Ruled by Rules

So happy you feel better, Sister! Now for my question: Why is it that people genuflect after the priest, and not with the priest, at the stations of the cross? We genuflect together during the Angelus. We make the sign of the cross together all through the mass. I can't think of a single gesture (words, yes, but gestures, no) that we do separately. (Please, dear readers, do not volunteer that we gesture back and forth when the priest extends his arms and says, "The Lord be with you" and then people in the pew gesture back at him. We are not supposed to do that. Check your GIRM!) Anyway, the words, "We ADORE you, O Christ" are the words to which we should be genuflecting, correct? They are the words of adoration. Why would you genuflect while saying, "because by your cross..." ?? Hopefully, we can do a better job of it next year.

You are correct! We are supposed to genuflect on the words "We Adore you, O Christ".

Perhaps the people you were doing the Stations with didn't really know the customs and didn't really know when to genuflect and were just trying to follow along.

That is, after all, one of the main comments from people who aren't Catholic, or are newly Catholic.  They just can't get over all the up and down and down and up, sitting, standing, kneeling, standing again, kneeling again and so on.  Better just to follow along.

Here's another rule for the Stations of the Cross: you are supposed to be meditating on the Passion of Christ.  You don't have to meditate even on each individual station at all.  You can.  It's up to you.  You can just meditate on the whole event in general.

There are fourteen stations, each, as Mel Gibson so graphically showed us, with plenty of horror and pain to mull over, not to mention that Jesus is doing all of this for us, for me individually.  That is a lot to take in.

We're not meditating on when we're supposed to genuflect, is my point, or if everyone but me is doing it wrong.  Ironically, you're complaining that people get with the program, while you're not with the program.

That's like being at your daughter's wedding and stewing the whole time about the hemline of her wedding dress being uneven.  It's like taking that Carnival Cruise you've been saving for for years and spending the whole time clocking who was late for dinner.  It's like receiving the Stigmata and obsessing over whether to wear cloth gloves or leather.

There are only four rules to the Stations:

1. They must be properly erected.

2. There fourteen stations.

3. You have to walk from Station to Station.

4.  You meditate on the Passion.

It is customary to genuflect on the word "Adore", as you said.  But it's just a hemline.

Get Thee to a Monastery!

After my last post, a reader asked if there was a patron saint of pickles. What a card! (as my mother would say).  There's an expression you don't hear any more.  It means "cut up".  You don't hear that, either.

Of course, there is a patron saint of pickles.  I do believe there is a patron saint for everything.  Saints were people and there are thousands and thousands of saints, which means they did everything and experienced everything that everyone else does, including pickles (St. Nicolas), knitting (St. Blaise), dog breeding (St. Hubert), car fixing (Mother Frances Cabrini) and crocheted Kleenex box covers (St. Rose of Lima).

Some saints, however, tried to get as far away from this earthly life as possible, or at least boil it all down to its most basic components.


When you are caught up can you spend some time discussing the different kind of monastics? I know that Benedictines are, but are there others? What do they do? Are they allowed to leave the monastery? Can women live in a monastery? Thank you.

Monastics 101

People who give up worldly pursuits to live a life of pure spirituality are called monastics.  The practice goes way, way back to early Christian life, as many people found it was impossible to follow Christ completely and still live in the hedonistic world around them.  They tromped off into the desert to live alone in caves, but soon found it was also too difficult to keep that up without some camaraderie and encouragement.  They moved to caves a little closer to one another, and finally formed walled communities.

Within these communities, it was still difficult to stay true to the purely spiritual path.  In time, the rules were bent and broken and various monasteries had become cushy and complacent.  At some point, someone would enter, look around and say, "What's with you people?!  Get it together!  Here is a list of rules you need to follow!"  And when that happened a new group would often form.  Benedictines too soft for you? Try the Carthusians!

St. Benedict was not the first to draw a list of rules, but his rules are the most famous and still at the basis of all of the other lists of rules.  We also have a list from St. Augustine for the Augustinians.  By the 12th century we see the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Servites.

We also see many orders who don't wall themselves up, but choose to live just outside the mainstream and come and go so they can serve the public, because that's what it means to them to serve Christ.  The Augustinians went that way, as did the Franciscans.

Now there are dozens of orders. Let's not forget the Trappists! The Salesians!

There are both men and women monastics, but women are called nuns or sisters and men are called monks or brothers.  Women can't live with men in a monastery or vice versa.  They live in separate communities, although they may be from the same order.

I imagine there are still some hermit monks out there somewhere.

It isn't prison, so you can leave whenever you like, vow to God notwithstanding. 

What to they do?  Many of them live a contemplative life of prayer.  But they have to eat, even if they do fast a lot.  So they also farm, and make bread and beer and fancy embroidery and all kinds of things like that.  Each order has a different mission statement, although they are not wildly different from each other.  The rules by which they live may differ greatly, from vows of silence to running a hospital.

To find out about each order, you'd have to read about each one.  It will take some time!  I'll leave that to you.

If you find out which order is famous for their pickles, I'd rather not know.

Whale Island

What with our last two posts being such heavy lifting, let's have a easy breezy question for today.

But before we get to that, I must share with you my latest opportunity for suffering.  Yo may recall my Lenten dilemma with the McDonald's fish sandwich and my subsequent food poisoning erasing the problem for a long time to come.  Like the lead character in "A Clockwork Orange", whose new aversion to violence came with an inadvertent aversion to the music of Beethoven, my new aversion to all things McDonald's  has sadly left me unable to enjoy another thing I like a lot: dill pickles. 

How sad.

My love of dill pickles goes a long way back, from always eating a giant dill pickle after a day of swimming with friends and cousins in the summer, to sloppy joes piled with pickles. If someone was putting pickles on my sandwich, they could not overdo it. 

Some day I'll enjoy them again.  Meanwhile, the souls in purgatory are getting a reprieve whenever the condiments are passed out.

My daughter is a big fan of marine mammals and loves to visit aquariums, zoos and parks like Seaworld so she can watch the animal trainers there. Who would the saint of marine mammal trainers be?

We don't have far to look. St. Brendan of Ireland is the patron saint of whales. Since the whales themselves don't need a patron saint, as they are not human beings whose souls need our prayers, it stands to reason that St. Brendan is the patron saint of people who care about whales, although there is a lot a argument about whether or not anyone should be trying to train them.

I won't enter that debate.  I have been to SeaWorld and I had a very, very good time.  I did not sit in the splash zone.

St. Brendan was an Irish monk who set sail with 60 (or 14) pilgrims and 3 non-believers looking for the Garden of Eden.  According to legend, he made 7 such journeys, earning him the moniker "Brendan the Voyager".  His exploits call to mind "Sinbad the Sailor" if Sinbad had been a follower of Jesus.

At any rate, on one of his voyages, he landed on an island, which turned out not to be an island at all but a whale.  Or a sea serpent, depending of which translation you're reading.  I believe this also happened to Sinbad, except that is St. Brendan's case, Easter Mass was celebrated on Whale Island.

As fanciful as all of this sounds, there really was a St. Brendan who did travel around quite a bit. He established monasteries in Ireland and Wales and traveled to Great Britain.

But as per his patronage of whale lovers, he returned to the Whale Island several times, so they must have gotten on like gangbusters.

True Grit

We've had quite the discussion from the Peanut Gallery on the last post on the Patron Saint of Etiquette. I hope you can take the time to read through the thoughtful thoughts of our compassionate readers.

I wish I had had the wherewithall to sum it all up as nicely as one reader's mom did: "something my mother always said, "the people who are hardest to love are the ones who need it the most."

Ain't it the truth?

Happily for me, I know our readers will also weigh in on this complex and gritty problem:

A question: Do I allow a 14 year old girl (very good, kind, naive, religious girl), to have popular rock songs on her ipod that are riddled with sexual innuendo (if you want to call it innuendo!), and other nasty themes? She doesn't know about the birds and the bees yet (homeschooled!), and just loves music, the beat, etc. I feel like the Grinch telling her she's got to go find something more suitable, as almost nothing on the local radio station is suitable (especially when I consider my choices at her age), but yet I feel a horrible pang of guilt every time I download another icky pop favorite for her. I've explained my reluctance to her in that most of these songs glorify sin, especially against the 6th commandment. She doesn't quite get what that means. Is it time for 'the talk'? Do I cut the cord on the music? Am I overreacting? Any input would be appreciated!

Would that we could all just stick our fingers in our ears and hum. But, no such luck.  School, whether at home or seated in a roomful of the great unwashed, is a preparation for life outside the classroom.

She's 14 and you haven't had "the talk"?  You wouldn't have gotten away with that had she gone to school outside your home.  Not that that is a bad thing, but any second, she could walk out your front door and be very, very unprepared for life as the rest of us know it.

It's lovely that you've managed to keep her innocent for so long.  These days, most children have had the rudimentary "talk" by age 7 or so, and because of all the hormones in our milk products, the rest have had the full explanation, complete with a power point show, by age 9.

I think you've bypassed your dilemma. Here is your actual dilemma: You can download all the songs you want and feel no guilt whatsoever because she doesn't get one word of the innuendo or otherwise.  They may as well all be in French, or Swahili.  What difference does it make, really if she doesn't understand any of it?  It really is just a beat.  As long as she doesn't bop around town singing it, nothing bad has happened.

I saw "A Streetcar Named Desire" on TV once when I was too young to know what was going on.  I thought Stanley was kind of mean to Blanche and that was the end of that.  I felt sorry for Blanche because she wasn't married and wanted to be married and I thought it was mean of that homely man, Carl Malden, to dump her because she had had boyfriends along the way.  Of course she did!  She was in her forties!  Go live with your mother, Carl!

Now I realize what was going on there. 

Once you have that talk, you're going to also have to decide how to handle this.

Growing up is about handling things yourself.  She's going to have to decide what to do about all of this.  At that point, you can tell her you will no longer download things you find inappropriate.

That doesn't mean she'll never hear any of it, or find a way to listen to it, or end up downloading it herself at some point, unless you lock her in the basement where there's no internet reception.

Keep this in mind, you can't be good without bad.  If there was no bad, good wouldn't be a choice.  She has a solid foundation in good, but she's always going to have to choose it, just like the rest of us.

And it's not always so black and white and easy breezy lemon squeezy.  I remember when Elvis Presley couldn't be shown on television except for his head because he gyrated his hips.  Now when you see those old videos, he just looks like he's swinging his knees all around.  At least, that's what it looks like to me.  But then I never could figure out what all went on in "Suddenly Last Summer".  My point is, even with things that seem terrible and sinful, times do change.  Hence the phrase "a well turned ankle."

Maybe you can get her interested in Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.

I'm sure our readers will have a lot to say!

The Patron Saint of Etiquette is You

Dearest Sister,

I need your help! Who is the patroness of etiquette? There is a new teacher at my daughter's school who is (and I hate to say this) annoying. She was hired because her qualifications are impeccable, her recommendations - glowing. She must have done well during her interview. (Most anyone can hold it together for 45 minutes when being interviewed.)I've been to see the principal, and he is beside himself! The poor teacher simply seems not to know any etiquette, and now she is under contract for the whole year. The principal says that unless she does something (or fails to do something) specifically stated in her contract, he really has no grounds to let her go. It seems our institutions of higher learning are allowing basic skills to go by the wayside. How can it be that someone holds a Masters degree, yet she mispronounces several basic, English words. For example: Ek-specially. Wunst-a-while (once in a while) Prolly (probably) and koont (couldn't). This is a person for whom English IS the first language. Additionally, she chews gum with her mouth open (in my day, we didn't dare chew gum!) sits with her legs apart, and interrupts people when they are speaking by talking over them. She can get very loud. And, when she laughs (usually at her own jokes) it sounds more like grunting or cackling. The other teachers do not know how to bring these things to her attention without hurting her feelings, so everyone just avoids her. I could say more, but I would much prefer to simply leave it at that. Any advice? Where can I find a good book on professional etiquette! The principal says he plans to let her go when her contract expires (she thinks it is because enrollment is going down) but he has written a glowing recommendation for her, hoping to dump his problem on someone else. He does not feel the least bit guilty over it, because he is sure that her last employer did exactly that, which is how he got saddled with her. I am trying to teach my daughter the importance of good manners so she will be successful in the world. I tell her that first impressions make lasting impressions, and that good manners are a way that we can all show respect and charity toward one another. On the upside, being around this person causes me to take a serious look at myself and ask what I may be doing that is annoying to others. I know that when we point a finger at someone else, we are pointing 3 back at ourselves. However, if someone doesn't do something to help this poor young lady, she will go from job to job, and may never realize that she simply lacks good manners!
Thank you so much for your time,
Dora

That's quite a list.  Yes, you could buy her a book on etiquette, but then she'll just know which fork to use and how to write a proper thank you note.

Here's what you can't do: tell her she 'laughs wrong'.  I'm sorry you don't care to hear her laugh, but people laugh how they laugh, hyena, donkey or howler monkey.

I would try an entirely different tactic.  Love her, warts and all. The poor thing seems to have no friends.  Her off putting laugh, her gum chomping and overbearing style of conversation has made her a social pariah, which is a never ending spiral of loneliness and misunderstanding.  Perhaps if there was someone who could be a little more tolerant, just a little more tolerant, that person would have her ear and then that person could say things like, "Oh, darling, watch out with your knees there! We can see all the way to the Jupiter..."  or  "Excuse me, I wasn't finished making my point. If you would just let me finish."  A friend can tell her, "I don't care much to talk to you when you talk over me."

I do grow weary of the the phrase, "What would Jesus do?"  but He did have some difficult people around him. Today is the feast day of St. Mark, the Evangelist.  St. Mark had traveled with St. Paul and after that St. Paul specifically requested that St. Mark not travel with him on the next trip.  Perhaps St. Mark was a gum chewing over talker.  Maybe he snored.

But in the end, St. Paul asked Mark to visit him in prison.  We'll never know if Paul asked Mark to take that gum out of his mouth.

Also, make another list.  The list of things she does well.  The list of things that are lovable about her.

I can tell you this: it takes a brave person to befriend the social pariah.  Because a person who befriends a social pariah runs the risk of becoming a social pariah themselves.

Jesus was a bit of a social pariah, precisely for this reason.  I guess we now know what He would do.

Sixteen Tons

How do I know where I am supposed to work? I have a job now. My husband is job-seeking. I get job offers and interview requests frequently. How do I know if I should go to another place or stick it out here?

Well, if you don't know, how on earth can I help you? What's your job? What are the job offers? Do you have to move? Would you make more money? Would you have more time or less time for your family life?  Is where you work now a horrible sinful place where you are surrounded by evil? Are your co-workers dragging you into a life of sin?  Are you put upon so much so that you feel used and abused?  Is there health insurance?

You have to ask yourself every one of these questions. Make a pro and con list.   In the end, if this is the only job that has health benefits, stay.

A job isn't just a job.  It can be where you spend almost all of your time.  You are giving all your time away for what, exactly?

1. Fulfillment. All jobs are not created equally.  Some are mind numbing, sand pounding days of dullness as thick as a layered bean dip.  Some are kind of pleasant at best.  And some are important and engaging. 

But don't think that if you are just a bean counter or a shelf stocker that your job can't be fulfilling.  As long as you do your job with a sense of purpose, that sense of doing good work and being needed will stretch itself across your life.

If you find yourself "phoning it in" everyday, maybe it's time to move on if there's someplace to go. As long as that place has health insurance.  Don't go from a job where you have insurance to one in which you don't.

2. A paycheck.  This is nothing to sneeze at!  Are you making enough to make ends meet?  Do you need more for food, rent, clothing?  If the answer is yes, you should be looking for something better.  Don't go backwards in your salary.  Unless you don't have insurance now and the new job pays a little less or the same but has benefits.  Then it's worth the move.

3. Loyalty.  Also nothing to sneeze at! There's not enough these days.  Still, you have a family to take care of, even if your family only consists of you and your husband just now.

I get the idea that your job is no fun.  But why?  This is an important question.  It could be that it's just not fun, what you do, like being a public defender.  No fun and low pay.  But perhaps a  great sense of fulfillment. 

There are reasons to stick it out if your job stinks.  That paycheck. Those benefits.  If you're just put upon, or your co-workers are icky to you, the only way you are going to survive is to change your attitude, because they are not going to change.

I believe that one of the reasons the world never changes is that, for the most part, human beings have the tendency to say to themselves, "Why am I the one who has to bend over backwards to accommodate these clowns?  They should get it together!"  That's why Jesus was such a radical. He said to everyone, "No. You have to love them as you love yourself. You have to change to behave that way.  Chances are it won't change them. But it will change you."

Meanwhile, we turn to St. Joseph the Worker, our patron saint of workers.  Granted, he didn't have someone in the next cubicle snapping their gum and making personal phone calls at the top of their lungs and eating whatever food is in the break room whether it belongs to them or not.  But he did have the whole town looking at him sideways because of the unusual situation with his wife and son.

We all have our crosses to bear.  I hope yours has health insurance.

A Glimmer of Hope

I am still very behind on catching up to all the questions! But today I have to address a serious question with no time to spare in answering.

I have lost my will to live. Which saint can I request intervention concerning the sin of despair?

Hold my hand while I say gently to you that you have not lost your will to live. Not yet. Not quite. Something is causing you to hang on by your toenails, and not only reach out to a blog, but to ask for help.  For a patron saint.

That would give you something to focus on outside your despair, even though it's all about your despair.

Yes, despair is, in fact, a sin.  That seems rather unfair, since some depression is not just sad lazy thinking, but a medical condition.  You can't sin if you're not responsible for sinning.  It's very possible that you're not sinning at all.

Let's talk about that for a moment.  Why is despair a sin?  Very simple: with God there is always hope. So to despair is, in some way, a denial of God's power and grace.

But I think it's very possible to feel hopeless and desperate and kind of forget all about God while being stuck in the ever increasing oppression of depression.

So you have actually raised up your head, just high enough, to ask God to help you, because when we pray to a saint, we are only praying (asking, petitioning) for the saint to pray to God with you, for you.

Please make sure you seek medical help, too, and/or a therapist.  These things can make a world of difference.

All the while, Heaven will help you.  St. Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes, but not because he suffered from depression or had a terrifically difficult life.  He made have had a rather jolly life, for all we know. Although, I rather doubt it, as one of the first Apostles (he replaced Judas), I imagine he met with a lot of jeers and resistance.  The reason he is the patron saint of the hopeless, is precisely because of his relative obscurity.  Since we know almost nothing about him, someone figured that no one gave him much thought and therefore, no one was praying for his intercession, leaving him with eternity on his hands and not much to do.  That would give him time to tackle the really hard stuff.

And as we all know, he has turned out to be really good in that area.  By now, though, he must be very busy.

I would go with Mother Teresa, who is surely in Heaven.  She suffered her 'dark night of the soul' for most her her working life.  And while she felt abandoned by God, she never let that slow her down in her faith or her work or her life.  I would think she could sympathize with you completely.

Also, there is the lovely St. John of God, who was so lost for so long in his life, only to wake up to the grace and power of God.  He was in a mental institution at the time.

Know that everyone who reads this will be praying for you, just like the saints.

Thunder

You may recall that I found out long ago that at some point in time in the ever more distant past, Sister St. Aloysius had suffered from a brain tumor.  As many of you who have had some sort of catastrophic illness can attest, having this type of thing happen to you can change your outlook on life considerably.  I have had some very interesting discussions with her as a result.

On this beautiful spring day, a letter from a reader called to mind one of those talks:

Dear Sister Mary Martha,
I'm sorry to be posting this in a comment on another post, but I don't know how else to reach you. I have a serious problem: I live in an apartment building, and the people above me are insufferably loud. Not "normal" loud, but jumping, running, bouncing balls, dragging things across the floor kind of loud. In the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening—it never stops. The residents there are a woman and her young son, and I have tried explaining to her multiple times that their activities sound like an earthquake in my ceiling that shakes my walls and nearly topples my bookshelves. She is very nice, but insists that she can't believe it's that loud, and that she can't control her son, that he's "just at that age". I have tried complaining to the front office and they have mentioned it to her, too. Short of harassing my neighbor or anonymously sending her Dr. Dobson's child-rearing books in the mail, how can I make this stop? I can't go on with them waking me up every morning, preventing me from taking a nap during the day, constantly interrupting anything I'm trying to concentrate on...
Please help me!
Anonymous

One of two things is happening, or both.  She doesn't believe you.  She doesn't care.

I have three options for you:

1.  Be vigilant.  Every time you are disturbed, tell her and the office.  Tape record the noise.  Ask someone from the office to come to your apartment during the noise.  File a formal complaint. Make sure someone knocks on her door every time it happens.

If you go for this option, make sure you are truthful.  There is going to be noise from above when you live down below.  They can't live silently up there.  They have to walk and move things and maybe thump and bounce once in a while.  Complain when there is something to complain about.

2.  Befriend her.  Bring the child a little gift or ask her for dinner or coffee.  Don't talk about the noise at all. Let her talk about herself.  Dote on the child.  Once you are friends, you can ask her for small favors.  "I have a big meeting tomorrow and need to make sure I get some sleep.  Can you try to be extra quiet tomorrow morning?"  Enlist this child's help.  "Will you remember to be quite as a mouse?" "I'm so tired. I need a nap.  Can little Lonny watch "Rio" for the 200th time while I snooze for a bit?"  This will take time.

But you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  Unless you just want to splatter them on the countertop with a flyswatter  and get it over with.

3. Love the noise.  I don't mean love it, as in "I love Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."  I mean just embrace the noise and stop fighting it.

I have mentioned that Sister St. Aloysius is rather a nervous person.  She once told me that during her treatments, especially leading up to the procedure that removed the tumor, the doctors were very worried that she wouldn't be able to handle how very still she would have to be for quite some time while they worked on her.  So they arranged for people to come and work on relaxation techniques with her.  This involved some sort of 'guided meditation'.  A very calm woman showed up to work with Sister St. Aloysius,  had her lie down and focus on relaxing every muscle in her body one little muscle at a time.  As soon as they began, everyone in the neighborhood decided to go out in their yards and laugh, holler, talk, start up lawn mowers, throw screaming children into the swimming pool and do whatever makes the dog bark so that his barking can cause all the other dogs to bark.

The mediation lady said,  "I'm so sorry.  This is not very relaxing, all this noise."

And Sister St. Aloysius said, "It's not a problem."  She said she found a great peace in the sound, as she wasn't sure if she was going to survive the tumor or the surgery, that she wanted to soak up every sound of life being lived.  It was relaxing. 

So love them. Love their lives and the noise life makes.

I'm sure there will be times when the noise is a bit much.  But at this point, you're counting and tensing and waiting and grinding your teeth, which is just making everything worse.

I recommend option 2 and 3 combined.  And St. Scholastica, the patron saint of thunder storms.  She was visiting her brother, St. Benedict and it was time to go home.  She didn't want to go home. She wanted to stay and talk.  He insisted she go.  She prayed.  A violent storm sprang up so she had to stay put.  They spent the night talking while the storm raged.  She died the next morning, no doubt with a head full of prayer, and thought and thunder.

She Has Risen

Happy Easter!    Full of ham?  I am. Which is close to miraculous. Our standards for the miraculous are very high.   I could have used an actual miracle. Instantaneous and unexplained.

I had quite a time of it this week.  Whatever I had hoped to accomplish by giving up things for Lent was trumped by the most brilliant opportunity for suffering and an end, once and for all, to my dilemma of the McDonald Fish sandwich.

We had quite the plan, lining up the Easter lilies for the altar, and the other Easter decorations so that we'd have a smooth transition from the stripped down sancutary to the Glory of Easter.  We were like a well oiled machine! The florist was on board.  The white drapery for the cross was at the dry cleaners.  We spent the day with the plastic bottle of Murphy's Oil Soap and some elbow grease and got to work on the pews.  Sister St. Aloysius started on the left and I began on the right.  We had Sister Mary Fiacre parked in the middle.  She turned out to be a rather good marker as to where we were in our work.

The Friday before Good Friday.  We had had such a productive day I decided to throw caution to the wind, and my Lenten fish sandwiches issues, and grab one.

It will be a cold day in Hell when I do that again.

Within about two hours, I realized that the fish sandwich was very much still with me.  Three hours, four, still tasting the tartar sauce. My stomach started to hurt.

I'll spare you the gory details.  Let's just say I had a lot of suffering to offer up. For about five days.

I thought about what that poor soul said when he visited St. Catherine.  She had been at his death bed only an hour before and there he was, asking her to pray for him. He told her he had been in Purgatory for sixty years!  She felt really bad having to break the news to him that it had only been an hour that seemed like sixty years.

This week seemed like sixty years.

We had to call in the troops.  The Ladies of Charity brought food that I couldn't eat. The doctor put me on a liquid diet and antibiotics.  The Ladies of Charity brought jello.  Peach and strawberry.

On Holy Thursday, I graduated to mashed potatoes.  I rediscovered ginger ale.

Poor Sister St. Aloysius  had to do everything herself.  Well. not all by herself. The Ladies of Charity chipped in.  But she is really not comfortable with bossing people around.  Bossing is called for at every turn.

Like Jesus, I rose from the dead for Easter!  Sister St. Aloysius and the gals did a wonderful job.  Not the way I would have done it, with the lilies sort of scattered all around instead of grouped together, but the effect was lovely.  Perhaps we'll keep in that way next year, unless some fussy old goats fuss about it.  You wouldn't believe the things people fuss about, even on Easter.

So here I am back at work and ready to tackle all the questions that have piled up during my trip to Little Purgatory.

And I'll never have to think about those fish sandwiches again.

Or...

I'll go ahead and eat them and offer up my suffering at the very thought.

The dilemma lives on.  Oh well.

To the Moon, Alice!

It seems like I've unwittingly stirred up a tempest in a teapot by mentioning that Christopher Hitchens didn't like Mother Teresa.  (And he didn't just "not like" her, he wrote an entire booked about it.)  I said he thought her an "empty habit".

Which brought to mind, for someone, another famous nun.  A lot of people don't care much for her, my beloved 92 year old mother, for one.

I don't want to talk here about the truths or untruths about famous nuns. What I'd like to talk about is how to not like someone.  This is an issue no one seems to think all that much about, since we all have folks that rub us the wrong way, we chalk it up to, "oh, well..."   What do we do?  We don't actually hate them. That would be sinful.  So we just...avoid them.  Go to a different parish, cross the street, sit somewhere else, find a different cafe, cross them off the Christmas card list.

And some people, for some people, are actually toxic and should be avoided at all costs.  Abusive, dangerous people.  Sociopaths. Psychopaths.  Axe murderers.  No one expects you to go give them a hug.  We'll have to let Jesus give them hugs. They will be in our prayers.

I'm really talking about the annoying nuns and the cheating mechanics,  the telephone solicitors, the loud horrible singers, the people  who are always wrong about everything but won't admit it or don't even know, the rude, the cell phone blabbers, the traffic cutter offers, the loafers, the lazy, the people on the other side of the political spectrum.  We avoid these people at all costs, so we don't grow to hate them.  We think this is a good idea.

But, guess what?  If things go well and you live a wonderful life, there is every reason to believe you will achieve your heavenly reward.  And God is just and kind and way, way more forgiving than you could ever hope to be, which means that once you achieve your heavenly reward, you may find yourself sitting next to a fill in the blank.  There won't be a rope line in heaven to corral them.  There won't be a parish or a pew from which you can flee, another town in which to live, an apartment in which to hide with your caller ID.

You are going to have to love them.

"OH!" you say, "no problem!  I'll be in Heaven and they will have changed, too if they're in Heaven!"  You think?  Maybe.  God may love them just the way they are.

But let's imagine that we will indeed be perfect beings there in Heaven.  Okay....but that means you'll have to change your thinking at some point.  You actually will have to love and forgive everyone.  Why wait to burn in Purgatory?  You have to get your brain around this.

Why do we love Ralph Cramden's famous admonishment, "One of these days, POW! to the moon!" ?  Because we all feel that way sometimes.  You think I don't?  You think living in a house with a bunch of very religious women makes me immune?  Ou contrare.  It can bring out the worst in everyone.

So how do we allow ourselves our opinions of others, which actually do inform our own choices, without judging and bad feelings?  Drop the blame.  Drop the idea that you know why they behave that way.

It is perfectly justified to note that Mother Teresa did a lot of fundraising.  It is not justified to decide that she loved the limelight and that was her motivation.  My mother doesn't care for the other famous nun because, "She (the nun) thinks she's being so cute."

Not your call, Mom.

Hate the sin, love the sinner, is so much more easily said than done.  After all, it's the sinner that puts the sin into action. Without the sinner, there would be no sin, sin needs to be stopped, so the sinner should be stopped, too.  Right?  Stopped, if possible, yes. Judged, no.

So long, Nancy Grace!  What could have been a public service is nothing more than a witch hunt.  Nancy is set for a some very uncomfortable afterlife encounters. As are we all.

Thank goodness for Lent!  Giving up avoiding people you don't like would be a good one for next year.  It will be just like Heaven!

Hitching up with Hitchens

A friend of mine has recently lost his faith. He read a book by Christopher Hitchens, which has completely destroyed what he believed. He is very, very confused and angry. What would you say to him?

Oh Goodness!  Mr. Hitchens was very confused and angry, too!  He didn't like Mother Teresa.  Who doesn't like Mother Teresa? That, right there, is enough for me to not listen to another word he had to say.  He felt she spent all her time fundraising and was therefore just an empty habit, a money grubber.

She did spend a lot of time fundraising.  She needed funds for the poor people she served. I suppose, since they were all dying, she could have just left them lie there, but the silly woman believed they should be fed and kept clean and comfortable.

I suppose she could have sent out one of her no name nuns who worked there at the hospital. Because you know, that would have really helped draw a crowd.

Clearly, Mr. Hitchens had no clue  how to fundraise or that nuns are pretty much synonymous with fundraising and has never been to a church supper, card party or Bingo game.  No wonder he was angry. He missed all the fun.

I'm sorry I don't know quite what to tell you to tell your friend.  I would start by asking him some questions and listen to his answer and not worry too much about arguing with his responses.  I'd try to find out exactly which part of what he read caused him so much consternation.

Then I'd go think that over.  And then I'd go back and talk with him about those things.

Because it really can't be everything.  There must have been something that got to him.  Some thought that was in the book that entered his brain like an earwig (or at least, the mythology of an earwig) and has eaten holes in some synapses.

Then I would suggest some other reading for him.  G.K. Chesterton springs to mind.  All Catholics love him, don't they?  Chesterton himself was a convert to the Catholic Church.  We especially love converts, because they chose the Church in  a way the rest of us have not, although in Chesterton's case he had been Anglican, or, as we like to say "Catholic Lite", so it wasn't a big leap.  Anyhow, you want to look into people who are called "Catholic Apologists".  A weird term, I know, but it refers to people who are explaining (not apologizing).

Hope this helps.  Mr. Hitchens must be very surprised these days, about all the things he got wrong.

Unforgiven Unforgiveness

Dear Sister Mary Martha,Could you please help me? I am struggling with unforgiveness. Is there any saint who i could ask to intercede for me who had a similar problem?

I am so pleased with you.  Two reasons: you've admitted something that a lot of people have a hard time admitting because it makes them sound petty at best and vindictive and hateful at worst. Let's hope most of us fall on the petty side of the forgiveness fence, because the other side of that pasture is nothing but brambles and quicksand that either stick to your socks so you carry them everywhere with you, or suck you down into a suffocating death.

And! You made up a very useful word.  I don't believe unforgiveness is an actual word. It should be. If we try to find the opposite of "forgiveness" we are faced with words like blame and condemnation, which have nothing to do with forgiveness except for being things you do when you can't forgive.

We need your word!  Thank you.

Forgiveness is at the very heart of Christianity.  It has to be, because we are all SO not perfect.  Compassion and forgiveness are the very essence of Christ's teaching, so if we can't muster it, we've failed utterly at being in harmony with Christ.

But, being so imperfect as we are, forgiveness can be just about impossible.  Oh, it better be easy enough when someone cuts you off in traffic, or wears the same gown as you at the ball.  And it better not be all that hard when someone gets the promotion you thought you were getting, someone who is less qualified than you and kind of lazy, but a big rah-rah windbag when the boss is around.  That's going to be a little harder.

But when the drunk driver whose license has already been revoked runs down your second grader on his way to school?  That's going to be a problem.

Even if you could never forgive that person, we would all understand.

Jesus asks for more.  I always think to myself, "Easy for you to say, Jesus!  You're actually not just a person, You're God."

Too bad.  I often find common ground with atheists, believe it or not, by saying to them, "Okay, I'll pretend that Jesus wasn't God and didn't die for our sins, if you'll admit that His death on the cross did have meaning, even for you, because He proved He meant what He said about non violence and forgiveness.  He went all the way to the cross with His convictions.  He showed you what He actually expects from you and how impossible difficult it will be."

I can only offer you this advice: people often confuse forgiveness with some kind of admission that what the other person did was somehow okay.  It isn't.  We can still demand that the cheating husband, the playground bully,  the car thief and those people on Wall Street did things that were wrong, bad and sinful.  We can demand apologies and reparations.

What we can't do, is harbor the anger.  We can be angry.  We can't stay angry.  We can't live in anger and bitterness.  We have to find a way to love the person, the soul God made, again.

If you focus on that, instead of dwelling on who was right and who was wrong, and how not okay what other people are doing or not doing is,  you'll be more than halfway there.

And of course! The perfect patron saint: that guy on the cross there on Calvary with Jesus.  We call him St. Dismas, the thief that Jesus took to Heaven with Him that day, but no one really knows what his name was.  Silly legends have sprung up around him, that he was someone Jesus had encountered before, along the lines of Ben Hur encountering Jesus while Ben Hur was in chains and then Jesus gives Ben Hur water.  That kind of thing.  But really, all we know is that he was a criminal and the Romans had had enough of his antics.  When the other thief (the bitter, angry one) said to Jesus, "If you're so great why don't you get us out of this?",  Dismas said, "Shut up. You and I deserve this.  This guy doesn't."  Then Dismas said, "Remember me when you get to your Kingdom."

Poor Dismas, by the way, is a cornerstone in the age old argument "faith without good works is just fine".  Such a silly argument.  Dismas' story is about forgiveness.  Anyhow, you don't have faith if you're not doing good works.  Not real faith, at any rate.

And of course, St. Paul.  Now there was one unforgiving person, who ran all over on horseback actively persecuting people with whom he disagreed.

You can start by asking forgiveness for your unforgiveness.  Once you realize that you've been forgiven, you'll find it easier to pass it on.

Christian Singles

Please help. Maybe this is the wrong question for a nun, but maybe someone else on here can offer suggestions too. I'm a young single Catholic women called to marriage... where are all the (practicing) Catholic young men at? Oh, I know they still exist albeit few, but where? I have few friends outside of Catholic activities: volunteer work and the young adult group I attend. It seems that everyone there is already paired off, with respect to both relationships and friendship circles. I've been seeking a relationship and friendships for almost 3 years no avail. As far as love and marriage goes, I've been asking intersession from St. Raphael, Mary and Joseph. Thoughts? While my relationship with God has blossomed in this seclusion, I could really use someone to spend Friday nights with.

You are already taking all the advice everyone gives, which is to look no further than your church group, as though "Of Course that will work!"  Not if everyone is paired up it won't, unless you are one unethical girl.  Which would defeat the whole idea of finding someone in a church group.

It is disturbing that anyone would be "paired off" in a friendship circle. It seems to me that these are the people you want to infiltrate!  Surely they have other friends and relatives!

Let's take a tip from our "Elder brothers" (as the Pope says), the Jews.  The nice Jewish girls I know have pretty good look finding people at least to date (if not marry).  Why? Because they let their intentions be known.  They ask friends and relatives, "Got a fella for me?"  Dates ensue.

A few years ago, I would have told you to stay away from the internet.  And I'm old, so the whole idea of internet dating still gives me the willies.  Apparently, however, it's time for me to put on my big girl wimple and admit that out of the five happy couples I have recently met on their way to the altar, three of those couples sought each other on the internet.  No one is more surprised than me.

But when I think about it, the truth is there are many people finding many things on the internet. God, for one.  I can't tell you how many readers I've had who have said that reading blogs brought them to the Catholic Church, or back to Her.

Meanwhile, two things: offer it up.  There are worse things that not having a date on the weekend. Tsunami's for example.  Life on the Sahara.

Having no relationship with God, who apparently is very happy to be your date.

Secondly: St. Agnes.  She is the patron saint of man hunters (and Girl Scouts).  You've missed out on this year's "bedtime egg".  But that doesn't mean you can't turn to her, even though she was never interested in having a boyfriend.  I've never quite understood why she is the patron saint of the opposite of what was going on with her, but it's not my call. She has been the patron saint of man hunting since her untimely death.  It's rather like having Marie Goretti as the patron saint of finding a boyfriend, but she's the patron saint of teen purity.

Anyhow, St. Agnes is as effective as the internet, as far as I know.

Meanwhile, my recent advice about finding friends applies to adults, too.

That's the Sound of the Men Workin on the Chain...Ga.a....ang.

I'm a bit behind on tackling questions.  I'll catch up. I always do!

But I have a quick question for you!  Is it okay to say, "Happy Lent!" ?

I don't think it is, but I always feel like saying that, I suppose because I love Lent.  It makes me feel good.  I feel like I'm making spiritual progress.

But I'm supposed to be suffering.

And I am suffering.

But then I feel good about it. Like running a marathon.  That must feel horrible.  But we know it feels great because of the accomplishment. And the endorphins. 

I'll be interested in your answers.  No wonder saints went to such great lengths to beat themselves up. St. Rose of Lima made herself a spike hat.  She was a very crafty girl (as in Etsy, crafty, not sly and manipulative crafty).

Meanwhile, I can't resist this question, even though it's brand new and there are older questions to answer.

I have joined a rosary making group. Lately I have just made them solo, but I wanted to get involved at church. I am having problems with the name of the group. They call themselves, "Mary's Chain Gang" I am finding this very offensive to Our Lady....or is my skin too thin? There are not very many members and I believe this may be do to people not knowing what the group does....especially since the words rosary making isn't in the title. Before I moved to this city I was with a group called Joyful Rosary Makers and we were very active. Being new to the group I wonder if I should even tell them about my concerns. Also interesting enough this group makes cord mission rosaries and very few chain rosaries. Am I totally off base here?

I can't think why that name would be offensive.  Are you thinking of gangs, like street gangs, as though they are calling the group "Mary's Bloods"?  That would be offensive.

A chain gang is a group of prisoners, chained together at the ankles, wearing striped prison garb, breaking rocks with sledge hammers and pick axes.  The purpose is twofold: to put the offender to hard labor, and to humiliate them while they serve their time.

One could argue that these people are criminals, but although chain gangs still exist, you really can't judge.  In the old days (which is where we get the term), the men on chain gangs might not have been guilty of anything more than being the wrong color in the wrong place.  Or stealing a loaf of bread because his family was starving.  Looking at the men on a chain gang, there would be no way to tell who was an innocent caught up in the system and who was a bank robber.

I don't think you'd find an actual psychopathic killer on a chain gang, because that guy would have just gotten hanged outright.

It's just a clever name.  Maybe it's just me. I'm chained to a bunch of people and I wear funny clothes, too.  Sometimes I feel like I'm breaking rocks with a sledge hammer.  Or pounding sand.

The one area where I might agree is that people don't know what the group is or does by the name.  They need a Facebook page or something.  If I were in a parish and I saw "Join Mary's Chain Gang!" in the church bulletin, I would be intrigued.  Maybe people just don't like making rosaries there.

I don't like working with beads myself.  I always drop them all over the floor at some point.

I should join a rosary making group during Lent!

The Patience of a Saint

Sister, can you recommend a saint to help my 9 year old daughter to have some friends at school? Or to help her follow God's will, if He doesn't want her to have a "best friend" right now?

I can't imagine in my wildest imaginings that God wouldn't want a 9 year old girl to have friends at school.  Jesus, God's Son and the Second Person in the Holy Trinity, was all about having friends.  He was friends with people who no one on the planet wanted to visit.

Nine is a tough age.  The tricky thing is to somehow help her understand how to be a friend, to be open and loving and compassionate, and not to expect anything in return.  To let go of the hope of having a gaggle of friends or one or two close ones,  and to just let the cards fall way they may, happy in the knowledge that you've been the best person you can be.

And to not make her lack of friends her fault.

Here's a good thing to learn to do: Listen.

When people talk to her, tell her to listen carefully to what they are saying, and then, rather than comment on it, or try to offer advice, simply to say what they just said back to them in her own words.  Simply be compassionate to their feelings.  Lend an ear. Lend a hand.  The end.

People love a good listener.  When you repeat to them in your own words what they've just said, it lets them know they have actually been heard.  Who doesn't want that?

What she'll need is patience and a thick skin for all the times when she'll simply be ignored for all her good behavior.  I'm going with St. Rita.

This may seem like an odd choice, as St. Rita is the patron saint for not so hot marriages and infertility. But here's the deal, St. Rita always wanted to be a nun and the nuns just didn't want her.  At all.

But Rita never gave up and finally, angels came and flew her over the convent wall.  That got her in. You'd think that once angels flew you into the convent, the nuns there would snap to attention and welcome her into the fold.  They did not.

They gave her a task to demean her and to prove her mettle (!) and her obedience.  They stuck a stick in the ground and made her water it every day.  This went on for quite some time. And then one day the stick sprouted leaves and eventually grew into a tree. I think it's still there.  Maybe not. How long do trees live, anyhow?  I'll have to look that up.

One would think that after angels flew you into a convent and a stick grew into a tree, that the nuns would finally want you as one of their own.  Nope.  Rita was never accepted into the community in a loving way, because she had been a wife and mother, and her husband and sons were all not nice people (as in, involved with Mafia types, not nice).  Back then, women who had been married and had children were not concerned nun material.

Finally, St. Rita received the stigmata, with a thorn in her forehead that festered and stank.  Finally, the nuns understood her holiness, but now, what with the stench and all, Rita had to spend the rest of her life in her cell by herself.  After she went to her Heavenly reward, her room began to smell of roses, and does to this day.

Patience and a thick skin.  St. Rita reached her goal.

I'm sure your daughter will not have to water any sticks or stink up her room.  But if she remains patient and compassionate, her loving nature will be rewarded.

To Have and Have Not

Sister, a contructive criticism made possible by the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, the Congregation of Christian Brothers, the Augustinian Fathers and the Sisters of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross, all of whom taught me to pe precise in my expression, it is not "I understand that the Mother Superior wanted Sister Hepburn to have to do something huge to prove her metal."; the word you are searching for is "mettle". Thank you, Russ

Thank you, Russ! That was really bothering me! I know in print this sounds like I am being sarcastic, but I assure you, I am not.   I knew something was wrong but I could not remember the correct word.  Now I will write "mettle" on the board 400 times.

Now you must go write "constructive" on the board 20 times.  And "be".  Or maybe type those words.  I'm sure it was typing.  Unlike me, who actually had the wrong word altogether.

I do depend on my readers to let me know when I've tripped the type fantastic.  I often have to pick a new word, because I can't for the life of me remember how to spell something.  Here's one: "racked", as in "I racked my brain trying to think of the way to spell mettle."  Is that correct?  It always seems like it should be one of the silent "W" words to me.

It's a wonder I can put my shoes on.

How is everyone's Lent going?  I am facing my usual Lenten dilemma, whether or not to eat a McDonald's fish sandwich.  The answer is generally, no.  But I go round and round.

To begin with, the McDonald's fish sandwich was invented for Catholics.  Sitting in a habit, eating a fish sandwich on a Friday in Lent goes a long way toward our main mission: getting our souls and the souls of others to Heaven.  It's "a picture is worth a thousand words" moment.

And a "take a picture with your cell phone" moment, as far as I can tell.

Also, it's a thrifty thing to do.  The McDonald's fish sandwich is on sale on Friday's in Lent.  We like thrifty.  We need thrifty to survive.
 
I almost feel duty bound to head over to McDonald's on Fridays in Lent. I can even walk there. Talk about thrifty!  So what's the problem?

I love them.  I find them completely delicious.  The hot steamed bun, the slice of mild cheese, the thick tartar sauce dripping and oozing and squirting.  It doesn't seem right to me to have a treat on Fridays in Lent, the one day in the Lenten week where we 'up the ante' so to speak, by not only our regular Lenten fasting, but skipping meat as well.

Which reminds me...what do vegetarians do?  They never eat meat in the first place.  I suppose they give up cheese.  Or lentils.

What to do?  I think I'll have one.  Why? Because I have always referred to them as my 'guilty pleasure', not because of my Lenten dilemma, but because they are loaded with all things McDonaldsy bad.  Two million calories. Saturated fat. I'll focus on the 'guilty' and not the 'pleasure'.

And I'll just have the one.  Which will make me suffer all the more when I don't have another one.

Or.  I'll ask for a Hula Burger.

Change of Habit

I am one confused nun.  Perhaps you, dear readers, can talk me through it.  Someone called us last evening to breathlessly announce that there was a nun on the Oscar red carpet! I thought they were joking. As far as I know, there has never been a nun at the Oscars, and besides, it's a Sunday in Lent.

So I checked it all out on the internets, and sure enough, there she was.  Not to be confused with the horrible portrayal of a nun by pretend Sister Laura Petrie in her nine pounds of mascara laden fake eyelashes and vampire eyeliner in "Change of Habit",  Sister Dolores, an actual nun, made a documentary movie about how she left Hollywood and kissing Elvis to become a nun. Her movie is called,  oh...I already forget what it's called....  something about God being better than Elvis. 

I believe my confusion lies somewhere in the dusty scripts of Hollywood and nuns.

Just the other day, I chanced upon the opening hour of Sister Audrey Hepburn in "A Nun's Story".  That is one upsetting movie.  Sister Hepburn has a humility problem that plagues her throughout the film and eventually causes her to stroll out the door in a very smart Chanel suit.  (Forgive me if you haven't seen the film and I just ruined the ending for you.  I believe I've saved you a couple of hours that could better be used saying rosaries.)  She is a very smart young lady whose deepest desire is to be a missionary and a nurse.  Some sort of fancy nurse, I believe.  A surgical nurse, perhaps.  She has the chops to do this, but Mother Superior is constantly on Sister Audrey's case about her lack of humility.

Keep in mind, that this is not ordinary humility, but nun humility.  This is the kind of humility that causes a novice to confess that she paused before acting when asked to dry the dishes because she thought maybe she should help wash them or that she sighed once when she saw the breakfast oatmeal was looking even more dry than usual.

So Sister Audrey is about to ace her nurse test that will land her in the Congo when Mother Superior calls her into the office and asks if she would be willing to prove her humility and obedience by blowing the test so that Audrey's nun nursing school rival can move ahead and be sent to the mission.

I didn't watch past that to see what Sister Hepburn decided to do. I have seen the film before and  I know she somehow ends up in the Congo, still a nun.  I was just so aggravated at such a ridiculous request. I understand that the Mother Superior wanted Sister Hepburn to have to do something huge to prove her metal.  But what about the poor people in the Congo?  Don't they deserve to have the actual best candidate for the job?  The people of the Congo hospital weep.

As do I.  It made Mother Superior look like a crazy person who is more interested in rules than in what the rules are for.  Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Humility. Lent. The Red Carpet.  Hollywood just cannot get nuns right.  Poor Sister Dolores is faced with the dilemma of the best publicity her message can ever get vs. that the publicity occurs on a Sunday in Lent.  I suppose she made the right choice. If she hadn't, none of us would have ever heard of her film.  Maybe her Superior ordered her to go.

I'm sure she skipped the Vanity Fair after party.