#7.5: The Confíteor, and why I love it

Again, I don’t feel like the latin, so google it, but this is the confiteor, said at the Mass.

I confess to almighty God, to the blessed Mary ever virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, to all the Saints, and to you, Father(here the priest is meant), that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.  Therefore I beseech the blessed Mary, ever Virgin, blessed Michael the Archangel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, all the Saints, and you, Father(the priest again), to pray to the Lord our God for me.

The priest then answers

May almighty God be merciful unto you, and forgiving you your sins, bring you to everlasting life.

I think this prayer pretty well sums up the life of every person who goes to Mass.  We are bad people.  We are, as it said in the prayers in the previous post “a sinful nation”.  And yet here we are, trying to give God glory.  I don’t know about you, but when someone, who I know hates me, comes and says good things about them, I usually think they are making some ironic insult, and just get more angry.  Yet God seems to allow us.

I like the inclusion of all the Holy people.  To non-Catholics, it may seem as if we are raising them to the level of God, which we sort of do, but in a different sense.  Those people have called us to conversion and repentance, and truly lived out lives dedicated to Christ(except for Michael, who is an angel, and as such hasn’t “lived out” but rather is still “living out”).  By sinning against God, we have failed to heed their message.  John, who said he would not even be worthy to touch Jesus’ feet.  Mary, Who was with Jesus every step of the way, who said yes to his birth, and at the same time, yes to his death.  She saw her son brutally murdered, and yet was only drawn to more love.  Peter and Paul, founders of the Church.  Michael, who led the faithful angels against those who rebeled, whose very name means “Who is like God?” the battle cry he led with, the answer by the way, is nobody).  The priest is the representative of all the people, whom we have let down over and over again through our sinfulness.  And of course the tons of other saints, whose lives are incredible to read about.

And yet, does such a prayer really change us?  Not really, or else we wouldn’t have to say it every time we went to Mass.  In fact, in an older version of the missal, it was said here at the beginning, and then not half an hour later just before communion, because it was possible that we could have sinned in that time.

So what do we do, how do we change?

Some would say that you should just cut ties with all of those who lead you into bad situations, but I think that approach is rather extreme(at least to do right away).  What I do think is necessary is that you do find good people to associate with.  People who are like John and Mary and Michael.  Perhaps you won’t find the next Joseph of Cupertino(who was known to levitate from time to time), but certainly there are good people all around us.  

Next, I would judge the things that they are doing.  The quickest and easiest test is “would I tell my parents I did this”(not a foolproof method, but it works for a lot of the bigger things).  If not, then perhaps you shouldn’t do them at all.  Is it easy to do? No.  Then again, Peter and Paul continued to preach despite knowing it would bring nothing but their death(eventually, Peter was crucified and Paul beheaded).  Not going to that party Saturday night might at worst draw some laughs.  

Third, be yourself.  We(my self included) are very influenced by who is around us.  Why is it that the guy across the room uttering a profanity means that we must lace our own speech with them?  And yet we all subconsciously make similar adjustments.  

Last, get rid of some of those people who are only invitations to sin.  Like I said, it is rather extreme to do it right away(this would seem to lead to an empty life), but eventually, you will have to recognize that your wants and theirs are not compatible.  To use an example from my life, someone once told me to have guys, who want to become priests, surrounded by beautiful Catholic women(as I am here), is like a guy, who wants to quit smoking, hanging out in a cigar shop.  It just isn’t smart.  If you want to stop doing stuff, don’t hang around with people who are going to do those things.

So there it is, my best advice, which I still must refer to myself, as to how to try to get to a life worthy of God.  Not easy, but then again, Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to be starved to death while at auschwitz so that another man(who was originally chosen) could live.

#7: The Mass, part one

This is part one of a multi part series going through the prayers at the Extraordinary Form Mass, that is according to the missal of 1962.

Life in Ohio

And so my blogs from the great state of Ohio have begun.  Today is more of an update of my life than any real life lesson, those will start again soon.  I arrived in Ohio on Thursdsay, and checked into my room.  My roommate and I got all organized, and by now, it is trashed.  On Monday, there was a Memorial Mass for a student who was killed in a car accident on the way here for her Sophomore Year, not a great way to start, but Fr. Gregory gave a beautiful homily, albeit a really long one.  On a higher note, I did pass a test to fulfill my foreign language requirement.  Tuesday started classes.  My Metaphysics class was so uneventful, I don’t remember anything about it.  However my Foundations of Catholicism is taught by Chris Padgett, a man who is basically a Rockstar to teens.  He goes to Youth Conferences and talks and entertains.  You can actually check out his music on iTunes.  I already had some of his songs on my iPod.  He loaded us up with reading homework, but all in all, it seems like the class will be pretty chill.  Wednesday, I had Political Philosophy, with a professor who seems like he will be great, Philosophy of the Human Person, the professor seems to have lost his mind, and English, in a class of 11 people.

But really, the most important part here is the Catholicity.  Not only does every day for me start out with Morning Prayer at 7:15(and usually daily Mass at 6:30 am), but then a prayer is said before the start of every class.  I had to wait in line to go to Confession!  Students organize their own prayer times, and the abundance of Rosaries, Scapulars, and assorted devotional items is simply astounding.  Top it off with the fact that there are Friars and Nuns walking all over campus, some of them teaching classes(none of mine though  ), as well as taking classes(again, not in any of mine, some of my friends classes have nuns in them though).

For those who didn’t know, I am in the Pre-Theologate program, which is designed to help students feeling a call to the priesthood.  There are 24 guys in the Living Stones, which is freshman and sophomore, and we all live on the same dorm floor.  The guys are great.  We do get into some pretty deep conversations in our spare time though.  The nature of Evil, Latin Mass, Philosophy, If Holy Water can be frozen into Holy Ice(if you know, tell me, we don’t).

I suppose if I had to say anything bad about Ohio, its that yesterday it was 62 and raining, which even for Northerners made it really cold.  Even the food here has maintained a pretty good quality, at least for now.  Also, expect that when I return, I have calfs of steel.  the way the hill the school on works, I literally walk uphill both ways to class and my dorm(imagine a U, with my dorm on one top point, and class on the other), and in the winter, it will be uphill both ways in the snow.  I figure we will all make great old men putting kids in their place “Back in MY day…).

#5 My Last Blog in Florida

So, this time tomorrow I will be somewhere between here and Ohio.  At about 4 PM tomorrow, I will wave goodbye to my house, and not see it again for 4 months.

And it just so happens that I came across a new saying by St. Francis of Assisi today.  ”Let us begin again, for until now we have done nothing.”  There is a lot of meaning in this statement, but I think the thing that makes it most impressive, is that St. Francis uttered this sentence, as he lay blind and in immense pain, shortly before he died.

#4 The Light and Dark

Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness.

God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” Thus evening came, and morning followed–the first day.

-Genesis 1:3-5

Seems pretty basic right, God created a lightness and a darkness.  And just like today, He called them day and night.  Simple?  Not so much.

Then God said: “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years,

and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth.” And so it happened:

God made the two great lights, the greater one to govern the day, and the lesser one to govern the night; and he made the stars.

God set them in the dome of the sky, to shed light upon the earth,

to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. God saw how good it was.

Evening came, and morning followed–the fourth day.

-Genesis 14-19

Now pay close attention.  What just happened?  God just created the Sun, Stars, and Moon.  On day 4.  The Earth lived, separated into times of light and dark for 3 days with no Sun to provide light.  It says that in the beginning it was a “formless wasteland, and darkness covered abyss”.  An awful lot of clues there to point out that there was in fact no light previous to God creating it.  Therefore something had to be light and dark, and it couldn’t have been night and day as we know them.  Because there was no Sun to signal day, no Moon to govern the night.

#3: As We All Head Off

As I spend this last week saying goodbye to my friends, I have done some thinking about the step I am taking.  For 4 months, I won’t see people who I have considered best friends since as far back as 5th and 6th grade.  It is weird to think about.  We may be completely different people in December.  Or we may be the exact same.  But one thing is for sure, it is sad to think about all the people that I am leaving behind.

#2: The Assumption

Ah yes, August 15th.  One of those days that isn’t a Sunday, and yet every good Catholic tries to make it to the nearest church.  One of those Holy Days of Obligation that sneaks up on everyone, even though its the same date every year.

The Assumption, or fully The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is one of the biggest Marian feasts on the liturgical calendar, along with The Immaculate Conception(of Mary not of Jesus).  It is considered to be Mary’s “second birthday”, as it is the start of her Heavenly life.  It is one of the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary.

My First Post

A momentous occasion, no doubt.  And like all important events, it is happening at Midnight.

So I voted today.  Second time ever.  Hopefully it turns out better than last time, when I voted for the man who came in last place.

There were some of the races where I was able to pick a candidate that I thought was qualified to do the job, or at least, more qualified than the other.  Then there were races where I didn’t really know what the position even was, so I pretty much trusted my Dad’s judgement, as we both have small government libertarian leanings.

However, in only one race was I unable to choose a candidate.