The New Beginning

Friday, September 07, 2007

History of the Dominican Liturgy: Section Two: Conciliar Adaptions, 1962-1965 [Part 2]

at NLM

Thursday, September 06, 2007

John Ball on China

at Taki's Top Drawer: The Dollar Sign or the Cross: Which Faith Will Save China?
Posted by John Ball on September 06, 2007

The Light of Mother Teresa's Darkness (Part 2)

The Light of Mother Teresa's Darkness (Part 2)
Father Kolodiejchuk on Joy in Suffering

ROME, SEPT. 5, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Without suffering, our work would just be social work, not the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption, said Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

The founder of the Missionaries of Charity expressed this in a letter written to a spiritual director, now published with many others letters in a volume titled "Come Be My Light," edited and presented by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk.

In this interview with ZENIT, Father Kolodiejchuk, a Missionary of Charity priest and the postulator for the cause of canonization of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, discusses his new book and the interior life Mother Teresa kept hidden from the world.

Part 1 of this interview was published Tuesday.

Q: The name of the book, "Come Be My Light," was a request Jesus made to Mother Teresa. How did her redemptive suffering for others in such extreme darkness connect with her particular charism?

Father Kolodiejchuk: During the 1950s, Mother surrendered and accepted the darkness. Father Neuner [one of her spiritual directors] helped her to understand it by linking the darkness with her charism, of satiating Jesus' thirst.

She used to say that the greatest poverty was to feel unloved, unwanted, uncared for, and that's exactly what she was experiencing in her relationship with Jesus.

Her reparatory suffering, or suffering for others, was part of her living her charism for the poorest of the poor.

So for her, the suffering was not only to identify with the physical and material poverty, but even on the interior level, she identified with the unloved, the lonely, the rejected.

She gave up her own interior light for those living in darkness, saying, "I know this is only feelings."

In one letter to Jesus, she wrote: "Jesus hear My prayer -- if this pleases You -- If my pain and suffering -- my darkness and separation gives You a drop of Consolation -- My own Jesus do with me as You wish -- as long as You wish without a single glance at my feelings and Pain.

"I am your own. Imprint on my soul and life the sufferings of Your heart. Don't mind my feelings -- Don't mind even, my pain.

"If my separation from You, brings others to You and in their love and company -- you find joy and pleasure -- why Jesus, I am willing with all my heart to suffer all that I suffer -- not only now, but for all eternity, if this was possible."

In a letter to her sisters, she makes the charism of the order more explicit, saying: "My dear children, without suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption -- Jesus wanted to help us by sharing our life, our loneliness, our agony and death.

"All that He has taken upon Himself, and has carried it in the darkest night. Only by being one with us He has redeemed up.

"We are allowed to do the same: All the desolation of Poor people, not only their Material poverty, but their spiritual destitution must be redeemed and we must have our share in it, pray thus when you find it hard -- 'I wish to live in this world which is far from God, which has turned so much from the light of Jesus, to help them -- to take upon me something of their suffering.'"

And that captures what I consider her mission statement: "If I ever become a Saint -- I will surely be one of 'darkness.' I will continually be absent from Heaven -- to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth…"

This is how she understood her darkness. A lot of the things she said make more sense and have a much deeper meaning now that we know these things.

Q: So what do you say to those who call her experience a crisis of faith, that she didn't really believe in God, or somehow imply that her darkness was a sign of psychological instability?

Father Kolodiejchuk: It wasn't a crisis of faith, or that she lacked faith, but that she had a trial of faith where she experienced the feeling that she did not believe in God.

This trial required a lot of human maturity, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to do it. She would have become unbalanced.

As Father Garrigou-Lagrange said, it is possible to have seemingly contradictory feelings at the same time.

It is possible to have "objective Christian joy," as Carol Zaleski called it, while at the same time going through the trial or feeling of having no faith.

There are not two people here, but one person with feelings on different levels.

We can really be living the cross in someway -- it is painful, and it hurts, and just because we can spiritualize it does not take way the pain, but one can be joyful because one is living with Jesus. And that is not false.

This is how and why Mother lived a life so full of joy.

Q: As the postulator of her cause for canonization, when do you think we might be able to call her St. Teresa of Calcutta?

Father Kolodiejchuk: We need one more miracle -- we have looked at a few, but none has been clear enough. There was one for beatification but we are waiting for the second.

Perhaps God has been waiting for the book to come out first, because people knew that Mother Teresa was holy but because of her ordinariness and simplicity of expression, they did not have an understanding of how holy.

I heard about two priests talking the other day. One said he was never a big fan of Mother Teresa because he thought she was just pious, devout, and did nice, admirable works, but then when he heard about her interior life, it changed everything for him.

Now we have more of an idea how developed she was spiritually, and now something of her deeper characteristics are being revealed.

Once the miracle comes in, it could take a couple of years, although the Pope could do it faster if he wanted to.

Q: What has happened to the order since Mother's death?

Father Kolodiejchuk: The order has grown by almost 1,000 sisters, from around 3,850 at her death to 4,800 today, and we've added over 150 houses in 14 more countries.

God's work goes on.

Transcript: last night's debate

Republican debate in New Hampshire, September 5, 2007

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Miss Korea 2006 Honey Lee in SK Telecom ad

Vietnamese Folk Music Performance

Bill to establish Commission on Wartime Contracting

From Senator Webb's website:

FRESHMEN SENATORS CALL FOR COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE WARTIME CONTRACTING
Washington, DC - Senate Democratic freshmen today introduced a bill to establish an independent, bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting to investigate U.S. wartime contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Commission would significantly increase transparency and accountability and generate important solutions for systematic contracting problems, potentially saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
The Commission will study and investigate the impact of the government's growing reliance on civilian contractors to perform wartime functions. It will assess the extent of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement of wartime contracts, and the extent to which those responsible have been held accountable.
The Commission will work in consultation with a newly-expanded Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) that will be authorized to audit defense wartime contracts for logistics support, as well as other federal agency contracts for security and intelligence functions in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. This collaborative effort will result in specific findings and recommendations to improve inter-agency wartime contracting.

Copy of the bill establishing an independent, bi-partisan Commission on Wartime Contracting.
Summary of the amendment including the latest co-sponsors.
Press Release on freshmen Senator's press conference introducing the Commission.
Audio from Senator Webb's remarks at the freshman Senators' press conference.
Video from Senator Webb's press conference on legislation to establish independent, bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting to investigate U.S. contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hyori and Jessica Alba

at Popoholic

Video of the photoshoot:

For Sarge: Jessica Biel

2 from Sandro Magister

Revisiting the Mystery: The Sanctity of Mother

The Christians Are Coming Back to Arabia – Fourteen Centuries after Mohammed

Dr. Kurt Richebächer, RIP

From Bill Bonner, Paging Doctor Liquidity:

Our old friend Dr. Kurt Richebächer died last week, in Cannes, France. He was 88 years old, and his writings were a staple among many people's required reading list. As Chuck Butler puts it in today's issue of The Daily Pfennig, "Yes, I used to kid about how when you read one of his letters you need to put away all the sharp objects… But he told it like no one else…

"He didn't pull punches, and he was always ahead of all other economists with his thoughts. I will miss his writings… And the world has lost an economist that didn't cower to Washington…"

Dr. Richebächer, R.I.P. (More on the Good Doctor to come…)

Two vids of Sister Marie Keyrouz

Amamaka Ayoha almasloob - Marie Keyrouz

This one I've posted before...

Hayley Westenra, I Hope I Never

Vietnamese song (traditional)

Beauty Plays Traditional Vietnamese Music (two)

Kim Yen - Doc Tau Chim Quyen

Vietnam traditional music

Three cute girls in Vancouver, WA singing live

Mother's Love

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Dr. Wilson asks, "What culture?"

at Chronicles

The Wreck of Western Culture

Rod Dreher introduces this book by John Carroll

Mr. Dreher writes:

I'm intrigued by Carroll's assertion that the Aborigines were right: when a culture no longer believes the stories it tells about itself, when a culture ceases to be able to sustain what Richard Weaver called its "metaphysical dream," it begins to die. Weaver, you'll remember from "Ideas Have Consequences," said the turning point in the death of the West was the victory of William of Occam over the Schoolmen, and the resulting loss in belief in transcendentals. It sounds crazy, given the efflorescence of cultural energy and achievement released over the next 500 years. But if Carroll is right, we've reached the end of the road, as we were destined to, having abandoned our belief in the Western metaphysical dream.

I think Weaver was wrong on this point, even though it has been repeated by orthodox Catholics--all are looking for an -ism to blame for the decline of the West. Rather... I'd look at the splitting of Christendom, the weakness of the Church and the loss of evangelizing power, and the accumulation of power by secular princes, to the detriment of the Church and of the common good.

George Holt Design

recommended by a reader of the Crunchy Con blog in response to a query regarding St. John Antiochian Orthodox Cathedral

Not much to say about this past weekend

And I have my reasons for not saying much here about what happened this weekend. What can I say about Toronto? In many ways I would have to agree with Fujian Gal's friend, it is like Chicago. I didn't get to see any of the museums; the old city hall reminds me of Trinity Church in Copley Square--the architecture is very similar. I wish I could have seen Fort York. Personally, I wasn't impressed by the city. Not because it's Toronto (though the new city hall does seem appropriate--something symbolic of the close-minded and proud bureaucracy running the show), but because it's just another megapolis that owes its existence to an industrialized, oil-dependent world.

I suspect Montreal is not much better--there doesn't seem to be a section of Toronto that one can point to as being "historic"--perhaps parts of UofT might quality, but the much-touted multiculturalism of Toronto is not really something to be celebrated, as the city loses its Anglo character and culture, which is being replaced by... a PC liberal ideology.

Quebec City, on the other hand... I imagine it to have historic sections that are still intact and being used.

I did see St. Michael's College and PIMS. Not bad... According to the former Lady Downstairs, St. Basil's is the oldest Catholic church in Toronto. It's ok, but not as pretty as St. Ignatius in Chestnut Hill or St. Paul's... I missed most of the Saturday vigil Mass, but I'm guessing it was typical. On Sunday I went to Holy Family, but I missed the 11:00 Latin Mass, and went to the 12:30 Mass instead. The Church is done in a neo-classical style, but I was surprised by its plainess, and lack of liturgical artwork. Perhaps it is in one of the poorer neighboorhoods of Toronto and doesn't have the money for it.

After Mass, I stepped outside, and there must have been a local airshow, because a F-22 was flying around and making a lot of noise. Some of its maneuvers (like what it can do while in a loop, such as braking?) were impressive, but how much fuel did it burn up for that performance?

F-22 Raptor Team Web Site

We did go to Congee Queen on Saturday. The best congee in North America? Perhaps. Fujian Gal claims that that honor belongs to Congee Village in NYC. (She thought the congee was too watery, I thought it was about right, since I don't like thick congee, although that is what my mom makes.) I suppose if I ever visit NYC again, I will have to try it and make a judgment as to who wins. The congee is not better than what one can find in Hong Kong--but it is difficult to find well-made congee this side of the Pacific. The food at Congee Queen was good for the most part, though the fried been curd was inconsistent. Some of it was really good, some of it was overcooked. I did like the salt and spicy pork, though they used pork chops instead of the fatty pork section (rib meat?) that other places use.

While we were driving down Steeles Ave. in Markham, we passed by Casa Imperial--a lot of well-dressed people were walking up to the front door--I suspect that was a wedding banquet or some other celebration going on. I wonder how good the Chinese food is there...

Niagara Falls was ok, I wish I could have spent more time looking at the water, but the city surrounding it... is a tourist trap. We had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe--the food was even more overpriced than usual, and the quality no better than what I've had before--perhaps even worse. Someone should open up a Chinese deli that sells cha siu and roast duck--they'd make a bundle of money, I think. We visited Casino Niagara and it was not a pretty sight inside, with all of the people spending their money in that way. I lost my desire to check out Vegas.

Fabius Maximus, The Long War, part 2

News from the Front: America’s military has mastered 4GW! Part II of a Series on The Long War, by Fabius Maximus.

Richard Heinberg, Peak everything

Published on 3 Sep 2007 by MuseLetter / Global Public Media. Archived on 3 Sep 2007.
Peak everything
by Richard Heinberg

Mr. Heinberg's edited version of the introduction to the book.

Global food crisis looms as climate change and population growth strip fertile land

via EB

Global food crisis looms as climate change and population growth strip fertile land
Ian Sample, The Guardian

Are things this precarious?

The Light of Mother Teresa's Darkness, Part 1

The Light of Mother Teresa's Darkness, Part 1
Father Kolodiejchuk on Unity With Jesus

ROME, SEPT. 4, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Feeling or not feeling love, Mother Teresa of Calcutta knew that she was united with Jesus, for her mind was fixed on him and him alone.

The founder of the Missionaries of Charity expressed this in a letter written to a spiritual director, now published with many other letters in a volume titled "Come Be My Light," edited and presented by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk.

In this interview with ZENIT, Father Kolodiejchuk, a Missionary of Charity priest and the postulator for the cause of canonization of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, discusses his new book and the interior life Mother Teresa kept hidden from the world.

Q: The extraordinary interior life of Mother Teresa was discovered after her death. Aside from her spiritual directors, how was this life, especially her suffering of spiritual darkness, kept from all who knew her?

Father Kolodiejchuk: No one had any idea of her interior life because her spiritual directors held onto these letters. The Jesuits have some, some were at the archbishop's house, and Father Joseph Neuner, another spiritual director, had some.

These letters were discovered when we went looking for the documents for the cause.

When she was alive, Mother Teresa asked that her biographical information not be shared.

She asked Archbishop Ferdinand Perier of Calcutta not to tell another bishop about how things had begun. She said, "Please don't give him anything from the beginning, because once people come to know the beginning, like the locutions, then the focus would be on me and not on Jesus."

She kept saying, "God's work. This is God's work."

Even the closest sisters had no idea of her interior life. Many would have thought that she would have had a great intimacy with God to keep her going in light of the difficulties of the order and the material poverty she suffered.

Q: The book discusses Mother's secret vow that she made early in her vocation, where she promised not to refuse God anything on pain of mortal sin. What role did this play in her life?

Father Kolodiejchuk: Mother Teresa made this vow, in 1942, to never refuse God anything.

Her inspiration letters from Jesus soon followed. In one of them, if not both of them, Jesus says, picking up on her vow, "Wilt thou refuse to do this for me?"

So the vow is the background to her vocation. Then you see in the inspiration letters where Jesus makes her call clear.

She then pushes forward because she knows what Jesus wants. She is motivated by thought of his longing and his pain because the poor don't know him, so they don't want him.

This was one of the pillars that kept her going through the trials of the darkness. Because of her certainty of her call and this vow in one of the letters she says, "I was at the point of breaking and then I remembered the vow, and that picked me up."

Q: There has been a lot of discussion about Mother Teresa's "dark night." It is described in your book as a "martyrdom of desire." This element, her thirsting for God, has largely been missed. Can you describe this?

Father Kolodiejchuk: A good book to read to understand some of these things is Father Thomas Dubay's "Fire Within."

In Father Dubay's book, he speaks of the real pain of loss and a pain of longing, with the pain of longing being more painful.

As Father Dubay explains, in the path to authentic union with God, there is the purgative stage called the dark night, after this a soul then goes to a stage of ecstasy and true union with God.

The purgative stage for Mother Teresa seems to have been during her time of formation at Loretto.

At the time of her profession, she said her companion was most often the darkness. The kind of letters that you read there, in the dark night, are typical letters you would read of someone in the dark night.

Father Celeste Van Exem, her spiritual director at the time, said that maybe in 1946 or 1945 she was already close to ecstasy.

After that, there is a reference to when the inspirations and locutions came, when the difficulty against faith stopped.

Later she wrote to Father Neuner, explaining: "And then you know how it worked out. And there, as if our Lord just gave himself to me to the full. The sweetness and consolation and union of those 6 months passed but too soon."

So, Mother Teresa had six months of intense union, after the locutions and ecstasy. She was already in the real transforming union. At this point, the darkness returned.

But now, however, the darkness she experienced was within that union with God -- so it wasn't that she had the union and then lost it. She lost the consolation of the union and alternated between the pain of loss and a deep longing, a real thirst.

As Father Dubay said, "At times the contemplation is delightful, and at other times it is a strong thirsting for him." But in Mother Teresa's case, apart from one month in 1958, she did not have this consolation of union.

There is one letter in which she said: "No Father, I am not alone, I have His darkness, I have His pain, I have a terrible longing for God. To love and not to be loved, I know I have Jesus in the unbroken union, for my mind is fixed on him and him alone."

Her experience of darkness within union is very rare even among the saints because for most, the end is union without it.

Her suffering, then, to use the Dominican theologian Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange's term, is reparatory, much more for the sins of others, not purificatory, for her own sins. She is united to Jesus in enough faith and love to share in his experience in the Garden of Gethsemane and on the cross.

Mother Teresa made the comment that the suffering in the Garden was worse than the suffering on the cross. And now we understand where that was coming from, because she understood Jesus' longing for souls.

The important thing is that it is union, and as Carol Zaleski pointed out in her article in First Things, this kind of trial is a new kind of trial. It is a modern kind of experience for the saints over the last 100 years or so, to suffer the feeling that one does not have any faith, and that religion is not true.

[Wednesday: On Mother Teresa's Joy in Suffering]

Mother Teresa Endured God's Silence, Says Pope

Mother Teresa Endured God's Silence, Says Pope
Comments on Nun's "Dark Night" to Youth

VATICAN CITY, SEPT. 4, 2007 (Zenit.org).- God speaks even when he doesn't say anything, Benedict XVI told 500,000 young people in reference to the "dark night" of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.

Mother Teresa's spiritual suffering was one of the topics covered by the Pope on Saturday night, during his question-and-answer session with 500,000 youth in Loreto, Italy.

The Vatican released the transcript of the questions and answers today.

The session, held in the esplanade of Montorso, was part of a two-day encounter of Italian youth with the Holy Father.

A young Italian woman, Sara Simonetta, explained to the Pontiff that she believed "in the God that had touched my heart, but I feel a lot of insecurity, questions, fear."

"I feel human solitude, and I would like to feel God close. Holiness, in this silence, 'Where is God?'" she asked.

Benedict XVI responded that "we all, even though we believe, experience this silence of God."

"A book was just published on the spiritual experiences of Mother Teresa, and what we have known is now more openly presented: With all her charity, her strength of faith, Mother Teresa suffered the silence of God," he said.

The Pope was referring to the book "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," written by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, postulator for the cause of canonization of the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. The book, published 10 years after the nun's death, is a compilation of her letters and writings.

Benedict XVI continued: "On one hand, we have to endure this silence of God, partly in order to understand our brethren who don't know God."

On the other, he said, "we can always yell out again to God: 'Talk, show yourself!' And without a doubt, if the heart is open, we can discover the great moments of our life in which the presence of God is truly perceptible, even to us."

Seeing God

The Pope explained how it is possible to see God.

Before all, the Pontiff said, "the beauty of creation is one of the sources in which we can touch the beauty of God, we can see that the Creator exists and is good, that it is true what sacred Scripture says in the creation account."

Second, he explained, it is possible to perceive the divine presence "listening to the word of God in the great liturgical celebrations, in the great music of faith."

Benedict XVI then told the story of a woman who converted to Christianity after having listened to the music of Bach, Handel and Mozart.

Third, the Pope told the assembly of youth, one can discover God through "personal dialogue with Christ."

"He doesn't always respond, but there are moments in which he really responds," the Pontiff said.

A last way of discovering God, according to the Holy Father, is "friendship, companionship in the faith."

Benedict XVI continued: "Now, here, gathered in Loreto, we see how faith unites, how friendship creates a companionship of journeying persons.

"And we experience that all of this does not come from nothing, but has a source, that the silent God is also a God who speaks, who reveals himself, and above all, that we can be witnesses of his presence, that our faith truly brings about light, even for others."

The Pope added: "On one hand, we have to accept that in this world, God is silent, but we shouldn't make ourselves deaf when he speaks, when he manifests his presence on so many occasions, above all in Creation, in the liturgy, in friendship within the Church. And, full of his presence, we can also give light to others."