feminine-genius

Supporting the priests

From CatholicVote.org:

My friends,

All of you, I am sure, have heard so much about the tragedy in Newtown, CT. Many of you have received emails from me about my younger brother, Father Luke Suarez, who is a priest at St. Rose of Lima parish, a Catholic church just down the road from Sandy Hook Elementary. He, and his pastor, Monsignor Weiss, arrived at the school within moments of the shooting, and have been caring for the community ever since. The picture I have included was taken at the school.

Father Luke has an impossible task before him. His diocese is without a bishop right now…. Monsignor … is personally devastated by the losses. The parish is very large…. The rectory has received serious threats, and as my brother gave the homily Sunday at the noon mass, the church had to be evacuated by SWAT teams. After experiencing identity theft and online hacking incidents, he had to erase all of his internet accounts. After a weekend of endless media requests, notifications and vigils with heartbroken families, and little sleep, he now has two wakes and two funerals every day, until the fourth Sunday of Advent. Father Luke has not even been ordained two years.

My large family has been trying to send Father Luke our love and support from afar, and one of my brothers was able to visit with him briefly a couple times. All he asks for is prayer.

I have been wracking my brain, trying to think of a way that our beautiful, loving community could tangibly reach out to Father Luke, Monsignor Weiss, and the St. Rose parish, to support them in this most awful of times. I have sent many prayer requests, and I am asking for more prayers again. But I also want to ask everyone to search their hearts, and if the Holy Spirit moves you, please consider sending one of your family’s Christmas cards to the rectory, with a few words of love and encouragement. Here is his address:

Father Luke Suarez
46 Church Hill Road
Newtown, CT 06470

My brother has said over and over again that without the prayer support he is receiving, he could not keep going. And this week is only the beginning. Everyone there is still in shock. Their peaceful home has been desecrated by violence. They will need to live with this sorrow forever.

But in our weakness is His strength. Grace abounds. Can you help me carry him through this time of trial?

On a hopeful note, Father Luke did say that no media coverage has even touched the deep, beautiful awakening of faith that has occurred there. Their tiny church, where my children have received sacraments and where Luke was ordained, has been full of people in prayer without ceasing since this tragedy happened. Love is stronger than death.

Please feel free to share the address with your family, friends, and community. An outpouring of love will sustain these good priests through their impossible ministry–impossible on their own, but possible with God.

I am so grateful to live in this community. We are all so blessed with one another. Every day, I see you all loving one another as Christ loved. Thank you for letting me reach out to you now.

With humble appreciation.

Godly orientation

Pope Benedict's Wednesday Audience was especially profound today, as applied to the challenges of everyday life, but also when tackling the tragedies that spring up in our midst:

As part of our catechesis for this Year of Faith, it is fitting, during these last days of Advent, to consider the faith of Mary, the Virgin Mother of Christ. At the Annunciation, the angel Gabriel greets Mary with an invitation to rejoice because the Lord is with her. This joy is that of the messianic hope of God’s people, the daughter of Zion, now being fulfilled in her. It is also the fruit of the grace which fills Mary’s heart and shapes her obedience to God’s word. Mary’s faith, like that of Abraham, combines complete trust in the Lord’s promises with a certain “unknowing.” In her life Mary knew, as we do, that God’s will can seem at times obscure and far from our expectations; it involves embracing the mystery of the Cross.

Mary--like Abraham (her father in faith)--was faced with incomprehensible events. They were not only out of the ordinary, but seemed at face value to contradict what each already knew about God. Their daily communion with God through prayer and observance of the law stabilised them amidst the turbulence, and guided them as they placed one foot in front of the other along a perplexing journey.

If the trust hadn't been built previously, they would never have been able to shoulder the burdens of their calling. That said, even those who embrace all the means possible to know God may still find his ways bewildering at times.

It is significant that at the Annunciation Mary ponders in her heart the meaning of the Angel’s message. Her example reminds us that faith, while fully obedient to the Lord’s will, also must seek daily to discern, understand and accept that will. In this holy season, may Our Lady’s prayers help us to grow in a humble, trusting faith which will open the door to God’s grace in our hearts and in our world.

Morning interview

Will be on Live Hour shortly (8-9am EST). Will look for link later if you miss it.

UPDATE: What an amazing conversation -- two wonderful fellows with a wicked sense of humour, and living very real lives of faith. The link is here.  Ladies, do consider booking a healing conference in the coming year -- it will clear your decks and transform your heart so that you can be the beautiful icon of Holy Mother Church that you were called to be!

The unspoken question

Mary Kochan publishes the question many I know were pondering in the last few days:

In the wake of the horrifying deaths of 20 young school children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting at Newtown, Connecticut, there is one question that we must ask.  We must ask it while the horror is fresh and we must ask it when the process of grief has eased our shock and pain and we must ask it the next time and all the days in between now and the next time.

In what way did those children differ from the unborn who are slaughtered in this country by the thousands every day in abortion clinics SUCH THAT the former deserve the protection of the law and latter do not?

The piece is stark and relentless in its reasoning. The first two comments below the article express discomfort with the thesis, saying that her comparison "[trashes] the experience so disrespectfully" (experience, it would seem, meaning grief). But Mary is not trashing the national absorption over this particularly wretched act, but rather doing the exact opposite: she is reminding us of the grief we owe concerning the innocents slaughtered daily. It's not that the grief in Newtown is prone to politicisation, but that the commensurate acknowledgement of the children aborted daily is startlingly absent.

This needs to be said. Nothing is cuter than a kindergartener, but cute is not a criterion for human dignity. There are empty chairs nationwide in every grade that could have been filled by those whose only differentiating feature was that they were unwanted by their mothers.

Our grief for those suffering in Newtown is well nigh overwhelming. But the same should be said for the daily loss of life in our midst. We aren't seeking to diminish that suffering, but adding to it our grief for those who never make the evening news.

They scarcely waked before they slept,
They scarcely wept before they laughed;
They drank indeed death's bitter draught,
But all its bitterest dregs were kept
And drained by Mothers while they wept.

(Christina Rosetti)

"Affairs of the Heart"

A wonderful new blog has been started by Donna-Marie O'Boyle, to which I've contributed here. My piece is meant to be a realistic approach to Advent, which can be a real "pot-stirrer" (emotionally) for women. Time to do something about that...