My own "Crown of Thorns"

By Theresa

{my favorite icon: Nymphios which means Bridegroom}

As I was reflecting on my Profession into the Secular Order of the Discalced Carmelites, I was thinking particularly about the name I took when I received the scapular many years ago. I felt inspired to take the name "Theresa of Jesus Crowned with Thorns" since I have a great devotion to this image of Jesus. This image, most of all, pierces my very soul.

I also reflected on how Christ has allowed me to share in this particular suffering during the last 14 years. Through my own depression, anxiety and the chronic insomnia that resulted...Jesus has blessed me with my very own "crown of thorns". This was compounded by the erratic sleep patterns of my youngest daughter and in the last several years, different hours at work that require me to be "on call" through several nights (so I can stay home during the day). Many, many times, it has felt like anything but a "blessing". But it is through this very suffering that God has taught me to rely completely on Him to help me make it through the day...to take care of my family, my home, to work part-time, in other words, to remain faithful to my vocation as wife, mother, and Carmelite.

Please do not get the impression that I did not fail in accepting this suffering. I failed many times...miserably failed...to the point of despair. In the depths of severe sleep deprivation, it is not hard for one to lose all hope and feel as though something will snap inside. There must of been a thread...a thin thread...that kept my soul clinging to God with whatever strength was left. And each time, He pulled me out of the depths of despair. I have lost count...


Continue reading at Theresa's blog my desert heart.

A sad anniversary and a free chapter of Trusting God with St. Therese

By Connie Rossini

This is my family (plus two friends) on June 10, 1974.
I’m the one with the braids in the front.
Terri is behind me next to our mom.

Here is how our car looked thirty minutes later.

Today is the fortieth anniversary of one of the saddest events in my life so far. On June 10, 1974, our family was driving to the annual Catholic Charismatic Conference at the University of Notre Dame. We began our journey in Spokane, Washington, where we had spent a weekend on retreat. Just outside Missoula, Montana, the car rolled over three times, landing in the median of the freeway. I was in the back with the seat down and no seat belt. So were two of my siblings and two friends.

I ended up with stitches in my leg and a bump on my head. My sister Terri, who had been sitting next to me, was thrown from the car and died. She was ten years old.

Why did God let this happen? Didn’t He know where we had come from and where we were going? Hadn’t He heard Terri’s voice, when she had volunteered that morning to pray for a safe trip?


Continue to Connie's blog to receive your free chapter of Trusting God with St. Therese.

Be a people of the Word

By Caroline

Light of the World by William Holman
Hunt (Wikimedia Commons).

I’m on a short three-week break in between classes so I’ve had some time to catch up on news and things around the cultural landscape… Sometimes, I wonder why I bother. What an assault on the senses, what a challenge for anyone in this modern day to continue on the path of living in the world, but not being of it. It’s difficult seeking a life where one is,

like sheep among the wolves…as cunning as serpents and yet as harmless as doves.

—Matthew 10:16

Quite an exercise in discernment and yet, if I don’t do it, my class of 6th graders tell me about it nonetheless and then some; at least this way I’m prepared.

When they do tell me, they expect me to react as the world does, in anger and bitterness. They expect me to give in to the inevitability that, whatever I may teach them about God’s ways, it just isn’t going to cut it in the world where they’re growing up .

And the children are really in survival mode. The stories I hear about what goes on daily in school, it’s heartbreaking. But, bless their hearts they carry on and they have the energy to because they’re young.

 Who can overcome the world?

—1 John 5:5

 Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.

Rejoice!

By Heidi

Joy!  That is the message this Sunday.  We light the pink candle, and we look to our joyous celebration of Christ’s birth as well as to His second coming, which we wait for amidst the groaning labor pains of all creation. Even in suffering our joy is at hand. 

This is why I love Enya’s version of O Come, O come Emmanuel.  It has that soft, mournful tone of a world that is subjected to futility, a world that longs for redemption.  And echoing in the background, as if from somewhere outside of time you hear: Rejoice! Gaudete!

And we need to know that our rejoicing is not a glib refusal to accept the harsh realities of our day, but an enduring hope that we can indeed reject the concerns of the flesh, which lead to death, and receive the Spirit of God, which is not enslaved by fear:  "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, 'Abba, Father!'" Romans 8:15

 
Continue reading at Heidi's blog Journey to Wisdom.

Thankful for earthquakes and supercyclones

By Anabelle Hazard

When supercyclone “Haiyan” was poised to whip at the Philippines, I joined my countrymen in prayer, every hour on the hour.I sighed with blessed relief when my sister reported that although power had gone out, my hometown of Cebu City (which had just been rocked by a 7.4 magnitude quake) escaped the eye of the storm and didn’t sustain much damage.  But over the next few days, as more photos and news reports emerged of severe destruction, missing persons, unknown casualties and downed communications and transportations north of my province and its neighboring islands, my sighs were snuffled into tissues.

A ship washed into a leveled shore of a once bustling port; coconut trees shaven or snapped in two; a looted half of a mall building teetering; a roofless hospital; entire towns and villages  pulverized into debris; paper plates and pieces torn from the boxes containing messages of survivors to their anxious family members that “we are all alive” or “so and so is dead”; survivors sagging on  evacuation centers, one of which was a grown man, with a distinct brown scapular around his neck, crying…  and the most heartbreaking of all: a muddied corpse of a mother clutching her dead boy and her baby.

Along with the distressing images, my Facebook page  has been flooded with information on how to help and help speedily on its way. Packed bags of relief goods, donation centers set up, money coming in, my teenage nephews helping build homes, medicines arriving with volunteer doctors from California, Canada and Israel, US. Marines deployed, Japanese rescue teams, and local corporate businesses and news reporters doing their primary job of being compassionate human beings. 


Continue reading at Anabelle's Blog  Written by the Finger of God.

The call from Narnia

by Heidi

Map of the Narnian world by David Bedell, Wikimedia Commons.

CCC 30: “Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.” Although man can forget God or reject Him, He never ceases to call every man to seek Him, so as to find life and happiness. But this search for God demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will, “an upright heart,” as well as the witness of others who teach him to seek God.

"It started out as a feeling,..." 

Our family recently watched Prince Caspian on our weekly movie night, and I guess I was in one of those nostalgic moods, because as I was watching the ending, and as the theme music was swelling, I was transported back to my childhood days.  Days when I deeply longed to find the portal that would take me to Narnia, or some other wonderful world.  A place where I could not only see wonders, but be a part of them.  A place I was certain existed in my heart, though I had no way to access it.

and then turned into a quiet hope..."

Then came Junior High, and it was in that time that I learned that what I really should long for was to be popular and to not make a fool of myself.  (In Junior High you make a fool out of yourself by divulging that you have spent more than a few afternoons sitting in your grandmother's closets --she had the closets with the best prospects for adventure-- hoping beyond hope that a door would open up on a world where heroism and valor, beauty and great love were things that could be attained in actuality and not just in the imagination.)

Very quickly I moved on to more rational, down-to-earth, and attainable pursuits. I focused my longings, even my spiritual ones, on things that could be found "under the sun." These worldly things pretend to be just as wondrous and, all to often, seem to be all there is to satisfy deep longings.  They stifle the call of eternity. Then adulthood comes and duties and responsibilities shrink our hopes even more.

I have seen the business that God has given to mortals to be busied about.  God has made everything appropriate to its time, but has put the timeless into their hearts so they cannot find out, from beginning to end, the work which God has done. Ecclesiastes 3:10-11 

"which then turned into a quiet thought..."

How quickly timeless yearnings in our hearts are diverted!   I know that much of our daily life is made up of mundane and often dreary duties, (I am doing laundry and changing diapers as I am writing this so, believe me, I know!) but even in the midst of this concrete, material world every one has moments when you know there is something more.  What do you do when that little feeling of God's wonder and mystery tugs at your soul?  Respond to it!  Even for just a second acknowledge that you are being called to place you deepest hope in eternity, to hunger for it -- to believe in it!

"which then turned into a quiet Word..."

 

Continue reading at Journey to Wisdom.

Hope for the remnant of God's people

by Heidi

The Tribute Money by Titian (photo in Public Domain)

  

The word “remnant“ has been coming to my mind a lot lately and I have been trying to write a reflection on it for days, but I could not pull it together (admittedly this is a frequent problem for me).  I keep brushing the word aside thinking that the word remnant seems a tad over-dramatic. Is our culture dying so quickly that those who are still faithful to the Church’s positions on the issues of marriage, contraception and abortion in our Catholic churches are already a mere remnant (even if the pews seem full)?  Surely that is overstating the case!

Yet in headline after headline, and in discussion after discussion, with Catholic individuals who ought to know better, I am finding that adhering to the Natural Law (the Ten Commandments), particularly in political views, is not even considered!  Many ( though not all) of my fellow parishioners use a soft sentimentality as the basis for many political positions, how you feel governs your stance.  Anything that causes discomfort ought to be re-defined. This is dangerous, because so many of these individuals are willingly handing over to Caesar the powers to bind or loose moral teachings – and if you try to make an argument against that, you are completely misunderstood, because so many lack an understanding of what liberty and freedom really mean!!!  Are we narrowing down to a remnant of faithful Catholics?

Then the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down DOMA and dismissing Prop 8 came down, not unexpected, but still quite ominous, and after reading Elizabeth Scalia’s excellent article titled “The ‘Party’ is victor; Time to save souls and churches”, I realized I was not being dramatic at all.  It was the Spirit that place that word in my heart.  Not to cause despair, but to show me that the seeds of renewal are even now being sown.

“So too at this present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace” (Romans 11:5).

The word remnant first popped into my head during the June 7th rehearsal dinner for my son Matthew and his then bride–to-be Grace. They were married on June 8th (Yes! It was the feast of the Immaculate Heart-- isn't that awesome!) after a real courtship that was based on discernment of God’s will for them.

These two have a profound respect, for each other and their deepening love, for parental authority and a commitment to Christ through their Catholic faith. In fact, it was their Catholic faith that came shining through all the wonderful parties and joy-filled celebrations. Especially in the beautiful Nuptial Mass, where the Gospel was chanted by a newly ordained transitional deacon and Panis Angelicus, Ave Verum Corpus and Gounod's Ave Maria were beautifully sung. The Mass and all of the celebrations that surrounded it were directly and indirectly proclaiming what marriage truly is: A covenant that is “ordered to the good of the couple, as well as the generation and education of children.” (CCC 1660) Marriage was not just about the two of them, it was a bridging of the past generations to the future ones. It was about the obligations of these two to build up a Culture of Life through their vows to each other and to God.

Both Grace’s mother and I heard from guests who felt renewed and filled with hope after the wedding. It was so joyfully Catholic! Three generations of the priesthood participated in celebrating it and at least one other young man was undertaking serious discernment for a religious vocation. And it was at the rehearsal dinner that I looked around the room and felt the hope and promise of renewal that God is always offering us! I thought here ,in this room, are some of the remnant, the faithful remnant in an increasingly post-Christian world. God always leaves a remnant. And what a joyful remnant it was! I wish I had words for my gratitude.

 Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love.  Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created.  And You shall renew the face of the earth.

Continue reading Heidi's reflection at  Journey to Wisdom.

The orchid resurrection

by Caroline

An orchid in Costa Rica (Photo Credit, Jose Manuel Lopez Pinto, Wikipedia).

There’s an orchid that sits on a green table on my porch. It was a Mother’s Day present from my son several years ago, which he has no memory of.

When he first gave it to me, the purple and white striped blooms had this delicate magical beauty, but unsure of my limited green thumb skills, I was concerned. Could I mother such a delicate plant? I put it on the porch and followed some basic orchid care instructions for dummies I found on the internet.

Next to the green table is the chair where I often sit to pray the evening office; where day after day, week after week, the orchid blossomed and thrived and gave me such joy. While praying there, I offered up the many concerns I had about my son; prayed when there were days I didn’t hear from him, prayed when I knew with that motherly instinct that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.

Then one day, I could see the blooms dying off. One by one they dropped away, until all that was left of those purple veined beauties was a plant with thick green leaves.  The flowers were gone mirroring almost simultaneously a dark time in my relationship with my son.

Read the rest of this special Mother's Day post at Bell of the Wanderer.