Okay, so I’m reading through the Old Testament and am in the middle of 1 Kings.
Here’s the issue:
15:1-2 — Here we meet Abijam, he rules Judah for 3 years and his mother’s name is Maacah daughter of Abishalom.
15:9-10 — Here we meet Abijam’s son (according to verse 8), Asa. His mother’s name is Maacah daughter of Abishalom.
Wait. What? The same woman?
Is there something Oedipal going on here?
A friend asked me to pray this novena for her for the next 13 days. The 13 blessed souls are Jesus and the 12 apostles (I’m assuming Matthew and not Judas for the 12th apostle).
If you’d also like to pray this novena with me, here it is!
(Please Note – The repeat of the first line is not a mistake it is supposed to be read twice.)
Oh my thirteen Blessed souls so wise and understanding, I ask you for the Love of God that my request be answered. Oh my thirteen Blessed souls so wise and understanding, I ask you for the Love of God that my request be answered. Of you I ask for the sake of the blood that Jesus shed that my request be answered.
My Lord Jesus Christ that your protection wrap me with your arms. Guard me with your eyes.
O God of kindness you have been my defender in life and death. I ask that you free me from the difficulties that torment me. My thirteen blessed souls so wise and understanding having received the grace I seek from you [state request] I will be devoted to you.
Say 13 Our Fathers and 13 Hail Marys for 13 consecutive days and offer a Mass of Thanksgiving.
I didn’t skip this dare, and I didn’t forget about it. Today’s dare involves trying to be unselfish, and I didn’t feel that I really had a good chance to be unselfish yesterday and decided to extend the dare for several more days.
Part of being unselfish for me is to think more of the stresses and demands placed on others and trying to relieve these, instead of thinking of the stresses and demands that others are placing on me.
While I have tried to adjust my thinking and my heart, I was given the opportunity to concretely do something for others on January 11th. A friend had told me of an awful fire, where 20 units burned. The tenants lost everything. While the management got them placed into vacant units in the complex, they didn’t have any beds or blankets and were sleeping on the floor. They didn’t have basic essentials, like food, dish soap or shampoo.
I ended up going shopping for them and picking up a few things, which was joy enough for me. I didn’t need any recognition for it, nor was I looking for an atta-boy. What ended up happening was that God put someone into my life that I really didn’t have a relationship with before.
This girl has an incredibly beautiful heart. The way she loves is inspiring. She loves deeply: her family, her co-workers, her neighbors, complete strangers. And she gives of herself selflessly. What a gift, that I should have this person enter my life! 🙂
What has been even better, in the subsequent days, is that she has spurred me on to greater awareness of others and acts of unselfishness. Which was kind of the point of Day 3, right? 🙂
A friend sent me a link to Sacred Space, a prayer site run by Irish Jesuits. On a whim during my lunch today, I popped on and starting praying with their prayers, reflections, and Scripture for today.
The Scripture was the story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. After reading the passage, they ask you to reflect upon how this Scripture made you feel.
In the beginning, they describe the people as being like sheep without a shepherd. This made me think of myself as a sheep, and how I would feel if I were without my shepherd. And I became sad. I need my shepherds. I would be lost without them.
Then, they spoke of how all the sheep were gathered up and held within the communion symbolized by the loaves and fishes, and I saw in this the analogy of the Mass. It made me reflect upon the profound connection that there is between our priests and the Mass. And upon how much I need both.
I need this sacramental life like I need air to breathe. And I can’t imagine my life now without it.
Thanks be to God.
I know that this isn’t the next calendar day after Day 1, but I felt that I should pick up where I left off, instead of trying to cram many days into one. I felt that would be cheating, somehow. I need to learn each lesson as I come to them and spend the appropriate time on them before looking at the next.
Today’s dare focuses on kindness, the second pillar of love (the first being patience). They tell us that kindness is comprised of four separate things: gentleness, helpfulness, willingness, and initiative. And that kindness is love in action. To truly be kind, I need to be aware of my basic selfishness and die to self, so that I can live for the good of others. This is really hard; I think we are by nature selfish. I think that I have a high degree of empathy for other people, but I still need to fight with myself to *do something* about it. Especially when that “something” involves some sort of sacrifice on my behalf.
Today’s dare is to do one unexpected gesture of kindness for our spouse. It was a sacrifice for me on a number of levels, and it was not made easily. But it was for the love of Christ, and He turned that sacrifice into a blessing for me, as well. This doesn’t really surprise me. After all, our priest is known to exhort couples at their wedding to try to “outdo” each other in kindness. If the relationship that I am working on is the one between Jesus and myself, then I really have no hope of being able to outdo Him in kindness. 🙂 Although, I can try. 🙂
I found this tradition in a Catholic bookstore around my first Epiphany (which was in 2008), and have kept it a tradition in my household ever since. Basically, you are taking time on this day to consecrate yourself and your household to God for the year, up to next Epiphany, when you do it again. You can find prayers for this house blessing in several places online, this one is the site that I used tonight to bless my house and to consecrate myself to the Lord.
Since I live alone, I said all the prayers myself, aloud. 🙂
I prayed the Magnificat from the Bible I received from the RCIA program, when I was joining the Catholic Church.
Then I sprinkled holy water in each of the rooms of my house. I don’t really have a good “sprinkling” technique, so I kind of splooshed gobs of water in each room from my holy water bottle. I’m sure God can work with that. 🙂
I didn’t have any incense with which to incense each room in the house. Instead, I took a candle I received at a memorial Mass for my godmother, lit it, and prayed for her intercession in each room in my house. I tried to tailor my prayers to the activities that normally occur in each room (E.g. pray for friends and relationships, that I consume media that feed rather than diminish my soul, etc. when I was in the living room). I asked her to take all these prayers to the throne of the Lord.
As the last part of the house blessing, I inscribed + 20 C + M + B 13+ above the entry doors to my home.
Front Door:
Back Door:
This is the first Epiphany Mass in four years in which I did not cry. Four years ago today, my godmother, Pat McDonald, died and went home to Jesus. While I am happy that she is no longer sick and suffering, the selfish part of me misses her quite a bit.
It is also rather fitting that today, on Epiphany, I would celebrate Mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel, with Fr. John, who was her spiritual director and a good friend of us both. At one point in her illness, she was no longer up to serving at Mass at St. Anastasia as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. With the additional prompting of our pastor, Fr. JJ, I agreed to take her spot on Team 1.
Last summer, I signed up to me an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at Our Lady of Good Counsel as well (I’m a parishioner at both parishes). I’m only called to be a minister there about once every month and a half. As it happened, today was one of those days. Not only that, but for the first time since the summer, Fr. John was the priest celebrating Mass. And! It was the first time that I got to distribute the Body of Christ (as opposed to the Blood of Christ). AND! I was assigned to stand next to Fr. John while doing it. 🙂
My red sweater fit in nicely with all the poinsettias on the altar and the red trim on Fr. John’s white chasuble. 🙂 Not that that matters, but it was a nice detail.
I was so joyful up there, handing Jesus to people. I’m sure I was grinning ear to ear the whole time. LOL!
It is Masses like this where I never want to leave. I just want to stay there in the company of Jesus and my friends forever. God willing, this will happen soon! 🙂
Here is Pat, taken on a trip to the Holy Land, overlooking Jerusalem.
I love you!
I suppose today’s dare actually began during Mass at the very beginning of the day today. Right after receiving communion, as I knelt down to pray, I remember reflecting upon the host that I had just consumed. I felt as if God were speaking to me of His plans for me for the coming year. I think what he wants for me this year is an increased sense of docility to him. A softening of my heart. A new gentleness.
How fitting then that this first day tackles the subject of patience.
I think that part of being a patient person is docility to the will of God. If I know, if I *truly* know, that God loves me and always wills for my good, then I can suffer anything, because I know that He will see me through it.
The reading tells of a fruit of patience: “Patience brings an internal calm during an external storm.” Docility, reliance, peace. The reading also says that, “it gives you the ability to hold on during the tough times in your relationship rather than bailing out under the pressure.”
I am not often angry with God, but there is a relationship that I have that I was on the verge of bailing on. Not that I wish ill toward anyone, but I have been hurt so many times before by so many people, that I tend to quietly leave situations rather than to suffer more hurt, particularly when I do not think that the other party is that interested in my friendship. I mean, if they do not really care, why should I keep trying?
But this is the hardness of my heart speaking, I think.
And if I want to practice patience for Jesus’s sake, then I think He is giving me a situation where I can try to show patience — and perhaps it is in this relationship.
So today, I got the opportunity to see things, or at least one instance, from the other party’s point of view. And I certainly have fault. Clearly, what I need is to have patience in this instance. Patience for God to work in me. For Him to soften my heart and help me to grow and learn to love better. For as I treat others, so do I treat Him. I pray that He will help me and give me the grace that I need.
I watched the movie Fireproof recently, and as I talked about in a recent Quick Takes, I have been kicking around the idea of using the Love Dare in my relationship with God.
Okay, you’re right. It should be done with one single person in mind and God is three persons. Let me be more specific, then. I will see if I can apply the Love Dare to my relationship with Jesus. I get that it’s going to be a challenge sometimes, but I am hoping that I will still be able to see an improvement in the relationship as I become more aware of my own selfishness and seek to do what is best for Him (or based on His wants for me and not my wants for me).
Just like it says in the trailer, it’s a decision to begin leading your heart instead of following your heart. Many of the saints experienced what is called a “Dark Night of the Soul”, where they experienced aridity in their prayer life and/or couldn’t feel the presence of God in their lives. It is during these times that they had to lead their hearts.
I have a decent amount of knowledge about God, but as I reflected on this Year of Faith that we are in, I realized that while learning ever more about God is a good thing, I don’t want it to be the only thing. A personal relationship with the persons of the Trinity is what changes a “religious scholar” into a “theologian”. And I want my heart to be in it. I want my heart to be in Him. Isn’t that his main point to the Pharisees?
And so I begin.
Please pray for me, as I keep you in prayer as well.
Earlier this evening, I went out with a friend to see Les Miserables again. I still love it! Afterwards, we went to Chili’s for dinner. Towards the end of the meal, I was starting to not feel well, so when I got home, I decided to take a nap before Midnight Mass.
I set my alarm, but when it went off, I still wasn’t feeling better, so I kept hitting snooze.
Finally, I decided to get up and go. Because I really do love going to Midnight Mass to start off the new year. And because I was concerned that if I let myself just sleep, I might miss the 10 am Mass tomorrow morning. 🙂
I really need about 20 minutes to make it to Ss. Cyril and Methodius on time, but left about a quarter to midnight. Traffic and lights were cooperative and I made it to a seat in the church just as the last bells of midnight were ringing and they were announcing the hymn for the processional. 🙂 SAFE! I thought. Sliding in to home plate, just before the priest greets us all with a loud “Happy New Year!”
It was a lovely Mass. As I sat in my car, ready to go home, the radio was on and I caught the tail end of one song. All I heard of it was a phrase, “See Heaven’s got plan for you.” And as I was leaving the parking lot, the next song sang to me, “I’m glad you came!” Both great things to hear right after Mass! 🙂
If the link works, here is the first song that I was listening to:
