The Marriage of the Head and the Heart

We sat every Sunday morning in that hot master-bedroom-turned-classroom of an old cinderblock house on Church property. It seemed to flow in and out of the dead leaves and sticks and palmettos and low hanging spanish moss like a stereotypical Florida home built in the 70’s. Brown and tan and empty and rotting and weirdly nostalgic and safe. Like visiting your friend’s granny. Regardless, we definitely dragged our feet in the rocks after Mass as we walked from the Church to the house where CCD took place. The room always smelled like granny was hiding in a closet sniffing pinesol. All the metal chairs in the hot but otherwise empty room faced the front and therefore so did all 18 of us sweaty 9th graders. This is catechesis in 2003 in Valrico, Florida. It was my freshman year of high school. If you’re reading this, chances are you too can harken back to that classroom where you stared at the back of Melissa’s head wondering what a Mexican wedding would look like. You might still remember the strange endearing sympathy you felt as your volunteer catechists stood at a half-broken formica table and tried to hold the attention of a room full of your hormonal freshman peers raised on Pokemon, Adult Swim, and iPods.

Let’s be honest: those Sadlier religious-ed books were out-gunned from the beginning.

To this day I still wonder how I ended up willing to (or at least praying that I would be willing to) die for the things those volunteers spoke about in that room. I remember telling my friend Darryl to say “transubstantiation” to throw the teacher off. The Catholic faith was another chunk of information I could wield to stroke my ego just like the (little) philosophy, martial arts, and LOTR information I possessed.

Somewhere during senior year of high school or freshman year of college I bumped directly into Jesus for the first time, andthen quickly tried to ignore Him by burying myself in self-aggrandizing information gluttony. Its a lot more comfortable to follow Jesus if you feel like you’re an expert in Jesus-knowledge. I learned about typology and colored salvation history timelines. I could recite - from memory - Jeff Cavin’s hour long talk from the audio CD “I’m Not Being Fed”. But I made sure to never look up from the information directly into the eyes of Christ. It was like a relationship that only existed on Facebook.

I find it sad that to this day too many people believe there is a strong dichotomy between Catholic doctrine and a transformational relationship with a personal God. I’ve been guilty of this most of my life. Many times I’ve been running from one extreme to the other. I’ve either hidden in my head from my heart’s need for Jesus, or headlessly chased Jesus around with my heart.

“The principal task entrusted to the Council by Pope John XXIII was to guard and present better the precious deposit of Christian doctrine in order to make it more accessible to the Christian faithful and to all people of good will.”

Do you know what Pope St. John XXIII believed the principle task of Vatican II was? What he really wanted to accomplish with all that Church window opening? “To guard and present better the precious deposit of faith”. Catholics who are deep in the evangelization frenzy, steeped in Catholic meditations on beauty, or armed to the teeth with apologetics tracts might hear this as a sad trombone.

And maybe that’s because deep down we aren’t sure if there can exist a marriage between our heads and our hearts.

Maybe we really believe that when we are 19 and reckless we can have a religion like a love-affair but when we are finally 35 and mortgaged we need to grow up and learn some facts and let the naive passion of our youth fade into the past like First Communion.

I, however, choose to believe that the panting of our hearts can be quickened by the slow and seductive revelation of God in the form of doctrine, tradition, and dogma. Maybe that’s really what all the doctrine should be viewed as: a lover writing from a foreign land revealing who He is.

For too long the distance between the head and the heart has forced me into a false dichotomy. I should either be a frenetic charismatic or a staunch Thomist. The spirit and the letter. I think its normal for this tension to exist. Its part of how we are made. But what would it look like if the two were married?

It looks like Divine Revelation.

I believe it looks like the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Papal Household, seems to agree.

“…we need to discover the CCC’s pulsating heart. And what is this heart? It is not a dogma or a truth, a doctrine or an ethical principle. It is a Person: Jesus Christ! “On page after page,” – the Holy Father writes regarding the CCC in the same Apostolic Letter – “we find that what is presented here is no theory, but an encounter with a Person who lives within the Church”

We can get our heart into the heart of Christ by walking over the bridge of revelation.

The more Revelation becomes our bridge to the heart of God, the more we unite our head and our hearts. Then we can begin to transform the catechism from “a silent instrument, like a valuable violin resting on a velvet cloth, into an instrument that sounds and rouses hearts.”

[photo: rocket-fueled]

The Annoying "Yes" Lady at Mass

Due to many scheduling conflicts a few Sundays back, I went to Mass by myself without the wife and kids. Over the past month or so we began to notice a curious and regular disruption at the 9:30 a.m. Mass. The weird part was, I began to take a strange pleasure in it. It went something like this:

Priest prays out loud, "May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your ha-"

"YES LORD," interjects the affirmation from what sounds like an old African-American woman somewhere in the pews to the far back and right.

And it continues...

"For the praise and glory of your name..."

"YES LORD."

"For our-"

"YES."

"-good and the good-"

"YES."

"-of all our Church."

"YES LORD."

And it goes on and on like that, with the older lady interceding between every ten or so words from the Priest. Heads everywhere are trying to make clandestine surveillance of the pews around them without making it obvious that they are clearly distracted and pissed off.

Now I'm not going to lie, the first time my wife and I heard the Yes Lady we did what every other couple did. We looked at each other with faces of smirky inconvenience and gossiped after Mass about how obnoxious and distracting this woman was being, resolving that SOMEONE had to do SOMETHING.

I mean holy righteous anger batman! We are trying to PRAY here!

But this Sunday was different. Right around the Eucharistic prayer I noticed a small but steaming pile of self-righteous indignation in my pew. Curious, I kicked it up under the pew in front of me and listened again to the Yes Lady.

"Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ."

"YES."

A quick burst of willful naivete shot through my brain and I asked a question based on giving the Yes Lady the benefit of the doubt:

What if she really believes she is doing something important?

Suddenly I felt angry. I was angry at anyone who was angry at the Yes Lady. I was angry at the 59% of U.S. Catholics who don't attend Mass weekly. I was angry at the 62% of U.S. Catholics who don't claim a strong religious identity. I was angry at the 29% of U.S. Catholics who don't believe in a personal God. But most of the anger was aimed at myself, because I suddenly became ashamed that I felt so entitled to a distraction free Mass.

What do Catholics who leave the Church to join a Protestant denomination say one of their biggest reasons for leaving is? "My spiritual needs are not being met."

DISCLAIMER: There is a big conversation we could have about the discrepancy between a person's perception of not being spiritually fed, and the actual reality of the depth of spiritual fullness made available in the Catholic Church. And I could fill a hard drive with reasons why I don't think anyone should be constantly giving their public verbal consent to the Eucharistic Prayer. I'm not saying active participation must be busy participation.

But do we, who know the sublime reality of Mass, worship like we are being spiritually fed?

As I honestly examined my frustration with the Yes Lady, I realized I was really just frustrated by the notion of anything "happening" at Mass.

I watched the Priest raising up our gifts and the work of our hands - the bread, the wine, and all intentions we lay at the altar - but part of me didn't really expect God to accept them. I heard the Priest calling the Holy Spirit down on the altar with the conviction of Elijah, but part of me would have been inconvenienced by a rush of wind and tongues of fire. I heard the Priest imploring the help and intercession of an army of Saints, but part of me didn't really want them to show up. I cried aloud telling the Lord I'm not worthy for him to enter under my roof, begging Him to only say the word and heal me, but part of me didn't believe He could actually deny me. I waited mere minutes as we shuffled to the front of the Church to hold the endless, to consume the unconsumable, to swallow the sea, to insert infinite love into my size 34 waist, like a candle trying to hold the Sun, but part of me would be impatient if anyone took longer than seconds to take their wafer and move on.

Who is really being inconvenienced here anyways? Me? The guy who wanted a woman with expectant faith to shutup so I could go back to thinking my own thoughts during Mass?

Or God, who sits through Mass revealing Himself lovingly through His Son, humbly through bread and wine, vulnerably through His death on a Cross, and intimately through bodily communion, only for people like me to look on with blank stares like we're checking email? I've sent prayers to God soaked in tears asking Him to stop being so distant, and the next day been so impatient with a Priest who fumbled slowly through the Mass you would have thought if God himself showed up I'd tell Him to keep His homily short.

Thank God for the Yes Lady. I think only Yes Ladies get healed by Jesus. I think Yes Ladies walk out to Jesus on the water. I think the upper room was full of Yes Ladies at Pentecost. I think Yes Ladies' prayers heal the sick. I think Yes Ladies convert cities. I think only Yes Ladies can be tortured and martyred for Christ.

Is this a call for everyone to go all Southern Baptist this Sunday at their local parish? No. Please no.

But lets smile at the Yes Lady.

Because thanks to her, I pray more often for God to show up.

I pray more often for liturgical inconveniences.

(Photo by Cameron Zohoori)

[Video] Dual Wielding: Bible and Catechism

[youtube=http://youtu.be/PV4tfoHq1HI] I wanted to personally share a method of reading the Bible with the Catechism that opens up the depths of the faith to you, and is also pretty exciting to do.

Dual Wielding: Just Like in Halo

I call it "Dual Wielding the Bible and the Catechism" because it sounds epic that way. Basically it is reading the Bible through the lens of the Catholic Church, using the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

I've written about this way of reading the Bible through the lens of the Catechism, but here it is in a different medium. (My first foray into creating videos...go easy on me!)

I felt really called to explain this in person to you, and I hope it blesses you. Let me know if you try praying through the Bible and the Catechism this way.

Leave a comment, send me a tweet @edmundmitchell #dualwielding, or email me at contactedmundmitchell@gmail.com

Screwtape Letters and the Catechism of the Catholic Church

I'm all for using the Catechism of the Catholic Church, especially in unconventional ways. That's why when I came across this article by Marlon de la Torre about Using the Screwtape Letters to unpack the Catechism for high school students, I had to share it with y'all.

One of the biggest barriers between Catholics and the Catechism that I hear most often is that it isn't accessible. The language is either too complex or too theoretical.

In C.S. Lewis' renowned The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape is a demon advising fellow demon Wormwood about how to tempt and lead a man to damnation. Marlon takes chunks of Screwtape's letters and lead the students in debunking his advise using the Catechism. Engaging the Catechism in this way makes the content immediately practical and exciting to read.

Read the whole article here to get a better feel for what a typical lesson of this type would look like.

As I did some more research, it turns out Marlon wrote a book that does just what he does in class: open up the Catechism using C.S. Lewis' mesmerizing book. Go buy it  here like I just did: Screwtape Teaches the Faith. This Marlon guy deserves a raise.

Check out Marlon's blog at Knowing is Doing.

(Hat tip to Marc Cardaronella of Evangelizing Catechesis who sent this article my way.)

New Resource: Pray the Catechism [Print Out]

“…this book can be transformed from a silent instrument, like a valuable violin resting on a velvet cloth, into an instrument that sounds and rouses hearts.” Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa 1st Advent Sermon to the Papal Household

I want to share a one page pdf describing the "Brief Way" to pray the Catechism of the Catholic Church which I created not too long ago. My wife and I have tried praying with the Catechism this way, and we love it. It takes about five minutes.  Download the pdf here.

Breathe the Faith

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, our Catholic faith entrusted to the Church by Jesus Christ, is not a salad - you don’t  at as much as possible as quickly as possible hoping to finish full and soon.

The Catechism is more like a fine wine - sip it slowly, breathe it in, and let it marinate your palate.

Cardinal Arinze prayerfully reads one page from the Catechism every day during his time of prayer. If a Cardinal is praying with the Catechism on a regular basis, why shouldn’t you? Praying with the Catechism instead of reading right through it allows the precious faith of the Church to seep into our bones and water our soul. Feel free to adapt this or work it into your own pattern of prayer. This method of praying the catechism can be used for private prayer or for praying with others.

How to Pray the Catechism

This way of praying begins with the Sign of the Cross the source and summit of our faith, followed by the Apostle's Creed, a summary of our faith handed down to us through the centuries and the foundation of the first pillar of the Catechism. We then pray the Our Father, which Jesus teaches us as the disciples ask "Lord, teach us how to pray" and which is the basis of the fourth pillar of the Catechism. We then prayerfully read and meditate on one In Brief paragraph from the Catechism (if you aren't sure what those are, see my post on How to Use the Catechism) and then pray one Hail Mary, honoring and asking for the intercession of Mary Mother of the Church and our Faith.  We wrap up this time of prayer by giving praying Glory Be to God, the Blessed Trinity and heart of the Catechism.

Some Deets

We read one In Brief and pray one Hail Mary a total of 5 times, which I found is just the right amount. But if you are feeling sassy, by all means don't let me stop you from praying all of them.

Why the In Briefs? For one thing they are on average shorter than the rest of the paragraphs in the Catechism. I found they are more succinct and easier to digest and meditate on. But if you are feeling doubly sassy, go ahead and pray with the rest of the catechism this way. You might want to cut down how many paragraphs you pray in one sitting though.

Download the pdf here and print out 700 copies to give to all dem Catholics you know, to stuff your Parish narthex with, and to slip inside all those Catechisms you bought recently graduated high school kiddos. Its completely free, just let people know where you got it from!

If you try praying the Catechism this way, let me know what you think. Its still a work in progress, and I would love to hear your feedback or suggestions about how to make it better.

"This Catechism is of historic importance. Depending on how seriously we take it, the future of the Catholic Church will be shaped accordingly." Fr. John Hardon

"Say What?" Monday Catechism Series #14 - Slaves of Economy

I believe the Catechism is THE tool for the re-evangelizing of secular society and the renewal of Catholic culture. Every Monday in this mini-series I'll share a gem from our Catechism of the Catholic Church that is interesting, relevant, or remarkable. _________________________________________________________________________

What is the point of an economic system ? What is its end? Does it have a purpose bigger than just making sure people play nice with their money?

The word "economy" can be traced back to the Greek word οἰκονόμος (transliterated 'oikonomia') which means roughly "house rule" or "household management".

Capitalism, socialism, distributism - these are just a few of the variety of economic systems thought up by men to define the "household rules" that should govern a large group of people trying to live life.

Check it out:

2426  The development of economic activity and growth in production are meant to provide for the needs of human beings. Economic life is not meant solely to multiply goods produced and increase profit or power; it is ordered first of all to the service of persons, of the whole man, and of the entire human community. Economic activity, conducted according to its own proper methods, is to be exercised within the limits of the moral order, in keeping with social justice so as to correspond to God's plan for man.²⁰⁹

So the question to ask when making economic decisions is not who will benefit, will it help us be more innovative or powerful as a nation, but is it serving the human person. That is to say, is it promoting the common good: that which causes the human person to thrive and flourish as a human person should.

We are not slaves to a set of macro forces that require us to obey or suffer the consequences. The purpose of an ideal economy should be the service of the human person.

+JMJ

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[Video] Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

http://youtu.be/pCXrMBejH2c I came across this fantastic intro to the Catechism created by the Diocese of Birmingham Catechetical Institute. David Anders (Ph.D, Church History) provides some revealing insights into the origins and structure of the Catechism, with some very practical tips on how to use it and pray with it.

USE THE CATECHISM!

How to Proclaim and Defend the Entire Catholic Faith

"...this book can be transformed from a silent instrument, like a valuable violin resting on a velvet cloth, into an instrument that sounds and rouses hearts." Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa 1st Advent Sermon to the Papal Household

So maybe you're one of those Catholics hipsters - hip young adult devoutly committed to Orthodoxy, sworn ally to the Pope, defender of Mother Church, reader of Chesterton and Percy, drinker of beer and wielder of apologetics.

Maybe you're not.

Either way, if you want to help spread the love of Christ, and fulfill Christ's not-so-optional Great Commission for all disciples (yes you too) then you have to spread the faith.

What faith?

          What parts of the faith?

                    THE ENTIRE CATHOLIC FAITH.

Yes that's right. And I mean Catholic as in the deposit of faith as guarded and upheld by the Catholic Church in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium.Right now there is a vast misunderstanding in our society, and even among some well-intentioned or self-professed Catholics, about what the Church actually teaches.

"Someone, somewhere in the Church founded by Christ must be in a position to tell the faithful, "this is true, and that is false;" or "this is morally good, and that is morally bad." Otherwise, the very existence of Christianity is in danger and the survival of the Catholic Church in any given country or locality is in jeopardy.

In many dioceses of America, attendance at Sunday Mass is down to some twenty-five percent of the professed Catholics in a diocese. Some Church officials are scrambling for a solution and recommending the most bizarre solutions. It never seems to dawn on these "experts" that the heart of the problem is the massive uncertainty in millions of Catholic minds about what is unchangeable doctrine in faith and moral principles." Fr. John Hardon

If you are striving to be a Catholic and defend the faith, then you must speak from the heart of the Church. You must be in a confident ability to charitably inform, or even sometimes correct, misunderstandings about the Catholic faith.

I mean the entire faith because the Catholic faith is not one long dainty necklace with doctrines and dogmas and pretty beliefs hanging separately and disjointed from one another.No, the faith is always entire and whole because the faith is unified and organic.

Our faith is more like a wheel. The center of the wheel being Christ, and the doctrines and beliefs being the spokes all in relation and connected to Christ - "the love that never ends".

The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love. Catechism Paragraph 25

Hold the whining. Its not as hard as you would imagine.

"We now have a one-volume reservoir of Catholic truth and practice for everyone who wants to bring others to Christ, if they are not yet Christians; to solidify the faith of those who have been baptized; to defend Roman Catholicism in a world in which the Church has been abandoned by so many once-believing Catholics and is being betrayed even by some of her ecclesiastical leaders." Fr. John Hardon

That's right my beloved Papists, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is our one-stop shop for evangelization.

The Catechism might sound like a less-than-spectacular remedy for the slings and arrows of our time, but that's because of our preconceived notions, not because the Catechism is anything less than a powerhouse for evangelization.

"This Catechism is of historic importance. Depending on how seriously we take it, the future of the Catholic Church will be shaped accordingly." says Fr. Hardon. He explains that the course of the Catholic Church will depend on whether or not we see the Catechism as an act of God. "He is providing us with the opportunity of helping to make the twenty-first century the most glorious since the coming of Christ, but on one condition: that we capitalize on the gift He is giving us in the Catechism of the Catholic Church."

Fr. John Hardon, in his article "Understanding the Catechism of the Catholic Church", proposed five ways to use the catechism to help Christ evangelize the masses and spread the liberating and life giving faith who is Jesus Christ.

Here are Fr. John Hardon's five suggestions for using the Catechism:

KNOW TRUST ADAPT LIVE SHARE

Below each are explained in Fr. John Hardon's own words...

Know the Catechism.

Our most fundamental duty is to know the Catechism. How do you come to know anything? By reading, by discussing, by hearing it explained by competent persons.

Speed reading of the Catechism would be self-defeating. If anything, the Catechism should be not only read but prayerfully meditated. Spend some time set aside for reflecting, in God's presence, what the Catechism teaches through more than 500 pages of print.

How much time people waste in reading fiction, or worse. Is it too much for Christ to expect us to spend a few hours a week in reading, alone or with others, what promises to be the food that feeds the soul on revealed truth?

Trust the Catechism.

Already, critics have appeared who discredit the Catechism on both sides of the spectrum.

• Some criticize it for being outmoded and out of touch with the times.

• Others criticize it for giving in to Modernism and therefore discredit what the Vicar of Christ is offering the believing faithful for their spiritual sustenance in a world that is dying out of hunger for the truth.

Pay no attention to these critics. To distrust the Catechism is to play into the hand of the devil, who fears nothing more than security of doctrine among the followers of Christ.

Adapt the Catechism.

The Catechism is not simple reading. But neither is it sophisticated and out-of-touch with the vocabulary of the people. In any case, the Catechism contains all the essentials for Catholic faith, morality, and divine worship.

In using the Catechism to teach others, adjust the language to the mentality of those you are teaching. Adapt the ideas, without watering them down. Accommodate what the Catechism says, to the mental and spiritual level of those with whom you are sharing God's truth.

Live the Catechism.

This is no pious platitude. Teaching the true faith is unlike any other form of pedagogy.

The purpose of teaching the Catholic faith is to enable those you are teaching to practice the virtues which Christ expects of His followers. Very well, but how do you enable those you teach to practice what they have learned? You don't! Only Christ can give them the grace they need to practice what they believe. So how do they get the grace they need? From Christ, of course. But through you, their teachers.

What are we saying? We are saying that God uses holy people as channels of His grace to others. In the measure of our own union with Him, He will communicate to those we teach the light and strength they need to live the Christian faith. God uses humble people to give others the gift of humility. He uses chaste people as conduits of His grace of chastity; patient people to inspire patience; prayerful people to make others prayerful.

In a word, if we live the Catechism, we become instruments of divine faith to everyone whose life we touch. This, we may say, is the law of spiritual generation. Sanctity is reproductive; holiness is procreative.

Share the Catechism.

One final point should be made: On the last day we shall be judged on our practice of charity. How we hope that when Christ appears, He will say to us, "Come, blessed of my Father, and possess the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; thirsty and you gave me to drink; naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me."

What does this have to do with the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Everything! This masterpiece of sacred wisdom provides us with all the resources we need to meet the spiritual needs of America. But we must be convinced that these needs are desperate, and that we have at hand the means of saving the soul of our society.

PRAYER

"Lord Jesus, you have given us the Catechism of the Catholic Church to bring light to those who are walking in darkness and supernatural life to those who are sitting in the shadow of death. "Enlighten our minds with your revealed truth and inspire our hearts with your divine love — so that by our courageous witness to your Name here on earth we may bring countless souls with us to that heavenly Kingdom for which we were made. Amen."

**This is an exerpt from Fr. John Hardon's excellent article "Understanding the Catechism of the Catholic Church"

The Last Supper Before the Last Supper

This Monday of Holy Week we heard St. John's account of the first Last Supper. Christ prepared us then for today, Holy Thursday, THE Last Supper, and now is urging us: "Remember Lazarus".

In every town Jesus travels through he encounters sinners and the sick. Bethany is no exception. Simon the Leper lives in Bethany. Mary the sinner is forgiven in Bethany. Lazarus is raised from the dead in Bethany.

On Monday Jesus passes back through Bethany, the "House of Misery", to dine with old friends. He is on his way to Jerusalem - on his way to death.

For Bethany, this meal with Jesus is a last supper.

"They gave a dinner for him there, and Martha served, while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with him." John 12:2

John's Gospel uniquely points Lazarus out at the table with Jesus. Lazarus was raised from the dead during Jesus' previous visit to Bethany (in John 11) and the town is still electric with the story of Jesus' miraculous defeat of Lazarus' death. It was a last straw for the Chief Priests and Pharisees.

"So from that day on they planned to kill him." John 11:53

The Jews travel to Jerusalem to prepare for Passover, and there prepare to arrest Jesus and put him to death once He arrives.

What did Lazarus and Jesus talk about?

Death, I'm sure of it.

No doubt the story of Lazarus, his tomb, his burial clothes, and Jesus calling him from the grave was told again. It is a story that should end in smiling and laughing. But you could imagine this room filled with a soberness as Jerusalem and what could happen there looms, only two miles away. Many could guess the intentions of those who were looking to arrest Jesus. A strange mutual understanding exists between Lazarus and Jesus.

The night of this dinner in Bethany, death is a guest.

Lazarus is a dead man, walking away from death. Jesus is a "dead man", walking towards death. The disciples have a clue at this point, they must have heard the rumors, and Jesus had already begun to speak more often of His death.

Death sits at table with the dying. Death retells his story. His memories, his last thoughts from the cusp of death, and then - what? What happened before awaking wrapped and bound in a tomb?

"I died."

His soul wretched from his body.

Suddenly Jerusalem seems too close.

Jesus will die. Could the Apostles be put to death as well? Could He raise himself from the dead? But there Lazarus sits. Eating and laughing and moving. He is ALIVE. There is no getting around it. Lazarus was dead but now he is alive.

And in the middle of this strange dinner of the dead, the dying, the sick, and sinners, a fragrance like sweet flowers fills the room. Mary anoints the feet of Christ and wipes those sacred feet with her hair.

Mary, Martha's sister, pours out all she has onto Jesus' feet. Three hundred day's wages would have been needed to buy that much perfume. Where did Mary get that kind of money? Could it be the spoils from a past life of sin? Could Mary have, in one act, poured out and died to all that was left of her attachment to the world and her past life onto the feet of Christ? These feet carried this gift and burden to the Cross where they were pierced for Mary. For you and me.

At THE Last Supper, did the Apostles remember Lazarus?

This time, they are without a walking witness to Jesus' power over death. Memory of their time with Jesus is all they have left. Memory and faith. They are on the eve of their Shepard being struck down and them being scattered. What would happen to Jesus? What might happen to them?

Tonight, at the Last Supper before Easter, place yourself at THE Last Supper. Your heart would have been pounding; the fear of death sneaking into the room, assaulting your faith. Jesus speaks of His death. Breaks His bread and shares it with you. Jesus washes your feet. And as the fear of death, yours and that of the Lord who lovingly washes your feet, slips into your mind, you try to repeat to yourself...

Remember Lazarus.

Remember Lazarus.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/kaEQIda0Tds]

The Catechism on the Pope

Some relevant reading from the Catechism of the Catholic Church about the Pope (from the Latin papa meaning Father), also know as the Supreme Pontiff, also known as Papa.  I've bolded some of the awesome.

869  The Church is apostolic. She is built on a lasting foundation: "the twelve apostles of the Lamb" (Rev 21:14). She is indestructible (cf. Mt 16:18). She is upheld infallibly in the truth: Christ governs her through Peter and the other apostles, who are present in their successors, the Pope and the college of bishops.

880 When Christ instituted the Twelve, "he constituted [them] in the form of a college or permanent assembly, at the head of which he placed Peter, chosen from among them."³⁹⁸ Just as "by the Lord's institution, St. Peter and the rest of the apostles constitute a single apostolic college, so in like fashion the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, and the bishops, the successors of the apostles, are related with and united to one another."³⁹⁹ 398. LG 19; cf. Lk 6:13; Jn 21:15-17. 399. LG 22; cf. CIC, can. 330.

881  The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the "rock" of his Church. He gave him the keys of his Church and instituted him shepherd of the whole flock.⁴⁰⁰ "The office of binding and loosing which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of apostles united to its head."⁴⁰¹ This pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the Church's very foundation and is continued by the bishops under the primacy of the Pope. 400.Cf. Mt 16:18-19; Jn 21:15-17. 401.LG 22 § 2.

882  The Pope, Bishop of Rome and Peter's successor, "is the perpetual and visible source and foundation of the unity both of the bishops and of the whole company of the faithful."⁴⁰² "For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the entire Church has full, supreme, and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered."⁴⁰³ 402. LG 23. 403. LG 22; cf. CD 2,9.

1369  The whole Church is united with the offering and intercession of Christ. Since he has the ministry of Peter in the Church, the Pope is associated with every celebration of the Eucharist, wherein he is named as the sign and servant of the unity of the universal Church. The bishop of the place is always responsible for the Eucharist, even when a priest presides; the bishop's name is mentioned to signify his presidency over the particular Church, in the midst of his presbyterium and with the assistance of deacons. The community intercedes also for all ministers who, for it and with it, offer the Eucharistic sacrifice: Let only that Eucharist be regarded as legitimate, which is celebrated under [the presidency of] the bishop or him to whom he has entrusted it.¹⁹¹Through the ministry of priests the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is completed in union with the sacrifice of Christ the only Mediator, which in the Eucharist is offered through the priests' hands in the name of the whole Church in an unbloody and sacramental manner until the Lord himself comes.¹⁹² 191. St. Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Smyrn. 8:1;SCh 10,138. 192. PO 2 § 4.

Let's pray for the Conclave and the prayerful election of a new Pope! Veni Sacti Spiritus!

AND check out what the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about the Pope.