Our Hearts Are Restless

This old myth has been around for years: the Catholic Church hates women.  Don't mention the myriad orders of sisters and nuns, the four female Doctors of the Church, the epically heroic women and girl martyrs, the spectacular women saints who affected the Church and history (think St. Catherine of Siena) and certainly not the deep respect given to holy women in the Bible, especially in St. Paul's letters.  Most of us Catholics are pretty sure that women in the history of Catholicism were not just incidental.  Oh, and did I forget to mention Mary, the Blessed Mother, and the hundreds of titles given to her, the deep love for her evidenced in the life of every single holy person, and the dozens of countries dedicated to her?  Get with the times - the Church loves, respects, and cares for women, because Christ Himself loved, respected, and cared for the women around him, from His Mother to the woman who touched the hem of His robe to the women who stopped him during the carrying ...

While recuperating from a late closing shift, I was thinking about work and the spiritual life.  A couple of thoughts from the past few days finally coalesced into a funny little meditation that I decided to share. :)  This is what happens when a Catholic works food service... -My restaurant is pretty much obsessed with bread.  If you think about it, bread is in the center of every culture, from Egypt to Mexico, in some form or another.  It's the bottom and top of every sandwich, and at the side of every good meal.  It's simple, yet essential.  Christ is the Bread of Life - He Himself made His own Body into bread, that almost elemental substance.  Indeed, He gave us the best Bread ever: His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Holy Eucharist.  Do we make Him the center of our culture - at least the culture of our families, our friendships?  Is He the top and bottom of our lives, what we build on and where we find our culmination?  Is He by our side every day, every conversatio...

I ran across this quote from Lamentations 2 in the course of my spiritual reading this week.  I was struck especially by the last sentence, reflecting on the murder of one priest and the beating of another in Arizona last week.  When I read the verses again, it came to me also as a call for prayer in our times, for the spiritual starvation of the world and the cruelty of abortion. Arise, give praise in the night, in the beginning of the watches: pour out thy heart like water, before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands to Him for the life of thy little children, that have fainted for hunger in the streets.  Behold, O Lord, and consider what Thou has thus dealt with: shall women then eat their own fruit, their children of a span long?  Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?

I've had difficulty putting any blog posts together, after I left Europe and returned to face...normality.  That state of existence is actually fairly tolerable, but not always the best fuel for keeping a functional blog.  My apologies to you delightful people who clearly still check this page despite my long silence! At the moment, my summer is full of work and...more work!  With a few fun things in between.  My job at a local bakery-cafe is keeping me busy, as well as newly appreciative of the people who work behind the scenes at restaurants. This summer, I'm beginning work on my senior thesis for Christendom!  Facing senior year is a scary and exciting challenge, but I will admit I'm looking forward to this thesis.  My topic, broadly, is children's literature.  I spent most of my childhood in the world of books, and I credit my mother for having shaped my love of the written word.  All those summer reading lists, the trips to the library, the huge amount of books she...