God's creation

Victoria - Week 2 St. Andrew's Cathedral

I've been blessed to be able to attend Mass here in Victoria at St. Andrew's Cathedral. What a beautiful church it is. It is a real traditional church with beautiful Catholic art and stained glass windows. What a joy it is to be here.

Friday morning after Mass we stayed for a time for adoration of Jesus. I spent some time thanking God for the gifts he has given me. There are a lot. My health, my family, my being able to be here in Victoria. My siblings. My beautiful grandchildren. My work. The beauty and the peace of being here in this church. Being away from the snow and cold.

It struck me how important it is to be thankful, especially when I feel like complaining. Which has happened, you know, maybe once or twice in my life.

As I sat in the church in the silence, I felt only peace. Thank you God.

People are hungry for God

I saw the relic of St. Francis Xavier at St. Michael's Cathedral in Toronto last Friday where Mass was said by Cardinal Collins. The Church was packed. I didn't stay to venerate the relic as I intended to go on the Sunday at Our Lady of Lourdes.

Then Sunday I went into Our Lady of Lourdes Parish at 1:30 but couldn't get in. The church was jammed and people were spilling out the door.

I returned at 4:30 and got in line. It took an hour and 15 minutes to finally venerate the relic for two seconds. The line of people wound their way through the pews, one line on each side of the church (pictures below).

People are clearly hungry for God. What a lovely thought, when Canada has become so secular and so many of our political leaders preach an anti-Christian worldview. Clearly they can't dampen the desire for God. No matter how hard they try.

Pictures at St. Mike's Cathedral in Toronto

Pictures at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Toronto

Same kind of different as me - a movie worth watching

Yesterday Fred and I wanted to see a movie. I checked all the ratings of the movie that were playing and was intrigued by this movie: Same kind of different as me

I wondered why the critics obviously panned it (29%) but the audiences loved it (92%). Five of the only seven critics rated the movie "rotten". But 2,804 viewers obviously loved it.

Why?

After watching the movie and then reading what the critics said about it, it's pretty clear that their dislike of the film probably had little to do with what they used as their reason.

So what was the real reason they didn't like it? Well for starters there was no killing, no sex, no profanity and no special effects. And there was a faith component, and yes, even references to God in it. Of course in "progressive" Hollywood, God is persona non grata. But the critics couldn't say that could they? So instead they say because it was racist blah blah blah.

But here's the kicker. The story is based on real human beings Denver Moore, Ron and Debbie Hall, and based on a real story with references to spirituality and dare I say it, God. The book was also on the New York Times best-seller list for 12 weeks. The story happened and the people loved it.

I guess the elitist critics are just so much smarter than the plebs like you and me.

My advice? Go see the movie. It's pretty darn awesome. And yes. You may cry.

The gifts we receive when we are present with the dying

Today I was blessed. I visited one of my regular residents at the long term care facility where my sister Maureen and I visit every week.

This woman I'd been visiting for about two years, is now bed ridden and I'm pretty sure she is close to death. Working in a nursing home you begin to know the signs.

In fact, there have been quite a few people pass away here these past two years. Most of the time there is no obituary. This makes me sad.

She was alone in her room. I prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet with her. Even though she barely seemed to comprehend my presence, we had prayed together before so I knew she was okay with me praying while I sat with her.

I placed my warm hand on her cool arms--translucent with the blue veins and thin skin so common in the old and frail--and prayed. She was in a seemingly semi-conscious state so I wasn't sure if she could hear me or not.

Then when I finished the Chaplet I prayed some additional prayers and asked God to bless her. She said thank you. Ah, she had heard me. This surprised me as I know that she is pretty deaf. But she had heard me ask God to bless her. Good I thought.

I told her I would keep praying for her and then I said goodbye. I asked her to remember me and she said she would. I told her I loved her and kissed her on the forehead. I left her room and felt the tears come.

I wasn't going to go to her floor today. So glad I did. Yes I am blessed.

False gods are alive and well

A lot of celebrities died in 2016. People get all weird about these deaths, of people they don't even know.

Then there are sports people. People get all weird about them too. Games have throngs of screaming fans who go crazy over their favourite team and or sports person.

Sports people and celebrities--these are the new gods of the 21st century. People are looking for some kind of transcendent meaning to their lives but can't find it. They don't believe in God anymore, or if they do, God doesn't play an active role in their lives. Their search finds what they are looking for in the hero worship of humans, humans they look up to, humans who are famous, humans who are fallible, humans they don't even know.

And then these fallible imperfect human celebrities die, and those who don't know them, mourn them. It's all so weird.

St. Augustine of Hippo famously said in his book Confessions

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

If Jesus Christ appeared at a hockey rink instead of the usual hockey players, I wonder how the crowd would react to him. Would they cheer him? Would they give him a standing ovation? Would they adore him? If Jesus was tortured, humiliated, spat upon, nailed to a tree to and died, would they mourn his death? Would they even know who he was?

Maybe I'm the weird one. Maybe everyone else knows something that I don't know.

Return to Ireland - Feast of Corpus Christi

UPDATE June 4: Maureen my sister put together a video of the pics below.

Yesterday was the Feast of Corpus Christi, or the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.

After Mass the priest led a procession through the streets of Lahinch with the real presence  of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.

The children who had recently made their First Holy Communion led the way, and the girls threw rose pedals for Our Lord.

What a lovely procession it was.

As a child I remember we used to have similar processions where I grew up in Hull Quebec. But it's been years and years since I've attended this wonderful testimony to our Catholic faith. I don't think most parishes do this much anymore in Canada, if at all. What a pity.

Quote by St. Sebastian

"The devil strains every nerve to secure the souls which belong to Christ. We should not grudge our toil in wrestling them from Satan and giving them back to God."

GK Chesterton - evil spirits are diabolically jealous

More from Jousting with the Devil by Fr. Bob Wild on GK Chesterton.

Pages 77:

"Traditionally we understand evil spirits as haters of humankind, envious of our redemption by Christ. We are enjoying the light of Christ; they still live in the darkness they have chosen, and they are diabolically jealous. Thus, black magic becomes inhuman. Chesterton attributes cannibalism and human sacrifice, especially of children, to demons. And when we consider the plague of abortion in our own time, can we fail to see the demons' hatred of the human race at work: "But without dwelling much longer in these dark corners, it may be noted as not irrelevant here that certain anti-human antagonisms seem to recur in this tradition of black magic. There may be suspected as running through it everywhere, for instance, a mystical hatred of the idea of childhood:" (The Everlasting Man, p.122)

Chesterton is grateful that Rome defeated Carthage, and that Christianity did not have to contend with the Carthaginian child-eating Moloch, but instead with the milder Zeus and Saturn and Apollo. It is mostly in our own time that the perverse spirit of Moloch lures millions to commit abortion. And isn't it significant that when the Child of Peace entered upon his earthly pilgrimage the demons unleashed their fury in the destruction of the children in Israel? I highly recommend this chapter in The Everlasting Man as Chesterton's most extensive and penetrating treatment of the influence of demons upon civilization."

(Moloch is the ancient pagan God of child sacrifice.)

GK Chesterton - The devil tempts us with lies

More from Jousting with the Devil by Fr. Bob Wild on GK Chesterton.

Pages 72-73

BELIEF IN THE DEVIL MAKES YOU MORE CHARITABLE

"Awareness of the devil and his temptations is one of the factors behind Chesterton's celebrated charity towards his intellectual foes, towards everyone, really. He believed that erroneous ideas affected moral behavior, and that often people were not aware that their ideas were erroneous. (He said there were two kinds of people: those who hold dogmatic positions consciously, and those who hold them unconsciously—like George Bernard Shaw.) What he's saying—and a whole modern school of psychology (Cognitive Therapy) is built on this theory—is that maybe people are grouchy because they harbor pessimistic ideas, not pessimistic because they are grouchy; maybe people are sad and unpleasant because they have fatalistic and harsh ideas, not harsh because they are unpleasant people. And so on.  

The devil is the father of lies. If you believe that Satan is alive and active, tempting people with lies, you will be more charitable and compassionate. If we do not believe in the devil, we then naturally attribute all the evil in the world to human beings alone, and regard many of our fellow-creatures as, well, "fiendish;' when they might actually be tempted or tormented' victims. And, if we accept the reality of possession, this also will make us more charitable: "The assertion that a man is possessed of a devil is the only way of avoiding the assertion that he is a devil". (The Illustrated London News, April 28,1917. I remember reading of a New York Times editorial when the Nazi extermination camps came to light. It was quite explicit in saying that there must be some other source of evil in the world to explain such monstrosities.)

Of course, such compassion can be overdone. But it is a very common human opinion that there are evil things in the world of such magnitude (the Holocaust) that they can only be called devilish; and to say that there are no devils is really to conclude that all evil comes from human beings."

GK Chesterton - Satan doesn't like to be laughed at

More from Jousting with the Devil by Fr. Bob Wild on GK Chesterton.

From Page 63:

[Chesterton said] "Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly."

To be able to take oneself lightly, to be able to laugh at oneself, is one of the healthiest of human traits. It is one of the signs of our transcendence, one of the "rumors of angels" in us, a kind of divine antidote to the exaltation of the ego.

Chesterton's following insight about the opposite of taking oneself lightly is less well known:

"Seriousness is not a virtue. It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to do. It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy; hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity. (Orthodoxy, P 128)"

The devil fell because he took himself too seriously, that is, he did not acknowledge his dependence on God; he did not accept the obvious truth that he was not the center of the universe. Thus, taking himself so seriously, he doesn't have a sense of humor; and he certainly doesn't like to be laughed at. And those Christians—like Chesterton—who draw comic images, of him, well, he probably doesn't like that either."

GK Chesterton - Secrecy is of the devil

More from Jousting with the Devil by Fr. Bob Wild on GK Chesterton.

From Page 60-61:

"SECRECY IS OF THE DEVIL

These early imaginative depictions of the demons still seemed rather odd until I came across the following insights that express another driving force behind his writing and thinking: a horror of secrecy. We should "put things on the table, say what you really think, expose your inner world to the light. So he didn't conceal his early fascination with demons. 

In the following passage he applies this line of thinking to thinking itself, to Christian and non-Christian art, and then to our major topic, talking about the devil. Generally, he thinks that secrecy is of the devil. But first about thoughts themselves: 

"Whenever you hear much of things being unutterable and indefinite and impalpable and unnamable and subtly indescribable, then elevate your aristocratic nose towards heaven and snuff up the smell of decay [read "devil"]. It is perfectly true that there is something in all good things that is beyond all speech or figure of speech. But it is also true that there is in all good things a perpetual desire for expression and concrete embodiment; and though the attempt is always made to embody it is always inadequate, the attempt is always made. If the idea does not seek to be the word, the chances are that it is an evil idea. If the word is not made flesh it is a bad word." (G.K. Chesterton, "The Mystogogue;' A Miscellany of Men (IHS Press: Norfolk, 2003)."

In another place he wrote: "I could fancy that men drew the Tempter with the curves of a serpent because they can be twisted into the shape of a question mark." (The London Illustrated News, Jan. 27, 1917) I interpret this to refer to world, the tempting question in the Garden, "Did God really say you must not... ?' One of the devil's ploys is to ask questions which make us doubt the word of God, the trustworthiness of God. 

Concealment of thoughts, in certain circumstances, can be a form of lying, used by the father of lies. He hates the light and the truth. So when he speaks it is often lying; and if he cannot or will not speak, or allow his followers to speak, the tactic is to remain silent and conceal one's plans, one's ideas. Above all he does not like to "put his cards on the table:""

GK Chesterton - The Church on the Offensive

More from Jousting with the Devil by Fr. Bob Wild on GK Chesterton.

From Page 48-49:

"I remember reading years ago in CS Lewis that the Church is involved in a "mopping up operation". This is not a very glorious description for the new evangelization! After the resurrection the victory has been won, Hades has been emptied, and the demons know that the main citadel has been taken, But as in battle when the capital has been taken, there are often forces out in the hills somewhere who haven't heard that the war is over—or refuse to accept that it is over. (A pertinent twenty-first century example was the holdout of Gaddafi loyalists in his hometown. All communication had been not know that Tripoli had been taken.)

It's the Church's mission to go into the whole world and tell everyone that the battle is over. The demons, who know that Christ has won the victory, keep trying to convince everyone—by lying, or by keeping the truth from them—that the battle is not over, that Christ is not God, that he has not risen from the dead, that you are still in your sins, and blah, blah, blah. The Holy Spirit, the Parakletos (defense lawyer in Greek) testifies that Christ has won the victory. 

'And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it:' (Matthew 16:18) Too often Christians understand this text as the Church being under siege, enclosed in a fortress surrounded by hostile forces as in Mansoul. On the contrary, the analogy is just the opposite: it is the gates of hell that are being attacked. In other words, the Church is on the offensive."

GK Chesterton - Jousting with the Devil - The series

Thursday, June 18, 2015
GK Chesterton - evil spirits are diabolically jealous

Tuesday, June 16, 2015
GK Chesterton - The devil tempts us with lies

Thursday, June 11, 2015
GK Chesterton - his battle with the Father of Lies

Thursday, June 11, 2015
GK Chesterton - Hell is a place to be avoided

Thursday, June 11, 2015
GK Chesterton - The Church on the Offensive

Friday, June 12, 2015
GK Chesterton - Secrecy is of the devil

Sunday, June 14, 2015
GK Chesterton - Satan doesn't like to be laughed at

GK Chesterton - Hell is a place to be avoided

More from Jousting with the Devil by Fr. Bob Wild on GK Chesterton.

From Page 25:

"Often mystics testify that before they received extraordinary graces they experienced a very profound and painful awareness of their sinfulness. This is a purification to prepare them for the beauties about to be revealed to them, and the graces they will receive. Perhaps these experiences of desolation are also given to the mystics to ground them in humility before the reception of more positive and exalted gifts of the Spirit.When Chesterton was asked what he thought about hell he replied that he had never been there himself, nor did he know anyone who had been there; but he understood it was a place to be avoided. But even if he hadn't been there, could he have been given a taste of hell?"

GK Chesterton - His battle with the Father of Lies

I've just finished reading Fr. Robert Wild's book Jousting with the Devil.

The book is about the great writer GK Chesterton, and his battle with the Father of Lies.

I must admit I've had a difficult time reading GK Chesterton before. In fact I started reading his book the Everlasting Man (quoted below) but had to stop as his writing is so dense (or perhaps I'm dense not sure which). After reading this book by Fr. Wild, and Fr. Wild's previous book on GK, Tumbler of God, I am going to attempt to read it again.

In any event, I found a lot of great nuggets in Fr. Wild's book on GK's battle with the devil, and I hope to post a few of them over the next little while.

It's funny--or maybe unfortunate--but it seems the world has grown reluctant to speak of the devil in the last number of years. Maybe that's because religion, for many, is passe. 

I must say I enjoyed Fr. Wild's book.

From the Preface - page xxix

"The word "prophet" is often used of Chesterton. A prophet is not so much someone who "sees" the future but who very deeply knows the present. He or she can see where present trends are heading. They "prophesize" that "if you don't change this course you are on, you are going to wind up in such and such a state. This was one of Chesterton's chief gifts: he saw deeply into the intellectual errors appearing on the horizon of his day and "predicted" that, if we don't change, this and this will happen. His "prophecies" are being proven right. 

His belief in the devil is part of his prophetic message to the modern world. He believed in the reality of the devil in his day, and so he can make us aware of the reality of Satan as one of the perennial truths in the gospel for our times. 

Chesterton's belief in the devil is an essential part of his prophetic mission. "If you don't believe in the devil you will lack the fighting spirit exemplified by Christ when he said to the disciples as they returned from their first mission: `I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.' (Luke: 10:18). What is that but a shout of victory in a battle!" (The Everlasting Man P 198). If you don't believe in the devil you will attribute all the colossal evils in the world to human beings. Yes, we are capable of much evil, but there is an enormity of evil in some events that cannot be explained except by the presence of other evil forces besides human perversity. If you don't believe in the devil you will lack the vigilance that the Lord counsels in so many of his parables. 

Belief in the devil is an essential part of Chesterton's message to the world, because it is an essential part of the gospel. "The whole point of Christianity is that a religion can no more afford to degrade its devil than to degrade its God:' (The Everlasting Man P 201) Like many of Chesterton's phrases, this seems like an exaggeration. However, his point is that the whole truth of a religion must be accepted, and not just the nice, comforting aspects. Jesus thought we were capable of hearing the whole truth about reality, and that includes the devil. 

Chesterton didn't often speak explicitly about the existence of the devil as he spoke about other tendencies that would arrive in the future. He simply believed in the devil, as does the Church, and wove belief in his battle with the satanic existence in and out of his writings. He didn't find this depressing: it was part of his faith understanding of reality. And in this also he is a prophet: he speaks this truth to every generation."

Flowers are a present from God

We've now been back from Victoria for over three weeks. And it's all but a distant memory now. Well not really. But that sounded good I thought.

Anyway I still want to post a lot of pictures. I will do them by category I've decided.

Today is flowers. I couldn't post all my flower pictures even though I've posted a ton below. The flowers in Victoria are just so beautiful, it's hard to comprehend. Many of these ones are from Butchart Gardens. In fact I think they all are.

God was generous when he gave us these colourful fragrant pieces of nature to enjoy. What a thoughtful gift.