Saving Treyden

I have never been very successful trying to understand the pain in this world. Yes, I try to understand what Pope John Paul II said in his Apostolic Letter Salvifici Dolorus and in his Letter to the Sick at the National Cancer Institute. This is not easy going. I’m not as concerned about my own salvation as I am about those who suffer, animals and human.

We were on our way to Texas for my mother-in-law’s funeral. My cellphone rang. A call from the animal hospital where I was boarding my cat, Sonny. There was a lump on his hip. Should they take a sample and send it to the lab? “Why, yes,” I said, “of course.” I didn’t even ask about the expense. Animal or not, Sonny was my friend and I would take care of him like any friend.

Next day a call from the veterinarian, the cells looked funny to her and the lab. Although they could not be positive they were cancerous, she thought it would be best to remove the tumor. I did not hesitate to say yes. Damn the cost. I had already lost one dear feline friend and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake with Sonny by not getting him care.

The tumor was successfully removed, and I was grateful. It was an aggressive, malignant sarcoma. But a month later he fell ill. Even though he was in the house, we could not find him for hours. When we did, I could see how sick he was. I had watched my other feline friend die an agonizing death, perhaps because I did not get him the medical care he needed, and if given a second chance I would not let that happen again. It was an awful night. Sick as Sonny was, he came to the bed to say good night in his way, as he often did. I too was sick, sick at heart. I could never understand why animals had to suffer. Oh sure, I’ve read that they do not comprehend pain as we do, but the fact of the matter is they do feel pain. And they are innocent. They are without sin. Yet they suffer for our sins.

I too was suffering, full of anguish and worry, and it made me reflect upon suffering and pain once again. It was always easier to understand my own suffering than it was the suffering of others. The worst of suffering was never physical pain, but the suffering of anguish and worry and loss. Of watching and trying to comprehend the incomprehensible suffering we see all about us. I think it was Percy Bysshe Shelley who once said he was like a nerve “over which the else unfelt oppressions of this earth do creep.” Yes, I was feeling pain and anguish for Sonny, perhaps comprehending life without him coming to our bed at night. But what I was thinking went a lot deeper than that.

The Catholic Church teaches a couple of things in relation to animals. First, we should not spend money on them that should as a priority go to relieve human misery. Well, that wasn’t going to stop me from taking him to the animal hospital and letting them put him on an IV and anti-biotics. That’s what I did and once again I didn’t ask about the expense. Sonny was a better friend to me than many people had been. Perhaps the message to me in this was that I should also give more money to human causes.

The Church also teaches that while it’s OK to love animals, we should not direct the affection toward them that are due to human beings. Well, of course not, but that did not prevent my empathizing with his suffering or my anguish at the thought of losing him. He had done nothing to deserve his suffering, much less death at a relatively young age. Was I wrong to pray for him? If God knows when a sparrow falls from the sky, surely He knew that Sonny was sick as well.

After a night in the hospital, Sonny fully recovered. Prayers answered? I don’t even think about that. I’m just grateful to have his friendship back. But that’s only the lead-in to why I came to write this post. My daughter-in-law has been posting and sharing entries from a Facebook site “Saving Treyden.” Treyden is a baby. He is very sick. His parents are going through a hell no one deserves. Until this time, I had thought very little about these posts. To be honest, I still have not read them in great detail because I simply cannot bear it. See, Treyden being a baby, he too is innocent.

Being a parent and a grandparent of an infant grandson, I simply cannot comprehend the agony his parents are going through. I don’t need to read their posts to pray for them and for Treyden. It’s all we can do to pray into the darkness of this fallen world and pour some light into it. It’s all I can do. That, and ask anyone else who reads this to pray for Treyden and his suffering parents. They all need the strength that only God can give.

Please take an extra moment today and pray for them. God Bless You.

Ghost Dog

Reblogged from Spirit Island:

Offering of St. Ignatius Loyola

Take, O Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my whole will. Thou hast given me all that I am and all that I possess; I surrender it all to Thee that Thou mayest dispose of it according to Thy will. Give me only Thy love and Thy grace; with these I will be rich enough, and will have no more to desire.

Read more… 469 more words

If I Should Never See the Moon Again

I ran across this beautiful poem this morning in Medjugorje Day by Day.

If I should never see the moon again
Rising red gold across the harvest field
Or feel the stinging soft rain
As the brown earth her treasures yield.

If I should never taste the salt sea spray
As the ship beats her course across the breeze.
Or smell the dog-rose and new-mown hay,
or moss or primroses beneath the tree.

If I should never hear the thrushes wake
Long before the sunrise in the glimmering dawn.
Or watch the huge Atlantic rollers break
Against the rugged cliffs in baffling scorn.

If I have to say good bye to stream and wood,
To wide ocean and the green clad hill,
I know that he, who made this world so good
Has somewhere made a heaven better still.

This bears witness with my latest breath
Knowing the love of God,
I fear no death.

Inscribed in the Bible of Major Malcolm Boyd, killed in action in France, June 1944.

No Cilices for Me, Thank You; or I Let God Feed the Bears

I look out the living room window and wonder whether to take the dog for a walk in the woods. It’s drizzling icy rain. A half inch of slush sits atop old, soft snow. The trail will be icy and treacherous. But there might be new turkey tracks, and Cooper won’t care about the weather.

As always, Cooper is so grateful for his release from the kennel he jumps about nipping at the shoulders of my hunting jacket. Even dogs know joy and gratitude. I take him even on days when I don’t feel like it, because his gratitude makes it all worthwhile. Hmmm, I wonder, maybe God would like a little more jumping up and down from me, spiritual jumping of course. I have much to be grateful for, this walk for instance.

Cooper forges on ahead. He has far too much pent-up energy to go at my speed. The winter-bare trees loom gray and wet and awaiting spring. The trail is a hazard for 61-year old arthritic knees. In some places the snow is firm and in others it slips away. By now I know where to expect the ice. My knees are firmly wrapped in Ace bandages, which I do every day because of loose ligaments. They have felt better lately, but I could do more for them. Sometimes the pain getting up from a chair is excruciating. I make a point to consecrate my aching knees to Christ.

That does not mean I want the pain. It just means I accept it as God’s will. I use it as a form of prayer. That does not mean I shouldn’t lose weight and do the exercises the therapist said I should do. We don’t have to go out of our way to suffer; there’s suffering enough in life without helping ourselves to it. No cilices for me, thank you. My hunting jacket is warm, dry and comfortable. My boots are waterproof, and I don’t feel a bit guilty about it. Just infrequently grateful.

The snow is noisy, crunching beneath my boots. I am seeing no tracks, except a few rabbit prints. Cooper emerges from the trees ahead. He has his favorite detours where the aromas must be of special interest, and so I catch up to him. I can scarcely wait for the snow to be gone, even as winter seems to be clinging to its last icy breath. I can scarcely wait to hunt turkeys next week, although I know the week of my permit will be over quickly, assuming I need to hunt that long, which is likely.

I am no expert turkey hunter, but that isn’t important to me. I pull a crow call from my pocket and send a few caws into the soggy air. I stop and listen. Cooper turns and looks at me. He wonders if I am calling him. No, I have a whistle for him when he ranges too far. There are things in these woods even a seventy-five pound dog does not want to meet. Wild turkeys will sometimes gobble to various calls, so I was just sounding out the neighborhood. I am at the turn where I saw a pair of turkey tracks ten days ago or so. Until January when I found tracks across our front yard, I have never found turkey tracks on our property before, although turkeys have been seen nearby for several years now. This is no turkey hunting mecca, but I will try hunting our own property the first couple of days. I listen a little longer, but I hear only the neighbor’s chainsaw grinding.

Slipping a little, I put the call back in my pocket and move on. So does Cooper. We pass the tree stand where I wait for deer in season, so far unsuccessfully. I have shot some nice ones, though, with the trail cam, but pixels don’t fry up very well.

We stop at the bend where the trail turns down to the creek. There is a dead balsam pine here full of perfectly drilled holes made by a pileated woodpecker, the largest and in my opinion most beautiful of woodpeckers. I marvel at his handiwork. One morning sitting in the tree stand I heard what sounded like someone pounding a small hammer on wood. I didn’t know what it was then, but I do now. Even in winter time, the Lord feeds his creatures. The bird must find dormant bugs in the dead wood. Last fall, while sitting in a blind, a pileated landed not eight feet from me. What beautiful, graceful birds they are. Yes, Lord, they make me want to jump up and down. Thank you.

I pull an owl call from my pocket and blow some hoo-hooing. Once again, Cooper looks at me cockeyed, like the RCA dog, although he has heard me do this before. My calls are once again met by silence.

Another hundred yards and we are at what is most of the year a creek. Right now it is full of ice from melting snow. There is no surface flow yet. I stop short of the ice and pull a wooden box call from another pocket. It consists of a paddle bolted over a hollow, resonating box. The contact surfaces are made to emit almost any sound made by turkey hens when the paddle is scraped over the edges of the box. I try a few clucks and short calls called cuts. I am not surprised to get no response again. Cooper is jumping up and down next to me, knowing this is the end of the line, the place where I give him a treat and turn around. I pull one from my pocket, and he takes it before I can offer.

On the way back, I hear a strange tweeting overhead, like a small creature blowing a whistle. When I hear it again, I stop and look up. I see black-capped chickadees dancing in the pine branches. They appear to be following us. Maybe they recognize me as the person who leaves them black oil sunflower seeds on our deck all winter. Winters are hard here, and I don’t mind helping the Lord feed his creatures. The chickadees don’t explain the tweeting sound, however, never having heard them tweet like that. There is still so much I don’t know about these woods I’ve lived in for almost 30 years.

When we get back to the house, the birds are at the last of the sunflower seeds, redpolls, nuthatches, blue jays, chickadees. We had pine grosbeaks earlier in the winter, but they have moved on now. There will be no more seeds for the birds this year, because the bears are waking up. The garbage can where we keep the sunflower seeds still wears the dent it received from two bears arguing over its contents. The bears will break into a garage for sunflower seeds. They instinctively know what doors are for, and they care little for locks. For years now, I’ve left the feeding of the bears exclusively to God.

 

To Be Light, You Have to Burn

Prayer can sometimes be an adventure. The distractions in prayer are not always without meaning. The other morning after finishing the Office of Readings and the Morning Prayer, I put down the Liturgy of the Hours and picked up my Kindle for the daily mass readings from “The Word Among Us,” which is sent to me every month.

The morning before I’d been going through my file of most read books, of which there are about 90, and thought I saw the title Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. I could not remember getting that book, but for some reason I’d promised myself to look for it the next time I opened my device. So instead of going to the mass readings, I went looking for Louise. Whether I had the book or not (of course a hardbound copy was sitting up on the shelf), there was something spooky about thinking I’d seen it. No, I couldn’t find it, so I ordered a Kindle edition. For the books I treasure the most, I’ll get a Kindle version in addition to the physical copy.

Then I thought, gee, where was Annie Dillard? Louise Erdrich and Annie Dillard are writers I can open to any page of any work just to enjoy their writing, to read prose rich as poetry or poetry that transcends. So then I went looking for Annie, found her and opened to the last book I had been reading, Holy the Firm. She recalled a time when she had been camping in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.

I had hauled myself and gear up there to read, among other things, James Ramsey Ullman’s The Day on Fire, a novel about Rimbaud that had made me want to be a writer when I was sixteen; I was hoping it would do it again. So I read, lost, every day sitting under a tree by my tent, while warblers swung in the leaves overhead and bristle worms trailed their inches over the twiggy dirt at my feet; and I read every night by candlelight, while barred owls called in the forest and pale moths massed round my head in the clearing, where my light made a ring. Moths kept flying into the candle….

One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burned dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when a shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two-inch wingspan, flapped into the fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled, and fried in a second….

When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Had she been new, or old? Had she mated and laid her eggs, had she done her work? …

And then this moth essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth’s body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the jagged hole where her head should be, and widened into flame, a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two flames of identical height, side by side. The moth’s head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.

She burned for two hours without changing, without bending or leaning—only glowing within, like a building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled, while Rimbaud in Paris burned out his brains in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet….

How many of you, I asked the people in my class, which of you want to give your lives and be writers?

For a long time I have toyed with the idea of becoming a tertiary of some kind. I thought maybe a Benedictine Oblate, but somehow I always had a conflict with the next meeting or retreat. I don’t really care for the rule enjoining idle chatter and “words that lead to laughter.” I love to talk and joke and laugh and I really think God has a far better sense of humor than Saint Benedict. So how about the third order Franciscans or the Confraternity of Penitents? These commitments haven’t seemed to fit either.

The truth of the matter is I am more wordsmith than monk, more poet than priest, more writer than theologian. This is why my morning prayers found me reading Annie Dillard instead of the Gospel of Luke (which I read later at the doctor’s office waiting for my wife). I am still Catholic to the bone. The metaphor of the moth was not lost on me. To be a true writer, you have to burn your brains out. To be a true Christian, you have to lose your life to find it. You must die to bear much fruit. Or, as St. Francis of Assisi said, it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

So no matter what we do, poet or priest, we have to die and burn. We have to wick God’s grace in order to be His Light.

Awake, O Sleeper

I haven’t been too inspired lately, but every once in a while I stumble across something too good to keep to myself. This is from an ancient homily which appears in this morning’s readings of the Liturgy of the Hours:

“Something strange is happening – there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

“He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ Christ answered him: ‘And with your spirit.’ He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.’….

“Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.”

The Holy Hour: Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

 From the Blessed Sacrament Prayerbook, a method of the Holy Hour, third quarter:

“Contemplate Jesus as He stands before His sleeping disciples and meekly complains:

‘I looked for one that would grieve together with Me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort Me, but there was none.’ (Ps. 69:21).

“Meditate for a moment on this complaint of Our Lord and then recite the ‘Litany of the Sacred Heart,’….

From Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The proper act of the devotion 

This act is required by the very object of the devotion, since devotion to the love of Jesus for us should be pre-eminently a devotion of love for Jesus. It is characterized by a reciprocation of love; its aim is to love Jesus who has so loved us, to return love for love. Since, moreover, the love of Jesus manifests itself to the devout soul as a love despised and outraged, especially in the Eucharist, the love expressed in the devotion naturally assumes a character of reparation, and hence the importance of acts of atonement, the Communion of reparation, and compassion for Jesus suffering. But no special act, no practice whatever, can exhaust the riches of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. The love which is its soul embraces all and, the better one understands it, the more firmly is he convinced that nothing can vie with it for making Jesus live in us and for bringing him who lives by it to love God, in union with Jesus, with all his heart, all his soul, all his strength.

 

During Lent devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus takes on even greater significance. Hence, the inclusion of the Litany of the Sacred Heart as part of a suggested method of observing the Holy Hour. I would encourage you to read the rest of the article in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Thanks to sacredheart.com for this version of the litany. 

Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Christ, graciously hear us. God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us. God, the Son, Redeemer of the World, have mercy on us. God, the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, Son of the Eternal Father, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, formed in the womb of the Virgin Mother by the Holy Ghost, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, united substantially with the word of God, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, of infinite majesty, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, holy temple of God, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, tabernacle of the Most High, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, house of God and gate of heaven, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, glowing furnace of charity, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, vessel of justice and love, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, full of goodness and love, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, abyss of all virtues, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, most worthy of all praise, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, king and center of all hearts, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Divinity, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, in whom the Father is well pleased, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, of whose fullness we have all received, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, desire of the everlasting hills, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, patient and rich in mercy, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, rich to all who invoke Thee, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, fount of life and holiness, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, propitiation for our sins, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, saturated with revilings, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, crushed for our iniquities, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, made obedient unto death, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, pierced with a lance, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, source of all consolation, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, our life and resurrection, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, our peace and reconciliation, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, victim for our sins, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, salvation of those who hope in Thee, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, hope of those who die in Thee, have mercy on us. Heart of Jesus, delight of all saints, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord. Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, graciously hear us, O Lord, Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. V. Jesus, meek and humble of Heart. R. Make our hearts like unto Thine. Let us pray Almighty and everlasting God, look upon the Heart of Thy well-beloved Son and upon the acts of praise and satisfaction which He renders unto Thee in the name of sinners; and do Thou, in Thy great goodness, grant pardon to them who seek Thy mercy, in the name of the same Thy Son, Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with Thee, world without end.”