Thirsty?

Before writing this post, I prayed to the Holy Spirit to guide me to the topic, and to speak through me as He wishes, so today I am going to talk about “Spiritual Dryness”

 ***

Imagine you have hiked up a huge mountain, the sun beating down on you at around 30’C, there is no shade and not a pick of moisture in the air, and you realise you ran out of water half a mile back. Your tongue is dry, so dry it feels like velvet. But you see on your map that through the forest visible in the distance there is a small creek...can you make it? Can you go through the motions to get to that source of sustenance? Yes! The answer is always yes! 

This analogy is a reflection of, and the answer to, spiritual dryness. In my faith journey there have been a number of occasions where I have been in a state of spiritual dryness. If you have ever felt distant from God or a sense of disbelief or uncertainty, if you have allowed yourself to fall deep in sin or you simply felt like giving up - then you have experienced what is known as spiritual dryness (AKA a crisis of faith). Let me begin by saying that EVERYONE experiences this once, twice, or even multiple times in their lifetime. The annoying thing is that not everyone wants to talk about it, it’s almost like Catholic taboo. Apart from seeking out spiritual guidance during that time, I told no one else, and therefore, unfortunately, at times felt alone and isolated in the situation that I was in, despite being amidst many Catholic friends and acquaintances.

 

Multiple saints and Catholic figures are noted to have experienced a crisis of faith in their lifetime, including Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, who is quoted as having said in a letter to Reverand Michael van der Peet just three months prior to receiving the Nobel Peace Prize: ‘Jesus has a very special love for you, but as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear, the tongue moves in prayer but does not speak...I want you to pray for me - that I let Him have a free hand.” If you want to read more about saints and their struggles, here is a link to another article which details numerous saints and their dealings with spiritual dryness. Just know that in spiritual dryness you’re never alone in that experience, as these saints stories have proven. Christ Himself was even tested in this way, when He spend 40 days and 40 nights in the desert with Satan. But Christ was victorious, and we can be too!

So the question is: How do we tackle spiritual dryness?? If we look back to the analogy above - do you:

(a) sit down and wait for your death
(b) do you go Bear Grylls style and drink your own urine (YUCK!)
(c) persevere, go through the motions and get to the creek?

Answer: (c) YOU GET TO THE CREEK! It is a source of life, it is a source of sustenance, and you know you will feel so much better, despite the physical and mental hardships it will take to get there. 

The answer is the same for spiritual dryness. The best advice I ever received when in a crisis of faith was to keep going and not give up. Two priests on two separate occasions advised this, and it was the best thing they could tell me. Partake in the sacraments - go to mass often, even more than normal; get regular confession; get spiritual advice; surround yourself with people of faith - friends or family; read religious books; study the saints; and lastly, pray. Even if your heart is not in it, pray pray pray. You might feel like God is not listening (He is), but that conversation is vitally important. Don’t cut the ties of the communication, even if it’s a standard prayer or a simple hello. Something has hardened your heart, and He will break through to you, but you have to meet Him halfway. It’s important to also talk it through with a priest, a sister or nun, or a close confidant. Having that support around you is vital - their advice and their prayers are priceless.

Just as Jesus carried His cross, so too are we called to carry ours. But in this Easter Season we are constantly reminded of the hope of the resurrection. We believe that Christ rose from the dead, and while carrying our cross right now is difficult, and at times we are ready to give up, we have that beacon of hope waiting at the finish line for us.

So what now?

Muster up all your energy, run through the forest, get to the creek and jump right in!! The water is pure, refreshing and completely worth the fight!

Do Angels Have a Gender?

Happy Easter everyone! I got to prepare for Easter in a very special way this year, by being a part of our church's ninth annual Passion Play. I wasn't originally planning on being in it, but my choir director managed to snag me after Stations of the Cross one night and convince me to audition. I'm so glad she did, I had such a great time! I was cast as the angel Gabriel, and I gotta admit, I was a bit outside my comfort zone at first when I had to stand up on a platform in front of Joseph and yell at him to go to Egypt. My sister said she got a good laugh out of it every night from her position in the choir loft, she said I was really scary! I also managed to have a not so angelic moment as I hit Jesus in the face with a door just before dress rehearsal was starting, he got a bruise which started swelling and they had to go get him ice and everything. He was very forgiving though, true to his part! Being in the Passion Play brought a lot of new questions and observations to mind about the story of Christ and the supernatural in general, and I'd like to take this opportunity to share a little bit about what I learned.

'The Liberation of St. Peter' by Raphael in the Vatican Museums. One of my favorite depictions of an angel.

1) Angels
When I was cast as the angel Gabriel, my first thought was, wait minute, isn't Gabriel a guy angel? I knew a little bit about angels, that they are God's messengers, and that, despite what many people may think, we humans cannot become angels when we die, we will have a glorified human body in heaven, but angels are a separate creation from us. But what about angels, what do they really look like? It occurred to me that perhaps there weren't male and female angels, just as God has no gender. But this would seem to defy all of the pictures that we normally see of angels, who appear to be either male or female. After opening night, I went to the over 21 get together at a nearby bar, and as I was sitting across from our deacon, who played the part of Nicodemus, I took the opportunity to ask him, 'So, do you think angels have a gender?' He responded, 'No, they don't have a gender because they don't reproduce. They are radiant beings, like Christ himself, who is light.' I said, 'Ok, that's kind of what I thought, but I guess I had always seen angels depicted more like humans with wings.' 'Well,' he remarked, 'they may not be human-like, but God gives angels the ability to personify, to appear in our form before us. I believe that everyone will meet an angel at some point in their life, whether they realize it or not. I met one once, I'm sure of it.' He said that one night he went out to the bar after moving to a new town. His family couldn't come with him yet, so he was lonely and felt like getting out. When he arrived, he saw an average-looking woman who he had never seen before sitting at the bar. She called him out by name, and said to him, 'What are you doing here? You know you don't belong here.' And with that, he left straight away, and never saw her again. He even had another story about his brother, who while on vacation , came back to his boat on the pier and saw a strange man standing in it. He approached the man and asked what he was doing here. The man said, 'My name is Victor. You need to call home.' The Deacon's brother was very confused, but followed the man's instructions and called home to find out that his dad, who is named Victor, was very sick. When they went back to the boat the man had disappeared. I found this story pretty shocking, maybe I'd already met an angel, maybe I'd meet one someday! Deacon emphasized that the line between the supernatural and the natural is very thin, and that God makes miracles all the time and it is our blindness that often keeps us from recognizing them. But what do angels look like if they have no gender as humans do? We won't really know what they look like for sure until we get to heaven, but what I had learned previously from the Catholicism series by Father Robert Barron is that each angel is completely unique, as though each one is it's own species, pretty cool, huh?

2) Pharisees
The Pharisees played a big role in our production this year. As I was watching their scenes, I got to thinking about how much trouble they went through to have Jesus killed by the law. They tried him themselves first, and ruled that he should be condemned to death, but they didn't have the power to execute such an order because, as one of them sang during the play, 'Only the Romans may put a man to death.' He is then taken to Pilate, who realizes that as a Galilean, Jesus' fate rests with King Herod. He is sent to King Herod, who after asking Jesus to produce a miracle and receiving none, turns him back over to Pilate. Pilate was very reluctant to hand Jesus over, but the Pharisees and the crowds pushed and pushed saying that according to their law he must die for saying he was the Son of God. I'm sure that there could have been a much quicker, more efficient, and more secure way of doing away with Jesus. Couldn't they have just hired someone to kill him in secret? But I suppose that what the Pharisees wanted was power, wanted to maintain their position of authority over the people. If Jesus died while he was held in good esteem, or in a way that broke the law, people might have gotten angry, they might have questioned their authority figures. The Pharisees needed to make sure that his reputation was ruined before he was killed. And it seems that they are made even more hypocritical by insisting that he die at the hands of the government when the government ruled him not guilty. They put more emphasis on appearing just than on being just, appearing to follow God's law rather than on what they really mean, to love God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

3) The Tomb
Some more tidbits from our deacon. The kind of tombs where Jesus was laid were hewn out of the rock in the side of a mountain, and the stones that covered the entrances weighed approximately two tons. For the women who were coming to anoint his body after he had already been sealed in the tomb, the fact that the stone was rolled away would have been really shocking! One person couldn't have moved it alone. They must've been very frightened, being unable to put together what happened there, and probably even more frightened upon entering the tomb and meeting an angel there. But imagine their rejoicing when they heard the Good News, that Jesus was risen indeed!

4) Kids are cute
Ok, this really doesn't have to do with theology, but there's this scene where Jesus is on stage with a whole bunch of little kids, and they sing a song called 'God cares about me' in which all the kids jump up and down with joy, and there's this one kid in the front who was trying to jump so high every time, and he just looked like he was having the time of his life. I'm not normally much of a kid-person, but that was darn near one of the cutest things ever. No wonder Jesus thinks so highly of children, they are so unencumbered by useless worries and are so uninhibited in expressing their joy!

Well, those are a few of the subjects I thought about and learned about, and being a part of this production really drew me in to the Passion of our Lord, and the joy and relief of the resurrection after so much suffering. A very Happy Easter to you all, rejoice in the Risen Lord!

Life Lessons!

by Claire 

It has been my “turn” to write a post for a little while, and while it has been in the back of mind, every time I try to think of a topic my mind goes blank. I’ve been looking at my life, looking at the things I do, and wondering what can I share with the blogosphere... so here it goes.

God has been teaching me some lessons lately. Normally, that sounds like something quite vindictive, my mind conjures some mafia thug character in a Martin Scorsese film growling “I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget!”. No, it definitely was not like that. God has been lovingly nudging me in certain directions and highlighting certain situations for me. I want to share one in particular

I live in a house with two girls that I don’t know, it was a flat share I had found on the internet. One of the girls I live with seriously, seriously gets on my nerves. She loves to talk about herself at great length, and share every single detail of every waking moment she has experienced. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to hear about other peoples lives, but seriously, she doesn’t care about anything I have to say. Take, for example, the other morning, she was talking so much I just walked out of the flat without remembering to bring anything with me to eat for the day. Slightly extreme, I know (and my purse did not appreciated it)! 

So in walks God with His lesson.... This past while I’ve been reading St. Therese of Lisieux’s autobiography, and came across this story:

“A holy nun of our community annoyed me in all that she did; the devil must have had something to do with it, and it was he who undoubtedly made me see in her so many disagreeable points. I did not want to yield to my natural antipathy, for I remembered that charity ought to betray itself in deeds, and not exist merely in the feelings, so I set myself to do for this sister all I should do for the one I loved most. Every time I met her I prayed for her, and offered to God her virtues and merits...I did not rest satisfied with praying for this sister, who gave me such occasions for self-mastery, I tried to render her as many services as I could, and when tempted to answer her sharply, I made haste to smile and change the subject...One day she said to me with a beaming face: “My dear Soeur Therese, tell me what attraction you find in me, for whenever we meet, you greet me with such a sweet smile!”

So when this passage cropped up I had to laugh to myself - God was teaching me a lesson, in the humourous fashion that He tends to exhibit to me. He knows I find my flatmate annoying, but he wants to show me that I can still show charity and love towards her, through the example of St. Therese. It will take me a while to get into the practice of it, but when she’s off on one of her long winded rants about something, I will offer up a prayer for her. I will use the situation for the good of her, and the good of Christ. I’m not saying I’m going to automatically become her best friend, but I want her to be able to see God through me, and by running out of the flat first thing in the morning, I’m never going to be able to achieve this!

I’m accepting our clashing of personalities as part of the day-to-day suffering that we as humans undergo. Suffering is difficult, it is uncomfortable, it is frustrating, but I read something recently that was quite profound: everytime we suffer, and offer this suffering to Christ, we are helping Him lift his cross that little bit higher as He makes the journey to Calvary. We are helping him support the weight of our sins, our sorrows, our burdens. I don’t know about you, but I would give anything to help Him do this for me. I’ve heard in the past offering something up for the souls in purgatory, for the Pope’s intentions, but never solely for Jesus. Our suffering - whether it be illness, death, spiritual dryness, or an annoying housemate - can be gifted to Jesus...Wow!

  

“There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us.”-- Pope John Paul II

How to Not be a Zombie

by Stephanie

'Like a stream is the king's heart in the hand of the Lord, wherever it pleases him, he directs it.' (Proverbs 21:1)

It's the beginning of March, and while we've gotten through the harshest time of year here in Connecticut, it's still just cold, bitter at times, with unpredictable weather.  We're supposed to be getting another snowstorm today with 6-10 inches, and then some rain which will make for a muddy, mushy mess, mmm.  This time of year it seems that my inner instincts all point towards hibernation.  They plead with me:  Don't get out of your warm bed just yet, why not reset the alarm again?  But the shower's so warm, c'mon just stay another minute!  You don't wanna leave the house, you've already got your sweatpants on!  (If I put on my sweatpants I might as well just give up right there).  Everything seems to take a lot more effort, going to daily mass early in the morning, going out with friends, exercising, basically anything besides sitting at home in my bathrobe.  I'm sure there are many others who feel this way, and it occurs to me that it is really only will-power that makes the world go round, especially this time of year.  If we all just did what we felt like, we'd be standing in the hot shower until the water ran out, or sleeping in our beds all day, or watching movies eating snacks until our arteries clog.  

We'd really be zombies.  Which reminds me of a movie I just saw recently with my sister called 'Warm Bodies.'  Warning you right now, this is a spoiler, but it's anything a 6-year-old could've predicted from the commercials anyways.  The movie takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which most of the population have become zombies, with few normal humans left who hide out in heavily guarded towns.  The main character, named R, is a zombie living (or dead actually) among other zombies.  No one sleeps, they all just shuffle around very slowly all day long.  You can hear his thoughts, but he is unable to communicate them to anyone else.  Though, he does have a best friend that he occasionally grunts at.  He has forgotten his own name and his whole history, he doesn't sleep or do anything, and he seems to really hate his existence.  The only instinct he is driven by is his hunger for human blood, which he gives in to when he gets the opportunity.  He seems to have some remorse for his action, but accepts it as a necessary evil.  However, his world is turned upside down when in the midst of attacking a group of humans, he sees a beautiful blonde girl, and his heart lights up and beats, and he falls in love with her.   He spares her life, and hides her from the other zombies.  The more he hangs out with her, the more human he becomes, starting to walk less stiffly, and even talking.  The other zombies start to catch this 'cure', and eventually in the end, they are accepted by humans again.  The blond girl returns R's love, and R becomes fully human again.  Now, you might be wondering what zombies have to do with being Catholic.  But consider R before he knows love.  His body is a cage, he is completely trapped within himself, unable to interact with others.  And worse, he is unable to control his instincts and kills people to satisfy his own needs.  This condition is much like sin, the cage of self-absorption, which allows our selfish desires to have control over us leading us to ignore those around us, and at it's worst, hurt those around us to satisfy our desires.  We are rendered utterly incapable of love.  

Contrary to this life of frozen desolation, we find Jesus Christ, who overcomes every selfish instinct that is part of the human condition, even the strongest instinct, survival, in order to love us.  He disrupts our run on the pleasure-seeking treadmill by showing us the way of temperance, which sets us completely free to run the race we were meant for, for holiness, for putting God and our neighbor over ourselves.  As love changes R from his life of icy desperation, and melts him into a human being again, we are changed by the love of Christ to become more human again.  And as we become less self-centered, we are made flexible to become more other-centered.  Next to Jesus, Mary was the most flexible human being to ever exist.  She wanted God's will to be done so badly, that he could have an angel come down and ask whether she would give up her entire life to birthing and raising God's only son.  She doesn't say, 'Well, lemme sleep on it.'  She is eager to please the Lord, and not herself.  She is like a stream in the hand of the Lord, to direct wherever he pleases.  

As I write this from my warm bed (electric blanket and everything), I wonder how free I am to do the Lord's will?  If the Lord sent an angel to ask me, right now, if I would go out into the night with nothing but my pi's and take a hot cup of coffee to a person without a warm bed to sleep in, would I say yes?  Or would I say, 'Can we wait 5 months, then do it?'  Are we as flexible as a stream or more like stubborn boulders, against which the Lord must do a lot of pushing just to make us budge?  Do we see someone in need and hesitate to react, heeding the chorus of voices in our heads saying too much effort, too much sacrifice, not enough ME?  It seems that we are in quite a predicament, but thankfully, if we just listen, Christ is speaking in these moments also.  As we fall in love with him, we will hear his voice more clearly over our own and feel him melting our hearts to the point that doing his will is just natural and easy.  And moreover, it's contagious.  St. Catherine of Siena says, 'Be who God meant you to be, and you will set the world on fire.'  The more we become the humans we were meant to be, the more others are drawn to it, and before you know it, as the blond girl notes about the zombies, 'they're curing themselves.'  Now, we just happen to be in the midst of Lent, in which fasting, prayer and almsgiving are key practices, all involving self-denial.  So lets resolve to hold fast to them, and when it gets tough, to keep our eyes fixed on the objective, becoming free to love as Christ was and freeing the whole world!  

Welcome to Virtually Catholic!

In 2065, a remarkable pair of women log on to their computers to converse in the only way they know how -- via the internet. Over fifty years ago they met at university in Ireland, and through the grace of God, founded a relationship that would last decades. Through Skype conversations, Facebook chats, and long winded emails they brought the light of Christ into each-others lives from across the Atlantic Ocean. Responding to Pope Benedict XVI’s call during the Year of Faith, to use social media to bring the Truth, and their faith, to their generation online, they co-founded a blog ‘Virtually Catholic’. After many years of writing on ‘Virtually Catholic’ these two women are finally retiring from their roles as bloggers to enjoy watching as their loved ones take on the reins and share their faith with their generation.

That is our vision for Virtually Catholic. If we can bring God’s word and love, in whatever way He sees fit, to you, our readers, we will be incredibly happy! But back to 2013, we are thrilled to be finally launching this blog; it has been in our minds for quite some time. We thought that as two young women, both Catholic, but living in different countries and at different places in life, we could bring a great variety of ideas to the table and make one great big delicious blog feast. We have not been friends for very long, perhaps a year and a half, but what bonds us together besides our ridiculous senses of humor, is our faith, and we have really grown in faith just from being friends to one another.

In this blog we'd like to reflect on what it is like to live out Catholicism in our day and age. Let's face it, we're not living in the rural farm villages of the past where you were probably a social outcast if you didn't go to church on Sunday. Today is quite the opposite, where we are more likely to be ostracized for going to church on Sunday. But perhaps our modern situation gives us the opportunity to live out our love for Christ in a more profound way than those people of the past, even more profound than our parent's generation. How much more of a sacrifice is it to suffer rebukes from your peers for witnessing to the truth than to simply be surrounded by others who share your beliefs? In facing greater trials and opposition, we become more conscious of our decisions and thus, deepen our yes to God. God gives us free will, so that we may freely choose him, because freedom and love go hand in hand.

We hope to reflect on how we may take up our crosses daily and follow him here in 2013, in every aspect of our lives, and see how every little thing we do has the potential to both bring us closer to Jesus, and bring the kingdom of God closer to the earth. God wants us to succeed, and this should fill us with incredible hope. And this should bring us an incredible sense of hope for our church as the cardinals gather in Rome to elect our new pope!

While we are both very sad to see Pope Benedict go, as he has really been a gentle, loving father to us, we are inspired by his great humility in willing the good of our church over the good of himself by making the chair of St. Peter available for someone more fit and able for the job. It is through his instruction that our blog exists, and it is through his love for God and His Church, that we are to welcome a new Pope into our lives in the coming months. Our prayer for Pope Benedict today is that he may continue to live out his vocation prayerfully and joyfully as he always has, and we wish to impart to him our sincere thanks for his ministry.

Pope Benedict’s last tweet as our Supreme Pontiff reads: “If only everyone could experience the joy of being Christian, being loved by God who gave his Son for us!” We hope that our blog will convey to you this Christian joy that Pope Benedict speaks of.

God Bless You All!