The Family Foundation School Catholic Community Bulletin
Pauca Verba (Latin for: “A Few Words)
This is Family Day weekend at our school. We’ve hosted hundred of relatives. There’s a lot of repairing to do in our families, isn’t there? We left our families as unhappy places. And that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. Not all the ruin is our fault, but we have played an important role in the sadness.
And our families don’t heal simply because we’re ‘nice’ when the folks show up for the show – or because we get misty eyed when they drive off for home and we’re left behind.
Do you really want to repair your family? Begin by sending home wonderful report cards – give them that joy! For your part, restore Christ to your home. All throughout the gospels we see Jesus as a healer. Invite Christ into your life – ask that Jesus would expel the personal demons that don’t want your family to be well. And for heaven’s sake – get real! Get real, so that on graduation day we’re not grinding each other in dirty dancing at the expensive party that’s been thrown for us. Get real, so that when, through tears, you recommit to your family on the graduation stage, you mean it in a deeply felt place – and hours later aren’t buying beer in the Hancock supermarket. Jesus loved his family and looked for ways constantly to expand his notion of family! What about it?
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SUNDAY NIGHT ADORATION: Most of us leave the chapel after Mass on Sunday evening, but have you stayed to experience what follows? Or do you stay only now and again? Have you ever invited a friend to stay and pray with you for Adoration?
Jesus said of the bread, “This is my Body.” And he said of the wine, “This is my Blood.” He meant it. He doesn’t lie. How does the change happen? I don’t know. Can I understand the Eucharist? No. But that doesn’t keep me from believing – in fact, believing is only real when I can’t understand it and yet surrender to it as truth. God doesn’t lie.
Believing in an unseen world makes for a deeper, more interiorly rich person. Belief awakens a sense of wonder – which most of us lost when we were little – becoming cynical and jaded.
On Sunday night during adoration we light candles and pray. We can hear the night sounds of insects coming through the open chapel windows. We kneel before Christ in the Eucharist and consider the mysteries of the gospel – the lives of Jesus and Mary. And we let these mysteries – Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious – invade our lives, becoming fruitful in growth, joy and change.
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BIBLE READING – SPIRITUAL READING: We’ve filled ourselves with every kind of printed toxin – anarchistic material, printed pornography, dirty stories, terrible and false poetry, phony philosophies, the poison of witchcraft, magic and the occult, anti-God literature. Our problem is a soul problem, isn’t it? We’ve allowed demons to take over by what we’ve read.
Mark Twain writes, “The one who doesn’t read has no advantage over the one who cannot read.” Many of us have trouble reading. Many of us have weak vocabularies, or a hard time getting the sense of sentences and paragraphs. Many of us are strangers to spiritual or religious concepts. Soul problem. Change this! Learn the stories of the Bible – the Hebrew Scriptures (especially Genesis and Exodus), the Gospels, Acts and Letters of Saint Paul. Every Christian should be reading the New Testament – even again and again, throughout our lives. Much of what we read is unworthy – while we neglect the saving Word of God!
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OCTOBER IS ROSARY MONTH: Want to step up your spiritual life? Want to do something that requires a real discipline? Something you’ll feel great about in a month? Make a promise to pray the rosary every day during the month of October. A decade up Chapel Hill in the morning. A decade while waiting for the service to start. A decade going down to breakfast. A decade walking over to class or while you wait for class to start. A decade sometime during the evening – maybe to begin a study hall or back up the hill to the dorm – or before lights out. It’s all very do-able.
A Few Words