We are all trees...

I am feeling really inspired right now and have a great need to write what the Lord has put on my heart.

So, first off, I write this for the glory and praise of God--and am not proficient in this topic, but really feel the only way to pin a tail on the donkey is to hammer it in a bit. So here we go. On New Years Eve, the missionaries and I threw a party for our students attending the SEEK National Conference. I remembered the year before I had gone to a party where we drew names out of a hat to find out who our "saint companion of the year" was. Mine this last year (2012) was St. Martha...I am ashamed to admit that I was not exactly psyched about this saint matching. I have never related to St. Martha--I was always a Mary--and was unabashedly proud of it. I always saw Martha as the one who wears herself out--who doesn't choose the better part and hang out with her Savior. But, in my ignorance, I failed to see that Martha is as essential as Mary, although gazing upon the face of the Lord is always the Church's more elevated state of life. We as a Church have both the contemplative life and the active apostolate--and we need them both for the Church to survive, as they are both parts of one body. However, the contemplative is the heart pulsing in the body, while the active life is the necessary hands, arms, and feet. The Lord was smart to give me St. Martha as an intercessor, because as a FOCUS missionary I have truly learned the beauty of service and how it is necessary for my salvation to pour myself out like her. Sure, I yearn for solitude and intimacy alone with Jesus (Mary-style) but I believe the Lord had given me many "Mary-years" before I joined FOCUS, as my previous spiritual life was much more solitary. It's time I get up off my butt and share Jesus with others, I need to move aside from the "best spot" -- and let them sit at His feet for awhile so they can fall in love too.
So, thank you St. Martha for teaching this reluctant Mary to help out in the kitchen.

So, on to the idea of companion saints...this year I got St. Catherine of Siena. Again, wasn't so excited--was actually jealous of Sarah White, my teammate for getting St. Margaret Mary Alacoque ("I wanted her!") But, turns out I did not comprehend with my peanut sized intellect how abundantly mind-blowing is St. Catherine of Siena--who is known for mystical espousal and "death". Oh, and she's one of 4 women saints who are Doctors of Holy Church. Which means her intellect is bigger than a peanut. So, she picked me--or so the tradition of saint companions go. In case you didn't know, your saint companion follows you through out your year and promises the following: intercession, protection, and a share in their charism. Say char-rizza-what? Yes, whatever supernatural gift or virtue or mission the Lord endowed them with on this Earth for charity's sake is given to us. What was Catherine of Siena known for? A LOT. (I won the spiritual lottery!) She had the charism of boldness and fearless courage-- at 28 years old she preached in the streets of Italy prophesying the Church's need for reform. She personally talked sense into Pope Urban VI (it was the Great Schism--*shivers*) to leave Avignon and return to Rome, the true home of the Papacy, and re-claim his vicar's chair from another man claiming to be Pope. I'm 25, and I cannot imagine telling a priest what to do, let alone the pope--so this courage inspired by love and obedience to God is incredibly inspiring.


I really could use that kind of courage this year--as a FOCUS missionary, and as a Catholic living in the US in this present age. I am living under the most pro-choice President in US history, who is eradicating all justice in our country--allowing preborns to be killed without civil rights in mass numbers, and squashing the Church's autonomy on issues of faith and morals. We have no voice--just like the preborns in the womb, and we are in solidarity with them who are being silenced by evil. So, there is a lot to pray for and work against--and the Lord needs our hands, arms, and feet more than ever. He needs our voice too--not only to praise Him because we were created to do so, but also to proclaim Truth in a world that disclaims Truth exists. Here is my voice: we need to go back to our roots. I say this a lot, but now I mean this in the spiritual sense. We cannot fight this war with human weapons--intellect, materials, physical strength--but rather we need to retreat first, to the cell within our soul, where the Lord Himself dwells in each person.

St. Catherine wrote about the following in her "Dialogue", but I am gonna recycle it and put my own understanding to it. Our Eternal Father showed her that each soul is a tree, and each soul must be rooted in HUMILITY. Our roots can either drink of humility, or drink of pride. There is a circumference around each tree--and this circumference is called "self-knowledge." In Delphi, there is a saying written on a stone tablet-- "KNOW THYSELF." All the saints proclaimed this simple truth: love of God starts with knowledge of self. We must know who we are NOT before God WHO IS. The more we contain ourselves in the room of self-knowledge, the more we gain the favor and delight and friendship of Almighty God. Why is this? It seems a bit neurotic or self-centered in the act, how does a person know who they are truly? We all have biases, right? So in order to see ourselves clearly--we need the Light of God. We need access to another room--"the cell of our souls"--which is where the Father of Lights dwells. He will show you yourself--but it must begin with the desire to see yourself as God sees you. This must be an act of love, because the cause will bring  the effect of an increase in love of God.

You see, how can we love God if we don't understand who we are in relation to Him? If we don't understand that everything He gives us is free without charge and is entirely unwarranted, how can we ever be sincerely grateful for His death on the cross? How can we want to return His love for love, if we don't understand the great mercy within His love? What does this mean, simply put, you ask? It means...He doesn't owe us anything--we're in debt. But He paid it--because He is MERCY--mercy is simply paying a debt which you are not indebted to pay. Mercy is Love Personified. So, in His Mercy He gives us ALL (rewards in the after-life, graces at every moment, infinite love) through the precious blood of His Son which opens the door to all these luxuries. Every day that I do not thank the Lord for His precious blood poured out for me drop by drop, I am offending the Father. (And Jesus even gave us the best hour of the day to thank you--3pm--the hour he died on the cross, called "The Divine Mercy Hour."  http://thedivinemercy.org/message/devotions/hour.php) Some of us do not say thank you out of forgetfulness or perhaps because we've never thought about it before, but I think that is the problem: we forget who we are before God. We are nothing and we owe Him everything. He supplies every little need we have for no reason but LOVE. It's madness. And as I write it, I still don't comprehend the immensity of the gift of mercy. When Jesus appeared to St. Faustina, He said, "LET IT BE PROCLAIMED TO MEN THAT MY GREATEST ATTRIBUTE IS MERCY." Do you know for how many years I've grappled with what Jesus meant by this? I don't really appreciate this term --"mercy"--it seems like an abstract holy word that encompasses a really broad thing--like "redemption." We hear it, but we don't take too much time to ponder the meaning. But to understand mercy and the immensity and madness of the gift, we have to understand humility. A proud person doesn't appreciate mercy--because they've never been to the bottom of the pit or waded in the dregs of misery. A miserable creature--a person bent low--understands mercy. They swim in the oceans of mercy--they see that they are misery without God, and thus they depend on God for every little thing. Jesus calls these special people "His little ones." The little ones understand they deserve nothing before God. They see clearly and know that their sinful nature (we all got one!) demands justice, not mercy-- but mercy awaits them with open arms--arms nailed to the wood. The floodgates of mercy were opened with the open arms extended nail to nail on the cross. "I saw Jesus nailed to the cross in such a way that when God wanted to look at the earth, He had to look through the wounds of Jesus. And I understood that it was for the sake of Jesus that God blesses the Earth." And here is the humbling truth: only through the wounds of Jesus does the Father call me daughter. Through his merits, not my own, I can call upon the Father for everything, and I should more. United to the wounds of Jesus, I can be refused nothing--as long as it is within God's good will.  This holy madness makes me grateful and even more humbled--even our existence is an act of mercy.


So back to the tree analogy (see blog post title)--our tree's roots must soak up humility, which is located in the earth of self-knowledge. The earth is dry...and each vice has to be rooted out in order to gain the living water--the knowledge of God. St Catherine writes about two types of knowledge--and we need them both--knowledge of self and knowledge of God. We need knowledge of self so we can spot and uproot our sins so we can live more intimately united to the Divine Spouse of our Soul. After we remain in this room of self knowledge, we need to into the "cell of our souls" while keeping one foot in the room of self-knowledge. In the inner cell of our souls, we grow in the knowledge of God who dwells there. In this inner room, we will begin to BURN with the love of Divine Charity. In a sense, if we are like trees, our wood needs to get dried out--through purification in prayer and spiritual dryness--so we can blaze in the Divine Furnace. This process is written about the best by St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila--some more Docs of the Church. But going back to my original statement of how we need to fight this war the spiritual weapons of self-knowledge and knowledge of God--we need to be enflamed ourselves if we can do any good work. We can only be a voice or extra arm...or drop kick in the body of Christ if we retreat first. We need a profound union with the Almighty before we can take down Goliath.

So New Years Resolution--instead of weight loss or knitting more quilts, maybe we should spend time asking for the grace of self-knowledge. It's a good shooting off point -- to "know thyself." Be honest with your weaknesses--embrace them united to the wounds of Christ. And as St. Paul says, this shall be our crown of glory in the life to come.

St. Catherine of Siena, you are so awesome. Keep blowing my mind.