Rebecca Schwan, RIP

Dear reader, even if you read this years from now, please pray for the soul of Rebecca Schwan, my friend, who died earlier this evening.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

I love you and I miss you, Rebecca. Be at peace.

Good morning, Rebecca.

This is Michael.  I love you my friend, my best friend, my dearest friend.  We have had many happy times together.  I like being with you, and I miss you now, but it is only for a little while.

Let us ask God for His help, both of us, so that we don't have to spend too long in Purgatory, but can be friends again soon in Heaven.

Purgatory is the hospital for our souls.  I know you were eager to get out of your hospital in Portland and back to your home.

Our true home is Heaven, so let's give up all our old sins now, and live with clean hearts, until God calls us home.

Let's give out hearts to God, and give Him all that we are, so that God can make us holy.

After 12 years, I know you a little, and love you more than that, but God knows you completely and loves you completely.

He offers us everlasting life in His home, and if we accept that offer, in His home we will come to know more than we know now, and understand more, and love more, and become the people that He made us to be.

There at last we will have perfect, steady friendship, never darkened by grief.  We will be friends forever with each other, and other people, and most of all with God, Who has been waiting patiently for many years for us to come home to him.   That is the home He made for us, where can we can live with Him joyfully and peacefully and forever.

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I thought about what I wanted to say to you, and after I figured that out, I saw the readings for today. Listen to the responsorial psalm:

The response is: "One thing I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord."! How perfect is that?

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear? The LORD is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid?

R. One thing I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord.

One thing I ask of the LORD this I seek: To dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, That I may gaze on the loveliness of the LORD and contemplate his temple.

R. One thing I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord.

I believe that I shall see the bounty of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD with courage; be stouthearted, and wait for the LORD.

R. One thing I seek: to dwell in the house of the Lord.

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Today is the memorial of Saint Athanasius, who was a doctor of the Church. That means he knew and understood a lot about God. In Heaven, we will have some of that knowledge and understanding.

Bye, sweetie, I love you; I'll call again this evening.

A Brighter Day

A nurse told my best friend today that her myeloma shows no sign of progressing and they don't need to see her for another 3 months. Happy news.

Two lovely prayers for a lovely soul (found here):

Heavenly Father, physician of our souls and bodies, Who have sent Your only-begotten Son and our Lord Jesus Christ to heal every sickness and infirmity, visit and heal also Your servant R. from all physical and spiritual ailments through the grace of Your Christ. Grant her patience in this sickness, strength of body and spirit, and recovery of health. Lord, You have taught us through Your word to pray for each other that we may be healed. I pray, heal Your servant R. and grant to her the gift of complete health. For You are the source of healing and to You I give glory, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

O Lord our God, Who by a word alone did heal all diseases, Who did cure the kinswoman of Peter, You Who chastise with pity and heal according to Your goodness; Who are able to put aside every sickness and infirmity, do You Yourself, the same Lord, grant aid to Your servant R. and cure her of every sickness of which she is grieved; and send down upon her Your great mercy, and if it be Your will, give to her health and a complete recovery; for You are the Physician of our souls and bodies, and to You do we send up Glory: to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, both now and forever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.

Happy Chinese New Year

Best wishes to my friend Ling as she starts her new job


恭喜發財
Congratulations and be prosperous

歲歲平安Everlasting peace year after year

Perichoresis

I recently encountered two words that theologians use to describe the unity of the Trinity: from Greek perichoresis and from Latin circumincession. They mean the same thing, that each Person of the Blessed Trinity lives in the other two, and they act with one accord and cannot be separated from each other, yet they remain distinct Persons.

Perichoresis literally means "dancing around", although it has perhaps become a theological term of art divorced from its origins. As an occasional social dancer, I hope it is not irreverent to still see in human dance some dim reflection of the Divine life. My own dancing is typically lead-footed and clumsy, but, once in a great while, the weights fall off, and with Rebecca, my friend and dance partner, we soar. There is joy in dancing as one, a small model of the exaltation and unity of the Ever-Blessed Trinity.

Years ago I read Chance or the Dance by Thomas Howard. As I recall, it contrasted the modern view of the world as a place of random, meaningless events with an older view of the world as a great dance, wherein we each have a part. I am reminded of both views when I think of a folk dance I once attended. From inside the dances, things looked chaotic, with lots of people wheeling around and going under each other's arms (the whirling energy was a big part of the fun). But of course there was a pattern to the dancing, and one only got into trouble when one left the pattern.

With Christ Jesus as our model, we learn our part in the dance of life, moved sometimes by the Holy Spirit, but other times by the zeitgeist or by our own stubborn will. Leaving the pattern, we may step on a few toes. We may even stumble and fall. If we do, the music still goes on, and the master of the dance waits for us to resume our part, training us with infinite patience and tremendous insistence, preparing us for our part in the great eternal dance, where the life and light and joy of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit fill the souls of the blessed.

Blogger and friend, lower-right foreground, at Chicago's SummerDance

Learning to Tango

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The Council of Florence declared:
These three persons are one God, not three gods; for the three persons have one substance, one essence, one nature, one divinity, one immensity, one eternity. And everything is one where there is no distinction by relative opposition. Because of this unity, the Father is entirely in the Son and entirely in the Holy Spirit; the Son is entirely in the Father and entirely in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is entirely in the Father and entirely in the Son. None of the persons precedes any of the others in eternity, nor does any have greater immensity or greater power. From eternity, without beginning, the Son is from the Father; and from eternity and without beginning, the Holy Spirit has proceeded from the Father and the Son.' All that the Father is, and all that he has, he does not have from another, but of himself; he is the principle that has no principle. All that the Son is, and all that he has, he has from the Father; he is a principle from a principle. All that the Holy Spirit is and all that he has, he has from the Father and equally from the Son. Yet the Father and the Son are not two principles of the Holy Spirit, but one principle, just as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three principles of creation, but one principle. Therefore, the holy Roman Church condemns, disapproves, anathematizes, and declares to be separated from the body of Christ, which is the Church, all who hold any contrary opinions.

(Relative opposition, or relation, is the opposition between two terms either of which needs the other to explain it. For example, the ideas of father and son, of double and half, of knowledge and the object known.)

My fellow buddhists & I

Oops...

You fit in with:
Buddhism

Your ideals mostly resemble those of the Buddhist faith. Spirituality is the most important thing in your life. You strive to live by all of your ideals, and live a very intellectually focused life.

0% scientific.
40% faith-oriented.

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

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My buddhist friend was upset at the poor treatment she receives at work. I tried suggesting that the the suffering we endure in this world is a path to understanding. She seemed skeptical. I don't know whether it has anything to do with our conversation, but after that she borrowed some videos from her temple, and now thinks that the cruelty inflicted on her might be payback for cruelty she inflicted on others early in life. There might be something to that.

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In the hopes of being able to present the truths of Catholicism more intelligibly to my friend, I visited our local public library to see whether it has anything on Catholicism and Buddhism. It does have one book: Living Zen, Loving God, by Ruben Habito, described as a practicing Catholic. I do not think my friend is a Zen Buddhist, but maybe the book will have something useful.

At first glance, things did not look good. I opened the book at random to page 13, and read:

What we are really seeking deep in our hearts cannot be found by looking "outside".

On second glance, it is not much better. I opened to an account of the good Samaritan (page 82). After quoting Luke's gospel, the author writes:

We tend to read this passage as moral injunction: "Help your neighbor in need." While that may be one valid reading it would not do full justice to what is being presented to us here.

It begins with the question of the lawyer, "What must I do to attain eternal life?" Let us plumb the depths of our being and really hear this question. This is the very question we ourselves are asking in our hearts, although we may put it in different ways:

What is true living?
How may I live an authentic life?
How may I realize who I am, and live my
True Self each moment of my life?

"Eternal life" thus is not life after we die, the extension of some form of consciousness that will go on after our biological death, but something that is available here and now.

Thus? The author has not even mentioned life after death and thinks he has already disproven it. I wonder, not for the first time, just how Catholic liberal Catholics are. Mr. Habito may be a fine Buddhist, and does ask some worthy questions, but his answers are not those of a Catholic. Compare his first quote above with this from St. Augustine:

Our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee

God may touch our hearts, but He is not confined to our hearts, and He is immeasurably greater than our hearts. I'll start this book from the beginning, and maybe find something that can help my friend, as the two of us stumble towards our final destinations.

Loaves and Fishes

I was talking with a deeply skeptical friend yesterday about the possibility that God actually exists. She asked why there haven't been any miracles in the last two hundred years. I said I had heard of more recent miracles, including a barrel of food that miraculously stayed full, but I could not remember the details.

I may have found the details:
[Maybe. The way I remember the story, the miracle happened in a refugee camp in a war-torn African nation, and lasted for days. Maybe the same sort of Divine intervention happened twice in recent years; more likely I just remember the story wrong].


Subject: Miraculous Provision

A close friend of mine, Gayle Smith who has been shown some of the forthcoming tribulation events, was told by the Lord on one occasion that, "I will feed you, I will clothe you, I will put a roof over our head. I will protect you. All that I require is that you believe I will do it." Here is a perfect example of just that.

The following is copied verbatim from the July, 1999 Newsletter of Agape Harvest Church Ministries, Blue Springs, MO pastored by Dr. Daniel E. Bohler.

This month we want to share with you about a Miracle Provision from the Lord. It happened with Tom and Wanda Shaw, Founders and Directors of Tree of Life Ministries, including a home and school for underprivileged children in Honduras, Central America:

"We, His servants, occasionally have the privilege of being where He is moving in a big way. Such was the case when our ministry team went to feed the refugees who were flooded out of their homes as a result of Hurricane Mitch. The storm had stolen the lives of 6,000 people in Honduras. Thousands more were left homeless. We learned from the authorities that 3,500 people were being sheltered at Camp Agas, the refugees flood center in San Pedro Sula. My wife and I were shocked to hear that many of those people had not eaten for three days! "Our school was not damaged by the hurricane and God had blessed our crops and ministry so that we had ample food with which to feed our students.

However, when Mitch hit, schools all over the nation were abruptly forced to close. Our school was no exception. Thankfully, we were in a position to help those destitute people, now stranded on what had been the San Pedro Sula fairgrounds. "When we arrived there, we turned over several hundred five pound bags of corn, rice, and beans to the authorities. We knew it could take quite a while...even days...before the officials could organize the cooking and distributing of that dry food.

The situation was so grim, that we also brought in three 20 gallon tubs of cooked food for immediate distribution to these starving victims. While we knew it was impossible for us to feed all the refugees, we were hoping to at least be able to feed the children.

"The pastor who took us in warned me that our reception could be crude. It seemed the government was moving too slowly and desperation was overwhelming the hungry families. One of the camp's main officials had come to assess the situation just one day earlier. In anger and frustration, the people threw garbage and shoes at him and drove him off.

I knew my team would have to face several challenges. The first one being that we only had enough food for the children. "When 1,000 children lined up, I became panicky. Beside the line of children was another long line of elderly people. Mothers with babies were in still another line. We had only two tubs of cooked rice and milk mixture and one tub of cooked beans. It appeared we were facing devastation!

The first half of the children who passed through the line quickly consumed the two tubs of rice and milk. We had just one tub left. It contained the beans, which were to be accompanied with a tortilla.

"We brought the rest of the children on through the line, but I began to feel anxious sorrow. I could see we were not going to have enough food to make it to the end of the line. There was no way for that tub of beans to stretch to feed all those children! Despair overwhelmed me as I stood looking at the line trying to judge how quickly the food would run out. It was an impossible situation!

To make matters worse, some of the children would try to slip back into the line for another helping. The scenario was growing increasingly chaotic and the line difficult to control. I could not bear to observe this hunger inspired chaos any longer!

"As I walked outside the building, I cried out to the Lord in my heart. Then, for 15 or 20 minutes, I just stood there watching the line of people pass into the building. When I went back inside, I expected the tub to be nearly empty. That meant I would have to cut the line off and turn the rest of them away, still hungry. Yet, when I looked, there was more food in that tub than there was when I left! The supply of beans did not seem to be diminishing. The servers just kept on scooping up beans and handing them to the hungry children.

My daughter, Brenda, was one of the servers. She remarked later, "Dad, it seemed strange that there was no change in the amount of food left in the tub. It just stayed at the same level, no matter how many people we fed!"

"Soon, I realized that all the children had been fed, and still the tub of beans remained lull! We were able to serve the entire line of adults and everyone else we could beckon to come and eat! A 'MIRACLE OF PROVISION" was happening right before our eyes.

It was just like the miracle Jesus did when He made two little fish and five small barley loaves stretch to feed five thousand men, plus women and children! "We do not really know how many we fed. One thing is certain. Everyone was fed who wanted to eat!

"Afterwards, we knew there was one more very important thing we had to do. So, after we fed everyone, we gathered the people into the bull ring. It was sad to watch as whole families tried to assemble themselves on their little cots so they could sit and hear us.

Then, we boldly proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ and made sure they knew that God was not the author of their pain and that He cared about them. We made certain they understood that what we had done for them was just a small expression of what God would like to do for them. We were able to give them the most valuable food of all!" "TO GOD BE ALL THE GLORY."

In the Garden of the Lord

My friend Rebecca informs me that in the garden of the Lord, I am a clover and she is a wild strawberry (and there are weeds).

(Speaking of the garden...)

In the Garden of the Lord

Last night I dreamed the Master came to me and gently said,
"Beloved, lay thy cross aside and come with me awhile,
For I would have thee rest within the garden of the Lord."
And then he took my trembling hand and led me through the gloom

Until we came to where a massive gateway barred our path.
The gates were closed, but opened at the Master's sweet command.
We entered, and the shadows fled before his radiant smile.
Oh, vision rapturous, can words be found to tell how fair!
Ten thousand roses beckoned with Love's crimson hue, and round
About our feet the violets nestled in their purple grief.
A passion flower, sad symbol of his dying agony,
Entwined itself with orchids rare, fair children of the air;
While velvet pansies, clothed in royalty, together grew
With lovely, clinging, pink and white sweet-peas, and close beside
The lilies of the valley bent in sweet humility;
And everywhere the tender grass--a carpet soft and cool.

And often as we passed, the Master's hand with loving touch
Did rest upon some drooping flower, and lo! at once it seemed
Refreshed. At last we came to where a stately lily stood,
Its snowy crown uplifted like a chime of silver bells,
Whose swaying filled the garden with a fragrance sweet and rare.
We closer drew, and then I saw, alas! how here and there
A petal fair was torn and brown, as though by some rude wind
Or scorching heat. I wondered greatly at the sight, then turned,
The question on my lips,--when suddenly there rose a storm
So fierce that every flower in the garden bent its head;
And then a shower of flaming arrows, hurled by shadowy forms
Outside the garden's ivy-covered walls, rained down upon
The lilies, while I clung in terror to my Heavenly Guide.
A moment only did the storm prevail, and then I heard
The Master's "Peace, be still!" The tempest ceased and there was calm,
The wondrous light grew dim, the garden vanished,--and I woke.

The Master had not spoken thus, and yet I seemed to know
The fair dream-garden was a picture of his "little ones,"
(He neither sleeps nor slumbers in his watch-care over these).
And then the thought,--if in this garden I might choose my place,
Would I be like the rose? Ah, no! lest in my passionate zeal
To show by works my heart of love, I should forget the thorns,
Dear Lord, and wound thy loving hand! Ah, then, perhaps I would
The lily be, and sound thy blessed Truth o'er land and sea
In clear-toned eloquence. Ah! no, I might not bear the storms
That beat upon the one whose head thou hast uplifted far
Above his fellows,--and a shining mark for Satan's darts!
And thus I thought on each and all that garden's lovely ones,
Then cried, "My blessed Lord, if I might choose, oh, let me be
The tender grass, that I may rest and soothe thy weariness,--
A lowly place, safe sheltered from the wind and fiery dart,--
What rapture this--to lay down life itself beneath thy feet."

--G. W. Seibert, Sept. 30th, 1905.