St. Augustine, insisting upon the message whether it be welcome or not, wrote:
“If I am straying,” he says, “if I am lost, why do you want me?” You are straying, that is why I wish to recall you. You have been lost, I wish to find you. “But I wish to stray,” he says: “I wish to be lost.”
So you wish to stray and be lost? How much better that I do not also wish this.
In an excellent meditation delivered at the vigil of the beatification of John Henry Newman,Pope Benedict XVI said, “”Passion for the truth is costly: it often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied.”
The Pope said:
Newman’s life also teaches us that passion for the truth, intellectual honesty and genuine conversion are costly. The truth that sets us free cannot be kept to ourselves; it calls for testimony, it begs to be heard, and in the end its convincing power comes from itself and not from the human eloquence or arguments in which it may be couched. Not far from here, at Tyburn, great numbers of our brothers and sisters died for the faith; the witness of their fidelity to the end was ever more powerful than the inspired words that so many of them spoke before surrendering everything to the Lord. In our own time, the price to be paid for fidelity to the Gospel is no longer being hanged, drawn and quartered but it often involves being dismissed out of hand, ridiculed or parodied. And yet, the Church cannot withdraw from the task of proclaiming Christ and his Gospel as saving truth, the source of our ultimate happiness as individuals and as the foundation of a just and humane society.
Finally, Newman teaches us that if we have accepted the truth of Christ and committed our lives to him, there can be no separation between what we believe and the way we live our lives. Our every thought, word and action must be directed to the glory of God and the spread of his Kingdom. Newman understood this, and was the great champion of the prophetic office of the Christian laity. He saw clearly that we do not so much accept the truth in a purely intellectual act as embrace it in a spiritual dynamic that penetrates to the core of our being. Truth is passed on not merely by formal teaching, important as that is, but also by the witness of lives lived in integrity, fidelity and holiness; those who live in and by the truth instinctively recognize what is false and, precisely as false, inimical to the beauty and goodness which accompany the splendour of truth, “veritatis splendor.”
Make me as a flower in sun and rain.
May I, as by nature,turn to follow You in Your course throughout my life.
Let Your holy, healing waters penetrate my being, as roots planted securely in Your Providential soil, drink of Your constant streams.
As it is Your nature to water and supply, may I by Rebirth, unfurl my gowns to Solomon’s delight.By Joann Nelander
Early this morning, I read these words in the Office of Readings:
“But the time came when He who had set me apart before I was born and called me by His favor chose to reveal His Son to me, that I might spread among the Gentiles the good tidings concerning Him.” Galatians 1:15-16
My thoughts flew to the issue of Life; God creating each one of us purposefully; knowing us as we are, with all our faults and failings and even our misguided “good” intentions. Paul had just finished describing to the Galatians his background, including what had been his well meaning ambitions previous to his conversion:
“You know that I went to extremes in persecuting the Church of God and tried to destroy it; I made progress in Jewish observance far beyond most of my contemporaries, in my excess of zeal to live out all the traditions of my ancestors.” Galatians 1:13-15
As I thought about this, it wasn’t much of a leap from there to recalling the arguments and dismissals of those in the pro-abortion camp, declaring an unborn child as: no child, no purpose, a blob of tissue, an inconvenience, a mistake (recall President Obama’s words), an economical burden (Nancy Pelosi’s words.) In addressing the Galatians for their having strayed from the Truth, Paul says, “O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” Galations 3:1. How much more can these words be spoken to our generation so steeped in secular relativism and materialism.
If God not only had Paul’s personhood in mind before he was conceived, but also had a plan for Paul, which included His Church, and had a moment in Time set, in which He would enable Paul to see clearly and become the man He called him to be, then how can we continue to throw away precious life as though God isn’t watching, isn’t caring, and isn’t remembering? Is Paul’s term, “Stupid,” strong enough to characterize so many so zealous in their war against life in our present culture of Death?
It amazes me that the Mother of Jesus has come to be such a contentious figure. Some time ago, I painted Our Lady with the Child Jesus in her arms. It showed at the Parker Gallery in CO. A church met in the same building, so members of the congregation would stop by to see the artwork after services. One Sunday only a young girl, about 9 years old, wondered from painting to painting, until she came to Mother and Child. She stood before it a moment considering the painting and then to my astonishment made a disdainful sound, “Psst!” 
Then, the child tossed her head and left abruptly. The gesture seemed beyond her years. Wouldn’t you expect an image of a mother and a child to touch a soft spot in a young and tender heart? Instead, it struck like a rock bouncing off unyielding ground. I remembered the lyrics of a song from South Pacific:
You’ve to to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
Prejudice can effect, or more accurately, infect us at any age or stage. It’s sad when it blinds us to goodness; saddest when it makes us immune to holiness, which, I guess, it always does.
Charles Krauthammer, the syndicated columnist and psychiatrist, continues to be a voice of sanity while Chicken Little (no names) runs around crying, “The sky is falling” in press conference after press conference. (Who could that be?)
Be Holy! 