Friday, June 22, 2007

Saint Thomas More




St. Thomas More was born at London in 1478. After a thorough grounding in religion and the classics, he entered Oxford to study law. Upon leaving the university he embarked on a legal career which took him to Parliament. In 1505, he married his beloved Jane Colt who bore him four children, and when she died at a young age, he married a widow, Alice Middleton, to be a mother for his young children. A wit and a reformer, this learned man numbered Bishops and scholars among his friends, and by 1516 wrote his world-famous book "Utopia". He attracted the attention of Henry VIII who appointed him to a succession of high posts and missions, and finally made him Lord Chancellor in 1529. However, he resigned in 1532, at the height of his career and reputation, when Henry persisted in holding his own opinions regarding marriage and the supremacy of the Pope. The rest of his life was spent in writing mostly in defense of the Church. In 1534, with his close friend, St. John Fisher, he refused to render allegiance to the King as the Head of the Church of England and was confined to the Tower. Fifteen months later, and nine days after St. John Fisher's execution, he was tried and convicted of treason. He told the court that he could not go against his conscience and wished his judges that "we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to everlasting salvation." And on the scaffold, he told the crowd of spectators that he was dying as "the King's good servant-but God's first." He was beheaded on July 6, 1535. His feast day is June 22nd.
"What does it avail to know that there is a God, which you not only believe by Faith, but also know by reason: what does it avail that you know Him if you think little of Him?"

"What men call fame is, after all, but a very windy thing. A man thinks that many are praising him, and talking of him alone, and yet they spend but a very small part of the day thinking of him, being occupied with things of their own."

"Although I know well, Margaret, that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in his merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience. God's grace has given the king a gracious frame of mind toward me, so that as yet he has taken from me nothing but my liberty. In doing this His Majesty has done me such great good with respect to spiritual profit that I trust that among all the great benefits he has heaped so abundantly upon me I count my imprisonment the very greatest. I cannot, therefore, mistrust the grace of God. By the merits of his bitter passion joined to mine and far surpassing in merit for me all that I can suffer myself, his bounteous goodness shall release me from the pains of purgatory and shall increase my reward in heaven besides. I will not mistrust him, Meg, though I shall feel myself weakening and on the verge of being overcome with fear. I shall remember how Saint Peter at a blast of wind began to sink because of his lack of faith, and I shall do as he did: call upon Christ and pray to him for help. And then I trust he shall place his holy hand on me and in the stormy seas hold me up from drowning. And finally, Margaret, I know this well: that without my fault he will not let me be lost. I shall, therefore, with good hope commit myself wholly to him. And if he permits me to perish for my faults, then I shall serve as praise for his justice. But in good faith, Meg, I trust that his tender pity shall keep my poor soul safe and make me commend his mercy. And, therefore, my own good daughter, do not let your mind be troubled over anything that shall happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best." - from a letter written by Saint Thomas More from prison to his daughter Margaret

"If I am distracted, Holy Communion helps me become recollected. If opportunities are offered by each day to offend my God, I arm myself anew each day for the combat by reception of the Eucharist. If I am in need of special light and prudence in order to discharge my burdensome duties, I draw nigh to my Savior and seek counsel and light from Him." --Saint Thomas More

"These things, good Lord, that we pray for, give us Thy grace to labor for." --Saint Thomas More.

"It is a shorter thing and sooner done, to write heresies, than to answer them." --Saint Thomas More.
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More rose rapidly in public life despite his lack of ambition. He was a renowned lawyer and elected to Parliament in 1504 (at age 22). In 1510, he was appointed Undersheriff of London; 1518, Secretary to Henry VIII; 1521, he was knighted; 1523, chosen Speaker of Parliament; 1529, Lord Chancellor in succession to Cardinal Wolsey. Nevertheless, he continued to read, study, and write, and is known more as a scholar than as a jurist. Yet he was realistic and wrote in Utopia (1516), "philosophy had no place among kings....it is not possible for all things to be well, unless all men were good, which I think will not be this good many years."

Thomas was imprisoned in the Tower, because he would not help Henry VIII put away Catherine of Aragon and supplant the Pope as the head of the Church of England. Thomas More did not wish to die. "I am not so holy that I dare rush upon death," he declared; "were I so presumptuous, God might suffer me to fall." But he could not accept that Henry VIII was supreme head of the church. He resigned rather than be seen to support the king's divorce.

Next Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which made it high treason to refuse to accept the king as the only head on earth of the Church of England. More was brought to trial on the perjured testimony of Richard Rich and defended himself against the inferred act of treason. He was convicted of high treason, and martyred for his steadfast defense of the indissolubility of marriage and the supremacy of the pope. After the sentence was issued, he broke his silence. On the scaffold, he said simply,
"I have been ever the king's good and loyal servant, but God's first"

"Doubtless Christ could have caused the apostles not to sleep at all, but to stay awake, if that had been what He wished in an absolute and unqualified sense. But actually His wish was qualified by a condition -- namely that they themselves wish to do so, and wish it so effectually that each of them do his very best to comply with the outward command Christ Himself gave and to cooperate with the promptings of His inward assistance. In this way He also wishes for all men to be saved and for no one to suffer eternal torment, that is, always provided that we conform to His most loving will and do not set ourselves against it through our own willful malice. If someone stubbornly insists on doing this, God does not want to waft him off to heaven against his will, as if He were in need of our services there and could not continue His glorious reign without our support. Indeed, if He could not reign without us, He would immediately punish many offenses which now, out of consideration for us, He tolerates and overlooks for a long time to see if His kindness and patience will bring us to repent. But we meanwhile abuse this great mercy of His by adding sins to sins, thus heaping up for ourselves (as the apostle says) a treasure of wrath on the day of wrath (Rom 2:5)."

"Nevertheless, such is God's kindness that even when we are negligent and slumbering on the pillow of our sins, He disturbs us from time to time, shakes us, strikes us, and does His best to wake us up by means of tribulations. But still, even though He thus proves Himself to be most loving even in His anger, most of us in our gross human stupidity misinterpret His action and imagine that such a great benefit is an injury, whereas actually (if we have any sense) we should feel bound to pray frequently and fervently that whenever we wander away from Him He may use blows to drive us back to the right way, even though we are unwilling and struggle against Him."

"Thus we must first pray that we may see the way and with the Church we must say to God, 'From blindness of heart, deliver us, O Lord.' And with the prophet we must say, "Teach me to do your will" and "Show me your ways and teach me your paths." Then we must intensely desire to run after you eagerly, O God, in the odor of your ointments, in the most sweet scent of your Spirit. But if we grow weary along the way (as we almost always do) and lag so far behind that we barely manage to follow at a distance, let us immediately say to God, "Take my right hand" and "Lead me along your path."

"Then if we are so overcome by weariness that we no longer have the heart to go on, if we are so soft and lazy that we are about to stop altogether, let us beg God to drag us along even as we struggle not to go. Finally, if we resist when He draws on us gently, and are stiff-necked against the will of God, against our own salvation, utterly irrational like horses and mules which have no intellects, we ought to beseech God humbly in the most fitting words of the prophet: "Hold my jaws hard, O God, with a bridle and bit when I do not draw near to you" (Ps 32:9)."
--Saint Thomas More in The Sadness of Christ

[All text is from "Way Of Living Website" where the quotes are better referenced, also you can get more (no pun intended:0) as well as a list of his writings at the Catholic Encyclopedia]


Monday, June 11, 2007

The Splendor of Truth

For anyone who follows Jesus, the embodiment of Truth, reading "The Splendor of Truth" an Encyclical Letter of Pope John Paul II (Veritatis Splendor) is an absolute MUST.

In dealing with the moral and ethical questions of today, which is basically a war against the tyranny of relativism, one is girded by truth. So what is essential?

Following Christ is thus the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality: just as the people of Israel followed God who led them through the desert towards the Promised Land (cf. Ex 13:21), so every disciple must follow Jesus, towards whom he is drawn by the Father himself (cf. Jn 6:44).

This is not a matter only of disposing oneself to hear a teaching and obediently accepting a commandment. More radically, it involves holding fast to the very person of Jesus, partaking of his life and his destiny, sharing in his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father. By responding in faith and following the one who is Incarnate Wisdom, the disciple of Jesus truly becomes a disciple of God (cf. Jn 6:45). Jesus is indeed the light of the world, the light of life (cf. Jn 8:12). He is the shepherd who leads his sheep and feeds them (cf. Jn 10:11-16); he is the way, and the truth, and the life (cf. Jn 14:6). It is Jesus who leads to the Father, so much so that to see him, the Son, is to see the Father (cf. Jn 14:6-10). And thus to imitate the Son, The image of the invisible God" (Col 1;15), means to imitate the Father. (#19)



This quote gives another example of it's beauty and challange:

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate, we must not be content merely to warn the faithful about the errors and dangers of certain ethical theories. We must first of all show the inviting splendor of that truth which is Jesus Christ himself. In him, who is the Truth (cf. Jn 14:6), man can understand fully and live perfectly, through his good actions, his vocation to freedom in obedience to the divine law summarized in the commandment of love of God and neighbor. And this is what takes place through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, of freedom and of love: in him we are enabled to interiorize the law, to receive it and to live it as the motivating force of true personal freedom: "the perfect law, the law of liberty" (Jas 1:25). (#83)

Thursday, June 7, 2007

My Journey in Natural Family Planning

While a student at Cedarville College (now Cedarville University), a concept hit me while studying the scriptures. The World will tell you clearly that money is a blessing and children are a burden. However, the Bible seemed to indicate that money was often a burden while children were clearly a blessing. Students would frequently mention their desire for family, but would usually set a limit on how many children they wanted. Yet, I never heard anyone place limits on the amount of money they hoped to earn or possessions they hoped to obtain. It didn't take long for me to become known by my friends and acquaintances as the guy that wanted to have 12 kids . I guess they still couldn't resist imposing some number upon God's blessing. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that loving children was a excellent measure of one’s Christlikeness, while the love of money was the root of all kinds of evil.

Knowing that I was not interested in any young lady that was not open to the Author of life, this reputation was not all that bad for me to have.  I came to know my future wife as a growing disciple of Christ, open to all the possibilities of life in the Spirit.

When we became engaged, we truly desired to know the will of God in every aspect of our future life together. We discussed the issues of finances, education, employment, in-laws, and the more intimate aspects of our marital union. We prayed, read books, wrote letters, and sought the advice of married couples we admired for their faith in Christ. We did not practice the physical aspects or pretend marital union before marriage. So we also prepared for our conjugal life by laying the foundational stone of faithfulness in chastity.

I was a Biology/Pre-Med major, so I got to study Embryology. It became clear to me on a purely biological level that I never wanted my wife to place any harmful substance like a hormonal contraceptive into her body. It seemed absolutely clear to me that God had an awesome design in this amazing reproductive system that we could only mess up rather than manipulate. Anyway, I wanted to remain open to God blessing us with children.

My future wife was spending time with one of those older women we respected. This woman had made a tragic decision to abort an unwanted pregnancy while young. In the process of her healing and forgiveness she became strongly pro-life. Now, she had even grown to see contraception as part of the devil’s anti-life agenda along with abortion. She had never heard anything like this before and shared it with me. It struck me as the extreme though admirable view of someone hurt by abortion, perhaps like someone hurt by alcoholism becoming adamant about total abstinence. We could see no Biblical reason to reject barrier methods if we chose to use them, though I would have argued that the pill was clearly Biblically unwise.

Connecticut law inadvertently required us to take a renewed look at the different types of contraception. Very near our wedding date, Linda discovered she needed a repeat MMR vaccination in order for us to get a marriage license in CT. Doctors recommended that she not become pregnant for a period of time after the shot, which included the first 3 months of our marriage. Unaware of any other alternative, we decided to use contraception for those months, even though we didn’t really want to.

We read and studied more intently those sections on contraception in the marriage prep books. In an effort to make the wisest choice, we eliminated all hormonal methods and settled for some type of barrier method. For me, the condom held too many negative connotations. We determined that the "sponge" method with the addition of a spermicide would have the least risk of side effects or pregnancy.

After those three months of contracepting, we were then graciously blessed with the conception of a new, unrepeatable life during the fourth month of our marriage. Dining at the Olive Garden, we celebrated our first anniversary with an 8 day old little girl at our side.

We continued to grow in the LORD. We remained active in promoting the gospel of life at church and in the community through the local Crisis Pregnancy Center. We desired more blessings from the LORD and found out just how the gift of fertility is not only precious but unpredictable.

Something wasn’t working right with my wife’s fertility. She had been having periods for over a year, we were desiring more children, and we had not been using any form of birth control. Yet, we had no pregnancy. We were medically considered as having infertility. Now, we began to think about life without any more children. Would we adopt? We thought about how blessed we were to have tried to get pregnant that first year against the advice of many books and "experts". This only led us to pray more in gratitude and in anticipation for His plans, confident that we were open to the life He had for us. We knew that it was God alone who fully knew the womb and we placed our fertility in His hands.

God is good. Very soon, after my wife missed her period, our hopes were confirmed. New life! What joy to know that God was blessing us, but once again it was not as we had planned. At about 10 weeks an ultrasound showed that the heart was not beating. Our baby was dead. The medical field uses euphemisms like miscarriage, but we knew this was another unique, unrepeatable life from his or her moment of conception.

We grieved the loss but celebrated the life. We named our child and planted a tree in our little one’s memory. Again, the trial brought us closer in unity and made us all the more appreciative of Life. Out of His great abundance He gave us a new life shortly after our loss. In less than four years of marriage we now had two beautiful, healthy girls and we hoped to cherish whatever God might have for us.

Soon, our attitude and spirit of openness was challenged. We had a third daughter only 15 months after the second. We then felt a bit too quickly blessed. Linda was terrified of another sudden pregnancy, which meant another painful delivery. She was exhausted with 3 little ones now, especially with contemplating home schooling the oldest. Our unity was tested; she was not ready for more children and I was not eager to use birth control. By the grace of God, Linda read a pamphlet about Natural Family Planning while workign at the Crisis Pregnancy Center . It claimed to be safe, healthy, and effective. We hoped it would give us an acceptable way of regulating births.

Having three young children is perhaps one of the most difficult times in marriage. It was for us. The issue of procreation was effecting our unity. We were tired but still seeking to love each other and plan for our future in a way that would please God. I knew that to love Linda I could not demand she remain open to more children, so I prayed. Linda knew that our sexual intimacy was intricately tied to our unity in body and spirit, so she prayed and sought some means on which we could both rely to postpone another pregnancy without risking health or compromising our convictions.

NFP taught us how to observe the fertile and infertile times of a woman’s cycle by temperature, mucus, and cervical changes. It was amazing. By understanding better God’s incredible design we knew exactly when having marital relations might end in pregnancy or not. The method was practically flawless when followed properly. However, we used the information that we learned and added the use of a barrier, the condom, during fertile times. The teachers did state that they believed using contraception was a sin. They encouraged abstaining during fertile times if a couple had serious reasons to postpone or space a pregnancy. They taught that this would assist the couple’s growth in unity, but we did not accept the moral implications.

Thinking about contraception as a sin did remind us of that Godly woman’s advice during our time at Cedarville, and it did seem logical from a pro-life position. We remained open to life and open to God making us more open where we feared and lacked faith. God continued to work in our hearts and expose us in our pro-life convictions to literature that spoke about the culture of death. We learned the of the pill’s potential to act as an abortifacient and began to oppose some forms of contraception on moral principles.

We grew spiritually and blessings were willingly received. We would even jest that we had the "gift of receiving". Due to the naturally infertile times during pregnancy and breastfeeding, our need for using any barrier method of contraception was rare. With fertility awareness we knew exactly when our next 2 children were conceived, neatly spaced about 2 years apart. But, now, my openness to life was being tested. Was God too abundant in His blessing? The world in which we live designs vans for only 7, so 5 children is all that fit. Can we really afford further expansion? Besides, we were now fully immersed not only in the procreation of children but in their education. We home schooled. Could God really want to give us more when we weren't sure we were doing so well with what we had?

Something was different for me now when it came to marital relations. I did not want to procreate even though I wanted to be united. My wife was reading articles from the Couple to Couple League that said weird things. Godly men, defenders of life, were making statements like one of the best gifts you can give your child is a sibling. Family defenders were challenging us to be generous in life, trust God, and be a sign of life to the culture of death. We were as pro-life and pro-family as anyone could be and yet I was not open to another ...... another ...... what was it...... a blessing or a burden?

One thing I was definitely still open to was sex. I did not want to abstain but for some reason I had no peace about using a contraceptive. I wanted the sexual relation and the unitive intimacy but I was rejecting its procreative design in my heart. So was I really loving Linda? Was I still willing to give ALL of myself to her in the marital act, even that which may cause procreation?

No, I was willing to take the pleasure but not receive the God given consequences. If I was no longer willing to give of my entire self, I was trading love for mere purposefully sterile sexual gratification. It was as if I was uninviting the Holy Spirit, excluding the Author of Life from our sexual union. At that point, it ceased to be worship. The thought of quenching the Holy Spirit in the most intimate aspect of marriage horrified me. The thought of using a condom now sickened me.

I vowed to follow the Biblical principle in 1 Cor 7:5 "Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control." RSV

Now, until God changed my heart toward another blessing, we would abstain during the fertile times and pray. We would pray, offering our time to God as a fast, asking God to make us one in Him, and opening our hearts to Christ, our Life, in every way no matter what the cost. We took that time to embrace spiritual unity and pray for our children and for others. We gained even greater spiritual blessings than we ever imagined and I grew in self-mastery over sexual temptations.

We now fully accepted the principle that each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain open to the transmission of life , thus honoring the unitive and procreative aspects designed by God for sex and marriage.

Since we had now accepted the principles for teaching Natural Family Planning with the Couple to Couple League we responded to the Holy Spirit’s prompting to become teachers of NFP. We learned and now teach the "sympto-thermal method" of natural family planning. As we said before, it is safe, healthy, and effective, honoring God’s design for sex and marriage.

The next two of our seven children have been received in gratitude, not because of "method failure" resulting in an unplanned pregnancy, but because of method success in changing our hearts to remain open to the possibilities of life.

Planning a family is not the same for every couple. The couples that taught us both had 3 children each and have used the method their entire marriages. Sometimes couples open to life have difficulty achieving pregnancy. God has plans for families and NFP is the best way to achieve, space, or postpone a pregnancy while inviting the Holy Spirit into the marital union, making it an act of worship.

As a final note, it was this great truth (Humanae Vitae) preserved in only the Catholic Church that opened our hearts and minds to consider the claims of the Catholic Church. We entered fully Easter Vigil 2005. That "journey home" will have to be another post for another time.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Life verse

Philippians 3:13-14

"Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. " NIV

These verses contain many deep theological concepts in a tight package. It clearly shows that getting to Christ is a process. We are participants in working out our salvation. However, it can only happen in Christ Jesus. God has issued the call and given the grace of Christ in Christ making it possible to win. We have a choice to do or not to do. This also means it is possible to lose, even for Paul.

Salvation is first and foremost a person. That person is Jesus Christ. But Salvation is a place as well - in Christ. With Christ we have eternal life, in Christ we have eternal life. Every day we have the chance to start again, forgetting what is behind. For a sinner like myself, this has been a constant comfort since I claimed this verse at 19. It gives me hope and a challange to never, never, never give up, but to press on.