I will listen for what God, the LORD, has to say; surely he will speak of peace to his people and to his faithful.
Psalm 85,
Verse 9-11
9 I will listen for what
God, the LORD, has to say; surely he will speak of peace to his people
and to his faithful. May they not turn to foolishness! 10 Near indeed is his salvation for those who fear him; glory will
dwell in our land. 11 Love and truth will meet; justice and peace will
kiss.
Today traditionally is the Eve of the Feast of
Saint Nicholas and is celebrated throughout much of Europe with sweets and
gifts to children. Legend tells us that Nicholas was a man of action and used
his abundance that the Lord provided him to give special protection to children
and unmarried young women. Let us find some way today to practice both the
spiritual and temporal works of mercy. Today would be a good day to do
something that helps children or young unmarried women from the abundance that
God has provided us. For those who cannot share it is suggested to fast twice
this week as was the practice of Saint Nicholas and give the cost of the food
you would normally spend to help those in need. From the store house of your
spiritual abundance your prayers can make a difference: pray especially for
women who are enslaved in addictions and/or the sex slave trade. Thousands of men from over 80 countries
consistently pray for women lead by an online organization called “e5 men”[1].
Perhaps the Lord is calling you to this.
Blessed are the Peacemakers
Seventh,
Christ blesses not peace, but peacemakers. Peacemakers are not pacifists.
Peacemakers are warriors, but they are spiritual warriors, warriors against
war. Sometimes war can be conquered only by war. Everyone speaks highly of
peacemaking. How, then, is that countercultural, except to terrorists? Because the
peace that Christ blesses is the peace the world cannot give. It is peace with
neighbor, self, and God; not with the world, the flesh, and the devil. It not a
peace with greed, lust, and pride, but the peace that comes through poverty,
chastity, and obedience, three most countercultural virtues. These two kinds of
peace are in fact at war with each other. Our world's peacemakers will embrace
Christ's peace, but only if they do not have to give up the world's peace and
only if they do not have to fight for it. Thus, paradoxically, we lack true
peace because we are reluctant to war against the enemies of peace, and also
because we do not put the three ingredients of Christ's peace in the proper
order. We preach incessantly about peace with neighbor, but seldom about peace
with God. Thomas Merton reminds us of this necessary order in three wonderfully
simple sentences when he says, "We are not at peace with each other
because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with
ourselves because we are not at peace with God." Christ does the same in
putting the first table of the law first, as Moses did. We need to relearn
lesson one. Christ blesses peacemakers, but when you are at war, you can make
peace only by waging and winning war. Christianity is judgmental and repressive
and negative. For Christianity says to us that we are at war, ever since a
certain incident in Eden, and war judges the enemy (that's why a war is fought:
because a judgment is made about an enemy) and represses the enemy (that is
what defense is: repressing the enemy's offense) and negates the enemy,
destroys the enemy (that is what offense is, destroying the enemy's defense).
Our enemies are real, just as real as flesh and blood; they are principalities
and powers. They are not men; they are demons. And they are also our own sins. Our
Lord told us that he came into the world to bring a sword to wage and win this
war. The sword is a cross. Happiness does not consist in pacifism; happiness
consists in peace, and peace can be obtained only by waging and winning a war
to make peace. The cross is like a syringe; it gives us a blood transfusion. It
is the opposite of a normal sword. What Christ does is exactly the opposite of
what Dracula does. Dracula, like the demons, takes our blood, our life. Christ
gives us a blood transfusion. We are on a battlefield between Christ and
Dracula. When Christ says that peacemakers are blessed because they "will
be called the sons of God," he does not mean that peacemaking is the cause
and being a son of God is the effect. The other way around: only the sons of
God can make God's peace, do God's work. Peacemaking is the effect. But
peacemakers are called sons of God. They are known to be sons of God because we
recognize the cause by the effect.
Blessed are You when Men Persecute You
The
eighth beatitude blesses not just pain or suffering, but persecution, that is,
suffering imposed by rejection and hatred. This is the only one of the
beatitudes that Christ repeats, both to emphasize it as the final and most
outrageous beatitude of all, and to emphasize that it is not merely the pain,
but the rejection, the reviling, the slander, that is blessed. But how can this
be? Everyone wants to be loved. How can it be blessed to be hated? One possible
explanation is utterly inconsistent with Christ: a kind of sneering
superiority, as if it were blessed to say to those who hate us, "I
wouldn't want love from worthless fools like you." Surely it is great
grief that the persecutors are fools. Of course they are not worthless fools;
if they were, there would be no reason for our grief for them. And therefore
grief on our part that they are not blessed is real, if we love our persecutors
as Christ does and commands us to: "Love your enemies." Notice that
he does not say, "Do not use the word enemy, it is not nice." We have
enemies, but we must love them. The reward that makes persecution blessed is
the same as the one that makes poverty blessed: the kingdom of Heaven.
Persecution has the same blessing as poverty because persecution is a form of
poverty, poverty not of money, but of love, that is, of being loved. Both money
and love are blessed only when they are given: "It is more blessed to give
than to receive." We desperately crave love from the world. But the world
is not Christ. The world is fallen, fallen into the knowledge of good and evil.
The world is therefore afraid of Christ as the cavity is afraid of the dentist
or as the liar is afraid of the light. (I use the word world here in the
scriptural sense: not as the planet (Gaea, matter), which God created good, but
as the time word, eon, that designates the era of sin, the kingdom of the
devil. Persecution is not blessed in itself, but it becomes blessed if it is
persecution "for righteousness' sake", for the sake of God, not only
explicitly, but also implicitly, that is, if you are persecuted for being that
which God is: for being Godlike, for being righteous. Thus the righteous pagan
like Socrates is also blessed when he is misunderstood, hated, rejected, persecuted,
and killed, like Christ. Just as your peacemaking is a sign that you are a
child of God, and thus blessed, so being persecuted for the sake of your
righteousness is also a sign that you are a member of His kingdom and thus
blessed. Blessing comes only from what is good, and persecution, poverty, etc.
are not good in themselves. Christ is not a Stoic or a Hindu or a Buddhist;
blessing does not come from not caring about the good things of this world,
which God created, nor from seeing through this world as an illusion, as maya,
nor from the clever device of spiritual euthanasia by which our desires for
things are quenched so that we can avoid the suffering that they bring. No, the
Christian knows something real and good in itself that the Stoic, the Hindu and
the Buddhist do not know (even though they may implicitly long for it and even
attain it in the end), and that something is, simply, Jesus Christ. He makes
blessed even the nails in His cross. And only He makes them blessed.
He that Loses His Life for My Sake shall Find It
Our
ninth desire is for life, and the ninth blessing is death. Death contains all
the other paradoxes. Christ teaches us this blessing of death not in words
only, but also in deed — by his cross, which sums up all the beatitudes. And
the cross reveals the hidden source of all eight beatitudes: the historical
fact, not the abstract principle, that God, out of sheer love for us, became
incarnate, died, and rose to save us from sin and death. As Dorothy Sayers
said, "The dogma is the drama." By this dramatic judo, death itself
was turned into an instrument for life, as an earthen dam is overwhelmed by the
waters of the flood that conquers it, and the dam is swept along and made into
a part of the flood itself. So the flood of God's infinite life, when it
entered our world, not only conquered death but turned death itself into life's
most powerful instrument. In the words of the old anthem "Open our
Eyes", "Thou hast made death glorious and triumphant, for through its
portals we enter into the presence of the Living God."
The secret of happiness is very simple. It is Jesus. Not
just the philosophy of Jesus, but Jesus, his real presence.
We
anticipate that final death, and its final blessing, in all our little deaths
now. Our participations in Christ's eight beatitudes are those little deaths.
We not only anticipate it, we actually participate in it, in these little
deaths, the real little (or large) dyings that we do every day. And we also
anticipate and actually participate in the final blessing, "the presence
of the Living God," every time we "open our eyes" and see who it
is that is really present there. Where our eyes see only the most undramatic
little wafer of bread, look who is present! How absurd that we find it easier
to get up off our knees than to get down! The secret of happiness is very
simple. It is Jesus. Not just the philosophy of Jesus, but Jesus, his real
presence. He actually comes to us in such unlikely vehicles as poverty, pain
and persecution. He has weird taste in vehicles. He came to Jerusalem on a
donkey. And when he comes, he acts with power, though usually also with
subtlety and not bombast. He really works! I am haunted by my memories of a few
precious hours in the company of two happiest groups of people I have ever met
in my life. In both cases I was supposed to speak to them. In both cases, they
spoke to me — with very few words, like Mother Teresa, like Jesus. One group
was in fact Mother Teresa's nuns, in Boston's worst slum. Another was a convent
of contemplative Carmelites in Danvers, Massachusetts. What they said to me,
simply by being who they were, was unmistakable: "See how happy I am; see
how happy Jesus makes me!" This is how happiness happens: it is not so
much taught, like math, but caught, like measles. The Church is in the business
of spreading the good infection, like in "The Invasion of the Body
Snatchers", only this is a good infection. And that is "the new
evangelism". And it is also the old evangelism that won the world two thousand
years ago. It will do it again, for there is no argument against real
happiness. The smiles of the saints are the arguments that will win the world
for Christ again. They are unarguable. Only one thing, then, is necessary to
create a world of happiness from pole to pole. And it is not doing any of the
many good things that Martha did, but doing the one thing that Mary did: just
sit at Jesus' feet; just be in his presence, know his love, all day. That is
the scandalously simple secret of happiness.
COURAGE FOR THE MODERN WORLD 2017 #2017CALENDAR
Authored by Mr. Richard H. Havermale Jr.This book is the continuation of my first book based on more than 365 references in the Bible to fear, dread, and that in fact our God encourages us to "BE NOT AFRAID". To do this we must be in the presence of our Lord and talk to Him. I recommend you develop the habit of spending 10-15 minutes a day with our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel or if that is not available some other quiet place where you can be in the presence of our Lord. Read the daily entry and reflect on it asking our Lord and His mother to talk to your heart and reveal to you the will of the Father and then Do it. The layout of this book is to list and reflect on the books of the bible Sirach through Revelations. In the early part of September my search of the verses dealing with fear and being afraid was completed; so I asked the Lord what do I, do now. After some reflection I realize that the fruit of fear in the Lord is the Theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love which ultimately results in Peace of the Lord. As a consequence the month of September will deal with Peace, October with Love and the month of November will be reflections on Faith and Hope. After Thanksgiving for the season of Advent and Christmas this work uses a multitude of references that reflect the Christmas season. There are many theologians who state that the eighth deadly sin is fear itself. It is fear and its natural animal reaction to fight or flight that is the root cause of our failings to create a Kingdom of God on earth. Saint John Paul II in his writings and talks also tells us to BE NOT AFRAID. In fear or anger we walk away from God. Our Lord, Jesus Christ taught us how to walk back toward God in His sermon on the mount through the Beatitudes. Each of the beatitudes is the antidote for the opposite deadly sins.
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