[Salvation]

July 4, 2008

Between My Bed and the Wall: Saint Paul

But do thou continue in the things that thou hast learned and that have been entrusted to thee, knowing of whom thou hast learned them. For from thy infancy thou hast known the Sacred Writings, which are able to instruct thee unto salvation by the faith which is in Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 3:14-15)

Lectio Divina?

Growing up, my younger brother Danny and I shared the same bedroom without sharing quite the same interests. We had twin beds. Mine was the second one in; between my bed and the outside windowed wall of the room was a narrow space, perhaps twenty inches wide. It became my little hermitage.

How I used to love going to my room when my brother was out. I would close the door and, crouching in that little space between the bed and the wall, I would read Saint Paul from a New Testament belonging to my father. Dad must have given it to me at some point because, when I came across it while packing the other day, I remarked that I had stamped my name inside the front cover when I was probably ten or eleven years old.

How I Met Saint Paul

I'm attached to that particular New Testament. It represents a bond between my father and me. I think Dad bought it during a parish mission. It is the 1941 revision of the Challoner-Rheims version, published by St. Anthony Guild Press in Paterson, New Jersey. There is a prayer to the Holy Spirit on the same page as the Nihil Obstat and the Imprimatur. I'm digressing. My point is that I met Saint Paul at a relatively early age by reading his Epistles in the solitude between my bed and the wall. I remember the sweetness I experienced, and the peace that came from reading the Apostle.

Caves and Deserts

Children need spaces of solitude as much as they need playgrounds and baseball diamonds. Children are capable of silence. Nothing is more intriguing to a small boy than stories of hermits living in caves or braving the desert. Improvised and imaginary hermitages can be places of grace for a child. God has been known to speak between a little boy's bed and the wall.

[Salvation]

Homily of the Day

Homily of the Day

Have You Put Yourself Outside the Circle of Fools and Sinners?

July 4th, 2008 by Monsignor Dennis Clark, Ph.D. ·Print · ShareThis

Amos 8:4-6, 9-12 / Mt 9:9-13

Self-knowledge is a hard-won treasure, and even the best of us are blind to much of what our friends see clearly. Too often we blithely give convoluted explanations of our actions and intentions which convince no one but ourselves. Fictions like “I was just resting my eyes during the third act,” make us feel fine, but fool no one.

The self-deception may reach far deeper. We may well end up like the pharisees in today’s gospel, who clearly thought they were sinless and needful of no forgiveness, and therefore seemed apt critics of Jesus’ decision to consort with sinners. What they said sounds foolish and the height of arrogance, and indeed it was. But we do the same thing whenever we put ourselves outside the circle of the world’s fools and sinners by ridiculing or denouncing them.

If we were forced to depend solely on our lifetime record, unamended and uncleansed by any unearned forgiveness, we would all be doomed — without exception. We are all in trouble if left to our own devices. God gives His forgiveness freely; but there is no earning it. He asks but one thing in return, that we extend forgiveness with equal abandon to one another.

If you want to be forgiven, learn first to forgive.