#saint Maximilian Kolbe? obsessed

[kitsnicket]

All Saints Day is my favorite minor Catholic holiday bc i am nothing if not obsessed with the saints

[ephesus-churchdotorg]

St. Max

Hi, Saint Maximilian Kolbe said to talk about drinking. That must help people. I asked him if I would be drinking if I had money and he said, “You should always want to be drinking.” I get that perspective, I think. Don’t worry about it or obsess about it. If you run out, run out but always know you’d be drinking if you could. I’m gonna do that. It seems like God gives me little breaks by running…

[stevedonnellyfaith-blog]

Darkness and Light (Post 54) 9-10-14

                        I flicked on the television on Saturday and was surprised that it was tuned to a news channel. Because it is only Stephen and I at home, I asked Abby to cancel our satellite service, but she hasn't gotten around to it yet. I record some car shows and soccer occasionally to watch while I decompress after work, but that is time that would be better spent reading anyway. Stephen is generally too distracted to turn on the television, but he must have been watching something on Fox News because the show that came on was 13 Hours in Benghazi.   The show transfixed me.

I have read quite a bit of military history over the years, but I prefer military history to be the straight truth without revisionism or embellishment. Discussions about the attack in Benghazi tend to focus on boring politics rather than about the sacrifice of the men who died there. 13 Hours in Benghazi, on the other hand, was about what actually happened on the ground as told by the special operators who were there. I decided the car shows could wait. Jesus once explained to us that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for a friend. With the anniversary of September 11th this week, the sacrifice of people that run towards gunfire and burning buildings is on my mind. Taking time to watch a show about what happened in Libya seems little enough sacrifice to pay homage to a much more significant sacrifice on the part of men whose calling is to keep us safe.

I watched the rest of the program. At times it was excruciating, but the ache was healthy. The three special operators that wrote and lived the story explained how things went down and the circumstance of the death of their friends. When one couldn't talk through the pain, one of his buddy's would take up the story. They acted as a team even in this.

Each of them is devoutly Christian; each is also a loving father of a family. They were in Benghazi not because they revel in violence and death, but because evil men walk the earth and their vocation was to protect the innocent from the malevolent. While Christianity is a peaceful religion, it is also possible to be a Christian warrior. Every shepherd carries a crook and David was very capable with a sling in his youth and with a sword in his adulthood. I have read that every angel carries a blade and will continue to defend heaven until the last day, after which, with evil banished forever, their weapons and watchfulness will no longer be required. For the present, there exists great evil in the world, a state made apparent with each subsequent beheading, school shooting, murder and rape. It is perfectly natural that the Body of Christ should have a hand that can, at need, become a fist. As often as possible that hand should be used to help others, but for every Solomon that has served the Lord, there has also been a Joshua or a Judas Maccabeus.

It concerns me that our country may one day fail to provide a generation of soldiers fit to defend justice. Culturally we are drinking deeply from a poisonous draught in which right and wrong no longer stand in opposition. There no longer seems to be a choice between a white door and a black door; we have imagined a gray one that has never existed before. For every heroic television protagonist there is a serial killer protagonist or a methamphetamine cooker. Dissatisfied with goodness, adolescents now play video games in which they are assassins or violent felons. This is not a totally new phenomenon in America as Bonny, Clyde and Billy the Kid were portrayed as contemporary Robin Hoods in the media of their day - minus the giving to the poor part. What is a modern innovation is the idea that when someone beheads another person, we ought to animate the act with realism for an upcoming version of Jihadi Killers IV. A beheading ought to inspire our condemnation and our prayers for the victims as well as the warped immortal souls of the perpetrators.

We need to be careful of the impact of the jaundice of relativism on our ability to discern good from evil. There is no moral equivalence between the values that Maximilian Kolbe lived by and the values of the commandant of the prison camp where the saint gave his life. The bravery of the firefighters that I watched stride into the World Trade Center was admirable. The "courage" of the hijackers was misguided and reprehensible. Good and evil are objectively different. As Catholics we believe that the truth of the Natural Law written ineligibly on our hearts; truth is not written with an Expo pen on a dry erase board.

Within each of us there is both good and evil in opposition. In our prevailing culture there seems to be a belief that good and evil can exist in a soul in a kind of perpetual stasis like chocolate swirl ice cream. Modern thinking holds that nothing is purely dark or perfectly light; everything is jamocha. As a Catholic, I believe that my soul is always headed towards purity or degradation. Each act brings me closer to the darkness or towards the light. There is no standing still. When I chose wrongly, I need to make a U turn back to the light with a stop at the confessional on the way.

At one point during 13 Hours in Benghazi an operator describes aman with a cell phone that walked up the street next to the compound that served as their Alamo and returned in the direction from which he came. The special operator chose not to shoot him even though he was probably using the GPS capability of his phone to triangulate the mortar attack which later killed two teammates, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. The operator's decision was a moral one consistent with his training in the United States military. The pedestrian could have been a random non-combatant. The operator made a choice reinforced through discipline, an ingredient of most objectively right decisions.

Many modern people argue against the existence of a conscience. They say that when they make a decision in opposition to what we believe is the objective Natural Law they feel no remorse or cognitive dissonance caused by what we would call their transgression. The existence of terrorists, sociopaths and moral relativists can trouble faithful Christians because they don't seem subject to guilt. Their moral compass seems to be scrambled or broken. The conscienceless disturb people who are seeking salvation because if there is a Natural Law there must be guilt. If the lawbreakers don't suffer guilt, doesn't that put into question the idea that Natural Law is written on all our hearts?

In actuality people that claim not to feel the pangs of conscience are either mentality ill or have trained themselves in a manner to their great detriment. When a person persists in sin, they serve Christ an eviction notice from their personal premises. It is not hard to see the signs of a person who has set out with determination to silence the still small voice that tells him what is right. Usually the person inundates themselves with booze, drugs, sex, loud music or any other obsessive activity in an attempt to drown the inconvenient feeling of guilt. Mortal sin is soul poison. It is not surprising that those who slather their lives in iniquity eventually meet their goal of immunity to conscience.

13 Hours in Benghazi was a good reminder to me that the world is bigger than Brentwood, California or even the United States. I watched three men that love their families but also think daily about their lost teammates. They look forward to reuniting with them one day in heaven. I am sure that there are many firefighters and policemen in New York that think similar thoughts. As for me, on September 11th, I will think of my friend, Pat Dunn, an upperclassman who watched out for me my plebe year. I will never know on this side of heaven if Pat did anything heroic as the jetliner bulldozed into the side of his workplace in the Pentagon. I am hopeful that his soul was in good order in his final moments. I pray for the salvation of all those that lost their lives in the attacks September 11th and in subsequent action like Benghazi. When I remember to, I also pray for the attackers. Let us all hope for Jesus' mercy.

[orlandodiocese]

August 14, 2017, Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

“Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is to be handed over to men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.  And they were overwhelmed with grief.”  Matthew 17:22-23

Body: Killing yourself in the gym? It could be because you’re killing yourself in the kitchen.  If you were as disciplined about what you eat, as you are working out - you could save yourself a lot of time and energy. Remember sometimes you need a light or moderate workout to let your body heal.  

Mind: In the gym too much lately? Ask yourself why! Has it become an unhealthy obsession because you can’t control other areas of your life? Time to evaluate it all. Is your job making you miserable? Dating life rough? Have you been working on your relationship with God? You’re workouts, both physical and mental, should not be some sort of punishment. God created you for JOY.

Soul: It is okay to feel grief deep in your soul. The apostles were incredibly sad when Jesus told them He would be killed - even though He also told them He would rise again.  Jesus himself wept when He learned his dear friend Lazarus had died. He was heartbroken, even knowing He would make Lazarus rise. It is okay to let grief wash over you. In time, and with God’s help, this too shall pass.

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