🧀The Cheese & Crackers = Quotes by St. Francis of Paola, St. Joan of Arc, and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
🌽The Veggies = My 2💰
🍟The Potatoes = “Catherine of Genoa”, By Fr. Benedict Groeschel, O.F.M. Cap. (Part 2 of 10)
🍗The Meat = Book: “Purgation And Purgatory, The Spiritual Dialogue”, by Catherine of Genoa
🍰The Dessert = YouTube Video: “God’s Presence In the Eucharist”, by Fr. Jacques Philippe (Part 5 of 8)
⏲ “Act and God will act, work and He will work.” By St. Joan of Arc
🍅 "The precious time of thanksgiving after communion should not be neglected", by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
📹https://youtu.be/oZCixBEORp8
Fast forward to the next morning, and find myself waking up and wondering why did that video cross my path? Upon meditating it spoke to me in this way:
💡 The first thing: The minuses in our lives are allowed by God. It’s in embracing the cross that we can find that the minus is turned into a “plus” by God’s grace that blesses far beyond what we can imagine
📖 Ephesians 3:20-21 “Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine, by the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen”
The good becomes better, and intimately it’s about “the best”. What God offers is always nothing less.
💡 The second thing: Coming to mind is that whatever state we find ourselves, God can help us level the playing field. He will have it that no one is destined to have to sit on the side lines. Every puzzle piece helps complete the picture, as we are all in this together and need each other to function at the highest level. Small puzzle pieces are just as valuable as large ones, no one or nothing is indispensable in God’s plans, everything have a unique purpose.
📖 Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 “There is an appointed time for everything and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to give birth, a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant. A time to kill, and a
time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. What profit have workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to mortals to be busied about. God has made everything appropriate to its time, but has put the timeless into their hearts so they cannot find out, from beginning to end, the work which God has done”
💡 The third thing: Lastly, we aren’t our bodies. The body is just the shell containing what is most valuable. Like an egg, which is composed of the shell, the yolk, and the egg white, we are body, soul, and spirit. All parts are valuable, but the unseen is of the essence and the spirit lives forever. The body is the shell for our soul and spirit, and it plays it’s part but do not comprise who we really are. It’s to live from the core and not in a superficial manner. Sharing a bit of a conversation between the body and the soul that St. Catherine of Genoa talked about in the meat dish below, please sample and enjoy the hotdog.
After viewing the video and by Divine Providence coming across a quote by Henri Nouwen, it showcased for me the truth of living the present moment in, through, and with Christ. In that way, we’ll see enough to eventually witness that God is exactly who He says He is, a God of love who never leaves or forsakes us.
📖 John 6:35 “Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst”
📖 Psalms 34:9-11 “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the stalwart one who takes refuge in him. Fear the LORD, you his holy ones;
nothing is lacking to those who fear him. The rich grow poor and go
hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing”
The decision was made to use the quote as a text mess to be sent out:
Henri Nouwen: “You can’t C da whole path ahead, but there is usually enuf light 2 take da next step.”
(MC=My Comments- Da path dat have been laid out by God, U can B assured there is no other 1 dat is best. It’s this video from last nite dat is being shared, & this quote dat makes it clear that a “minus” is turned in2 a “plus” via embracing da cross wit complete trust in God dat His way is perfect. He alone can write straight wit crooked lines & make all things work 4 good. Graces @ work will do what we can’t by even a long shot imagine. Standing in da lite, we’ll get 2 witness how extreme is da goodness of God. Only by journeying on wit feet firmly planted on da path unfolding b4 us & holding on in faith, will we experience God’s ordered path leading 2 a fullness of life beyond imagining.
📖 John 10:10 “A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly”
📖 Psalms 34:9-10 “Taste and see that the LORD is good;blessed is the stalwart one who takes refuge in him. Fear the LORD, you his holy ones;nothing is lacking to those who fear him”
📖 Mark 7:37 “They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and [the] mute speak”
“The devotional life of Catherine in later years took a new turn. Her need for confession and her preoccupation with guilt for her sins diminished as her desire to receive the Holy Eucharist increased. In a complete reversal of the discipline of the times, Catherine was permitted to receive Holy Communion daily from May 1474 until her death. The focus of her devotion seems to have been the Eucharistic Presence of Christ and the experience of spiritual nourishment. Another noteworthy fact of her spiritual life was the lack of any human spiritual director or counselor for about twenty-five years. It was not until the end of the century, about 11 years before her death, that she received spiritual direction and assistance from the devoted Dom Cattaneo Marabotto, to whom we owe so many of the details of her life. Prior to this, she was open to receiving assistance from others but was internally instructed and governed by God alone, and felt inspired to follow this unusual and lonely course of action.
Another singular element of her life after her conversion was the ability to endure "great fasts." From a psychological point of view, both these fasts and her attitude toward them are fascinating. Beginning on March 25, 1476, and lasting through the next twenty-three years, Catherine could barely eat during Lent and Advent. She ate heartily up to the day a fast began and immediately after it was over. The fasting did not affect her. Through out that period, she was as active and bright as usual. This inability to eat troubled her at first. Ignorant as she was of its cause, she suspected that she was deluding herself and would force herself to eat. This invariably produced vomiting, and yet she would make the attempt again and again. These fasts were not seen as penances since she did not experience any hunger or discomfort from them, and they continued long after she admits that she had lost any glimpse of her past sins or guilt.
The first record of her ecstasies occurs during this period. They lasted several hours, and for their duration, she either walked up and down or lay on the ground with her face in her hands, always in private and always psychologically withdrawn from her environment. When they came to an end, she would at first try to explain to others what she had experienced, but since no one ever understood, she gave up the attempt and kept silent. She would also ignore calls of the curious but would respond immediately to any call of duty or charity. A Discussion of Mystical Phenomena, reading these accounts today, some five hundred
years later, many questions arise. What is the nature of these extraordinary phenomena? Are they miraculous, parapsychological, or the product of psychopathological states? Since these phenomena continued throughout Catherine's life, and since an adequate sampling of such experiences is found in these first six years of her conver sion, it seems best to interrupt the narrative of her life and see how this behavior fits into comprehensible categories drawn by contemporary studies in the psychology of religion. The later events of her life will then be more comprehensible.
In considering mystical phenomena, one must look at the entire life and functioning of the individual, because these occurrences will always be part of the whole pattern. Some four years after her conversion, Catherine Fieschi Adorna emerged a highly competent and totally dedicated servant of the poor. She became soon after director of the vast Pammatone Hospital now united with the smaller Franciscan dispensary. She acted with more sympathy and warmth to her husband, to the staff, the friars, and the patients of this great charitable institution. She was very close to her married cousin Tommasina Fieschi. Her wills (she wrote several) showed an abiding concern for the welfare of her relatives, especially unmarried nieces, and for her humble servant girls, at least one of whom had some emotional disorder. Later, as an older woman, she would be a close friend of Ettore Vernazza, a deeply spiritual person and even more effective servant of the poor.
Catherine was not a withdrawn and isolated person. But she had an almost overwhelming spiritual sensitivity, a sensitivity so powerful and compelling that a person of less strength and acumen might well have been destroyed. This is why, as has been mentioned, she combined
elements in her life that are often mutually exclusive. A solitary, she was surrounded by needful people. Though her inner world was compelling to the point of ecstasy, she responded normally to the outer world. Von Hugel has studied this capacity in his amazingly thorough way and has concluded that she harmonized psychological chaos by "constant and immense effort, a practically unbroken grace-getting and self-giving, an ever-growing heroism and indeed sanctity, and, with and through all of these things, a corresponding expansive and virile joy." We owe a great deal to von Hugel. Still, while he used the best psychiatric theory available to establish Catherine's basically healthy personality, he was not aware of the insights of psychodynamic theory, which was only then developing. Today with the help of these psychodynamic insights it is possible to give a more persuasive account of some of the unusual phenomena of Catherine's life.
There is no evidence to suggest that Catherine Adorna was psychotic. She was a person striving for an adjustment of profound inner forces. Her own doubts about the supernatural origin of her fasts and illnesses, her willingness to listen to others, to be skeptical about the spiritual value of something as dramatic as a forty-day fast, attest to a degree of reality testing inconsistent with any psychotic process. Her ability to relate to antagonistic personalities, including initially her husband's, counter balances her withdrawal into unusually recollected states. Her ability to rouse herself on a moment's notice for the good of some other person is totally inconsistent with any pathological withdrawal symptoms. In a penetrating study of the difference between mystical states and schizophrenia, Wapnick has pointed out that whereas pathological states lead the personality to disintegrate, mysticism does the very opposite. The remarkable unity of purpose combined with an ever growing concern for others and escape from self-centered thinking makes an overwhelming case for the basic mental health of Catherine after her conversion. On the other hand, her depression and the voluntary attempts to over come this state caused by her loneliness and solitude in the first years of her unhappy marriage suggest a more normal neurotic response to this genuinely miserable situation.
A growing body of theory on the function of unconscious defense mechanism in the adjustment of neurotic personality, not available to von Hugel, makes this clear. Von Hugel, however, in a very perceptive passage, has an inkling of this fact: "It can be said, in simple truth, that she became a saint because she had to, that she became it, to prevent herself from going to pieces. She literally had to save, and actually did save, the fruitful life of reason and of love, by ceaselessly fighting her immensely sensitive, absolute, and claimful self." In the language of modern psychology, he suggests that some of the phenomena in Catherine's life may be unconscious attempts of the ego to adjust to the overwhelming stimulation of her inner consciousness of the Divine.
For anyone familiar with defense mechanisms, this probability arises: Her penances, grief over her sins, extraordinary fasts, even her zeal for and identification with the poor,' functioned as counterweights in her complex personality. This is especially evident in the years immediately following her conversion. Catherine often stated that she was inwardly impelled to do these things and she had a particular distaste for any assignment of merit to what she had done. She never saw herself as the giver but always as the receiver of blessings.
What about other phenomena such as the great fasts that seem to defy explanation? Such unaccountable experiences so common that it is thoroughly unscientific to claim that they did not occur. Although they are often found in abundance in the lives of deeply spiritual persons with a mystical bent, they are also evident in the lives of persons with no great moral or spiritual acumen. In an often arbitrary way, the phenomena that occur in the lives of otherwise commonplace people are called parapsychological, indicating that they can be related to natural causes not known or understood; those occurring in the lives of extraordinarily devout persons are called paramystical, a term suggesting that they are related to the special gifts of the individual. The fact that in both cases the same phenomenon is observed (for example, extrasensory perception) leads to some confusion. In Catherine's case, the circumstances of her fasts, especially her inability to eat and her complete denial of any penitential character to these fasts, suggests some similarity to the syndrome known as anorexia nervosa. The similarities do not exclude profound differences. Her complete lack of symptoms of malnutrition after a forty-day fast is not compatible with anorexia, nor is her ability to eat heartily immediately after her fast. Thus, we are left with a phenomenon as scientifically unaccountable as a miracle and yet one that bears some resemblance to a psychosomatic symptom. Since these fasts seemed to improve her health and mental functioning, they can in no way be classified as pathological or morbid.
The same is true of the so-called ecstasy. These periods of profound recollection did not interfere with her adjustment to the extramental world. Indeed, she could easily rouse herself if need be. They correspond to profound periods of recollection described by writers as varied as the English philosopher Aldous Huxley and the experimental psychologist Albert Deikman. These states, as both of these writers suggest, may be aids to healthy adjustment rather than pathological states. These profound periods of contemplation then may be seen as furthering a better adjustment. Since, as we shall see, Catherine continued until the very last days of her life to be a highly organized, compassionate, and ever more available person, this possibility should be considered”.
Stay tuned for more.
🚹 BODY
Since I am subject to you, I will do as you wish; remember, though, that without me you cannot do what you wish. Let us, therefore, understand each other at the outset; in this way we shall have no arguments. Once I have found what gives me joy, please keep your word. I would not want to hear you grumble, muttering that you want to go elsewhere or insisting on looking for what interests you. To do away with that possibility, let us invite a third party to come along, someone to resolve any differences we might have a just and unselfish person.
👁🗨 SOUL
Very well. Who will the third person be?
🚹 BODY
Self-Love. He will give the body its due and share the body's joys. He will do the same with you; and so each of us will have what is meet and
proper.
👁🗨 SOUL
And if we were to come across food we would both enjoy, what then?
🚹 BODY
Then he who can eat more will do so, provided there is enough for two. If that is not the case, Self-Love will give to each his due. Considering our naturally different tastes however, it would be remarkable if we came across food we both enjoyed.
👁🗨 SOUL
Very well. I am not afraid of being won over to your preferences, since by nature of the two I am the stronger.
🚹 BODY
True, you are the stronger of the two, but I am at home here. There are many things here that I enjoy. It will be easier for me to convert you to my
preferences, I think, than vice versa. The things that give you joy
are not visible nor do they have any taste.
👁🗨 SOUL
Let us start out, then. Each of us will have one week to do what he
will- as long as we do not offend our Creator, something I will not do as long as I live. Should I die-that is, if you have me offend God- I will do all that you ask, be your servant, do your will, take delight in what gives you delight. Bound each to each, we shall never again be separated in this world or the next, but be together in good and evil. Free Will will not
loosen this bond. Should I triumph over you, naturally you would act the same. Agreed on this, the Body and the Soul set out in search of Self-Love.”
(see the Green Salad link for a free pdf copy of the book by St. Catherine of Genoa)
Video link: https://youtu.be/5wH7yJGba_s