Great Expectations

I’ll Be Speaking in Ontario, California, Next Weekend (Nov. 21 & 22)

I'll Be Speaking in Ontario, California, Next Weekend (Nov. 21 & 22)

Cardinal Francis Arinze Splains Why “Liturgical Dance” Should be Rejected

Radio Days

Time has flown by since I started hosting the Thursday edition of EWTN Radio’s “Open Line” broadcast (every Thursday at 3:00 p.m. Eastern). My three-year anniversary is next month, which means 150+ shows have come and gone. Whew!

In the Company of Women, Lots of Women

Last night at a banquet and today at their conference, Nancy and I are privileged to be participating as speakers for the 63rd annual convention of the Columbus Diocesan Council of Catholic Women. Their theme this year is “Welcome Back, Catholics,” dedicated to learning how to reach out compassionately and with solid Catholic teaching to help bring home to the Church those who have wandered away. A couple of hundred women will be there. 

If Father Z Says It's “Stunning,” You Know It's Got to Be Good

He says:

REVIEW: The TLM instructional DVD by the FSSP. Stunning! 

Get excited. . . .

Fr. Nolan sent me an advance copy of their long-awaited instructional DVD for priests who desire to learn the older form of Mass.

The fuller title is The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, an Instructional Video for Priests and Seminarians.

This DVD is stunning in its production values and its detail.  It is easy to follow, well explained, beautifully recorded.   This is a must obtain for priests, must give to seminarians, must be used by them set of disks.

On Reaching a Comfortable Cruising Altittude

A few days ago, I travelled to Phoenix for some important Envoy Institute meetings. The morning of my departure, the sky over Columbus was typical for early November: gray, overcast, dreary.

I was looking forward to the sunny blue skies of Arizona and, thankfully, when I got there I wasn’t disappointed. But this little reflection is not about the sunny skies that awaited me. Rather, it’s about something I learned on the way there.

This life, filled as it is with so many mundane things like catching a flight from point A to point B, can yield up intuitions and insights about the spiritual life that suddenly float unexpectedly into view. I love how the Lord teaches me through the routine and seemingly insignificant things in my day-to-day life.

So, I’m seated on the plane, getting ready to take off. I prefer an aisle seat, but this morning I find myself seated next to the window, where I have a nice view of the dismal sky. We take off, and the plane quickly climbs through the clouds toward what I hope will be “a comfortable cruising altitude,” where my mind will be free to move about the universe.

Gazing absentmindedly out my window, I watch the clouds fall away beneath me as we ascend to our appointed height. But just as the plane passes through the lowest cloud layer, we enter a clear gap between cloud decks that’s fairly bright, enough for me to see a fair distance away, although there’s nothing to see except more clouds. I enjoy this view for a few moments and then the sky begins to darken and becomes obscured once more, as the plane rises through another looming mass of dark mist.

Nothing but gray for the next few minutes, and bumpy, since passing through clouds usually causes turbulence. Nothing unusual there. We’re rising higher, but still, all I can see is a wall of gray, formless clouds.

Suddenly, we break back into another clear zone between the clouds. This time, I can see for miles and miles. It’s much brighter here, but I still can’t see the blue sky I had expected. Craning my neck to look upward, I can see another layer of clouds above us, this one lighter and thinner than the ones below. In a few minutes, we plunge upward into it. I see that this layer is suffused with light and even has a hint of blue peeking through, here and there.

That’s when it occurs to me how similar this flight is to the spiritual life. A simple metaphor that stirs my soul with thoughts about my own journey toward heaven. I know that “somewhere up there” is the clear blue sky — heaven — where I want to be. I want to get out of the gray, cold, dreary clouds, out of the mist, out of the turbulence, and into the warm, tranquil, light above. To get there, though, I have to pass through who knows how many more clouds that stand between where I am now and where I am headed.

The great spiritual masters, such as St. Augustine, St. Francis, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Therese of Lisieux, all say that the upward path to heaven leads through the stages of purgation and then illumination before finally reaching that blessed union with God.

Passing through the dark and difficult “clouds” in this life and thinking for a moment, “Hey! I’ve made it!” only to realize with a sigh, “No, I still have a good way yet to go,” becomes a source of joy and consolation for the man or woman who truly desires God. The higher one goes, the great saints say, the more illuminated things become. Until one day, that joyful day when, by God’s grace, one has finally passed through all those interminable clouds of this earthly life, he suddenly finds himself enveloped within splendorous light and glory, as he is ushered into the presence of the Triune God.

Thank you, Lord, for this little insight. I know I’ll think about this every time I travel on a plane.

An Abortionist Has a Dream . . .

Madrid, Nov 12, 2008 / 09:21 pm (CNA).- The Spanish daily “La Razon” has published an article on the pro-life conversion of a former “champion of abortion.” Stojan Adasevic, who performed 48,000 abortions, sometimes up to 35 per day, is now the most important pro-life leader in Serbia, after 26 years as the most renowned abortion doctor in the country.

“The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue,” the newspaper reported.  “Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 80s, but they did not change his opinion. Nevertheless, he began to have nightmares.”

In describing his conversion, Adasevic “dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence.  The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. ‘My name is Thomas Aquinas,’ the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican genius saint.  He didn’t recognize the name”

“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked Adasevic in his dream.

“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,’ St. Thomas told him. 

“Adasevic awoke in amazement and decided not to perform any more abortions,” the article stated.

“That same day a cousin came to the hospital with his four months-pregnant girlfriend, who wanted to get her ninth abortion—something quite frequent in the countries of the Soviet bloc.  The doctor agreed. Instead of removing the fetus piece by piece, he decided to chop it up and remove it as a mass. However, the baby’s heart came out still beating. Adasevic realized then that he had killed a human being” . . .  (continue reading). 

Confessions of a Former Contracepter

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