FEAST OF ST. CLARE
Hebrews,
Chapter 10, Verse 26-27
26 If we sin
deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains
sacrifice for sins 27 but a fearful prospect of
judgment and a flaming fire that is going to consume the adversaries.
Have you not been attending Mass? Do you have habitual
sins that plague you? Have you lost hope after having full knowledge of the
truth? Do not abandon hope in the promises of Christ. There will be a second
coming. Turn around for here is a very solemn warning about deliberate sin. If
you turn your back on the sacrifice of Christ, there is no other sacrifice for
sin to appeal to. Do not reject salvation that comes from the Son of God. Only
His blood can save us from the inescapable judgment of God.[1]
Therefore go to confession attend Mass weekly and increase in faith, hope, and
love.
Getting Saved?[2]
How do you “get
saved” as a Catholic? This is something I’ve had on the burner for a long time
and have started writing more than once before. Now my dearest reader asks the
question and I’m motivated to come up with a concise response. “Getting saved,”
in the parlance of Evangelical Protestants, refers to the experience of
salvation by faith, being regenerated and justified by God’s grace, receiving
the Holy Spirit, and becoming a Christian. It’s not a term that Catholics
generally talk about: In the Catholic understanding, as I’ve discussed before, salvation is not a singular, one-time
event, but a journey and a process, an ongoing series of events
and encounters with God’s grace,
especially through the Sacraments. The reader will know
from my blog how one already a Christian becomes a Catholic; but how does
one who has no relationship with God at all, the unchurched sinner, become a Christian in the
Catholic Church? Does one pray a “sinner’s prayer”? I was
taken aback by the question; I’d never really thought about it. The “sinner’s
prayer,” in the Evangelical tradition, is a simple acknowledgement to God that
one is a sinner in need of His grace and salvation, repenting of those sins and
asking Him to come into one’s life and heart. In the traditions my reader and I
grew up in, “praying the sinner’s prayer” is shorthand for salvation, after
which one is “saved”; and while many even in those traditions would admit that
God continues to work in our lives through sanctification, that is generally
understood to be “it,” all there is to “getting saved.” (Interestingly, even in
the Southern Baptist Convention there has been a recent turn away from this attitude.) Generally
speaking, no, Catholics do not believe that praying a “sinner’s prayer,” by
itself, will “get one saved.” So, if, in the Catholic
understanding, salvation is a journey, how does one take her first steps?
Sacramentally speaking, Baptism is the entrance into the Christian life of
grace and into the Church, one’s initial justification and when one can
rightly say to be “getting saved.” But generally, one must go through months of
classes as a catechumen in RCIA before one can even be baptized — which
seems to the Evangelical mind to be the very antithesis of evangelism and
outreach, making it positively difficult,
apparently, for sinners to come into the kingdom. (The critic would raise, and he
would be right, that the earliest Christians in Acts 2 didn’t have to endure through months of a catechumenate before
they could receive Baptism. But St. Justin Martyr attests that by the
mid–second century, some period of preparation and instruction in Christian
doctrine was required. There are exceptions: Any priest can expedite
the process of initiation if there is a good reason to, e.g. the catechumen
demonstrates a thorough understanding of what she’s getting herself into; and
in fact anyone, even a layperson, can baptize in cases of dire need, e.g. the
sinner is in danger of death. Since the earliest times, the Church has understood that for the
catechumen awaiting Baptism who dies in that desire, God works that saving
grace anyway.) What is the sinner supposed to do, then, who longs to know God
and partake of His grace, but is told she has to wait and first be instructed?
The Evangelical mode, at least, serves that immediate moment and desire —
though there is then the danger of considering salvation “over and done.” And certainly,
there is that desire, and it can
start with a moment, and in that moment and even before, God’s grace is working
in the sinner’s life, calling her to repentance and faith. I think one reason Evangelical Protestants so easily misunderstand
the Catholic view of salvation, calling it salvation
by works in contrast to salvation by faith, is because faith is
immediate and cannot be put off. Saying that salvation
begins with Baptism seems to dismiss the role of faith and place emphasis on what
seems to be a work. But just as the Catholic
understanding of salvation is that of a journey, the preparation for that journey is itself a journey, the journey to the baptismal font: and in those initial steps
God’s grace is already working, cultivating the sinner’s faith. Marriage begins with a wedding: a pledge of faith, commitment, covenant, and espousal; but generally,
one does not choose to be married unless one already has faith in one’s betrothed: one’s relationship with
the Bridegroom has already been building for some time. Catholics take a long and
patient view of salvation; and we should: we’ve been ushering sinners down that
road for 2,000 years! I would say, now that I’ve thought about it, that something like
a “sinner’s prayer” is a good first step, even for
embarking on the Catholic road: not that the formulaic words themselves are
efficacious or “get one saved,” but that the confession that one is
a sinner and wants to make Jesus Christ Lord of one’s life is an appropriate response
to what is surely the grace of God already working in one’s life and bringing
one to repentance and faith. Pray a “sinner’s prayer”; better
yet, make that confession out loud to God and to others. Begin reading the
Bible and the Catechism and attending Mass.
Talk to a priest and enroll in RCIA. Through all this, God is working in your
life, building you in faith, drawing you nearer to Him; and when it does come
time for you to receive the graces of Baptism and the Sacraments, you will be saved by faith.
The
Lady Clare, "shining in name, more shining in life," was born in the
town of Assisi about the year 1193. She was eighteen years old when St.
Francis, preaching the Lenten sermons at the church of St. George in Assisi,
influenced her to change the whole course of her life. Talking with him
strengthened her desire to leave all worldly things behind and live for Christ.
The following evening, she slipped away from her home and hurried through the
woods to the chapel of the Portiuncula, where Francis was then living with his
small community. He and his brethren had been at prayers before the altar and
met her at the door with lighted tapers in their hands. Before the Blessed
Virgin's altar Clare laid off her fine cloak, Francis sheared her hair, and
gave her his own penitential habit, a tunic of coarse cloth tied with a cord.
When it was known at home what Clare had done, relatives and friends came to
rescue her. She resisted valiantly when they tried to drag her away, clinging
to the convent altar so firmly as to pull the cloths half off. Baring her shorn
head, she declared that Christ had called her to His service, she would have no
other spouse, and the more they continued their persecutions the more steadfast
she would become. Francis had her removed to the nunnery of Sant' Angelo di
Panzo, where her sister Agnes, a child of fourteen, joined her. This meant more
difficulty for them both, but Agnes' constancy too was victorious, and in spite
of her youth Francis gave her the habit. Later he placed them in a small and
humble house, adjacent to his beloved church of St. Damian, on the outskirts of
Assisi, and in 1215, when Clare was about twenty-two, he appointed her superior
and gave her his rule to live by. She was soon joined by her mother and several
other women, to the number of sixteen. They had all felt the strong appeal of
poverty and sackcloth, and without regret gave up their titles and estates to
become Clare's humble disciples. Within a few years similar convents were
founded in the Italian cities of Perugia, Padua, Rome, Venice, Mantua, Bologna,
Milan, Siena, and Pisa, and also in various parts of France and Germany. Agnes,
daughter of the King of Bohemia, established a nunnery of this order in Prague,
and took the habit herself. The "Poor Clares," as they came to be
known, practiced austerities which until then were unusual among women. They
went barefoot, slept on the ground, observed a perpetual abstinence from meat,
and spoke only when obliged to do so by necessity or charity. Clare herself
considered this silence desirable as a means of avoiding the innumerable sins
of the tongue, and for keeping the mind steadily fixed on God. Francis or the
bishop of Assisi sometimes had to command her to lie on a mattress and to take
a little nourishment every day. Discretion, came with years, and much later
Clare wrote this sound advice to Agnes of Bohemia: "Since our bodies are
not of brass and our strength is not the strength of stone, but instead we are
weak and subject to corporal infirmities, I implore you vehemently in the Lord
to refrain from the exceeding rigor of abstinence which I know you practice, so
that living and hoping in the Lord you may offer Him a reasonable service and a
sacrifice seasoned with the salt of prudence."
Saint Clare, Virgin,
Foundress of the Poor
Clares.
"Read
these counsels slowly. Pause to meditate on these thoughts. They are things
that I whisper in your ear-confiding them-as a friend, as a brother, as a
father. And they are being heard by God. I won't tell you anything new. I will
only stir your memory, so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so
you will better your life and set out along ways of prayer and of Love. And in
the end you will be a more worthy soul."
40. You lack strength of character: what insistence on having a hand
in everything! You are bent on being the salt of every dish. And — you won't be
annoyed if I speak clearly — you have little aptitude for being salt: in
particular, you lack its capacity to dissolve and pass unnoticed.
·
Please
Pray for Senator
McCain and our country; asking Our Lady of Beauraing to
intercede.
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