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This week's small town church comes to us from Chewelah, Washington--St. Mary of the Rosary. I've never been to the state of Washington, so that's all I have to say. Just kidding, just kidding. It's true that I haven't ever been to Washington, but I do have more to say. While I haven't laid a toe in the state, my better half once lived there as a teenager. His step-dad was stationed in Steilacoom, Washington and they lived there for about 2 1/2 years. I know it was rainy and my husband loved running in the drizzly rain and it was very green. And that's because Steilacoom is on the west side of the Cascade Mountains. Chewelah is on the eastern side, which I'm told is NOT the lush side. Side Note: For some weird reason, people from Kansas like to add an r into the words Washington and wash. Pretty much my whole family says "Warshington" or "Warsh." Why? I have no clue. I have been broken of the habit since living away, but if I'm home too long, that R sometimes resurfaces. Last week, we looked at a church in Alabama which is part of the area known as the Bible Belt. Interestingly enough, Washington state is part of an area called the "Unchurched Belt," with church attendance across the board being low. Catholics make up 14%-17% of the population. What's interesting is that this parish started out as a missionary parish founded by the Jesuits. What a lot of people don't know, is that missionaries, like the Jesuits, used to move into an area that was kind of uncharted territory and lay the groundwork. Once the population of an area became big enough to support a diocese, the missionaries would relinquish the parish(es) they founded to the diocese. That's what happened here. The Jesuits moved in, founded this parish in 1885 and handed it over to the Diocese of Spokane in 1916 and it's been holding down the fort ever since. 🙂 So, I hope you enjoy this copper-roofed church from Chewelah, WA, Catholic Pilgrims, and happy Monday! Side Note 2: While my husband enjoyed living in Washington, he's not too happy with the Seahawks for beating his Niners in the playoffs. So, his relationship with the state right now is bittersweet. lol.
Throughout my life, I have been admonished by numerous people for something I was doing wrong--by parents, siblings, my spouse, my kids, friends, priests. Initially, my reaction can be to bristle at their admonishment, to get defensive or try to justify my actions. Long, long ago, my baby sister, even when she was still a kid, admonished me over something and I dismissed her. I explained my sin away to her by saying that someday she'll understand why it's so important for me to commit this sin. Can you imagine? Lord, have mercy on us. Anyway, years later, I realized that God was trying to get through to me through my sister. He tries to get through to a lot of us by putting people in our lives that help to correct us and challenge us to be better than our current state. Last night at my Bible study, we were listening to our daily Lenten message and the priest said something that really connects to this. He said, "Jesus doesn't want us to just be wrong. He wants us to be aware of what we can change, so that we can be better." --Father Columba Jordan. So that we can be more like Him. Jesus doesn't want to point out our sins and vices to make us feel bad about ourselves. He doesn't want us to just be wrong. He wants to show us another way and we can only be shown that way if we become aware of where we are missing the mark. The word "sin" stems from Greek and Latin words that mean to miss the mark. My sister wasn't interested in just pointing out I was wrong. She thought my behavior was unbecoming of who I really am supposed to be and she was trying to help me. We have a lot of people in our lives, Catholic Pilgrims, trying to help us hit the mark. Don't dismiss them or brush them away because you can't stand to face yourself. Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Thursday.
Think of the most annoying person you've ever known. Got them in your head? Good. I've had numerous annoying people come into my life, as I'm sure you have, too. (I hope I'm not the person that pops into someone's head as their most annoying person. 🤔) In my younger years, when I was barely living my faith, I struggled to be good to anyone that annoyed me. Our first duty station was Wright-Patterson AFB. When we got there, I was anxious to work, so I tried everything--I subbed, I worked for some high-powered defense attorneys, and then I worked for base legal. My first day on the job, I met the lady I would be working with the most. We'll call her Lexi. Not only did I quickly discover that my job was utterly unnecessary and boring, but Lexi was quite possibly the most miserable person I'd ever met. She hated her job. I could see why: A lot of government jobs are so void of any real purpose that it makes the worker feel worthless. Because there was so little for her to do, she got used to just sitting at her computer doing nothing. So, even when people would come in to get help, she despised them. They made her get up and do something. The inertia of her life was such that she just wanted to stay put and stew. She was rude to me. Rude to customers. Rude to the lawyers. Everyone was stupid in her eyes. If I tried to do any kind of work or be happy towards customers, she would snap at me. Now, normally, I would have given her a piece of my mind, but for some reason, with her, I found the ability to not let all her snide remarks and laziness negatively affect me. I didn't consciously decide to love her, but I just found myself doing it. Each day I would come in and talk to her, ask her questions about herself. I found out that she loved to cook and we had a common interest in music. One day, she brought me food and it was delicious and I told her so. She started listening to the radio and we'd sing along to songs together when there was no one to help. Even though she was still pretty sassy, I saw her start to be more energetic, fun, and positive. Underneath all her prickles, she was a good woman. By the time I left to go get my Masters, Lexi and I had a pretty decent relationship and she was much more enjoyable to be around. I told my son last night, "People will come into your life that you don't like very much. Oftentimes, they are the ones that help work out our sanctification because they really challenge us to live out the virtues. If you can find a way to love annoying people well, you just may change their lives for the better." Find a way, Catholic Pilgrims, to love your annoying people well. P.S. You'll need grace and lots of it. 🙂
When I say Alabama, you may say: Football (SEC 👎) Bible Belt Forrest Gump Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" (There you go, it's in your head now. You're welcome.) What you won't probably think about is Catholicism. I know I sure didn't think that when my family was stationed there for 10 months a few years back. But, if I learned anything living in Turkey, sometimes when you are outnumbered, your faith gets stronger. Catholics in Alabama are some devoted folks. Our small-town chapel this week is Sacred Heart Church in Clear Point, Alabama. It sits right on Mobile Bay and is a popular venue for weddings because of its charm and quaintness. It's, also, packed during the busy season, so get there early all you late-coming Catholics. Yes, I'm looking at all of you. It's not far from Mobile, which is a city my family thoroughly enjoyed visiting when we lived in Montgomery. Side note: You Gulf people have some strange food habits. This Kansanite (my word for a person from Kansas) wasn't too keen on ripping the heads off of the river bugs, sorry, crawfish. I know you love to suck the brains out after decapitation, but I'm gonna have to stick with the cows, chickens and pigs. lol. 😉 However, if you are ever sticking your feet in the Gulf Shores in Alabama, check out the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile. But, also, take some time to visit Sacred Heart Church and be thankful to the French that got our Catholic Faith kick-started off in Alabama all the way back in 1703. Merci! Live the Faith boldly and travel well, Catholic Pilgrims.
Early on in my marriage, when I still had major anger issues, my husband would kindly ask me to work on my anger. Of course, I would become super angry and get defensive and yell, "This is just who I am, okay!" It was so selfish of me to not want to work on myself. I wanted to believe that my faults and failings were just something that happened to me. I couldn't help it, you see? Sure, there were reasons that led to me having a deep-seated anger within me, but it was always my choice to allow it to take over or not. I just didn't want to admit that. Instead, I wanted to believe that God had just made me this way--angry, selfish, and impatient. In effect, I was telling my husband, "Welp, sorry pal, you get what you get." These are the lies we tell ourselves to protect our egos. We want to believe that everything is out of our control because then we don't have to take responsibility and ...AND...we don't have to put in effort to work on ourselves. God did not make us to be filled with vices, bad habits and sinful behaviors. The potential we have in God's plan for our soul is beyond our imagination. With His grace we can become who He created us to be. Lent is the perfect time to finally be honest with ourselves. We are angry, jealous, lazy, irritable, rude, ungrateful, prideful, impatient, distracted, etc, because we allow ourselves to be. Not because we were made that way and not because we have no control. At some point, for love of my husband, I realized that I was a horrible wife for telling him that I wasn't going to change for the better. I got honest with myself and asked for God's help. I'm not that same person anymore. Resorting to anger was a habit of mine, so I will tend towards it when upset, but I do realize now that I have the ability to control it with prayer and awareness. It is something that I will always have to work on, but it is easier now to work on it. Excuses never allow us to grow, Catholic Pilgrims. Be brave enough to face yourself. Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Monday.
What has Satan used to tempt you away from God? We know from today's reading from Matthew that Satan tries to use pleasures, presumption, and power to tempt Jesus away from the Father. The three P's, if you will. We all know that worldly pleasures definitely tempt people away, by making them think that they can find ultimate happiness in them. We know that people are tempted away from God by just presuming that God will save them in the end. This creates an apathy in their souls, because why do you need to try if no matter what you are saved? For sure we know that power tempts people away from God. Getting drunk on our own power and believing that we are gods is, well, something Satan knows well. I wasn't, though, tempted away by any of those things initially. I was tempted away by Satan telling me that God didn't really care about me. "If God really loved you, He'd never have let bad things happen to you." In an instant, I believed that lie, because, I thought, who needs God when He just leaves you to be hurt? With that poison in my heart, I walked away. In that walking away, I went to the three P's. I tried to find happiness in my life apart from God in pleasures. That didn't work. I wrongly presumed that just because I still believed in God, He'd eventually save me in the end. So, it didn't matter how I lived. Such ungrateful arrogance. And, I believed I had the power to heal myself and live my life my way. That didn't work either. Satan doesn't always tempt us by offering to add something to our lives. Sometimes, he makes us doubt that God even cares. That's what he did to me. Through all temptations, we must hold fast to our worship of the One True God and of Him alone. There is nothing that Satan could tempt you with that is better than staying close to God, Catholic Pilgrims--nothing at all. Have a blessed First Sunday of Lent.
We all have something that we need to be healed of, whether it be spiritual wounds, emotional ones, physical, or even mental. Doesn't it feel, though, that we aren't necessarily getting better--more healed--as a people? One reason that people don't heal is because they want to cling to the pain. That sounds crazy, but it's true. For me, I didn't want to let go of my anger. The anger radiating from my emotional pain fueled me. It allowed me to be the hurt, injured victim that couldn't be blamed for how things were going in my life. I didn't want to let go of my anger, because if I let go of my anger, what would I have left? Well, I'd have to face myself and who I had allowed myself to become and I didn't want to do that. The anger allowed me to direct my focus on others and that took the heat off of me. If we want to truly be healed, we must let go of wanting to cling to our sad story in order to give us a pass for how our life is turning out. A second reason that people don't heal is because they try to fix themselves on their own. You will need Christ. I tried to heal myself, while still clinging to my red-hot anger, mind you, and that went absolutely nowhere. I even--out loud--told God, I was turning my back on HIm. Then I marched off to fix myself. That did not work. At all. Healing doesn't mean that you forget. Healing doesn't mean that you get to a place where you condone bad things that happened to you. Sometimes, we will not be physically healed as we desire. But, God can give us the grace to handle physical issues with dignity and not self-loathe to the point of wallowing in our misery. That misery will always turn to bitterness. A hard truth to accept is that, at some point, everybody's body will stop working for them. Healing does mean that we invite God into our lives to give us grace, that we brave facing the ways that we have poorly tried to cope, that we forgive any who need forgiving and let God deal out the justice, and that, instead of clinging to our pain, we had it over to God and refuse to let it have power over us anymore. Lent is a perfect time to seek healing, Catholic Pilgrims. Have a blessed Friday.
Because I live on an Air Force base, weekday evening Masses tend to have a lot of civilians present who don't normally come to Sunday Mass because they live off base. The evening Ash Wednesday Mass is always full of unfamiliar faces of people getting off work and coming over to Mass before going home. Sometimes people don't quite get off work in time and so they are a little late. Yesterday, after Mass, a few people had gotten there late and missed getting ashes. Standing in the back, I heard them shyly ask Father if they could get some and he smiled and said, "Oh, don't worry, it's not required." I think he thought they believed they had done something wrong. They smiled and replied back, "Would it still be okay to get some?" "Of course, come with me." There is something about Ash Wednesday that speaks to the human heart almost more than any other holy day. I think the answer to why is found in something I read yesterday. "To take the ashes is to confess kinship with this world of dust, to declare our readiness to abdicate pretensions to omnipotence. Standing before God in this way, I profess that I am not God. I admit the chasm that separates me from Him. I accept the uncomfortable otherness of God. He is what I am not, yet my being bears His mark. I crave a completion no created thing can give. I walk this earth as a yearning incarnate. I am at home, yet a stranger, homesick for a homeland I recall but have not seen." --Bishop Erik Varden Our ashes remind me of us our littleness and our bodily mortality and I think Ash Wednesday is that day, where as lost as we may be, we still want to return and be reminded that we belong to God. Have a blessed Thursday, Catholic Pilgrims.
"Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return." This life is a pilgrimage to our eternal destination whether you realize you are on it or not. The goal should always be to journey towards our true home--Heaven. I pray that you live the faith boldly this Lent and travel well. Have a blessed Ash Wednesday.
You all know that I'm a convert and that my cradle Catholic husband and I fought a lot in our early years of marriage on whether to be Catholic or Protestant. I had such a hard heart during those years. For one, I thought I knew everything about Christianity, which is so laughable, because I barely, if ever, read the Bible, I had a Sunday-class level of understanding of the Faith, and I really didn't go to church. I thought Catholics were a small, cultish group of Marian worshippers, so that was the extent of my understanding of Catholicism. Because of my hard heart, I just could not understand anything my husband was saying to me when he would try to explain the Catholic Faith. His words just ricocheted off my forehead. Nothing was getting in. It's like where Jesus asks his disciples today in Mark, "Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened?" So, I had this one Sunday when we were attending Mass where I decided that I was going up to receive Communion even though I wasn't Catholic. Nobody was gonna tell me what to do. As soon as I consumed the Eucharist, I felt sick. I went back to my pew utterly bewildered at what just happened. For me, it was just a symbol. If that was true, why did I feel awful? It was in that moment that the ice around my heart started to melt. I vowed never to take the Eucharist again without being Catholic and I started researching and trying to understand the Church's teachings on Holy Communion and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The second I "got" it, I knew I had to become Catholic immediately. It's not that I figured the mystery of the Eucharist out completely, it's that I came to understand that Christ was serious when He said, "This is My Body; This is my Blood." I realized that everything Christ did had to be elevated over what foreshadowed Holy Communion in the Old Testament. It could never be equal to and, most certainly, it could never be less than. It is impossible to understand anything with a hard heart, Catholic Pilgrims. Thank God that He finds ways to break through. Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Tuesday. *St. Rose Catholic Church, Lone Pine, CA
Although George Washington was never a Catholic, his belief in religious freedom made him a friend to Catholics. An Anglican--or Episcopalian until his death--he did attend services of different churches in order to show religious tolerance. While in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress, he attended Mass at St. Mary's. St. Mary's is the second oldest Catholic Church in Philly. He, also, helped to support the building of a Catholic Church in Baltimore and in Alexandria. The church in Alexandria is the Basilica of St. Mary where my family attended daily Mass on Fridays when we were stationed in Virginia. In addition, Washington had a friendly and positive relationship with Bishop John Carroll, the first bishop of the United States. In March of 1790, Bishop Carroll wrote a letter to Washington on behalf of Catholics in America. Washington responded with a letter to Catholics, dated March 1790. In it, he wrote: "I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality. And I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution, and the establishment of their Government: or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed." There's your President's Day history lesson, Catholic Pilgrims. Have a blessed day!
Many months ago, I saw a video of Allie B. Stuckey debating in the Jubilee forum. If you are unfamiliar with Jubilee, it's where one person with one set of beliefs gets debated by a room of people that are from the other mindset. Anyway, Allie B. Stuckey, a very faithful Protestant, was debating, I believe, a very progressive pastor. At one point he says, "Jesus would have been seen as a progressive as it related to Second Temple Judaism. He had a posture of, look, there are some things that have gone astray. You have heard it said, but 'I say to you.' So there's a part of Jesus that I see that had a posture of a progressive or being progressive." By "progressive" he meant all the ""progressive" talking points that we hear in Christianity today. Allie B. Stuckey does a really good job of defending the faith by saying that Jesus wasn't being a progressive, He was teaching about how things ought to be and that goes back to the beginning, to Genesis, to what the Word Made Flesh had always wanted. As I was listening to her talk, all I could think about was where Jesus said, "I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it." And so, all I wrote in the comment's section was that. Jesus was not a progressive, nor any other modern label. He came to restore. He did not abolish any of the Ten Commandments, but instead, went even further. Killing isn't just bad, but even being angry with your brother. Adultery isn't just bad, but even lusting after a woman. Divorce, in Jesus' eyes, is an act of adultery, if another is married. Making a false oath isn't just bad, but swearing to God at all is wrong. These are not my words, but Christ's. We see that Jesus never takes away the law, but fulfills it by asking us to seek an even more perfect way of living. This is restoration of the perfection that was initially found in the Garden, not a "progressive" path meant to include all modern sensibilities. Jesus did not call us to whatever our heart desires, but to what His heart desires. And His heart never desires us to do anything contrary to what He taught. Have a blessed Sunday, Catholic Pilgrims.
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