What Will We Do   Part III

 

Our Holy Brothers are the soil in which our Church grows. They are also the guardians of the Church. The Orders have expanded the Church in the areas of piety, intellectual pursuits, charity and the formation of the laity. They embody the best of us. The laity prays for guidance and the grace to accept God’s will. The Brothers are the ones who do God’s will and in time become God’s will. The Brothers will become the offices and titles of our Church. It is our duty to ensure that nothing interferes with their calling. Nothing from within the Church and nothing outside the Church. We do this by being responsible to them. Demanding piety and transparency from the clergy who are their sponsors, teachers and sentinels. And designing the civil sector to uphold religious liberties, by passing no laws or regulations which would deter these souls from their destiny.

What Will We Do Part II

Reestablishing the harmony with the Magisterium is not as difficult as we imagine. This moment is clouded with doubt and hesitation. However, we know that theology is built on solid philosophy and healthy psychology. We know both are found in our beautiful and beloved Catholicism. Our theology is the full measure, deeply textured and expressed through the Holy Family, the saints, the doctors, fathers and martyrs found in antiquity and ever present today. It is the Magisterium which brings this theology alive, ever present into our lives. Priests who did not know what it truly means to be a priest; this is the sin which has stained their cloth. Their sins and behavior are so grievous that it will be punished by our courts of law. The world will burden these men with the weight of their crimes. Once these men are removed, the flock will once again hear the voice of their good shepherds and follow them along the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. This is the way it was intended to be and the way it will be.

 What Will We Do Part I

 

The turmoil, troubles and falling away which the Church is experiencing  may be solved by making the past, the path into the future. Through the rediscovery of our perfected precepts, we the Body of Christ, we the laity, through our Faith and our continuing conversion of heart can recreate the cornerstone and construct Jesus’ Church. As it was, as the Holy Spirit makes it, as it will be. Solutions will be found by reestablishing the harmony in our hearts, through the teachings of the Magisterium, and through the Holy Order of Brothers, in our  Domestic Church and our communities. Through right thinking, evangelization flows naturally from one thought to the next. What does this look like, what will we do?

Let us ask; what has been forgotten and what has been lost? Two thousand years of biblical and historical perspective have brought us to this moment; surely this isn’t the end of those means. Have we forgotten that the betrayer was one of the twelve? Are we too sophisticated to believe the evil one prowls this world destroying lives and crushing souls? Is the Greater Good, found in the tragedies of today’s headlines; a return to our roots, the foundation found in the Word as told through Sacred Scripture, that word written in our hearts and told through our listening. Will we now say openly and honestly; the Lord has spoken, and we have answered? If prayer is a conversation between two people who love each other, and I believe it is; then, we pray our prayers will be answered. We pray we receive and accept His will. So, we pray together;  from the deepest, most focused and concentrated meditative state of mind we can muster, to simply calling his name; Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

The Hour Glass Revisited

 

As an explanation of the Form and Content of our beautiful and beloved Catholicism; the Holy Spirit gives us the hour glass as a working model. What does this mean?

Consider the hour glass, unmistakable in its form, design and purpose. It’s immediately recognizable; in its symmetry, its functionality and in its simplicity, no other structure is like it, no other structure can take its place. It is the Form. It is the way that it is, because it is the only way it can be. This is the Church.

The sand; each grain is exquisitely unique.  Distinctively faceted, a shade apart from the rest, fashioned by God and honed by nature. This is the Content. Bathed in paradox, because the only element each grain truly shares is that each is different. Yet taken in their entirety, each is uniform, locked in perfect harmony with the rest. This is the Body.

We realize the Form can not be changed, rearranged or altered in any way. And nothing can be added or taken away from the content. Not even the most beautiful diamond among the sand, for nothing else belongs there. There can be no substitutes; there are no equivalents, for only a genuine and measured amount will work.

Simply put, the “Hour Glass” provides the best example of the Church. Without the Form the Content fulfills no purpose.  Without the Content the Form has no function.