I confess... I miss anxiety

It’s just one word. 

But I still notice it, almost every time. 

I miss “anxiety.”

It's been eight years now since the new English translation of the Roman Missal was implemented in Catholic parishes across the country on the first Sunday of Advent--back in 2011.

At our own parish, we were well prepared for the changes by our pastor, who arranged very helpful homilies, over several weeks, and even started using the new language two months early! It was his way of helping us to focus on Advent-- and not on whether we were getting the words “right.”

At the time, as we worked on the transition as a community, I found it very helpful to keep in mind the responses we say at Mass in Spanish.  The 2011 English translation parallels those Spanish responses much better than the previous one ever did.

Yet there is one point at Mass that still stalls me.

Right after we say the Our Father, the celebrant’s prayer that leads to the Sign of Peace, currently says:

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

But prior to Advent 2011, the prayer was:

Deliver us, Lord, from every evil,
and grant us peace in our day.
In your mercy keep us free from sin
and protect us from all anxiety
as we wait in joyful hope
for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Protect us from ALL ANXIETY.

There is nothing wrong with distress. But I genuinely miss begging God, as a community, to protect us from anxiety, all anxiety.

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NOTE:

I have two free Advent Apps from MAGNIFICAT to give away!! 

Please leave a blog message or private message me if you’d like one!! 

First come first serve.

Happy first day of Advent! 

who wants a FREE Magnificat Lenten app?

I have been a fan of Magnificat, the monthly pocket-size prayer companion, for years. Not only is it part of my daily prayer, but our family has also used it for Evening Prayer together. When our kids went off to college years ago, I even offered each of them a subscription to it--and three out of the four took me up on it.

When college age teenagers say yes, that should tell you something!

I love the editorials and the art commentaries. But it's the daily reflections that constantly surprise me, challenging me to go deeper in my prayer life and to connect the dots between the daily Scripture passages and my daily life.

This year I'm also using the Magnificat Year of Mercy companion -- check out a digital version here.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Click here to view a sample issue or to request a sample copy.

Magnificat is also available as an app--a feature that comes free with subscription to the print version, and makes it easy to use in any setting.

No, I don't get a commission for spreading my enthusiasm about Magnificat with you... I promise.

NOTE THIS:  I have TWO codes to give away to TWO lucky people for the Magnificat Lenten companion!  If you want to enter to win a FREE Magnificat Lenten app, all you have to do is leave me a message here on the blog or on my Facebook page.

But hurry -- do it between now and Sunday!

I will pick TWO random names and tell you who won on Sunday night.

open up within me the gate to awareness of you

O name of Jesus,

key to all gifts,

open up for me the great door to your treasurehouse

so that I may enter and praise you

with the praise that comes the heart

in return for your mercies

which I have experienced in latter days;

for you came and renewed me

with an awareness of the New World…

Gather my mind into the silence of prayer,

so that all my wandering thoughts

may be silenced within me

during that luminous converse

of supplication and mystery-filled wonder.

O Sun of righteousness

by which the righteous beheld their own selves

and became a mirror for their generations,

open up within me 

the gate to awareness of you.

~Isaac of Nineveh, †late 7^th century

as published in Magnificat magazine,

May 2015

Vol. 17, No. 3, pp262-3

[Photos: top, Mont-Sainte Michel, France;

bottom, Mission La Purísima Concepción, California

all photos © Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda]

confession... it's still all about me

“The first goal of spiritual combat, that toward which our efforts must above all else be directed, is not to always obtain a victory (over our temptations, our weaknesses, etc.), rather it is to learn to maintain peace of heart under all circumstances, even in the case of defeat. It is only in this way that we can pursue the other goal, which is the elimination of our failures, our faults, our imperfections and sins. This is ultimately the victory that we must want and desire, knowing, however, that it is not by our own strength that we will obtain it immediately. It is uniquely the grace of God that will obtain the victory for us, whose grace will be the more efficacious and rapid, the more we place maintaining our interior peace and sense of confident abandonment in the hands of our Father in heaven.”

~Father Jacques Philippe,

Community of the Beatitudes

as quoted in Magnificat Magazine

A funny thing happened to me on my way to Holy Week. 

I blame my good friend Susan Stabile, the prolific writer over at Creo en Dios. At the beginning of Lent, Susan wrote about an idea suggested to her by a friend -- where you take a calendar of the 40 days of Lent, and you mark each day the name of a particular someone you will pray for… with the caveat being it’d be someone who irritates you or drives you nuts or just rubs on you.

Here’s what Susan said:

In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, chiding us that loving and caring for those who we love or are good to us is not enough.

Whether it is someone who has hurt you, someone who has done something to irritate you, someone who rubs you the wrong way, someone you are just “not too fond of”, why not find some time to pray for their wellbeing during this Lent. 

You can read the rest of her blog here.

The first thing I noticed once I decided to take up Susan’s challenge is that I needed more than 40 days!

Yes, it is true. I came up with more than 40 people whom I needed to pray for just because they “rubbed me the wrong way.” It was a humbling realization.

But what unfolded as I journeyed deeper into Lent also perplexed me. The further I moved into the season with this practice, the harder it became.

Before I knew it, the people rubbing me the wrong way were not merely names of people from my past or people in distant circles of my life—but rather pretty much everyone I am most intimate with!

When I took that revelation to confession last week, the priest seemed to get a real kick out of my admission of guilt.  With a smile on his face he simply said,

“It sounds like the Holy Spirit is reminding you that you must be willing, 

but ultimately, even this good act--it is not something you can do by yourself!”

How did I manage to turn even my Lenten prayer practice into an achievement contest?

In case you were wondering, the penance I received from my wise confessor was to pray with Psalm 51:

A clean heart create for me, God;

renew within me a steadfast spirit.

Do not drive me from before your face,

nor take from me your holy spirit.

Restore to me the gladness of your salvation;

uphold me with a willing spirit.

martyrs: their blood confesses Christ

winter light in my back yard

I have spent much of the last few weeks editing my latest book, the biography of Father Stanley Rother, the courageous Oklahoma priest who was martyred in Guatemala in 1981 while ministering the Tz'utujil indigenous community of Santiago Atitlán.

I've written several blogs about Father Stanley before -- read more here and also here. Or check out the article I wrote for Our Sunday Visitor newspaper, here.

The good news is that the manuscript has a publisher--and I am thrilled that it's found such a good home for publication! I'll announce more details on that soon.

Yet as I continue to work on the manuscript edits, I am deeply moved by the powerful and striking reality of martyrdom, dying for one's faith--especially in light of Christians being persecuted and killed for their faith today, like the 21 Coptic Christians murdered by ISIS in Libya this weekend.

"Their blood confesses Christ" -- and challenges me to take the name Christian seriously. Their story, like the story of Father Stanley Rother, becomes a witness and a call to action.

A Vatican commission recently declared that Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador was killed in odium fidei, Latin for "in hatred of the faith."

We wait for a similar official announcement regarding the martyrdom of Oklahoma's Father Stanley Rother, who died a year after Archbishop Romero.

As Pope Francis said in relation to Romero's announcement, "What I would like is a clarification about martyrdom in odium fidei, whether it can occur either for having confessed the Creed or for having done the works which Jesus commands with regard to one's neighbor... And this is a task for the theologians."

May it be so -- and may it be soon!

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NOTE: It seems impossible that Lent is two days away. Am I the only one not ready?

Here's something to help you... message me on FB, Twitter, or here on my blog, for a chance to win one of two of Magnificat Magazine's Lenten companion app!

I desire to desire... my Thanksgiving prayer

Charleston, NC

Every single day we lose two minutes of sunlight. That’s a fact. And I have to confess that the combination of less light and my melancholic spirit is truly messing with me.

I also think that the dramatic shift from Spring time weather and sunlight in Santiago de Chile one day—to brutal winter temps and our first real snow of the season the next day, has truly exacerbated my already fragile and volatile emotions.

my backyard, November 2014

I want to rejoice and be grateful and enjoy life and even embrace its many changes as everything keeps shifting around me, especially this week as our family gathers around the table and each other. But in all honesty, I’m struggling. And I’m failing.   

Perhaps it’s time I give myself a break and simply embrace the swing in my prayer from “Lord, I desire to surrender all… embrace all” to the more ornery but realistic, “Lord, I desire to desire (or even desire to desire to desire) to surrender all… embrace all.”  Or not.

Truth be told, that’s the first thing I’m grateful for, the fact that God takes me as I am, where I am, every time.  And for now, that is enough of a prayer, no?

Two more things. 

First, a question. Are you interested in receiving a FREE digital version of Magnificat Magazine’s Advent Companion? If so, just drop me an email or leave a message here or on Facebook. I have a hand full of codes to give away, and you could be the one to get one!! 

Finally, my wish and prayer for each of you as we bring another liturgical year to a close is that you may be blown away this week by the awareness of God’s presence in your life! Keep an eye out for Him. He’s dying to be seen.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving and weekend my friends!

TE DEUM

Not because of victories

I sing,

having none,

but for the common sunshine,

the breeze,

the largess of the spring.

Not for victory

but for the day’s work done

as well as I was able;

not for a seat upon the dais

but at the common table.

~Charles Reznikoff in “The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food & Drink”