Years have passed since 'the incident', so I'm going back to JoAnn's today. Thanks in advance for your prayers. Which brings us to today's question:
Great post Sister! I have a question in regards to your older post called "Every Waiter Has a Screenplay, But God Doesn't" when you talked about free will in regards to God's will. I really do believe that God gives us options on how to complete His ultimate Will for us, but is one option better than the others? What if all the options seem equally as good, how does one decide? Thanks for your input!:)
You're going to have to put your big girl dress on and choose. You don't have to choose in a vacuum. You can discuss your options with people you trust, your confessor, people who know something about you.
What not to do: discuss it with anyone who will listen. People have their own agenda and their own baggage and may have had a bad experience with something that might be a great choice for you. I had a woman tell me to avoid going to visit the LaBrea Tar Pits because it was a depressing awful place where little robins still get mercilessly stuck in pools of tar. I loved it there. No birds were stuck in anything and the hologram of the the only human being ever found stuck in the tar (an ice age woman who was a murder victim) is fascinating. When people ask me what touristy thing to do in Los Angeles, I always send them to the Pits.
Weigh your options. Think carefully about what happens next when you make your choice. I was recently chatting with a gentleman who is active in AA. He told me that one of the things that helped him stay sober was a trick he learned from his meetings, to play the scenario all the way out. "What happens when I have just one drink? To begin with, I ruin five years of sober living. And then, I think I can 'handle it' so I drink more, and I start missing work and missing important things in life like weddings and birthdays and then I get arrested for drunk driving and lose my job and maybe go to jail...." He was very specific. Be specific.
What not to do: waffle back and forth until you've forgotten your own name.
And the most important step, pray. This is where the rubber meets the road, prayerwise. So many people pray as though God is a some sort of big box store that has everything you need in stock, if only He'll just send the stock boy to the stock room and drag it out for you.
Prayer is a communication with God for the strength and grace you need to make the right choices to stay in harmony with His Will.
What not to do: listen to dreams and voices, especially if you have a fever of over 101.
Also, no coin tossing, Tarot card consultation or tea leaves.
5 comments:
I cannot understand why Halloween is getting to be a more decorated event than Christmas. Isn't Halloween the devil's event?
Yes, Halloween is the devil's event Muffy's Marks. It was originally a major pagan (Celtic) feast day of Samhuin. As a counter, the Church made a new Holy Day of Obligation, All Saints' (or Hallows') Day, on the day after Halloween. Because of the Holy Day, the Church then made All Hallows' Eve to counter the pagan feast day. Halloween itself is actually the eve of a Church Holy Day; Halloween is not the name of the pagan feast. In fact, I do not know the name of the pagan feast at all. Somewhere along the line, however, Halloween got twisted to mean the pagan feast of Samhuin, with the important part, being a day of prayer and penitence to prepare oneself for the major feast of All Saints' got dropped. The wearing of costumes on Halloween is also part of the Celtic feast. The only part of Halloween that is now based on the Church is the name.
Here is the link. There is much more, but too much for here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain
The Devil's event? Lighten up, people. I deal with this kind of crazy-talk in my Catholic homeschool group as well. Kids get to dress up and get candy from kindly neighbors. That's AWESOME.
Have a Saint's Day Party as well, if you must, talk about the Poor Souls in Purgatory, have some Masses said for them, but don't jade your kids and turn them anti-Catholic because of the scars inflicted by making them stare out the window at the kids having fun.
Hi Sister,
I was in a discussion recently with a Protestant friend who insists that the Catholic Church is just as fractured as the Protestant groups. I was sort of taken aback and had to dig deep to figure out what he was saying since the only real "fracture" I could think of was the Great Schism. Apparently he was referring to the differences in the Catholic orders, like the Franciscans, the Dominicans, the Jesuits, and so on. He has been taught that the different orders are like the fractured Protestant faiths, the Methodists, the Lutherans, the Baptists, and so on. How can I explain the difference to him? How can I show him that the Jesuits are just as Catholic as the Benedictines, that they have a different name but they're all part of the same team? Do you have a good analogy? I don't know what to say to him. Thank you for your help!
The different branches of an armed forces, maybe? The US Navy, Marines, Army, and Air Force (yes, and Coast Guard) aren't different militaries; though they have their wrangling and their rivalries, they all answer to the same people.
You can make the same analogy with other militaries, if you aren't American, though I seem to recall Canada has unified all its branches of service.
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