The Lenten Virtue Challenge

Lent 2012 has begun! For the next 40 days we will be striving to prepare ourselves for Easter through prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

Each of us has different struggles and different areas of our lives in which we would like to grow this Lent. Maybe you’ve resolved to make prayer more central, or you are fasting from a T.V. show or website that gets in the way of your spiritual growth. No matter what your particular focus is this Lent I can bet it is going to involve virtue, and so I would like to invite you to participate in the Lenten Virtue Challenge!

Virtue is defined as “a habitual and firm disposition to do the good.” (CCC 1803) Naturally, the sacrifices we resolve to make during Lent should be based on our love for God and our desire to do the good. With virtue, this desire to do the good can be transformed into a “habitual and firm disposition.” It is virtue that allows us to stay strong in our fasting and prayer for all 40 days of Lent. In addition to allowing us to do the good, virtue also allows us to give the very best of ourselves. (CCC. 1803) The Prophet Joel encourages to do just that in the first reading from Mass today: “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart…” (Joel, 2:12-18)

The Catechism also adds that “the virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions.” (CCC 1803)

This quote leads to the goal of our Lenten Virtue Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to help us grow as virtuous women through formation and practical applications of virtue, so that we may remain strong in our Lenten resolutions and be ready to receive the Our Risen Lord at Easter.

Each Monday of Lent we will be introducing one of the four Cardinal Virtues and focusing on that virtue throughout the week. There will be explanations of each of the virtues, suggestions of concrete ways to live them out, and testimonies and reflections. We would also like to invite you to use the comments section as a place to share insights and engage in discussion on the virtues.

Please invite your friends, household sisters, coworkers, and classmates to participate in the challenge as well! The more women that are involved the more we can all help each other grow in virtue!

God Bless,

Megan

Judith and Feminine Courage

           

Food and water were running out. The Israelites didn’t see how they could survive much longer. They were ready to surrender to Holofernes and his Assyrian army. Judith was aghast.

Judith, a widow of three years, was a beautiful, holy woman of Israel who opposed the Israeli plan to surrender to the pagan enemies. After hearing the rumors, Judith approached the elders of the city with a plan to save her people: “Listen to me,” she told the men. “…Stand at the city gate tonight, and I will go out with my maid; and within the days after which you have promised to surrender the city to our enemies, the Lord will deliver Israel by my hand. Only, do not try to find out what I plan; for I will not tell you until I have finished what I am about to do” (Judith 8:32-34).

            Judith, receiving approval from the elders, proceeded to prepare herself. She asked God for his protection, and then changed out of her black, mourning outfit into festive apparel that augmented her beauty. Judith left her people and approached the Assyrians.

When questioned by the Assyrians, Judith explained that she was fleeing Israel before it would fall into the hands of the Assyrians, and that she wanted to advise Holofernes on how he could best win victory over the Israelites.

            Things went as planned. Judith was granted permission to speak with Holofernes, and he, overcome by her great beauty, readily listened to her plans. The days passed, Judith retreating every day to pray and discern if the time had come for Holofernes to attack the Israelites. One day, Holofernes invited Judith to a banquet, for his “heart was ravished with her and he was moved with great desire to possess her” (Judith 12:16). Judith attended the banquet, and at the end of the night, was left alone in the tent with Holofernes. Now, Holofernes lay, passed out on his bed, since he had consumed more wine that night than any other night in his entire life (Judith 12:20). Judith knew the time had come.

            Beseeching God’s blessing, Judith procured Holofernes’ sword. Breathing a prayer for strength, she heaved the sword above her head and let it fall into Holofernes’ neck. Unable to completely sever his head from his body, Judith raised the sword again. This time, the blade sliced through. Rolling Holofernes’ body out of sight, Judith took his head and left the tent, giving the head to her maidservant, who hid it in a food bag. Then the two retreated from the camp, to pray, as was their custom. Having evaded the Assyrians, Judith and her maidservant returned to the Israelite dwelling.

            All of Israel rejoiced when they saw Judith and Holofernes’ head. Then they prepared to fight the Assyrians, knowing that when the Assyrians would seek Holofernes’ council the following day and find him dead, they would flee in terror, handing the victory to the Israelites. All went as planned, and the Israelites sang praises to God. Judith rejoiced, saying:

            “The Assyrians came down from the mountains of the north; he came with myriads of his warriors…But the Lord Almighty has foiled them by the hand of a woman” (Judith 16:4a, 6).

*                                  *                                  *

            I am simply amazed by the strength and courage Judith possesses. She is not forced to deceived and decapitate Holofernes, but instead, choses, on her own accord, to risk her life, deceive her enemies, and kill their commander. And yet, she does all this without a second thought.   

            Furthermore, she does this as a woman. So often, we women hear that we are weaker than men and that we need to become like men to prove our strength. Judith does not try to be a man in order to save her people; she saved them by being a woman, by charming Holofernes with her sweetness and beauty. She didn’t even have the strength to kill Holofernes with one blow; she had to strike him twice! And yet, Judith took up the sword fearlessly and did what she had to do.

We as women may be physically weaker than men in a certain sense, having less muscle mass and blood than men. Yet we are also strong also, and do not need to become like men in order to prove our strength. Ladies, we must embrace our femininity and the gifts and strength particular to us as women. Use your beauty, your sensitivity, your intellect; do not be ashamed of these gifts. God has blessed you with them. Use them. And you will find, that God will foil our enemies. 

-Margaret

Untangled by Truth

Oh Repunzel.  How many of us can identify with her in this situation - going back and forth in our heads and getting ourselves all tangled up in our thoughts and emotions?  At the BeLoved Event a few Saturdays ago, Sr. Eliana, T.O.R. pointed out how easily we can go from reality to ridiculous in 3.9 seconds; how after a guy on campus says hello to you, 5 minutes later you are shopping for your wedding dress in your head.  Or how you think you did poorly on a test and jump to the conclusion that you are failing out of Franciscan.  Or you see someone else praying piously and automatically assume they are a walking saint far beyond you, a wretched sinner who will never achieve such heights of holiness. 

We can get so tangled in our heads and hearts when our thoughts and emotions get out of control.  So how do we bring ourselves back from ridiculous to reality?  First, we have to have a solid foundation.  That solid foundation is a daily personal encounter with Jesus in prayer.  Built on this foundation, there are 5 practical steps towards being untangled by truth:

1.  Realize - stop and listen!  Be aware of your stream of consciousness.  Take a step back and look at the situation honestly and realize the incorrect thoughts.

2.  Reject - make a choice to reject the ridiculous, negative, or false thoughts. Don't entertain them.

3.  Renounce - (similar to reject) in the Name of Jesus renounce the lies, negative thoughts or emotions.

4.  Replace - recall and repeat truth (Scripture verse, saint quote, recall God's love for you or your unique beauty) instead of dwelling on the negative thoughts or the lies and falsities you may have internalized.  You must fill yourself with truth. 

5.  Rejoice - thank the Lord for who He is and what He has done for you - for showing you Truth!

 

These are the 5 R’s to untangle our thoughts and ground ourselves in Truth! 

"Do not comform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind" (Rom 12:2) 

Peace to your beautiful hearts!

 - Sr. Elizabeth, TOR

Mary Most Beautiful

For today’s blog, I want to encourage readers to contemplate the beauty of Our Blessed Mother. Here is an excerpt from The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty (Pp.122-123) by John Saward to reflect on this topic:

Grace, as the poet says, is “God’s better beauty,”[1] the splendour of the soul. From the beginning of her existence, Mary is radiant with a fulness of spiritual beauty in proportion to her dignity as Mother of God. “O pure Theotokos,” sings the Byzantine Church on the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the temple, “thou hast a clean and shining beauty of soul, and art filled from Heaven with the grace of God.” [2]

Grace conforms the soul into the likeness of Christ. So it is with Mary. Her plenitude of grace gives her by anticipation a likeness to the Son who will take His flesh from her. Hers is a reflected beauty. The women poet catches the play of light: “Christ’s mirror she of grace and love.”[3] In face and in grace, Mary is like Jesus. When Dante reaches Paradise, St Bernard tells him that contemplating the countenance of the Mother is the best way of preparing to see the glorious face of the Son:

                         

                        Now to that face which most resembles Christ

            lift up thy face; its radiance alone

                        can grant to thee the power to look on Christ.[4]

The Virgin Mary, in all her splendor and beauty always orients us towards her son. Even in her being she reflects Christ. This is another example of how she is Mediatrix: by mirroring Christ’s grace and love, she shows us her son. How amazing it is that by looking at her face we see the reflection of Christ!

Thoughts? Reflections? Please comment below.

-Holly

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[1] ‘To What Serves Mortal Beauty’, in The Poetical Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. N.H. Mackinzie (Oxford 1990), 183.

[2] The Festal Menaion (London, 1969), 190.

[3] ‘Feast of the Annunciation’ in The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti, new ed., vol 2 (London, 1986), 238.

[4] Paradisio 32, 85-87; 672; ET, Sayers and Reynolds, 336.

Oh, Those Emotions!

It was orientation weekend, and I was heartbroken and homesick. But I didn’t want to show it. I tried my hardest to restrain my tears, hiding my homesickness behind a stoic face. When a fellow student in my small group asked how I was doing, I could restrain myself no longer and burst into tears. She hugged me, of course, and the other members of our small group gathered around me and tried to console me. I was so embarrassed, and wished I hadn’t broken down. Have any of you ever had similar feelings—wanting to hide your emotions and feeling embarrassed when you can’t? I do, all the time. I’m always trying to suppress my emotions. Even when praying in Adoration, if I feel about to cry, I try to repress my tears. Why?

On Saturday, at the BeLoved Event on campus, Katrina Zeno spoke about emotions, and integrating them with our intellect. Basing her presentation off Dr. Conrad Baars, she shared with us women that emotions are not morally bad; they are morally neutral. How we choose to act on our emotions is what carries the moral weight. So, for instance, feeling the emotion of hate is not a sin, but acting on that hate and hitting someone is wrong. We are to feel every emotion, but that does not mean that every emotion will be expressed or gratified. After we experience the emotion, we must use our reason (informed by Magisterial teaching and Scripture) to determine whether we can express the emotion or if we should redirect the emotion. Katrina mentioned that we should not suppress our emotions; doing so can cause problems, especially in our mental health.

This information struck me, because I suppress my emotions. As I reflected on emotions, I tried to determine why I suppress mine, and I realized I do it because they embarrass me, and because I have a misconception that if I cry in front of others, they will think I am weak. The strongest man in the world cried: Jesus wept when Lazarus died (John 11:35). Jesus experienced many emotions: He became angry with the money changers in the temple and drove them out (Luke 19:45-46); He rejoiced when His apostles returned from preaching (Luke 10:21).

Emotions are not bad; they are even good to feel. We need to allow ourselves to feel them, and then respond appropriately. I am just beginning to learn how to do this. Do any of you have suggestions as how to do so? I’ve been thinking maybe if after I experience an emotion and determine it is not one to act on, I can offer that feeling to God, as a sacrifice. What do you all think?

If any of you are interested, Katrina Zeno mentioned a book written by Dr. Baars: Feeling and Healing Your Emotions.

Thank you all for sharing your suggestions.

~Margaret

The Right to Love

My Dear Sisters,
   
     Women have such a capacity to love!  Every time I think about it (which is becoming increasingly more often) I am still struck with awe.  I can’t get over it, nor do I want to, it’s too gorgeous not to dwell on.   The incredible bond women have with each other, their friends, and their family is mind-boggling.  Just think of the tenderness a little girl shows for her doll, which is not even human, yet she demonstrates her desire to love and serve by brushing its hair and trying valiantly to feed it.  Conversely, when a woman’s femininity is poisoned by hate and fear, she can be exceptionally cruel.  I’m sure we’ve all heard of or witnessed these tragedies of girls tormenting their peers for no real reason other than they can get away with it or they “just don’t like her”.  Hate and fear can drive women to do terrible things, even going as far as to wage war against one of their most deeply ingrained instincts- a mother’s protectiveness of her child.  Abortion remains one of the most direct and vicious attacks against a woman’s femininity, and unfortunately the response from those able to help victims is often that of disgust and condemnation.  As we turn from the ugliness of the sin, let us not also turn from or forget the beauty of the women.
    These women are in great need of healing, not judgment or abuse.  Abortion was/is only meant to destroy.  Love heals all, and it is only through love and compassion that we may help heal and be healed.  Loving these victims is not condoning the evils of abortions, it is actually doing the exact opposite.  I have never heard of any account of an abortion where the mother skips away, perfectly content.  Whether they recognize it or not, these mothers intuitively know that they have lost something that can never be regained, that their choice has consequences they couldn’t imagine.  Their decisions were ruled by fear and pain.  Fear is not of God, for “there is no fear in love, for perfect love drives out fear”(1 John 4:18).  Through love we are fighting this overwhelming fear, this terror that drives mothers to kill their own children. 
    It’s easy to rave about how much we love Abby Johnson, one of the leaders of the Pro-Life movement.  She is fantastically inspirational and courageous and God is certainly working through her to change hearts.  But here is the question we need to answer for ourselves- did we love her when she was a clinic escort?  Did we love her when she was the director of a Planned Parenthood?  Did we love her when she had abortions of her own? 
    The love I’m talking about is deeper than just “hey you’re pretty cool, I think you’re fantastic”.  It’s not a, “well, you’ve sinned too, so you have no right to judge” blame/shame game.  The love I’m talking about, and the love that so many women long for, is beyond words, it is a presence.  It is someone speaking from their heart, “I love you because you are.”  It is a shoulder to cry on, arms to embrace them if they want to run to them.  It is the special force of prayer, being present to the women and asking forgiveness and healing from God on their behalf, even if you never meet or know their name.  It is a love that deeply imitates Christ’s love for all of us- loving the person exactly where they are, not because of what they have done, or what they will do.  Whether or not they have more abortions or fight for prolife laws.  The simple and beautiful fact that they were created and loved by God makes them worthy of all the love in the world.   
    Just look at Our Lady of Guadalupe, hear what she says to Juan Diego- “Am I not here who am your mother?  Are you not under my shadow and my protection?  Are you not within the folds of my mantle, in the crossings of my arms?”  Can you ever imagine her disgracing or shunning anyone?  Especially a grieving mother?  Our country is classifying pregnancy as a disease, that women are “oppressed” by their uterus.  Imagine the conflict within the victims’ hearts after they have aborted their children.  They feel the pain and the anguish of what they have lost, the magnitude and permanence of what they have done, but instead of being allowed to grieve, they are told they should be happy, even proud, that they have “liberated” themselves.  By mocking the pain of the women through ignoring it or waving it aside like a flu that will pass in time, society has wounded its daughters once again. 

    And so my sisters, I ask that you remember when speaking of abortion, whether in a debate or general conversation, always speak with love.  In this war against one of the greatest evils in this world, let us remember that we can only prevail if we love with such fierceness and such motherly tenderness that the world cannot help but gravitate towards it.  Let us show them how a woman’s love can change the world.
   
Your Sister in Christ,

Jenny

G.K. Chesterton and The Three Kings

I found this lovely poem/hymn that G.K. Chesterton wrote. I encourage you to read it slowly and thoughfully. I wish you all a wonderful Epiphany!

Love, Marta



G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936

The Wise Men

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly…it has hailed and snowed…
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(…We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly, humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain.
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.