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More on First Saturdays: the results of an experiment I didn't know I was doing.

Some time ago, while I was working on the Total Consecration, I wrote about my reluctance to enter deeply into Marian devotions -- a reluctance that was brought into high relief when I encountered a certain online book by Fr. William Most that discussed Mary as "co-Redemptrix":

"This is the kind of Marian writing that makes the tops of Protestants' heads blow off. ...[A]s I read it, I found myself struggling with some of the concepts, precisely because of the Protestant, anti-Marian influence in American Christian culture. It was very edifying, because intellectually, Father Most's arguments make a great deal of sense to me. And yet the logical conclusion of his arguments suggests an attitude toward the Blessed Virgin that feels radical to me. Deep down, it seems, I feel a sort of repulsion against fully embracing the idea of Mary as intercessor, which as I search my history seems can only have come from contact with American Protestantism. I didn't even realize that I felt that internal repulsion until reading Fr. Most's arguments forced me to confront it."

 

I have long had that feeling about many Marian devotions. Take, for example, the Five First Saturdays devotion. Originating in a request that Our Lady reportedly made in an apparition to Lucia Santos, it is a superficially pleasant-sounding-enough activity: Attend Mass, say a rosary, go to Confession, and spend fifteen minutes in meditation, all with the intention of making reparation for sins committed against the mother of Jesus. Do it five first Saturdays in a row, and you are done. A simple little thing, not terribly demanding, a one-time commitment, like making a pilgrimage.

But I was always bothered by the fact that, in recommending it to us, the Church, or Mary, didn't stop there, but instead went on to promise something in return. Here is a direct quote of what Sister Lucia reports that Mary told her in her vision:

"I promise to assist at the hour of death, with the graces necessary for salvation, all who on the First Saturday of five consecutive months confess their sins, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, with the purpose of making reparation to my Immaculate Heart."

One resistance:  I felt that this promise ...cheapened the devotion somehow. And that Mary had made it that much harder to do it with the purpose of making reparation, by dangling a carrot of promised graces before us.

It felt presumptuous too. All I have to do is check off these items, and I get the graces necessary for salvation? (I hadn't noticed the subtle difference between promising salvation, and promising the graces necessary for salvation.)

Finally, it seemed disturbingly superstitious, which is to say that I could not see any logical or natural connection between "do these things now, and when you die, possibly far off in the future, after who knows what temptations have assailed you and after you have failed in who knows how many ways, you will get something you don't deserve, just because you checked off the boxes." Even if I mean it now, suppose I become hard and unrepentant later? How can doing this now protect me and help me then? This put it in company with a number of other Marian devotions, e.g., the wearing of the Brown Scapular (what? Die with your magic necklace on and you're good to go? How does THAT work?)

Okay, well, I decided to try to do it anyway. I get Saturday mornings off, at least if Mark isn't traveling, and so I didn't have much excuse not to give it a whirl. I prayed for the grace to purify my intentions, so that I really could do it with the purpose of making reparation; I found a local parish that had a Saturday morning Mass; and off I went, on the first Saturday in July, which turned out to be the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I went on to complete the devotion over the next four months as prescribed.

For the benefit of anyone else who is creeped about Marian devotions because they smack of superstition, presumption, and illogical connections, I want to report back on two results that had the effect of removing my creeped-outedness completely. The caveat is that they are specific to me -- I haven't the foggiest idea whether other people would get similar results. Another caveat is that I can only speak for this moment in time -- for all I know I may think differently after life has thrown more curveballs at me. I am just throwing it out there, as a sort of personal testimony, in the now.

Direct result #1 of doing the Five First Saturdays: I discovered that I rather like going to Mass and confession once a month. This was a bit of a surprise. I rather thought I would be ready to have a "Woo-hoo, I did it, now I'm done!" party. Instead, by the time I had been through five of them, I wanted to keep it up. And so now it is sort of an established habit of mine. I go to Mass on the first Saturday of the month, if I can. I show up early enough to say the rosary with the other folks who are there. I go to Confession. After my penance I stick around for fifteen minutes. I like it. I don't know why I never thought of going to Mass on Saturday mornings before, along with the trip to the gym and the library and getting my hair cut and running personal errands and all those other things I try to do in those few hours I have to myself each week. It was a great idea that I somehow never came up with on my own. I don't know for sure if I will keep it up for the rest of my life, but it has certainly lasted longer than the five Saturdays I originally signed up for, and who knows how much good I will get out of it? Maybe exactly what is necessary.

Direct result #2: On the second Saturday, the priest in the confessional advised me to make the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary. If you have been following along at all, you know that the Total Consecration, encompassing as it does pretty much all authentic Marian devotion, feels to me transcendently more radical than something like the five first Saturdays. Here I was, just trying to check off the boxes and asking please for the grace to do it with the right intentions and not the wrong ones, and now I was being invited to go deeper. I went away knowing I had at least a responsibility to find out more about the Consecration and to discern whether I should make it. You know by now that I did this, and that I made the Consecration in the fall.

Has it changed me in any real way? I can't know that for sure. I hope so. But its totality, inherently, promises more than five Saturdays seems capable of promising. The Five First Saturdays seemed so mean a commitment; so much more might happen to me afterwards; it seemed insane to accept that in any natural way, in any just way, they could be part of the cause of graces received maybe fifty years from now or more. But the Total Consecration promises to be a bridge across the unknown future, between now and that hour of my death, across all the pitfalls that could still swallow me, across the pavement of my good intentions. It is not a guarantee, but it is an accessible path from here to there. And there is no doubt that the invitation came as a result of the First Saturdays.

Obviously there is no way I can generalize from my experience to anyone else's. I only know what is inside me. And I have written before that I am fully aware of the proclivity of the human mind to see patterns wherever we want to see them. Perhaps I am only unconsciously justifying my irrational decisions by overlaying a perception of rationality that comes from outside myself and cannot be falsified by any external test. Like persisting in the belief that my spouse loves me; I can't prove its truth or falsity, but it is certainly convenient to think so.

It is just that I tried something that I couldn't make sense of, and received a result that -- well -- not so much made it make sense, as left the possibility that it could make sense. And as a result, I am not sorry I tried. YMMV.

 

Par, avec, en, pour.

I posted a couple of days ago about being bothered by the difficult-to-parse prepositions in liturgical phrases, such as in the Doxology and in scriptural passages like "in Christ shall all be brought to life."

One of the things that pleased me about St. Louis de Montfort's True Devotion to Mary was a little section near the end, where he really delved into four different prepositional phrases with Mary as their object.

[T]here are some very sanctifying interior practices [of this devotion] for those whom the Holy Ghost calls to high perfection.

These may be expressed in four words: to do all our actions by [or through] Mary, with Mary, in Mary, and for Mary; so that we may do them all the more perfectly by [or through] Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus, and for Jesus."

Let's first take the phrasing back to the original French to clear up some ambiguities in the translated text. It goes like this: par Marie, avec Marie, en Marie et pour Marie.

I have two different translations of the text, one of which gives us "by" for par, and the other of which gives "through." If you had more than a little French then you know that par can be translated with either word; the sense is "by way of" or "via" or "mediated by." It does not signify "next to" (as "by" sometimes means in English) nor "from one side to the other" (as "through" sometimes means in English). Avec and pour correspond closely with "with" and "for," respectively. En is one of two common prepositions translated as "in" (the other is dans), and it can mean in a place, or in a state, or in a period of time -- or by a type of transportation vehicle: as English speakers would say you go somewhere by car or by plane, the French say en voiture or en avion. it isn't in the literal sense of "enclosed within."

But we are not stuck speculating on meanings just based on our high school French, because St. Louis goes on to explain more precisely what he means by each of these four prepositional phrases.

Take the first of the four. "faire toutes ses actions par Marie" (to do every action through Mary, or "all through Mary"):

We must [il faut] do all our actions by/through [par] Mary; that is to say, we must obey her in all things, and in all things conduct ourselves by her spirit, which is the Holy Spirit of God...

In order that the soul may let itself be led by Mary's spirit, it must first of all renounce its own spirit and its own lights and wills before it does anything...

Secondly, we must deliver ourselves to the spirit of Mary to be moved and influenced by it in the manner she chooses. We must put ourselves and leave ourselves in her virginal hands, like a tool in the grasp of a workman, like a lute in the hands of a skillful player.... This can be done simply, and in an instant, by one glance of the mind, by one little movement of the will, or even verbally, by saying, for example, "I renounce myself, I give myself to thee, dear Mother..."

Thirdly, we must, from time to time, both during and after the action, renew the same act of offering and union...

The second of the four phrases is "faire toutes ses actions avec Marie" (to do every action with Mary, or "all with Mary").

...that is to say, we must in all our actions regard Mary as an accomplished model of every virtue and perfection[,] which the Holy Ghost has formed in a pure creature for us to imitate according to our little measure. We must therefore in every action consider how Mary has done it, or how she would have done it had she been in our place. For that end we must examine and meditate on the great virtues which she practiced during her life...particularly ...her lively faith... her profound humility... and her divine purity....

The third of the phrases is "faire toutes ses actions en Marie" (to do every action in Mary, or "all in Mary." Significantly, the saint does not tell us how to do everything, or anything, "in Mary." It is the only one of the four that lacks specific instructions. He seems not to know how one "does" an action "in Mary." Apparently there is no tip or trick that we can perform that, along with an action, makes that act happen "in" Mary.

But he does tell us that, if only we can know certain truths, perhaps we can "understand this practice." What follows is a lengthy description of what Mary is, what kind of "place" she represents. Here is an excerpt:

Thoroughly to understand this practice, we must first know that our Blessed Lady is the true terrestrial paradise of the New Adam, and that the ancient paradise was but a figure of her...

The Holy Ghost, by the mouth of the Fathers, also styles the Blessed Virgin the Eastern Gate, by which the high priest, Jesus Christ, enters the world and leaves it.... The sanctuary of the Divinity, the repose of the Most Holy Trinity, the throne of God, the city of God, the temple of God, the altar of God, the world of God...

..."My sister, my spouse, is a garden enclosed... a fountain sealed up."...in that virginal bosom, the soul shall be nourished with the milk of grace and maternal mercy... it shall be delivered of its troubles, fears and scruples; it shall be in safety against all its enemies...it shall be formed in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ in it.

Maybe the saint means to say that "in" Mary is not a way of doing things so much as it is a state of being, a state to which we can aspire through intellectual meditation and acts of trust and self-abandonment.

Finally, the fourth phrase: "faire toutes ses actions pour Marie" (to do everything for Mary, "all for Mary," the "Totus tuus" of Pope John Paul II's personal motto).

As we have given up ourselves entirely to her service, it is but just that we do everything for her as servants and slaves... [W]e must not remain idle, but, supported by her protection, we must undertake and achieve great things for this august sovereign. We must defend her privileges when they are disputed; we must stand up for her glory when it is attacked; we must draw all the world, if we can, to her service... we must speak and cry out against those who abuse her devotion to outrage her Son... we must pretend to no recompense for our little services, except the honor of belonging to so sweet a Queen, and the happiness of being united through her to Jesus her Son...

I think there are several interesting things to be taken away from this discussion.

First, although (probably because of the Pope's motto) the object of the devotion is often summarized as "Totus Tuus," or "All for You" -- all for Mary, or for Jesus through Mary -- it is actually a bit more complicated than that. It's not just "all for," but also "all through, all with, all in" Mary -- and all of that in order that everything we do, we do "through, with, in, and for" Jesus, the ultimate end.

Pondering the four prepositions, I find it easiest to think of them in terms of Mary's role with respect to us. If we do all through Mary, we renounce our own spirit and take up her own, to be led and guided and employed as she pleases. If we do all with her, we are her imitators, she our model. If we do all in her, we trust ourselves to her protection. If we do all for her, she is to us a mistress and a Queen.

It is sort of tempting to think: well then, being "in" Mary is a sure path to being "in" Jesus, and doing our actions "through" Mary is a sure way to do them "through" Christ, and so on. I am not sure that the four prepositions can really be separated out that way. But I do think it is a very simple first step to try that "one little movement of the will" so that an act may be done "through" Mary: "I renounce myself, I give myself to thee." That is a place to start, even if we are puzzled by the saint's advice about "in," and if we are overwhelmed at the thought of imitating the summit of created humanity, and if we are unsure what she requires of her servants. St. Louis says that the important thing about renouncing ourselves is that we do it, that it doesn't matter if it feels any different; it is still real. No one on earth, no barrier at all can keep us from mentally renouncing ourselves in this way at every moment of our lives. And so even if "for" or "in" or "with" doesn't make sense, we can all start with "through." And since what it means is simply to be led by the Holy Spirit in everything, what Christian could object?

Handwritten thanksgiving.

I approach my prayer life rather in the same way I approach housecleaning.  Which is to say:

Clearly, I like to think about ways of doing it, systems, etc. much more than I like to do it.  So a lot of times, when I decide "It's time to clean house!" what I really do is sit down and make a list of what needs to be done and a schedule by which I should do it, and before long the time is up and I have to do something different.

Also, my living space looks pretty tidy enough most of the time, except dead in the middle of the school day or when we're having a party.  It's 7 am and the kids aren't up yet, so my evening routine still hasn't been disturbed.  The floor is more or less clear of clutter, the kitchen counters are mostly empty except for a tray of chocolate-filled breakfast buns and a coffeemaker, the children's books aren't all in the shelves but they are at least in a neat pile on the floor by the couch.  I'm pretty sure there isn't a bunch of junk on the bathroom counters, and the schoolroom is fairly orderly.  

But if you looked closely at the kitchen counters you'd find some sticky stuff and crumbs, if you looked closely at the floor you'd find more sticky stuff, if you looked around the couch you'd find it had been a long time since the last vacuuming, and please don't open any cabinets or closet doors, nor look too closely at the rim of my toilet.

Somewhere in one of those drawers there's an old schedule reminding me that I was going to swipe the toilet with a brush every Wednesday morning.  Or maybe it was "make a kid swipe the toilet."  I don't remember.  It felt good to write it down.  Much better than actually doing it.

So.  My prayer life is like that too.

+ + +

A humorous analogy suddenly comes to me:  The Liturgy of the Hours is like Flylady for slobby prayer.

Do with that what you will.

+ + +

Oh, and one more thing:  I like blogging about cleaning more than I like cleaning.  And I like blogging about praying more than praying.  And apparently, blogging about cleaning and blogging about praying makes me feel a sense of satisfaction similar to what I imagine I might feel had I actually cleaned, or prayed.  Remember that next time you get impressed at my organizational skills.  They are really just a finely tuned means of procrastination.

+ + +

But I never will be cured, I think, of the attempt to fix my sloth/acedia through better planning.  Since I did the Marian consecration last month, I have been trying a number of new things.  Or maybe it's more accurate to say that I have been trying to look at the old things through a new lens.

I hit upon this idea to make myself a handwritten prayer-book.  

Last year, when I read through Introduction to the Devout Life (lots of posts on that here), I wound up carrying a well-dog-eared copy around everywhere and using it as a prayer manual for a while.  The many sections are not organized as a prayer book, but they give a method of morning prayer, a method of evening prayer, recommendations for confession, recommendations for preparing to attend Mass, etc., and I found it useful to refer back to the book often.   Note that the book didn't actually provide "prayers" as much as it did a "method of prayer."  But I like to have "prayers," so eventually, I sat down with de Sales's method of morning prayer and  I wrote out a formula that followed the method but was in my own words.  Well, some of St. Francis deS.'s words and some of my own.  I kept that sheet of paper next to my bed, which freed me up to keep the book in my handbag.  

I used that morning prayer for quite a long time.   I still use a memorized short excerpt from it many days.  ("Behold, O Lord, my poor heart which has conceived many good desires yet is too weak and wretched to put them into practice unless you grant Your heavenly grace.  This I beg, O Merciful God, through the passion and resurrection of Your Son, in whose honor I consecrate this and all my days.")

St. Louis de Montfort's book True Devotion to Mary contains a method called "This Devotion at Holy Communion" which suggests some ways to pray before, during, and after Communion.  I tried to follow along in the book a couple of times while I was in Mass but found it too cumbersome.  Because it doesn't exactly contain prayers but more an instruction on how to pray, and it's wordier than it has to be.  So finally I sat down and wrote out some pithy prayers that, if I prayed them, would be in accord with de Montfort's method.  (It was a little better, but I still need to tweak it.  The Mass follows a different rhythm now than it did in the saint's time, and it's harder to slip long personal prayer into it.   The intent of the vernacular Mass is, after all, for us to pray along with the Mass.)

I looked around at Mass and of course I always see many people thumbing well-worn prayer books and Magnificat issues and breviaries and things during the wait to go up for Communion or after communion or just before or just after Mass.  (I wonder how long before people will dare to use their Kindles and iPhones to access prayerbook apps in Mass?  I've seen people do it in the adoration chapel.)   But I know from experience that I get distracted by a thick book of prayers.  What I need is a book of just exactly the prayers I am working on using.  A morning prayer, an evening prayer, a short method of meditation before the Blessed Sacrament, a thanksgiving after Mass.  

So I got me a little Moleskine, the cheaper, thinner, brown-paper-covered kind, and began writing prayers down in it.  

I like it.  There are dozens of "morning prayers" to choose from; I can put in just the one or two I really am likely to use, plus I can write out my "own" one that I developed from St. Francis's method.  I can copy out prayers in Latin that I would like to learn.   (Working on the Anima Christi right now.)  I can write out an examination of conscience that leaves out the sins I am not likely ever to commit, and thus saves time.  

I think once I have it filled up I will want to do another draft.  Already I have crossed out and rewritten a few sections that turned out not to sound right, that I kept wanting to say differently.  But in the meantime I am finding it fruitful to have my own words, or at least words chosen by me, at my fingertips.

Let me give you one example.  So, one thing I've never been in the habit of doing is kneeling to make a prayer of thanksgiving after Mass.  (I was never catechized to do it, and although there are always some people that I see praying after Mass in the pews, of course most people are up and socializing, even at my solidly orthodox parish.)  I went looking for something, and OH MY they are loooong.  There is no way I could realistically do any of that with the four kids all wanting to get downstairs before the best doughnuts are gone.  So just as a practical matter I needed a short one.  

For the time being I used the "Hail Holy Queen" as a placeholder while I tried excerpting some of the longer ones, and I tried composing my own.  But what kept popping into my head was a musical antiphon from one of the psalms:  "How can I make a return to the Lord for what he has done to me?"  I didn't know which psalm, so I googled it, and found that it comes from Psalm 116.  

The whole psalm isn't really what I was looking for, but the second half is.  So I used just a few verses from that Psalm as my Thanksgiving After Mass:

How can I repay the LORD for all the great good done for me?

I will raise the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD.

I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.

Dear in the eyes of the LORD is the death of his devoted.

LORD, I am your servant, your servant, the child of your maidservant; you have loosed my bonds.

I will offer a sacrifice of praise and call on the name of the LORD.

I figure it works as well as anything else.  Having looked for a prayer with a Marian flavor, I liked the "child of your maidservant" bit. 

Anyway, I have a number of more prayers to add to the little book before it has everything I need on a daily basis, but it does seem like a good start, and I'm already using it regularly.  I'm totally going to recopy it more neatly, though, when I've got it all together.  Because that will be something I can do one of these days to put off actually praying.   Naturally.

Pocket-sized religious art.

I like prayer cards, a.k.a. holy cards, especially as items for babies to play with during Mass, as reminders scattered throughout my house, or as a pocket-sized text of a prayer I'm  using for a season.

 Here is a confession:

...gosh darn it, I sometimes really hate the art that comes on them.  A lot of it is pretty schlocky, and when we know what a modern saint looked like from her photographs, the pictures are sometimes ridiculously unlike the real live person.

I mean, come on:  St. Thérèse of Lisieux looks like this:

 

 

not this:

 

 

Anyway, today I stumbled across a site that seems to produce a better sort of holy card:  CatholicPrayerCards.org.  For about a quarter apiece you can buy holy cards that look like, um, an actual work of art, like this:

... or something a little more Eastern (remember:  icons are the anti-Thomas Kinkade):

... or a photo of the saint in life, perhaps complete with leprosy sores:

The photographic ones are my favorites.  Take a look at these:

            

I think I'll go through my children's "decks" of cards in their Mass bags and perhaps replace some of the more egregious examples of bad art with these.  

Because, really, folks.  We have Michelangelo in our court.  And Caravaggio.  And Raphael Sanzio. If you want something populist, I suppose you could go with Millet or something.  There is no reason Catholics should have to put up with bad religious art.  

Quick-takes style, Marian consecration edition.

1

I'm doing this seven quick takes thing because of my weird blogger's block.  I'm not actually going to bother with Mr. Linky.   Incidentally, another reader emailed me and said that she felt oddly introspective while doing the 33-day Montfortian consecration, and so it rang true that I am having trouble writing while doing it.

2

But this seems kind of strange to me, because (what with school starting and all) I can only do a wussy version of the consecration prep.  There's a little bit of reading, and a couple of prayers, both grabbed whenever I have time; a different focus in my spontaneous prayer throughout the day; a general attempt to turn from "the spirit of the world;" and I'm noticing more  frequently how often I screw up and prove myself a very worldly person.  The Montfort subroutine is running in the background of my real life.  Hasn't crashed the system yet.  

I'm aiming for Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, Oct. 7, or more likely, the next day, which is a Saturday when I can attend Mass and go to Confession.

3

After I read St. Louis de Montfort's True Devotion to Mary, I felt unsatisfied.  All the people who'd told me about it claimed it was this amazing, mindblowing work, but it didn't really ring with me.  Really, except for the explanation of the consecration itself, it all just seemed like a repeating string of assertions about Mary, little of which were new to me (but maybe they were new to the people he was writing to back then?) and none of which were backed up by any arguments that weren't themselves simple assertions.

"God in these times wishes his Blessed Mother to be more known, loved, and honoured than she has ever been."  Okay -- how do you know?  Why particularly in these times?  "God the Son imparted to his mother all that he gained by his life and death, namely, his infinite merits and his eminent virtues."  Where does that come from?  How do we know this?  

I think it is meant to be inspirational writing, rather than thought-provoking writing, and I am peculiarly un-susceptible to inspirational stuff.  

And lookie here what I found:

"Were I speaking to the so-called intellectuals of today, I would prove at great length by quoting Latin texts taken from Scripture and the Fathers of the Church all that I am now stating so simply.  I could also instance solid proofs... But I am speaking mainly for the poor and simple who have more good will and faith than the common run of scholars.  As they believe more simply and more  meritoriously, let me merely state the truth to them quite plainly."

Well, there's my problem.  I believe complexly and not quite so meritoriously, I guess.   Let me hope I can glorify God in my infirmity.

 

4

On the other hand, the idea of the consecration itself was thought-provoking and interesting.  So I went looking for more modern writers, less concerned about writing simply and plainly.  And I found a gem of an online book:  Mary in Our Life, by Rev. William C. Most.  It was written in the 1950s. The link goes to a table of contents that links to all the chapters, online, for free.  Much more my kind of "inspirational" writing.

5

This is the kind of Marian writing that makes the tops of Protestants' heads blow off.  The word "Co-Redemptrix" is bandied about, for example.  And as I read it, I found myself struggling with some of the concepts, precisely because of the Protestant, anti-Marian influence in American Christian culture.  It was very edifying, because intellectually, Father Most's arguments make a great deal of sense to me.  And yet the logical conclusion of his arguments suggests an attitude toward the Blessed Virgin that feels radical to me.  Deep down, it seems, I feel a sort of repulsion against fully embracing the idea of Mary as intercessor, which as I search my history seems can only have come from contact with American Protestantism.  I didn't even realize that I felt that internal repulsion until reading Fr. Most's arguments forced me to confront it.

 

6

At the same time, it's exciting to have read this, because it's the first time in a long while that I have had a theological concept of any kind to grapple with in a radically new way.  I think it's funny that the concept itself isn't particularly new, and is even uber-traditional.  But it's really blown my mind and I still have a lot to think about.

(And yes, I could write more details, but I am having trouble expressing them.)

 

7

Meanwhile, all sorts of odd little messages from outside seem to be finding their way to me, encouraging me to keep on with the Consecration such as I can.  I'm aware that human beings are great at finding patterns where really there is only random noise, and that it's unsurprising that if I'm thinking Marian thoughts, I would see signs everywhere (such as, having just prayed for discernment about whether to make the consecration, being handed a business card 15 minutes later, on which was printed a call to people to make a Marian consecration!  That was a fun example).

It's time for me to get back to work, and writing this has exhausted my creativity.  Have a great Friday!

More on Benedict for families: Prayer, work, and study.

I'm totally buried in school planning this week, so blogging has gone to the back burner.

 Scratch that:  I'm immersed in school planning.  Planning is absolutely my favorite part of homeschooling.  It's summer, I only have to teach a little bit of "remedial" stuff (or let them teach themselves; for example, my 10-y-o's special summer subject is intensive typing practice with Mavis Beacon), and to top it all off, two of my kids are visiting Grandma and Grandpa for two or three weeks right now, so I have tons of time.  And I'm pouring most of it into lesson planning NOW so I won't wake up some morning in February 2012 and say "I don't know what I'm going to do today so I guess we'll just watch movies."

So speaking of being immersed in work, did any of you go and read Fr. Longenecker's Saint Benedict for Busy Parents that I recommended a few posts ago?*

I found myself unable to stop myself from creating a three-by-three matrix:

	Prayer	Work	Study
Obedience
Stability
Conversion of Life

...and trying to fill in all the cells, or at least some of them.  Do I practice obedience with regard to prayer, etc.

Because that's the kind of response a girl like me has to a piece of spiritual reading.  (You should have seen my notebook after I finished The Interior Castle.)

Of course, I immediately ran into another question, because while some of the stuff I do every day is undoubtedly prayer, and some of it is surely work, and some of it is arguably study, there's a lot of other stuff that isn't clearly any of them.   It's not hard to classify, for example, driving to the grocery store as "work."  What about going for a swim?  What about eating dinner?  And for that matter:  what about hanging out with friends or just sitting down with a cup of coffee in the morning getting ready to face the day?  I noticed a distinct lack of "just chillin'" in St. Benedict's trinity of how you spend your time.  And yet the monks were expected to have recreation time.   So do you suppose St. Benedict thought of the free time the monks had as part of prayer, part of work, part of study?  Or is free time some kind of fourth thing outside of prayer, work, and study?  Or is free time spent doing things that all can get classified as either prayer or work or study?  (If scrubbing the floor can be a form of prayer if it is done with love, I suppose finally getting that cup of coffee can be prayer if it is done with gratitude.  "If?"  Who isn't grateful for that cup of coffee?)    

Or maybe there really is no such thing as free time and the reality is that whatever we're doing, we are working, or studying, or praying, whether we realize it or not, and maybe we should sit up and pay attention to what it is we're making, or learning, or saying to God.

But anyway, I made a stab at classifying all the things I do as either "prayer," "work," or "study."  

Prayer wasn't too hard.  Attending Mass is prayer (even if I'm too busy attending to children to pay much attention to it, I decided).  Prayer is prayer.  Going to Confession or Adoration is prayer.  No problem.  

So you could say it was pretty easy to classify everything I do into "prayer" and "not-prayer."  (Subject to the caveat about all activities being a form of prayer if you do it in love, à la St. Thérèse.)  It was trickier to decide what to do with all the "not-prayer."   

In other forms of "what do you call what you do" classification, "work" is divided from other things, like "leisure," by monetary considerations.  Does it create wealth?  Can you get paid for it?  This won't work here.  It's more essential than that; it has to make sense whatever the context of economy.  And anyway, we're not distinguishing it from "leisure," but from "study."

So, in this system, "work" is something you do (I decided) that participates in creation:  remakes the physical world somehow.  It "co-operates with God in the redemption of the world," to quote Fr. Longenecker.  "Study" is something primarily interior that involves taking in the world as it is, and shaping it in the mind.   

With that in mind, I decided that teaching children is work; that preparing lessons is work.  That all the aspects of life that I could call "homemaking" is work.  For the purpose of dividing life up into this trinity, writing is work, even though I do it almost entirely for fun.  Traveling of all kinds is work, even driving to the grocery store.  Physically caring for other people, like nursing this child on my lap right now as I type, is work.  Physically caring for myself is work, too, and that includes getting the exercise I need and want.  And so having dinner with my family or friends is work.  Indeed, interacting with other people is almost always work, even just hanging out, because through our interactions with each other don't we remake the world in a small way?  Don't we have an opportunity to co-operate (if we are kind and prudent and open to the spirit) in redemption?

That leaves a number of things that can be called "study."  Scripture study and spiritual reading seem like they could be either "study" or "prayer," but fortunately, St. Benedict himself called them "study," and that is a bit of a guide to help us define the category.  All kinds of scholarship and research are "study."

Now, if you work as an academic, or a scientist, or a teacher in or out of the home, the distinction between "work" and "study" may be a little difficult to pinpoint; I, personally, make the classification based on whether I am remaking my own mind or something outside my own mind at the time.  When I skim through a stack of history books to decide what I will teach the children, I am studying.  When I put pen to paper to make a list of points I plan to teach, I am working.  

I have worked in laboratories, and I think I can figure out how I would classify as work or as study the various tasks: planning experiments, building apparatus, running experiments, collecting and analyzing data, writing up results and presenting them.  There is some prayer, of course, too:  I suspect that even if you include all the atheists, it's a rare researcher who hasn't uttered "OH PLEASE LET THIS THING WORK" at least once.  

Much leisure is study.  All reading for pleasure, and by extension all media consumption of any kind (this includes reading Facebook -- but not updating your status, which would be work, since you are creating content for others).   Developing skills of your own through reading or watching others  is study (although practicing them may be work).  Self-examination is study, even when prompted by prayer.

+ + +

Speaking of self-examination:  here is where I explain something about myself, because I can hear a voice asking "What's the point?"  The point is, I find a peculiar entertainment in continually examining my life, interior and exterior.  I find a meditative peace in the act of simplifying and filtering it.  Creating a blank table in a spreadsheet, all crisscross black lines, and empty  -- like the one above, before I started filling in the cells -- rakes the sand in my little mental Zen garden.

And I like the exercise of "What if I thought of --say-- getting to the gym as part of my work?  How would that change my attitude toward it?  Would it affect how I see it interrelating with the other things that are part of my work?"

Actually, the bit that felt most satisfying when it clicked into place was the concept that for me, hanging out with my friends, insofar as I am capable of "hanging out"  -- being with other people in general -- what I called "Fellowship" in my spreadsheet -- was to classify that as "work."  Because really, I am a classic introvert, and even though I enjoy other people, it wears me out.  Calling "fellowship" "work" lifted a bit of weight from my shoulders. 

The most useful insight for me, though, is that when you classify everything as either prayer, work, or study, no time is wasted.  It's either spent for good, or spent for ill.  

When I attend Mass, or pick up the breviary, or stand in line for confession, or even utter a voiceless "please!", I'm praying.  Am I referring to God or to myself?  Am I aligning my will with God's or against it?  Am I a channel for grace or an obstruction?  Am I opening my heart or trying to conceal it?

When I watch a video, or check comments on a news story, or listen to music, or read a book, I'm learning something.  Did I learn something true or something false?

When I write a blog post, or clean up a mess, or assign work to the children, or go for a run, or go to sleep, or spend time chatting with my friends, I'm participating in the creation and redemption of the world.  Did I help it or hinder it?

 

 

________________

* I forgot to mention on that post that I owe a hat-tip to Rich Leonardi for linking to it.

Heart to heart.

Earlier this month I had a conversation with some other women in my parish about various devotions that one might take up.  I had been bemoaning how I can never make it through a novena without forgetting, and how I lack the courage to try going to daily Mass with the children, and that sort of thing.  And then I was reminded of the Five First Saturdays for reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary -- a devotion I hadn't really thought about in several years -- and I realized that I had absolutely no excuse not to at least try to make the FFS devotion, right now at exactly this point in my life.  

Because (a) Saturday mornings are a time when I can usually rely on Mark to care for the kids,

(b) I live within easy driving distance of a parish that actually has a Saturday morning daily Mass (even though, fyi, a Saturday night vigil Mass is sufficient for the devotion)

(c)  it's only five, how hard can that be, and

(d) maybe my situation will change soon and it'll suddenly get harder to make it to Mass on Saturday, who knows?

So I resolved to give it a shot on the very next first Saturday.  Which is today!

OK, so here I am, up and ready to head off to Mass.  And you know what I know now that I didn't realize until only a few hours ago?

It's the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary!

Cool!

Now I really have no excuse.

Here's something I wrote on the same feast last year:

I think when we speak of a "heart" that can ponder, a "heart" that can love, we are speaking of something natural, embodied, enfleshed.  Often we speak of the flesh as being opposed to things of the spirit.  The flesh, our bodies, tempt us to turn away from spiritual goods and crave selfish things.  But haven't you noticed that our bodies tempt us to love as well?   We have natural inclinations (for example) to care for our offspring, hormones that surge to reward us for nursing our babies, that overflow into strength and aggression to help us defend them from harm.  Could that be the heart that loves -- the biochemical, physical mechanisms that urge us to lay down our lives for the ones we are attached to, that urge us to attach to each other in the first place? 

A body that tempts us to love:  could this be the "heart" we mean?

If so... this is a kind of love unknown to the angels -- a kind of love unknown to the universe before the advent of the human race.  God MADE this kind of love,  the love of the human heart; He did not possess it according to God's eternal nature.  Father, Son, Holy Spirit had no heart, no body with which to love as bodies love.

At least not until the Incarnation.

It is interesting to think that upon the Incarnation the Son of God received for the first time a nature through which He could be tempted by Satan in the desert.  Through that nature He could also, for the first time, be tempted by the flesh to love.  God's love is perfect and always was perfect; and yet in creating human beings He created a kind of love that He did not possess, and that He only made his own upon His conception.  Think of the baby relaxing into his mother's arms; of the frightened toddler fleeing to the safety of his father's side; the grown man in justified anger, driving corruption from his Father's house; oxytocin, cortisol, testosterone; the heart, the body tempted to act in love.

Odd, but true: that even though the Son of God, being eternal, pre-dates the Mother of God, in a sense is His mother's own creator; but Mary's heart pre-dates the Sacred Heart.  All that it is truly came from her.  And so to take a pious formula -- to "flee to the shelter of the Immaculate  Heart of Mary" is to say, Shelter me where you sheltered the Lord; form my heart in the womb where the Sacred Heart learned to beat.

Have a blessed Feast (and, in the USA, a safe and fun holiday weekend.)

Taking liberties with Jeremiah on St. John's Day: For the mothers.

Do you ever feel like you are fighting your children, and your children are fighting you, all day long?

+ + +

From the Office of Readings for today, the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist:

Jeremiah 1:4-10, 17-19

The word of the Lord came to me thus:

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you,a prophet to the nations I appointed you.

"Ah, Lord God!" I said, "I know not how to speak; I am too young."

Too young, too old, too tired, too busy, too faltering, too selfish, too confused, too inexperienced, too unprepared, too overwhelmed.

But the Lord answered me,

Say not, "I am too young."

Or whatever. 

To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak.  Have no fear before them, because I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

"To whomever I send you, you shall go." 

Because they come after us, we often think of the children as being sent to us.

But John turns this time-sequence on its head.  John testified:  He who is to come after me existed before me.

And though they didn't exist before us, this paradox recalls that, rather than them being sent to us, it's more true that we are sent -- to each child in turn, and at the same time.

"To whomever I send you you shall go."  

Then the Lord extended his hand and touched my mouth, saying,

See, I place my words in your mouth!

This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms,

(Or perhaps only over one family of children),

To root up and tear down, to destroy and to demolish, to build and to plant.

But do you gird your loins; 

Get out of your pajamas.  Put on your shoes and tie back your hair.  Wash your face.  Chin up.

stand up and tell them all that I command you.   

Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you crushed before them; 

And boy, don't I feel that way sometimes.

For it is I this day who have made you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass, against the whole land; Against Judah's kings and princes, against its priests and its people.  

The Lord fortified Jeremiah against Judah.  He expected conflict.  (And got it.)  Conflict, however, was not the purpose of their relationship.  The purpose was guidance, correction, reconciliation, love.  

In Jeremiah on St. John's birthday we are to see the purpose of "preparing a way for Christ" as well.  A road into the heart.

They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.

If you had told me a few years ago, when my children were fewer and smaller, that I would read this and immediately identify with Jeremiah (knowing to whom I am sent), I probably would be horrified at the language of antagonism and conflict and power struggle.  Isn't our ideal a little bit more... collaborative?   Shouldn't we turn to language that sounds a bit more... encouraging?  Warm nurturing welcoming nourishing protecting cuddling sheltering blah blah blah?

<ringing sound of sword being unsheathed>

The Lord made my tongue a sharp sword; he hid me in the shadow of his hand.

Both, perhaps?

I am the voice.  The voice of one crying.  The voice of one crying out.

I have placed my words in your mouth.

Do you gird your loins.

It is I who have made you a pillar.

Earth.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that yesterday I had a guest post on Jennifer Fulwiler's most excellent blog Conversion Diary.  She got the idea to go through the Our Father word by word and solicit guest posts one word at a time.  I got lucky with "Earth."  Check it out here.  A link to the entire "Our Father" series is here.

I imagine that am probably single-handedly responsible for a HUGE spike in Jen's traffic yesterday.  Of course, it all comes from my spending most of my day obsessively checking Jen's blog to see if anyone left any comments on my post.

It was a big step for me, though, because I allowed her to post it under my real name.  I don't do that very often.

Just asking.

In the comments to the last post, MrsDarwin mentioned the "Lord we just" phenomenon, which I have also noticed in ecumenical groups being led in prayer by a Protestant:

Someone once described the sort of spontaneous group prayers as the "We just" prayers: "Lord, we just come before you today, and we just give you thanks for..."

Curious,  I googled "Lord we just" and came up with this "How not to pray" page, presumably written by a Protestant:

For some inexplicable reason, the word JUST shows up a lot in prayer. "Just" is used for pausing, for filler, as an adverb, for rhythm, and, well, to underscore that this is just prayer and not talking in general. Since this is not normally the case in human dialog, it is hard to explain why. This is also known as the JUST'n MARTYR PRAYER.

"Lord, we JUST pray that you would JUST like, JUST really JUST totally..."

The comment that this is "to underscore that this is ... prayer and not talking in general" was interesting -- linguistically I mean -- is it serving as an interjection, a marker to denote "prayer-language?"  Maybe a cultural difference between Protestants and Catholics (or it could be a regional difference).  I have never heard a Catholic use gratuitous "justs" this way.

Here's another example from a news article profiling some Christian mixed martial arts fighters:

"Father, we just thank you for the opportunity to go out tonight and to train and compete," coach John Renken says. "Lord, we just pray that you protect our fighters, as well as the other guys. We pray that we will be a representation of you."

And the comments thread on this post also seems to indicate that it's mostly a Protestant thing. 

I wonder why that is?  Maybe the rote prayers lead us Catholics to expect a certain tone.  None of them have "just" in them.  We probably have a whole different set of verbal tics.

"Lord, teach us to pray."