Always Advent

The average American gives away 2% of his income to charity and the church of his choice.

By contrast, the average Catholic gives away only 1% of his income to the Church and other charities.

According to scripture, this number is way off: people of faith should be giving away 10% of their income, a practice known as tithing.

The concept of the tithe comes from a word that means “a tenth,” and first appears in the Bible in the book of Genesis when Abram gave “a tenth of everything” to the High Priest Melchizedek. (Genesis 14:18-20) The book of Leviticus says that “All tithes of the land, whether in grain from the fields or in fruit from the trees, belong to the Lord, as sacred to him…The tithes of the herd and the flock shall be determined by ceding to the Lord as sacred every tenth animal as they are counted by the herdsman’s rod.” (Leviticus 27:30-32)

People who argue that the Old Testament is outdated and need not be adhered to in this regard may be right, but think again: in the New Testament, Jesus calls for even more lavish giving:

• “When [Jesus] looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins. He said, “I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.” (Luke 21:1-4)

• “…lend expecting nothing back…” (Luke 6:35)

• “Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.” (Luke 6:38)

Can you imagine someone at Mass, during the offertory, grabbing the basket from the usher and stuffing it full of money, packing it together, shaking it down, until the basket could hold no more? Probably not, but to throw a buck in there is just lame. “That’s basically an afterthought,” says Catholic author Phil Lenahan, of Veritas Financial Ministries. “We don’t want God to be an afterthought.”

But God doesn’t need our money. Why should we part with our hard-earned cash?

First of all, from a purely practical standpoint, the Church needs a certain amount of money to stay in operation. The fifth precept of the Church is to contribute to the support of the Church, if for no other reason than to heat the church building, feed the priests, and keep the parking lot plowed in the winter. The Church has mundane housekeeping costs just like we do and no way to bring in funds other than our generous donations. In this regard, we’ll certainly receive from the Church exactly what we put into it and not a penny more. If we’re stingy, we have no right to expect wonderful Church programs and great landscaping.

The second reason is more important. Giving alms to the Church and to the poor is a spiritual practice that helps us to grow in holiness. How? The money we offer is a symbol of ourselves and a sign of our detachment from material goods. God doesn’t need our money, but we need to give it away in order to avoid being mastered by it:

Whatever you possess must not possess you; whatever you own must be under the power of your soul; for if your soul is overpowered by the love of this world’s goods, it will be totally at the mercy of its possessions. (Pope St. Gregory the Great)

In this regard, whatever we give away will be transformed and returned to us a hundredfold, so we definitely don’t want to be stingy:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be. (Matthew 6:19-21)

The usual way of dividing up the tithe is 5% to the parish, 2.5% to the poor, and 2.5% to other worthy causes (pro-life, Church missions, religious communities, and so on.) Should you tithe from your net (after-tax) income, or from your gross (before tax) income? That depends. Do you want God to bless your net or your gross? The level of giving is up to you, but above all, trust God and be generous, “…for the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” (Luke 6:38)

“This is the meaning of true love: to give until it hurts.” (Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta)

Other scripture verses:

The Bible contains over 2,000 verses and references to matters of finance and stewardship. Here are a few of them:

• “At the end of every third year you shall bring out all the tithes of your produce for that year and deposit them in community stores, that the Levite who has no share in the heritage with you, and also the alien, the orphan and the widow who belong to your community, may come and eat their fill; so that the Lord, your God, may bless you in all that you undertake.” (Deuteronomy 14:28-29)

• “Mine is the silver and mine the gold, says the Lord of Hosts.” (Haggai 2:8)

• “The Lord’s is the earth and its fullness; the world and those who dwell in it.” (Psalm 24:1-2)

Recommended book:
Seven Steps to Becoming Financially Free: A Catholic Guide to Managing Your Money by Phil Lenahan of Veritas Financial Ministries. www.veritasfinancialministries.com

(This article first appeared in the December 2007 issue of Family Centered Faith Formation News, produced by the Office of Religious Education at Holy Trinity Catholic Church.

Who, I ask, will search out the Most High in his own being, for he is beyond words or understanding? Who will penetrate the secrets of God? Who will boast that he knows the infinite God, who fills all things, yet encompasses all things, who pervades all things, yet reaches beyond all things, who holds all things in his hand, yet escapes the grasp of all things? No one has ever seen him as he is.

No one must then presume to search for the unsearchable things of God: his nature, the manner of his existence, his selfhood. These are beyond telling, beyond scrutiny, beyond investigation. With simplicity, but also with fortitude, only believe that this is how God is and this is how he will be, for God is incapable of change.

Who then is God? He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God. Do not look for any further answers concerning God. Those who want to understand the unfathomable depths of God must first consider the world of nature. Knowledge of the Trinity is rightly compared with the depth of the sea. Wisdom asks: Who will find out what is so very deep? As the depths of the sea are invisible to human sight, so the godhead of the Trinity is found to be beyond the grasp of human understanding.

If any one, I say, wants to know what you should believe, you must not imagine that you understand better through speech than through belief; the knowledge of God that you seek will be all the further off than it was before.

Seek then the highest wisdom, not by arguments in words but by the perfection of your heart, not by speech but by the faith that comes from simplicity of heart, not from the learned speculations of the unrighteous.

If you search by means of discussions for the God who cannot be defined in words, he will depart further from you than he was before. If you search for him by faith, wisdom will stand where wisdom lives, at the gates. Where wisdom is, wisdom will be seen, at least in part.

But wisdom is also to some extent truly attained when the invisible God is the object of faith, in a way beyond our understanding, for we must believe in God, invisible as he is, though he is partially seen by a heart that is pure.

St Columbanus
a Celtic monk who was born the same year that St. Benedict died; he evangelized the Franks in the 7th century in what is now France.

If you haven’t checked out SciFiCatholic yet, you must. Great stuff.

Here’s something I came across there recently regarding Star Trek:

Thanks to two readers who alerted me to an excellent essay and a news item.

James Pawlak of Crusader Knight sent me Raymond J. Keating’s article “Faith, or Lack Thereof, in Star Trek,” which appears at OrthodoxyToday.org. Most people are probably aware that Gene Roddenberry was an atheist, and it is reflected in his most famous creation, as Keating explains. However, I object to Keating’s insistence that a similar rejection or ignorance of religion exists in most sf or even most TV sf. Though I don’t see much television, I specifically remember a Babylon 5 episode celebrating the diversity of human religion, and it seems the remake of Battlestar Galactica, though I didn’t particularly like what I saw of it, also has religion on its mind.

“Several conservatives writing on NR seemed to wrestle with being fans of this rather liberal television show. It’s an interesting point, including for this self-confessed conservative Trekker. Perhaps it’s as straightforward as a combination of interesting characters, compelling stories that often involve some big issues to debate and discuss, cool space stuff, and general sci-fi geekiness.”

Here at The Sci Fi Catholic where we don’t believe everything has to match our worldview to be good fiction, we’ll just say, “Stop wrestling, Ray.”

(SciFiCatholic, 10/22/07)

LINKS

Blog: The Sci Fi Catholic
http://www.scificatholic.com/

Article: “Faith, or Lack Thereof, in Star Trek”
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles7/KeatingStarTrek.php

Several years ago, when I walked out of the L.A. County Courthouse after my husband’s successful petition for divorce, my attorney said to me, “Well, he’s out of your life forever.”

He was a very young attorney, who obviously hadn’t yet discovered that *that* is the great lie divorce tries to sell to people. Get the divorce, and your problems will be solved.

In reality, divorce merely exchanges one set of nasty problems for a different set of equally nasty problems.

Jennifer Roback Morse has a good post at her blog on the unintended negative consequences of divorce. The divorce mentality tries to sell unhappy couples the idea that divorce will solve all their problems. For some families, they ain’t seen nothin’ yet…

http://jennifer-roback-morse.blogspot.com/2008/01/if-you-are -considering-divorce.html

Browse around Jennifer’s blog or go to her website: www.jennifer-roback-morse.com. She’s excellent.

My “manifesto” (I guess) on my experience of divorce is here on my blog: A Word That Means “Divorced”.

I found this on a bookmark I picked up somewhere. Sounds like it may have to do with the “purpose-driven life” craze. No idea who wrote it, but it’s worth reflecting on if, like me, you sometimes find yourself on “auto pilot.”

Gracious God, at times my days run together into weeks, into months, into years without any conscious thought on my part. Then, suddenly, I come to myself in the space of a moment and realize how unaware and without purpose I have been. Yet, when I try to define my purpose, it seems strangely elusive.

What did you have in mind when you breathed the breath of life into me? I ask that you will give me clarity of purpose, that you will reveal to me my own reason for existence, that you will give me the sure and certain assurance that even when I have lost track of myself and my life, your purpose, though unknown to me or forgotten by me, is still being lived out through me.

I ask this for the sake of your love. Amen.

Author unknown.

Tybee Island, Georgia
Photograph copyright 2007 by Clare Siobhan

Just a picture for Epiphany–the 3 kings statues at my parish. Click on the image to see a bigger version. Enjoy!

from Teresa of Avila:

It is amusing to see souls who, while they are at prayer, fancy they are willing to be despised and publicly insulted for the love of God, yet afterwards do all they can to hide their small defects. If anyone unjustly accuses them of a fault, God deliver us from their outcries! Prayer does not consist of such fancies. No, our Lord expects works from us. Beg our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbor. If someone else is well spoken of, be more pleased than if it were yourself; this is easy enough, for if you were really humble, it would vex you to be praised…Comply in all things with others’ wishes, though you lose your own rights. Forget your self-interests for theirs, however much nature may rebel.

In 1791 – only 15 years after the founding of the United States of America–the Roman Catholic Church established its first seminary in the United States: St. Mary’s in Baltimore.

The original seminary of St. Mary’s was on Paca Street in what is now called the Seton Hill district of Baltimore, so-named because St. Elizabeth Ann Seton once lived in the same neighborhood, right next door to the seminary chapel. In addition to being the first Catholic seminary in the United States, St. Mary’s is also the oldest Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States and the very first college chartered in the State of Maryland.

Incidentally, the priests who founded St. Mary’s were from France. Since 1789, the brutal French Revolution had gripped France in a stranglehold and plunged the whole country into chaos: the French monarchy was toppling and the Catholic Church was being actively persecuted. Many priests fled the country and came to America. Some of these men were Sulpician priests. Sulpicians is the shortened name for The Society of the Priests of St. Sulpice, a movement of priests founded in 1641 by Fr. Jean Jacques Olier.

Fr. Olier wanted to reform the clergy by ensuring sound spiritual and ministerial formation for men entering the priesthood. He was so keen on this goal that he actually started his own seminary. When he was later named pastor of St. Sulpice Catholic Church in Paris, he moved the seminary with him and simply named his society of priests after the patron saint of his new parish.

The Sulpicians still exist today: a society of diocesan priests dedicated solely to the education of fellow priests. Sulpicians still run St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore and many other seminaries on five continents. Other U.S. seminaries run by the Sulpicians are Theological College in Washington, D.C., and St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California.

In 1929, St. Mary’s Seminary moved from Paca Street in Seton Hill to its present location at Baltimore’s Roland Park. The old seminary chapel is still in Seton Hill, though, and open to visitors. It is the first neo-Gothic church built in America.

The Seton Hill neighborhood in Baltimore is the source of many other Catholic “firsts”:

–Mother Seton House, the first parochial school for girls in the United States
–Sisters of Charity, the first order of nuns founded in America (1809)
–Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first African canonically approved society
–1975—Elizabeth Ann Seton, first canonized American-born saint, whose feast day is January 4.

In 1968 the neighborhood was designated an Historic and Architectural Preservation District of Baltimore City, and in 1975 Seton Hill was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Old St. Mary’s Chapel and Mother Seton House are Registered National Landmarks.

Info about Mother Seton:

Catholic Online
Emmitsburg Historical Society

Info about Seton Hill area of Baltimore

Seton Hill Historic District
Live in Baltimore - Seton Hill

Info about St. Mary’s Seminary

St. Mary’s

January 3 is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.

It’s a good day to remember the Second Commandment: You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. (Exodus 20:7) This commandment is probably the most forgotten and most violated of the ten; everywhere you go you will hear the phrases “Oh my God,” “Jesus Christ,” and their variations almost constantly, and definitely not in the context of prayer or praise to God.

The sad fact is that even Christians habitually sin against the second commandment by misusing the holy name of God and of Jesus.

Misuse of God’s name offends Him and gives a bad example to the people around us: consider what St. Paul wrote to the church in Rome: The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. (Romans 2:24)

Here are 3 simple things you can do to increase your own devotion to God’s name and help foster obedience to the second commandment:

1 - Make a slight bow or nod of the head at every audible mention of the name of Jesus, especially during Mass or the recitation of the rosary.

2 - When making the sign of the cross, don’t say, “Father, Son, Holy Spirit” and wave your hand around like you’re brushing away flies. Make the gesture carefully and reverently, clearly pronouncing each word: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

3 - Say “Blessed be God. Blessed be his holy name” or “Blessed be the name of Jesus” in reparation every time you hear or accidentally utter an offense against the second commandment. If it is prudent, say it out loud with the same volume as the offense. Otherwise simply say it quietly. This habit alone will sensitize you to the rampant misuse of God’s name: you may start to wince as, wherever you go, you hear the name of someone you love being thrown in the dirt. Keep at it, though, and you will find yourself slipping up less and less, and often the people around you will start to modify their speech.

This third suggestion is, in my experience, the most effective of the three. I got the idea from the Catholic Children’s Treasure Box booklets. These books were first published in the 1950s, so they are somewhat outdated and sometimes too syrupy for my taste, for mostly they are very sweet. In booklet 8 there’s a charming story about a little girl who asks what “taking the Lord’s name in vain” means and what she can do to better honor the holy name of God. The person she’s talking to suggests that every time she hears someone utter God’s name as an expression of dismay, peevishness, anger, and so on, she should say, “Blessed be God, blessed be his holy name” or “Blessed be the name of Jesus.”

I taught my children to do this, and mostly they follow through. When we’re watching a show or a movie together, and someone blurts out “OMG!”, it always warms my heart to hear a little chorus of “Blessed be God, blessed be his holy name!” from the children.

Andy Eells also makes some excellent points in his essay “His Name” from his booklet The Catholic Challenge:

In current times, it is necessary to address the negative use of God’s name. Christians can hardly expect others to abe attracted to our faith, or even to respect our faith, if our speech is casually disrespectful of our own God. And if it is true that God hears whenever we use his name, what does he hear us say? In the first place, are we really even thinking of God when we use his name? If not, isn’t that rather like placing a phone call and then hanging up when the other party answers? Truly, it is not conducive to intimacy with God to continually “hang up the phone” on him.

Slipshod use of phrases such as “for God’s sake” and “oh, my God” to express personal outrage, surprise, or shock should be studiously avoided. These phrases are nearly always spoken with no thought of their literal meaing. Even more serious an error is using the names “Jesus” or “Christ” separately or together as a personal exclamation about mundane topics like high prices, or automobile traffic. (Dr. Lester Sumrall thinks we should even avoid the use of abbreviations like “gee,” which is really derived from “Jesus.” It can also be observed that under stress, “gee” slips into “Jesus” with great ease.)

If you’re in the habit of using the Lord’s name wrongly, make a resolution today to break that habit by implement the three suggestions above. The Catechism (para 2144) says, Respect for his name is an expression of the respect owed to the mystery of God himself and to the whole sacred reality it evokes. (Copyright 2008 by Clare Siobhan)

Links

Catholic Children’s Treasure Box
https://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/page/shop:flypage/product _id/474/

Note: Andy Eells’s booklet, The Catholic Challenge, appears to be out of print. It was published in 1990 by Max Cotto Books. I couldn’t find any resources on the internet, but the mailing address for Max Cotto Books is 2322 E. Oakland Park Blvd., Fr. Lauderdale, FL 33306. Don’t confuse this booklet with a similarly titled book by Thomas W. Rezanka: The Catholic Challenge: A Question of Conscience. Rezanka’s book promotes dissident Catholic ideology and the website for the book (thecatholicchallenge.com) links to dissident groups Call to Action and Voice of the Faithful.

I quoted extensivelly from Eells’s booklet in a recent series of articles on honoring Sunday: 5 Things Catholics Can Do to Keep the Sabbath Holy (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five)

“O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:1)

CHILDREN OF BRIDGET JONES

I went to my mom’s house unannounced, as I am wont to do, and found that she was out, as she is wont to be.

No matter. Being English, like my mom, I put the kettle on for a cup of tea and went in search of a book to read while I waited.

I picked up Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel, Bridget Jones’s Diary. Not the sort of thing I’d normally be interested in, but at the time I figured it was better than nothing.

I enjoyed Bridget’s New Year’s Resolutions and Chapter One enough to bring the book home and add it to my stack o’ books, teetering alongside the other book I was reading at the time, P.D. James’s Children of Men (1992).

As I read on, it occurred to me that these two books, even though they differ widely in genre, style, and intended audience, actually have quite a lot in common.

Each book chronicles about one year of elapsed time: Bridget’s fictional diary begins on January 1 and ends the day after Christmas, and P.D. James also begins her book with a January 1st journal entry by the main character, Theo Faron. Both contain first person point-of-view elements (Bridget Jones more than Children of Men) Both are intensely personal, providing the reader with access to the innermost and secret thoughts of the main character.

Some major differences, of course: Fielding’s main character, Bridget, is feckless, stupid and hilariously funny. James’s main character, Theo, is thoughtful, intelligent and serious.

Bridget Jones’s Diary ends with Bridget in bed with a good man instead of the insufferable twit she’d been after for the past 11 months, which our freely fornicating world considers a “happy” ending. James’s book is about the end of humanity…and its new beginning…amid murder, mayhem, mass euthanasia, betrayal, and hopelessness.

Bridget Jones’s Diary was a much more enjoyable read than Children of Men, yet, the book that made me sad was Bridget Jones’s. Even though I laughed out loud at Bridget’s antics and at Fielding’s inimitable turn of phrase, I couldn’t help thinking that there are actual, real life people in the world who live the kind of pathetic, meaningless life Bridget describes in her “diary”. She drinks too much, smokes too much, and eats too much, and constantly obsesses about how much she drinks, smokes, and eats, continually makes resolutions to improve herself, but never, ever does. She berates herself for sleeping with her boss, vows not to do it again, but does it again many times over. She vows to stop being late for work, but that very morning doesn’t get out of the house until 10:30. She is so lacking in self-knowledge that she turns a sensible meal of shepherd’s pie for a few friends into a gourmet meal for 16 that was to have concluded with grand marnier soufflés, but ten minutes before her guests were due to arrive she had stepped in the dinner and she still hadn’t dried her hair.

Details may vary, but is this not a description of just about everyone’s life? The struggle with vice, bad habits, laziness, inconstancy, habitual sin. The waffling back and forth from an exalted view of ourselves that bites off more than anyone could possibly chew to wallowing in self pity as we watch stupid YouTube videos.

Those who profess, by God’s grace, faith in Christ, have something to live for, at least. Bridget has nothing to live for, except those few dropped pounds on the scale, that evening at the pub with her friends, the momentary excitement and comfort of sex with someone new.

Bridget is fictional, but how could the Gospel of Jesus Christ reach someone like her in the real world? She knows that her life is meaningless and pathetic, yet I have a feeling that if she ever met a real Christian who tried to share the Gospel with her – rare in England these days – she would smile politely while trying to extricate herself from the encounter as quickly as possible.

In Children of Men, the entire human race has become sterile. No babies have been born for 25 years. The people of this world know that they are the last of their kind and they believe that without the future promised by the presence of children in the world, life is meaningless. P.D. James constructs a terrifying dystopia around this idea and answers the question of how a society without God would contemplate its own demise. Life in such a society is nasty, brutish, and short. The aged demonstrate their hopelessness by mass suicide. The young demonstrate theirs by acting out in anger, in reckless and indiscriminate violence.

If the fertility crisis James creates in her fictional future were ever to come true in the real world, I have no doubt that secular human society would deteriorate in much the way it does in her book, because in some ways her dystopia is already here. Euthanasia of the aged is practiced regularly in the Netherlands and they are contemplating it in rapidly aging Japan. In some countries the number of abortions exceeds the number of live births. The terminally-ill and severely brain-damaged are put to death every day in this country, although mostly without the furor surrounding the cruel death-by-starvation of Terry Schiavo. In many parts of the world, violent lawlessness is commonplace.

I think—I hope–people of faith would handle news of the end of the world differently, just as I hope people of faith are able to find meaning in everyday life the way Bridget Jones is not.

One of the reasons I’m profoundly un-interested in “endtimes” predictions, doomsdays, reported appearances of the anti-Christ, and so on, is because in the end it doesn’t matter: each one of us is hurtling toward our own personal apocalypse. We can take nothing with us, yet “what we do in life echoes in eternity.” (Gladiator) We each make the choice, every moment, to live meaningfully, for the good of others and for the good of our eternal souls, or to live a meaningless life that is only for the moment and is heedless of other people or our own eternal destiny. As my pastor is fond of saying, “Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days you’re going to be right.”

May this year be a year full of meaning within a lifetime full of meaning for you, for the people dear to you, and for every person you meet. (copyright 2008 by Clare Siobhan)

Links

http://www.georgiabulletin.org/local/1979/01/25/a/
Georgians Hear U.S. Congressman Henry Hyde Speak On Abortion
Archbishop Donnellan noted that in many U.S. cities the number of abortions far exceeds the number of live births.

http://www.ijgo.org/issues/contents?issue_key=S0020-7292(00) X0046-X
Trends and causes of maternal mortality in Kazakhstan
N. Kaupovaa, S. Nukushevaa, H. Biktashevaa, N. Goyauxb and P. Thonneaub
International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics
Volume 63, Issue 2, 1 November 1998, Pages 175-181
the number of abortions far exceeds the number of live births in the independent states of the former Soviet Union.

http://books.google.com/books?id=aaklGZAID08C&pg=PA17&lpg=PA 17&dq=number+of+abortions+exceeds+the+number+of+live+births& source=web&ots=ML93IMS_Wr&sig=7NyC45KTwEcaluv_knvp0dLlDEo#PP P1,M1
Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics: A Compilation of Jewish … - Google Books Result
by Avraham Steinberg - 2003 - Religion - 1191 pages
In countries where abortion on demand is totally legal, the number of abortions often exceeds the number of live births.