Author: endourlifewell

As a former Hospital Chaplain who journeyed with the aging, ill and dying for nearly 5 years, the introduction of Medical Aid in Dying in Canada caused me grave concern. In the years since its legalization, I think MAiD has adversely affected the delivery of compassionate, caring healthcare and has had an extremely negative impact on us as a caring society. I believe we are living on the edge of seeing death-dealing as the answer to being a caring culture of hope that nurtures every person from their conception to their final, natural breath, because we no longer acknowledge, or put our faith in our having been created in the '...image and likeness...' of the Living God, Creator of all mankind. Our lives are being impacted by political decisions and legislation -- we cannot be oblivious to what is happening at that level, in this regard. We need to be ready for what comes next! The creeping culture of death will, in the end, consume us, and lead to more death, rather than our living in life sustaining hope and love for one another. Martin Niemöller (1892–1984), famously commenting on the rise of Nazism and the development of the death camps, penned a short ditty that includes these words: "First they came for (others)... and I did not speak out...because I wasn't one of them, Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

Think about THIS…

This is a departure from the usual commentary on ‘Life’ issues, but, still…I think its an important aspect of…life when it comes to…justice for all.

I am of the opinion that the mainstream Western media, several international governments, including Canada, and some notable religious leaders, are missing the point when it comes to dealing with the conflict (WAR) between Israel and the Palestinian military faction known as Hamas.

These individuals are viewing the situation though the eyes and mindset of the Western world and its humanism and rationalism…which doesn’t compute when applied to the Islamists and their reasoning and motivation based on a radical spiritual ideology.

The media, Western government leaders and religious leaders fail to rightly discern the real reasons for the conflict and so apply misguided assumptions about what is happening. They routinely shift the blame for the disastrous results for Palestinians in Gaza onto Israel instead of laying it at the feet of the Hamas organization holding sway over Gaza and its Palestinian population.

There are two reasons that fuel the Western mindset that result in the misunderstanding of the situation. This abysmal lack of understanding of what is happening causes these pundits to be unable to discern the roots of the conflict and to offer inappropriate, unworkable solutions to resolving the clash and bringing peace. Both of the reasons that cause them to arrive at wrong conclusions about the conflict are found in the precepts and tenets of Humanism.

Humanism…which is the prevailing philosophy or belief system guiding most Western governments today…does NOT believe in a spiritual realm and promotes the belief that human beings are good, in and of themselves…they are ‘bad’ only because of things inflicted on them by others. They further assume that human beings are intelligent, rational beings who can resolve conflicts based on engaging their intellects and entering into dialogue and negotiation which will lead to peaceful resolution of conflict.

Therein is the problem…dealing with the situation without any reference or belief in a supernatural, spiritual realm, and believing that all people are people of good will totally lacking in malfeasance or nefarious motives is inappropriate and inapplicable.

It overlooks the fact, that, first of all, for the particular brand of Islam practiced by the Hamas leaders and their military, this is a spiritual battle. Indeed they are waging a ‘Holy War.’ One that they are enjoined to engage in directly by the Quran and their spiritual founder, Mohammed. It is a battle founded upon and grounded in the intent to kill all Jews and to overrun and extend their own rule over the territory designated as Israel.

It is a spiritual injunction to rid the world of Jews and the state of Israel based on sura’s found in their Holy Book and interpreted by their Imams and religious leaders as being the basis for ‘jihad’, their ‘Holy War’, with the goal to rid the land of the infidels…that being, as a matter of fact, both Jews and Christians. These religions, and their adherents, are not seen as compatible with this particular interpretation of Islam.

So, if this battle is founded upon a spiritual basis, it changes the assumption that it can be settled by dialogue and negotiation. The brand of Islam being practiced does not allow for an intellectual coming to a compromise solution that allows Israel to exist and be populated by Jewish people. To them, when the chants of, ‘Death to the Jews’ sound across the Gaza strip, they mean it, as much as they mean to be rid of Israel, the ‘little Satan’ and America, the ‘big Satan.’ The leaders of Hamas, both political and militarily, are not about to negotiate to a truce that peacefully allows Israel to exist and Jews to continue to live there.

Because those who are offering solutions, and making demands that Israel halt its military actions to negotiate with the Hamas military arm, do not believe in God, and wrongly believe that all human beings are rational, intelligent beings who can arrive at reasonable settlements, they are blinded to the reality of what is fueling this conflict itself.

Reason is not the answer to a spiritual belief that the coming of the Islamic Mahdi1…the equivalent of the Jewish Messiah, or the Christian return of Jesus…and the establishment of the Caliphate, a worldwide kingdom in which no infidels are left alive, to be governed by Muslims based on sharia law…is dependent on the shedding of blood…of anyone who gets in their way…Jews or their own Muslim fellow believers.

They truly believe that anyone…be they military or civilian…who dies on their side in this conflict is guaranteed a direct route to a heavenly…supernatural realm beyond this one…with great benefits beyond what they have experienced in this earthly realm. It is a great thing to obtain death in such a conflict to end the challenges and struggles of life, here and now, with life in a paradise beyond imagining. Death for them is a reward for honoring and living out their Islamic beliefs to rid the world of all who do not embrace their faith.

These, then, are not people for whom peaceful co-existence with their Jewish neighbors is to be seen as a victory. Only the complete destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews is the accepted outcome.

So, when the international governments are calling on Israel to stand down, negotiate with Hamas, to end this conflict…and the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza2, they are, if you will, ‘…barking up the wrong tree….’ The ones who will not come to a settlement and stop the conflict and the attacks against Israel and the Jewish population are actually the ones in the other camp…the Hamas leadership and military, not Israel.

Israel is battling for the right to exist and to protect their own citizens…a right, given and protected by international law, that is not being respected by…the Hamas government or its military, or by these international nations who lay the blame for the unwillingness to be at peace on Israel, instead of those warring against them, based on the spiritual roots of the beliefs of these individuals and their interpretation of the Quran.

When there is a failure to acknowledge or comprehend the spiritual roots of the battle, based on the general lack of belief in the supernatural, and the added belief that all people are rational, intelligent beings of good will, who want only good for themselves, and the other, the solutions to the conflict cannot be seen for what they are. What is being proposed and demanded doesn’t ‘fit’ with the realities of the roots of the conflict.

Demanding Israel change things, without acknowledging the source of the conflict and the malice of intent to destroy them on the part of Hamas brings Westerners to the wrong conclusion about who is at fault and what it takes to establish peace.

1 Brittanica Definition: Mahdi, in Islamic eschatology, a messianic deliverer who will fill the earth with justice and equity, restore true religion and usher in a short golden age lasting seven, or eight, or nine years before the end of the world.

2 Watch “LIVE FROM ISRAEL: FAMINE IN GAZA? Fact or Fiction?” on YouTube

The Problem is:

Faith of our Fathers, faith and prayer
Shall WIN all nations unto Thee;
And through the TRUTH that comes from God,
Mankind shall then indeed be FREE.

Text: Frederick William Faber, 1814-1863

Jesus began His ministry by coming back from the wilderness to PROCLAIM: “The Time Has Come, and the KINGDOM of God is at hand. Repent and Believe the Good News.” cf. Mark 1:15

While the late Pope Francis is being recognized and lauded for going to the margins, reaching out to the peripheries, and welcoming all, everyone and anyone, into the Church…he has done so without the prerequisite proclamation that the Lord, Jesus Christ, made…which was to, first, proclaim and call to repentance, then belief in Himself, because He was ushering in the Kingdom of God…on earth.

But, it is a kingdom that, first and foremost, is based on sinners ‘…turning from (their) wicked ways…’ (cf. Acts 3:19) and becoming believers in Him as, ‘…the Way, the Truth, and the Life….’ He who proclaimed Himself to be, the one and only ‘way’ to the Father. (cf. Jn. 14:6)

So, I am left with the question, in my heart and mind: Whom am I to believe? Pope Francis, who was a compassionate, humble, fatherly man, who welcomed sinners, without qualification or question…or, Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, who said, ‘Repent and believe (in Me) for the Kingdom of God is at hand.’ The One who sent His followers, apostles and disciples, alike, into all the world to preach the Gospel…the ‘good news’ that Jesus, has come into the world, to, as St. Paul references, ‘…to save sinners, of whom,’ he says, he, ‘is the greatest.’ (cf. 1Tim. 1:15) Can sinners be received into the fullness of the Church, into receiving its Sacraments, and the attendent graces, without repentance?

That, for me is the issue.

So, I am left with the dilemma…to honor the man, who was Pope Francis, but still disagree with his theological perspective.

Can sinners be welcomed at the table of the Lord…without having repented, when they have not been washed clean in the redeeming Blood of Jesus and the waters of Baptism, or come through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in order to be restored to the state of grace necessary to receive the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist, which is the True and Real Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of our Lord, Jesus Christ? For it was He who suffered the horrific death on the Cross, shedding His Sacred Blood, for the sake of restoring us to right relationship with the Father, the relationship that had been lost in the Garden when our 1st parents disobeyed the injunction of the Father to NOT eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, lest they die…not physically, as we now see and realize, but spiritually.

Death was introduced into our eternity of fellowship with the Father…’death’ that was the very real, definitive, and unequivocal separation from God, the Father, their Creator. Their action broke their fellowship and communion with the Father, and they were left without an immediate remedy to restore the fellowship…i.e., living in that state of grace of the Garden…and being in full fellowship and communion with God, which could only be effected, i.e. restored, by the shedding of Blood for forgiveness of the accumulated sin of all mankind (which includes women and men, both made in the image and likeness of God, into whom was breathed the breath of life by the Creator God…without distinction.)

So, I ask again, the question: Who is it that has the authentic, final word in the matter of coming to the Table of the Lord, or being welcomed into full communion there…the, albeit humble, welcoming man who trusted in his interpretation of what has been taught down through the centuries, and promulgated his own understanding, or the Man whose words have been, until now, faithfully passed down in the Deposit of Faith, from one generation to the next, since the Apostles took up the mantle…and were commissioned by the Lord…to preach the Truth as they had received it from Him? Who are we to Follow?

I have no doubt which version of the Deposit of Faith, and the Gospel message that I believe…and choose to align myself with.

I cannot automatically elevate to sainthood the goodness of the man, Pope Francis, when he taught and modeled precepts and beliefs that failed to comply with the words recorded in Holy Scripture, the inerrant, infallible word of the One and Only Begotten Son of the Father, written down through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to human writers, written so that those who lived then, and we who live now, could know the TRUTH and the TRUTH would set us FREE.

Niceness, being good to one another, welcoming everyone with kindness, incorporating everyone into the social fabric of our faith community, does not bring salvation, unless it is accompanied by the Word of God being proclaimed and taught, that echoes down through the centuries, from one generation of believers to the next: Repent. Believe. The KINGDOM of God is at hand.

It is a Kingdom into which the Church Fathers and countless Saints, have proclaimed, on behalf of the Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, that only those in a state of GRACE can be restored to the fellowship of the Garden, to walk with the Father, which is Heaven itself.

That’s what I choose to set my hopes in…the Teachings of the Traditions and the Deposit of Faith handed down from the Apostles, recorded in Holy Scripture, not in the niceness, kindness, goodness of a man, however, compassionate, humble, and open to everyone, come what may.

I close with a quote from Fr. Paul D. Scalia, writing in The Catholic Thing on Sunday, April 27, 2025, in an article entitled, Faith and the Papacy.1

“Everything else in the Church depends on doctrinal clarity. Without it, we don’t have faith but only religious opinion. Without it, we don’t know how to worship “in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23) Without it, we don’t know how to love God and neighbor because we don’t know the truth about God and man. The very teaching of doctrine is an act of charity, leading people out of error, out of false worship, in order to know and to love the one true God.“

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Faith and the Papacy

SEE ALSO: Fr. Raymond J. de Souza’s, Interregnum: Restoration of the Petrine Office, posted Saturday, May 3, 2025 on The Catholic Thing

Interregnum: Restoration of the Petrine Office

Fr. de Souza makes the salient observation about Pope Francis: “…his final testament, a curious document that primarily dealt with the logistical disposal of his mortal remains rather than the affairs of his immortal soul.“

Perhaps, this ‘sums up’ the ‘man’ Pope Francis.

Eternal Rest grant unto Pope Francis, O Lord. And let Your perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, Rest in Peace.

Could the ANSWER be in Prayer?

I have a sense that…the answer to…countering the culture of death through pro-life action, and probably even to addressing the issues in our own personal lives…is somehow caught up in PRAYER…which, after all, shouldn’t be so surprising, when you stop to think about it!

Somehow there is a relationship between prayer and hope…and that’s recently come to the fore for me as I read the comments of Fr. Joseph, MIC, in the Summer, 2024, issue of Marian Helper: Inspiration and news from the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception.

I had somewhat forgotten that 2024 has been declared as the Year of Prayer by Pope Francis, leading up to the Celebration of the Jubilee Year of Hope in 2025. Fr. Joseph, MIC, (who is in fact Fr. Mark Baron, MIC, as explained in the notes at the bottom of his comments) recounts his ‘call’ – since January of this year – to emphasize prayer in his personal life and his ministry as Director of the Association of Marian Helpers.1

He closes his comments with an invitation, saying that, even though the Year of Prayer is half-way through, to ‘…take advantage of the graces the Holy Spirit is offering to us during this Year of Prayer for the upcoming Jubilee.’ Adding a challenge to, ‘…open our hearts to the Holy Spirit…to allow our lives to become a prayer to God…’ and, interestingly, he combines it with a request to renew our sense of ‘…awe and wonder in Jesus’ true presence in the Eucharist.’ He concludes,

Think about the fire that God wants to set ablaze in our hearts. Please join me in this call to faith, in this call to prayer, in this call to transformation, in this call to holiness.2

The invitation caught my attention and piqued my interest. Having been caught up in the grip of my own ongoing struggle to fathom the call from Our Blessed Lady, as she has appeared at Medjugorje, to ‘pray from the heart,’ prayer has become a focus of my life, as well. My problem is that, as a very word-oriented person, who processes my world cognitively, it is difficult for me to get a handle on what to ‘pray from the heart’ really means.

So, I betook myself to check out the reference Fr. Joseph, MIC, made to the Catechism of the Catholic Church to see what it has to say about prayer. I found it gripping. As always, the Catechism brings the teachings of the Church into sharper focus in what I find to be very understandable language…that, well, actually, speaks to my ‘heart’…that place in my being that is beyond my mental faculties of understanding.

Under the heading, Prayer in the Christian Life, it says, “‘Great is the mystery of the faith!’…This mystery…requires that the faithful believe in it,…celebrate it,…and live from it in a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God. This relationship is prayer.” (CCC 2558)

It terms prayer the ‘gift of God,’ saying, “‘Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or requesting of good things from God.’” Adding that ‘…humility is the foundation of prayer.’ It is when we acknowledge that we, ‘…do not know how to pray as we ought,’ that we are ‘…ready to receive freely the gift of prayer.’ It concludes that, ‘Man is a beggar before God.’ (CCC 2559)

There’s so much more contained, even in the 1st few paragraphs, but suffice it to say, I will be using the Catechism as a reference point for prayer over the rest of this Year of Prayer.

The Year of Prayer is to prepare our hearts…and minds…for the Jubilee Year of Hope, which connects prayer with hope in a profound way. If we are to counter the culture of death we need to be purveyors of hope, as Stephanie Gray Connors points out in a recent article in BC Catholic.3

Saying its not necessary for Catholics to be demoralized by the onslaught of Canada’s ‘extreme’ euthanasia regime, Connors, being originally from Abbotsford, BC, where she is visiting for the summer from Florida, is a pro-life apologist and urges that using logical argument and compassionate action are effective ways to counter the culture of death that we, as Canadians, find ourselves so immersed in.4

She adds, citing quotes from Victor Frankl, a psychotherapist who survived a Nazi Concentration Camp, that those contemplating ending their lives prematurely need to be offered hope…and meaning. She says hope starts with the foundation of prayer.5 And, we must find meaning to want to live.

I think that, when we explore the various means of countering the death-dealing culture of abortion and euthanasia that continues to proliferate across Canada, focusing on either political activism or educational approaches cannot succeed without a strong, solid foundation in prayer. 

So, perhaps there needs to be a coordinated effort…within what remains of this Year of Prayer, then, reaching on into the upcoming Jubilee Year of Hope, to ground our proposed actions and efforts in deepening our own personal prayer lives, and adding corporate prayer that is focused and intentional to pray, not only for ourselves and our efforts, but also for the purveyors and perpetrators of abortion and MAiD. How much, they, too, need to find a sense of meaning and hope that they would no longer see death as an answer to what ails the lives of individuals because they face suffering or challenging circumstances.

Life is never without its challenges, tragedies and triumphs, finding hope and meaning must be, as Fr. Joseph, MIC, concludes, recognizing Jesus in His REAL Presence…for us, as Catholics, in the Eucharist, and, for others, in being in His Presence in that profound meditative or contemplative stance of personal relationship with the Living God.

Jesus gave meaning to suffering and gave us the hope in something more beyond this life. We need to find ways of offering hope…and life…to not just those contemplating MAiD or abortion, but to those who are promoting and proliferating death in our Canadian political, educational, social and healthcare landscapes.

We need to come up with new ways of addressing the issues…not continuing to rely simply on tried-and-true activities alone.

That’s my take on it. Prayer is the answer…to what ails our society when it comes to the culture of death that permeates our response to challenges and suffering that we are bound to face in life…because we live in a fallen world, rife with sin, and brokenness, that leads to despair and death.

How do we become greater or better purveyors of hope and life than the anti-life forces we contend with?

How’s your prayer life doing?!? Can you add more prayer for yourself, and join with others, for a greater impact and effect on…the whole world?

1, 2 https://images.marianweb.net/archives/flip/mhe/Summer_2024/2/

3, 4, 5 https://bccatholic.ca/news/catholic-van/love-and-logic-are-the-catholic-response-to-maid-international-pro-life-apologist-says

Which way forward…

This was a post that was written following the unprecedented, unprovoked attack on, among others, a civilian population enjoying a holiday event last October, 2023…but, for whatever reasons, this didn’t see the light of day…to become published. However, I intended to use it to initiate a more regular blogging schedule, again, then move on from here:

Breaking the Silence…

Since the earlier post that heralded in the New Year of 2023, I have come through nothing short of a miraculous cancer journey, complete with surgery that removed the right section of my colon, an amazing recovery, and being declared ‘cancer-free’ all within the rapid-fire space of a three-month timeline…but that’s a story for another time. Suffice it to say, it’s now the right time to make a comeback…and, to begin to reflect and write and share my thoughts, again. So, this begins another phase in, what has proven to be, a rather intermittent, blogging journey.

Musings…

Very recently, I had occasion to gaze out my bedroom window at the shifting kaleidoscope of color in the leaves of the trees and these musings came to mind…beginning with concern about heightened fears of further COVID spread and feeding off the most recent current events rocking and shaping our world, beginning with the shocking terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, and the even more shocking response from around the world leaving me wondering: What comes next?!?

Sunday, October 22, 2023

The other morning when my husband drew back the bedroom curtains, I was immediately struck by the noticeable change in shade of the fall leaves beyond my window. There had been a subtle shift from the blazing, light-reflecting amber gold of the day before to a dull, faded yellow hue, with more bare branches standing stark against the morning sky as the tree released its shriveling leaves.

My first thought was that winter was on the way! There would be no more lingering gleaming, golden leaves, vying for attention against a bright blue sky, with touches of red in the landscape of neighboring shrubs, or with the still green foliage of the late turners standing in stark contrast.

It came with a twinge of nostalgia that what had been a lingering fall, with pleasant temperatures, sunshine and fall colors abounding, for weeks on end, would all over very quickly. The remaining leaves clinging to branches would flutter to the ground, carpeting the lawn with sodden, rather than crisp, brittle leaves.

Soon enough snow would cover the landscape with a uniform blanket of white, and we would be hunkering down to weather the dark, frigid, cold ensuing days of winter that would soon envelop our world.

It always catches me off guard that spring, summer, and fall, when all is said and done, seem to be so fleeting. In the blink of an eye, the bleakness of winter has returned and largely ignored, until it settles, unbidden, upon us.

Given the trajectory of our world, proven in the previous couple of years, as the flu season is once again upon us, I wonder if this might not be a metaphor for the potential of bleakness heralding in the rather unwelcome return of restrictions of social involvements and travel, involving again social distancing, masking and vaccine mandates, lockdowns and other impediments to carrying on even a semblance of what would be seen as normal social interactions and healthy community life. Might this be about to break upon us, once again, unwelcome, and as distasteful as enduring the same scenarios over the previous 2-3 years?

It may be that the pleasant return to near normalcy of the previous several months has lulled us into an expectation of the worst being behind us. Being able to enjoy the welcome ‘springtime’ of non-restrictive living for this past year or so, might have caused us to become complacent, or cling to an optimistic hope that it is really all behind us, and, surely, it could never happen again! Could it?

The re-introduction of restrictions, masking, lockdowns, and all the paraphernalia we have become familiar with, might surface yet, again, still fueled by a renewed pandemic of fear, pitting people against one another, in the guise of healthcare safety, as the desired response to another outbreak of the lingering COVID-19 viral infection that is rebounding, as it is wont to do. It is, after all, a virus, and that’s what a virus does, and it is, after all, fall, and moving into winter.

This time, though, I think it will be with an added twist…an even more blatant hostility to those who don’t ‘buy in’ to the narrative popularized by the political elites and mainstream media. It could well lead to violence against the outliers who will be cast as a threat to the health and wellbeing of all, in the pandemonium of very strident voices claiming that it is for the only good of the sake of safety for the community…and all who don’t comply are a dangerous threat.

I fear that, soon enough, the same vaccine mandates, travel restrictions and vaccine passports will all be re-instituted and the non-compliant will be even more vigorously hounded, harassed, isolated and driven to the fringes. more stridently than occurred in the first go-round of insanity that gripped the world 2-3 years ago. For the many, or any, who did not speak out before, who silently, conceded and went along with it, for whatever reasons, it will be too late to stand up and be counted anymore. They will all be swept up in the fearmongering and finger-pointing that has become so common place in our world of today.

The perpetrators of the only ‘acceptable’ woke narratives will show no mercy or reason, and it will be enough to ‘know’ that a person disagrees with the touted ‘party line’ to silence, marginalize, isolate, criminalize, and eliminate those with dissenting voices.

Any and all, and especially believing Christians, who try to stand against the injustices of loss of freedom, whether it be in silencing sane voices of dissent, or sounding the alarm for dehumanization, marginalization, hostility and hatred towards those whose voices differ from the mainstream, inculcated narrative which is being heard in the corridors of power, the halls of academia, the corporate towers, and the bellowing and blaring in our streets already, will be targeted in ways not seen in a long, long time.  

We are graphically witnessing this kind of bigotry and alienation in the outcry against…not Hamas for the terrorism perpetrated on innocent civilian victims, within the boundaries of their own national boundaries…but against Israel who are a sovereign nation needing to protect their own innocent citizens from the atrocities of this deliberate, with malice aforethought, unprecedented terrorist attack.

As with the insidiousness of the creeping policies that broke in waves over pre-World War II Germany, that eventually saw millions swept up in the frenzy of hatred against the ‘enemy,’ the Jews of that day, we are already seeing them, once again, targeted in our cultural frenzy over ‘colonialist’ ideologies. It may soon sweep the whole world up into it. As we witness what the worst level of violence means for those who oppose what is taken to be the only ‘truth’ allowed. Battle lines have been drawn and, now, we can only wait to see how the violence and hatred begin to play itself out, as has already been paraded before us so graphically, in cities around North America, on university campuses, and in nations around the globe, including the horrendous mob attack on innocents arriving at a Russian airport where the mob fired warning shots at the police to stand back and let them maraud and hunt down Jewish travelers and threaten their lives and the Jewish students locked inside a University library while fellow students pounded on doors and windows trying to gain entry to get at them.

Civil discourse is no longer allowed, or even expected. There isn’t a place for dialogue or negotiation when the other person’s ‘right’ and freedom to believe differs from the accepted ‘narrative’ regardless of who is touting it. We have deteriorated to mob rule, where ‘might makes right’ when there is even a perceived variance from what is held to be ‘true’ by another person.  

As the Jewish people are witnessing, what they thought was a haven in nations who declared loudly and vociferously, ‘Never again!’ has proven to be a false hope for them. And this is in danger of proliferating to the basest level of discourse, for the most mundane reasons.

Watch for more of this, across our peaceful, civilized democracies. Third World conditions in nations where despot’s rule will soon be evidenced, even in our local, small communities throughout Canada and the US where people believed they would always be safe. If the Jews are no longer safe in Western countries, then no one of any faith will be, either. Especially, if the enemy of our souls has his way. Today, more than ever, we need to PRAY! PRAY! PRAY!

Where should we be in all of this? What kind of persons do we want to be…and on which side?

I am reminded of a recent comment by an Israeli commentator who is a Messianic Jew…who has said, the enemy grounded in Hamas/Hezbollah operatives, are right now coming for the ‘Saturday people,’ but once they have done that, they are going to move on to attack the ‘Sunday people.’

Reflections…from Medjugorje

Medjugorje Report May 25, 2024

Medjugorje changes things… and it changes us, if we will only let it.

One of the first things I heard regarding Medjugorje, when I visited there for the very first time more than 20 years ago, was that ‘Mary is a real person, and she is personally present.’ I have found that to be remarkably true.

There is something qualitatively different about this place than any other place on earth that I have been. I believe it is because Mary has set her foot down on the hillside, and it has become the closest place to heaven on this earth that anyone will ever have occasion to be.

Since the Apparitions of Mary to six, at the time, young people/children, began in 1981, more than 40 million people, from all faith, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, have visited this remote village to be strengthened and renewed in their spiritual journey. Many who have come as unbelievers have left as believers, countless others have received physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healings. The fruits speak for themselves.

Mary has said that the She is spending these years among us here as a, ‘…special time of grace granted by God.’ She says, “I have come to tell the world that God exists. He is the fullness of life, and to enjoy this fullness and peace, you must return to God.”

An example of the messages being delivered by Mary are these most recent ones, received on April 25, 2024:

Dear children! I am with you to tell you that I love you and to encourage you to prayer; because Satan is strong and every day his strength is stronger through those who have chosen death and hatred. You, little children, be prayer and my extended hands of love for all those who are in darkness and seek the light of God. Thank you for having responded to my call.

And this one from May 25, 2024:

Dear children! In this time of grace, I am calling you to prayer with the heart. Little children, create prayer groups where you will encourage each other to the good and grow in joy. Little children, you are still far away. That is why continue to convert anew and choose the way of holiness and hope so that God may give you peace in abundance. Thak you for having responded to my call.

My present 2024 pilgrimage to this holy site was made more special by staying in the pension of Ivanka Ivankovic-Elez, one of the visionaries.

The first to catch a glimpse of Mary on the rocky hillside of Podbrdo on June 24, 1981, Ivanka was a 15 yr. old girl who had recently lost her mother. The Feast Day of St. John the Baptist was a holy day…and, thus, a holiday…for the people of the area, including the mission hamlet of Bijakovici, which neighbors Medjugorje, and was the birthplace of five of the visionaries. The church of St. James the Apostle, a Franciscan mission, is the home parish of the visionaries.

Telling the friend who was with her, as the two strolled towards home that evening, that she had seen “Gospa”, i.e. Our Lady, the friend retorted she was crazy.

To meet her, Ivanka, is an unremarkably, ordinary, middle-aged woman with nothing that sets her apart from others her age and background. Her face neither shines, nor does she levitate…or carry herself with any sense of superiority or marked blessedness. She is a humble, down to earth, wife and mother, who is presently is looking forward to the marriage of her youngest son, Ivan, in June. Ivanka cooks for the pilgrims who stay at the Elez Pension, and son, Ivan, acts as server and driver for the pilgrims. She gives warm, welcoming hugs and smiling blessings.

Speaking to the dozen pilgrims during our stay, she began by saying she wasn’t above asking the Madonna, “Why did you choose me?” Sometimes, it is out of curiosity, wanting to know what it is for, other days, it is with an anger that while it is a great gift, it is also a great responsibility. It has marked her life since her teen years in ways that she did not imagine would happen to her when she was a child.

“I am a human being like you. I get knocked down, but I get up again. I find the strength to follow the path that God has given to me. As we all must.”

Many say to her that she is blessed to see Our Mother Mary, but, on the other hand, while she realizes the great gift God has given her, she says, with the blessings come many temptations, crosses, and problems.

The gift of having seen the Mother of God, is to gaze upon an indefinable beauty, not just to see her with the eyes, but to see her with the heart, as all of us must strive to do.

“I am not chosen by God because I am better than anyone else, it depends on making ourselves open to God for each one of us to see him.”

It is not that God is far from us, she says, but, rather, that we are far from God.

When she first saw Gospa, Our Lady, who later identified herself as the Queen of Peace, Ivanka was 15 yrs. old, living in Mostar. She was in Bijakovici visiting her grandparents for the school holidays and helping them working in the fields, the lot of most of her friends, and the children and young people of the community.

Because it was the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist, no one was working, and the young people were free to take a walk outside the village into the countryside. She and Mirjana, also visiting, but from Sarajevo, had walked away from the village and were awaiting others to join them, but they didn’t come. Becoming bored with the wait, the two of them began to return down the path to the village.

“I don’t know what caused me to turn my head, but when I did, I said to Mirjana, ‘Look. It’s Gospa.’ Without looking herself, Mirjana said to me I was crazy. And we kept walking.”

Coming upon Mirjana’s sister, she took one look at Ivanka and asked what had happened to her because she was white. At the same time, the others who they had awaited came up. They looked and also saw a beautiful young woman, dressed in grey, holding a baby in her arms and motioning for them to draw nearer. Frightened by what they were seeing, none of them dared respond.

They dispersed to their homes and families, and, in tears, some of them began to tell parents and family what they had seen. The overriding sentiment from the adults was to forget about it because no one really saw things like that.

Ivanka says it was the longest night of her life. Sleep did not come, and she lay awake wondering, indeed, if she was losing her mind. Everyone was saying that it simply was not possible. (At this point, no one in the village had ever heard of Marian Apparitions. The remoteness of the village, and still being under Communist domination as part of what was then Yugoslavia, information about places like Lourdes and Fatima had not reached them.)

Such news in the closeknit community meant that the next evening when they ventured back to the hillside where they had first seen the Lady in Grey, many villagers gathered at the base of the hill to witness what was happening. Ivanka’s grandmother had told her that whatever it was she saw up there, it wouldn’t be there again.

But the original four who had seen her, and two others who had not been there the evening before, saw a light that seemed to pull them up the hillside. Despite the thornbushes, stones and rocks, and with no path, they all ran up to the spot where they saw the same young woman again. No one could stop them from running up the hillside, nor could anyone keep up with them.

Ivanka pauses in her recitation of the facts of what happened, then says, “How can you describe with our poor words, the love of God? How can you describe the peace of God, the blessings and happiness? There are no words to describe it.”

There was the same young woman again. She was wearing a long, grey dress, with a white veil. She had blues eyes, dark hair, and stood on a small cloud. Never had any of them seen anyone so beautiful. The Lady spoke and said to not be afraid. And that she would be with them.

It was a tradition in the village and area to say seven Our Father’s, Hail Mary’s and Glory Be’s and sprinkle the house with blessed water every Saturday evening. One of the girls had been advised to take Holy Water and sprinkle it towards whatever they saw saying, “If you come from God, stay. If you do not, go away.” Ivanka says when the other girl did that, the Lady smiled and stayed.

The first message that the visionaries were given were the words, “Mir. Mir. Mir” “Peace. Peace. Peace.” Later the Lady would identify herself as Queen of Peace.

Ivanka saw Our Lady daily from then until May, 1985. Early on, still mourning the death of her own mother, she had asked Gospa where her mother was, and was assured that she was with Mary. The greatest gift came with her last Daily Apparition of Mary on May 7, 1985.

“I saw my mother and she hugged me and said to me, ‘I am very proud of you, my daughter.’ This was an enormous gift – a gift for me, and a gift for you. If you ask if there is life after this one, I can assure you that there is. She was real and I felt her hug like a real person.”

She goes on to say, “God gives us hugs. He asks us not to wander, but to come back to Him through conversion, prayer, fasting, confession, and Holy Mass.”

God is asking us to change our lives, and the first step in that is to be at peace with ourselves. He invites us to make use of Confession, to throw out of our hearts what is impure, to open our hearts to be cleansed and healed. He invites us to go to where Jesus awaits us, both in Adoration, and Holy Mass. He will give us new life, heal our lives, but we must choose which way we will go.

Ivanka’s special mission is to pray for families and she says that each one of us has a special mission from God.

“I have a family, like you. I experience the same problems that you do. We must put God first in our life, then it is easy to carry the problems. Bless your families. Start each day in prayer. Say, ‘O God, stay with me and my family.’ At the end of the day, say, ‘Thank you, God.’ It is one single drop in the ocean of prayer, but it means the world for you.”

She concludes, that if we have everything without God’s peace and love, we have nothing.

“What Our Lady said to us, I am telling you. Do not be afraid. Our Lady is leading us to Jesus. I pray for you. You pray for me.”

With six seminarians in our midst, she encouraged the pilgrims to pray for seminarians because the world needs holy priests, going on to say that there is a battle between good and evil going on more strongly than ever. With prayer and blessing, we can be instruments to stop the evil. The greatest weapon is the Rosary.

“If you are feeling lonely, and abandoned, pray the rosary. If you want to walk through life with smiles, have Our Lady next to you, she will take us to her Son, Jesus.”

“If we make one small step, it will lead us to having heaven on earth. The hardest thing becomes the easiest if we have an open heart…to Our Lady and Her Son, Jesus.”

In the end, it seems that the real message of Medjugorje…and Our Lady’s lingering presence there, is…for us all to live with an open heart, a heart that is open to God, open to respond to the call to convert, pray, fast, read scripture, go to confession, and attend Mass. All must be from the heart, a heart that is ready to believe who God is and to receive what He has for us.

This openness of heart must be the enduring source of our life, alone. Nothing else will suffice to prepare the purity of heart needed for us to be in communion with God. From a heart turned to God will come the peace, healing and new life we seek and long for, a heart that pleases Him and gives us access to Him and the eternity He holds in store for us.

Shades of Foreboding for 2023???

“The one who wants to win the world for Christ, must have the courage to come in conflict with it.”1

St. Titus Brandsma

Backdrop to Today’s Blog Post:

A favourite gift from this past Christmas was a small paperback volume (under 200 pages!) titled, Saint Edith Stein: A Spiritual Portrait, from Pauline Books & Media by Dianne Marie Traflet. It traces the spiritual growth of this Jewish daughter, born on the Jewish Day of Atonement in 1891, in Breslau, Germany. She was the last of 11 children, and by her teens had already rejected her family’s spiritual heritage and embraced atheism.

A brilliant, renowned scholar and philosopher of her day, she subsequently embraced the Christian faith, becoming a Roman Catholic, and a nun. Stein died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942. Her crime? Being Jewish, of course.2 Sincerely converting to Catholicism, and entering the religious life, could not protect her from the wicked plans of evil men to eliminate the Chosen People of God.

Among other victims of the Nazi concentration camps, who have achieved the status of sainthood, are the Polish priest, St. Maximillian Kolbe, and a Dutch priest, Fr. Titus Brandsma, who was elevated to sainthood on May 15, 2022. As a Carmelite Friar, he was in good company. It is the Order of St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Therese of Lisieux, and, yes, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross…otherwise known as St. Edith Stein.

Franciscan Media says of St. Titus Brandsma,

During his brief time at Dachau Fr. Brandsma was well-known for his kindness and spiritual support of other prisoners. His death on July 26, 1942 was a result of the Reich’s program of medical experimentation on prisoners. He gave a wooden rosary to the nurse who administered the fatal injection; she later became Catholic and testified to his holiness.3

It also adds the comment, in regard to St. Titus, “Conscience often creates martyrs. That was the case for Titus Brandsma. Many people ‘go along to get along,’ not realizing that by doing so they are destroying themselves internally.”

Reflecting on the lives, and the times, of these two particular Saints, triggered the thoughts that follow. It gives me pause to wonder, as we enter this new year, if we need to look more closely at what’s happening today, and how our times compare to theirs. How do you see it?

Thoughts on entering 2023…January 1, 2023

TODAY…the beginning of a New Year, on the cusp of things we know not of, or can barely imagine, might befall us, in our modern, civilized, Western culture. I foresee it will be so like what was to befall Europe, unbeknownst to anyone but those in the highest echelons of power and authority, who knew already what they purposed and planned, as the world careened into pre-WWII in Germany, which would engulf it, and its neighboring nations. All were about to be caught up in the maelstrom of madness proliferated in the minds of men with evil intent, focused on the annihilation of the Lord’s Chosen ones…to continue and further the hatred against them, which began when the Lord called Abraham, and set apart his seed to be a holy people, consecrated in covenant relationship to the One True God, for all eternity.

Hatred of Jews, hatred of Jesus Christ, hatred of all those called to be uniquely separated and consecrated to the Living God, in the Name of His Only Begotten Son, still awaits us, as men with the same evil intent of those who plotted the destruction of Jews, through the millennia, are once again in the ascendency. With the same evil intent, they now plot the destruction of Christ and His Church, to establish their godless purposes to, themselves, ‘be like gods,’ in their own hearts and minds…to reign over and supplant godly men and women who believe that God is God, and there is no other. (Dt. 4:39; Is.46:9)

While we who believe know their efforts are doomed to fail, the chaos and strife they will engender is about to engulf people of all stations and status, of belief and unbelief, of all stripes. All, together, will be caught up in conflict that sets families at odds, drives division between friends and neighbors, rips asunder communities, parishes, countries, and nations. None will remain untouched or unscathed. Such will be the lot of those alive today as they watch civilization teeter on the edge of anarchy and destruction that they, falsely, believed could never happen, in their day and age, ever again.

The lessons of the past, from more than 75 years ago, have not been well learned, nor taken to heart, as they might have been. To displace God is to displace civility, genuine respect and regard, care and concern, for one another. Those things that form the foundation of ‘taking care of your fellow-man,’ to quote my un-saintly, deceased father who passed to his reward more than two decades ago. He was a man who sought peace among people and nations that could not be found in his atheism or communism, because that peace is only available in the personal surrender of hearts and lives to live for, and embrace, the reality of ‘knowing the One True God, and Jesus Christ, whom (he) has sent.’ (Jn. 17:3)

This was the ‘Truth’ that Edith Stein discovered that gave her the grace to face incarceration in a Nazi concentration camp, and the gas chambers, with equanimity. The same was true for Fr. Titus Brandsma who died from a lethal injection, as part of the human experimentation on the living practiced by Nazi medical personnel. As Canadians, with the legalization of Medical Aid in Dying, we might want to pause and wonder where it is leading when medical professionals become acclimatized to the thought of putting patients to death and normalize the death dealing in their own hearts and minds. Will healthcare continue to be life-saving, or is it destined to become more death-dealing, based on the beliefs of the current political leaders who form our government?  

Only in serving the Living God, bending the knee, and bowing the head, declaring that Jesus Christ is Lord, will the peace the world seeks come to reign in the hearts of men and of nations.

I close with an observation by St. Titus Brandsma,

Among the many questions which I ask myself, none occupies me more than the riddle, that the evolving human being, proud and spirited in his progress, turns away from God in such great number.

It is disconcerting that in our time of such great progress in various areas, we face, like an infectious disease, an insidiously spreading violation and denial of God.

Why is the image of God so obscured that so many are no longer moved by it? Is the failure only on their side? Or is there something asked of us to make it shine brightly again over the world and might we hope that a study of the concept of God will at least alleviate this greatest of all needs?….

Despite the great progress in many areas, the human mind must be terribly dazzled that it no longer has the capacity to see God. This obstruction of vision, however, is not a total blindness. And without ignoring that this defective vision results from an ailing mentality which has clouded the eye, I ask myself if the object to be viewed is placed sufficiently in the light and whether we should not try to illuminate and place it so that even, through this ailing defective vision, it will be seen again?5

I think, that in today’s modern world, the ideas espoused above, still hold true as much as they did back in the day when St. Titus first voiced his concern. Are we the ones called to try to illuminate the Gospel truths so that they will be seen again…at the risk of our freedom…or our very lives?

Footnotes:

1 https://olmlaycarmelites.org/quote/titus-brandsma

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Stein

3 https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-titus-brandsma/

4 Ibid.

5 https://carmelitesph.org/triduum-titus-brandsma-day-2/

It was bound to happen…

What a callous, uncaring society we have become when a healthcare professional, or someone else who might even be a stranger to me, can enter the room where I am expecting to receive healthcare and casually offer me a date with death!

To anyone who has been around the pro-life movement for any length of time, it doesn’t come as any surprise to witness how quickly Canada’s limitations, initially called ‘protections’, on access to Medical-Aid-in-Dying (MAiD), the government’s sanitized legislative euphemism for physician-assisted-suicide, have been set aside.

The widespread normalization of offering death to suffering Canadians who are not necessarily terminally ill, i.e. not facing death in the ‘reasonably foreseeable future,’ has not only become par for the course in the healthcare system, but has escalated in the months since the changes to the eligibility criteria have been widened. And, of course, we’ll face yet another increase in eligibility when the government’s proposed offering of self-appointed appointments with death broaden yet again to include those with mental illness.

Even the mainstream media are highlighting the unprecedented and casual offering of MAiD. to vulnerable patients in the healthcare system. A Canadian Veteran has a Veterans Affairs employee offer a death appointment rather than support and treatment in dealing with recovery from PTSD and traumatic brain injuries sustained during combat deployments as part of his military service.1

Another patient has a hospital ethicist remind him he’s costing the healthcare system more than $1500 a day and offers to help him with an appointment for his death. A woman who had mental health issues and a chronic inability to access psychiatric care, without the knowledge of her family, opted for MAiD to the shock and dismay of the family.2

The statistics are morbidly alarming…indicating that we, as a caring society are far less prepared to invest our limited healthcare dollars in those whose prospects to live a ‘normal’ life – like you and me – are less than stellar. We no longer ‘care’ for the ill, the disabled, the mentally or physically unfit, instead we are ‘johnny on the spot’ with the offer of death by lethal injection for any number of people who have no one handy beside them to encourage them to fight the good fight to the end and opt for life.

The statistics are alarming…and the reasons for choosing to be euthanized equally alarming, as outlined in recent mainstream media reports that have been highlighting the statistics. It’s a change from the usual pro-death chatter usually presented by the mainstream media and seems to indicate a naivete that is astounding. It doesn’t take the brain of a nuclear physicist to recognized that if you open the door slightly, all kinds of insidious thinking, beliefs, and actions, will slither in.

And, that’s what we have here…as with the abortion issue, when we initially legalized immolating our unborn children on the altar of convenience, for some very ‘popular’ social reasons like the ‘health’ of the mother, which eventually became, ‘because I feel like it,’ and, over time, ended up with license to kill our unborn children for whatever reason, whenever, during the entire course of a pregnancy, right down to moments before birth. It’s the same thing now with our assisted suicide legalized protocols. Where we approved killing of innocent citizens, by their medical professional, at their own request, for some specific reasons, we have edged over into killing of patients for convenience and, obviously, as a money-saving tactic to address the strains on the limited resources – financial and personnel – available in the broken healthcare system that has developed over years of mismanagement and unwillingness to look at root causes.3

It sounds pretty barbaric to me…and anything but the ‘gentler, more caring’ society that our young, ‘clone’ of his deceased father (Pierre Elliot Trudeau), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, promised to deliver to Canadians when he was first being popularized by the media, and touted as the modern-day Sir Galahad who would save us from ourselves, and be the answer to the societal ills that plagued us and made Canada such a harsh, uncaring place to live in.  

Andrew Coyne, writing in the Globe and Mail, raised the alarm over the ‘slippery slope’ that has become the norm for the Doctor-assisted-death dealing practice prevalent today in the Canadian healthcare system in articles posted in 2020.4

Earlier, writing in 2016 as the legislation was being introduced and voted on, Coyne opined that,

It is not about easing the pain of dying, but easing the pain of living. It is about helping people to kill themselves who are not in any danger of dying, but find their lives, for a variety of reasons, intolerable.5

Coyne went on to point out, sanely, that we don’t, in other circumstances, accommodate those who express a wish to kill themselves, but rather try to intervene to keep them alive. Now, though, assisted suicide, “…asks us to invert that convention: not merely to allow the suicide to proceed, but to facilitate it, indeed to subsidize it.”6

How caring are we really, as a society, when a recent report on MAiD in Canada indicates that 1 in 5 people opt for assisted death because of loneliness and isolation.7, 8

In an eerily familiar fictional scenario published several years ago, Dr. James Dobson and a co-writer, deal with what has become a page out of our Canadian history for physician-assisted-death as a means of dealing with the ‘deplorables’ or as the books refer to them, ‘debits.’9 The trilogy of books are a chilling view of the future where assisted-death is popularized and normalized in the culture and which could be prophetic considering what’s currently happening in Canada today.

Once there is approval for wholescale elimination of the human population at one end of the spectrum of life, as we’ve had for so long in Canada with abortion, it is just a matter of time before there is approval for wholescale death dealing at the other end. Which now appears to be our present situation in Canada, it seems.

Writing in the National Post’s First Reading column, Tristan Hopper says, of the casual offering of MAiD to Canadians, that barely a week now goes by without some new case emerging of a sick Canadian being offered assisted death in lieu of treatment.10 He adds:

It’s a nightmare scenario that was envisioned by no shortage of ethicists and health figures when assisted death was first written into Canadian law. But with few exceptions, these warnings were ignored by the various court rulings that ultimately forced Canada into adopting the world’s most permissive regime of legal euthanasia.11

He quotes Trish Nichol, whose suicidal, severely mentally ill brother was administered MAiD when he sought treatment for a psychiatric episode, in a Chilliwack, BC hospital, saying her brother was screaming uncontrollably minutes before receiving the lethal injection, while hospital staff assured her that he had been of ‘sound mind’ when he opted for assisted death.12 In her presentation to the Medical Assistance in Dying Committee, she said,

Would you feel safe now, bringing your suicidal loved one to seek medical care for recovery when there are no oversight or stringent safeguards surrounding a procedure that kills people?13

I think we are in store for more harshness than we could ever have imagined, as Canadians, who pride themselves on being the most caring, just society that goes out of its way to look after the orphan, the widow, the marginalized, the diverse, the homeless, etc. I believe we are about to see the proliferation of death by voluntary choice evolve into death by legislated mandate, rather than choice. I don’t think it’s a far stretch to think we could see people routinely, not offered, but designated to be euthanized to save healthcare dollars and services once a certain level of care/need has been assessed and a list of criteria checked off.

And, for the naysayers, remember…it has happened before in other, equally ‘civilized’ jurisdictions that prided themselves in being every bit as ‘caring and gentle’ to their citizenry.

I am frighteningly concerned that Medical Aid in Dying, which is presently touted as both death with dignity and being voluntary, will, as I have said earlier, becoming mandatory, and be imposed, even within the not-too-distant future. Then, we will live through horrors that only those who have lived under the most repressive of political regimes, that violated human rights and loosed death squads on dissenters, have tried to warn us about.

That’s my take on it. Time will be the arbiter of the truth of my belief.

Watch for this, supposedly benign, death-dealing to impact you, or a loved one, soon in a healthcare facility near you.

1,2 https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/another-case-of-a-sick-canadian-offered-death-instead-of-treatment-%e2%80%94-this-time-a-veteran/ar-AA10LtyD?ocid=hplocalnews&li=AAggNb9

3 https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-life-boat-is-full-why-canadas-entire-health-care-system-is-failing

4 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-our-cautious-start-to-assisted-dying-is-now-an-accelerating-drive/

5, 6 https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-assisted-suicide-makes-us-all-complicit-in-anothers-death

7 https://care.org.uk/news/2022/02/loneliness-and-depression-lead-people-to-access-assisted-suicide-warns-expert

8 https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/hundreds-of-sick-canadians-euthanized-over-loneliness/

9 https://endourlifewell.com/?s=Chillingly+Real+

10, 11, 12, 13 https://link.postmedia.com/view/622959daa0000c70b02b3504h4tg3.4fi/b2d841d7

It must have been a spectacular sight…

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/main_image_deep_field_smacs0723-5mb.jpg

The Lord’s fire came down and consumed the holocaust, wood, stones, and dust, and it lapped up the water in the trench. (1 Kgs. 18:39)

Can you just imagine it? It must have been a more spectacular sight than even the legendary Gun Fight at the OK Corral…well, that was only a 30 second shoot-out between three of the Earp Brothers, with back-up from brother Wyatt’s sometime sidekick Doc Holliday, and six notorious members of an outlaw gang loosely known as the Cowboys.

When the puffs of gun smoke cleared, there were three dead Cowboys, three wounded lawmen, two of the Earp brothers, along with Doc Holliday, and Wyatt Earp walking away unscathed. The remaining three of the outlaw Cowboys Gang high-tailed it out of town and lived to tell the tale. The confrontation certainly wasn’t witnessed by all the townspeople of Tombstone, Arizona Territory, sitting in bleacher seats, or standing idly around on the boardwalks waiting to see who in the altercation would best who, since none wanted to risk a taste of lead that would be flying freely. Despite its brevity, the conflagration continues to be touted as the most famous shoot out in the history of the American Old West1…but I digress.

Back to the ‘real’ topic at hand…recounted in 1 Kings 18: 16b-40, where we’re told the story of the standoff between one single, wild haired, aging prophet and the 450 prophets of Baal who enjoyed the favor of King Ahab, along with the 400 prophets of Asherah, who were favored by Queen Jezebel, and dined daily at her table. Men in a priestly garb, kept by Jezebel to promote her own special brand of idolatrous worship.  

The location of this proverbial confrontation was Mount Carmel, a mountain range in northwestern Israel, that was known from ancient times as a ‘high place’ and routinely  recognized as a center of idol worship.2 Identified today at a location near the Israeli port city of Haifa, in the modern-day State of Israel, it is best known as the scene of Elijah’s facing off against the false prophets of Baal, even though he was badly outnumbered with odds of 450 to 1.

Elijah had spent years haranguing and, according to King Ahab, “harassing” him(1 Kg. 18: 16b), and the people of Israel, with his call to abandon the idolatry they were practicing and return to the Living God, the God of Israel, who had set them apart – and given them the land they occupied – to serve Him, and Him alone. So, not only are there 850 pagan prophets present, but the King has called together all the people of Israel to witness this contest between the pagan Baals, and the God of Israel…the traditional God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…to determine a ‘Champion’ from the two opposing spiritual entities.

“How long will you straddle the issue? If the Lord is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him.” 1 Kgs. 18: 21.  

The response of the people gathered is telling…the verse concludes with this, “The people, however, did not answer him.” Hmm…when in doubt, don’t say or do anything to commit yourself…keep your options open.

So, here it is…the full story described in detail in a mere 24 verses of Chapter 18 of 1 Kings. First, Elijah throws down the gauntlet challenging the priests of Baal to call on their gods, while he calls on the God of Israel, and the one who ignites the fire to burn up the sacrificial bull on the altar of stone, is the real, genuine god, the one the people of Israel should serve.

The Baal prophets are up first, and spend most of the day, dancing about, shouting, and cutting themselves until their blood flows, ‘…as is their custom.’ (v.28) All to no avail. Nothing happens, no sound, no answer…the sacrifice languishes on the altar of stone, untouched.

Now, it’s Elijah’s turn…and, you have to give him credit for the dramatic flare in his actions. First, he rebuilds an altar of the Lord with twelve stones, one representing each of the ‘sons of Jacob, to whom the Lord had said, “Your name shall be Israel.”’ (v. 31b) He repairs the destroyed altar of the Lord, digs a trench around it, prepares the sacrificial animal, and lays it upon the wood atop the stone altar. Then, rather oddly, he asks to have it all doused three times in several gallons of water, thoroughly soaking the sacrifice, the wood, and the altar, and filling the trench around it with water.

Now the time of accounting is at hand…before all the people gathered around to witness this, who have been there for much of the day, waiting for something to happen, and witnessing the gyrations, actions, shouts and screams, and self-harm of the 450 prophets of Baal, without any effect.

By now, late in the day, perhaps the audience were lulled into complacency, not expecting much, and maybe even questioning whether Elijah can possibly do much more than the 450 men have already done. After all, they have been shouting most of the day to rouse Baal, and it’s been a rather unspectacular performance. From the high expectation at the beginning of the day, with their senses dulled by the time it came to the hour of the evening sacrifice, those watching might have shown nothing more than a bored silence.

Then it happens…Elijah prays very simply, “Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things by your command. Answer me, Lord!  Answer me, that this people may know that you, Lord, are God and that you have brought them back to their senses.” (v. 36, 37.)

Without further preamble, likely in only a fraction of the 30 second time frame of the famous shoot out, a fireball falls out of the sky totally consuming, not just the holocaust, but it is so hot it annihilates the stones, the dust and licks up the water in the trench. Now that’s power!

Can you just see it? You standing there among those people who had stood around all day waiting for something to happen…and suddenly, from no where, a fireball descends and the holocaust, altar, and everything around it is gone in a flash?

We, too, probably would have, in the next split second, joined them on their faces, declaring, in great terror, with utmost respect and fervency, ‘The Lord is God! The Lord is God!’ Like them, too, no doubt we would have meant it with everything in our being. Having witnessed this, surely nothing could have convinced us that the Lord wasn’t real and alive or that he wasn’t at work in our midst. Surely this would have settled it once and for all… the Lord is God, and He alone should be served and worshiped…through all ages to come.   

Alas, what follows is all too typical. Having seen the Lord do this great and mighty miracle, proving that the Lord is truly God, in short order, those who witnessed this spectacular event once again turn their backs on Him and go back to their false gods and idol worship. Imagine!

Now, to be sure, none of us have probably witnessed the fire falling from heaven as the Israelite’s of Elijah’s day did. Still, only a few days ago, something equally spectacular was revealed to us through the ingenuity and inventive, creative power of the mind of man. Seeing the images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope that show an almost pin prick glimpse of outer space in all its glory and intricate beauty, must surely be a modern-day equivalent of witnessing to the Lord as God, Creator of the universe.

Can anyone really view the images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope3, showing a glimpse of the universe, constellations wheeling beyond our own galaxy, with the sky holding light beams that began billions of years ago, and are just reaching us now4, and believe this complexity of organization, and the delicate dance among these stars and planets that keeps them balanced in a massive holding pattern, all transpired by ‘chance’?

Science would say that, rather than chaos resulting in organization, organization is always tending to disorganization, to breaking down. How, then, can science suggest that the intricacy of the universe, and its operation, came from chaos that organized itself into balance, harmony, and the detailed clockwork timing of movement, whether of the atom or the galaxies of the universe, without positing a ‘designer’? Believing that chaos became organization and that a spark of life also came from nothing, takes more faith than to believe in a Creator God, the Lord, the Intelligent Designer who says He set the stars in place, and called each one by name. (Ps. 147:4)

Scripture also says,

When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and stars, which you have set in place,

what is man that you are mindful of him,

and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet, you have made him a little lower than heavenly beings

and crowned him with glory and honor.  

You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;

you have put all things under his feet…  

Psalm 8: 4-6 (ESV)

So, it’s a question we might once again, today, still ask ourselves. If the Lord truly is God, who made the heavens and earth, and reigns supreme over the entire Universe, why have we turned away to follow the false gods of our day, the ‘prophetic’ voices that entice us to idolatry, and the myriad of voices that declare there is no god, and we are our own gods? Where and how do we come to leave God out of our daily lives and still believe we can attain heaven on our own efforts, or through the false, phony lies that the world tells us, saying the Lord is ‘love’ and a loving god would never consign anyone to loss of heaven or eternal suffering in a place that is devoid of his presence and love?

Maybe, as we ‘witness’ this miraculous glimpse into galaxies and universes beyond our ability to comprehend, it is time to go back and reconsider…that the Lord is God, and we should serve Him…not the machinations of man and his mind positing hypotheses that require greater faith to accept and acknowledge as being true than to trust ourselves to the Living God. (cf. Is. 48: 12-13)

(Composed: July 16, 2022 ~ Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Pray for us5)

1   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral

2   https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Carmel-mountain-ridge-Israel

3   https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

4 https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet

5 https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resource/55429/our-lady-of-mount-carmel

Once more…into the fire…

During the Fifth Week of Lent, all those who follow the Common Lectionary once again found themselves reading in Daniel 3, the recounting of the three Hebrew youths in the fiery furnace…who stand against the dictate of the most powerful political leader in the world at the time, Nebuchadnezzar, and declare they will not bow down to the golden statue he has erected, even on pain of a fiery death in the flames of the furnace.

Trusting in their God to deliver them, if He so chooses, they wind up being tossed, bound, into the blazing hot furnace, only to be seen walking about, in the midst of the flames, apparently unharmed, with a fourth figure that Nebuchadnezzar declares looks like, ‘…a son of God.’ He calls the three out, and though they were clearly seen in the midst of the flames, their clothing is intact and there isn’t a sniff of smoke about them…which causes Nebuchadnezzar to declare, ‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who sent his angel to deliver the servants who trusted in him: they disobeyed the royal command and yielded their bodies rather than serve or worship any god except their own God.’ (Dan. 3:95)

There is another historical account of a saint who went through the fire and survived, one, St. Martin of Tours.1 In the account of the incident, he becomes trapped in a room where his straw mattress, which he cast aside as too comfortable for him to sleep upon, catches fire from a faulty stove beneath the floor of the cell in which he is sleeping. At first, he tries desperately to escape the flames, but the rusted bolt of the door defies his attempts to dislodge it. Finally, he resigns himself to the care of the Lord he serves and lays down amidst the flames.

Recounting the story, in Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey through Lent, writer, Albert Holtz, O.S.B., resorts to describing the end of the incident in the words of St. Martin of Tours biographer, Sulpicius,

At length recovering his habitual conviction that safety lay not in flight but in the Lord, and seizing the shield of faith and prayer, committing himself entirely to the Lord, he lay down in the midst of the flames. Then indeed, the fire having been removed by divine intervention, he continued to pray amid a circle of flames that did him no harm.2

Holtz asserts that St. Martin admitted to taking too long to resort to prayer as his source of safety and saw the incident as an attempt of the devil to snare him. Holtz goes on to suggest that we all know what it is to panic in the midst of an unexpected threat and forget that God is there with us. He says,

In the flames of difficult situations, when everything seems to be coming apart, I take too long to hand things over to the Lord. I, like St. Martin, the great Bishop of Tours, take too long tugging at the bolt and only later remember to stop trying to control things and turn confidently to the power of prayer.3

A survivor of the Nazi death camps, Corrie ten Boom barely missed being sent into the fiery furnaces at Ravensbruck, Germany. Ten Boom was a Dutch, Christian woman, who together with her sister, Betsy, both in their 50’s, and their father, Caspar, were imprisoned for assisting Jews to escape the Nazi persecutions that swept across Holland with the invasion of the German armies. Her father and her sister both died while imprisoned. After 10 months, Ten Boom was released through, she learned later, a clerical error. The week following her release, all the women her age were sent into the crematoriums.

After World War II ended, Ten Boom became an internationally known writer and speaker who recounted her experiences, and spoke of the God who sustained her, and forgiving her captors and tormentors. Her experiences were chronicled in the film, The Hiding Place, filmed by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Worldwide Pictures.4

Having the people she addressed marvel at her deep faith, Ten Boom rebuked them saying it wasn’t her own faith that sustained her, but the person of Jesus, Himself. According to one account written by the last of her traveling companions, Ten Boom discounted the strength of her faith, saying,

‘My faith was so weak, so unstable. It was hard to have faith. When a person is in a safe environment, having faith is easier. But in that camp when I saw my own sister and thousands of others starve to death, where I was surrounded by men and women who had training in cruelty, then I do not think it was my faith that helped me through. No, it was Jesus! He who said, “I am with you until the end of the world.” It was His eternal arms that carried me through. He was my certainty.’5

She added that if it was based on her level of faith, others would think they needed her level of faith to survive the difficulties and suffering of life. She concludes,

‘If I tell you that it was my faith, you might say if you have to go through suffering, “I don’t have Corrie ten Boom’s faith.” But if I tell you it was Jesus, then you can trust that He who helped me through will do the same for you. I have always believed it, but now I know from my own personal experience that His light is stronger than the deepest darkness.’6

Jesus is the One to take us through the flames of adversity…whether in the person of a 4th Man in the furnace, or as the strength and arms to sustain one in imprisonment and inhumane treatment by those ‘…trained in cruelty,’ as Ten Boom recounts.

When we face the fires of adversity, we must already know how to be sustained by the reality of Jesus as our personal Friend and Savior. If we only believe in our heads, and not in our hearts, our trust will falter and fail. Coming into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord is what will stand us in good stead when things become what we have never imagined could happen here among us in North America…Canada, the Western world. But, we cannot suppose that what has been faced by multiple thousands of Christians in other areas of the world, will never happen to us. The current trajectory of our governments and the anti-Christian sentiments becoming the ‘norm’ in our present day society do not bode well for our freedom to practice and believe our Christian faith.

Pray it would not be so, but, just in case, prepare in your heart for the possibility. We cannot continue to be the only location on God’s green earth where we do not experience what Our Lord experienced by being hated by the world and, ultimately, martyred for believing that He is who He says He is, the Anointed One of the Lord, the Only Begotten Son of the Father, Creator of heaven and earth, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. If we believe, we will share in His death, and, then, in His resurrection…Hallelujah!

As the ancient proclamation declares, Christ is Risen. Truly, He is Risen.

Let us Rejoice and live life in and through Him, daily, whatever threatens or befalls us.

1 https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recnum=2098

2 Albert Holtz, O.S.B., Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey Through Lent, Morehouse Publishing, 2006. p. 135

3 Ibid. p.136

4 https://www.christiancinema.com/digital/movie/the-hiding-place

5 Moore, Pam Rosewell, Life Lessons from Corrie ten Boom, Chosen Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 2004. p. 114

6 Ibid.

Never Forgotten…

Even if these forget, I will never forget you… Is. 49:15 (NRSV)  

Was reading recently from a Daily Devotional that features excerpts from the writings of Charles (Chuck) Colson, the highest-level staffer in Pres. Richard Nixon’s White House to be imprisoned for the Watergate scandal.1 Just prior to his imprisonment he became an evangelical Christian and remained faithful to his commitment to Christ for the remainder of his life. While this compilation of his writings was published in 1994, much of his commentary still sounds ominously appropriate and curiously applicable to our current, everyday state of affairs.

Colson referenced Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in a recent reflection. He was the Soviet dissident who was imprisoned in 1945 for writing a letter critical of Stalin. He spent seven years in the infamous Gulags, a system of forced labor camps under the Communist regime. Following his release from the gulags, Solzhenitsyn wrote extensively about his experiences, eventually winning a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.2  

Colson recounts a particular episode in Solzhenitsyn’s life when he came to a place of desperation and despair. So deep was his hopelessness that he resigned himself to death at the hands of the cruel guards who oversaw their work. Colson writes:

Like other prisoners in the Soviet gulag, Alexander Solzhenitsyn worked in the fields, his day a pattern of backbreaking labor and slow starvation. One day the hopelessness became too much to bear. (He) felt no purpose in fighting on; his life would make no ultimate difference. Laying his shovel down, he walked slowly to a crude work-site bench. He knew at any moment a guard would order him to get up and, when he failed to respond, bludgeon him to death with his own shovel. He’d seen it happen many times. 3

Seated there, Colson describes Solzhenitsyn becoming aware of someone beside him. He raises his eyes to find an elderly, wizened man seated with him. Hunching over, holding a stick, the man traces a cross in the sand at Solzhenitsyn’s feet. Solzhenitsyn, who had rejected the Christian faith of his childhood well before his incarceration, staring at the rough outline experienced an ‘aha’ moment. Colson continues,

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the rough outline, his whole perspective shifted. He knew he was one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet in a moment, he also knew that the hope of all mankind was represented in that simple cross – and through its power, anything was possible. Solzhenitsyn slowly got up, picked up his shovel, and went back to work – not knowing that his writings on truth and freedom would one day enflame the whole world.4

Colson concludes, “Such is the power God’s truth affords one man willing to stand against seemingly hopeless odds. Such is the power of the cross.”5

While Solzhenitsyn had been born and baptized into a Christian tradition, he had rejected any association with Christianity and embraced the atheism presented to him through the Marxism taught within his education experience. It was an experience in the prison camp that brought him back to embrace the Christian faith. A poem recorded in his book, The Gulag Archipelago, reflects that faith:

I look back with grateful trembling
At the life I have had to lead.

Neither desire nor reason
Has illumined its twists and turns,
But the glow of a Higher Meaning
Only later to be explained.

And now with the cup returned to me
I scoop up the water of life.
Almighty God! I believe in Thee!
Thou remained when I Thee denied…6

What was true for Solzhenitsyn as he sat on that work-site crude bench, is still true in our present day circumstances. The power of the Cross to change lives, and history, is still equally valid here, now as it was for him in that Soviet gulag some 75 years ago. It is the purpose for which we must stand, even in the face of risks to our personal safety and freedom, just as he did.

There is another reference that I have just read that puts into perspective the meaning of the Cross, which begins with the birth of a Baby, in a stable in Bethlehem, more than 2 millennia ago. Albert Holtz, O.S.B. writing in his Lenten devotional, Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey Through Lent, says this:

It is only in coming as a baby that God can assure the powerless that salvation doesn’t lie in might and mastery. It is only by being born in a stable that God can persuade the poor that salvation doesn’t lie in wealth and economic security. It is only by being born unnoticed in the obscurity of a small town that the King of Kings can convince the unloved that salvation doesn’t lie in fame or popularity. Emmanuel, God-with-us, comes as Mystery to be seen only with the eyes of faith. God comes as a surprise, in a shocking reversal of this world’s wisdom.7

When we understand the mystery of God, the Word made flesh, coming to dwell among us as that Babe in a manger, and the meaning of the cross…the instrument of his horrendous death…and the purpose and meaning of this God-with-us paying the price for our salvation, it is then that we see that each life has purpose and meaning, even if it is not to have international influence and effect as Solzhenitsyn’s life has, or a Fr. Maximilian Kolbe, or a Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Yet, we all have a role to play, a part in the tapestry of history that is being woven as each one of our lives play out. The nameless who have given their lives for freedom are as much heroes as those we are aware of and celebrate.

Our lives are no less meaningful and purposeful when we live for the purposes of God, and stand for Truth and Freedom, as any of the well-known martyrs of the faith.  We will be judged on our faithfulness and obedience. And, St. Mother Teresa, another Nobel Prize winner, says, we must be known, not for our worldly success, but for doing small things with great love.8

The Lord sees us, and knows us, and does not forget His own. If we are His, we need not fear, whether it is the threat of death from the COVID-19 pandemic or a war on our own soil. He continues to be Emmanuel, God-with-us, if we embrace Him in our hearts and trust in His everlasting Love.

1https://www.npr.org/2012/04/21/150918213/chuck-colson-watergate-figure-and-evangelist-dies-at-80

2 https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aleksandr-Solzhenitsyn

3 Charles Colson, with Nancy R. Pearcy, A Dangerous Grace: Daily Readings, Word Publishing, 1994. Pp. 69-70

4 Ibid. p. 70

5 Ibid

6 https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/webfm_send/558

7 Albert Holtz, O.S.B., Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey Through Lent, Morehouse Publishing, 2006. p. 113

8 https://time.com/4478287/mother-teresa-saint-quotes/