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People used to ask June (Carter) how she was doin' and she used to say, 'I'm just trying to matter'. I know what she means, you know, I'm just trying to matter and live a good life and make work that means something to somebody. - actress Reese Witherspoon
I come from ten generations of New England Puritans; my natural tendency is to consider anything pleasant to be wrong. Following this tendency, however, tends to make me unhappy, so if I do things that are pleasant I feel guilty for doing them, and if I don’t, I feel guilty that I am unhappy about not doing them. And this, some inner voice tells me, is exactly where God wants me to be. Since Lent is a time when one is supposed to come closest to God and to seek holiness, I sneak through Lent like a teenager who knows his parents are looking to catch him and punish him for something, and come to Easter with a relief borne of not having been caught this time at least. I also know that this is wrong. By thinking this way, I am misrepresenting God. I know the Scriptures pretty well, and I can demonstrate from both the Old and New Testaments that this is not what God is like or how He wants me to relate to Him. God, I know intellectually, loves me. I may not experience it, but the Word says it, the Church teaches it, the saints bear witness to it, so it must be true. There is something more God wants me to know by experience, and there is some evidence that He might even want me to experience it in this life. Certainly if I could experience it in this life, I might have more hope for the next.... Sometimes, however, something glimmers through the fog. Last Sunday, it was a line from Hosea: “So I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart.... She shall respond there as in the days of her youth, when she came up from the land of Egypt.” ... I am convinced, in spite of myself, that the Lord does want to teach me something, perhaps this Lent, if He can pierce the fog far enough. I would say that I am praying for it, although I don’t want to be trying to convince myself into some sort of religious experience. I have enough experience to know that you can’t make God speak to you; He will break in at His own time. - Henry posting at "A Plumbline in the Wind"
Pleasure certainly isn't a bad thing and... while we of course have a duty to help and serve the poor, most of us would lose our sense that life is good, our connection with the dignity of ourselves and others, perhaps our very sanity, if we did not take the goods of this life and enjoy them. The key, I think, remains in the sharing. Eating a good meal with friends and family, enjoying the food, drink, and conversation, is a good, it seems to me. Eating caviar to show how sophisticated you are is not. - Bruce Frohnen of "Crunchy Con" blog
My prayers are less for myself than for others. My life seems so inconsequential and so unworthy of my own prayers compared to the souls of others that seemed so determined to spend eternity in hell and need so much grace to avoid hell. - Patrick of "Extreme Catholic"
I was giving some of the bookcases in the den their quinquennial dusting the other day and up on one of the very top shelves amongst the pennydreadfuls where the overflows from the detective case are stuffed, uh, I mean "carefully shelved", and in the midst of a whole row of Sax Rohmer's finest, it came to me: the key to the whole Al Q'aeda terrorism difficulty: Osama bin Laden is modeling himself on Fu Manchu. Al Q'aeda is his own version of the Si Fan... If the security wonks want to get to the bottom of all this Al Q'aeda business they need to be reading more Sax Rohmer. Anyone know the National Security Agency's phone number? - John at the "Inn at the End of the World"
The observance of Lent is the very badge of Christian warfare. By it we prove ourselves not to be enemies of the cross of Christ. By it we avert the scourges of divine justice. By it we gain strength against the princes of darkness, for it shields us with heavenly help. Should mankind grow remiss in their observance of Lent, it would be a detriment to God's glory, a disgrace to the Catholic religion, and a danger to Christian souls. Neither can it be doubted that such negligence would become the source of misery to the world, of public calamity, of private woe. - letter written in 1741 by Pope Benedict XIV via Hallowed Ground
The first chapter [of Gueranger's "The Liturgical Year"]...is a sad chronicle of ever-increasing laxity. From its inception, the Lenten fast included abstinence from wine, cheese, and eggs. Only one meal was allowed, and it was taken no earlier than sunset. The first relaxation of discipline occured when the meal time was moved from sunset to the hour of None, or about three-o-clock in the afternoon, which became almost universal by the tenth century. By the thirteenth century even this was thought to be too severe, and the meal began to be allowed at the hour of Sext, or midday. Not long after this relaxation it was discovered that taking the meal so early in the day led to greater fatigue in the afternoon and evening hours, and so it was gradually permitted to drink a little bit of wine during the evening readings. However, given the rigorous schedule of prayer and services observed in the monasteries, the monks soon realized that taking only wine without any solid food could be unhealthy. As a result they were ultimately allowed to take a morsel of bread along with their wine... - Jeff of "Hallowed Ground"
For those of us who are religious conservatives, or to be more precise, whose conservatism comes primarily from our religious beliefs, we can’t be happy with an economic and social order built around the structural indifference to the spiritual and moral needs of the human person. Obviously a command economy cannot work, and there can be no such thing as perfect justice this side of heaven. Still, if Irving Kristol is right, those of us who believe in and benefit from capitalism need to put our minds to work figuring out how best to work within the system we have to make it better suited to authentic human needs – which include the need to replenish the moral capital upon which the economic order is built. - Rod Dreher of "Crunchy Con" blog
The architects of Europe's post-war welfare states were — at least many of them — devout Christians who believed, understandably, in a Christian socialism that would smooth out economic injustice, diminish the "creative destruction" of capitalism, and provide a safe space for families and faith to flourish in. Had I been born in 1930 or even 1950, I might have subscribed to this vision. But the lesson of Europe's recent past is that when you try to smooth out the difficulties of life, and aim for stability and statis rather than growth, you can end up destroying faith in the "permanent things" much more rapidly than even the "casino economy" of American capitalism. The risks and shocks of American life, paradoxically, are one of the reasons that we're still as socially conservative as we are — because they make us cling more tightly than Europeans to the bonds of family and the promises of God, and because they make us more likely than Europeans to live in the future (that is, locate some of our hopes and dreams in our children) than in a cosseted, materially-satisfying present. - Ross Douthat of "Crunchy Con" blog
Faith in the market is not synonymous with faith in materialism. [Libertarianism] often results in the important things being strengthened rather than weakened. In a chaotic world families become more important, not less. Some people realize this, and benefit from the realization. Others don't and suffer for it. And most of us come up with their own happy balance between the demands of modern society and the demands of permanent things.... But at some point what does all of this "capitalism sucks" talk matter if it doesn't translate itself into an agenda...Mankind will learn at the school of example and none other, says Edmund Burke. Well, where is the example of a crunchy system worth emulating?... Even Charles Murray's What It Means To Be A Libertarian, an outstanding book, by the way, works on the assumption that it is not capitalism but anti-capitalist schemes which erode families and communities. It is simply taken as a given in here that libertarianism is not only soulless but soul-killing. It is that unproven assertion which muddies the waters most. - J. Goldberg of "Crunchy Con" blog
If you are reading this, you know that I am not abstaining from my blog during Lent. I have always assumed that those who do abstain, do so in order to spend that time in more prayer or in some sacrificial endeavor. I commend them for it...It is funny, for some time I thought that by doing enough penances I could catch up, or make up for my sinfulness and the damage my sinfulness had done to others. Of course this spirals into more and more severe penances (I think a heresy eventually comes out of this, but I can't remember the name of it). One day, in discouragement, I realized I was sinning faster than I could possibly do penance. At that moment of grace, I was shown how much I needed God's mercy. So from then on, I didn't view penance so much as a competition, but something more joyful. Penance became a way to open my heart, or to clean it out of all those things I am attached to - so as to make room for Christ. - Jim Curley of "Bethune Catholic"
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