Wisdom from Padre Pio about Christmas...

"All the feasts of the Church are beautiful.  Easter, yes, is glorification but Christmas has a tenderness, a child-like sweetness that completely captivates my heart." - St. Padre Pio

Of Life and Men...

Merry Christmas to all!  Our Savior has come to us, a tiny infant, weak and helpless, and rests in a small manger in Bethlehem!  He will one day grow into a man who will save us all by conquering death.  He will give His life for us at Easter, and the Church will rejoice in what is our finest hour.  He will die for us to give us life.

But, what of His living for us to give us life?  What of those years of fidelity paid to humanity by His daily chores, His mother's and father's teaching, His hours of carpentry work and missionary work?  What of this Christ?

I often wondered growing up why I loved Christmas the most out of any Catholic holiday.  It was such a joyous time of year, when Santa would come, when the world felt somewhat of a more bearable and happy place, and people were more giving, more caring, more sharing of what little they had.  It was a magical time.  Now that I am older, my Christmas to-do list has gotten longer, my wintertime bank account has gotten smaller, and my heart has grown much bigger by the time Christmas rolls around.  The need for Christ is no longer buried among excited anticipation for gifts from Santa.  It is front and foremost in my mind - the gift of His life; the gift of His coming and sharing with us a humble existence like our own.

Far too often we focus on the ultimate passion of Christ - which, by no means, is to be underestimated in its importance and value!  But, what about the LIFE of Jesus?  Every day, He died a thousand deaths.  Crying out in screams for His mother when He was cold, or tired, or hungry, or wet.  Our GOD, an infinite being, crying out in the night for the most basic needs of His feeble human existence!  He was completely and utterly dependent, as a child, on our care for Him.  He was HUMAN.  This fact often escapes me so much!!  I have no problem imagining Christ's perfection and divinity, yet it is so puzzling to me that his HUMANITY is so ever-present!  It astounds me every time, that this God of ours would deign not only to rescue us from sin, but to become ONE of us; so DESPERATE was His desire for love freely given from us!

God LIVED for us, and He did this even before He died for us!  In a certain sense, living a thousand deaths each day is somewhat of a more astounding existence than simply dying in one's earthly life.  Think about marriage, and how every day a spouse dies to his or her own wishes.  It is difficult stuff.  A little part of that person's self dies each day, to become a new and better self - the self that God intended that person to be - without ever losing the essence of who he or she is.  The French use the phrase "le petit mort" ("the little death") to talk about those moments that stop our heart and even physically hurt and touch us, such as those that come after finishing a breathtaking piece of literature, during orgasm, or while listening to a heart- and soul-stirring symphony.  The small part of us inside that dies each time we encounter transcendent beauty and love, the melancholic yearning and reaching out for God, is the "petit mort" that makes life worth living.  When we are humbled, when we are shamed and ridiculed - in essence, any time we suffer - we are LIVING in little deaths to self.

This process of dying to self is like a statue being carved by Michelangelo - bit by bit, as he carves into the block of stone, more and more of the statue is revealed - the statue awaiting discovery inside the cold and shapeless form of marble - until David himself is practically living and breathing before you.  Michelangelo himself said that, "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it."  We are all constantly seeking to chip away at our imperfections, dying a thousand deaths to self each day, to discover who our true self is, already created by God.  Our God deigned to allow His own Self to be limited to the form of a human being, a human body.  As a human being, He prayed and worked and cried and laughed just like us, to discover His Father's Will in all around Him.  Truly magnificent, that He lived even as we do, except for sin!

This daily martyrdom, the kind that nobody knows enough to even speak about, is truly the beauty of Christ's coming at Christmas.  For He chose to live among us, that the Word might become FLESH.  This was Christ's victory over LIFE, even before His victory over death!  What does death matter, when Christ has already gained victory over LIFE?  The hope of generations, already born of woman by God?  He has already died a thousand times to Himself, even at the angel's very announcement of His conception to Mary.  "For nothing will be impossible for God."  (Luke 1:37).  Truly, we hail the Favored One, for the Lord IS with her, and shared with all of us, from the moment of his conception in her womb.  His greatness made small, His life made accessible to all of us throughout history.  Blessed be those whose eyes and ears and hearts and minds are open to the one who lives a divinely human life, completely unbeknownst to those around Him!  This is why Christ taught us to love the poor - He lives with them in their poverty and hiddenness.  His gift to us begins with His birth at Christmas, and ends with His death on the cross... but first, He teaches us to truly LIVE.  When we truly live, we see our earthly death as another small chip in the marble, revealing our true selves and preparing us for the perfect love that we shall be able to give in Heaven.

Already, we had been saved, for Christ came to do the Will of His Father... the hope of our generations rested on the "yes" of a young woman, whose reliance on the Holy Spirit gave life to Our Lord.  At that moment, we knew that humanity had been saved: a star ignited in the sky, Our Little Savior had been born.

Gardening our Souls, Part 2145

I know what you're thinking.  We have all heard or read about man's fall in the Garden of Eden: this BEAUTIFUL paradise where every beautiful thing grew.  And then, Eve and Adam, lushes that they were, had to go mess it up.  Tragic.  Pitiful.  But it's OUR story.  We were left with a legacy of the garden - and the legacy of sin.

That is, until Christ came along, and went to another garden.  This one was called the Garden of Gethsemane, and here Christ laid His life down to redeem His Bride from sin.  He gave His life that He might pay for our sins, and give us eternal life.  He transformed what we previously associated with a lush set of tragic characters to a mystery of love that we have carried with us for over 2,000 years.  The Garden again became a place of purest beauty and peace, untainted by sin.

Given how much God loved the world (so much so that He sent his ONLY SON to die for us), it seems rather fitting that this garden is the perfect analogy for the human soul.  Gardens are things that we tend to, things that we plant beautiful flowers or delicious fruits and vegetables in.  They require care and nurturing, weeding and pruning, and a lot of attention.  Without attention, they quickly become overrun and underappreciated, and fill with plants that choke and kill all gently blossoming plants.

Christ Himself even used a garden analogy when referring to the human soul.  He said that God's Word would fall sometimes on rocky soil, sometimes on soil where weeds and thorns would grow, and sometimes on good soil.  We all must take care that we have prepared good soil for God's Word to take root and grow strong, and that often involves weeding out other words, other seeds, and other plants that threaten to strangle our fragile virtues.

The other day, as I was praying, I thought of how blackened and dead much of my heart must be due to sin. I lamented this to God, wondering why He would choose such an imperfect vessel to carry out His works and live out His love.  The response I received went back to the garden, where Christ is waiting all along.  God cuts out the bad parts of our hearts, the deadened parts, and works them into the soil of our souls, so that it fertilizes the growth of the new, good plants that are growing.  It is His beautiful way of taking our faults, doubts, sins, and pasts and casting them into the furnace of His love, where all things are made new.  Even the parts of us that are bad foster new life in Christ - when is there ever reason NOT to rejoice?

AND, that's not even the best part - no, far from it!  When we recognize and allow God to cut out the parts of our hearts that are blackened from sin, God can take those parts and use them to enrich the soil of OTHER gardens, as well!  The souls of our friends and family benefit from our pasts, our imperfections, and our struggles.  God truly makes all things new, even when our failings seem to get in the way!  It really is true that, "now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Romans 8:1.  In fact, "I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Romans 8:38-39.  Whoah - suddenly our sins don't seem so mountainous that they can block out God's mercy.  Far from it.  Rather, the mountain of manure that is our sin is spread out into our gardens by Christ, who cares for us and tends to our soul like a master gardener, with the utmost care.  The bigger the pile of manure, the more God wants to enrich the soil with it.  (For an example of this kind of super-enrichment, look to St. Augustine).

We are INSEPARABLE from Christ, just as roots stretch toward the ground, and leaves reach up to the sun, and flowers burst from buds.  We need only be sure to care for the plants that God has given us, to nurture the little garden which He watches over, that we might create a little beauty in our corner of the world.  The rest is up to God.

A Beautiful Letdown

We have all felt the feeling before.  We end the day, tired, disappointed in ourselves, wishing we had done or could have done more (or perhaps both).  There is an emptiness that never seems filled, that hole we keep open for our unfulfilled expectations for our frail, human selves.  We are an impossibly hard to please bunch!

And yet, we are all a Beautiful Letdown.  Nothing that we ever do will be ENOUGH - and the fact that we are dissatisfied with ourselves is an indication of how much we need Christ.  We are always searching for something MORE.  And that MORE must always come from Christ's abilities, NOT our own abilities!

So often we find reasons to be disappointed in ourselves, because we don't meet our own expectations.  What about the expectations of Christ?  What about the things that He wishes us to accomplish with our days, and what about His knowledge of our weaknesses, our failings, the things that we hold onto and the things we so easily let slide?  We are children of God, and as children of God, we must sacrifice our own pride and expectations in order to accomplish the greatness He has planned for us.

To illustrate this point, I want to tell you the story of a young boy you might know.  He grew up in Poland during a time of political turmoil, and he loved Christ with all his heart.  He loved football, and he even dabbled briefly in the field of library science and theatre, working as a playwright.  But he loved Christ more than even all this, and felt a call to the priesthood.  This little boy could have become a football player, or a writer, or a librarian, but he followed God's call to something I'm sure he felt was much bigger than himself.  This little boy was Karol Jozef Wojtyla, and would later become Pope John Paul II.  How would the world be different if he had instead held onto the expectations he had for himself, and pursued a career as a football player, or a librarian?

We are all Beautiful Letdowns, at one point or another.  Rather than focusing on how we have failed to be what we expect ourselves to be, let us focus on how we are accomplishing what God intends for us to be.  It may very well be that the "Letdown" we see in the mirror is God's beloved child, accomplishing His will with an artful grace, even though we may not realize it.

The Band Perry and the Lady of Shalott

One of my latest song obsessions is called, "If I Die Young," by The Band Perry.  Admittedly, the song is fairly depressing, as it talks about death at a young age.  At the same time, though, the lyrics are fascinatingly beautiful: "If I die young, bury me in satin / lay me down on a bed of roses / sink me in the river at dawn / send me away with the words of a love song." Click here for a Youtube video of the song. Who wouldn't want that kind of a send-off?

I decided to investigate the song, as I was wondering why a hit song would be written about such a topic.  I discovered, in my investigation, that the song was based on a Tennyson poem, called "The Lady of Shalott."  There is a copy of the poem here, for those of you who are interested.  The poem is about a woman held up in a tower in Shalott, forever weaving a tapestry based on the image she sees from her mirror, pointed out the window at the countryside below.  She cannot turn around to look directly at her beautiful town of Shalott, or else she will be cursed.  So, she remains, staring into the mirror day after day, weaving her tapestry.

That is, until Lancelot.

One day, Sir Lancelot (of Arthurian legend) comes riding through the countryside on horseback, and the Lady of Shalott is forced to turn around to gaze at him.  As the curse comes upon her, she decides to leave her tower, and lowers herself out the window.  She finds a boat, gets into it, and starts floating down the river toward Sir Lancelot.  She dies as the boat carries her downstream, and when Sir Lancelot and his Knights find her peacefully lying in the boat, Sir Lancelot says, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott."  Wow - some poem!

Sir Lancelot's dashing appearance onto the scene forced the Lady of Shalott to turn around from her tapestry and mirror, and look directly out at the countryside.  Don't you wish that such beauty would appear in your life?  A gallantly beautiful horse, a handsome hero.  Surely death was a small price to pay for such a truly beautiful moment, after a lifetime of shadows!

My favorite line of the poem comes after the Lady of Shalott saw two lovers in the field below.  She says, "I am half sick of shadows" as she muses on them below, living their lives, while she seems forever trapped in the prison cell of her tower, for fear of the curse.  It seems to reflect a lot of the fear in our own lives.  We get so caught up in weaving our own lives, afraid of being cursed with hurt and failure, afraid of dying to our own desires.  We refuse to turn around and actually stare life in the face, to see it on God's terms, as He meant for us to see it.  We refuse to take that leap of faith because we know that life means pain, and fully living life means fully dealing with the consequences and emotions and daily battles.  Many of us find it much easier to sit weaving away our tapestry in a tall tower, removed from it all.  

So, we often find ourselves at the loom of life, weaving away at a tapestry, keeping us distracted from reality.  We weave the life that we see in the mirror, letting other people tell us what the countryside of our lives should look like.  But what worth does life have if we cannot savor its beauty, stare it in the face?  My grandfather had a saying in Italian: better a day as a lion than one hundred days as a lamb.  In essence, better the life fully lived than one not lived at all.

So, when I hear the lyrics of the song, "Gather up your tears / keep them in your pocket. / Save them for a time when you're really gonna need them," I think of all the lives that have lived without ever having seen the kind of beauty I have known.  It's then that I realize that the tears aren't for death or loss, but for people who never knew love, or beauty.  The tears are for the people who never turned around to look directly out the window, who were never so stunned by the beauty of God that they were at a loss for words.  The people who remain in that state, captivated by this beauty, don't feel the fear of being cursed.  They understand the freedom of living life to the fullest, and the futility of living in a world of mirrors.  If the price we pay for beauty is death, then we are well-served to take the risk and pay the price.  Otherwise, we die without ever having truly lived.

In the Love of Christ through Mary,

Christina :)

The Romance of Christ

I have been thinking a lot about the intersection between faith and relationship lately.  The desires of our hearts seem so far removed from our realities sometimes - there is always a piece of the puzzle missing, and we struggle to reconcile the hope of Heaven with the difficulties of earth.  Women struggle so much with the search for love on earth - finding that "special someone" to complete us, defend us, preserve us.  We want to be loved, and to love fully in return.

And then, there is Jesus.

If there was ever a man to fall head-over-heels in love with, it's Christ, first and foremost.  It is so SAFE and BEAUTIFUL to give all of ourselves to Him!  He is the ultimate Lover, gracious, kind, giving, attentive, courteous, strong, forever seeking, forever loving.  Why does it surprise women that we are not satisfied by anything less than a man who imitates Him?  Everything in our soul cries out for the love of Christ, for the love of the God and Man who laid His life down to rescue us.  Our hearts pine and yearn and thirst for this kind of love - self-sacrificial, whole, complete and beautiful.  The Passion and Death of Our Lord, who died for us, serves as a fitting testament to the depth of this love.  How could we stand for anything less, when we have already tasted the sweetest of the fruits of love?

So many women feel the loneliness, shame, and heartbreak that comes from wounds and attachments they have suffered in relationships.  Women fight to discover that love they have searched for so ardently, the one that they pray for with their whole beings.  Yet, our battle is counterproductive: seeking rather than allowing ourselves to be sought, trying to discover love in men rather than men in love, making plans rather than letting God take care of it.  What a silly way to go about letting God direct our lives, and what a silly way to let Him bring to us the man He has kept for us all this time!

To take a valuable lesson from the Song of Songs, "I adjure you, do not arouse, do not stir up love before its own time."  The only love that can ever fully satisfy our hearts is that of Christ, who teaches us how to be TRUE women of God.  As women, we crave respect, fidelity, attention - someone to confirm our hope that we are precious, beautiful, worth seeking.  Rather than seeking that love among men, it is our job to discover the seeking love of Christ.  He pursues us day and night, moment by moment, hoping He will win our hearts and our undying love.  He has been burning with this love for us, waiting for us to answer His Call all along - the passion of a lifetime is the romance of Christ!

The best romantic movies, to me, are the ones where the female half of a pair of long-time friends suddenly discovers that the male friend has always had feelings for her.  The woman is often surprised (although the audience often is not...) that this man could care about her like that.  And she often ends up making a decision to go for another man, which she later rescinds in favor of this lovestruck best friend.  She realizes in the end that true love is something we are given, often something that is right under our nose.  It is not something that we can make ourselves.  We can't treat our love life like a cookie recipe for true love - take one guy, make sure he fits certain standards, add in two parts romance, one part emotional attachment, one part attraction, and a touch of idealism...  It simply doesn't work.  Real love, the kind that lasts a lifetime, is something we are offered, something we are given freely and fully.  Real love is a man conforming to the Will and grace offered by God.  Real love is something that requires no convincing, no solicitation - just a patient, womanly heart that is willing to wait in silence.

I find Christ completely analogous to that lovestruck best friend.  Christ has been my best friend for so long, and knows everything about me.  He was there when we were kids, growing up together.  He knows my every thought, what makes me laugh and what makes me cry.  He knows all my secrets, my passions, my longings, the wounds from my past.  He has loved me the whole time He has known me, in the hope that one day I might feel the same way for Him, always thinking of how He will win me over, how He can do what is best for me.  He has been pursuing me my entire life, sending roses, birthday presents, and "I love you's" in the form of beautiful silences filled with peacefulness, joy and happiness that carries over to others, grace-filled friends, an amazing family, moments of sadness, moments of wonder, moments of confusion and pain, and moments of clarity.  All of it is a calling to share our hearts with Christ, because His love for us never yields, and always seeks our love in return.

With a love like that, how can we feel anything but blessed, even in the darkest of times?  And, when that "right one" comes along, shouldn't we expect nothing less than the best?  After all, He has loved us with an everlasting love, and He is the one who will bring us that special someone to love us completely with His own love.

In the Love of Christ through Mary,

Christina :)

There's a (Good) Reason for Everything...

What a radical Gospel it was that Christ preached!  He told us of His Father, in Heaven, who loved us all even through sin!  He showed to us His Mother, who was to become Our Mother, and who was to have each of us as Her child!  He demonstrated for us the ULTIMATE act of love for us, the most perfect expression of complete self-sacrifice that this world has ever seen!  And yet, too often we lack the trust to understand: He only desires everything GOOD for us!

We struggle with so many different things!  We worry about how we will pay the bills, or get the job, or find the guy, or seize the moment, or even please the Lord!  We get depressed and hopeless about our tendencies to sin, take them as horrible proclivities toward evil that cannot be altered without great difficulty, and become frustrated with our own inability to change.  Sound familiar?  It sounds all too familiar to me!  And yet, He ONLY DESIRES EVERYTHING GOOD FOR US!

What does this mean?  This means that every inclination, every emotion, every EVERYTHING He gives us is meant to draw us closer to Him.  The catch?  When we direct all those gifts towards something OTHER than Christ, other than our God made Flesh.  Then, the gifts become twisted in unrecognizable ways, disturbingly lacking in peace and the joy that Christ has brought us through His Resurrection.

Think about it: take any proclivity toward sin you can think of.  Covetousness.  One is so envious of another's land, or their wealth, or their wife!  Yet, directed toward God, that WANT of something BEAUTIFUL is fulfilled!  God offers us all we desire, AND MORE.  We simply need to orient that GIFT that He has given us of IMMENSE desire for something beautiful, precious, and priceless towards HIM!

Or, take addiction.  Addictive tendencies, directed toward God, give us abounding recourse to Him, all the time!  Take judgment of others.  A thirst for righteousness and justice, directed at self-reflection as Christ calls us to do ("remove the log in your own eye before trying to remove the splinter in your brother's eye!"), is beautiful and humbling in ways that cannot be achieved otherwise for certain personalities.  Take feelings of sadness, or emptiness, or loneliness, or doubt: directed toward God, we find everything we could ever need, and we discover that He was the answer all along to our supposed "problem"; and that that "problem" actually ended up bringing us closer to Him.

We've all heard the story: "In the end, it was a GOOD thing that this tragedy happened: I ended up trusting in God, or learning from Him, or growing in Faith."  Everyone has a story like that, either from themselves, a friend, a family member, or even an acquaintance or friend of a friend.  What would the world be like if we recognized the CHRIST in all our supposed "difficulties"?  Christ died on the Cross so that we could be free of sin - not so that we could nail ourselves with our own self-condemnation, but so that we could recognize that He has taken the world's sins onto His back, has had them driven into His Hands and His Feet, and has saved us from all evil.

God can never bring us anything but Blessings of Goodness, even when those Blessings may appear to be difficult.  Just change the angle at which you are viewing the Gift: you may find it to be stunningly beautiful. :)

May we pray that, for today, we thank Him for everything He gives to us.  May we recognize God's beauty in everything we see, and know the difference between things that are of God and of the evil one.  Grant us a discerning mind, Lord, to be always present in You, and recognize Your Presence in us.  May we, like Our Blessed Virgin Mother, meditate on Your Goodness day and night, and never be parted from Your Love.  May our hearts rejoice in the knowledge of Your Goodness, and thank You and praise You all the days of our lives!  May we always praise You, for You "make all things new" in You!

In the Love of Christ through Mary,
Christina :)