When Large Families are Celebrated, and it Hurts

I just realized this is tagged with Traditional Catholic Femininity's url.
I do encourage you to check out her page.
I'll link it HERE.

I love that large Catholic families are "trending" and people are celebrating and honoring them.  It's a beautiful thing.  I'm seeing posts, pictures, and even artwork depicting families of 6, 7, 8 or more children!  

However, I'm seeing something else trending, too.  I'm seeing hurt, negativity, and even anger towards these large families and their depictions.  I expect it from the world, but I've seen it among Christians, too.  

There are those who would have loved a large family but face infertility.  They feel like small families are looked upon and large families are depicted as more holy.  They worry about being judged. 

There are those who wouldn't mind a large family, but their circumstances would make it very difficult to have one.  Maybe mom is chronically ill and burned out.  Maybe one of their children has a special need that absorbs so much time, energy, and money.  Maybe they simply don't have enough income or their house is too small.  

There are those who don't want a large family.  They prefer to put their focus on the 2 they have.  

There are those who don't want any children at all.  

I can empathize with the first two.  The others, I can understand their arguments even if I don't agree with them.  

For all of them I say that we cannot and should not censor the advocacy and joy towards large families just because it stings a little in our own situations.  

I look with longing at families larger than mine, especially those so well put-together.  My own family of 4 children seems so small, and I am painfully aware that my husband and I chose sterilization back when we were evangelicals.  And I'm painfully aware of my own limitations when it comes to raising a family (situation, family, finances, personal ability and wellness).  I would love for it to be different, but I choose to honor and advocate for large families rather than focus on my own sadness, resentment, or bitterness.

The Eucharist and I

If you sat me down right now, looked me in the eyes and asked me if I believe that Christ is really present in the Eucharist I'm honestly not sure I could say yes.

That is a hard thing for me to admit, especially after that profound vision that I had.  I thought for sure that vision would seal it in me as a belief as strong as my belief that God exists.  But, I find I'm still struggling.  I admit part of that struggle is in how the Church handles the Eucharist.

Before I even knew about the Novus Ordo, radical traditionalism, or even that there was such a thing as the Liturgy of the Eucharist, I had an idea of how reverent it must be to come before Christ and receive Him into our bodies.  As I went to Mass for the first time, I looked forward to seeing how communion was done among people who believe and within a Church that believes that He is REALLY present.  Unfortunately, I was left feeling quite empty.

Over the years I've tried to reconcile how the Eucharist is received in the Church today and the dogma of the Real Presence, but I admit it is a stumbling block.  While I cannot judge those around me, for myself, it actually pains me to realize if I come fully into the Catholic Church I'd be receiving the Eucharist the usual way and not the way I'd imagined I'd receive the Eucharist. 

I've been to Adoration and felt the emptiness there, too.  For one thing, Adoration is the exception, not the rule where I am.  If Christ is really present in the Eucharist you'd think Adoration would be more available and not the first thing to go on the list of ministries the Church offers.  

As I kneel in my pew and the people pass by me on their way to receive the Eucharist, I look at them and wonder if they really do believe, because would they be so casual if they really did believe? 

Other than a different form of the communion ritual, it doesn't "feel" much different than communion in my former evangelical churches.  It's admittedly a little more reverent, but certainly not to the level I assumed it would be considering it's supposed to be Christ Himself in the Eucharist!  

Now, I'm sure someone would say, "you can't base your beliefs and expression of faith on how others behave or you'll always be disappointed!"  That's true, but it's more than that.  This goes deeper.  

Maybe cradle Catholics are just so used to it that they don't realize.  My belief in the Real Presence has very strong and very real consequences in my life.  This isn't just becoming a member of another denomination.  This is making a vow before God that I cannot break, a vow that my family, both immediate and extended, are completely against.

Everything hinges on whether or not Christ is really present in the Eucharist.

And I am sorry to say that what I have seen and experienced thus far in the Catholic Church has only added to my doubts. 

Honestly, how can a Church claim that Christ is really present in the Eucharist and behave thus!?  

This has become more of an issue as I bring my two youngest children with me to Mass.  I try to tell them that Christ is in the Eucharist but they don't experience it.  It is no different to them than "snack time" at the evangelical churches.  (Yes, they called it snack time.)  They don't see that it is any different or more reverent because, again, if it were really Christ in the Eucharist, would we behave thus?  

A Habit of My Own?

 

Today is the Feast of St. Clare.  As I listened to her story on Catholic radio I thought about my own life, my own desires to live a life in service to the Lord, living more simply so I can better serve others, and I thought about adopting a habit of my own.  

Now, throughout my christian walk, especially in my Protestant days, I went through phases where I did try to wear very specific clothing to set myself apart in my Christian walk.  In my late teens I started wearing the caped dresses and headcoverings of the Amish and Mennonites.  In my young married years I wanted to dress in modest 1940s, 1950s styles.  Lately, I dress in a sort of "uniform" for the kind of work I do.  I wear jeans of some sort and tshirts.  In summer, they are cropped jeans and short sleeve shirts.  In cold weather, they are regular jeans and long sleeve knit shirts, sweaters, or hoodies.  Very "mom" of me.  I miss wearing more feminine clothing.

But, a part of me wants to find a style that is suitable for my station in life, feminine, inexpensive, simple, and initially thoughtful to be increasingly thoughtless.  What I mean by that last bit is that if I put thought into it upon purchase I won't have to think about what I'm wearing or worry about making outfits.  It just simply won't matter.  

I thought, perhaps if I just wear habit-colored tops.....

But, I put it to prayer.  I'd already been asking Mary to guide me in my clothing choices.  So I asked Her about this "laywoman habit."  The thought that came to mind is that I already live simply in my clothing choices in that most of my clothing comes to me 2nd hand, either given or purchased at garage sales.  My jeans are one of two brands I can literally just grab off the shelf in seconds at local big box stores.  Inexpensive, simple.  I have days where I have the energy to put a little thought into my wardrobe, but most of the time I can pretty mindlessly put my "uniform" on.  

Therefore, I feel like Mary is giving me the nod to just keep on as I am where I am right now.  I don't feel my wardrobe is as modest as it ought to be.  Jeans are still rather form-fitting, but perhaps in her graciousness she knows I'm kind of stuck right now, and it doesn't make sense to spend the time, money, and energy redoing my wardrobe.  

So, for now, as the need arises, I will ask Mary to guide my clothing choices.  

I still think it is a neat idea to have a sort of simple wardrobe habit of my own.

Stone Soup for the Healing of the Church

 Do you remember the old children's tale about the stone soup?  In it a man comes to a hungry village seeking food only to be turned away by the poor, hungry people.  Therefore, he claims he can make a delicious soup from just a stone.  As he cooks his "soup" he quips about this herb or that vegetable being "just the thing" to improve upon the soup.  The curious villagers offer him their meager herbs and vegetables to improve upon the soup, unaware that he has tricked them into making the real soup.  At the end of the tale there is enough to feed and nourish the entire village with more to spare.  

So often I read or hear Catholics bemoaning (and rightly so) the state of the Church.  So often, though, they also conclude that it is because of one problem or another.  They blame priests all the way up to the Pope.  They point fingers and offer solutions that if only the Church would heed this one thing or another the Church would be fixed.  

I offer another solution. I offer stone soup.  Everyone in the Church needs to contribute their part.  We cannot wait for our particular diocese to have the bishop we think we ought to have.  We cannot wait for our parish to have a priest that's more serious, involved, and orthodox.  We cannot wait for a Pope we think is best for the position.  We cannot wait for more families to come into the Church.  We cannot wait for a President that we can feel comfortable being citizens under.  We cannot wait until we have more seminarians.  We cannot keep waiting and pointing fingers.  The time is NOW and the contribution is each individual contributing their Catholic Faith and Walk to the Church, to Christ.  We must get on our knees and seek the Lord's will for us as Catholics and how we must contribute to the True Unity of the Church.  

The elders will respond to the movement of the people.  We, as lay people, may only have some shriveled onions and soft carrots to throw into the stone soup.  But, as the aroma of the cooking soup permeates the Church like incense, it creates a hunger in others.  They come seeking the source of the smell.  They realize they have a garlic clove, a handful of peas, some good broth they can add.   

We must be Catholic regardless of the state of things.  We must contribute instead of only complaining that we are hungry, starving even, for the leadership and orthodoxy of the Church.  

Pray your Rosary (and/or other prayers you are devoted to).  Choose a novena.  Contribute your alms and offerings.  Seek a ministry.  Even simply being more present in mind, body, and spirit at Mass is a contribution to the stone soup.  Make your homes Catholic.  That's a big one!  Dust off your icons.  Pull your Bible from storage or the shelf and put it in a place of honor on a home altar or the coffee table.  Hang crucifixes.  Ask a priest to bless your home, and bless him with a meal.  Pray as a family, even if it simply starting with grace at dinner.  Take steps.  It doesn't matter if your contribution is a bit shriveled up.  In the stone soup it is made new and tender.  

Manifestation

Thanks to the quick reels of social media I recently learned about manifestation and had a realization.

The particular reel in questions shows a woman standing outside shouting up to the sky that she would like either all the things on her plate to do taken away, or her chronic illness taken away so she can do all the things on her plate.  Immediately, I related to her and her cry for help.  But, then she looks at her camera with a bit of an attitude and says, "It's called manifestation.  Look it up!"  

Manifestation is a New Age belief that you can believe or affirm something into existence.  It's the power of positive thinking, and of speaking into the Universe.  As a Christian, obviously I don't believe in New Age practices and personal spiritualism, but BUT I realized that many Christians do practice a form of Manifestation, and that a form of Manifestation was practiced within my old church.

Certain factions of evangelicalism got into the "Name It and Claim It" movement and the various renamed or slightly altered practices of it.  While my former church denounced Name It and Claim It, they still held onto a certain belief system that mirrors Manifestation, which is why I related to the woman and recognized it.  In fact, before she told the camera what she was doing I thought she was praying to God!  I thought she was doing similar to what we did in our old church.  

The idea in my old church was the God wants to give us all the good.  He wants to heal and fix and bless and all those things, which is true...to a point, but there was this undercurrent of needing to find the right prayer formula, the right amount of faith, the right spiritual practices in the right amount.  It was a constant battle of trying to figure out what God wanted from us so that we could do it just right and get our prize at the end, whatever we've asked for.  

I remember Evangelists and Pastors saying things like, "So and so tithed 10% on their gross income, first thing Friday when the check arrived, they set aside crisp bills for the offering envelope, and God gave them a new house!"  Or, "So and so asked for a new car/a spouse/a job and was very specific in what they wanted and God blessed their bold faith with exactly that."  We'd have alter calls where we'd pray and pray and pray, working ourselves up into loud, emotional frenzies, tongues, music, shouting, sobbing hoping to hear from the Holy Spirit or for a prayer to be answered.  And there were times when it didn't "work" and we'd be returned to our pews only to be admonished for not having enough faith, or having a hidden sin, or not doing enough.  All of these are just Manifestation, a New Age practice wrapped in a Jesus cloak.  

There's a difference between believing that the Lord loves to give His children good things and answer their prayers and believing that we can pry good things out of God if we just insert the right formula.  

Now, my church would "church it up" by saying "The Lord is ready to give.  Are you ready to receive?"  This implied that everything is ours for the taking because the Lord already gave it to us.  We just have to "go get it" "believe and receive."  It took away the relationship, the Fatherhood of God, His Will for us, His design, His purpose, His glory and Kingdom."  What if God's perfect gift to us is the hardship?  What if His Will is the hurt and pain and suffering that others may grow in virtue and benefit, or even ourselves?  

I know many women with chronic illnesses, including myself, who have been spiritual abused by such practices, wondering why God hasn't healed them, but living under this belief system that God wants them healed, they just aren't doing things just right enough to manifest that healing.  They hyper-focus on the woman with the issue of blood and how her simple faith healed her and wonder why all of their faithful efforts haven't brought forth healing.  I have to remind them that Christ didn't heal everyone while He was on earth.  He didn't raise everyone from the dead.  Not everyone received his bread and fish.  I have to remind them that He allowed for His own cousin, John the Baptist, to be beheaded!  The apostles suffered greatly.  Christians were persecuted.  Saints suffered many illnesses.  Not because God isn't good, but because He IS and His ways are not our ways.  

Manifestation is a New Age practice.  It is witchcraft.  In the church, it is American-centric picket-fence witchcraft in which we, based on our culture, think we are entitled to the Christo-American idealism or health, wealth, and happiness.  

We can certainly pray for healing and for changes in our life circumstances.  By all means, do!  But, remember, "not my will, but Thy Will be done." 

 

What is Forgiveness?

 

There are many people in our lives who have not apologized to us for the harm they've done towards us.  Some of them we can easily forgive.  We understand it was out of character for them, or a misunderstanding, or they were children at the time and didn't quite know better, or the incident was rather small in the grand scheme of things an had no lasting effect on us.  Sometimes, however, there are people who have hurt us deeply, or continue to hurt us.  Some may be sorry but never apologize.  Some may not be sorry at all.  Some may be hard-hearted and blind to their abuses.  Some may feel justified in being a rotten person towards others.  

It can be very difficult to forgive such a person.  I have such a person in my life who has caused me to contemplate forgiveness for many years, now.  It is easy to forgive a contrite person.  For me, it's even easy to forgive a person who did wrong in the past, never apologized, but has turned over a new leaf, or left my life and isn't a bother to me anymore.  But, it is very hard to forgive someone who continues with being a difficult and hurtful person and isn't sorry for it.  

I recently decided, thanks to learning about the Catholic teaching of offering it up, to offer up all the sufferings I endure with this person for their salvation and conversion to the Catholic Faith.  They are the kind of person who would make an awesome Saul-to-Paul conversion story (which, incidentally, is probably why the devil has such a grip on them).  I thought it would be sweet and easy to just grab those hurts hurled at me and float them up to heaven like mylar party balloons.  How I really react is quite different.

Anger, hurt, tears, resentment.  I swear under my breath.  I even flip them off behind their back.  I get so angry!  But the worst reaction I have, Lord, forgive me, is that I don't want to offer up the sufferings for their salvation because I don't necessarily want them encroaching on my faith walk, going to church with me, and I get so angry I don't want them in heaven with me.  They're always talking about how much fun hell is and how much better it'll be to go there than heaven, so I sometimes just want to say, "fine, go there, then, and leave me at peace in Heaven!"

That is not what God wants of me.  Imagine if Christ thought that way on the cross.  "I'm dying for you and you want Barabbas?!  Fine!  Have him!  I'll take the few remaining faithful and go."  No.  He wants all of us to come Home to Him, no matter how horribly we've treated him.  He wants this person in Heaven and if I have to suffer for them to get there, that's what I've been called to do.  

So, what is forgiveness in all of this?  Forgiveness is wanting them to be in Heaven with you, to spend eternity with them, should they accept the Lord's invitation.  

Even now as I type this I struggle with the idea.  Perfect contrition is so difficult to achieve, it seems.  Perfect forgiveness, too.  Lord, help me and have mercy.

The Weaker Vessel

Ye husbands, likewise dwelling with them according to knowledge, giving honour to the female as to the weaker vessel, and as to the co-heirs of the grace of life: that your prayers be not hindered.  1 Peter 3:7

There are always bits and pieces of Holy Scripture that makes us cringe a little.  This is no exception, except it makes society cringe.  "What do you mean women are weak?!"  

I've heard many different explanations of this phrase ranging from the absurd to the practical on different sides of the religious spectrum.

The most absurd I've heard from secularists is that the author of 1 Peter is a misogynist. 

The most absurd I've heard from Christians is that women are vapid, weak, dumb, emotional, and flippant compared to men.  

Other, more practical explanations include:

1.  Women are generally physically, muscularly weaker than men.
2.  In the society of the time (and of history at large) women were seen as property or as lesser citizens than men, making them more vulnerable.
3.  Women's reproductive biology, especially before modern menstrual products and medical care, made them more vulnerable.
4.  We are overall more bodily delicate, more affected by the elements, our skin is thinner, etc.

I think the Bible verse can mean the above 4 explanations, but, ultimately, these verses are about one spouse being a believer and the other spouse not being a believer!  If you start at the beginning of the chapter, St. Peter is telling wives how they might be witness and win over their husbands to Christ.  Then, he begins to say to husbands, "ye, likewise..." 

The weaker vessel isn't necessarily women in general, but the unbelieving spouse!!!!

Another thing I've noticed is that some translations call the woman the weaker vessel, but others say "as unto the weaker vessel" or "as to the weaker vessel."  That's a tiny difference that makes a big change.  

Read it with these Catholic glasses on, that the weaker vessel isn't women in general, but rather the unbelieving spouse.  See how this section of Scripture jumps to life and understanding more!