St. Valentine's Day celebration, Mexican style

We just got back from our regular Friday night mass and charismatic asamblea, and I'm so blown away I have to do a quick post on it. We have a charismatic asamblea (in the U.S. we used to call them "prayer and praise") every Friday after mass, but since it was the "dia de amor" today, the lay leaders had decided to have a special time of eucharistic adoration instead of the regular asamblea, to show Jesus our love for Him.

Well, in all my years as a charismatic christian - more than 40, and most of those in communities who understood how to do things decently and in order, with reverence and joy - I have NEVER experienced anything like this! At the end of the mass, Padre brought out Jesus in the monstrance, and then the lay leaders of the group led us in about 1/2 hour of prayer interspersed with songs of praise to Him, with much reverence. And of course, they were facing Jesus, not the congregation. Then Padre came back and gave a short message before the monstrance. He asked us, seriously, if our community were in great danger, would any of us be willing to sacrifice our child to save the community. You could have heard a pin drop as he let us think about that for awhile before going on to underscore the unfathomable love of God. What tenderness was manifested, what gratitude for each other!

Then two of the lay teachers read scriptures on love to us (from Isaiah and 1 John) - while facing Jesus, of course - and addressed prayers to Jesus rather than doing teachings on the scriptures they read. At the end we sang a number of joyful songs about the love of God, and it was marvellous to see the whole congregation standing before the monstrance with their hands raised in praise. I wish you could have seen it.

After tonight, I can't imagine any more perfect way of observing St. Valentine's Day that this. It was a taste of heaven, for sure!

3 Reasons - January 2014 edition

I would have done this post when Micaela first opened the link but we had some dear friends visiting us for a week and I didn't have the bandwidth to do a blog post late at night when everyone else was asleep. However, I got my 3 Things for this month from conversations with our friends. He is a retired Presbyterian pastor whose brother converted from the Anglican church (British family) to the Catholic Church many years ago. In addition, the pastor's wife used to be a Benedictine oblate through a monastery in Illinois, but it was too far from her home in California to continue the connection, so she had to give it up.

Anyway, while they were here we had many conversations about God, since we all started our faith journeys together in a highly committed christian community of ex-hippies in Mendocino and we share a common intense focus on our faith. One of the first things our friend Michael said is that the Catholic Church allows for much more diversity than protestant churches. This is a particularly interesting observation from a man who used to head up the U.S. Center for World Mission, and who has been involved in mentoring Chinese, Indonesian, Hispanic and other church groups (all Presbyterian) over the years. That got me thinking about how the Catholic Church welcomes diversity and expects it, where many (or most) non-Catholic groups are suspicious or afraid of diversity in faith practices or cultural expressions of worship. I'm not sure where that comes from but I can definitely attest to it from my decades in various non-Catholic faith communities. For the most part there is a fond affirmation of "diversity", but what is meant is a wide range of ages, or socio-economic conditions, and occasionally of ethnic backgrounds. But don't think you'll be accepted if you insist on a different way of "doing church" than what everyone's used to!

I suspect that one reason the Catholic Church can open her arms wide to take in all manner of expressions of faith is that - on a visible, experienced level - she relies on the commonly held Creed, the affirmation of the sacraments and the common liturgical elements to provide the necessary unity. Although some (but ever fewer) non-Catholic faith communities hold up the Creed as a central expression of their theology, almost none (other than the Orthodox) even believe that the sacraments are actually instruments of God's grace rather than simply symbols of human commitment. And especially since the spread of the mega-church model, there are few christian groups who see liturgy as anything other than "dead traditions". So they are left with the only way to share a common culture being having the same culture in common in the first place.

Another thing that my friend Michael pointed out arose as we spoke of the tragedy of denominations such as the Presbyterians and the Anglicans having given way to the culture of death because their governing bodies are composed largely of non-theologian lay people who are more concerned about being accepted by their neighbors than they are about being accepted by God. Michael noted that it must give us a great sense of security to have a strong authority in matters of faith and doctrine, and of course I agreed. However, he couldn't make the connection in his own mind that we have that precisely because we trust the popes and magisterium throughout the ages to guide us according to the Word of God, because Jesus promised us that the Holy Spirit would ensure that this would happen.

And for an example of cultural diversity within the unity of shared sacraments, here's a great photo of Cardinal Sean O'Malley with a group of Korean Catholics:

Thank you, Lord, for a Church that can be confident in its diversity because it has consistency of structure and teachings due to the oversight of the authority that you gave her through the Pope and the magisterium!

Don't forget to click over to California to Korea for more great posts on favorite aspects of our beloved Church!

Novenas, anyone? For non-Catholics too

I'm really hoping that my non-Catholic readers won't just blow off this post when they see that it's about something so obviously Catholic as novenas. Please try to see this through to the end - it's about PRAYER!

Being a relatively new Catholic (2010) I'm just learning things that are probably second nature to everyone else, one of those things being the efficacy of novenas. For you non-Catholics out there, a novena is a prayer prayed for nine days, the point being that our importunity has weight with God (see Luke 11:5-8, Luke 18:6-8, and of course "ask, seek, knock"). I've prayed several intercessory novenas this year and have been astounded at how effective this method of praying is. If you're not familiar with novenas, and want to read some stories about their effectiveness, buy "Nothing Short of a Miracle" by Patricia Treece (my new favorite book that I think everyone should read).

The description says it perfectly: "God doesn't need humans to work miracles for Him, but it certainly seems His good pleasure to perform great miracles by means of human prayers and human hands."

Since the Church has been using this method of prayer for a couple of thousand years, there are hundreds novenas that already exist in printed form. Many of them are prayers directly to God the Father, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, and many of them ask the help of specific saints as prayer partners and role models for the specific situation you're praying about. You don't have to use an existing novena prayer, or ask any saints to be your prayer partner. The main thing is to show God by your actions that this issue is REALLY important to you and you're desperate for an answer. So none of the "oh Lord won't you buy me a brand new Cadillac" kinds of prayers here. Most novenas are intercessions for someone who is really ill, or in dire straights, or in danger of some sort.

Since I'm just learning about the many saints we have as role models, I'm wanting to learn about their lives and find out who can be most helpful with specific issues. I have a wonderful book on saints, Voices of the Saints, by Bert Ghezzi, with stories of 365 saints who really come alive through his short (1 page each) but excellent biographies. I've bought several books on saints since I got this one, and this is by far the best compendium. It's definitely worth getting as a hardback, since it's a great book for the whole family to read from on a daily basis. The Pirate and I started reading this every day before we became Catholic, and found it to be an inspiring book about brothers and sisters in Jesus who faced the same difficulties we face today, plus some that we will never have to deal with!

So, back to the novenas. I've got a couple of questions, for any of you readers who have engaged in praying novenas. Rather than asking a single saint for prayer support, I figure why not assemble a prayer team? Maybe because for decades I was on intercession teams in the protestant world, but it makes sense to me that "in a multitude of counselors there is safety" and my experience has been that prayers tend to be more focused and deeper in a group than one's individual prayers. Have you ever made a novena with more than one saint? And have you ever created your own novena rather than using an existing one? I'm sure hoping that someone will take the time to respond!

BTW, I found an excellent general-purpose novena that acknowledges the good example of a specific saint (of your choosing) but is directed to Father God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. This would be a novena that could be used pretty easily by non-Catholics who want to try out this ancient way of praying. The problem is - which you'll know if you followed the link - it's in spanish. However if anyone would like a translation of this prayer, I'd be glad to send you one. Just leave your email address in the comment box, or click on my profile which will take you to Google+ and you can click the "email" icon there and send me an email directly.