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I was making my latest podcast yesterday and St. Francis de Sales was taking about inspirations from God.
He said something about sin and virtue that I had never quite heard before. He was talking about how with sin and virtue there are three steps taken.
With sin, there is the initial temptation.
With virtue, there is the initial inspiration.
Then, with sin, we take delight it the temptation.
With virtue, we take pleasure in thinking of living it out.
Lastly, with both, there is the consent to do it.
He says, “With sin there are three steps taken backwards, with virtue there are three steps taken upwards.”
So often, we think sin just kind of happens out of our control. We just stumble into it—oops! That’s not true. We are tempted, the temptation delights us in a not good way, and then we consent.
With virtue, it’s not just something that happens to us. We have to consent to live it out. Many times, we pray asking God to just make us patient or courageous. He will never just—poof!—make us something. He will inspire us to live it out, we must take pleasure in the idea of living it out, and then consent to do it.
With both sin and virtue, the will is involved, Catholic Pilgrims. May we always use our will rightly.
Have a blessed day.
*Ceiling is found in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Charleston, SC.
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
Continue ReadingAlthough 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!
Continue ReadingMany 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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