ARE CHURCHGOERS HYPOCRITES?

 

Catherine Nicolette

Imagine my surprise when I opened a spiritual magazine recently and found an article questioning whether churchgoers are hypocrites. The query reminded me of many years ago . . .

As a young child and member of a devout church-going family, I was called aside one day by one of my little peers. She explained to me that all churchgoers are hypocrites. By eschewing to attend Mass, she explained, she was not a hypocrite pretending to be holy. As, she explained, I was. Her remedy was for me to leave the church and thus no longer be a cause of dismay to other more enlightened little peers.

I was completely nonplussed, faced with my ardent hypocrisy for attending church. Further, I inwardly shuddered at the thought of telling Sean and Luky Whittle that their little daughter would not toe the line and attend church. That most certainly would not have gone down well. Finally, my heart wept at the thought of not visiting the Blessed Sacrament regularly. What to do?

Then all of a sudden I knew how I felt about this issue. I looked at my little friend, and told her,  "I know I am not perfect." As there was no surprise there, she nodded sagely. I went on,  "That's exactly why I go to church. Because I need help from God. We all need to go. You should go, too."

Having put her hand to the plough, my little peer was not going to give up. She replied, "There is no need for me to go to church. I can stand in a field in nature and worship God quite well." I asked her, "And when last did you worship in a field?" She hesitated, then flushed and turned away. I heard her mutter later, "It's no good arguing with that one. She's got all the answers!"

She got me thinking, however. In later years, I often pondered over her words, especially when, sighing, I realize that I haven't measured up to Christ's expectations of me - yet again. But, you know, I don't lose hope. I just keep on trying. Reality helps to give rational perspective. I realize I can't go it alone. Thus, I go to church, to pray to God to ask for help. Spiritually sick need the Divine Physician for healing - and there is not one of us who does not have a soul hurt or spirit wound needing His care. Basically, churchgoers don't go to church because they are perfect. They go because they are not.

Every time I pass a field, I think of my little friend from long ago. My answer to whether churchgoers are hypocrites is that churchgoers are realists. All have but one life, and each will be called upon to account to Almighty God as to how that life has been spent. Why not both attend church and pray in fields while we still can to help us towards serenity on that day? 

As the sunflower turns towards the sun, let us all turn our faces towards God. . .

With thanks to free clipart library

TRANSITION REGRET

 

Catherine Nicolette

Words of wisdom are that gender reassignment surgery procedures for youth are permanent changes to a very young body. 

When I was a teenager, I found the teen years to be a time of rapid change, confusion and - sometimes - emotional turmoil. Looking back now, I realize that many of the emotional issues were natural effects accompanying teen hormonal changes.

When I talked to my mom at the time about the issues which I felt I faced, she said that the experience was the same for her, her mom and her mom's mom. 

Teenage years - Mom said - are a time when the teenager is "neither fish nor flesh". I was ready to be indignant; what did this idiom mean? What it meant, explained Mom, is that you are no longer a child and not yet a full adult. 

Teenager years are themselves a time of transition, where hormones such as growth hormone, progesterone and oestrogen in a female and testosterone in a male are flooding the system. These cause a child's body to turn into that of an adult.

True, at times a child may need hormone therapy, such as a child who is deficient in growth hormone requires hormonal assistance in order to achieve relevant adult growth and attendant functional fertility. However, this instance is not the norm.

Usually, a teenager needs to have patience: give Mother Nature a chance to complete her work of turning you into a man or a woman.

If an individual is hermaphrodite (has both male and female gender organs), supportive psychology service will assist to determine whether emotional identity is male or female. Gender surgery at a relevant age will be of assistance if chosen after a period of expert medical assessment and assistance.

Emotional gender identity develops in stages. Some may experience distress or unease between their physical identity and their emotional identity. Counselling and psychological support may prove invaluable when a mismatch is experienced between birth gender and emotional gender identity. 

The crux of the matter is that the emotional suffering of those experiencing gender dysphoria is both real and a difficulty for those experiencing the dysphoria.

Yet it must be remembered that not every teenager who experiences confusion or moodiness is experiencing gender dysphoria. Sensible prudence would appear to guide that - except in cases of hermaphroditism and clear gender dysmorphia - give Mother Nature a chance.

A teenager is still undergoing tremendous physical, psychological, neurological and spiritual changes. Neuroscience is giving increasing evidence that brain development has not completed by age 21; according to studies, brain maturation only completes at age 25. [1] 

It would be deeply unfortunate for youth to make life-changing gender reassignment decisions at too early an age, only to regret these decisions later.

Which leads me to my next point. Gender transition regret has become a real issue for many in recent years. It is heartbreaking to hear the emotional pain of those who reassigned gender, only to realize that in fact this is a path they no longer wish to follow. 

Yet those who regret transition struggle with changes to their physiques which in many cases may prove difficult to reverse.

The moral of the story would appear to be: don't swiftly reach for the scalpel or body-altering medication to medicate the teen years. It may prove an experience with deep regret in its wake.

Prayer Chapel for Detransitioners who regret gender transition; Words of Comfort

https://eventslumiere.blogspot.com/2022/06/prayer-chapel-for-detransitioners-who.html

[1] Brain Maturity extends well beyond 21 - the moral implications of placing undue responsibility at too young an age

https://churchinterfaith.blogspot.com/2015/05/brain-maturity-extends-well-beyond-21.html

Gender ideology harms children - American College of Pediatricians

https://churchinterfaith.blogspot.com/2016/04/gender-ideology-harms-children-american.html

HOUSEWIVES MUST PRAY AS WELL AS WORK

 

Luky:

WOULD you describe yourself as a Martha or a Mary type of person?

Years ago I tried to get someone to promise to pray the rosary daily with her family. A friend and I obtained such pledges on behalf of the World Rosary Crusade for Peace. 

When I had used up all the arguments in favor of the rosary I could think of, the person tersely said: "You pray! I work!"

Balance needed

What the Marthas of the world don't always seem to realize, however, is that working and caring for the home are just not enough; you've got to pray a little too.

"You tell me", another housewife said, "Do I drop everything at the busiest time of the day to recite my rosary with the family? What about my cooking, dishes, the children's baths? Which would you like me to skip?"

I was amazed to hear myself answering: "None. You see to everything, but make sure our Lord gets His share too."

Why?

For what purpose are we washing nappies, serving meals, cleaning dishes, pulling out weeds, or playing chauffeur, chef and nanny, if these and our other daily chores are not backed by a meaning? Would you want to continue living if you truly believed that life were one continuous effort, terminating in the grave?

Only prayer and meditation can give meaning to these seemingly meaningless tasks.

Like all other human beings, the housewife has a contemplative side to her nature, although it may seem to sit ill on one wearing an apron, holding a baby and a broom or a duster. It isn't strange, when you think about it, because she has been used as an instrument in the miracle of creation, and that should make anyone thoughtful.

When she hears words like: "My soul is thirsting for the Lord; when shall I see Him face to face?", the housewife may be moved to tears of longing. But then again, if her doctor told her she had a fatal disease, she'd make straight for the church, light a candle and pray for the joy of seeing the Lord face to face to be deferred till her children were off her hands.

I don't meditate

I read with interest the exchange in the letter columns about meditation on the rosary, and have come to the horrible conclusion that I don't meditate properly, either on the mysteries or on the words of the Our Father and the Hail Mary.

I try to, honestly, but I fail time and time again. I've been tempted to leave off reciting the rosary, but can't because of my pledge.

Fortunately God knows I've a lot on my plate, so I continued rounding up the family for the rosary. Maybe one day I'll learn to meditate properly as I pray.

Simply beautiful

And yet I wonder if perfection is what God demands of His children as much as the desire to become perfect. One of my children used to bring me a bedraggled bunch of veld flowers, picked daily on the way from school. The smile on the child's face would be so devastating that I'd arrange the flowers in a good vase, where they would flop gracelessly.

I suppose my rosary, when it reaches Mary's feet, looks as bedraggled as those veld flowers. But I hope and believe that when she in her turn presents my bouquet to Jesus, it will look beautiful.

Catherine Nicolette

Ah, the rosary - what a blessed prayer. If you would like to join the Rosary Crusade for peace, click in the link

https://www.mdrevelation.org/rosary-crusade-for-peace/

If you do not know how to pray the rosary, and would like to do so, click in the following link

https://www.praytherosary.org/how-to-pray

If you wish to join worldwide prayer of the rosary, this is made possible in the following link

https://www.comepraytherosary.org/

With thanks to mdrevelation.org, praytherosary.or and comepraytherosary.org

Clip art with thanks to free clipart-library.com

MOM WENT TO HEAVEN

 

Requiescat in pace

Lucia Antonia Whittle

21 May 1940, Amsterdam

7 December 2021, Kroonstad

Dear Readers,

Our dear Mom went to Heaven on 7th December of last year. Words cannot describe the loss. Mom bequeathed to me her literary writings, and had asked me to ensure that articles, manuscripts and books she left ready, continue to put on the blogs which she treasured so much. This I consider an honour to do.

Please remember Mom in prayer.

Blessings,

Catherine Nicolette

How Coffee Break began

https://lumierecharitycoffeebreak.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-coffee-break-began.html

Marian Praise

http://lumierecharitymarian.blogspot.com/

Quilt of Memories - My Dappled Life

https://quiltofmemories.blogspot.com/

Lumiere Charity English Academy

http://lumierecharity.blogspot.com/

Koinonia Academic Journal

https://koinoniajournal.blogspot.com/

TREES OF FAITH

 

Catherine Nicolette:

And so I have a story to tell. This photo is such an evocative one. Lush greenery of great beauty making a verdant landscape; and I was there at the beginning . . . 

When we moved to the mining town of Welkom in the Free State when I was a very little girl, the landscape was very sandy and we experienced frequent dust-storms. The heat could be oppressive at times, and I remember that one heatwave was so blistering that some of the neighbourhood teenagers fried an egg on the bonnet of their car. A bird dropped dead from a tree in front of me from heatstroke. 

Water resources literally dried up, and we used to line up at the municipality tankers to receive a weekly ration of water. I used to walk to and fro from school, and on the way back it would be so hot that I hung my blazer over my head to prevent sunburn.

The school was beautiful, newly built. Long cloisters hearking back to missionary cloisters kept us cool, while mole-hills dotted the large erf. The Sisters built rockeries from hewn stones, and only bristle-thorned cacti and vygies could grow in the arid heat. The front erf was a sandy desert, and we longed for shade where there was none.

One day, a Sister came to call me to help her. "I think you would be interested, " she told me. We went out to the rockeries, and Sister showed me how to plant twig like branches. "What are we planting, Sister?" I asked. Sister twirled around with her arms in the air. "Look around you," she told me. "See all the trees and greenery!" 

Puzzled, I looked about Sister. There was no greenery to be seen at all. She pealed with laughter at my face. "Yes, many trees and plants are there, but you must see them with the eyes of faith. They are in the future," Sister said. "One day when I'm dead and gone, and no-one will remember me, you will come and see the beautiful trees that we planted today. Then you will remember me and the beauty that we planted. That is faith," she said very seriously as she looked at me, "We plant today that others may reap. We may never sit in the shade of the trees we planted, but many in the future will. God will take these small branches and make them grow. He always blesses our efforts!" 

I looked at the small twigs in that vast expanse of sandy desert. There was not a hope, I thought, that they would ever grow. But I wanted Sister to feel happy, so I merely nodded quietly.

Well, I was at that school until I graduated, and we had arid heat and sand with thin little branches that struggled to grow. After my graduation, I moved on with life. A few years ago, I went with my brother for a walk down memory lane. We went back to my old convent school, and I marvelled as I walked down verdant avenues. I had never thought of that conversation again: I had been too young to realize the depth of the truth that Sister had taught me. Indeed, she had never enjoyed the fruits of our planting. Sand and dust-storms had been her lot. Now the greenery grew lush and cool, and I remembered that I had been part of it all.

Dear reader, it is so true. That wonderful missionary Sister who had come from the wooded glades of her youth to minister in a newly developed mining town heavy with sand had explained a deep truth to me. We sow that others may reap. We plant in faith that others may benefit. And we look to the future to see how God brings forth faith and eternal life from the lessons of faith we pass on to younger generations.

 As I stood quietly under the trees which you had helped me to push into rocky ground, I watched students walk quietly past, cool under the sheltering leaves.

Sister, I salute you.

A fatherly priest who sowed friendship

Luky:

I have sung the praises of the late Father Norbert Jansen many times. Perhaps I loved him so much because he was so like my own dad, even to having the same Christian name. Shortly after I met Fr Jansen my own father died, and perhaps I transferred my affection to the priest.

Not only I but my whole family did. When Father Jansen arrived, which was seldom because he did not believe in favouritism, everybody dropped whatever he or she was doing and sat around him in the sitting room. Even the cat would jump on to his lap.

He'd sit there, beaming benevolently, as though thinking: "What a lovely Catholic family this is", and it would make you determined once again to pull up where you'd been slipping.

Different sorts

My husband and I had two rather different natures. He was reserved, distant and a fiercely private person. I am outgoing, a lover of people. This cost us both a lot of friends.

When we became engaged we found that his old friends couldn't really fancy me and that my friends weren't all that crazy about him. So on the principle "love me, love my dog", both of us turned away from our erstwhile cronies and became a somewhat isolated couple - except for all those children.

But Fr Jansen loved us both. I think he loved everyone. He brought out the best in all of us.

Author, too

We were talking about him one day. I asked my husband what the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are and he couldn't remember them all. I took Fr Jansen's book The Sacramental We and opened it on the very page I sought, though I hadn't looked at the book for years.

We started talking about him again and about the letter he wrote to us when he was very ill and my husband had just had his first heart attack.

"I have asked our Lord to take away your illness, Sean, and let me suffer it on your behalf," he wrote, "because I'm old but you still have so many children to look after."

That was many years ago. His prayer was certainly heard.

Diplomatic

But it is neither his holiness nor his longsuffering we remember when we talk about him. It is his sweetness and humour that we recall, and above all his diplomacy.

A friend of mine was having hassles with her husband, and went to Fr Jansen to complain. After some discussion they arranged that she would keep out of the way one day her husband was sure to be in so that Fr Jansen could call, be terribly surprised to find her out, and (so she assumed) wipe the floor with her husband.

But that's not the way things worked out. "I gave them an hour and a half together", she recalled bitterly. "Then I came home, determined to have things out with my old man in front of Father, once and for all. And what do you think I found?

"There they were sitting, smoking and having a drink together like blood brothers. That was the sum total of Fr Jansen's efforts on my behalf."

That was Father Jansen for you. He united, he did not divide. By taking sides against one marriage partner he would have created a rift. But by loving both he was in fact saying: "I love both of you. Won't you please love each other the way I love each of you?"

I feel that put him in the top of the tree where marriage guidance was concerned.

Catherine Nicolette

When I was a little girl, Dad and Fr Norbert Jansen were my great heroes. So when the two of them encouraged me to consider studying theology and philosophy - which I loved - I was enthusiastic. Dad, who had degrees in philosophy, used to sit me on the high bar stool and teach me from the Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In one of his philosophy lessons, Dad tried to get me to guess how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. I told him none, because angels are great spirits that a. wouldn't fit on a pinhead and b. they aren't stupid. "Besides," I went on, "they are too important to be bothered with pins." 

Dad looked at me quietly. "Why are they important?" he asked. "Well, they're busy keeping the planets going as regular as clockwork, and keeping asteroids from hitting us, and listening to God, and helping us with problems," I firmly replied.  Pins indeed! Dad looked at me quietly. "Well," he said, "I never thought there would be a match for my philosophy professor. But a nine-year-old girl would surely have made him think." I left Dad brooding gloomily over the hours he and his fellow students had wasted on the conundrum. . . 

Shortly thereafter, I agreed when Fr Jansen - supported by Dad - asked me to promise that I would eventually study for Doctorate of Theology. I credit my heroes with planting the seeds of my great love for theophilosophical research.

If you are reading this, I would ask you also to consider studies about the deep things of God [1 Corinthians 2:10]. The Kingdom of God always has need of able theologians ...

SAINT PAUL VI BLESSED THE TOWN OF KROONSTAD

Angel of the Resurrection

Catherine Nicolette

No-one was more thrilled than I was when I heard that Pope Paul VI was to be canonised. Pope Paul was a figure of my childhood for whom I had the greatest respect. During my youth, the second Vatican Council and the sweeping changes it wrought were an everyday phenomenon. I loved reading the Council documents, and there is no doubt they were a significant part of my theological formation.

Also beloved in my youth were the great Bishop Brenninkmeijr of Kroonstad and Sr Bernwarda OP, my charismatic art teacher. One day during art class, Sister told me that the Cathedral of Kroonstad had been graced with new art which would be famous internationally. I listened wide eyed to this new development. 

What I did not know was that Saint Paul VI had personally donated the obelisk with an angel of the resurrection.  Zoltan Borboreki - the esteemed South African artist (1907-1992) - had executed the sculpture, and Bishop Gerard van Velsen OP had dedicated the Cathedral. The then developing mission territory gratefully received all gifts. 

Pope Paul VI was instrumental in assisting far flung corners of the Church, from laying the Regina Mundi foundation stone in Soweto to donating an angel to the Free State. I only wonder how many acts of kindness and evangelization may be attributed to the saint from Concesio.

Saint Paul VI not only brought new life into the Church, but in the miracles attributed to his intercession before God has protected unborn life within the womb. 

It is a glorious day that this Saint who - so many years ago - thoughtfully helped the people of Africa with material and spiritual aid, has at last been recognized as one of the luminaries of heaven.

Luky

Correction, Nicolette.  I am sure I was even more delighted than you were to hear about St Paul VI's canonisation for unlike you, I was an adult member of the Catholic Church  who witnessed his spiritual martyrdom for telling the truth in Humanae Vitae.

I suffered to see the pictures of that saintly man and the  patient humility with which he bore all the denigration. At that time in a column I wrote for the Catholic press, I stated:  "Starting the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII opened the window to let fresh air into the Church, but it was Paul who bore the icy blast that followed."

Whenever I read about Jacinta, the little Fatima visionary, now also a canonised saint, and how she said: "Shame, the poor holy Father," I would see the tormented face of St Paul VI in my mind's eye. Today in heaven and on earth he was gloriously vindicated.  Hurrah.

St Malachy, a twelfth century bishop of Armagh, Ireland, is said to have prophesied a list of 112 papal mottos of which that of St Paul VI was the 108th.  St Malachy called him Flos Florum, Latin for Flower of Flowers.  Apparently this motto may have referred to the fleur-de-lis depicted on the pope's coat of arms. Somehow I always mistakenly thought St Malachy had called him the Angel of Angels - but Flos Florum will do. 

On this wonderful day I recall that I have honoured all the popes who ruled the Church from Pope Pius XII onwards until Pope Francis.  But among them all it has always been  Pope St Paul VI whom I have loved.  I rejoice in his newly declared sainthood.