Choose the right

Ever since hearing it for the first time, I have been totally moved by this quote from Mother Theresa:
“If you knew everyone’s story, you would love the whole world.”

I have tried to remember it time and again when my patience was being tried with people in the R&P or in Ravelry or some other internet forum, where the disconnect seemed so vast that I felt sure I would never be able to demonstrate love for the person, let alone FEEL it in my heart.

In reading the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families,” (For those of you who missed my blog on it-- GO and get this book! It’s absolutely amazing!) I noticed that one major point Covey made with regards to our “proactivity” vs. our reactivity (the idea that one has the capability, as a human, to choose how to respond to stimulus) is wrapped up in one simple sentence: No one will ever know your WHOLE story.

My heart stopped upon this sentence and I can’t seem to let it go because it is affecting everything I do. Even if you’ve been reading this blog for ten minutes, you know that I’ve always said that we CHOOSE to be offended, and that I firmly stand by that. When I allow someone else’s discomfort with where I’m at or what I’m doing to literally “offend” me, I know that I have gotten to a place where I am out of control of my emotions. I don’t have to LIKE what someone thinks about what I’m doing or saying, but I certainly don’t have to let them choose what I think or feel or say. Likewise, when I have done everything I can to be gracious and to bring “the truth in love,” there is sometimes nothing I can do if another chooses to be offended. The responsibility is on the communicator to make sure s/he is being understood, but if all attempts have been made to “Speak the same language,” then that’s really the impasse you have to reach.

My two year old demonstrated this quite well at our Saturday afternoon BBQ. We were over at my brother’s house, enjoying one of their typical Army family weekend cookouts, with couples and neighbor children and dogs all over the place. There were about five young boys, Annika’s age, around. We weren’t there for five minutes when Annika went over to one of the boys, a four year old, and aggressively made known that SHE was going to be playing with a certain toy and he could wait. I told her she needed to learn to share with him, and she gleefully took the toy from him and said, wagging her finger: “yeah! You share!”
From that moment, he ran to his mother and began relating, through big, thick tears, that she was “hurting my feelings! She’s being mean and making me really grumpy grumpy! Why is she being so mean to me??”
He wailed, and Annika, totally oblivious went on to the next boy, who she also made cry.
Interestingly, the first boys’ mother told him: “Remember what we talked about? You don’t have to let her make you upset. You can CHOOSE if you want to let her hurt your feelings. She probably didn’t know how important that was to you.”
Good advice, mom!
I admit, I initially cringed that this four year old boy, no less, was so in touch with his “feelings” as to describe them in great detail to us over and over. But I admired his mother’s response-- choose your response. Be proactive, instead of reactive. While I probably would have added the exhortation to get over it and find a different toy, (move ON!) I had to admit she was giving him some really meaty stuff to chew on and helping him to learn it right off the bat.

Anyways, all this to say that as Liza pointed out to me from reading my blogs for the first time, I do spend a great deal of time “justifying myself” to others.
I WANT people to know that it is God who has led me here and not my own feelings and emotions, that I really believe I’m reading my Bible clearly for the first time and that my theology is getting stronger instead of weaker. I want people to know that… but why? If I am sure that I’m in the right place, and Wayne is sure that I’m in the right place, then ultimately, what does it matter?

I think, upon examining this, that I do have a great evangelistic zeal that I’ve always had. I’m passionate about God, so when I learn something from Him I fervently share it with the world--- and that has always been one of my motivations. With that in mind, I’m going to write, in my next blog, one hopefully final “apologetic examination” of the Catholic Faith based on the five areas of dissent protestants have with it. The reason I’m doing this is that a dear friend has asked me for some answers, and instead of pointing her to twenty different blogs and a variety of links, I would rather put it all in one place and be able to point at it when people ask. I am not doing this to convince YOU, but rather to be able to order my thoughts about how and why I came to believe that the true church IS the Catholic Church, and that the true Faith IS the Catholic Faith. So, if you are sick of hearing it on this blog, then skip the next one J Otherwise, read on. But I hope, even if you ARE sick of hearing it, that you do read it, because I would like, once and for all, to answer all those questions which so greatly worry some of the people I hold dearest to me!

In other news, the most interesting thing happened to me yesterday! I blogged yesterday on this bizarre experience that I keep having at the moment of receiving communion-- this heart pounding, nearly out-of-body experience that really throws me for a loop.
A Carmelite friend of mine responded and assured me that it was not only normal, but a good sign, which greatly encouraged me, because it has been the source of much confusion as of late. It is not a BAD experience. But it’s very…. Intense. And something I am not able to really control, which is unusual.

Last night, before bed, I sat down to prepare for my next Carmelite meeting by reading from a book of meditations on the Eucharist by various Carmelite Saints and modern day believers. I enjoyed all of them, but none so much as when I came across the stories of St Mary Magdelene of Pazzi!!!! Wow! I had never heard of this amazing saint, but feel as though I know her already!
My spiritual “ears” picked up immediately as she described the feeling, as she went up to communion for which she longed day and night, of being certain that the ground would open up and swallow her whole as she waited to receive. This woman loved the Blessed Sacrament so much that she would literally do everything in her day in anticipation of receiving it. I can totally relate to that!!
In her ecstasies, she was able to SEE Jesus in the hearts of her Carmelite sisters who had just received communion… sometimes He was in the form of a little baby. Sometimes a man of 33. Sometimes on the cross, crucified.
NewAdvent.Org describes some of her spiritual ecstasies:
First, these raptures sometimes seized upon her whole being with such force as to compel her to rapid motion (e.g. towards some sacred object).
Secondly, she was frequently able, whilst in ecstasy, to carry on work belonging to her office--e.g., embroidery, painting, etc.--with perfect composure and efficiency.
Thirdly--and this is the point of chief importance--it was whilst in her states of rapture that St. Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi gave utterance to those wonderful maxims of Divine Love, and those counsels of perfection for souls, especially in the religious state, which a modern editor of a selection of them declares to be "more frequently quoted by spiritual writers than those even of St. Teresa". These utterances have been preserved to us by the saint's companions, who (unknown to her) took them down from her lips as she poured them forth. She spoke sometimes as of herself, and sometimes as themouthpiece of one or other of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity. These maxims of the saint are sometimes described as her "Works", although she wrote down none of them herself.
Most importantly, and what I loved best, was that her worldy “usefulness” was never interfered in by her ecstatic state-- she was constantly able to, for example, knit AND pray. She was miraculously able to “read” people (protestants call that the gift of Word of Wisdom or Word of Knowledge, depending) and could bi-locate, which allowed her to ‘meet’ with St Catherine De Ricci, having never really “met” her in the natural. She was nearly always sick, but bore her illness with such joy that she was an encouragement to everyone she met. She was on the point of death when she was professed a Carmelite. Satan was busy as can be attacking her, but she bore it all with extreme patience and true joy in her spirit.
Like her Dominican “friend” Catherine De Ricci, Mary Magdelene De Pazzi was a stigmatic-- she received the wounds of Christ.

I was so moved to read about her life that I gave up my precious hour of extra sleep last night to read up on her life and I am now so fascinated that I cannot stop thinking about her life! What a special woman...and I cannot tell you what a source of encouragement it has been to discover that one of God's most interesting saints shared a special experience at communion like this. Makes it a lot less wierd and whole lot more wonderful!

May her intercession strengthen our walks with Christ and point us always to Jesus, the source and summit of our beautiful Faith. And may we, like her, grow more and more in love with Jesus in His glorified presence in the Blessed Sacrament so that it truly becomes, as we profess, the center of our Christian life.