Why Go to Mass this Divine Mercy Sunday April 11

...and make Confession and receive the Eucharist. We cannot imagine the personal and individual impact that He said it shall have:

According to the notebooks of Saint Faustina, Jesus made the following statements about this day:

"On that day the very depths of My tender mercy are open. I pour out a whole ocean of graces upon those souls who approach the fount of My mercy. The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day all the divine floodgates through which grace flow are opened. Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet. My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity." (Diary of Saint Faustina, 699)

Have you ever tried Confession and doubted your ability to make any headway against sin? I know I have for many years in the past. My podcasts narrate that reality. St. Faustina was a dedicated vehicle to bring us deeper motivation to keep seeking His Mercy. Here is a suggested path to Celebrate this Sunday:

Observing the Feast of Mercy Sunday:

1. Celebrate the Feast on the Sunday after Easter.
2. Sincerely repent of all sins
3. Place complete trust in Jesus
4. Go to Confession, preferably before that Sunday due to big crowds
5. Receive Holy Communion on the day of the Feast if possible
6. Venerate the image of The Divine Mercy
7. Be merciful to others through actions, words, and prayers

Everything to gain and nothing to lose in this Sunday April 11, 2010.....do it with me.

Anew

Ever have to step back and rethink your whole approach to a particular thing? Thats what I've been doing with the Catholic Journeyman podcast (since 08 apparently). I initially barreled into narrating the discovery of Conscience as the map to my heart (in a broad view), and what stopped production was studying and living this new perspective, new constant insight, new ongoing reality of the Conscience effect.

It became confusing at times tracking a coherent path that I could fit into a narrative, that is, my conscience became such an active driver of all the human levels of living. This way of thinking continued evolving. This led down several different, but individually critical means of living out the new internal reality of the rightly forming conscience.

Upon discernment of the aspect that the conscience, motives and behaviors were under a consistent right formation, my outlines for future podcast episodes had to be put aside. They went too quickly into the intellectual and theological areas of study, at the expense of that which is more personal, meaningful and revealing. There was an overwhelming amount of Grace evidence to be mined, organized into narratives and then shared.

It is here that I begin back to the Cast Anew. Retracing the meaningful changes and endless affects of rightly forming Conscience. Brushing against it without sufficient depth would diminish the intimate for the theological and intellectual.

Pray the Song

Taking some inspirational advice from songwriters, I must share it.

"When seeking Him, or inspiration from Him, pray song/hymn lyrics."

At times when its tough to spell out the interior truth I seek in praying, this song says it for me:

I'm finding myself at a loss for words,
and the funny thing is..
it's ok.
The last thing I need,
is to be heard,
but to hear what,
You would say...
Word of God Speak,
would you pour down like rain,
washing my eyes to see,
Your Majesty.
To be still and know,
that You're in this place,
please let me stay and rest,
in Your Holiness...
Word of God speak.

Link to the audio version, on Godtube

Intellectual Participation II

...(continued from here)
This long exploration of questions and answers began from a curiosity and progressed during research into needing to fill a spiritual vacuum, a blank, lifeless open mental wound. This mental need for understanding, for resolution, for closure requires intellectual participation. Reading, interacting with others over the subject, listening to other peoples views, positioning the mind in various states of conclusion, measuring logic and reason for each view with fresh, open and objective vision.

During that period of investigation, each discovery led to more hunger for details, corroboration, deeper insight. My intellectual passion was fed by these discoveries and given the amount of time past the event and significant volume of information available each year going by (some valid and some erroneous), I was able to make determinations of fact and find a path of documented events that revealed the most consistent version of truth, means and motive.

This is a parable of my faith journey years ago. My religion from birth was attacked and wounded in my intellect, due to my lack of intellectual, behavioral and spiritual participation. I was defenseless accept to point out the obvious (IE. 1 Billion Catholics cant be wrong) which was fruitless to the attacker and myself. I had to start engaging my intellect in reading Scripture, Doctrine and Protestantism. Thats where participation led to understanding and a presence of the Holy Spirit became evident personally. Once the personal relationship began, a personal conviction was mine to own, use and grow.

Intellectual Participation I

If I had a dime for every time I tried to solve the Kennedy assassination between my 2 ears, I could buy a Hummer as a spare ride. No matter what angle I pondered with comprehensive documentation,(I have a library on the event, been to the scene, studied evidence, etc.) I could find no 100% cause fully supported to the exclusion of any other marginally close second. It remains a mystery wrapped in a reality result.

There was, for me for many years, a challenge to be quenched intellectually in the study and commitment to ultimately reach a solid conclusion. Not just a perps name, an engineered motive and identifying players in that as well. The problem is there is just to much evidence with a figure like Kennedy. Too much outside motive, too much public exposure and too many strategic possibilities. When I finally admitted this will remain an enigma, that resignation contradicted my own innate intellectual comfort level. What I was left with having was a faith or a hope in a theory that was supported by the largest amount of evidence. That faith or hope became a belief that Oswald was tasked by underworld leaders to commit the act. I had no knowledge that this was the path of Kennedy's death, all I had was evidence. I cannot ever know for certain, in the absence of pulling the trigger myself, but I can believe based on it.

The belief or faith that this theory held the truth is then mine to hold. I possess it and in spite of my wavering intellectual comfort level, the faith is enough to get me onto the next mental challenge. But it did not. What I discovered in this final thought and in faith was that we humans feel we must reach tangible conclusions or be doomed to exist in a partial vacuum of spiritual fulfillment. My spirit wanted to find those deathbed documents and cancelled checks signed by Jack Ruby that the underworld funded the whole shebang, but its just not there. I have faith, based on research and evidence that this was the case.

This self-discovery of a faith based belief is close to that which I hold for Catholic Doctrine. Patristic research reveals Christs Church. The Bible reveals Christs Church, all 73 books. Secular History validates Christs Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople acknowledges Christs Church is Catholic.

I have no knowledge of this. I was not a witness to the incarnation of God, yet I have a measure of spiritual fulfillment as a result of intellectual participation.
... (Continued in this Post)

Jillian's Gift Follow up

Jillian would like to thank the Academy, and share her Christmas spirit!

Another Calvinist Comes home

I'd like to introduce Jennifer. I was immersed in her Conversion Post on her blog and realized how recently her coming home has occurred. Jennifer is going through some family turbulence over this journey and I am confident support and relation is welcome. She's quite readable. Go say hello!

Just how Catholic are we?

As Catholic Bloggers, we read each others stuff. Its a small circle most of the time. How do you respond to this recent question a Catholic friend of mine posed:

"You have a Catholic Blog? Wow. (think "fanatic") Thats a little overboard...I mean...I feel I'm as devout as any Catholic but to go to that extent, thats a bit extreme."

Now...getting beyond that you could take this as an indication of spiritual depth of the person questioning...so put that aside for a minute or two and consider the question objectively. How "Catholic" are we to put study, energy and time into this, ahem "hobby"? I dont see this as fanatical or extreme, and yet my first inclination is to respond citing the convenience of this technology and using it for Evangelization, but thats just a thread in the cloth here. Its a discovery process, growing a community of believers, etc.

You?

Jillians Gift

My 10 year old daughter, Jill, and I have committed to play a musical duet in her School "Talent Show" tomorrow night. She plays Clarinet and I play Bass, and we've been rehearsing every other night for 2 weeks.

So there we are trying to nail this piece tonight and during a rest she volunteers the following:

J - I know why you have me doing this...(she means playing the Clarinet in general)

D - why Jill?

J - Because you want me to be a musician like you (smiling)

D - Your right...do you know why?...because making music can be life changing...

J - Yeah...it makes it like, easy to express, like, feelings and stuff

D - you are "getting it" aren't you?

J - (She interrupts excitedly) I know I know ! Dad...sometimes when you play certain kinds of music...and I hear certain sounds...I feel like I can do the impossible...like I can do Anything!

I then told Jill she has the "Gift" with the following true story:

When I was in 7th grade my Dad told me (not asked) that I should try out for the Marching band in Junior High School. Intimidated, I reluctantly selected the Trombone and began playing 2 hours a day. See...my Dad was at one time in his life a working Jazz musician. He played in the 40's after WWII in Chicago and NY City in the trumpet section of the Big Bands. Among the horn sections of the Dorsey Brothers and Woody Herman. After 5 years of that he had to "get a real job" when he married my Mom, he said, and never picked up the horn again. But he filled my childhood household with music and exposed me to the entire range of Classical, Jazz, Opera, Blues and popular music growing up. One day when I was 10 or 11, he took me to a Big Band concert, just me and him. It was in the basement lounge of a Hotel here locally in 1970. We stood for 2 hours against the back concrete wall of this lounge while Count Basie and his Orchestra pounded us with Jazz, Bop and Swing. I was penetrated by a flood of sensations I had never before experienced. I asked my Dad on the way home, "is it normal to have goosebumps from the music, I could feel it all over me?"

He replied...you have the Gift, son.

About a 3 years later I ran in from school after a Marching Band rehearsal and told him...

"Its E flat minor Dad! That goose bump chord is E flat minor...does it to me every time!"

He just smiled.

Imagine what it feels like to have the same thing happen to my daughter and me some 38 years later.

whew.

A Prayer to my Mom

Thanks Mom.

Thanks for dragging my whining little 4 year old butt to Catholic Church and making me go thereafter "even if Dad stayed home".

Thanks for grabbing my hands, folding them in reverential prayer and whispering the Creed, the Lords Prayer and the Hail Mary in my ear.

And for making me kneel, when I thought it was the most excruciating torture imaginable,

And for marching me down the aisle every Sunday to get my head crossed and patted by that "dusty old Priest".

For making me stop doodling during the whole atrocious Latin filibuster, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.

For making me try to outsing that massive scary Mack Truck of a Pipe organ.

For putting me in Catholic Grade school with those fierce Disciplinary Nuns wielding the power of God against all who chewed gum in class.

For exposing me to the most beautiful Liturgy on the planet.

For planting the seed of Catholic truth as best you could, given my constant belligerence, even if the roots took 30 years to stick.

For loving me long enough and deep enough to never let go of me.

I know you know all this but I have to say it.

Thanks Mom.

Love,

Your Son.

CJ Podcast # 003 is up

CJ Podcast 003 is here.

Conscience

Catholic Carnival #185

Is here, with a wide variety of great reading and resources of which I am proud to mingle.

CJ Podcast #001 is up

CJ Podcast 001

The beginning of a Christian discovery.

Podcast This...

I am halfway into the first podcast recording/production. While recording and editing, I am finding myself needing to post a description and introduction to format, mainly to keep my purpose within certain lines. (So I can refer back to this post for my own guidance)

The primary message I want to convey here is that I am the American everyman. I am you (unless you are Mr. Akin or Mr. Grodi, etc). I am the guy who lives in this stress charged, media driven Culture and have taken on not just seeking Christ, but am immersing myself in Catholic Faith Re Formation, Catholic Faith Life and Catholic Doctrine Study....all while being attacked by a fallen Catholic Fundamentalist...who I cannot walk away from. The a-C and I have dealings together that require almost daily communication, and those dealings are long term and cannot be dropped for survival reasons.

Initially, the podcast is intended to get you to relate to me. Narrating my intellectual struggle in comprehending this Faith, as deeply as possible. For now, I have no motive to record anything but my voice and some bumper music. This is about the journey as it has been in the last few years up to now. No sound effects, no attempt at lay comedy, no false front that I am trying to be a professional broadcaster. Feedback I'm sure will come.

I hope you come back and find my first podcast and listen.

-Peace

Just the Facts

I work in an intense Corporate environment. There is never a black or white solution to any obstacle in this work life. The ramifications of any business decision being made are analyzed for political, perceptive, time cost and quality impacts from every point of view before the hammer drops on the decision. Although I have some autonomy over staff and my firms internal process compliance...it becomes to a large extent...management by process. Very little creativity can be used in the official side of decisions. I do get to throw some practice pitches which test out what the most effective angle of a decision might be. While decisions are made using facts, the facts are selected, positioned and emphasized in an effort to gain the best result. Lots of the people that are a part of the process become intensely frustrated either short term or long term, which has a hangover through exposure on many others. The amount of restraint required to personally communicate negative facts in a personally accountable position does lead to life ending stress for some. In the big picture corporately, the work of this environment is self-regulated by policy, who has the power, and what decision comes closest to the answer that power holder requires. That is one slant or mindset on this work life.

On the other hand...

If you have been through enough years of this type of result driven process to get a paycheck, ultimately you can choose to have your personal identity created by it, and effected by it hourly....or do the best you can (which means get enough sleep, food, vitamins, and stress relief routinely) and find a more consistent identity outside of your work life. This gives significant weight to the cliche' "God, then family, then self". You or I can choose to be a one of a perceptively insignificant number or "workers" or take the work to live stance and become a person instead.

...a person.

On my journey, I am finding at this, ahem, middle age of life (much too late in my opinion) this a value generating attitude. A prioritizing philosophy for self identity. The freedom then to choose an identity of passion is evident. Right now its a Catholic Journeyman...and this journey is worthy of my focus.

Progressive Grace

Theres a epiphany point for all Christians in their journey. Changes of the Heart come for some quickly and some agonizingly slow. We can all attest to that hindsight 20/20 clarity to reveal a change of heart. (fish oil helps us over the hump types).

Years ago, when I made a distinct conscious decision to follow the Lord, seek his presence, actively pursue the answers to questions all Christians have in their heart...

"am I worthy?...how can He love me?...where will this lead me?...etc"

and if there is a consistent effort, intentional thought and specific prayer in the seeker, changes of the heart actualize. I have felt this progressive grace in my heart over these years since my decision to follow, and know its Him. The selfishness and pride(ego) was the first internally recognizeable change of heart. Within some matter of weeks after the decision, I noticed a lack of my typical frustrations and anger upon the normal triggers. Traffic...seriously...Dude cuts me off and I would seethe to a degree...but not after the decision. I was somewhat amused actually when I got victimized at 65 mph, then the epiphany set in...."thats Him?"...I thought. Sure enough for me it is. I had no conscious effort to restrain internal anger at that...just a lack of weight or need to. There are changes of my heart now, progressively more obvious, more meaningful. My values have changed (I didnt even pray for that), the way I "see" other people in my presence was transformed. I see fragile humanity more clearly today. Changes of the heart are coming and I cannot claim their domain, only recognize their origin, be grateful in the peace of their fruit and thank God he is finding me worthy.