Blessed Sacrament and Blessed Eva

I love it when the questions are super easy to answer, especially in the summer!:

I have a question, and I'm hoping wildly that this isn't disrespectful or wrong. I'm in the process of becoming Catholic and OH, I am wrong so often these days.
As I said, I'm becoming Catholic - finished RCIA and am waiting and praying for my husband's first marriage to be declared null so I can finally come home. During the RCIA process, one of the events that changed my thinking from "Oh, I suppose I can do this Catholic thing to make my husband happy" to "Oh please. Only say the word and my soul shall be healed. Please may I come home?" was a miscarriage. I lost my fifth child at four months gestation, and it all but broke me. I am still so very sad.
The day we found out she'd died, my husband and I went to the Adoration Chapel, a place I'd always felt very uncomfortable in. That day I was just so shocked and sad. I knelt and prayed and wept and shook. And then I looked up and realized that Jesus was there. Not like "I feel Him here," he WAS THERE, because he said he would be. Not because I deserved it or asked Him the right way, because He promised. It totally spun my thinking around on the Real Presence.
I told a friend about that, and she said, "You know what that was? That was your daughter, praying for you, and taking you by the hand into the Truth."
So this leads to my question. We named our daughter Eva. And since losing her has made this whole process of conversion so much more real and personal to me, I want to take Eva as my patron saint. From what I can tell, there was a Saint Eva, from the third century, who was a mother with four children, no less. But really, I mean it in gratitude for the life of my little one and what her loss has taught me about what really matters. Do you think that would be okay?
Thank you for what you do here. I'm a little scared of you, but much more grateful for your insight.

On come on. I'm not that scary. Unless you're under the age of 7.  Then I'm terrifying.  Even if I'm smiling. Perhaps, then even more so.

Welcome to the Church!

Now to your question. You can have anyone you want as a patron saint.  Oh, wait...did you mean you want to take your daughter as your patron saint?  That would be okay, I guess. We know she's in Heaven, which is the definition of a saint.

However, when we look to find a patron saint, we look for someone to help us through our struggles. That's why we first make sure a person had heroic virtue--virtue above and beyond the call of duty--for the cause of a saint. We generally don't call on the non canonized as patron saints.

Your St. Eva from the third century was a martyr, but I'm not sure the children who died with her were her children. She died with a rather large group of people, five of whom were children...four children and a toddler.  But that's okay. Martyrs go straight to Heaven and are automatically saints. (The only time we argue over the sainthood of a martyr is when we're not sure if the person's demise was in fact a maytyr's death.  Such is the case with St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, better known as Edith Stein.  She was both Jewish and then a nun, so there was considerable argument over whether her death at the hands of the Nazis made for a martyr's death, since she might have been murdered because she was Jewish, as opposed to being murdered because she refused to renounce Christ.  She was canonized, so the controversy has been resolved.)

So, that St. Eva from the third century is fine. But....this will tickle you!  There is another Eva, not a saint yet. Blessed Eva.  That means she is worthy of our veneration and has one proven miracle. She's waiting for another before she makes it to 'saint'.  Here's the part that you'll appreciate: she was instrumental in making the Feast of Corpus Christi and feast day!


The Feast of Corpus Christi is the day the whole Church celebrates the fact that the Blessed Sacrament is the True Presence.  Blessed Eva didn't start the ball rolling. Her superior, St. Julianna did that. St. Julianna had a vision of the moon with one dark spot on it, a symbolic depiction of the one missing feast day in the Church calendar.  She had this vision for twenty years but never told anyone about it, except for Blessed Eva.  St. Julianna didn't know what the vision meant for the longest time, and when she finally came to understand its meaning, she still didn't tell anyone about it because she didn't think there was anything she could do about it.  When she finally told her confessor, he took the information to the Bishop and the Bishop made the feast day happen, but just locally.

It wasn't until St.  had died that Blessed Eva took up the gauntlet and worked tirelessly until the Pope made the Feast of Corpus Christi a feast day for the universal Church.

How's that for a kind of perfect patron saint for you?  I hope it tickles you as much as it tickles me!

What a Headache

Dear Sister: I've been struck lately by severe headaches--the kind that are only gotten rid of by going to the emergency room and getting hooked up to IV painkillers. Coincidentally (literally--he went to the hospital in Cleveland at the same time I went to the hospital in DC) a friend of mine across the country is undergoing experimental brain surgery for his own crippling cluster headaches. I thought we could both use the intercession of a saint at this point, and found two names mentioned as patron saints for migraine suffers: St. Teresa of Avilla and St. Gemma Gelgani. Which has raised two questions in my mind: 1. Which one is it? St. Teresa or St. Gemma? And, more existentially, 2. Does it matter? I don't mean does praying for a saint's intercession work, because I know what you'll say about that. I mean, if I pray for the wrong saint's help, won't the saint I pray to still give me the hand up I need? Isn't that kind of part of their job definition? Or is it less effective if I invoke...I dunno...St. Joseph of Arimathea, who doesn't have any particular history with head or headaches than the headache sufferers official patron saint?

Thanks!

P.S. A third, half-facetious, half-serious question: 3. Will praying to the proper saint help us pay for our treatments? Insurance won't pay his $100,000 bill because the surgery is too experimental, and my own insurance has told me it won't pay for prescription refills in a timely manner.

Oh, you poor thing.  What a terrible hardship.

At the risk of giving you a headache, there is a third patron saint for headaches, St. Stephen, the first martyr.  He was killed by having rocks thrown at his head, so I think he's a very good choice.

There are several saints for specific problems in many cases. St. Francis of Assisi, because he preached to birds and squirrels and "Brother Wolf" is the patron saint of animals and animal lovers, but  so is St. Martin de Porres, because he was an amateur veterinarian. St. Rock is the patron saint of dogs and dog lovers and St. Gertrude is the patron saint of cats and cat lovers.  

St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers, but so is St. Joseph.

So let's back this truck up a second an take a look at what the deal is with patron saints in the first place.  The idea of having a patron saint for something is that in some way the saint had to deal with the same problems that you have. St. Martha had that unfortunate incident where the disciples descended on her house and her sister wouldn't help her get dinner on the table for them all. That's why shes is the patron saint of cooks and waitresses. Sometimes the patronage is rather a leap.  A really big leap.  Like St. Blaise.  He is the patron saint of sore throats because he once blessed the throat of a young lad who was choking on a fishbone. So that makes perfect sense. But he is also the patron saint of knitters, because he was tortured with wool combers.  He never knitted a thing.  That's a bit of a....an extrapolation.

I can't figure out why St. Teresa of Avila would be the patron saint of headaches. I do not believe that she was a headache sufferer.  Perhaps one of our dear readers would know.  I suspect that she is the patron saint of headaches because she was one.  St. Teresa was put into the convent by her very strict father because she was a rebellious teenager. At that time, the nuns in the convent were often other rich girls who wore their veils as a fashion accessory and brought their jewelry, not for the convent to use to buy food, but to wear.

Teresa didn't take to nunness right away. And even when she did begin to embrace the religious life, she was still a bit of a "how do you solve a problem like Maria" type.  She didn't care much for praying, for one thing. Ironic, since what made her a Doctor of the Church eventually was what she had to say about prayer, among other things.

Even after all of her sighing and eye rolling about prayer, Teresa began having mystical experiences including visions and ecstasies and levitation.  She changed her mind about prayer.  And the convent. She didn't leave, she called for reform and founded the Discalced Carmelites.  She was not popular and faced the prospect of the Spanish Inquisition twice. That would be headache inducing, I suppose.

Meanwhile, St. Gemma spent most of her life really sick in bed. She did have debilitating headaches, but then, she had debilitating everything. She had a really miserable time of it.

Your dilemma is simply to pick the saint to which you feel the most connected, for whatever reason.  So no, it doesn't even matter if the saint has that patronage assigned to them.  Why do we pray for intercession at all?  We are asking the saints to pray for us, just the way we ask each other for prayers. The saints, however are right there in Heaven.  They have got to be just the best at praying. It absolutely astounds me that there are people who think that asking for saintly intercession is some kind of time waster.  I hope they don't go around asking other people to pray for them either, but that kind of logical consistency seems to escape them.

St. Joseph of Arimathea seems like a very good choice to help with the financial end of things! He did after all, swoop in and take care of business when everyone else was too stunned and impoverished to figure out what to do with Jesus' body.  The Infant of Prague is also a good choice.

Oh wait! there's here's another idea for the headache patron! You could go with St. Joseph! He has his own aspirin.

Music to My Ears

I wonder if you would do a post on St Hildegarde, one of the new Doctors of the Church?

I would love to!  Besides that fact that St. Hildegarde is a fascinating person, her new status in the church is also something to talk about.

She wasn't a saint, officially. Four attempts have been made to canonize her, but the process took so long that it was abandoned.  She had made it to "Blessed", which means she lived a life of heroic virtue and a miracle had been attributed to her intercession.

Now she is officially a saint by what is called "equivalent canonization"  , which basically means she is a saint because the Pope says so.  There's a little more to it than that. The Pope doesn't go around calling people saints by osmosis.  That makes her all the more very special and worthy of our attention.  Next October she will become the 35th Doctor of the Church.  There are only 3 women who hold that title (St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Therese the Little Flower). Now there will be four.

Hildegarde experienced visions at a very early age, so by the age of eight--or maybe fourteen--she was sent off to the cloister with to be "enclosed" with and older nun name Jutta. And there she remained for 24 years until Jutta passed onto to her heavenly reward and Hildegarde was put in charge.  During this time, Hildegarde was a prolific, writer, poetess and singer.  She also was an herbalist and healer.

And the visions never stopped. This isn't a picture of an octopus attacking St. Hildegard. This a rendering of her receiving a vision in all five senses, which is how she described the experience.

Because 69 full compositions remain for us to enjoy, Hildegarde claims one of the largest repertoires of medieval music.  She wrote what is considered to be the first, or at least the first surviving, morality play. A musical, it has many parts and a speaking role for the Devil. She wrote buckets of music of all sorts, and of course many hymns.

She wrote down her visions. She corresponded with Bishops, Abbots and Popes. Nearly 400 letters survive. She wrote two volumes on herbs and medicinal cures.

She also did four preaching tours. Her writings about the Scriptures were so profound, stemming as they did from her visions, that she was the only woman around during that medieval time who was allowed to give speeches at all, let alone speak on the Bible.  She had ardent fans.

And if that isn't enough for you, she has an asteroid named after her. Asteroid 898, is called "Hildegarde".

I  am personally thrilled by her canonization, because it means we finally have a great saint to be the patron saint of musicians. Not that St. Cecelia isn't a great saint. It's just that she really had nothing to do with music at all and St. Hildegarde was a truly great composer, breaking the boundaries of medieval music.

Yes and No

 There was a time when I did lectures and fielded questions. That brief time is in part what spurred me to start this blog, because the questions were always very interesting and heartfelt and sometimes kind of funny and sometimes surprisingly misguided. I thought it all might make for a good read.

One time I got this question from the floor and just the other day here it is again from a reader:Hello Sister. I just have a quick question. I am a Protestant and my Catholic friend told me that according to Catholic Church teachings I can still get into Heaven. I did not think that was the official position of the Church. So what's the verdict? Can Protestants get into Heaven? What about non-denominational Christians? Mormons? I tried consulting the Catechism on this subject but it confused me a bit.

When I got this question from the live group there was a priest sitting in the front row.  I told the lady who asked  the question, "The Church believes that only Catholics can get to Heaven."

The priest nodded his approval.

"But the Church doesn't believe that only Catholics can get to Heaven."

The priest nodded again.

"So only Catholics can get to Heaven, but non Catholics can get to Heaven, too.  Right, Father?" I said.

He nodded again. Smiling.

And you say the Catechism confused you? I understand. You have to read between the lines.
 First of all we have this:

"Those who die in God's grace and friendship and are perfectly purified live for ever with Christ."

That would indicate that non Catholics will see the welcome mat at the Pearly Gates. But the Catechism goes on to state:

"By virtue of our apostolic authority, we define the following: According to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints . . . and other faithful who died after receiving Christ's holy Baptism (provided they were not in need of purification when they died, . . . or, if they then did need or will need some purification, when they have been purified after death, . . .) already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgment - and this since the Ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into heaven - have been, are and will be in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom and celestial paradise with Christ, joined to the company of the holy angels. Since the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, these souls have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature. "


So, now we're also talking Baptism. Okay. The other Christian denominations have Baptism, too. So we've closed the gate on the Wiccans and Buddhists, but there's still a turn style for Baptists and Presbyterians. 

But then the Catechism goes on to say:

"This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity - this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed - is called "heaven."

The Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed--that would be saints--that's Catholic.  And maybe Episcopal, a little bit. 


I think if we had a priest sitting in front of us, he would nod if I explained it this way:


We know that you can only get to Heaven if you are a follower of Christ, because Jesus said that you could only get to Heaven through Him. So that much is a given.  And we, as Catholics, believe that the most perfect way to be a follower of Christ is to be a Catholic. The Catholic Church is 100% on board with that line of thinking. The Catholic Church is the church that Jesus Himself founded while he was alive on earth.  He didn't found the Mormon Church, He didn't found the Episcopal Church and he didn't found the Jehovah's Witnesses.


That's why the Catholic Church basically believes that you have to be Catholic to get to Heaven.


But....

The priest is already nodding...


It's up to God who gets in.  If God feels that you are in His friendship and grace, you're in.


But since we know for a fact that Jesus founded a whole church so you could achieve that, why would you take the chance that God wouldn't think, "Say, listen here, I went through a lot of trouble to send my Son there and He went through an awful ordeal to set up this channel between Me and you.  Don't watch this movie on your cell phone when you have a big flat screen TV."


So the answer is Yes.  and No.  but Yes. But not really. But Yes. But ....

Simply Put

This is the toughest question I have ever had.

Dear Sister,
 I am looking for a saint that can help me with rest, relaxation, and the pursuit of pleasure. I am a workaholic and type A personality. I'm also co-dependent. All of this adds up to me coming in last in my life. I absolutely have to change this and I need some help. I thought if I had a patron saint of pleasure and/or relaxation, I could ask him/her for help everyday until I develop some healthy life balance. Thank you!!

Before I address my own problem in answering this question, let me assure you that what I'm about to say is not an admonishment to the dear reader who posited this in clear need of "healthy life balance". You can't help anyone if you are completely burned out and have no time to recharge your batteries. If you have children, it's not even safe.

The problem for me is finding you a patron saint. Because basically, I can't think of any saints who put themselves first in any way, rested, relaxed or in some cases, even slept much.

St. Catherine of Sienna only slept for about 2 hours a night. She fasted continually, sometimes surviving on only the Host. She didn't live long at all.

The Apostles walked as far as their feet could carry them, non stop, until they were stopped by martyrdom.

St. Sebastian spent all his time preaching to soldiers to lay down their arms, stop warring, turn the other cheek and all the other things we like to pretend Jesus didn't say because we're too weak to find another way to solve our differences. They got sick of Sebastian and shot him full of arrows. He survived.  Then he went back to tell them a few more things and they clubbed him to death.

Penniless St. John of God found a house, begged for money to rent it, begged for sheets and mattresses and supplies and medicine AND took care of the sick people who came there.  If they couldn't come or didn't come, he went and got them and carried to the his hospital. When it caught on fire he carried everyone out and then went back for the precious mattresses and bedpans.

I don't recall Mother Teresa having any spa time. And Jesus Himself washed the feet of His disciples.

Even the saints who actually didn't help anyone but themselves, the desert hermits who eshewed living in society because they found they couldn't stay holy and pure living among other people and the temptations there, spent all their time praying and fasting, devoting their every thought to God.

I just can't think of a single saint who knew how to relax. That's pretty much what made them saints. Work for God on a heroic level.

I do think you need to relax and recharge.  I just can't think of a saint who was into that. If anything, reading the lives of the saints will make you feel like you should be doing more. A lot more.

So let's take a step back and think about what you're doing.  You're a doormat.  What are you helping people do?  Are you helping them find money for their chemo treatments? Or are you doing their homework for them?  If you're doing the later, you're actually not helping at all.  Are you feeding the hungry? or are you making the kids afterschool snacks?  They can get their own snacks.  They can get you a snack. That would be more helpful to them because they should learn to do for themselves and others.

Are you helping the least and the last? or are you helping people who could do whatever it is you're doing for themselves.  Because if they could do those things for themselves, they could also be training themselves to help the least and the last. Are you following this?

Put simply, don't help people be lazy.

Is your workaholicness stemming from ego?  Is it that no one can do it as well as you, so you just do it yourself because you want it done a certain way?  Get over yourself. You might actually be robbing someone else of a simple pleasure, like making a nice sandwich or washing the car with the kids.

You're probably doing a lot of things that don't even need doing.

A saint for you? Let's try St. Francis de Sales, who had a lot to say about something that you desperately need: simplicity.

When a simple soul is to act, it considers only what it is suitable to do or say, and then immediately begins the action, without losing time in thinking what others will do or say about it. And after doing what seemed right, it dismisses the subject; or if, perhaps, any thought of what others may say or do should arise, it instantly cuts short such reflections, for it has no other aim than to please God, and not creatures, except as the love of God requires it. Therefor, it cannot bear to be turned aside from its purpose of keeping close to God, and winning more and more of his love for itself. -----St. F. de Sales.

Rakes and Brooms

Wheeeee!  It's been a whirlwind week doing absolutely nothing new and everything exactly the way we always do!  How does every moment get taken up so thoroughly? Ordinary time is never ordinary.  We have added gardening back into the schedule.  Getting the dirt out from under our nails has certainly taken up some extra time.

Now to clean up the mess I've left with the last few posts.

One reader points out that I said mortal sin "kills the soul" and that the soul cannot be killed. The soul never dies.  She is 100% correct. I was being dramatic it seems.  Mortal sin kills one's relationship with God, shuts down the channel of grace.  The soul lives on, which is exactly why you don't want to find yourself in a state of mortal sin, because your soul will indeed  live on throughout eternity...in Hell.  No one wants that. Oddly, people do choose it.

Another reader thinks one can't die from the D.T.'s. Au contrare.  One certainly can.  Just another reason to not head down that road in the first place.

Dear Sr. MM....where to begin...... I worked on a drug that was genetically engineered to cure breast cancer. I also worked on a pediatric drug that was genetically engineered to immunize millions of children in developing countries. Now I am finding out I have committed 2 mortal sins.......so should I die tonight, according to the Church, I am straight off to hell!? Perhaps I am being slightly facetious, but not really.......Personally I think St Francis' example is all I need, but now all these new sins worry me somewhat......especially since I am not about to leave my field.......

No you haven't committed any mortal sins at all.  Thanks for your hard work! We all appreciate it. We're not Christian Scientists.  The Church is talking about genetic engineering of people: choosing the sex of a baby (if and when that becomes possible), say, or in vitro fertilization.

I do worry about thinking that the example of St. Francis is all you need. Although that is a lovely thought, if you really want to go there, you have to trade your clothes with a homeless person and not work at a job at all, just beg for what you need.  And, no shoes.... 

 Why is it impossible to pray for anyone or anything besides oneself when in a state of mortal sin?

Mother Teresa was on board with this line of thought.  You have turned your back on God.  It's as though, by committing a mortal sin, you've said to God, "Ha! I need to go ahead and do this and I really don't care what You think.  I think You're crazy to think what I'm doing here is even wrong! Okay, maybe it is wrong, but I just really want to do it and you can take a hike."

You've wished yourself into the cornfield.  Anything you do besides try to get yourself back in God's grace is futile. 

I hope this clears out some of our weeds!

UnOrdinary

I believe I started our recent discussion by talking about Ordinary Time.  At least I think I did, since I can't actually remember what happened that far back.  I hope I never witness a crime, besides the fact that there would have been a crime committed and no one wants that, I would never remember what time I saw the robber leave the bank, or what day that was or what color his ski mask was.

But I digress.

We have to talk about one more thing in regard to the issue of what is and is not a mortal sin which is how actually ordinary things can fall under that category.  I believe the discussion also began because the question was about mortal sin being almost impossible to commit.

So not true, as they say.

Here's where the difficulty lies: some things that are mortal sins aren't sins at all. So there are the easy ones that are mortal sins, the end period. Pornography, murder, missing Mass on Sunday, premarital sex, dealing illegal drugs.  Easy to avoid, one would hope.  Or if not easy, like missing Mass, as least cut and dried.

But there are some things that aren't sins until they are.  It's not a sin to drink or gamble.  It's not a sin to shop or watch television.  But all those things could be mortal sins when done in excess. Excessive shopping is as destructive as gambling when gambling becomes an addiction.  If all you do is watch television, you've crossed into sloth, a deadly sin.

I mentioned that one of my favorite things about the Catholic Church is the road map that is provided by being a one of the faithful.  This includes a "Not To Do" list.  Following the map will help you stay on the road, but it will always be you and only you walking the path.

So I can tell you a million times that it's good for to give things up, offer things up, discipline yourself against bad habits and reserve your harshest judgment for yourself, but if you decide certain things are okay for you to do because you can 'handle it', you may be in for a rude awakening.

I'll offer you this thought: whatever it is, if it's potentially sinful and you do it everyday, you may be on the wrong road.  When does one beer everyday or a glass of wine become two, when does two become three?  Are you sober after one?  Are you sober after two?  Why don't you want to be sober?

When I was first thinking this all over, I was thinking about the Baptists.  As a child, I always thought it was kind of funny that the Baptists didn't allow drinking, card playing or dancing. Dancing? Really?  Canasta? Come on.

Now I can make a strong case for all three.  Not all dancing, certainly. But you see the problem we can have with dancing.

And before you laugh and say, "Yes! Nowadays! That dancing is sinful to watch, let alone, well, dance!", consider that when the waltz was invented it was scandalous because the man held the woman in his arms while they danced.  That could lead to lust.  Even today.  Maybe those Baptists are onto something.

So before we move on to a couple of questions that have arisen from these thoughts, let me leave you with this important information.  The reason some sins are called mortal sins is because they kill your soul.  Small sins turn your attention from God to other things.  Big sins cut you off from God altogether.  But it isn't God turning away from you. It's you turning away from God.  A mortal sin is when you turn away from God on purpose.

"Never!" you say.  Really.  Ask St. Peter about that.

Its Own Punishment

So yesterday we waded into the the "what makes a mortal sin" part of a reader's question.  Since that's not rocket science, we pretty much got through it.

There were some follow up questions, which we'll also get to, but for now, we're moving on to the really difficult part:

I also remember back in school days learning that habits or addictions may not be sinful. Why?

Let's take a deep breath.  Which habits?  Biting your nails? Not a sin.  Internet porn? Sin.

The problem we are facing in talking about addiction and sin is that when we say we are addicted to something, we are saying we are utterly powerless against the need to do whatever we are addicted to. And if that is actually true, then we are not sinning anymore.  So the question comes down to: is that true?

And all addictions are not created equally.  Being addicted to gambling or shopping (either of which are not sinful in themselves) is not like being addicted to meth, heroin or booze.  Drugs and alcohol alter the brain's chemistry in a way that actually can make you helpless.  You can actually die if you stop suddenly with no help.

But eventually, so can gambling and shopping alter your brain's chemistry, because the thing that was once a habit now releases dopamine into your brain and makes you feel better. So now your own brain has caused an addiction by rewarding you with a drug it has produced itself.  You have made yourself into a drug addict.  Addiction always brings with it diminishing returns, meaning, you have to have more and more of the thing to feel good.

Until you're not whole anymore.  St. Augustine said, "Sin is its own punishment."  How true.

The problem in defining the difference between addiction and sin is that at some point the thing that became an addiction was a choice.  You don't have a martini and become an alcoholic.  You don't drop a nickel in a slot machine and become a gambler who can't stop.  Even if you spend that evening dropping in nickel after nickel, you still have a choice: Don't go back tomorrow.

Obviously, the best thing to do is to just eliminate all bad habits.  The strength it takes to stop biting your nails will pay off when you have to stand up to some harder problems.  That's why the nuns were always on your case.


Your soul and your body are connected. They are one thing, which is you.  If you kill your body, you kill your soul, and if you kill your soul, you can also kill your body.  If you are destroying yourself, you are sinning.  That would be a mortal sin.

But what about the helplessness of addiction?  This is my own take on it and I urge you to get on the internets or go the library and read what wiser people have to say on the subject, especially wise Catholics who deal with addiction or addicts.  My own thought is that there does seem to be some point where a person is helpless against the sin of say, drunkenness.  Whenever that is, the drunkenness is no longer a sin.  Does that mean the alcoholic is no longer sinning?  I don't think so.  I think maybe the failure to get help becomes the sin.  The willingness to destroy yourself and those around you with no attempt to get yourself in check becomes the sin.  

But don't go by me.  These are just the conclusions I've drawn from my thoughts on the matter based on my understanding of the nature of sin, God's loving forgiveness, having been around a surprising number of various addicts and the daily struggle they face, and listening to the thoughts of people smarter than me.

I truly don't believe I have a full handle on the situation.  The medical community tells us new things about our mind body connection every day.  There actually are people who can become physically addicted to a substance right away because of their genetic make up. 

I will say that people who suffer from addiction face hell on earth, often on a daily basis, and sometimes well into their recovery.  They have to battle the urges, which are physical and mental, give up friends and family who drag them down, face the judgment and condescension of society hour by hour, day by day.

Let's pray for all of them.

Now You Know

It's spring and the world is as green as the priest's vestments at Mass. One of my very favorite things about the Catholic Church is that we don't have to flap around trying to figure out how to get closer to God.  We have a map all laid out for us called the calendar.  Where are we now. YOU ARE HERE.

In Ordinary Time.  Green days. Jesus has gone back to Heaven. The Disciples have been sent on their way. We are making our way through life with all the new information we've gained from living according to the map. A perfect day for this question:


Sister, My question is about sin. Someone told me recently that it is nearly impossible to mortally sin as three things have to be present. What is this person talking about? And in confession once the priest said that being angry isn't a sin. I kept on with my list and didn't think to ask why it isn't. And in that prayer during Mass we say we sin on thoughts, words, and deeds. How do you sin in thought? I also remember back in school days learning that habits or addictions may not be sinful. Why? Thanks.

That poor person.  Yikes!  She's right about the three things, but it's FAR from impossible to sin anyhow.

So let's do the easy one first: What the priest said.  Being angry is not a sin.  Staying angry is a sin. Harboring anger is a sin.  So, when you hear the statement that anger is a sin, being angry, as the priest said, is not a sin.  You are human and you will react as a human being and you will feel angry.  I once heard a psychologist say that anger is unexpressed hurt.  I felt that that was quite a revelation.

I thought about when I have been angry, the normal everyday flashes of irritation or slow boils. I've been cut off in traffic!  Yes, actually, you' there, cutting me off, you've been rude there and that kind of hurt my feelings if you get right down to it, that you would treat me that way, but I can't do anything about it but honk as you cheerily wave to me to indicate that you had to do that because you were on your phone and not as your best, driving-wise.  So now I'm angry.

If I stay angry, if I don't say a prayer and forgive you, I will be sinning.  I have to get my emotions in check and pull myself together.  And get your license plate number.

I'm kidding.  I'm not going to stoop to revenge. That would also be a sin.

It would not be a sin, however, if the reason you cut me off is that you were swirling around traffic, drunk as a skunk.  Then it would be my duty to call.

I hope that clears that all up.

Now onto what you need to do to commit a mortal sin.

1. The sin is a grave sin. Some of these are obvious, like murder. Some are not so obvious. We'll get to that.

2. You have to know it's a sin.

3. You have to do it anyhow.

My guess is that your friend thinks that #2 will get her off the hook.  You may commit a mortal sin, but you don't know it's a mortal sin.  But I'll bet her thinking takes her to the next step: "I don't believe this is a mortal sin." My guess is that she thinks that she gets to decide for herself what is and is not a grave sin. That's not the case.

Here is a perfect example. The Church has deemed it a mortal sin to miss your Sunday Obligation to attend Mass. Did you know that?  If you didn't, and you've missed Mass because you didn't feel like going or anything short of being very sick or buried alive, then none of your Mass missing, no matter what the cause was a mortal sin.

But I JUST TOLD YOU.  So now when you miss Mass, you are committing a mortal sin. It doesn't matter if you don't think it's a grave sin. The Church says it is.  It's not me making this up. You can look it up for yourself.

Now you are choosing to ignore what the Church to which you have pledged your faith has told you is a grave sin.

And since it's pretty easy to choose the Superbowl party over Mass....it's also pretty easy to commit a mortal sin.

Drunk driving is a mortal sin.  Premarital sex is a mortal sin.  Looking at dirty pictures is a mortal sin. Lust is a mortal sin.  In fact, the Vatican added some new sins to the list in 2008: polluting, genetic engineering, being obscenely rich, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice.

I can't imagine why abortion and pedophilia are on this list.  Those aren't new mortal sins. Those have always been mortal sins.  Frankly, although there has been plenty of argument to the contrary, so has being obscenely rich and causing social injustice.  That just leave polluting, drug dealing and genetic engineering.

 Bishop Girotti elaborated by saying that mortal sins also included taking or dealing in drugs, and social injustice which caused poverty or “the excessive accumulation of wealth by a few.”

To which I reply, "Since when is this news?"  Although I have read some pretty tortured explanations of why Jesus didn't mind if you don't share your money.  I think He was pretty clear on the topic of poverty and money. I have, in fact, staked my life on it.

I'm sure the readers will weigh in on our thoughts so far.  You question has a whole slippery slope second half.  So we'll digest part one before we move on.

The Great Unwashed

So, trying to be a good organist, I actually read Musica Sacra, the encyclical on Magisterium of Music at the Mass(on the web). Changing words to anything at the Mass is not ok--but lots of parish musicians don't know it, as they figure the selections in the missalette are approved by the Church--they aren't. They are just selections that the publishing company thinks will sell. If a congregation claps, it's a signal to the musicians that they are putting on a show instead of serving the congregation's music needs. Holding hands for the Our Father is Pentacostal--and many Charismatics have picked it up since it "feels good". Not a Catholic practice. Makes lots of folks feel creepy. And while we're talking about creepy, what about couples kissing at the sign of peace? 

Is there a question here somewhere?

I'm sorry that the great unwashed don't actually read the Musica Sacra.  I've also found they don't read books or newspapers.  We can't be too unhappy when they show up at Mass, like they're supposed to, and clap their little hands.

They're supposed to not to do this and definitely do that.  They can't keep track of it all.

 We can't throw tomatoes at people when they hold hands during the Our Father.  We can't keep a bang of empty tin cans to hurl at folks if they mistakenly do things because they feel good, like those misguided Pentacostals.

We also can't judge, look down our noses at other faiths, or feel superior to others.

It makes me feel creepy that people feel so creepy about other people.  Remember when Jesus hugged that leper?  Everyone thought that was creepy, too.  Why did he do that? Because nothing matters but souls.

I would prefer it, I suppose, if people didn't kiss in lieu of a handshake of Peace.  It does seem to take the focus away from the Mass.  Or it could.  But I'm really not going to get my wimple in a twist about it, because a really big Miracle is about to happen and if two people want to express their hope of peace for each other with a kiss, I'm not going to shout, "Get a room!" across the pews at them.

If the congregation is getting too loosey goosey with the Solemnity of the Mass, that's Father's call to ask everyone to get a grip.  Meanwhile the nuns have some long standing advice, "Mind your own garden."

Rockin' Rita

I simply must know about the painting of the nun in the rocker...there has to be a great story to that! 

It's just St. Rita.  You can tell which saint is which, to a large degree, by what's going on on the medal or the painting or the holy card.  You'll notice she has a red mark on her head there.  That's because St. Rita received the Stigmata.  Not the whole Stigmata. Just the Crown of Thorns. And not the whole Crown of Thorns, just the one thorn there in the middle of her forehead, which just stuck there and festered.  It smelled terrible and the other nuns couldn't stand to be around her, so she had to spend the rest of her life in her room by herself.  But after she died, her room forever afterward smelled like roses, which you see in the picture.  That's how you know it's St. Rita in the picture.  A nun with a forehead stigmata surrounded by roses.

Here's how St. Rita usually looks.

I can say with absolute certainty, however, that St. Rita did not have a rocking chair. The rocking chair is the whimsy of the artist, as is St. Rita's jolly demeanor.  St. Rita wasn't a particularly jolly type.  She had a rough time of it.  She had managed to talk him into to converting from his rotten ways, but for a long time her husband was a terrible man.  His evil ways caused him to be bumped off by the Mafia even though he had tried to make amends. Her sons, who had been good boys, became bent on avenging their father's death when they were older. Rita prayed they would not doom themselves to Hell by succeeding, and her prayers were answered when they both died of illness.  She wanted to be a nun, but the convent wouldn't let her in because she had been married and had children.  When she finally did get in because angels flew her over the convent wall, the nuns didn't really want her there and tested her continually, like with the watering a stick routine.  You would think that angels flying her in there would have given them pause, but apparently the nuns weren't impressed.  Maybe angels flew people in there a lot.  I can't think why they would have been so distrusting of Rita, otherwise.  Maybe the angels dropped her off and said, "This one could use some more suffering, have at her."  The nuns did pay some attention, because they let her in.

And then she got the Stigmata thorn and had to be stinky and stay by herself.  I can't imagine that she was sitting in a rocker like a drunken sailor, laughing to herself all day.  And whatever she sat on, it definitely was not a rocker, because the rocking chair was not invented until the early 18th century, 300 years after Rita went to her reward.

She probably does look like that now, in Heaven. Rocker and all.

I can't find out any information about the painting.  It appears that her mean dead husband is haunting her.  That's my guess of who that is with the cane. St. Rita is the patron saint of bad marriages, so that makes sense.

That thing that looks like a brain hanging from the ceiling is probably a beehive.  The day St. Rita was baptized as an infant, her family noticed a swarm of bees around her crib.  But the bees just buzzed around, harmlessly flying in and out of her mouth.

St. Rita today.

She also seems to be holding something in her fingers.  My thought here is that she is eating a fig.  When Rita was on her deathbed, one here cousins asked her if there was anything she they could bring Rita from her former home.  Rita asked for a rose and a fig.  There shouldn't have been any roses or figs there in the winter snow, but the cousin found the roses blooming and the fig tree with a single ripe fig.  The rose bush is still here, blooming, as is St. Rita herself.  She's still here, too.  She is incorrupt.  She doesn't look all that incorrupt to me, but she looked better when they first dug her up years after her death.

People who have visited her there in her glass case have said she sometimes moves around in there, up and down, or turns her head or that her eyes open and close.

Entangled

It's that time of year again. We have yet to find Amelia Earhart or Jimmy Hoffa, but this might be the year we unearth both of them in our garden.  I can't think why, every single year, we find ourselves entangled in thorns and vines, but we do.

We don't completely neglect our garden.  It doesn't rain much here, so we do water it. Sometimes.  Miraculously, most everything survives.  You know I don't just toss the word "miraculous" around.  Miracles are instantaneous and unexplained.  So, our garden is half miraculous, if that is possible.  It's not instantaneous, but the fact that everything is alive and not shriveled sticks calling out to St. Rita is certainly unexplained.

Why isn't St. Rita the patron saint of people with green thumbs?  I digress.

Watering is about all we have time for.  I was compelled to start writing this blog because I thought it would be of interest for people to understand what often happens to people with a calling these days. Three of us live in this little house. I have a salary and we live on that.  As a result, in many ways, my life here is just like your life. I have to navigate the same world in largely the same way as you do.

What is the calling of a nun?  It's really very simple. My job is to get myself to Heaven and to drag you with me.  It's like when you are on an airplane and the stewardess explains that should that oxygen contraption drop, you should put it on your own face before you try to get it over your child.  It seems counter intuitive, but the truth is, if you pass out while you're fumbling around there, everyone's in trouble.

That's really not all that different from what Jesus is asking of you, either.  The difference is that it's all we do.  I remember listening to a man give a lecture about composers.  He was telling composers that they should not worry about whether or not someone would actually be able to play what they had written, because there were people in the world who would be able to play it no matter what because "that's all they do", meaning, there were pianists who spend all day every day doing nothing but playing the piano and it would be their job to figure out how in the world to play the composition.

Because that's all they do.

Is this my excuse for my messy garden?  No, it is not.

I turn once again to my original intention in taking up the blog, and confess that, I can't keep up with everything.  I do keep up with almost everything.  The garden is on the receiving end of my failure.

I also like to talk about it a little because it illustrates another point of which people are not aware.  Some nuns are messy.  I think people have this illusion that all nuns are neat little people with very clean finger nails, tidy and composed, organized and collated.

That's not untrue.  But it's not because all nuns are orderly and well groomed.  It has more to do with not having much in the first place in the way of clothing and clutter and with the early nun training in obedience and scheduling.

The garden has simply dropped off our schedule.  Back on it goes.  It's worse than ever this year. A great opportunity for suffering, lacerations, sweating and dirty fingernails.

While we're out there, offer a little prayer for that nun you had who always looked a little askew, with her wimple a little crooked or a wisp of hair that would never stay under her habit giving away that she was a redhead.  She had an especially hard road with her calling.

Mass Mush

Hi Sister,
When the priest says "we ask you to receive us and be pleased with the sacrifice we offer you with humble and contrite hearts", I assume the sacrifice he's talking about is Jesus' sacrifice for us, so I don't understand how we're offering it, or why we're asking God to be pleased with it, which we already know He is.

Nope.  The sacrifice he's talking about is not Jesus' sacrifice for us.  This little prayer happens at the Offertory, when we offer our humble gifts to God.

The Mass is in three parts:

1. Getting our heads together for what's about to happen.

2. Offer some humble gifts to God.

3. A Miracle.

Then everyone shuffles out, grumbling because the people in front of them are walking so slowly or because someone held hands when they shouldn't have.  Or because someone should have held hands but they didn't.

We didn't always have such a fancy Mass.  The early Church just prayed and broke the bread.  They just had two parts to their ritual: Pray/Miracle. Eventually, they realized that that wasn't really enough to separate the Miracle from just having dinner together, so they began making it a little more formal.  By the middle ages, it was so formal that no one could see it,  separated from the congregation who no longer spoke Latin by a wall or a railing, the priest with his back to everyone.  So we dialed it back.

I think it was a very good change. Many people disagree.

In any case, we spend the first third of the Mass worshiping, asking for forgiveness, praying for the living and the dead, listening to scripture and getting some encouragement from our priest. We profess our faith and the priest forgives all our venial sins.

Then the altar servers represent us and bring the bread and water and wine up to the altar. We ask that God accept our humble gift. Then the priest washes his hands.

Ever wonder why his hands are so dirty that he has to wash them?  I always thought it was because he wanted to to super clean because he was about to handle the Body of Christ.  Then again, it is rather a symbolic washing, just dippy dipping his fingertips in the water.  He doesn't haul out a bar of Lava or squirt himself with hand sanitizer.

But in the early Church the Offertory was also the 'collection' time.  Not the tidy basket of tithing we have today, but chickens and pigs and grapes and corn, gathered for the poor.  So there was a time when the priest really did have to wash his hands before he continued with part three.

Part three is when God turns our humble offering into the Body and Blood of Christ.  A Miracle.

Then everyone starts jockeying to get to the parking lot first, often vexed by the fact that if there are going to be any announcements, this is where they go.  Sometimes they bolt right after Communion, zipping out before the final hymn strikes its first chord.

I am continually amazing that 2000 years of streamlining and nit picking to make the Mass 100% understandable to the community still falls short.  But...

...that's why I'm here!

Winning the Race

Dear Sr.Mary Martha,
Now that we are on a lighter topic, I would like to ask who is the patron saint of runners? I have been saying a quick prayer to St Sebastian to help me run like the wind, and he does seem to intercede on my behalf. However, I was hoping you might give us some more "meat" around this question please - especially anyone who can help with speed AND endurance....:-)

St. Sebastian certainly had endurance.  You are not going to find a depiction of St. Sebastian where he is not shot full of arrows, tied to a tree. The people who did that intended to kill him. He did not die. St. Irene came along and nursed him back to health.  Then St. Sebastian back to those people and said, "Ha! Look here!  You didn't kill me!"  So they clubbed him to death.

Before all of this St. Sebastian had been a soldier.  Hearing the words of Jesus made him decide not to wage war any more, but Sebastian was still out there with his battalion,  telling them to lay down their arms.  That went over like a lead balloon, which is why, eventually, everyone wanted him to just shut up and they tied him to a tree.

Where he was shot full of arrows and didn't die. I'd call that endurance.

I have a hair brained notion about speed. How about St. Peter?  Bear with me here.  As far as I know, St. Peter didn't run anywhere, unless he was in a hurry, to say, get up some stairs.  But he did walk all over the known world, spreading the Word of Jesus.

These were just people walking around talking to anyone who would listen.  They didn't have advance publicity and posters on phone poles. They didn't have a Facebook page or event listings.  They didn't have cell phones, or regular phones or email.  They didn't have a stage, or a hall or a dinner in a hotel ballroom with a podium.  They didn't have a church.  They didn't have loud speakers, microphones or bull horns.

St. Peter had to walk to a town and stand up on a hill or a berm and talk.  Shout, probably.  He walked and talked and led by example.

Within 50 years, everyone knew about this Christian idea. People were joining in droves. 150 years later, the spread of Christianity was causing kings and emperors to try to squelch the tide. People died rather than give up their new found faith.   150 after that, the known world was predominately Christian.
That's fast.

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.