Daily Prayer for Priests O my Jesus, I beg You on behalf of the whole Church ... give us holy priests. You yourself maintain them in holiness.
O Divine and Great High Priest, may the power of Your mercy accompany them everywhere and protect them from the devil's traps and snares, which are continually being set for the souls of priests.
May the power of Your Mercy, O Lord, shatter and bring to naught all that might tarnish the sanctity of priest, for You can do all things. - St. Faustina (Diary, 1052)
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To Protect Our Children’s Innocence
And to Help Restore Our Own!
It was my privilege today to visit the National Shrine of the Infant of Prague in Prague, Oklahoma. (They pronounce it Prage). This was a very interesting stop because the pastor of the parish is a convert from Episcopalianism. Also, it was intriguing because I have to admit that the devotion to the Infant of Prague is not something which is, errr, shall we say, immediately accessible to the male Evangelical convert to Catholicism.
In the end I bought an image of the Infant of Prague for my little chapel and learned to appreciate this not immediately winsome devotion. I felt happy about this: I like the Infant of Prague now! I guess that means I’m really a Catholic at last…
Here’s how it happened: Catholics should understand that the Infant of Prague is very alien to the typical Bob Jones graduate…The first impression is, “Good heavens! Why is baby Jesus dressed up like that? Is that some kind of fancy Catholic idol or what?” But putting my prejudice on one side and wanting to ‘affirm and not deny’ I learned about the history of the devotion and was given a very nice tour of the shrine including a look at a cupboard full of all the different outfits they had for him. It prompted a question on the drive back, “Can you get Infant of Prague kits? You know, buy the baby in diapers and then you buy the outfits separately? What does baby Jesus wear under the royal robes?”
Seriously, I wanted to try to understand this rather unusual devotion. Then I learned that the Infant of Prague actually started out with Saint Theresa of Avila. She had a devotion to the child Jesus. Bingo! A connection with my favorite Therese of Lisieux who also had a devotion to the child Jesus and spiritual childhood and spiritual innocence. I’m beginning to get it.
So after the tour I thought I’d kneel down and see if I could get hold of this a little bit more. As I’m kneeling I begin to understand the child dressed in royal robes and crown, for the whole image tells us that although he was a child born naked and squawking in a stable he was at the same time the royal prince of the house of David. He was a simple child, yet King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Furthermore, this is my destiny. I cannot enter the kingdom unless I become as a little child, but to enter the kingdom and be a royal adopted prince, a Son of God and a brother of Jesus is my ultimate destiny.
Then as I’m kneeling there I begin to see that this child is also the focus of our prayers for spiritual childhood and innocence for ourselves, but it should also be the one we turn to pleading for protection for our own children and for the innocence which is being lost every day to the corrupt morals of our day. Then thinking about innocence and children, lo and behold, I come home and check my emails only to find this horrible link: specially designed condoms for twelve year olds. Can you imagine? The world rightly bewails pedophilia and the sexualization of children, then turns around and offers pole dancing kits to little girls and condoms called ‘Hotshots’ for seventh graders.
So, may the Infant of Prague deliver us from such evils, protect our children and grant us the gift of spiritual childhood.
Father Dwight Longenecker
God’s Remedy For Natural And
Man-Made Disasters
Pat Robertson hit the headlines after the Haiti earthquake speculating that the disaster was a punishment for Haiti’s voodoo practices. Rationalists were quick to pooh pooh such an idea, and anyone who believes in a merciful God should have trouble with the idea that the Almighty is up there doling out natural disasters to sinners. More questions arise than are answered with such a scenario. If God is punishing sinners, why does he let so many off the hook? If he is interested in visiting disaster on people, why an earthquake or tsunami which must kill an awful lot of innocent people as well as the wicked. No, the simplistic idea of God meting out such arbitrary ‘justice’ doesn’t make sense.
However, what if there were other forces in play which do alter the equation somewhat? We know that sin causes stress. You hurt me. I get angry with you. I feel stressed. You feel stressed. Maybe I hurt you back. Perhaps that starts a spiral of revenge and violence and negativity. So far so bad. We also observe that the negativity spreads to other people. Our hatred and violence and revenge and rage touches other people too. I talk to my friends and they take my side. You talk to your friends. They all get caught up in our spiral of rage. Before long we have a war going on. The same spiral of ugliness and sin and suffering applies to any kind of sin. Lust breeds lust. Rage breeds rage. Killing breeds killing. So it goes on.
It goes further: what if all this ugliness actually spirals out of control in a society? So we see that lust or rage or violence or revenge sometimes erupts in mass murder, genocide, massacres, rape and abuse. Sometimes a whole nation can be overtaken by sin. It’s like the whole tribe or the whole nation is infected with a terrible virus of evil or infested with an evil spirit. A mood takes over. A dark Lord reigns. The light goes out and inexplicably a whole nation drifts into the dark side.
Here’s the jump: what if these negativities and this darkness actually move across into the rest of the created order? Can the whole earth somehow pick up that virus of evil and take on the darkness and turmoil the way a whole society can? What if the natural order picks up the negativities and starts to boil over itself as if it is sharing society’s sickness? There seem to be hints in Christian theology that this is exactly what happens. The doctrine of original sin includes the idea that the whole natural order has also fallen into a broken condition and St Paul speaks of the whole of creation “groaning for redemption as a woman giving birth” (Rom.8:22) What if this interaction and identification of the whole created order with human choices is a constantly dynamic relationship and not just a once and done event?
So, while God isn’t up there throwing a dice to decide which wicked people get an earthquake today, it could be that there are mysterious links between human behavior and the behavior of the created order. Too much greed and rage and lust and violence might just boil over and manifest in natural disasters–as if the created order is reflecting our own corporate disharmony, violence and broken-ness, and this stress and corporate negativity erupts at the weak points–tectonic plates, dormant volcanoes or volatile weather cycles.
If this is so, then the opposite must also be true. A cycle begins with every act of sacrifice we make. A wheel turns with every prayer, every action of love and forgiveness and every little kindness matters. Everything in God’s good world is connected, and the good I do has eternal consequences. A science teacher once told me that every beam of light goes out into the dark universe and continues to travel forever. It’s the same with every action of love and goodness.
If this is so, then holiness doesn’t simply transform me. It transforms the world.
Father Dwight Longenecker
It Is Not A Set Of
Meaningless Rituals and Fellowship!
One of the most disturbing things about the modern age is the fact that for many Christians religion has ceased to be religion. That is to say, it has ceased to be about a transaction between this world and the next and has denied the next world altogether.
Religion, if it is religion at all, is surely about man’s commerce with the supernatural realm. In this sense Paganism is a real religion. A priest sacrificing chickens or virgins to a monstrous deity in hope of supernatural protection and power is what I call religion. An animist, high on the fermented juice of the tropical tree, dancing around the campfire and cutting himself to satisfy the spirit of the river is a real religion. So is a Buddhist monk sitting in a snowdrift in his underpants humming his mantra and transcending the cold. For that matter, even the Mormon baptizing someone for the dead or a televangelist praying down the Holy Spirit fire to heal, mightily heal is practicing real religion. It may be a false or misguided religion, but at least it is religion.
All of this is in contrast to the milk and water that much of mainstream modern Christianity has become in most Western cultures. There is no religion there because the modernists no longer believe in the supernatural. Their religion is not a transaction with the other world for they do not believe any world but this one really exists, or if they do believe in the other world, they do not believe that is is possible to interact with it. Instead what was religion has been reduced to three things:
1. a meaningless ceremony; 2. a set of mild moral principles; and 3. an inclination to make the world a better place. While these things may be laudable in their way, they are not essentially religious. They are the bland leftovers from what once was religion.
The ceremonies they practice are meaningless because they have denied their meaning.  The modernist goes through all the ritual. He uses all the words, but he doesn’t believe the ritual matters, nor does he believe the meaning that the words carry for he has learned to ‘de-mytholigize’ and ‘re-interpret’ for a modern age. Subsequently the miracles of the gospel are explained away, the gospel of grace is turned into a gospel of good ideas and the sacrifice of the Mass is turned into the ‘fellowship meal of the people of God.’
The second part of this religion that is not a religion is the replacement of clear moral teaching with mild mannered morals. There is no longer a congruent and consistent set of beliefs which are divinely inspired, but there is one over-riding moral principle: “We must all be nice to one another.” There is not reason why this should be so, but we insist that it is so because without it we would have no religion at all. What they have done is replace religion with a set of table manners.
Finally, this religion which is no religion has eliminated dogma. That is to say, it has eliminated all but one dogma and that is, ”We can make a difference. Yes we can!” The followers of this false religion, having thrown out any idea of a transaction with the supernatural have replaced the idea of getting ready for the next world with the concept of making this world a happier place. This is simply the religion of good works.
What is paradoxical is that this ‘religion’ of meaningless ceremony, social courtesy and good works is practiced by the descendents of the Protestant reformers who inveighed against a religion that was no more than empty ceremonial, social standing and good works. They who were so opposed to a religion of works have turned their religion into nothing but good works. The only difference is, they don’t believe their good works will get them into heaven because they don’t believe there is such a place as heaven.
Unfortunately, this religion which is no religion, has influenced, invaded and infected much of modern Catholicism as well. Too many Catholics have also swallowed the idea that religion is essentially about being nice to one another and helping others. While this is certainly the fruit of true religion, it should not be confused with real religion itself.
Instead, full blooded Catholic religion engages in an interaction with the other world. Through the celebration of Word and Sacrament we believe that the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the cross is brought into the present moment and applied to the needs of human souls for their eternal salvation. This essentially religious act is the ladder between earth and sky. It is the linkage point between heaven and earth. God comes down as he always does, and transforms the human soul. Through this miracle in the heart of ordinary life the soul is opened to something called ‘grace’ which is God’s own power poured forth. This action of faith and love defeats the powers of darkness, brings Christ’s forgiveness and healing into the here and now and plants the seeds of hope that will transform the soul, transform the family, transform the church and transform and redeem the world.
This is real religion. Everything else that is great and good springs from this, and nothing–not even that which is great and good can ever replace it.
Father Dwight Longenecker
Who Decides
Who Burdens Society?
The report from the Daily Telegraph tells us that three out of four British people don’t think you should be prosecuted for killing your loved ones. The euphemism they use is ‘Assisted Suicide”…and they make fun of Americans for calling “the toilet” the ‘bathroom’???
Anyhow, why should we be surprised that secularists, either in Britain or the USA, (for we have proponents of euthanasia here too) should be in favor of mercy killing? It’s not too difficult to figure out: if you don’t believe in God or life after death; if you believe that when you die there is nothing at all, no heaven, no hell, just zilch, nada, zip, then mercy killing makes perfect sense. Put the sick person out of their misery. Oh, and by the way, you’ll save a pile of dough too because it’s expensive to treat all those sick people.
For that matter, if you don’t believe in God, heaven, hell and all that stuff, and mercy killing is okay, then what’s wrong with screening fetuses in order to abort the unfit? (whoops, I forgot we already do that) If there is only the zero after death, then why not eliminate the mentally unfit, the disabled and the elderly?
While we’re at it, isn’t our society loaded with other people who are also a terrible burden? They may not be physically disabled or mentally ill, but what about all the underclass who refuse to get a job, soak up welfare payments which they spend on booze and ciggies and drugs. They do nothing but breed more dimwit freeloaders. The eugenicists and social engineers would herd them off to a nice quiet place in the country and put them to sleep too.
Let’s not forget all those people who are deviant in their thoughts. What about those who engage in hate crimes and thought crimes? Aren’t they even more dangerous than the indigent and mentally unfit? They are a kind of terrorist. Shouldn’t they be eliminated too for the health and safety of us all?
Start with mercy killing and you’ll end with Auschwitz.
Father Dwight Longenecker
The way of Life and the Way of Death
Therefore, Choose Life.
 The Benedictine makes a vow to conversion of life. Conversion means ’transformation’, so this is not just what we think of as a once and done conversion experience. Instead, conversion of Life means conversion of one’s whole life. That means not one whiff of sulfur, not one sordid thought, not one mean action or sweet private lust will be allowed to remain. All of it must be purged. All the wood, hay and stubble will be burnt away. And, if it is my whole life which must be converted, then I also long and pray for the whole of LIFE to be converted–in other words not just my world, but the whole world. St Paul says the whole world groans for redemption as a woman in childbirth.
What we fail to realize is that the conversion of the whole of LIFE depends on the conversion of my life. A saint participates not only in their own salvation, but the salvation of the whole world. If we could only have eyes to see the eternal effects of that one action of self sacrifice, that one decision to obey, that one gracious act in the lives of others. If we could only see the final outcome we would be astounded at how the conversion of our one solitary life reverberates down the ages and for all time.
 If we are pursuing true conversion of life we are entering an eternally upward spiral in which we participate in a life that is greater and more graced and abundant than we could ever imagine. If we do not seek constant and complete conversion then we are on a downward spiral into the dark nothingness and the eternal sorrow of our solitary selves. We must be on one path or the other. Although our lives often seem gray and ambiguous we must decide today at this very moment which path we will follow. If it is for life and for the conversion of life, then let us run on the path, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.
Father Dwight Longenecker
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