MLK-saint Anthony, abbot-full wolf moon
Let anything you hear die with you;
never fear, it will not make you
burst!
Today
might be a good day to make a silent retreat. Shut off the TV, radio and try to
obtain silence. In the modern world it is indeed difficult to find silence and
when we do we fidget because our mind is so addicted to constant stimulation it
drives us crazy and we fidget. Never fear
you will not burst.
Silence:
“Be still and know that I am God.”
(Ps. 46: 10)
Here is an excerpt from
Ask a Carmelite
Sister…Sins and Faults of the Tongue: To
Speak or not to Speak – That is the Question
Dear Sister,
There is a lot of noise
around me – constantly. So much chatter. It seems to me that conversations in
general are getting more superficial. I’m reminded of the title of one
Shakespeare’s plays. It seems to fit what I am trying to say – Much Ado
about Nothing. What are your thoughts?
Dear Friend,
Ah! Much Ado About Nothing. Well said!
I hear a longing in
your question – a longing for something deeper, restorative and
spiritual. To fulfill this longing, we must all try, even though it is
not so easy in today’s culture, to re-discover the healing power of silence. As
Ecclesiastes says, “There is a time to be silent, and a time to speak.”
Each one of my
Carmelite Sisters, including myself, is required to make an eight-day silent
retreat yearly. When we first entered Carmel, silence was difficult for us. It
was new. Many of us spend our first eight-day retreat simply meditating with
growing astonishment that anyone could even keep quiet for eight full days, and
how were we ever going to get through it? Of course, throughout the
years, we have all come to love it.
There are two kinds of
silence – exterior and interior silence. Each complements the other. Each makes
the other possible. Both bring you closer to God. We learn to keep still and
quiet so that we may pray. It doesn’t take long to realize that the external
silence, once achieved, reveals all those interior noises that converge within
our minds. The Carmelite way is a way of profound prayer and we all find
out soon enough that our interior thoughts can be very noisy. I’ve heard from
people who had tried the hermit way of life, and left it because the silence
uncovered so much of their interior noise. As they put it, it uncovered too
much.
During one eight-day
silent retreat, the retreat master, who happened to be Father Thomas Dubay, SM,
spoke about the opposite of silence. He concentrated on speech, on WHAT we
CHOOSE to say and WHEN we choose to say it.
I still have my notes
from that memorable eight-day retreat. Each point was an eye-opener for me.
You may find this helpful in your quest. So, here are my notes from
conferences given by Father Dubay, who divided the topic into two sections:
1. Obvious Sins of the Tongue
2. Unrealized Faults of
Speech
Obvious Sins of the Tongue – “In a multitude of words, sin is
not lacking” (Proverbs 10:19).
· Detraction – speaking
about another persons’ faults (faults that are true) without a good reason
(Sirach 21).
· Calumny – which is speaking
about a persons’ faults (faults that are not true).
· Bickering – speaking nasty
or biting remarks
· Nagging – the constant
complaining, scolding or urging about a fault even if it is true; to find fault
constantly (Proverbs 21:9).
· Ego-centrism – constantly
referring to what I did, what I said, etc. Constantly talking about ME
· Breaking confidences – for
there are natural secrets that should not be spread; people have a right to
their reputation (Proverbs 11:13)
· Dominating a conversation
to prove a point – and most of the time we are unaware we are doing this.
· Salacious talks/jokes – which
has to do with speaking impurely (Ephesians 5:3-4).
Unrealized Faults of Speech
1.
Talking can be a
big waste of time – when the talking is empty and gossipy (Matt. 12:36)
2.
Neglecting the
spiritual in our speaking with others – which is the main business of our
lives (Ps. 25:15; Eph. 1: Col. 3:12; Eph. 5:18-20)
3.
Dissipation and
draining of our psychic energies – leaving us fatigued, distracted, and
unable to do our tasks at hand
4.
Bad example –
to our family, friends, co-workers, but especially to our children
5.
Excessive
comfort-seeking through words – which includes talking over and over again
about one’s hurts
6.
Excusing
ourselves – when we should not
7.
Vain discussions
– when our time could be better spent (2 Tim. 2:16-17)
8.
Meddling in
others’ affairs (2 Thess. 3:11-12)
How to Overcome Sins of the Tongue
9.
Daily prayer.
10. Frequent
Confession and Holy Communion.
11. Pray
for the grace to recognize all of the sins of the tongue — some are obvious,
some are subtle.
12. Pray
for the grace to keep silent during discussion of a bad situation.
13. Pray
for the grace to keep silent during discussion of another person.
14. Just
keep silent.
RULE: NEVER pass on derogatory or
uncomplimentary information about anyone, unless the Word of God has given you
the specific authority and responsibility to do so, and the person you are
informing likewise has responsibility in the situation and a need to know the
information.
Of course, the reason
we have times of silence is so that we may turn our conversation toward God.
The silence we are speaking of is a prayerful, expectant waiting silence.
Our world has too much noise in it today, and if we are really honest, each one
of us could probably say that our hearts do also. When we do speak, let us be
more attentive to what we say, why we are saying it, and how it affects others.
Thank you for your
question and until next time,
Sister Laus Gloriae, O.C.D.[1]
In silence today
listen to the Lord:
May the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is
the hope that belongs to our call. (Eph. 1:18-19)
May the Spirit of the
LORD rushed upon you as it did David the King. (1Sm. 16:13)
Catechism of the Catholic Church
IV.
OFFENSES AGAINST THE DIGNITY OF MARRIAGE
Divorce
2382
The
Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who willed that
marriage be indissoluble. He
abrogates the accommodations that had slipped into the old Law. Between the
baptized, "a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any
human power or for any reason other than death."
2383 The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be
legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law. If civil divorce
remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the
children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not
constitute a moral offense.
2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to
break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each
other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which
sacramental marriage is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is
recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse
is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery: If a husband,
separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because
he makes that woman commit adultery, and the woman who lives with him is an
adulteress, because she has drawn another's husband to herself.
2385 Divorce is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family
and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse,
to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn
between them, and because of its contagious effect which makes it truly a
plague on society.
2386
It
can happen that one of the spouses is the innocent victim of a divorce decreed
by civil law; this spouse therefore has not contravened the moral law. There is a considerable
difference between a spouse who has sincerely tried to be faithful to the
sacrament of marriage and is unjustly abandoned, and one who through his own
grave fault destroys a canonically valid marriage.
Catholic Recipe: Saint Antony of
the Desert Soup[2]
Saint
Antony, called the Great, lived in Egypt between A.D. 251 and 356. At age 18,
the gospel text "If you wish to be perfect, go and sell all that you have
and then follow me" so moved him that he left everything behind and
retired to an inaccessible place in the wilderness where he dedicated his life
to God in manual work and continual prayer. In his old age, he imparted wisdom
to his disciples and encouraged them to lead a monastic life. Because he was
the first Christian to retire to a monastic life, he is considered to be the
first monk and also the father of all monks. His feast is celebrated on January
17. Try this simple, healthy recipe in honor of Saint Antony the hermit.
INGREDIENTS
3
tablespoons oil of choice
1 cup
barley
1 carrot,
finely grated
2 leeks,
sliced
1 bay leaf
1/3 cup
fresh parsley, minced
Salt to
taste
7 cups
water
1 bouillon
cube, if desired
Chopped
mushrooms, if desired
DIRECTIONS
1.
Heat the oil in a soup pot and add the barley, stirring continuously for one
minute. Immediately add the carrot, leeks, bay leaf, parsley, salt, and water.
2.
Cook the soup over low to medium heat, covered, for 40 to 45 minutes, until the
barley is tender. Add more water if needed. For extra taste, add the bouillon
and the mushrooms during the last 20 minutes of simmering. Remove the bay leaf.
Serve hot.
Recipe Source: From a Monastery Kitchen: The Classic
Natural Foods Cookbook by Brother Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette, Gramercy
Books, 1997
Martin Luther King[3]
We celebrate today the legacy
of a man who died and lived to create a culture of justice that ensures the
dignity of all men, women and children in America. Our church also recognizes
the need for dignity not only for mankind but also in marriage and it is only
when we recognize the grandeur of His works that we begin to realize that every
man, woman and child is a wonder wroth by His hands.
The reverend Martin Luther
King, Jr. (1929-1968) championed a movement that was based on love and his
ideal was to obtain justice by nonviolent means as expressed in this speech.
Hate begets
hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must
meet the forces of hate with the power of love. Our aim must never be to defeat
or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. “The
ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the
very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor
establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not
murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for
violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid
of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate
cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Character
is Destiny[4]
According
to John McCain a person or nations character determines its destiny. McCain
points out in his book Character is Destiny the person who most exemplifies the
characteristic of fairness is that of Martin Luther King, Jr.
John
said of King:
From a jail cell he wrote a letter that is one of the most celebrated
documents in American history and summoned his country to the cause of justice. “My Dear Fellow Clergymen,” it began. Recognizing that his correspondents
were “men of genuine good will and your criticisms sincerely set forth,” he
promised to respond in patient and reasonable terms. They were reasonable
terms, and undeniably fair, but patient they were not.
We have waited for more than
340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. . . . Perhaps it is easy
for those who have never felt the stinging dark of
segregation to say, “Wait.” But when
you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown
your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen
curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the
vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight
cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find
your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your
six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has
just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when
she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds
of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her
beginning to distort her personality by developing unconscious bitterness
toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son
who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when
you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night
in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept
you; when you are humiliated day in and
day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name
becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your
last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected
title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that
you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what
to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when
you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” then you will
understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of
endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss
of despair.
America still struggles internally and externally to arrive at the place
Dr. King had summoned us to, that exalted place that had been the highest
ambition of our Founding Fathers and the highest value we recommend to the rest
of the world; the place where all people are recognized as equal and endowed by
their Creator with inalienable rights. African Americans recognize the debt
they owe Dr. King’s courage, wisdom, and unshakable sense of fairness. But
Americans of European descent owe him a greater one. At the cost of his life,
he helped save us from a terrible disgrace, the betrayal of our country, and
the principles that have ennobled our history. And that is a debt we must happily bear forever.
Martin
Luther King Facts & Quotes[5]
· Martin
Luther King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
1964. He was 35 years old, which made him the youngest Peace Prize winner
at that time.
· I have a
dream that my four little children will one
day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,
but by the content of their character.
· Life's
most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?
· Injustice
anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
· Hate is
too great a burden to bear.
Martin
Luther King Top Events and Things to Do
· Visit thekingcenter.org to find out about local events and ways you can
help promote unity, justice, and fight racism.
· Become a
mentor to an underprivileged person in your community through Big Brothers, or
another similar organization.
· Visit the
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. For more info see the Official memorial website.
· Donate to
the United Negro College Fund or other charities that
promote college degree attainment by minorities.
· Watch a
movie about MLK. Some popular films include: Our Friend Martin (1999), Selma
(2014) and The Witness (2008)
Reflect on what Martin would say about the
“Cancel Culture” and “BLM”.
Sons of Liberty[6]
Today,
also Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706. As a founding father of this nation,
one wonders would he question if Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
are Still Self-Evident Rights? Whether it is self-evident or not, it is the
philosophical belief in the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness that helped make America both great and good. Thomas Jefferson
stated: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Jefferson’s
argument is not that the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to
pursue happiness originate in government, but that these rights have a divine
origin. Jefferson argued that the job of all governments was to “secure”
rights that God had already granted. In other words, the rights to life
and liberty do not come into being with the force of government fiat; life and
liberty are pre-political rights already granted by God. Today, we have
lost that concept. Almost a quarter-millennia later, these rights are no
longer considered self-evident, and neither is a Creator. Once God and
the natural law are disassociated from rights—once the idea of justice and
goodness are separated from rights—we are left with a political environment in
which anything could be considered a right, or nothing could
be considered a right.
As
Pope John Paul II said in Denver, Colorado at World Youth Day in 1993: When the
Founding Fathers of this great nation enshrined certain inalienable rights in
the Constitution…they did so because they recognized the existence of a ‘law’ –
a series of rights and duties – engraved by the Creator on each person’s heart
and conscience. In much of contemporary thinking, any reference to a ‘law’
guaranteed by the Creator is absent. There remains only each individual’s
choice of this or that objective as convenient or useful in a given set of
circumstances. No longer is anything considered intrinsically "good"
and "universally binding". Rights are affirmed but, because they are
without any reference to an objective truth, they are deprived of any solid
basis. Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is
wrong, and are at the mercy of those with the power to "create"
opinion and impose it on others.
Pope
John Paul II saw and foresaw, once rights are viewed as mere arbitrary
constructs with no relation or reference to our Creator, rights become a mere
matter of whimsy—subject no longer to God, but to the fickle winds of public
opinion. Today, we are often told that it is not life and liberty, but
their opposites that are self-evident. We are told that the right to
abortion and euthanasia are self-evident, and that religious liberties and
liberties of conscience have no validation in law. The founding fathers
generally recognized that human laws and rights should reflect each other,
largely because they have the same origin. Just as human law must come
from divine law, so do rights ultimately come from God and from justice.
Rights flow from justice, and if a right cannot be traced to justice, it is no
right at all. Once a right, however, is traced to justice—the right to
life, for instance—it has the “solid basis” about which Pope Saint John Paul II
spoke.
Indeed,
as Jefferson noted all those July 4th’s ago, men “are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights.” Whether it is self-evident or not, it
is the philosophical belief in the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness that helped make America both great and good. Let’s continue to
promote and defend all three.
The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the
LORD are true, all of them just. (Ps. 19:10)
Let the words of my mouth and the
thought of my heart find favor before you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.
(Ps. 19:15)
Full Wolf Moon
According
to the almanac today we are having a Full Wolf Moon; plan to get with your
children or grandchildren around a fire and howl a little at the moon having
fun together. Also, you could sit down together and listen to the music from Peter and the Wolf. As a child this was
one of my favorite record albums that I would make my mother play over and over
again much to her distress.
Daily Devotions
· Unite
in the work of the Porters of St.
Joseph by joining them in fasting: Today's Fast: Individuals
with Mental Illness
· Monday: Litany of
Humility
· Rosary
[1]http://www.integratedcatholiclife.org/2011/10/ask-a-carmelite-six-practical-means-to-overcome-sins-and-faults-of-the-tongue/
[2]http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2017-01-17
[4] McCain, John and Salter, Mark. (2005) Character is destiny. Random
House, New York.
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