Ahem.

I don’t remember what it was about anymore.  They barely remembered what it was about halfway through their brawl.  And a brawl it was.

“She said this and then I did this and then she responded with this and….blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”  The part that struck me, and stuck with me, is that the younger one, who is smaller and not as strong, was apparently doing something to the elder one, who is much larger and stronger, “for a really long time” and it “really hurt” and she “wouldn’t stop.”

And besides worrying for the fate of their immortal souls and praying for the Holy Spirit to intervene and somehow take control of the situation for me, all I could think was “If it really hurt so badly, why did you let her keep doing it?”

I’ll spare you the gruesome details of the discussions and apologies and prayers and consequences that followed but I’ll confess that my elder daughter’s willingness to be the victim weighed heavily on me.  She could have easily pulled her arm away.  If not that, she could have easily called for help- I was just two rooms away, after all.  Perhaps she wanted to make sure that her sister was so clearly in the wrong that she was willing to endure the discomfort of a tight bicep squeeze “for a really long time”.  Perhaps she wanted the satisfaction of not being the one in trouble. Perhaps she really thought she needed to suffer in silence.  I don’t know.

What I do know is this: playing the martyr, turning the other cheek, suffering in silence- these are not free passes to salvation.

Since the day of their epic battle, I’ve been pondering this.  Puzzling over it.  Praying for some divine inspiration and just enough wisdom that they’re not worse off for having lived with me for 18 years once they step out of my doors.  When are we called to “turn the other cheek” or “suffer in silence” and when are we called to stand up for our ourselves and our God-given dignity?  The answer to either cannot be always nor can it be never.  I just couldn’t figure out when to do each one.

When the answer finally came yesterday, like a flash into my heart, it was a wonderful, fabulous “duh” kind of moment.  Because the answer was not only simple, it was the same exact answer I get all the dang time (I’m a slow learner, what can I say.).  And that answer is: it’s not about me.

It’s not about me.

None of this is about me.  Or her.  Or you.  It’s only about God and our relationship with Him.

So, if suffering in silence will bring us or our family member or our friend closer to God, will improve or help re-start a relationship with Him, then it’s the right thing to do.  If turning the other cheek shows another person God’s love personified, His willingness to die for our sins and keep loving us despite, well, everything, then it’s the right thing to do.

Take parenting for example.  And I use this example because it’s pretty much the only thing I have any experience with these days.  Parenting and managing hard water stains.  So parenting.  We might not love, you know, folding the laundry.  In fact, folding the clean laundry and putting it away might be the very worst chore we can think of.  We may have so many piles and baskets of clean laundry stacked in the den that people can no longer find clean, seasonally appropriate clothing in their closets.  They have to dig through the piles just to find something, anything, not covered in the remnants of last night’s dinner.

Olivia Hussey

Have you ever received a compliment that didn’t sound like one or one that caused you to swell with pride so much you thought you would explode and yet you acted unaffected? All humans love positive affirmation even those of us who pretend otherwise, or those who do not always accept it graciously.

I have noticed that most people react awkwardly when faced with a compliment – often mumbling a thank you, changing the topic or acting rather flustered. I wonder if it is a false sense of modesty that gets us acting or feeling this way. Perhaps it is the belief that to just accept a compliment without any question (or drama) would suggest that we are accepting it as pure fact. This would in turn suggest possible pride which – heaven help us – might be a sin!

In my own experience, I have been blessed to be considered attractive by many people and be compared to many beautiful ladies. I therefore have had ample opportunity to respond to compliments about my physical appearance. These however are the ones that used to make me the most uncomfortable – especially when I was much younger. See, growing up, I was taught to believe that receiving a compliment about my physical person meant that I had in some way attracted attention to myself – which was sinful. Thankfully I have come a long way from that self deprecating way of thinking. These days however, while I would graciously welcome all compliments, (wink!) I believe I would value a compliment about my physical appearance less than one about a personality characteristic that I had worked hard to achieve. Yes – with age comes wisdom!! With age also comes fewer compliments!!??… And then there are kids – nothing like kids to keep your feet planted firmly on the ground – or quick sand!?

During my youth, when my family moved to India, I struggled with learning Hindi but well remember one small, short story after all these years, entitled “Bechara, Balla Admi”. The English translation is “Poor, Good Man”. The story is told about this “poor good man” – so labeled by the villagers for multiple reasons. It went on to say that even if he wanted to be “bad” he couldn’t because he had to live up to the “good” image foisted on him by the community. So, the author opined, his compliment was really no blessing but a burden.

Many moons ago, when I was just twenty, I was paid a compliment that is by far the best in my lifetime, to date. A young man, who had a great devotion to Mother Mary, told me he had always asked her to provide a living example of herself here on earth and he believed she finally answered him when he met me. Little me (I was even littler than I am today!) was moved to tears when I heard this and I wondered if I deserved this super compliment but nevertheless was eager to claim it. When he explained why he believed this, he did not reference any of my physical attributes either. While I cherished this compliment, I was reluctant to disclose it to anyone because at face value, it would just seem too boastful. Then a couple of years ago, I was reminded of this compliment of compliments when a fellow parishioner who is an artist, told me she wanted to paint the “Virgin Mary” and would like me to be the model for the painting… Fast forward to recently, my daughter saw an old picture of me and told me it reminded her of the “Mother Mary in the movie Jesus of Nazareth”. (Trust me, most of the time; I can count on her to keep me humble!) Even though the picture was old, after I calmed my inwardly, extremely flattered self down, I once again recalled my all time treasured compliment from so many years ago. Despite the latter two compliments being about my physical attractiveness, they reminded me of the significance of being compared in any way, to Mary the mother of God. A lady who epitomizes all that is the beauty of unadulterated Womanly Grace.

In the movie Jesus of Nazareth, Olivia Hussey portrayed Mother Mary in the breathtaking splendor of youth and innocence, grace in suffering and her fidelity to God no matter the situation. I can honestly say in my own life with all its joys and challenges, there have been many an occasion when I have fallen short of this glory and grace and I have reached out in despair to that beauty. Yes – that one super compliment has been such a blessing to me because it has brought with it a responsibility – a “burden” – to live up to the image of the one Lady I am called to emulate.

After landing in LaGuardia, I checked my email messages as we prepared to de-board the plane. A note from a good friend inquired, “How was that conference you spoke at today?”

Huh?

“No, the conference is tomorrow.” I typed back. “I’ve just landed in New York.”

My friend responded back right away. “Um, you might want to check the brochure, because I think it was today.”

Radio silence.

Beads of sweat started rolling down my forehead as I headed to baggage claim, rummaging through my briefcase for the conference material—the same conference that was advertising Yours Truly as a key speaker. I finally found it and stopped short, looking at the date in disbelief. “No. No! NO! This can’t be right!” My heart dropped into my shoes. I had missed the conference by a day.

I wanted to crawl out of my skin right there in the middle of baggage claim. But I couldn’t. So I let out the kind of scream that no one sees—the kind that turns your stomach, rips your insides around, and then ties a double knot so you can’t breathe.

Mortified, I remembered that some of the top lawyers in my field were among both the panelists and guests. People were paying to hear me speak. But it was too late now, and there was nothing I could do about it.

My first reaction was to find someone else to blame.

I’m sorry, but you must have sent me the wrong date.

Don’t you people send out reminders? It’s not my fault.

My secretary booked the wrong flight.

I even thought about telling a teeny tiny lie—you know, the kind that is partially true.

I came down with an unexpected illness. (No kidding, I was feeling really sick.)

I had an emergency come up. (It’s called a brain lapse.)

I got stuck in traffic. (Just on the wrong day.)

But all I could do was say, “I’m sorry,” so I picked up my phone and made the dreaded call. No excuses. No lies.

I quickly reached the conference organizer and apologized. As it turned out, she was genuinely worried about my safety and said she understood the mix-up. She even promised to include me in next year’s program. I knew I would have to make further amends—like apologies to the conference panelists, something I wasn’t looking forward to. But I’d have to deal with that later.

I had blown it, and I desperately needed God’s grace once again. As much as I try, I just can’t keep it all together on my own strength. Grace wipes my tears and reminds me of my humanity. Grace is the hard floor that catches me when my knees give in. It’s the net that holds me, keeping me from falling into the endless abyss.

I sat down in LaGuardia airport and cried.

And really, I have to admit, they have a point. Not that there is no objective right and wrong, but that I have absolutely no authority to say what is right and what is wrong. I am not an authority. I am not authorized by another authority to make decrees about the rightness or wrongness of a darn thing. I am not empowered to decide for myself what is right and what is wrong.

And, of course, neither are they.

Humans do not decide such worlds-breaking things as rightness and wrongness, or human nature, or the existence of God. It’s not up to us. We don’t get to choose whether we live in a world with or without a God—we are only permitted to choose what we acknowledge, what we profess. We don’t get to decide if we live in a world where stealing is permissible or forbidden—we are only permitted to decide if we will abide by the laws in existence. We are in the presence of something entirely outside our control. And it drives us crazy.

Modernity, after all, is almost entirely predicated around the idea that progress is an expansion of individual choice and autonomy at the expense of whatever stands in our way. Man must conquer nature, must destroy distance, overcome the boundaries of gravity and time, must fend off death by any means necessary, must defeat the enemies of freedom by any means necessary. Our slogan, in fact, has become “By Any Means Necessary,” which is, of course, the sort of slogan that motivated the forces of Hell when they fought in the first great revolution against the Man—that is, the Triune God and his angels.

So we resist any imposition by any other upon our own, freely choosing (that is, autonomous) will when it comes to morality. We must be permitted the freedom to be mature, to make our own choices, to be respected for our maturity and the work we put into making our own choices. At the same time, as Pope Benedict has made abundantly clear, when truth is no longer the criterion for discerning the good, all that we are left with is power and politics. When good or evil do not rest in objective norms, then whoever is the most powerful decides what can and cannot be done. Freedom disappears in the name of freedom from objective norms. We are reduced to slavery beneath the boot of the tyrant and his majority, beneath the unfettered whim of his disordered will.

And, as Benedict, Blessed John Paul II, and C. S. Lewis often reiterated, true freedom comes from conforming ourselves and our world to the truth, to objective norms of right and wrong. Humans are liberated by behaving correctly according to their nature. Of course, at the heart of salvation history is one enormous exception to this rule—we are liberated by saying, “Yes” to the divine marriage proposal and accepting transcendence. We are made free in the Spirit by being adopted as sons and daughters of God—by grace, not by nature. But this is not to discard achieving freedom through obedience to nature. We are made partakers in the divine nature, as St. Peter tells us, and so the morality binding on Christians is the morality fitting to the divine life and love of God. Christian morality is the morality of the cross, of the total self gift made manifest in Christ’s passion and death which lies at the heart of the Trinity. The cross makes transparent the innermost life of God, and has been described by the popes as the deepest, most clear revelation of God which humanity has ever been privileged to witness.

Christ on the cross is a word to us, announcing the objective norm to which humans are called. We are made in God’s image and likeness, a phrase which indicates sonship. Adam and Eve are made in God’s image and likeness, and at the start of Genesis 5, have a son, Seth, who is in Adam’s image and likeness. Luke calls Adam “son of God” in his recounting of Jesus’s genealogy. The whole human race was created to be sons and daughters of God by grace, but Adam and Eve plundered the estate of their Father and became the first prodigal children. Christ on the cross is the sign of the Father come running with outstretched arms to embrace his children, his brethren, and draw them home.

We are not empowered to decide morality, only to discern it, and in it, the love of God, Father, Son, and Spirit.

Praise Him for the lukewarm and wishy-washy Church leaders.

Bless Him for the days of half-hearted adherence to Church teaching and the post-conciliar years of the infallible self.

And I mean that from the bottom of my Church/Tradition/Magesterium respecting heart, because God in his Mercy has used these men to bring salvation to souls.

I was speaking with a convert friend recently, listening to her account of coming to the faith.  She was preparing to marry a fallen-away Catholic whose roots were tugging him back for the celebration of the Sacrament of Matrimony.  A heathen whose taste for things spiritual was rapidly becoming a fully-fledged hunger, she was willing to be married in the Church building.

“Whatever,” she thought.

To her, it was the emotion, not the place, that mattered.  A painless concession to old-school in-laws.

But would the priest allow it?

A Big Tent man, he welcomed the couple with outstretched arms.  “Come on!  Of course you can be married here!”  He intoned boisterously.

She didn’t even have to sign the paper saying she’d raise the kids Catholic.  The one my pen almost choked on when it was my turn, a rabid Protestant, to marry a Catholic. 

In she came, and the Sacrament, the outward sign of the invisible grace, became a platform, a foundation, a core for more, and the ultimate result of grace building upon grace, established on the nature of her willingness, propped up by the somewhat lackadaisical approach of the parish priest, is the reason she was eventually baptized along with their children. 

It’s why she is today a Church/Tradition/Magisterium respecting Catholic.

There was another priest in the 1970s – I don’t even know his name.  He must have had a blase attitude toward the stricter norms regarding education required for baptism, and the pesky little godparents detail, because he baptized a whole family – mom, dad, two small children – without so much as a crash course in making the sign of the cross, although perhaps there was a handout on the creation of felt banners.

And clearly, the ancient Church has her reasons for requiring the anchors of education and godparently assistance for the neophyte, because very soon thereafter, the family fell away.  And the baptisms were forgotten.

But the grace of the Sacrament was at work.

Like Tolkien’s Ring of Power, the grace built quietly with the passing of years until one day, the fullness of time came, and the grace ignited a homing beacon.  There followed a strange and unlikely sequence of events that did not involve hobbits, but resulted in one of the children, now Protestant marrying a Catholic, in the Catholic Church.  One Sacrament having attracted another in a hungry soul, the combined grace power of the two was more than the soul could resist.  Twenty-one years after the somewhat improperly imbued grace of Baptism, the soul came home to live in the Catholic Church, receiving the Easter ‘Grand Slam’ of Reconciliation, Communion, and Confirmation’ in very short order.

Then came the phone call to family.

“Oh, and by the way, I became Catholic.”

A long silence, during which the years of Protestantism marched in reverse review until the long-forgotten day of the unlikely baptism was projected on the screen of family memory.

“Well!”  the voice was indignant toward the traitor.  “Well!  I suppose I’m not too surprised since you were baptized Catholic when you were two!”

She nearly dropped the phone.

And then she laughed.

For what God but ours would create time-release grace?

Who, but our God would know how to bring good from the work of those who should perhaps know better than to pass out Sacraments with such a cavalier attitude?

And how could it be contrived, except through His omnipotent omniscience that an invisible, indelible homing device could be affixed to a soul so that despite distance and intervening years, in spite of hours of fishing at the “new religion” pond, a soul could be recalled?

“This one’s mine,” God said.  “See my mark?

And I praise Him for the unknown, and perhaps unorthodox priest who put that mark on me.  Who, more fastidious, might have insisted on proper form, a lengthly process for which my drifting parents would not have waited and my friend might not have bothered.    Our souls would have been left nameless, master-less, vulnerable, without the the latent attraction to the Faith that eventually drew us home.

God bless the lukewarm priests, and the soul-saving power of Christ which can work through them.