Thankful

Give thanks to the LORD, invoke His name; make known among the nations His deeds. Sing to Him, sing His praise, proclaim all His wondrous deeds. Glory in His holy name; rejoice, O hearts that seek the LORD! [1CHRON 16:8-10]

In the day of retribution riches will be useless, but uprightness delivers from death.-Proverbs 11:4

My grandmother had this painting hanging in her kitchen.  She wasn't a religious woman (at least, not until she was diagnosed with advanced stage pancreatic cancer), but she always had this picture up, and I loved it.  An elderly man, all alone (as sadly, many elderly people are these days), eating a simple, humble meal of soup and bread, yet he still stops to give thanks to God.  Thankfulness is on our minds this time of year, but are we truly thankful?  Do we mean it, deep in our hearts?  Or do we think, "I'm thankful for xyz, BUT..." while longing for more than we need?  Of course, the Lord wants us to come to Him with our petitions, but we're also warned against covetousness (something important enough that it covers two of the 10 Commandments).  True thankfulness is perhaps something we find difficult when we are blessed to live in a prosperous and affluent country.  That's seems counter-intuitive, doesn't it?  You would think that more "stuff" you have, the happier you would be.  You would think that the less you want for in your life, the happier you would be.  Yet study after study has shown this is false.  Stuff doesn't make us happy.  Things don't fill the emptiness in our hearts.  Suicide rates skyrocket during the holidays, and why?  Loneliness.  Pain.  Emptiness.  In a country of wealth the likes of which most people on this earth can only dream of, people are filled with hopelessness and despair to the point they see no other avenue than death.  That is heartbreaking.   


How blessed the nation whose God is Yahweh, the people he has chosen as his heritage. -Psalms 33:12

The Holy Father recently visited Africa.  I'm consistently amazed and humbled by the people of Africa.  They have so little.  They know so much pain.  And yet, joy and love absolutely radiates from them.  They love God passionately, and they are earnestly thankful to Him for what they do have.  I'm sure there are many reasons we could find for this, and I don't mean to oversimplify or stereotype, or to discount the very real troubles they face, but the biggest difference I see between the people of the west and the people of Africa is God and family.  God and family don't just come first individually, person to person, but as a whole, as a nation.  Leaders are unafraid to openly praise God and thank God.  God comes first.  Here, even if our families personally put God first, our society sure doesn't.  Or nation sure doesn't.  The majority of our leaders don't, and even if they do, they're often afraid to speak it openly. What hope is there for a nation that has forsaken God?  For the nation and kingdom that will not serve You will perish, and the nations will be utterly destroyed.- Isaiah 60:12


So am I thankful for what God has blessed me with- a lovely home, a beautiful family, a hard-working husband, a comfortable financial situation in comparison to the rest of the world. But most of all I am thankful for the gift of grace He has given me, the blessing that it is to desire Him and love Him.   And I earnestly pray that our people and our nation receive this gift of grace, and once again give glory and praise to our Lord!

Happy Thanksgiving, and many blessings to you all!

For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God.--Ephesians 2:8

She bathed His feet with her tears, then she wiped them with her hair

It was kind of ironic that as I was chastising myself at Mass on Sunday for forgetting my headcovering for the second time in a row, the Gospel reading came from Luke 7, when the sinful woman washes Jesus' feet with her hair.

Now there was a sinful woman in the city

who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee.

Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment,

she stood behind him at his feet weeping

and began to bathe his feet with her tears.

Then she wiped them with her hair,

kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment.

Why did she wash His feet with her hair?  What's the significance?  She could have easily done it with her robe, but she chose to use her hair.  We know from Scripture that a woman's hair is her glory, and for 2000 years Christian women covered their hair, not out of some sense of shame, as modern feminists claim, but as an outward sign of their humility and submission to God.  At the time this woman was washing her Lord's feet, uncovering a Hebrew woman's hair was used as a way to punish and humiliate them.  We know the woman was a sinner; to uncover her hair, in the presence of men, was an acknowledgment of her sins.  To wash Christ's feet with that hair, her crowning glory, acknowledged in a very visceral way that His glory was so much more than hers.

So I think of this story whenever someone asks me why I cover in the presence of our Lord.  Sadly, because it's a practice that's fallen so badly out of practice, many women refrain from covering so as not to draw attention to themselves.  I definitely understand this!  You don't want what's ultimately an act of humility and submission to be viewed as an act of self-righteous piousness.  I don't wear a long, lacy mantillas.  I wear a simple but attractive hair covering, and I've never had any issues, even though I'm usually the only covered woman.  For more information of the history of Catholic veiling, check out Fish Eaters (easily one of the best websites for orthodox Roman Catholicism that I've seen!)

Titus 2

I was studying the book of Titus during prayer the other night, and while I was praying it struck me that I should copy part of Titus 2 onto my dry-erase board in the kitchen, so I can read and reflect on it through out the day. I was hoping it would help me to cultivate those qualities mentioned in the verse!

...and so train the young women to love their husbands

and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind,

and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God

may not be discredited. -Titus 2:4-5




This can be a hard verse for modern women. Submission is a concept much maligned and misunderstood. I think it's often viewed as an admission that the person submitting is inherently worth less than the one being submitted to; that in submitting to her husband a woman must become some type of infantile doormat. In fact, it seems that in Christian Fundamentalist circles, this is often the way it plays out. However, I think this is a very sad and misguided understanding of the biblical concept of wifely submission.

First, we need to also look at Ephesians 5:21-30:

Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives, be subjected to your husbands, as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the Church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
As the Church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her,
that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church,
because we are members of his body.

This bit of Scripture quite clearly dispels the notion that wives are to be doormats or slaves to their husbands. If anything, the duty of the husband is even greater and more difficult- he is to love his wife as Christ loved the Church, and Christ so loved us that he suffered and died for us. That's a lot for an earthly man to live up to!

Ephesians calls for wives to submit to their husbands and for husbands to love and cherish their wives. But I think that this verse can lead to a misunderstanding of the "mutual submission" that Pope John Paul II spoke about in Mulieris dignitatem, a notion that seems to be particularly popular with more liberal Christians. Wifely submission is antiquated and sexist, after all! But husbands are never called to "submit" to their wives. Did Christ submit to us? He loved us, yes. He suffered and died for us, yes. He even washed our feet! But those were all acts of love, not submission. When the apostles were wanting the kingdom on earth, He didn't submit to their will; He gently rebuked them and continued to lead them to what God willed.

So no, I don't believe we're called to "mutual submission," at least, not in the way it's generally understood. We are, however, called into an intimate partnership that's purpose is to give glory to God and to sanctify us here on earth.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on Christian marriage and what submission means!