When my son was a very little boy, maybe four years old, and he would get a headache, I would have him lie down, and put a cool cloth on his head, and tell him to close his eyes. Then we would play our "river game" to make the headache go away, and he would "think himself well".

I would tell him to take long, slow deep breaths, and let his toes relax, and let his legs relax, and breath in, and breath out, and let his whole body relax… one by one, moving up his body, we'd "tell" all his muscles to relax, and in a minute or so, he'd be as limp as a noodle.

Then, lying there quietly, I would tell him to imagine a cool stream of water, clean, and clear, and sparkling; icy cold, and running over little rocks, and under shady trees – and imagine it flowing though his body – through the center of his forehead, across and through his whole head, and down and out the back of his head – washing his pain away, washing his pain away, washing his pain away. I'd speak softly, gently, slowly…. Sometimes he lay with his head in my lap. Sometimes he'd get sleepy. But in just a minute or two he would always tell me that he felt better, that his head felt "cooler", and many times the pain was gone completely.

This is what psychologists call "visualization" – I just call it using your imagination, creativity, and the gifts God gave you – to help yourself relax and feel better. This was a very simple one – he could imagine the river because we lived near a river, and we'd walked by the river, and thrown stones in the river, and he'd gone fishing in the river, and he knew the river well. The idea of the cold, clear water washing his pain away was simple for him to imagine. And that's the way it works best. Put yourself in a setting you know well, and is comfortable for you, and then imagine yourself feeling better. You are essentially thinking yourself well!

We can use many different simple "visualizations" to help ourselves relax and feel better; here is another one, that author Madeleine L'Engle actually does when she's a bit stressed – but she writes about it so vividly and so beautifully, that I thought I'd share it, as a lovely example of using the the power of your creativity and your imagination to take a five minute "vacation" and mentally take yourself to your own safe, quiet place.

Your "circle of quiet" will probably be very different than Madeleine's, when you try this exercise yourself. With practice you can do this any time, any place, for a brief but relaxing moment all to yourself, but when you first start you may find it helpful to lie down on your bed, slow your breathing, close your eyes, and spend about 5 minutes in your own, special "circle of quiet".

Build it in your imagination, like the author does when she shares her special place with the reader. See the colors, the sky, and the plants. Hear the wind whispering. The birds chirping. Make it as real as you can, all the while breathing deeply and slowly – and soon you will find your whole body feels more relaxed and your mind feels less tense and anxious.

A CIRCLE OF QUIET

Every so often I need OUT; something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody – away from all these people I love most in the world – in order to regain a sense of proportion.

I like hanging out the sheets on lines strung under the apple trees – the birds like it, too. I enjoy going out to the incinerator after dark, and watching all the flames; my bad feeling burn away with the trash. But the house is still visible, and I can hear the sounds from within; often I need to get away completely, if only for a few minutes. My special place is a small brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is no visible sign of human beings. There's a natural stone bridge over the brook, and I sit there, dangling my legs and looking through the foliage at the sky reflected in the water, and things slowly come back into perspective. If the insects are biting me – and they usually are; no place is perfect – I use the pliable branch of a willow tree as a fan. The brook wanders through a tunnel of foliage, and the birds sing more sweetly there than anywhere else; or perhaps it is just that when I am at the brook I have time to be aware of them, and I move slowly into a kind of peace that is marvelous, "annihilating all that's made to a green thought in a green shade." If I sit for a while, then my impatience, crossness, frustration, are indeed annihilated, and my sense of humor returns.

It's a full ten-minute walk to the brook. I cross the lawn and go through the willow tree which splashes its fountain of green down onto the grass so that it's almost impossible to mow around it. If it's raining and I really need the brook badly, I go in my grandfather's old leather hunting coat and a strange yellow knitted hat from Ireland (one of my children, seeing me set off, asked, "Who do you think you are, Mother? Mrs. Whatsit?"); it's amazing what passing the half-century mark does to free one to be eccentric. When my hair gets wet, I look like a drowned ostrich, and I much prefer resembling an amiable, myopic giraffe as I wade through the wet clover of the large pasture….

After the pasture is traversed, I walk through a smaller pasture, which has been let go to seed because of all the rocks, and is now filled with thistles. Then there is a stone wall to be climbed; the only poison ivy around here grows on and by the stones of this wall, and I'm trying to kill it by smothering it with wet Sunday Timeses; my children have made me very aware of the danger of using chemical sprays…. I think the poison ivy is less flourishing than it was; at any rate, The New York Times is not going to unbalance the ecology. I love the ology words; olog: the word about. Eco, man's dwelling place. The word about where man lives.

Once I'm over the stone wall, the terrain changes. I step into a large field full of rocks left over from glacial deposits; there are many ancient apple trees, which, this summer, are laden with fruit. From the stone wall to the brook… takes me across a high ridge where there are large outcroppings of glacial stone, including our special star-watching rock. Then the path becomes full of tussocks and hummocks; blackberry brambles and wild roses. Earlier this summer the laurel burst from the snow into fire, and a few weeks later we found a field of sweet wild strawberries. And then there are the blueberry bushes, not very many, but a few, taller than I am, and to me, infinitely beautiful.

The burning bush; somehow I visualize it as much like one of these blueberry bushes. The bush burned, was alive with flame, and was not consumed. Why? Isn't it because as a bush, it was perfect? It was exactly as a bush is meant to be. A bush certainly doesn't have the opportunity for prideful and selfish choices, for self-destruction, that we human beings do. It is. It is a pure example of ontology. Ontology is one of my favorite words this summer. Ontology: the word about the essence of things, the word about being.

I go to the brook because I get out of being, out of the essential. So, I'm not like the bush, I put all my prickliness, selfishness, inturnedness, onto my is-ness; we all tend to, and when we burn, this part of us is consumed. When I go past the tallest blueberry bush, I think that the part of us that has to be burned away is something like the deadwood on the bush; it has to go, to be burned in the terrible fire of reality, until there is nothing left but our ontological selves; what we are meant to be.

I go to the brook, and my tensions, and frustrations are lost as I spend a happy hour sitting right by the water, and trying to clear it of the clogging debris left by a fallen tree.

From: A Circle of Quiet by Madeleine L'Engle,
Harper and Row Publishers, 1972 pp 4 – 6

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ZENIT, The world seen from Rome
News Agency
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Tulsa Bishop Explains Why He Faces East
Expresses Desire to Recover Authentic Worship

TULSA, Oklahoma, AUG. 19, 2009 (Zenit.org).- The bishop of Tulsa explains his decision to celebrate Mass at the diocesan cathedral "ad orientem" -- facing east -- as an effort to recapture a "more authentic" Catholic worship.

Bishop Edward Slattery affirmed this in an article featured in the September edition of the Eastern Oklahoma Catholic, titled "Ad Orientem: Revival of Ancient Rite Brings Multiple Advantages, Some Misperceptions."

In a discussion about liturgy, the prelate said, it is necessary to grasp this "essential" truth: "At Mass, Christ joins us to himself as he offers himself in sacrifice to the Father for the world's redemption."

He reminded his readers that "all of the faithful offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice as members of Christ's body" through baptism.

The priest has a unique role in this offering, the bishop affirmed, to stand "in the person of Christ, the historic Head of the Mystical Body, so that, at Mass, it is the whole body of Christ -- Head and members together that make the offering."

Bishop Slattery explained that "from ancient times, the position of the priest and the people reflected this understanding of the Mass."

As well, he added, "everyone -- celebrant and congregation -- faced the same direction, since they were united with Christ in offering to the Father Christ's unique, unrepeatable and acceptable sacrifice."

The prelate continued: "When we study the most ancient liturgical practices of the Church, we find that the priest and the people faced in the same direction, usually toward the east, in the expectation that when Christ returns, he will return 'from the east.'

"At Mass, the Church keeps vigil, waiting for that return. This single position is called 'ad orientem,' which simply means 'toward the east.'"

This traditional posture lasted for nearly 18 centuries in the Church, he noted, as something that was handed on from the time of the Apostles.

Journey together

The bishop observed that this single eastward position "reveals the nature of the Mass" as an act of worship shared by the priest and the congregation.

However, he said, this "shared orientation was lost" as the priest and people became accustomed to facing opposite directions.

Bishop Slattery explained, "This innovation was introduced after the Vatican Council, partly to help the people understand the liturgical action of the Mass by allowing them to see what was going on, and partly as an accommodation to contemporary culture where people who exercise authority are expected to face directly the people they serve, like a teacher sitting behind her desk."

Unfortunately, he added, this change had some "unforeseen and largely negative effects."

Not only was it a "serious rupture with the Church's ancient tradition," the prelate asserted, but it also "can give the appearance that the priest and the people were engaged in a conversation about God, rather than the worship of God."

He stated that it also "places an inordinate importance on the personality of the celebrant by placing him on a kind of liturgical stage."

The bishop noted Benedict XVI's appeal to "draw upon the ancient liturgical practice of the Church to recover a more authentic Catholic worship."

He continued, "For that reason, I have restored the venerable 'ad orientem' position when I celebrate Mass at the cathedral."

This gesture, he stated, is not one of rudeness or hostility toward the faithful, nor an attempt to "turn back the clock."

Rather, Bishop Slattery affirmed, it represents the fact that "we journey together to God."

As well, he continued, it is an attempt to respond to the Pope's invitation to "discover what underlies this ancient tradition and made it viable for so many centuries, namely, the Church's understanding that the worship of the Mass is primarily and essentially the worship which Christ offers to his Father."

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On the Net:

Full text: http://dioceseoftulsa.org/eoc/eoc200909.pdf

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ZE09081904
2009-08-19
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This article is from the ZENIT news agency.

"A Victory for Love and Mercy"
Saint of the Day - Blessed Karl Leisner
By: Fr. John Larson, MIC
www.marian.org/divinemercy/story.php?NID=3239

Photo: www.katolsk.no/biografi/kleisner.htm
Karl Leisner, a year before his death in 1945

Fr. John Larson, MIC writes: I enjoy looking into the archives of our Province and digging up gems. There are a number of old reel-to-reel tapes that have sat and collected dust for years, and I've wondered just what is recorded on them? Finally, with the help of my parents, I was able to get an old reel-to-reel tape deck working from the Marians' Chicago house, and I have discovered some lost treasures.

Among them, episodes of a dramatic radio program called "The Hour of St. Francis." Each show is only 15 minutes, so the term "hour" here is used figuratively. One episode was titled, "The Victory of Father Karl," which chronicles the trials of Karl Leisner, who became a priest while interred in Dachau, the Nazi German concentration camp.

At the end of the program, I wondered, "Could this really be true?" A quick check on the Internet found that not only is the story true, but Fr. Karl Leisner was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Germany in 1996. I also found that there is a book called The Victory of Father Karl by Fr. Otto Pies, S.J. It was translated from the German in 1957.

But who is this Fr. Karl, and why is his story so amazing?

Blessed Karl Leisner was born in 1915 in Westphalia, Germany. He grew up in Kleve, and during his school years, he became such a good youth organizer that the high school chaplain suggested he create a youth group, at the age of 12!

The group of boys, called the Saint Werner Group, often went on bicycle trips, which included the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass as the high point of the day. They would play music and pray various prayers, including acts of devotion to Our Lady.

As he grew, he excelled in schoolwork and also had a deep awareness of God. He wrote of needing the love of God and joy in his soul. While he was still in high school, as National Socialism came to power, he would need God to show him the way to love. He discerned a call to the priesthood and applied to the Theological Seminary in Muenster. Because there were many applicants, he was put on a waiting list.

Karl continued to work to lead youth to Christ, but now there was a new youth movement coming: Hitler Youth. The people of Germany didn’t realize it yet, but persecution was on the way. While waiting to attend the seminary, Karl used the time to volunteer in the newly instituted compulsory youth labor service that the Nazis had just formed, essentially to get it over with. He was afraid that if he waited, and was accepted into seminary, they could force him to quit, in order to work in the youth labor service. During that time, Karl was thrilled when he obtained the possibility to attend Holy Mass on occasion.

After this time, he was finally able to enter the seminary. It was now 1934, and the Nazis increasingly attacked Catholic institutions. After the closing of a youth house in Dusseldorf in 1935, Karl wrote, "But we maintain our Christian, courageous calm. Nobody will take away our will to struggle and fight back as long as He is with us. God is the ruler of the fates of men and peoples. This is our victory, which overcomes the world."

He wrote a poem that expressed his feelings at this time:

“Though the road wind through the blackest night,
Victory will be ours in the dawn's crimson light.
We are ready to proclaim, in all lands and climes,
That God is the Lord even of these our times.”

Karl continued to work with youth, and to share the Gospel with them, and the Gestapo noted it. They opened a secret file on his activities in 1936. They watched his movements and read his mail.

His studies continued, and he was ordained subdeacon and then deacon. But in 1939, shortly after he had been ordained deacon, his health quickly deteriorated. He was diagnosed with tuberculosis in both lungs. He went for treatment to a hospital in the Black Forest.

After six months, his health was improving, but one day after hearing about an attempt to assassinate Hitler with a bomb, he remarked that it was a pity that Hitler wasn't there when the attack occurred. This was reported to the authorities, and within hours, Karl was arrested.

He was moved from one prison to another and then sent to Dachau. At this time, Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), ordered all priests to be sent there. There were between 1,500 and 2,000 priests in the camp. Priests from 25 different European countries found themselves in Block Numbers 26 to 30. Karl arrived at Dachau on Dec. 8, 1940 — the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The authorities allowed a chapel to be built in Block 26. There was even a makeshift tabernacle. It was made of wooden boxes and tin cans. Still, it was sufficient to house the King of Kings in this terrible environment in which He and His priests were treated with contempt. Jesus was there. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was allowed once each morning at 5 a.m., just before the dawn roll call.

Although he suffered from depression, Karl kept up the spirits of others. Other prisoners remembered his cheerful disposition, and he would lead songs, just as he did with youth groups. One prisoner said of him, "Karl was always friendly to every fellow prisoner. He talked to everyone and inquired in the greatest detail about the latest bit of news. I never heard him speak an unfriendly or an impolite word; and I never saw him unwilling to do anything." He still longed for the priesthood, but that did not appear to be likely.

In 1941, his condition worsened. The tuberculosis was taking its toll. A blood vessel in his lung broke on March 15, causing blood to come from his mouth. He had a high fever. He was put in the camp hospital, which was as good as a death sentence.

This was a time of great trial for him, and he questioned God's providence at times. He held on to a particular Gospel verse, a favorite in his: "And we have come to know, and have believed, the love that God has in our behalf" (1 Jn 4:16). He did not want to give up his firm belief in love. In all this suffering, he held onto a "faith in love." To others, Karl was a ray of hope. He did not allow them to see his struggles. The possibility of his ordination seemed quite remote at this time.

Then, in September of 1944, there was a bishop among the new prisoners. Bishop Gabriel Picquet, of the diocese of Clermont-Ferraud, in France, was now among the inmates in Block 26. Others told him of Karl and his situation.

The bishop agreed to ordain him, but a letter of authorization was needed from the local bishop. A young novice of the Convent of the Poor Sisters in Freising was the vital link in passing the letters back and forth and for bringing the holy oils and other things needed for an ordination. She would get vegetables and plants that people bought from the camp greenhouse, but this was mainly so that she could pass other things in and out of the camp. (This girl, Sr. Josepha Imma Mack, later had the privilege to attend his beatification in 1996.)

The day was set for the ordination: Dec. 17, 1944. This was Gaudete Sunday — the Third Sunday of Advent. The SS were not aware of the plans, although they suspected something. Still everyone involved considered the risks worth it. He was ordained with all the splendor that could be mustered in the poor circumstances of the prison camp.

Father Karl celebrated his first Mass on Dec. 26 — the feast of St. Stephen the Martyr, but it was the only Mass he would ever celebrate. He was quite weak at this time, and although he survived to the time of the liberation of the camp by the Allies on April 29, 1945, he was then moved to a hospital where he died on Aug. 12.

He kept a diary in the hospital, and his last entry, on July 25, 1945, ended with "Bless my enemies, too, O Lord. 'Lord lay not this sin to their charge.'" The final words were a quote from St. Stephen when he was being stoned.

When Pope John Paul II beatified Fr. Karl Leisner, he held the staff used by the bishop when Bl. Karl was ordained. The beatification occurred at the Olympic Stadium built in 1936 by Adolf Hitler for the Olympic games. The stadium was meant to show the power of the Nazi regime, but the lasting power of God's grace had triumphed in the end.

Pope John Paul II said that day, "Karl Leisner encourages us to remain on the way that is Christ. We must not grow weary, even if sometimes this way seems dark and demands sacrifice. Let us beware of false prophets who want to show us other ways. Christ is the way that leads to life. All other ways are detours or wrong paths."

Blessed Karl Leisner, pray for us!

Labels: catholic, Divine Mercy, love, marian, saint

Living Out Her Spiritual Gifts

Last summer, EWTN talk show host, Rosalind Moss, announced that she is starting a new community of sisters in the Archdiocese of St. Louis with the permission of Archbishop Raymond L. Burke.

For those that aren’t familiar with her, Rosalind Moss was raised as a child as a conservative Jew, before converting to Christianity as an adult. She spent 18 years as an evangelical Protestant before becoming a Catholic in 1995.

She has hosted popular talk shows on the Catholic television network, EWTN, for a number of years – “Household of Faith”, and “Now That We’re Catholic”, and is also a Staff Apologist with Catholic Answers. Rosalind’s new order will be called The Daughter’s of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope. They are currently developing a web site, but it has nothing other than a simple home page and contact information at this time.

Now this is not new news. The web has been buzzing about this since last year. What is new is that I just heard that back in May Rosalind came out this way - to Tyringham, Massachusetts, to become a postulant for a year at the Visitation Monastery.

It’s truly exciting to find out that Sr. Rosalind is taking the next year to develop her vocation with the Salesians up here in Massachusetts with The Sisters Of the Visitation of Tyringham. The sisters at Tyringham are cloistered, contemplative group of religious – and Sr. Rosalind has stated that her new order will have much of this component – but she has also said that her order will also have much of the same charism as that of St. Francis de Sales, St. Jane de Chantal, and St. John Bosco had – to get out there, into the community, where the people are, and minister to them “where they’re at”. One of her other stated goals is to design a “head to toe” habit – she feels that it “preaches and teaches” without saying a word.

If the recent experience of some young Franciscan friars is any lesson, she’s right. And then again, St. Francis de Sales was very fond of the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi, and used many examples of his teachings and sayings in his sermons! I would guess that Sr. Rosalind too has heard St. Francis’ oft quoted saying, “Preach the Gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words!”

Let’s all pray for Sr. Rosalind as she completes her year of postulancy with the Sisters of the Visitation, and pray for her new order, the Daughter’s of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope. If you’re interested, there is an interview with Sr. Rosalind at the St. Louis Catholic site, and Blessed Sacrament, in Greenfield, has posted a great article discussing her conversion story, courtesy of Envoy Magazine.

God bless!

Militia of the Immaculata
MONTHLY PRAYER INTENTIONS 2009

 

Immaculata, please intercede…

 

August:

 

That, looking at St. Maximilian Kolbe's witness,
we may understand that to love

means giving our life without measure.

 

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you, and for all who do not have recourse to you, especially the enemies of the Church and those recommended to you.