Monday, April 9, 2018

Morning Glory

Christ is risen from the dead!



Today, the Feast of the Annunciation (moved from March 25 which was Palm Sunday this year), is the day of my total consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  And today, I finished watching the DVD series Divine Mercy in the Second Greatest Story Ever Told, hosted by Father Michael E. Gaitley, reminding myself of what I had read three months ago in the book it was based on.



And now I have made up my mind to continue with this Pair O' Dimes blog after all.  I'm going to be more prudent (I hope) with what I put on it, but I will NOT end it.  I have a lot to say but I want to be concise, so I'll focus on my main point:



When it comes to God, I have been working backwards for almost eight years now.  (I wish I remembered the exact date so I could say exactly when the eighth anniversary will be.)



Let me explain:

In 2010, Mortimer J. Adler's arguments persuaded me that God exists, where I wasn't sure before that.  Later that same year, Peter Kreeft's arguments persuaded me that Jesus of Nazareth not only existed historically, but that He rose from the dead--and therefore that He is the Son of God, making Christianity the one true faith.  Later still, that same year, I used a process of elimination to reject all Christian faiths except for the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.  I had only gotten that far when I returned to regular Mass on the First Sunday of Advent: November 28, 2010.

But for awhile, I didn't know enough about either the Catholic faith or the Eastern Orthodox faith to choose decisively between the two.  In the Spring of 2011 I took Confirmation classes and was confirmed in the Catholic Church on May 10, 2011.  But it was Father Brian Harrison's scrutiny of Eastern Orthodoxy that persuaded me to reject it in favor of Catholicism.  Even at this point, however, though I tried my best not to give in to them, I still had nagging doubts prodding me--specifically with regard to the claims of those who distrust the Second Vatican Council (the most recent one).

At some point (I wish I remembered when, but I think it was early on), I concluded that I could use Father Brian Harrison's arguments against sedevacantism as well.  And as I felt more and more strongly that I understood the Catholic faith, I thought I had reached the Truth more than ever before. But I still wasn't finished.

It wasn't until the last few months when Shane Schaetzel (in late 2017) and Father Michael E. Gaitley (in early 2018) finally persuaded me that even "radical Traditionalism" is false.  To clarify: it's okay to be a Traditionalist Catholic, but it is not okay to have contempt for Vatican II or those who follow the true Vatican II rather than the heretical perversion of it that has been running rampant for so long.

It's taken me almost eight years to learn all this (again, I wish I remembered the exact date when I learned of Mortimer J. Adler's cosmological argument for God's existence, so that I could mark the exact eight-year anniversary).



But I've been working backwards all these years.  I've sort of known that for awhile now (and I have Peter Kreeft to thank for it), but I think I now understand it more fully than ever before.  Jesus said "No one comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6)  In other words, it isn't through the Father that we come to the Son, but the other way around--yet I had come to the conclusion that Jesus is the Son of God only after I had come to the conclusion that God's existence could be known with certainty.  But the arguments regarding Jesus's identity necessarily imply the existence of God on their own--so that the cosmological argument for God's existence isn't needed simply in order to satisfy us that God exists.

In addition, I had heard the phrase "to Jesus through Mary", and especially this year when I've been reading Father Michael E. Gaitley's works about consecration to the Blessed Mother.  Again, it isn't through Jesus that we come to Mary, but the other way around--and yet, again, I had come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church (which venerates Mary) is the true faith only after I had concluded that Jesus her Son is the Son of God.

More to the point, though, is that I had been thinking too much and not experiencing enough.  I had been looking at it from a philosophical perspective, not a personal perspective.  I had been treating God, Jesus, even Mary, as philosophical concepts--the same that I would for fictional characters, even though in my head I knew they were real, and no one could convince me otherwise.  But I hadn't truly been engaging them in my relationship with them--or at least, not as much as I might have.

Part of this may not be my fault, not entirely (I do have Asperger's Syndrome)--and better late than never, but I'm still glad that I've finally come to understand better than ever before.



The way it's supposed to go is this:

We, the Church, united by the Holy Spirit and led by Mary, His Spouse, must lead the world to Jesus Christ, who in turn leads us to the Father.  We do this by receiving merciful love from the Father and the Son through Mary and the Church, and then sharing that merciful love with others.



Here's a summation of what I've taken away from Father Michael E. Gaitley's inspiring wisdom:

God is Love itself--but sin (original and personal) is rooted in a distrust of God.  Because of this, our sin (the original sin of Adam into which we are all conceived, plus our personal sins) distort the image of God that we hold in our hearts.  Rather than see Him as He is, completely trustworthy and completely loving, we see Him as untrustworthy and frightening.  To put it another way, we see not the handsome Prince of Peace, but a scary Beast judging us and inflicting wrath upon us when we displease Him.  (I'm beginning to wonder if this might have something to do with the pre-Christian pagan religions, where the gods were indeed like that.)  That's why we are often scrupulous, or else we despair that we will ever measure up--or we deny that God even exists, just to have some relief.

But because God is Love itself, He has spent all of history since the Fall of Man showing us how He really is, in contrast to the capricious heathen gods.  The culmination of this was the Incarnation and Nativity of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  Jesus Christ has the fullness of human nature, like us in all ways except sin--and this makes it easier for us to trust Him than it was for us to trust God before the Incarnation.  Historically, Jesus of Nazareth was never anyone frightening, treacherous, or judgmental.  On the contrary: He was little and humble, and He reached out to sinners, children, people being ignored by the powers that be--and He subjected Himself to the powers that crucified Him for a traitor.

The point is this: our distorted image of God, caused by sin, does NOT apply to creatures.  If it did, babies wouldn't trust their own parents, and so they couldn't survive--they wouldn't accept their parents' loving help that they need so desperately.  It also makes sense: while all sin necessarily offends God, only some sins (not all) offend any one creature--which is why only God can forgive all sins.  And so, Jesus Christ having the fullness of a created human nature helps us to trust Him better than anyone could have trusted God before He took flesh.  God didn't change, but our relationship to Him did.

But here's the rub: even though this is the case, Jesus Christ is still a Divine Person, not a creature--He has the fullness of Divine nature, and is the eternally begotten Son of God through whom all things were made.  Jesus of Nazareth the historical Man is identical to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity through whom the Father created the entire universe, visible and invisible.  And at His Second Coming, Jesus will be our just Judge, exercising justice to good and evil alike.  Added to this, in order to have the fullness of human nature at all, He needed a human creature as His Mother--and because God loves us (and because love isn't true love if it is coerced), she had to agree to be His Mother, uniting her will to His in that regard.

And that is where Mary comes in.  She is the Immaculate Conception, and so her will is always perfectly united to God's will--therefore our sins upset her as they upset God--BUT, because she is a mere creature, our sins only upset her by proxy, not all do so directly.  Mary cannot forgive us all our sins, and she cannot punish us for our sins--she is not our Judge.  She is a creature, exactly like us except for being Immaculate.

The long and short of it is this: Mary is a creature, and Jesus gives her to us to be our Mother--and sin doesn't distort our image of creatures (and babies and children naturally trust their parents, especially their mothers).  Plus she is not our judge.  This all makes it easier to trust her--easier for us sinners even than it is to trust Jesus Christ Himself, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.  But because Mary is the Immaculate Conception, her will is perfectly united to God's will, and therefore she is completely trustworthy--it isn't only easier to trust her, but she will always be worthy of our trust.

And so the Virgin Mary is God's primary instrument in healing us: she is no more trustworthy than God Himself, but because of our sin (our fault, nothing to do with God whose loving nature is unchanging), we can find it easier to trust her (a creature, and a Mother, who isn't our Judge) than to trust God.  And because she is the Immaculate Conception, she is also no less trustworthy than God Himself.  Mary, of her own free will, leads us to Jesus, who leads us to the Father.

Therefore, we creatures, sinners though we are, should be the same: not only trusting Mary to lead us to Jesus, who leads us to the Father, but uniting with her purpose in leading others in the same direction.  And we do this by accepting love through Mary that comes from Jesus and the Father, and sharing it with others--in effect, by ourselves being trustworthy and loving, and NOT scary, judgmental, and treacherous.  And we must be this way to everyone without exception or condition.



But it took actually doing a 33-day do-it-yourself retreat in preparation for consecration to Mary to make me understand more fully what I was missing.  Towards the end of this retreat, I realized something: Mary wants us to share our innermost life with her.  She wants to participate in our every joy and sorrow, as well as in our every work and prayer--no matter how small.  As long as what we're doing isn't sinful, she wants to be a part of it.  Mary is interested in who we are as people, not just in the biggest sense (our not being in danger of death or mortal sin), but in the smallest sense.  And that's what true love really is.  Not only is Mary like that, but so is Jesus Christ--and so is God our heavenly Father.  And knowing this is making it easier for me to share with Mary--and therefore with Jesus and God the Father--even little details.  I'm not used to it, and so I'm not perfect in it, but I don't have to be: I'll get better with practice and with heavenly aid, and even then I won't be perfect in this life, not until I die to sin completely and go to heaven.

But now that I know this, and know that I am completely consecrated to Mary, I feel more strongly than ever before that God loves me, and I feel more strongly than ever before that I want to return that love and share it with everyone.

Think of it this way: a lot of the time, people begin prayers with "God, I hate to bother you, but...." or "God, I know you're busy, but...."  Unless we are sinning, we NEVER bother the all-good God, and the all-powerful God is NEVER too busy to listen to a heartfelt plea.  God wants us to thank Him for, and share with Him, even the littlest things, because they are never too small for Him to notice or to appreciate.  Only if they are sinful does He not want them--but even there, God knows our weakness. "For a righteous man falls seven times" a day (Proverbs 24:16), and no sin will ever make Him stop loving us.  It's the sin He hates, not us--and He hates it because it's hurting us, because He loves us.



And it's partly because I've been working backwards since the year before I started this blog, that I've decided to revive it--and to dedicate it to the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose image you see to the right.

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But I've also been working backwards with regard to what I am meant to do, as I realize now more fully than ever before.

C. S. Lewis's "trilemma" helped me to conclude that Jesus is the Son of God, but now (through Bruce Charlton and Dr. Michael Ward) I'm coming to conclude that I have more in common with him than I thought.  I already knew that he left the Christian faith and then returned to it as an adult, and his theological writings made an impact on me (as did some of his fiction), but only now do I really feel closer to C. S. Lewis in a way that I haven't felt with any writer since J. M. Barrie, beginning in 2004.

Bruce Charlton's blog pointed out to me that C. S. Lewis's writing style is different from that of J. R. R. Tolkien--and while I share a birthday with Tolkien, I discovered more of myself in the description of C. S. Lewis.

For one thing, C. S. Lewis finds it difficult to make long works cohere into a singular unit--that is, he does better with episodic works than with a single novel-length plot.  I recognize myself in that: indeed, after reading part of Alice's Evidence: A New Look at Autism by Robert B. Waltz, I had a name to put to this common trait in people on the autism spectrum.  It's called "weak central coherence"--a stunted ability to see the forest for the trees, compared with neurotypicals.  I have definitely found it easier to go with a single burst of inspiration, writing shorter pieces (including shorter or episodic fiction), than to write long novels.

For another, C. S. Lewis's inspirations tend to be philosophical ideas or still images.  The same seems to be true for me--and that, combined with what I said above about how I'd been working backwards since 2010, is why I've chosen to keep this blog up, to begin it anew.  This blog, which I began in 2011, has always been a philosophical blog, and I have always had a mathematical-logical-spatial mind.  In addition, I have been drawing since I can remember, and new ideas that aren't philosophical ideas tend to come to me in visual form (that might be why I didn't notice my singing gift until I was 26).

Again, I've been working backwards: since shortly after the turn of the millennium, I concluded that what I wanted to do was to make up stories, irrespective of medium, and so I thought that the job title I wanted for myself was "writer".  Only now am I coming to accept the truth that I understood better before I became an adult.



But in recognizing and accepting this, I've decided to go further than C. S. Lewis did.  That is, if I'm going to "write" anything, I intend to stick with my strengths--so that the closest things to original stories that I might write will (at least in large measure) probably be one or the other (or a combination) of two things: 1) Socratic dialogues after the fashion of Plato (done in dialogue form but essentially philosophy texts); 2) stories told pictorially (in our modern Western culture, we can most often find this in children's picture books and in comic books).

In particular, I want to use these strengths in writing my epic fantasy Young Blood.  And it's here where my connection to C. S. Lewis really feels complete.

I haven't read his book yet, but I've become fascinated by Dr. Michael Ward's claim in Planet Narnia, which sounds outrageous on the surface but which seems to be backed up by solid evidence in C. S. Lewis's works themselves: namely, that what truly unites and makes sense of all seven Narnia books being what they are is actually expression of the qualities associated with the seven non-fixed celestial bodies known to the ancients, as they understood it before the Scientific Revolution: the sun, the moon, and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

In learning what these qualities were and how Lewis utilized them in the Narnia books, I've come to realize that I have (quite unknowingly) done something similar with the overall Young Blood story--but in a different order.  My own order is more comparable to the Ptolemaic model's order of the planets from Earth outward, which seems to me to make more sense than any order (perhaps excepting that associated with the days of the week).

Given this, I now feel more than ever that I'm doing the right thing with my Young Blood story, and I intend to do it as a heptalogy (seven volumes telling one progressive story).  With regard to its roots in Christ and my faith, I intend to take greater inspiration from Lewis's Narnia books--but in terms of its progression and a young protagonist growing up (and the fact that I have it in mind to do seven even before I've finished and published any of them), it will probably more obviously resemble J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books.



But again, I've been working backwards: I've been trying to find a goal first, before deciding on the best way to achieve that goal.  But that way takes longer and takes more effort.  I've come to realize that the more sensible thing to do is actually to start where I am, and then take the next step.  I may have to trust some, and risk going in a zigzag, but as they say, God does more with a mistake than with inaction.  And I've been inactive for far too long.

In other words, as long as where I'm going isn't sinful or dangerous, all I need to do is move away from where I am now.  God will let me know if I'm going the right way or not, as long as I trust Him and ask Him.

And now that I am consecrated to Mary, and recognize that Our Lord and Our Lady are interested in everything that I do or want (that isn't sinful), I think I will find it easier to do that than ever before--and this, combined with my conclusions about philosophy and art, makes me feel that I'm more ready to begin than ever before.  I may be in my mid-30's, but I'm still alive: better late than never.

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In addition, partly thanks to the inspiration of Shane Schaetzel (although he's going about it a different way than I am), I have also done something that, for the last six years, I thought I would never do:

I am once again a registered Democrat.

Sadly, the Democratic Party's platform hasn't become pro-life or pro-marriage as of the Democratic National Convention of 2016 (and it won't change again until 2020), so that's not the reason.



The real reasons are as follows:

1) I kept thinking that, if an election were held in which the Democrat and the Republican held the same pro-life and pro-marriage views and planned to act on them if elected, I would vote for the Democrat--because the Republican would be towing the party line, but the Democrat would be showing courage and integrity by going against the party line to stand up for good, and in my view that really deserves a vote.

2) I had already come to the conclusion that, if the Son of God had become Man today, the people He would most rebuke would be self-proclaimed "conservatives" and "right-wingers": people one might more expect to vote or register Republican than Democratic.  I base this on the example of the Gospels themselves, plus my own experience: for all that the Democratic Party gets fundamental morality wrong, many people vote or register Democratic because of a perceived focus on people, on individuals; and for all that the Republican Party gets fundamental morality right, too many who vote or register Republican dehumanize this morality, which is hypocritical and even worse than outright rejection of it.  The so-called "right" can accuse me of condoning abortion and homosexuality all they want in deciding to register as a Democrat, but it doesn't make it true.

3) Related to the above, the Democratic Party is closer in other ways (notwithstanding abortion and homosexuality) to what I believe as a Catholic Christian.  In particular, while I don't like the idea of big government in principle, the fact of big business and big banking and big money means that big government is kind of necessary.  Without it, big money can hold the government hostage, through a combination of bribery and threatening to cut off funds.  And while I am against illegal immigration on principle (it is illegal, let's not forget), we need to address the reasons why it happens, not just build a wall along the border with Mexico (I especially want to do something for pregnant women, Mexican immigrants, and drug addicts).  As I said even during the 2016 election, I think the Republican Party is being too idealistic and unrealistic on this issue--in particular with regard to President Donald Trump's desire to build a wall--and that it will have economic repercussions if it succeeds.  In this way, I think the Republican Party hasn't changed since it began: it was right to oppose slavery, as it is right to oppose illegal immigration, but it failed to take into account economic practicalities in its idealistic crusade against it.

4) I came to realize that "Democrats for Life of America" still exists, and according to their website, it is pro-life Democrats who have made the difference between the Democratic Party being the majority in Congress, or the minority.  In other words, from the 1970's even to this day, the Democratic Party has needed pro-lifers in order to control Congress!

5) Notwithstanding the party platform, I realized that I didn't have to undergo a "loyalty test" to prove my loyalty to abortion or homosexuality in order to be a registered Democrat--I just had to select that as my party registration, nothing more, and there is nothing innately sinful in doing that.  And this, combined with #4 above, meant that there was nothing innately sinful (nothing innately pro-abortion or pro-homosexuality) about being a Democrat.  Indeed, registering as a Democrat is the only way I can vote in Democratic primaries and so help any pro-life Democrats to be nominated.



So even though the party platform hasn't changed, I am once again a registered Democrat, and I don't feel that I have compromised my Catholic faith in doing so, even as I have not changed my understanding of it.

That said, however, I am against the concept of "party loyalty".  I owe loyalty first to God and Church; after that to my parents and family, and to my country.  But Democrat or Republican (or neither), we are all Americans.



Indeed, that's led me to something else I should mention:

Recently, my friend Eric read me an article (by a Christian) condemning the God's Not Dead movie series.  And I couldn't agree more: with friends like those, who needs enemies?

The Christian author of the article points out that the movies are not about the existence or nature or will of God, so much as they are about a persecution complex on the part of Christians in the West today.  That is, it doesn't suggest that the Christian fight is within, but only without.

But what I really took away from that article is this:

Our modern culture isn't exactly Christian-friendly, and it's no use pretending it is--BUT (and this is crucial) we are NOT being persecuted for our Christian faith.  At worst, Christian bakers and photographers are getting in trouble for not wanting to offer their services to same-sex "weddings"--but that's a FAR cry from being threatened with torture and death unless we renounce Jesus Christ, or unless we do something that He commands us not to do.  We have the first 280 years of Christian history to see what real persecution looks like, and I for one have never experienced any such thing.

Indeed, in my experience, when I say something like "God bless you" to a stranger, the response is usually positive.  I don't usually even hear them saying things like they don't believe in God, or "What's God done for me lately?" or anything like that--never mind attacking me physically because I'm a Christian.  Nor has any such thing happened during Mass in my experience.

And this is a GIFT from God!  The very fact that we don't have a Christian culture anymore is proof positive that this lack of persecution is God's merciful, loving gift to us--NOT coming from man!  And we are being ungrateful to the Lord (and so risking losing what we have, just because we are greedy for more) if we don't appreciate it and thank Him.  As someone said, with gratitude a spoonful is a feast, but without gratitude, a feast is a spoonful.

And so I've come to the conclusion that this is one clear way to be patriotic.  I am grateful that in the United States of America I still have freedom of religion, even though this is not a Catholic monarchy I'm living in but a secular republic.  And so I both can and should exercise that freedom of religion as long as I do have it.



And again, now that I'm consecrated to Mary and better understand what it means to love, I feel more ready to do just that--and that's another reason why I've decided to revive this blog.

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One more thing, as regards vocations.



On February 20, at the beginning of Lent, I woke up that morning feeling what I can only describe as a stronger feeling than ever before in my life that my true vocation is Holy Matrimony: marriage.

After that experience, I thought it over and realized that it made sense, even though I haven't yet met a woman that I want to marry.

One thing that I've come to learn from reading Father Michael E. Gaitley's books is that, as Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe pointed out, what matters most is our will.  If we will what God wills, we will become saints.  Our free will is the only thing that we control: God controls the rest.  We have no control over our outside circumstances, including the exact results of our efforts (and the future in general)--we don't even necessarily have any way of knowing the future with certainty.  Therefore, God cares more about us exercising our wills in union with His, than He does in what results.  He will take care of the results.

That being the case, then, I've come to conclude that a true vocation (which means "calling") is God telling us His will for us--whether we will it or not.  In other words, the truest clue to our vocation is what we feel the most strongly about, what we can't get out of our minds--whether we like this or whether we don't.

And while I've been fearful about it more than anything, the one vocation that I have indeed felt the most strongly toward is marriage, which requires being open to having children--and that requires sexuality, which is something that frightens me.



Until February 20, 2018 my thinking went like this:

I don't want to get married, or even get started on that route, unless that's my true calling.  Certainly I don't want to get married solely in order to have a legitimate excuse to face my fears (or a chaste way of having sex).

But then I remembered The Sound of Music, and how I felt about Maria in the second half, and I realized that I had been acting not entirely dissimilar to her.  I concluded that I had been using the religious life (being a friar) as an excuse to run away from my fears--which isn't what God calls me to do at all.  Whatever my true vocation is, God does NOT call me to give in to my fears and run away, but to face them with His help.

The difference is that she came to this conclusion after meeting the man she ended up marrying.  I haven't even met a woman I'm in love with and want to marry, which makes it more difficult.  But I must remember the lesson that the Reverend Mother told Maria: If I do fall in love with a woman, to the point to where I want to marry her, that doesn't mean that I love God any less.  Matrimony is holy too--indeed, it's a sacrament.

(I'm even coming to reflect on the old joke--even mentioned in the musical Camelot--that a brave man who faces the most powerful monsters and diabolical villains without a second thought is brought to his knees at the thought of facing a woman in a romantic sense.)



Indeed, maybe this is why I wrote Your Health!, to which Young Blood began life as a sequel: to show that this isn't scary at all.

In fact, this relates very much to what I said earlier about what I took from Father Michael E. Gaitley: I have a distorted view of sexuality.  In my mind I know it is holy: it is the complete sharing of bodies, and the only way that children are born.  But it's difficult for that to trickle down into my heart.  Instead of seeing the beautiful princess, I see the ugly frog, and she makes me uncomfortable.

This is why I used terminology from the fairy tale of "Beauty and the Beast" in talking about our distorted image of God--that's my own comparison, not Father Gaitley's, although I'm sure he would agree.

And again, now that I am consecrated to Mary, and understand better that she and God are interested in everything to do with me as an individual, I feel like I might be more ready to discern my vocation than ever--and like I might be better able to trust that I will get an answer and that it will be the correct one, however I might feel about it initially.  Again, better late than never: I'm still relatively young, and I look even younger.



(I still intend to look into the Secular Franciscan Order.  Married people can be Secular Franciscans--indeed, I found out about it through a married couple at my parish.  In addition, I'm coming to recognize that being saintly isn't about how much you do, but about obedience and doing what is right for you, and no less--or more.  It's about the will, not results--we don't "earn" our way into heaven.  So my previous conclusions about the Franciscan Order can still apply even if my vocation is to be a husband and father, rather than a Franciscan friar.)

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In sum, Father Michael E. Gaitley was right: yesterday was the 33rd day, and today I am experiencing my morning glory.



But my story isn't over yet.  I must be faithful to my consecration in preparation for whatever God has in store for the world and for myself as an individual.  I must act on my vocation and on my love of philosophy and art.

But I'm also going to begin another 33-day do-it-yourself retreat in preparation for consecration: to Divine Mercy.  And once again, I'm going to go by a book by Father Michael E. Gaitley: 33 Days to Merciful Love.

Tomorrow (April 10, 2018) will be day one, and my consecration will take place on May 13, 2018: the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima (which, this year, will be Mother's Day, as well as the Sunday before Pentecost, which ends the Easter season).  Pray for me.



Thank you for sharing part of your day with me.

May God show you His divine mercy, through and with and in Mary.  Amen.