Magnificent!

For all you Catholic readers out there...

I wrote a post last May titled Revelation, in which I related my experience in listening to a tape by Fr. Larry Richards, wherein he exhorted Catholics to remember that we aren't supposed to be going to church on Sundays to get something: we're supposed to be going to church on Sundays to give. It was a relief to hear this because one of my pet peeves with American Christianity is hearing people whine about how they don't "feel fed" by whatever church they're attending, whether Catholic or Protestant, as if any one church with any one pastor could ever be expected to shoulder the burden of nursing a bunch of people who are old enough to be feeding themselves.

In that post, I listed a number of ways that Christians can find the spiritual food they're hungering for, although in the bounteous ways of our merciful and practical God, who is always generous with His gifts and sometimes sneaky about the way He delivers them: even when we're there at church to give back to Him with our worship and praise, He gives us quite a feast with the liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist.

One of the ways I listed for spiritual food that we can consume for the good of our souls outside of Mass was through Magnificat, a monthly magazine that lists the daily Mass readings plus morning and evening prayer. But I just found out that there's so much more than that to this lovely little missal, the current issue of which is pictured above.

On Saturday evening's vigil Mass, Father told the congregation that some member of the parish had found himself with fifty copies of the July 2010 issue of Magnificat and that he'd brought them to the church for whoever wanted to pick one up. Meelyn picked up a copy for me and as I've used it over the past few days, I've come to realize how really nice Magnificat is.

First of all, it's more than just a missal -- a booklet that lists the daily/weekly Mass readings. The daily readings are there, along with the morning and evening prayer I mentioned before, but there's also a handy liturgical calendar on the first page that lets you know where we are in the liturgical year -- today, for instance, is the beginning of the fourteenth week in Ordinary time. There's also Night prayer, which comes in very handy for the insomniacs among us. You can also read about the Saint of the Day and reflect upon the Meditation of the Day (which goes along with the interconnected topic of the daily readings). There is some beautiful religious art in each issue, which brings me to my last point, which is that Magnificat is simply lovely to look at. Printed on high quality paper with a readable font, it's simply nice to have.

There are four ways to subscribe to Magnificat's hard copy version: You can do a six-month subscription, a one year, a two-year or a four-year. This might be a good time to point out that if you opted for the four-year subscription, you'd be able to read the entire Bible (minus the genealogical tables, which I'm not really sure anyone ever reads anyway, with all that begatting going on unto the tenth and lo, the twentieth generation) and have a head start on going through it all again.

But here are some alternate techie ways to get fed through prayer and the Word: Magnificat can also be launched as an app on your iPhone -- your daily prayers will come right up on your little screen for only $1.99 a month. Or you can subscribe to Magnificat online in either six-month or one year terms of service.

This is what I was talking about when I said in my Revelation post that there's just no excuse for any of us to have this lazy attitude of sitting in our high chairs with our mouths hanging open, waiting for some food to be shoveled in on a little spoon, or worse yet, offered to us in a bottle or a sippy cup. We need to see to our feeding through prayer, through reading our Bibles, through learning about Jesus through our faith by reading the Catechism or about the lives of the saints. There are so many ways available to us that it's just a terrible shame to hear about people leaving the Catholic church -- and incidentally, Jesus in the Eucharist, the cornerstone of our faith and the reason why -- because we think that a rock band playing up in the front of a different church is going to provide us with what we need. Good grief.

Magnificat is a particularly nice way to feed ourselves a good, satisfying helping of the Holy Spirit.

FISH ON FRIDAY: The Tuna Casserole Project

This tuna casserole recipe makes use of one of my favorite small kitchen appliances: the slow-cooker. I read the recipe, bewildered, wondering what it was about tuna casserole that would need four to six hours to cook. I mean, noodles? Maybe eleven minutes in boiling water. The peas, even frozen ones, cook by themselves while the casserole is in the oven. The tuna itself is already cooked -- I got a sudden mental image of a Midwestern housewife cramming an entire raw tuna, head, fins and all, into her Crock Pot -- and couldn't come up with anything. And then, a moment of revelation: The purpose of cooking a tuna casserole in a slow-cooker is twofold:

1) To make absolutely, positively CERTAIN WITHOUT A SHADOW OF DOUBT that all ingredients have reached their maximum level of gluey gloppiness so that each individual helping separates itself from the serving spoon with a sticky sound and lands with a sound that falls somewhere between a *thwack!* and a *thmp* on the plate, and;

2) To make your house smell, like, REALLY, REALLY GOOD. I mean, awesome, with that canned tuna fishy smell permeating every porous surface. Mmmmm....

Blaming God

The news agencies are all a-buzz -- or maybe a-Twitter would be a better term -- about the online comment made by Stevie Johnson of the Buffalo Bills after he dropped a touchdown pass that could have meant a win for his team.

"I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME!!!!!" Stevie tweeted Our Lord severely from his iPad, presumably not on his knees. "YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO..."

I prefer to believe that Stevie meant this comment tongue-in-cheek, but there are a lot of people out there who have taken him seriously and are berating this poor kid up to threatening him with eternal damnation for being so cheeky. From the picture I saw accompanying the news article I read, Stevie looks like a mere child I mean, a young man in his twenties, so I can't be too hard on him because this is a lesson that a lot of oldsters I mean, adults twice Stevie's age have trouble learning.

For the most part, I blame modern American Christianity, which has devolved to a place where the term "Christian" is somehow seen as synonymous with "I am healthy, wealthy and too blessed to be stressed!!!" Which is a phrase that makes me search hurriedly for a small wastebasket every time I hear it, because yuuuuuck. What in the world does being blessed have to do with a lack of stress? Because let me tell you, some of the most blessed times of my life have been when stress levels were shooting straight through the top of the stress-o-meter. But the red-line stress levels weren't because God's care and concern weren't with me; it was more a lack of my own trust that things would work out, no matter what. (As it turns out, things did work out, which made me feel very chagrined and apologetic.)

At any rate, I can't see anywhere in the Bible through my own reading or through hearing it at church every Sunday where God owes us anything because we "praise [Him] 24/7," which I don't think is possible anyway, even for contemplative orders of nuns and monks. He offers us the gift of salvation through His grace and the merits of His sacrificial death on the cross, but owing us, like, a happy life free from pain, disappointment, sorrow? No, that's not right. That's like a teenager going up to his or her parents and saying, "You owe me a car because I've remembered to make my bed without being reminded for the past year."

After all, Jesus's Passion, the culmination of His three year ministry on earth, His raison d'etre -- reason for being -- was our salvation and that was accomplished through pain, disappointment and sorrow from Gethsemane to Calvary. There was no escaping it if He wanted to carry out the plan to save us from the wages of our sin, which was death. So He voluntarily chose to walk the road of sorrows and when He told us that if we wanted to be His followers, we'd have to take up our own crosses and follow Him? He meant that we were going to walk the same road in this life, but He promised it would be worth it once we gained heaven.

This earth is not the place where we'll perfection of body, soul and mind. In the book of Revelation, St. John wrote of seeing "the new heaven and the new earth" in chapter twenty-one. "He will wipe every tear from their eyes and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away," the apostle wrote. "The one who sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new."

So when we approach this life as a time and place of perfection, where God is our own personal genie who will grant us our wishes of perfect health, perfect prosperity and perfectly caught football passes, we're setting ourselves up for bitter disappointment of the sort that Stevie expressed in his tweet. "Look at all I do for you! You owe me, God!" A lot of times, I have found that this "owing" concept has a lot to do with "Scriptural Promises," which are random verses plucked out here and there and taken vigorously out of context, with no regard to surrounding passages or even the scope and sequence of the Bible as a whole. In that way lies danger, because when a person does that often enough, it happens that the resulting religion they cobble together for themselves bears no resemblance to actual Christianity in either the spiritual or historical sense. Instead, it becomes more akin to a New-Agey sort of gnosticism. It may feel good to believe this invented quasi-Christian philosophy -- after all, who wouldn't want to experience prosperity, perfect health and so many blessings raining down from heaven that stress just got knocked over flat on its back? -- but it doesn't have any basis in real Christianity.

Real Christianity is rugged. It is not for people who are so delicate, they can't deal with the concept of money troubles or illness, seeing those things as signs that one has somehow missed God's will because otherwise, things would be rosy. It takes some real character to be a good one, not that I'd know because I'm one of those who still, in my mid-forties, has to fight down the urge to flip the bird at people who cut me off in traffic. It takes courage to believe without seeing, to be kind to your enemies and to extend charity when none is extended to you. It takes a strong person to believe that thing might not be okay right now, in fact, things might be disastrous right now, but to rest in the promise that someday, maybe not in this life but in the next one, things will definitely be okay. It takes a lot of doing to read your Bible, attend to your prayers and do your duty to God as a grateful thank-you for the generous gift of His Son. Authentic Christianity takes some faith and some works and sometimes it comes so easy that you could swear you're drifting along, borne up by angel's wings, and sometimes it's so hard, you just want to chuck it all out.

But then there's that part of you that echoes St. Peter words in John 6: "To whom shall [I] go? You have the words of eternal life." I hope that Stevie will learn this lesson as he continues with his career in professional football, whether he catches passes sent his way or whether they drop like stones right at his feet. I hope I'll continue learning this lesson, taking the advice of the great saints who have gone before us - St. Therese and St. Theresa (who once grumpily said, "If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few of them," a concept which I feel Stevie could heartily endorse.) St. Vincent de Paul and St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Catherine of Siena and St. John Vianney. Every single one of those people went through a time of bitterness and sorrow, some of them died difficult deaths, but none of them threw up their hands and said, "This is not what I was promised in Your Word! I want a do-over! I want my money back! I want to speak to the manager!" They all persevered and they won out in the end. I'm sure they had their times of wondering what the heck was going on, because who doesn't? But they held on. We can learn from them. We should learn from them; they have so much to teach us about authentic faith and spirituality for Christians.

One of the things I like best about being Catholic is this picture: Life is like a steep uphill climb, rough terrain like one might find in the hills of Judea.The path is there right in front of you, but it's obvious that there's not going to be any kind of easy ascent. So there's Jesus right ahead of you, beckoning you onward with a friendly smile and a look of love in His eyes so deep and so true, you just know that He knows you're going to make it.

He carries a lantern to light the way so that you can see the particularly bad spots and not miss your footing. On one side of you is your guardian angel, on the other is the Blessed Mother. From time to time, you fall down on the path. Okay, make that many times. But each time, Jesus stops and waits as your angel and your heavenly mother haul you up by the elbows. They dust you off and get you back on your feet and Jesus sets the lantern down so that He can bind up your wounds. "There. Better now?" He asks, and then it is onward and upward again, no time to stop, no time to look back.

All along the way, there is encouragement and kindness. Your angel and your holy mother pray for you every step, adding their voices to yours as you talk to Him. "Jesus, I need help. I'm so tired," you say. "Yes, Jesus," says Mary, "She is so tired. He is so weary. Please give her refreshment. Please bless his life." Your angel chimes in, "Yes, please, Jesus, help her be strong. Help him not to grow weary in well-doing." Jesus listens to our questions, provides us with answers, hears our complaints and deals with our fears and our frailties, constantly challenging us to be better, be bigger, walk stronger, get tougher....all while having the tender, loving faith of a little child. In short, He is there every second, always ready to come to us with His arms outstretched, every time He hears a heart cry out to Him, in the ancient words of the daily prayer, "Deus in adjutorium meum intende; Domine ad adjuvandum me festina"

God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me.

Stevie, you and I will keep on learning as we climb the path of salvation with Him, and as your Christian sister, I think the question I'd like to ask you if we could meet face to face right now is this: "What is He trying to get you to learn through that dropped pass? Could the lesson be that He is there with you whether you win or lose? Whether you look like a star or more like a burnt match? Since there is no humiliation that you experience that He hasn't experienced tenfold before you, could you be with Him in His time of need, share His pain and fear and humiliation this coming Holy Week? Could you give yourself completely not only to be known, but to know?"

I say it to myself, too.

I'd like my sinus infection on the side, please

It is no great revelation to anyone who knows me that I am the world's biggest hypochondriac, sometimes experiencing other people's symptoms of illness concurrently with them, even though I am not sick myself. Like, come up to me and tell me about your tonsillitis, your migraine headaches, your inability to digest soy and pretty soon I will be standing there feeling feverish while experiencing an aura along with a pressing need to visit the restroom.

I think it has something to do with my great love and compassion for all humanity. I take your pain: I make it my own. And then I'll want to tell you all about my suffering, so please stay close to your mobile phone, your email and your Facebook wall.

At the present time, I am all on my own with sickness. Having pneumonia over Christmas just righteously sucked and then to get a sinus infection on top of that mess was just adding insult to injury. Today was the blessed day when I finished the last of the amoxicillin the doctor prescribed for my sinuses and I am so glad because I am convinced that the side effects of that crap are quite possibly worse than the infection it was supposed to treat.

For the past seven days or so, I've been experiencing a series of delightful side effects from the amoxicillin, ranging from a horrible bitter taste in my mouth, to dizziness and lightheadedness, to nausea....oh, it's just been so much fun. There have been times when I have wanted to call the doctor back to demand some kind of drug that would counteract the stupid side effects.

I blush to tell you that my attitude through all of this hasn't been one of tolerance and good cheer. In fact, I've been surly and grumpy, complaining loudly and with frequency about my various ills. Not for me the old Catholic manner of "offering it up" with prayer for the salvation of souls. No, I'm too worried about my own and how it's faring in there, what with the constant, jostling nausea that makes my tongue lump up like a big, wet piece of army blanket about sixty times a day. I want other people to offer their stuff up for me, mostly in the area of bringing me a cup of green tea with honey and rubbing my feet and adjusting a pillow behind my weary head. And bringing me a new selection of library books to while away the time when no one is around to hear my roars of outrage.

With that last tablet, hopefully my sinus infection will be gone and the side effects of the amoxicillin along with it. Just in case either is still lingering, please pray for my family.

The O Antiphons - O Radix Jesse

Today is the third day of the O Antiphons of Advent, O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse).

"Come to deliver us and tarry not." The world cries out for Christ its King, who shall cast out the prince of this world (John 12:31). The prince of this world established his power over men as a result of original sin. Even after we had been delivered from the servitude of Satan through the death of Christ on the cross, the prince of this world attempts to exercise his power over us. "The devil, as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour" (I Peter 5:8). In these trying times, when faith in Christ and in God has largely disappeared, when the propaganda of a pagan culture is broadcast everywhere, and the forces of evil and falsehood rise up to cast God from His throne, who does not feel the power of the devil? Does it not appear that we are approaching that time when Satan will be released from the depths of hell to work his wonders and mislead, if possible, even the elect? (Revelation 20:2; Matthew 24:24.)

"Come, tarry not." Observe how thoroughly the world of today has submitted to the reign of Satan. Mankind has abandoned the search for what is good and holy. Loyalty, justice, freedom, love, and mutual trust are no longer highly regarded. Establish, O God, Thy kingdom among us, a kingdom established upon truth, justice, and peace. "Come, tarry not." "Thy kingdom come."

~Excerpted from The Light of the World by Benedict Baur, O.S.B.

Source: Catholic Culture.org

Reality cheque

At my friend Debbie's request, I am writing a post about one of the many realities of homeschooling. I've always written about real things that happen, but one of my modest talents is to be able to turn even the most un-funny episode into something humorous, but it isn't always possible to do that. Sometimes the bright side can be kind of dim.

Part 1: Debbie pleads her case

Debbie is the mother of six children, all under the age of 10. She and her husband and family attend Our Lady of Perpetual Motion parish and she, like many other homeschooling mothers, has been known to lock herself in the bathroom and claim to be suffering from a bad case of constipation. At a recent homeschool event, she said to me in her decisive way, "I think you should write a book."

"Oh, okay," I teased her. "I'll get started on that right away. Any suggestions on what this book should be about?"

"Oh, yeah," she said, leaning toward me across the table at which we were sitting. "You need to write a real homeschooling book. About how hard it is. And how you want to kill your kids sometimes. And what a crushing responsibility it is -- how you wonder if you're a total failure and if your kids are going to grow up to be panhandlers at a freeway exit."

"If I wrote a book like that, every single homeschooler would hate my guts," I protested.

"No, they wouldn't," she insisted. "They would totally get it. There are already enough of those books out there that tell those full-of-crap stories about how some mother has every aspect of homeschooling sewn up into some little package with pink peonies hand-embroidered on it. You know what I'm talking about: how Mommy has time to devote two hours to prayer each morning before getting up to take the kiddies to Mass and then come home to a nourishing family breakfast of coddled eggs gathered from their flock of chickens out back that the nine-year-old is raising for a 4-H project and whole-grain muffins their five-ear-old baked with one hand while she played a Beethoven sonata on the piano with another. And then the kids learn multiplication by sorting socks, and then early in the afternoon, she retires to her bedroom with the midwife and has her fourteenth child while she writes up the family school-and-chores schedule for the next six months."

"Oh, yeah," I said bleakly. "Those books. I hate those books."

"Tell me about it."

"They make me feel like a big, inadequate lump of dough."

"You think?"

"Sometimes, my one prayer of the day is, 'Holy Mother of Jesus Our Lord and Savior, please hold me back from hurting somebody.'"

"Uh-huh. That's what I mean. Like, the other day, there was only enough ice cream left in the house for one person, so I purposely sent the kids outside to play and I ate it myself. And I enjoyed every bite and I didn't feel guilty."

"You mean everybody doesn't do that?"

Debbie snorted. "Not from what you'd read in just about every homeschooling book out there. All those mothers would have made a project with the ice cream and some phyllo pastry and created little miniature Baked Alaskas to serve Daddy when he got home from work. And ev-ree-one would have had their fair share."

I sat with my chin in my hand, thinking. "Reality?" I asked her.

"Ab-so-freakin'-lutely," she said firmly.


Part 2: Reality according to us

We began homeschooling when Meeyln finished her second year in public school. She had wonderful teachers and the school was great. The problem lay in the fact that education being offered was what you could expect from teachers with a whole bunch of students working at differing levels and only one self.

Believe me, I am not one to naggity-nag-nag at public school teachers for the abysmal test scores and illiterate students that are endlessly cranked out of our public school system. I've been a public school teacher, and if there's any job that could suck the will to live right out of you, being a public school teacher is the one. Don't get me started on overcrowded classrooms. Or on how students show up on your roster that should have been held back years ago for non-mastery of basics, like, just for an example, knowing how to read.

I don't want to go to that dark place where most teachers spend a portion of their weak and spindly salaries on supplemental materials for their classes, or even on decor to cheer up their Cell Block B-style surroundings. And it would be too depressing to dwell on the endless discipline problems and the "necessity" of having the kids out of the class to go to this convocation and that pep rally and Story Time in the library...and people wonder why kids can't do math.

So. I am very pro-public school teacher. They have a sucky, demanding job and most of them are relentlessly optimistic at the beginning of each new school year.

But still, Meelyn was not doing well. She was reading at about the fifth-grade level and doing math at first-grade level. That, and the fact that the school system had just adopted a stupid and ridiculous whole-language program to replace the solid but "boring" Saxon phonics program they'd adopted five years earlier. Saxon phonics, I was told as a member of the textbook selection committee, was just too dull. Not enough colored pictures. Not enough flip charts, for heaven's sake! Not enough razzmatazz!!! We need full-page illustrations, people!

And no, I am not kidding about this.

I talked to my teacher friends in the building, teacher for whom I had served as a volunteer to listen to children read. "What is the deal with the flip charts-colored pictures-more razzmatazz sector out there?" I asked incredulously.

"I don't know," one said grimly. "But I'm already saving whatever Saxon materials I can so that my second-graders can learn how to read. I may get hauled away for copyright infringement, but at least I'll be doing my job."

The state of California used whole-language based "reading programs" for a number of years, resulting in the lowest reading scores nationwide during that time, an infamous experiment in throwing out the tried-and-true and replacing it with razzmatazz, with disasterous results. And now that same failed methodology was being brought to our local public schools where it could be inflicted on kindergarten-aged Aisling?

My husband said no way. "You already spend hours helping Meelyn with her math," he said. "Now you're supposed to teach Aisling how to read? Why are you doing the school's job after they've already been there all day long?"

I had no answer for this. Well, except for homeschooling. Which was actually my husband's suggestion initially. I had always been very interested in homeschooling and I had a big shelf full of books that I'd digested; my own plan was to have the girls go to public school for grades K-6 and bring them home for grades 7-12. It took a while for me to become convinced that we should start now. We devoted a lot of time to prayer, seeking God's opinion for what was a pretty big step. Neither of us could deny the peace we felt, which for Christians is the hallmark of God's will.

Once I was on board, there was one thing my husband and I both agreed on. We said: If we started homeschooling, it was going to be for always. There was going to be none of this school-for-a-year-then-home-for-a-year-then-back-to-school-for-a-year. My husband was bounced around like this in his childhood, only it was between public schools and Christian schools. He went to something like nine different schools in twelve years. Without going into a lot of personal stuff, he feels this damaged him and he didn't want to do the same to our kids.

So, there we were, living our own slightly counter-culture reality: Homeschoolers several years before we'd planned, charting our course through waters that were initially as smooth as glass.


Part 3: High winds and choppy seas

In our culture, it is hard to be a one-income family. Especially when the main breadwinner works on commission. We know other families where Dad or Mom is self-employed and they go through a lot of the same things we do.

As Christians, we're told to have faith. "Pray, hope and don't worry," as Padre Pio famously said. In spite of the fact that our finances have been freakishly nerve-wracking from time to time, we've always pulled through. Here's the reality: there have been disconnect notices. There have been increasingly irritated calls from collection agents. Due to a manufacturing economy that has gone belly up in the past few years (taking a lot of factory workers, and, incidentally, car salesmen) with it, we declared bankruptcy several years ago. There simply weren't customers buying cars. And then there was the small matter of September 11, 2001. And rising gas prices.

Through all of that, we continued on doggedly. It was strongly suggested by people we knew that we should just give. It. Up, already. The girls could go to public school; I could get a teaching job. Everything would be peachy.

Except for the fact that every time we considered that option, the feeling both of us had was one of jangling, screeching, jarring dissonance in our inner selves. No peace whatsoever. Trust me when I say that we weren't unaware of the seeming stupidity of continuing to be a one-income family when it was perfectly obvious to any sane person that two incomes would be the expedient way to go. My husband works with some people who have politely suggested that he tell me to get off my a** and get a job.

"I can't believe you don't make her get a job," one person said to him witheringly. "She's taking advantage of you, letting you slave away while she sits at home. There's no way I'd let my wife stay at home with the kids. She needs to do her share and bring in some money."

What can you say to a person like this? Other than, "I thank God every night that out of the eight hundred fifty-nine men anxious to marry me, you weren't one of them, my friend." It must be a lot of fun running your own little gulag. Sheesh.

But then there are fellow Christians -- and I have to tread very carefully, here -- who have told us that if what we're doing is God's will, then we would be blessed with prosperity. Things wouldn't be so hard, if we were in God's will. Sure, we would be dealing with the consequences of being a one income family in a two income society, but we sure as heck wouldn't be getting disconnect notices from the gas company, because God would be abundantly providing, "pressed down, shaken together and running over."

What is the answer to that? Other than a dumb look, I mean. Because this mindset is one that has ridden me like a rented mule through most of my life. And I have found that even though I am still working it out of my system with the help of God's grace, it is more difficult to explain the truth to the Christians who believe this than it is to explain quantum physics to a seven-year-old.

Part 4: Insomnimom: philosopher and theologian

Before I start on this section, I think it is important to mention that I am not stating my own personal beliefs. I am stating the beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church, the only congregation of Christians that has the historical, Biblical and authoritative claim of being the Church established by Jesus Christ, directly before and after the time of his death and resurrection.

First of all, it isn't true that God has promised Christians wealth and health during this lifetime. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. This life is one of lessons to be learned and crosses to be carried. That has been Christian belief for the past two thousand years; that life is often hard and the walk on the path of life is frequently weary, but that our hope of heaven brings us peace and joy.

I can personally attest to that.

The idea of God's favor granting Christians financial prosperity and good health began in the United States with a preacher named E.W. Kenyon (1867-1948), a New York native, who wrote numerous books on the subject of word-faith confession. In his book Hidden Man, Kenyon wrote a short phrase that serves as the catchphrase of his movement: "What I confess, I possess." Unfortunately for him and the people his teachings have deceived, this statement is false.

It may have been false, but it sure was beguiling. Kenyon's new teaching began to tickle ears all over the United States as people eagerly read his books. Oral Roberts and Kenneth Copeland were among the first purveyors of this false teaching. It was enthusiastically picked up by popular televangelists like Jim and Tammy Bakker and Kenneth Hagin. Kenyon's teaching is called by several different names: the "health and wealth gospel", the "prosperity gospel", "word-faith theology" and the "name-it-and-claim-it movement."

You could go to any Christian book store and glance at the rack of best-sellers and see a lineup of the current authors promoting the word-faith concept, smiling at you from the covers of their books. Some of them are the pastors of mega-churches and some of them have television programs; several of them have come under investigation in a United States Senate probe headed by Iowa Republican Charles Grassley for abuse of their tax-exempt status.

It's really important to know why this is a false teaching. Why is it wrong for Christians to preach a message of God's abundant blessings on the physical and financial health of His children? There are, after all, plenty of verses and passages throughout scripture that mention good health, long life and prosperity. And if God doesn't lie, how could those verses be wrong?

Like virtually all false teaching from the Gnostics on down, the problem is that a lie that has a little bit of truth in it is still a lie. This, I have been told from my Protestant childhood to my Catholic adulthood, is the classic ploy of Satan to confuse, disarm and deceive God's people. His specialty seems to be convincing people that they can pick and choose a verse here and a passage there and form them into a "belief" or a "scriptural promise" when they're really nothing of the kind. Anyone with a mind to do so can make the Bible say just about anything they want it to say.

This is how we know with certainty that Martin Luther's doctrine of sola scriptura ("through Scripture alone") is a false teaching. Complete misinterpretations of scripture are possible, which can lead to some devastating problems within the Christian brethren. Like, for instance, the matter of 30,000+ different Protestant denominations, all started by men (or even women) who had their own ideas of what the Bible was teaching. Whether or not that idea was backed up -- historically and spiritually -- with what Christianity has actually taught down through the generations from the time of Jesus and the disciples is another story.

Something I have learned from both Protestant and Catholic teaching is that divine revelation stopped when St. John the Apostle finished writing his revelation from the Holy Spirit. The Early Church Fathers explained the traditional beliefs of Christianity still further in their own writings, but their works have never been considered inspired by the Holy Spirit because there was nothing new in them - they were just a continuation of what had already been taught. Quite a few of the Early Church Fathers were disciples of the Apostles and learned directly from them.

There have also been Church councils and papal writings through the ages, all defining and solidifying what Jesus and the Apostles taught. Historically, spiritually and Biblically, we only can know the truth if we're seeking the beliefs of the early Church. They haven't changed over the years; as the scripture says: "Jesus Christ is the same today as he was yesterday and as he will be forever." (Heb. 13:8, NJB)

If He doesn't change His beliefs, then how can we? How can my husband and I use a teaching that was invented somewhere in the 20th century -- "If it is God's will that you homeschool, He will provide and if His provision is gone, you must not be in His will" -- as a litmus test of our decision to homeschool?

If you think of God's will for a person's life to be equal with His abundant provision, how can a Christian explain the lives of Job and Jesus? When Jesus was in Gethsemane praying before His Passion began, He pleaded with His Father to make some provision for Him -- Plan B -- so that He wouldn't have to undergo the torment. The provision didn't come; Jesus still suffered. The provision did come later in His victory over death, so Jesus was not ignored or forgotten. Likewise, the apostles suffered the death of martyrs, all except for St. John. God's plan for their lives didn't include health or wealth.

If it didn't happen for these early saints, champions and heroes of the Christian faith, how could we possibly convince ourselves that it will happen for us?

Part 5: So where are we now?

Right now, we're slap in the middle of one of the most alarming financial crises in our marriage. Wow, has it ever tested our faith.

In a discussion I had recently on the subject of the word-faith movement, Father, who is wise and good, said, "It's easy to be a Christian when things are good. When you and your family are in the pink of health and you have a big, fat wad of money in the bank and you have a great job and the market is bullish, your Christian experience is largely theoretical. It's when the hard times come that you get a chance to find out how deep your roots are."

"I hate it," I said sulkily, wiping tears off my cheeks with the tissue he proffered.

"Well, St. Paul says that you should be counting it as joy," he responded, smiling.

"I hardly feel like smiling. Not having money scares me," I elaborated, just in case he didn't understand the first time.

He sighed and patiently began again. "Do you remember Jesus's parable about the sower and the seed?"

"Well, yeah..."

"So you know that the sower in the story threw some of the seed onto stony ground, so that the plants sprang up quickly. But when the harsh sun shone on them, they withered and died because they hadn't developed a root system."

"You're saying, then, that this whole health-and-wealth thing is like the stony soil?"

I pictured the huge mega-churches that have sprung up everywhere nowadays, it seems, with their coffee bars and their "living rooms" designed for people who'd rather lounge on a sofa and watch the preacher on a plasma screen television than sit on a pew upstairs and see him live; these churches with their constant focus on entertaining feel good-ism that doesn't really press too hard on unpleasant issues like sin and our duty to God.

One preacher I read about, the pastor of the country's largest mega-church and the author of several super-dooper best selling healthy-wealthy books, confides that he never talks about sin or judgment in any of his sermons because people don't want to be brought down by a negative message. He wants to focus on the positive, which in his case means preaching about how God wants all of us to be prosperous and in blooming health; anything less is simply not the abundant Christianity that all followers should be working to achieve. He claims that talking about overcoming sin and working to achieve holiness and picking up one's cross -- all that stuff Jesus talked about -- is just not his "gifting."

"This prosperity thing," Father said, interrupting my thoughts, "is bound to create a generation of Christians with shallow roots. These folks will be required to carry some crosses in life and what's going to happen when their faith is tested with a cross? What's going to happen when they claim a healing that never happens? They don't think that crosses bear any relation to their walk with Jesus. Their roots are shallow; they'll burn out. What they're being taught to keep them coming to those churches is a lie and nothing good will come of it. The Church teaches that the end never justifies the means."

I left the church that day feeling somewhat better. My husband and I had a very long talk that went far into the night about money and homeschooling and God's will for our lives. This was our conclusion:

1) We began homeschooling after months of prayer. Our prayers led us to this conclusion: We would homeschool the girls all the way through high school. If it was right for them as elementary students, it would most assuredly be right for them as middle- and high-school students.

2) The Bible tells us -- backed up by Christian belief for the past 2,000 years -- that this life is one that has its great moments of happiness and a profound sense of joy as we hope for heaven, but it also offers a number of trials: health problems, financial messes, lonely times when it seems like prayers bounce right off the ceiling and fall with a thud onto the floor. These are things that should be expected by mature Christians; no one should feel exempt from trouble or feel that God is there to whisk problems away.

3) God tests our faith through trials. Without trials that we suffer though, our faith would be weak and our roots would be shallow. Our relationship with Jesus would be superficial.

4) Sometimes God removes our trials and changes our circumstances. Sometimes He doesn't.

5) Money may well be a trial that my husband and I suffer through for years. There are trade-offs, as there are with every circumstance in life.

On the downside, we may be as poor as churchmice and the girls may never get to have another piano lesson and the electric company may continue to send us letters that begin "We're sure through some oversight you have neglected..."

On the upside, we get to be with our kids. We get to guide and direct their education. We get to make them happy, because homeschooling is what they want to do. When they're grown, we'll never wistfully think that it all went so fast, what with careers and school and all, that we never really had time to truly know them before they were gone.

6) Money problems can be very scary and depressing. There's nothing like a good, solid bank account to make me feel a sunshiny blissfulness. Which possibly indicates one of the weaknesses in my faith that God is working on: I should be feeling a sunshiny blissfulness that God does provide, even if He doesn't provide in the abundance that we'd prefer.

But no. Me, I'd much rather have a whole great big bunch of stuff and then I'd like to get new stuff, more stuff than I had before. And I'd like a big house to put all my stuff in, too. And when I got bored with stuff, I'd like to go on vacations, either flying on planes or by driving in my black Hummer. With tinted windows.

Never mind that this attitude is pretty much the antithesis of Christian life. And I don't want to hear any of that silly business about how rich the Pope is, either. Everybody knows that the popes don't own any of that stuff in the Vatican: Benedict XVI cannot hold a rummage sale out there on the piazza. Not even his bed, his desk and his prie-dieu belong to him.

7) We have friends who have money. We have family that has money. But it isn't the responsibility of any of these people to look after us or tend to our wants. It is true that a certain friend who is mentioned frequently on this blog is very, very sweet about picking up the tab for occasional Mom's Night Outs or Book-It pizza lunches, but friendships and family relationships will never be exploited by our begging. If the Holy Spirit nudges someone and they offer a lunch or a check, that's one thing. But our sad, pleading spaniel faces will never beg from the people we love. It just isn't the right thing for mature Christians to do.

That's where we are as of this day, the day I am posting.

This is our homeschooling reality, filed under Bad News: our cell phones have been turned off because we can't pay the bill. Our gas is due to be shut off on January 7. We're behind on the rent. We almost lost the regular phones and the internet last week, but managed to squeak in with a Western Union payment before those services were canceled. We managed to spend about $25 on each girl for Christmas.

This is our homeschooling reality, filed under Glad Tidings: We remain debt free, in spite of the credit card offers that come to us daily. We shred those things up immediately. The temptation to give in has been enormous: it would be so nice to know that we have a little cushion. It's so much easier to trust on the immediacy of BankAmerica that it is on God, Whose ways are sometimes so slow and unknowable. This is, I think, one of the greatest achievements of our marriage. We are, if I may be so bold to say so, awesome. I am really proud of us. This test is one we've been passing with triumph.

This is our homeschooling reality, filed under Mysterious Ways: Just yesterday, my husband sold two trucks, completely out of the blue: Customers that had never been seen at the dealership before wandered onto the lot, pointed, and said, "I want to buy that truck and here's the money." My husband even has a couple more pending deals that just need to be closed. Next Friday, he'll have a superb paycheck that will catch us up almost completely. It won't be enough to bring back piano lessons and art classes just yet, but we're moving forward. This is how God comes through for us, showing us that He is always in control.

Part 6: And now, back to Debbie

So, there's some homeschooling reality for you, Debbie. The day we talked about what is r-e-a-l about homeschooling, I was so broke that the girls and I couldn't eat pizza with everyone else -- we ate sandwiches at home and asked for ice water when we got to Pizza Hut. It was a blue, blue day and I've been turning this non-fiction version of the book you said I should write over and over in my mind ever since we spoke that day.

Maybe I can get started on that partially-autobiographical novel next.

Bad Catholics

One of the hardest things I have to explain about our Catholic faith to my children is not the truth of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist or the infallibility of the Pope -- they understood those things with the childlike faith Jesus would like all of us to have, along with a healthy dose of realizing that in the case of the Real Presence, we have no business telling God what He can or cannot do and if He says "My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink," (John 6:47-71) we need to just accept the fact that He knows what he's doing and move on; and in the second case, that the Pope is only infallible when teaching about matters of faith or morals, not in predicting the Powerball jackpot numbers or the local weather forecast in Vatican City.

The hardest thing I have to explain to Meelyn and Aisling is about Bad Catholics.

Bad Catholics seem to abound these days, with the most visible among them being the ones involved in politics. Oh, it would be lovely if every Catholic politician was a Rick Santorum, former Senator from Pennsylvania. I've been very thankful that five of the nine United States Supreme Court justices are Catholics, and seem to be reliably conservative so that they don't shame the rest of us with their freakish pronouncements. Since the most prominent Bad Catholics today are nearly all Democrats (and that should tell you something, shouldn't it?), they're getting a lot of press.

As I write this article, Nancy Pelosi, one of the Baddest Catholics out there, has just met with the Pope -- apparently, she didn't burst into flame, so I'm assuming it took place somewehere removed from the Blessed Sacrament -- in a fifteen-minute meeting in which I hope he roundly excoriated her for her Bad Catholic hijinks, which include her ongoing support of abortion at all stages of pregnancy, and her more recent idiocy in which she said that monies artificial birth control should be included in Barack Obama's stimulus plan because we all know that babies grow up to be children and children are a severe drain on the nation's health care and educational resources. Thank goodness that got shot down, with even Barack himself demurring.

How do you explain things like this to teenage kids? How do you explain that one of the most powerful people in the country, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, is a Bad Catholic and that, in spite of her fame (notoriety?) and position, she should be completely dismissed as a role model and I don't care how far she's "advanced the interests of women" in our country because if you can't even get it right with your own religion that you claim to be so devoted to, how could you possibly be expected to get it right anywhere else?

When it comes to explaining things like this, there are some -- and they usually seem to be liberals -- who like to triumphantly fling around the only Bible verse they apparently know, which is Matthew 7:1-5:

"Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be
judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to
you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not
perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let
me remove that splinter from your eye,' while the wooden beam is in your eye?
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see
clearly to remove the splinter from your brother's eye."

But really, as you read this, the only way you could ever conclude that Jesus doesn't want us to judge anyone or anything is if you purposely ignored the many other verses in the Bible that support the idea of judging people and situations. For instance, just a little bit farther on in that very same chapter, Matthew 7:15-20, Jesus says this:

"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but
underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people
pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree
bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot
bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does
not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their
fruits you will know them."

Isn't He telling us there to judge? How else will we know false prophets if we don't weigh the evidence of their words and decide whether the fruit they're producing is good or bad?

How will we know the good politicians? The good pastors? Potential spouses? How will we know anything at all if we don't exercise some judgment? Are we meant to just blunder stupidly through life, accepting at face value everything that everyone tells us?

Keeping this in mind, I think it's only prudent to point out to impressionable teenagers that not every Catholic is worthy of the name; that some aren't religious people at all, but call themselves "Catholic" because Catholicism is part of the ethnic culture in which they were raised, and really has nothing to do with the dogma and doctrines of our faith, or even anything as simple as attending Mass on Sundays, which is not optional.

I think the key here might be in knowing beyond a doubt that there are some people who would consider me and my husband bad Catholics: we drink beer; I wear pants; we might say naughty words when we stub our toes, depending upon the level of pain we're experiencing. We have to remember to be humble in our judgment and not feel that we have achieved perfection of any sort.

But back to the Bad Catholics, the ones who veer so far from Catholic teaching that they bring scandal to their fellow members of the Body of Christ. We have to teach our children to make sound judgments on their characters. And above all, we must make sure our children know that the reception of Holy Communion when in violation of a basic tenet of the Catholic faith is a grave sin.

There was a time when I would have confidently stated that you only had to pay attention to whether the person in question was a Republican or a Democrat, but then I grew up. It would be nice to tidy everyone away so neatly into their separate boxes, but then where in the world would you put Rudy Giuliani? When the campaigning for the nomination for the Republican presidential candidate was still underway, I shook my head every time someone asked me if I would vote for Giuliani if he got the nomination. There is no way I could do that, I told people. I would be a complete hypocrite. If I refused to vote for Democrat Catholic John Kerry, an supporter of a woman's right to choose to kill her unborn baby, how in the world could I vote for Republican Catholic Rudolph Giuliani, also a believer in that very same issue?

People pointed out that Rudy Giuliani was a strong and fabulous leader in the aftermath of 9-11, going to something like three hundred different funeral Masses for fallen firefighters and police officers. I commend him for that, I truly do. That must have been emotionally and physically exhausting, especially considering all the other things he was doing other than going to all those different parishes, each with its own set of grieving families to meet. But I can't get past his stance on abortion, and no good Catholic should.

Thankfully, we were all spared having to deal with that problem.

Vice President Joe Biden is another Catholic supporter of abortion rights, as are former senator Tom Daschle, Senator Edward Kennedy and a bevy of others, most of whom have attempted to defend the indefensible by spouting some kind of nonsense that proposes that while they, themselves, would not get an abortion or help someone procure one, they simply can't deny that right to other people and impose their religious values on someone else.

Why not?

To me, those politicans seem to be saying that they purposely raised money for a campaign, spent unbelieveable amounts of that money plus their own personal time on the trail in the hopes of getting elected, and then got elected for the sole purpose of....representing people with whom they are in violent disagreement on what, to them, is a basic human rights issue?

Does that make sense?

I could also argue that people who say that they can't impose their religion on others and that their faith is a personal matter that has nothing to do with their professional lives are the kind of people who tend to show up when the poinsettias are banked around the altar at Christmas and the lilies make their appearance at Easter. To folks who are truly religious -- in the sense of having a personal, daily relationship with Jesus Christ that goes beyond pew-warming -- that religion is a fundamental part of who they are, and they could no more separate that personal part of their lives from the professional side any more than they could decide to use their lungs only on Sunday mornings from 9:00 'til 10:15. It just couldn't be done.

Mentioning Sunday mornings brings me to another area where Bad Catholics can be observed, and that is vested and standing at the altar. It shouldn't be a shock to any thinking person that there could actually be bad priests or bishops, but hello? Consider the Last Supper. All those disciples who attended that Passover meal were all about lovin' the Lord, but where were they later on that evening?

One completely betrayed Him.

One denied Him, not just once, but three times.

Ten fled and hid in fear of their lives.

One stayed with Him until the end.

Those aren't real inspiring odds, my friends. And when you think that those were the men who knew Jesus in person, who lived and walked and worked with Him every day for three years, why would we ever expect perfection in our leaders, who are descended from those same twelve men in apostolic succession?

So how do you know a bad priest or bishop? You can look right back to the seventh chapter of Matthew's gospel to know that: You know them by their fruit.

There is a priest here in our area who has just taken over a second parish due to the retirement of that parish's priest. Ever since Priest #1 has taken over, attendance has fallen off and the offerings are down so far, the parish is having difficulty paying the staff's salaries and even in keeping up with the utility bills.

You might wonder if all this is just because Priest #2 was such a beloved shepherd of his flock (which he was) and that people have just moved on to other parishes -- I think there must be at least twelve within a half hour's drive -- to find a new parish, but that kinds of begs the question Why not just stay here and learn to love Priest #1?

The reason why is because they already know Priest #1. Our city is not that large, and when there are two big Catholic parishes to choose from, it seems to fall that more liberal people go to Priest #1's church and the more conservative, orthodox people go to Priest #2's. Now that Priest #1 is the one-and-only, people are fleeing as if from the plague, which it is.

My family attended the parish where Priest #1 recently took over (not our home parish, but one that is close to our house) around Epiphany and my husband and I nearly came unglued when this priest casually said during his homily, "We don't know if Jesus was really born in Bethlehem or not. Some people feel that Matthew just wrote that because he wanted to make sure that Jesus' story matched up with all the prophecies from the Old Testament."

WHAT THE HELL??!!

I sat bolt upright and looked at my husband, who looked back at me with his jaw clenched. I whispered incredulously, "Is that PRIEST casting doubts on the inerrancy of Holy Scripture??!!" My husband nodded his head three times, his ears turning red. I looked over at Meelyn and Aisling and said firmly, sotto voce, "DO NOT LISTEN TO ANYTHING THIS MAN SAYS." They nodded solemnly and later on we talked it all over and agreed that there was a decided necessity to pray for Father, who is so busily teaching people to doubt the divine inspiration of the Bible. (For information on what the Catholic Church does believe about divine inspiration, you can go to the Vatican website and search for Pope Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus (dealing with the study of Sacred Scripture), Pope Pius XII's Divino Afflante Spiritu (dealing with the promotion of biblical studies); Dei Verbum, Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 74-141. Don't worry, all this stuff is in English.)

A few weeks later, my husband was attending the Vigil Mass at that same parish and Priest #1's homily was so outrageous that my husband stood to his feet and walked out of the church, right down the center aisle. Priest #1 has been judged by his fruits and it is pretty obvious -- just as obvious as the Barack Obama bumper sticker on the back of his car -- that his fruit is bitter and withered and unworthy for consumption. No wonder people are leaving.

My husband and I were received into the Church during its biggest scandal of the century, that of the homosexual priests and their repellent and abusive relationships with teenage boys. In spite of some new and gloating story appearing in the press nearly every day, we went on our way undeterred. "How can you even think of joing THAT CHURCH?" several people asked us along our journey.

The answer was very simple: We weren't joining THAT CHURCH because of anything that people did. We didn't even know any Catholics at the beginning of our conversion; there was not one single person in the world we could point to and say, "We want to be Catholics because of him/her." In our conversion, which is a fairly dramatic story, our sole focus was on Jesus and what He wanted of us, where He wanted to take us and the renewal of hope He had in store for us.

Like many other American Christians, we learned a long time ago that putting your faith in any person other than the Savior is a big mistake. Consider Jim and Tammy Bakker duping their followers out of millions; Jimmy Swaggart and his frolicking with prostitutes; Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson and their mad pronouncements; even lesser media-blitzed scandals like Larry and Melva Lea's now-defunct ministry. A single glance at any of those people ought to be a good warning to never to put your faith in people, because sometimes, people really suck.

We became Catholics because of a strong conviction, both spiritual and historical, that the Catholic Church was the one founded by Jesus Christ Himself, guided and protected by the Holy Spirit, watched over with loving care by the Heavenly Father. Not because we liked the Pope, although we did. Not because we supported the good priests who were so embattled in that scandal (the priest at our own parish church was refused service in a restaurant because he went in for dinner with his parents while dressed in his clericals), although we did. We didn't join because of strong youth programs or brand-new facilities.

We joined because of Jesus, in hope that He, with His daily guidance, could show us how to be the best Catholics we are capable of being as we climb the steep and narrow path of salvation.

So, Bad Catholics? They're out there. We have to watch out for them. We have to look at the fruit they're bearing and decide if they're worthy of our time and attention, or if they're going to draw us farther away from the faith that has set us free. We have to judge. We have to teach our kids, and above all, we have to teach it to ourselves and form our consciences according to the tenets of our faith, so that we'll know when the sacred is being violated by human pride, disdain and sophistry. Otherwise, we may well be promoting just one more generation of Bad Catholics.

Revelation

This particular thought I'm going to write about is one that's been simmering inside my head for a few months, if not years. With a little basting from Father Larry Richards and some seasoning from reading here, there and everywhere, I now have a nice reduction that I hope is ready to be served up.

Meelyn, Aisling and I have been listening to a six-tape series by Father Larry called "How to Get More Out of..." The series progresses through "How to Get More Out of Prayer" and "How to Get More Out of Reading the Bible" and they're all very, very good. But my favorite, the one I've listened to several times, is "How to Get More Out of Mass."

In this cassette, Fr. Larry propounds an idea that struck me like a tenderizing mallet on a tough chicken breast (as you see, I am determined to carry this cooking metaphor through to the very end). Here's what he said, and this is a thought that completely contradicts the very essence of twenty-first century American Christianity. Savor it for a moment:

We do not go to church to be fed or ministered to or to get something. We go to church to give.

This struck me funny, seeing as how the message on that cassette is titled "How to Get More Out of Mass," but Fr. Larry is very good at 'splaining things, just as succinct and funny as Julia Child is in teaching people how to flip a potato pancake (and here I am with the cooking again.)

But it also struck me funny in the not-a-ha-ha-kind-of-way because this whole concept is one of the main reasons why I was so drawn to the Catholic Church: this constant and fervid need of American Christians to go to church and be entertained. It seems that we've lost our ability to just sit still and listen to Him. Now we have full-on rock bands up at the front of church to engage us in worship choruses, some of which are so self-congratulatory (the choruses, not the bands)that they just make me want to fall to the floor and chew the carpet. We have Power Point presentations to display the lyrics of those choruses set against a background of nature's glory or whatever. And special performing singers. Or maybe dancers who swirl ribbons around their heads for the glory of God.

And then we have churches -- I suppose they're churches, although they strongly test my credulity -- with coffee bars where you can sit on a high stool and drink a latte and have a pastry while watching the pastor on a big plasma screen mounted above the espresso machine. Or "living rooms," just like at home only right there at the church, where you can lounge on a sofa or in a recliner and let the kiddies play on the floor while Mom and Dad watch the pastor's televised sermon. You don't even have to get dressed -- come in your jammies.

See, all this, in my opinion, is what happens when people think that going to church on Sunday is all about the getting. And once we start getting some, all we want is more. If your church used to get by on piano music ten years ago, then that's old, dull stuff and it's now time to add some drums and electric guitars. If your church used to rely on old-fashioned hymnals so that people would know the words of the songs, well, that was okay for the olden times, but not for now when the balcony where the organ used to be is now devoted to techies seated behind computers and a huge sound board and video equipment.

And to get people to come to your church, you have to have all the newest stuff, stuff the other churches don't have. You have to fill up every single second with sound, because dead air is very boring. Church is an event, a happening, as lively and colorful as a three-ring circus and it just depresses me to no end. Because who is this all for, all this stuff? Us? Or Him?

Here's what Fr. Larry said, paraphrased: "It drives me crazy when people tell me they're leaving the Catholic church because they come to Mass and they don't 'get anything out of it.' 'I just don't feel fed, Father,' they tell me. And I always want to say, 'Look, you selfish little pagans [Yes, he really did say that - SM], you don't come to church to get. You come to church to give.

"You come to church to focus your attention on God, to give Him an hour or however long Mass is at your parish. God is focused on you every minute of every day. If it weren't for Him giving to you, you would die right now. You can give Him an hour."

In short, Father Larry says, we need to take charge of seeking spiritual food in the same way we seek food-food as adults: we go after it. We plan our menus and make our lists and go to the grocery. We don't expect it to just fall into our mouths; that's what happens with infants. We are not supposed to be infants, expecting a church or a pastor to provide us with every spiritual need. We need to be looking to God to do that -- and if we truly do have a personal relationship with Jesus, we'll find it.

In American Christianity, this is a revolutionary idea, as unusual as the chocolate covered bacon at the State Fair last year. First of all, we are supposed to come to church to give? To focus our attention on Him instead of on ourselves? And secondly, we have a duty as grown up Christians who live on meat instead of milk (ref. Hebrews 5:12) to feed ourselves?

Strangely enough, Fr. Larry says, in the mysterious ways of God, our very act of focusing on Him at Mass means that we will be fed through His Word and through His flesh -- kind of like Emmaus, you know? Where those two disciples were walking along with Jesus and failing to recognize Him? Then He taught them from the scriptures and the light began to dawn -- or maybe I should say that their sauce began to thicken -- but they didn't KNOW Him until the breaking of the bread, the Eucharist. They were focused totally on Him and they were fed.

They didn't say, "Excuse me, this is all very interesting, but wouldn't it be better if we sang a few songs that feature the word 'I' about eleven hundred times in the verses and the chorus?"

So we need to exercise ourselves spiritually and seek out ways to nourish our spirits. Because that's what adult Christians should do. That's why He sent His Spirit, right? To guide us and teach us? We shouldn't just lie around starving with hollow eyes and sucked-in cheeks when there's a banquet sitting right in front of us, yet we're withering away because we're too lazy to pull a chair up to the table. And for heaven's sake, we should be adult enough that we don't have to rely on a choreographed performance with a cast of thousands, complete with muffins.

In this present time, Catholics have been so enormously blessed with an abundance -- a smörgåsbord -- of ways to feed our spirits. Our problem should be that we don't have enough hours in the day to keep stuffing ourselves with books and tapes and prayer and Bible studies and television programs, not complaining that Mass just doesn't get the job done. And the thing is, the more attentive we are to feeding ourselves, the more Mass will mean and the more your personal relationship with Him will grow; the more you focus on Jesus, the more He'll be there to feed you. We cannot outgive Him.

I was thinking this over and I came up with a list of ways that we can feed ourselves so that our inner selves, our spirits, will be completely full, like the kitchen pantry right before Christmas. I'm sure there are a thousand more ways that I didn't think of, but here's what I've got:

1. First of all, is there an opportunity to go to weekday Mass? It lasts for all of twenty-five minutes. The parishes in my neck of the woods stagger their Mass times so that some parishes have Mass at seven in the morning, some have them at 11:30 a.m. and others have them at 12:15. Then for the after-work crowd, Masses happen at 4:30, 5:00, 5:30.... There may well be a church near you where you could slip in and give yourself to Him.

And while you're at it, go to Confession. The Church recommends once a month. If you are carrying around a mortal sin, get your rear end in there ASAP. But you can confess venial sins too, you know. The graces available to you in confession can help you overcome those smaller faults and follies that plague you, by giving you the spiritual strength you need.

2. Bible reading is a fabulous option. You could get the daily Mass readings on Twitter, or you could read them online at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' website. You could also read them in a missalette such as Magnificat (and you'd get the prayers of the Divine Office with that). If you read the Bible using the daily readings as a program, you'll go through Cycles A, B, and C in three years. If you'd like to go a little faster and read through the Bible in one year, you could use this chart.

3. While we're on the subject of Bible reading, how about trying a Bible study? Jeff Cavins has a great one, or you could go to Agape Bible Study for the free in-depth lessons there, which use the Catechism of the Catholic Church (available online) and papal documents (also available online)to study Sacred Scripture. Or you could buy a single-chapter or theme Bible study (such as knowing the women of the Bible, or lessons on St. John's gospel) at a Catholic bookstore either near your home or online.

4. Prayer is an important consideration and we should all be doing that every day anyway. You could pray the rosary online at this site or you could download the Virtual Rosary onto your desktop. It's easy-peasy and wonderful to use. Or you could just do it like your Nana did and use your beads to pray, meditating on the Mysteries of Jesus' life.

You could also pray the Divine Office (also known as the Liturgy of the Hours) at Universalis or you could buy an actual Christian Prayer book and pray that way -- each prayer book comes with the current year's guide and there's always a leaflet inside that tells you how to order a guide for the following year.

5. You could listen to homilies and presentations of parish missions by people like the aforementioned Fr. Larry Richards or EWTN's wonderful Father John Corapi -- just click on that link to go to his website and there in that left hand column, you'll find a link titled "Browse by Topic" and that will take you to a page where you can find an item of interest and purchase either single talks on CD for around $10 or entire sets of DVD series teachings, such as his famous one on the Catechism, for about $250.

Many of my friends really enjoy Johnnette Benkovic, also from EWTN, who does a number of talks about the Catholic faith.

And here's a fun one that I'd like to try: Lighthouse Catholic Media has a CD of the Month Club with talks given by such luminaries as Father Larry Richards, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Scott Hahn, Matthew Arnold and other well-known speakers. Just click on the tab at the top of their Home page titled "Store" and it will show you all the excellent material they have available.

6. You can read books. Oh, the books! We are so blessed to have so many gifted Catholic writers today and the really nifty thing is that we still have the writings of so many who went before us. You can still read St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thérèse, St. John Bosco, St. John Vianney, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Louis de Montfort, St. Catherine of Siena....so many. While you're at it, don't forget the Early Church Fathers, the men who were taught by the Apostles. Read the Didache!

And then when you're done with all that and your spirit is so stuffed full. you don't think you can hold one more morsel of God's goodness without exploding, start on Scott Hahn, Patrick Madrid, Jeff Cavins, Mark Shea, Jimmy Akin...there are so many.

(Maybe you could start a library at your parish. There's a thought.)

7. And then there are the websites. Try Catholic Exchange or Catholic Culture or Catholic Answers. Make one of them your home page. Read the articles. Find your interest. There are lots more: Just make sure you're at a website that is authentically Roman Catholic, know what I mean? If you're going to feed your spirit, you need to make sure you're feeding it with healthy food and not garbage.

8. If you're a cable or satellite subscriber, you'll probably be able to tune in to EWTN, which stands for Eternal Word Television Network. There is an abundance of programming there. Use your DVR or TiVo to watch programs at your convenience. I absolutely adore the International Rosary and we keep all four sets of Mysteries on our DVR all the time. Plus I really like Raymond Arroyo.

These are just the things I thought of off the top of my head. If you have more to add, please leave a comment for all of us.

What it all boils down to (which in the world of cooking is actually called a reduction) is this: If you are a Catholic today complaining about not being fed because your parish doesn't have a band and you feel your overworked priest is kind of grumpy about hearing people whine that Mass just isn't meeting their needs and you feel that you want to leave behind the reality of Jesus present in the Eucharist to go to some other church with their band and their Power Point and their mocha frappuccinos, well, you're just being a poophead.

Feed yourself. Allow Him to show you what tastes best. Savor the sacraments. Sample the saints. Taste some teaching tapes. Well, not literally, of course. You don't have to go out to dinner anywhere else; you couldn't hope to ever plumb the breadth and depth of the Catholic Church in three lifetimes, let alone the one you've been given.

And in all the savoring, the sampling and the tasting, you'll find that Jesus is giving more of Himself to you than you could have ever imagined, In Jesus' own words, recorded in St. Luke's gospel, "Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap." (Luke 6:38, NAB)

See that first word?

Just give.