“Free Will”, “Your Choice” – Theologians as well as philosophers have written more about the topic than one person can read and digest in a lifetime. Our Lord Jesus, on the other hand, can sum it up much more succinctly: Mercy or Justice – You Choose.
“(90) Write: I am Thrice Holy, and I detest the smallest sin. I cannot love a soul which is stained with sin; but when it repents, there is no limit to My generosity toward it. My mercy embraces and justifies it. With My mercy, I pursue sinners along all their paths, and My Heart rejoices when they return to Me. I forget the bitterness with which they fed My Heart and rejoice at their return.
Tell sinners that no one shall escape My Hand; if they run away from My Merciful Heart, they will fall into My Just Hands. Tell sinners that I am always waiting for them, that I listen intently to the beating of their heart . . . when will it beat for Me? Write that I am speaking to them through their remorse of conscience, through their failures and sufferings, through thunderstorms, through the voice of the Church. And if they bring all My graces to naught, I begin to be angry (90) with them, leaving them alone, and giving them what they want.”
~ Jesus to St. Maria Faustina, quoted after “Divine mercy in My Soul. Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska”, Stockbridge, MA 1987, p. 610f.
When J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a letter to his son Michael (then in his tweens) giving relationship advice, it being late January of the year 1941 while Michael was recovering from an injury at the hospital in Worchester, he explained at length how things had gone in his own life. The letter comes as close to a biography of Tolkien’s life up until that point as it gets, and the last lines of it (as printed in Humphrey Carpenter’s 1981 edition of “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien“, Letter 43, quoting from page 53f.) have been oft quoted:
“Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: The Blessed Sacrament … There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death. By the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires.” —J.R.R. Tolkien
As relationship advice goes, I dare say it is somewhat surprising. Why? Because it goes far beyond the ordinary advice a father would give his son when it comes to such matters. And yet, as far as I can see, there is no better advice.
Michael went on to marry Joan Griffiths with whom he had three children. One might have expected him to become a priest after such advice, but that was the choice his older brother John instead. As a sidenote, it might be of interest that John Tolkien became an exorcist even before being ordained.
The 1908 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia characterised the task that faced him:“To extirpate inveterate abuses; to reform a court which thrived on corruption, and detested the very name of reform; to hold in leash young and warlike princes, ready to bound at each other’s throats; to stem the rising torrent of revolt in Germany; to save Christendom from the Turks, who from Belgrade now threatened Hungary, and if Rhodes fell would be masters of the Mediterranean – these were herculean labours for one who was in his sixty-third year, had never seen Italy, and was sure to be despised by the Romans as a ‘barbarian’.
In Utrecht they still point out this house to strangers,And name it after him: the house of pope Adrian,Still his bust stands in its façade. Less elevatedWas the ancestry of this pope, the son of a boat builder,His name is still proudly spoken by thousands of tongues,Only briefly, but with honor, he wore the papal crown.
If you have ever read C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”, even just in parts, you may remember the light, almost jovial style of it. Small wonder: “Mere Christianity” is a collection of radio talks turned book format. In it, C.S. Lewis aims to sum up what all Christians can agree upon, regardless of denomination. For this reason, you can find there many Christian concepts boiled down to the principles involved, with one of them being the very basics of repentance.
“Now what was the sort of “hole” man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of a “hole.” This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all.
“It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means killing part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person—and he would not need it.
Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot hap pen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another.”
Interested to read more but not interested in buying a copy of C.S. Lewis’ book? No problem at all! The text is available in pdf format on the inernet – for free.
The month of October is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary. During her last apparition at Fatima on October 13, 1917, Mary specifically referred to herself as “The Lady of the Rosary.” If you are not in the habit of praying the Rosary but have considered learning or starting again to pray it, this is the perfect month to do so.
Our Lady of the Rosary
On October 7th, the RCC celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. According to tradition, Our Lady famously appeared to St. Dominic de Guzman and gave the prayers of the Holy Rosary (as we know them today) to assist him as a spiritual weapon in combating heresy and leading souls back to the one true Catholic faith. Since then, the Rosary has been an infallible source of grace and strength to those who pray it. At Fatima, for example, Our Lady instructed the three children she appeared to to learn how to read and write so that they could pray the Rosary and spread the devotion to it.
Saints who prayed the Rosary
If and when you pray the Rosary, you are in very good company, both today and throughout the ages. Here is a short, by no means comprehensive list of saints who prayed the Rosary.
St. Benedict XVI
St. Bernadette Soubirous
St. Anthony Mary Claret
St. Dominic
St. Josemaria Escriva
St. John Paul II (who aded the Five Luminous Mysteries)
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
St. Louis de Montfort (who happens to be a relative of ours)
St. Pio of Pietrelcina
St. Pius V
St. Pius X
St. Francis de Sales
Don’t know how to pray the Rosary?
There are many books on how to pray the rosay, and what to contemplate while praying the many Ave Marias. If you are just starting out, here are a few links that might help you:
Halfway between the birthday of Our Lady on September 8th and the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows on September 15th, I’d like to introduce the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady chaplet, and explain how to pray it. Since September is particularly dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, this is the perfect month to learn how to pray this chaplet. It commemorates the seven swords that pierced the heart of Our Lady as she suffered with her son.
How to pray the Chaplet
This chaplet is somewhat similar to the Rosary, although using Rosary beads for it can be a little confusing. The reason is that for this chaplet, you pray seven sets of seven Ave Marias, and the ten-plus-one beads of the usual Rosary or tenner doesn’t lend itself very well to the purpose. But what did the Lords gave us fingers for?
When you start the chaplet, make the sign of the cross and pray:
“Mary, who was conceived without sin and who suffered for us, pray for us.”
Then say the Sorrow you are meditation on, and pray seven Ave Marias. At the conclusion of each set of seven, pray:
“Holy Mother hear my prayer, and renew in my heart each wound of Jesus my Savior.”
Repreat this until you have meditated on all seven Sorrows.
What to Meditate On
In this chaplet, we remember each of the seven sorrows of Our Lady while praying the seven Aves mentioned above. These are:
The Prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:34-35)
The Flight to Egypt (Matthew 2:13-21)
The Loss of Jesus for Three Days (Luke 2:41-50)
The Carrying of the Cross (John 19:17)
The Crucifixion of Jesus (John 19:18-30)
Taking Jesus Down from the Cross (John 19:39-40)
Placing Jesus in the Tomb (John 19:39-42)
How to Conclude the Chaplet
When you are done with the last Sorrow, pray this closing prayer: “O Mary, you truly became the Queen of all martyrs as these seven bitter swords of sorrow pierced your Immaculate Heart! By the merits of your tearful distress obtain for us and for all sinners the graces of perfect contrition and conversion. Help us always, dear Mother, to imitate you by taking up our crosses and following Jesus with limitless love and generosity. Amen.”
Short Version
If you are looking for a short prayer to pray this month in particular, or to add to your usual Rosary, the opening prayer, said three times, may serve, so I will repeat it here once more:
“Mary, who was conceived without sin and who suffered for us, pray for us.”
The month of September is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, Mater Dolorosa: On September 15th, we celebrate the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows.
Our Lady of Sorrows
From very early on, Mary was keenly aware that the Son of God, who was also her son, was born to suffer, to be the “man of sorrows” the prophet spoke about. This month, September, we particularly remember Mary’s role in the life and passion of Our Lord, how she suffered when He was still a child during the flight to Egypt and when Simeon prophesied over the child Jesus during the Presentation. More suffering followed when she lost Jesus for three days when He was twelve, and finally when she went with Him every step of the way during His passion. She was the first to pray the Stations of the Cross, even as they were unfolding.
Stabat Mater
Many Western composers have put to music a hymn from the 13th century, “Stabat Mater”, “The Mother was standing”. On the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows, this hymn is sung at the liturgy. The first two stanzas run:
Stabat mater dolorósa juxta Crucem lacrimósa, dum pendébat Fílius.
At the Cross her station keeping, Stood the mournful Mother weeping, Close to Jesus to the last:
Cuius ánimam geméntem, contristántem et doléntem pertransívit gládius.
Through her heart, his sorrow sharing, All his bitter anguish bearing, now at length the sword has pass’d.
Of course, there are a lot more stanzas to it, and if you are looking for a version of the Stabat Mater online, you will find anything from three-minute videos to over an hour long compositions. I happen to like this rendering of Antonio Vivaldi‘s version a lot:
The sword that “at length” pierces Our Lady is a reference to the prophesy of Simeon:
“And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” (Luke 2:34-35, KJV)
Since Mary’s sorrows are seven in number, depictions of Our Lady of Sorrows with seven swords piercing her, or Mary surrounded by pictures showing her seven sorrows, are numerous.
During the month of September, many people pray the Seven Sorrows of Mary in much the same way they otherwise pray the Stations of the Cross.
Why penance? If I confess my sins and am properly contrite in heart, is that not enough to atone for my sins? Why penance, then? What additional good does penance, self-imposed or otherwise, do to the penitent if a change of heart and mind, metanoia, has already been achieved?
There is a personal answer to the question “why penance” as well as a general one.
Personal Penance
On a personal scale, the damage sin does is not undone by contrition, repentance, confession, even absolution. The sin itself may be forgiven, but the soul must still heal, as must the relationship of the sinner to God and his fellow man. In order to assist this healing process, penance is a powerful tool.
Penance for Sin in General
Aside from personal shortcomings, there is what one can call the ‘sin of the world’. Our world is far from ideal: The ideal state is summed up in the third petition of the Pater Noster: “Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. In order to contribute to Jesus’ great work of atonement in our own small way, we can align ourselves to His suffering through penitential practices.
Penitential Practices
So now that we know why penance is important, how can we do penance?
There are many ways in which we can do penance. Lent is a time when many people, young and old, abstain from things they usually do or consume, like participation in social media, drinking coffee, or eating sweets. In former times, both the weeks leading up to Christmas (Advent) and the weeks leading up to Easter (Lent) were penitential times, times of preparation for great events in the Christian year. Even at a Christian king’s court, feasting was out of the question in those times.
Other people spend more time in prayer, thus offering time they otherwise might have spent in amusements. They choose this penance in an attempt to attune their mind and soul to the will of God, and often also to avoid the temptations their former amusements contained.
Then there are the physical ‘inconveniences’ people offer to Christ for their own sins and the sins of the world: They take the discipline, wear celices or hair shirts, sleep little and in uncomfortable places, eat sparingly and simply, or hold vigils in honor of Christ and His saints.
Many people do penance by serving others: They feed the poor, cloth the naked, visit the prisoners, both literally and figuratively. Some serve humbly in their families, workplaces, churches, and schools. Others assist the widow and the orphan, the old and the sick, offering up time and resources in atonement for a world spun out of control.
Scourge and Pillar – Symbols for Penance
The Daily Sacrifice
Ultimately, all penance is practice for the daily sacrifice every one must bring if he wishes to follow Jesus Christ: “Take up your cross and follow me.” With patience and humility, we give our suffering, self-imposed or otherwise, to Christ, and ask Him to turn it into atonement for our own sins as well as the sins of our community, our nation, the human race.
There are sorrowful sets of seven to concentrate on when we align our penance with the suffering of Christ, and there are also joyous sets of seven. Joyous sets of seven invite us to reflect, not so much of our own shortcomings, but on the freedom our Lord Jesus purchased for us. Freedom from sin is a freedom for a life that is governed by the Voice and Will of God, rather than the whisperings and promises of the devil. Such a life is open to welcome the gifts of the Holy Spirit as described in the first verses of Isa 11, where we find the “spirit of the Lord” resting on the “rod out of the stem of Jesse”, as well as on the “Branch” that “shall grow out of his roots”.
Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit
It is essential to be aware of and repent from our sins, failures and shortcomings in order to find our way to God. But when we have done so, we also need to fill the house that has been swept clean with that which pleases Our Lord. One of the many places where Scripture discloses what faith produces in us is Isa 11:2 and the following verses. In a contemplative penitential setting, we seek for, ask for, knock on the door for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts are (in English and Latin):
Wisdom (sapientia),
understanding (intellectus),
counsel (consilium),
fortitude (fortitudo),
knowledge (cognitio/scientia),
piety (pietas), and
fear of the Lord (timor Domini).
Diego Velázquez – Coronation of the Virgin – Prado 1635, detail
The Franciscan Crown: The Seven Joys of Mary
Freedom from sin also allows us to contemplate on the Seven Joys of Mary, Our Blessed Mother, to whom Jesus gave the apostel John, and to us all, to be her children: “Woman, this is your son.” In the Fransciscan tradition, the Seven Joys of Mary are also called The Franciscan Crown. They are prayed very much like a rosary with seven decades instead of five, plus two extra Ave Maria prayers for a total of 72 Ave Marias, one for each year Our Lady lived on this earth.
The Seven Joys of Mary are:
The Annunciation,
the Visitation,
the Nativity of Jesus,
the Adoration of the Magi,
the Finding in the Temple,
the Resurrection of Jesus, and finally,
either or both the Assumption of Mary and the Coronation of the Virgin.
“When we appeal to the throne of grace we do so through Mary, honoring God by honoring His Mother, imitating Him by exalting her, touching the most responsive chord in the Sacred Heart of Christ with the sweet name of Mary.” ~ St. Robert Bellarmine
We pray the Our Father often, maybe so often that we forget what we are praying for particularly. Seven petitions make up this prayer that the Lord Jesus Christ taught His disciples, seven petitions that we pray to this day. All of them ask God the Father to do something for us, naturally. Many of them require our active participation, some more expressly so than others. And the one petition that sums up this latter part, our part beautifully is: “Thy will be done.”
Thy Will Be Done
Seven Petitions
The seven petitions are:
Hallowed be Thy Name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven:
Give us this day our daily [epiousion] bread;
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
All of these, one can argue, are solely gifts from God. All of these, one can also argue, require a degree of choice on our part. The very fact that we are asking these particular things simply because Our Lord taught us to ask for them, is already a choice. On the other hand, some of these seem quite out of our control, like deliverance from evil, bringing about the kingdom of God, or being given our ‘daily’ bread. Our main responsibility here is to prepare our heart for these, so it seems.
The Hardest Thing
But the hardest thing among the seven, and the one on which the other six hinge, is the third:
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Why is this so hard? It is so hard because in order for God’s will to be done on earth, we have to do what God wants. Not what we want, but what God wants. Therein lies the difficulty, and surely because it is so difficult, this is the one petition that we find reconfirmed by Our Lord during the Agony in the Garden, when he saw all that was going to happen to him in agonizing detail and prayed for the cup to pass Him by. “Thy will be done”, was the end of this petition, however. “Thy will be done, not mine.”
Jesus Gives the Example
So let us draw comfort from the example of Our Lord. “Thy will be done”, even if I am scared, and do not understand why. My understanding is not required. All I need to do is to ask for God’s will to be done, here on earth as well as in heaven, and let things happen the way God wants them to be, rather than be in the way with my own ideas and interpretations. No matter what happens: God knows why.
The Lord’s Prayer by James Tissot
How do I start aligning my will with God’s? How do I return to a life in accordance with God’s will? Contrition is the first step, and contemplative prayer might be a way past your own understanding and into a closer connection with the divine Will. Start today.
