Ball Family Chronicles #2: Little Voices at Mass

It's been entirely too long since I published something (and in the process of writing this post, I realized how few pictures I've taken over the last three months.... shame on me!). The newborn and infant phases of parenting have really been taking everything out of me.

Daniel has left to go to work, and so in these smallish hours before the littles wake up, I have a little joy to share with you.

As you can imagine, having a baby makes going to the same Mass each week a bit arduous, so we do the sensible thing.

We don't worry about it. We get up when the baby makes us, and we go to the first Mass that's after she finishes nursing.

Preparing for His Return

1st Sunday of Advent

This Sunday, the second reading will be from 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2. But I strongly suggest reading the other readings as well.

Like many of the readings for Advent will, the first reading looks forward to the birth of the messiah, and the gospel looks forward to his return.

We know beyond any shadow of doubt that Jesus is coming back. We know this because he told us that he was coming back, and his word is trustworthy.

In light of this, what should we do to prepare our hearts?

Never Underestimate the Power of Your Village

Never underestimate the power of your village.

At our annual Mother's Day gathering this past year, my Mom was playing with Pitter Patter (as per usual), and I was not about to stop her.

When her mom, my Grammy, arrived with my godmother (Nanny), Mom immediately started to show Grammy all of the cool stuff that Pitter Patter knows.

She first started out with the things that I had worked on with her, The ABC's, "what's that letter for", counting, "what sound that animal makes", and then she started into the prayers Pitter Patter knows.

Teaching Generosity

Original Photo from Pixabay. Modified by Shannon Ball.

13th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This Sunday, the second reading will be from 2 Corinthians 8: 7, 9, 13-15, As usual, I am going to suggest that you read more: verses 1-15, and the other readings.

So… what is “this gracious act,” that St. Paul refers to?

Transubstantiation: Prefigured in the Old Testament

  Feast of Corpus Christi

Original photo from Pixabay.

This Sunday, the second reading will be from Hebrews 9:11-15. I’d suggest starting at verse 1, for context, and also reading both of the other readings. It's lectionary #168, if you're reading from a hard copy.

Why do we believe in transubstantiation? Logistically, it seems to cause us nothing but trouble, so why is it theologically so important?

This Sunday, the readings point us to one of the reasons as laid out in the Bible. (To my mind, a case based solely on the Last Supper, when Jesus says, “this is my body”, is not a good one, because it doesn’t lay out any evidence that might actually convince a skeptic.)

In John 6, Jesus says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink,” and at the last supper he says of the bread they shared, “this is my body.”

These (or something like them) is what most Catholics quote when challenged on transubstantiation and think that’s the end of it, but it can’t be. It may be enough for someone who already trusts the Church, but when you’re challenged like this, you’re speaking to someone who doesn’t yet have that trust. You need to show them the Church’s work, so that you can help lay a strong foundation of reasons to trust.

God Loved You First

7th Sunday of Easter

For the seventh Sunday of Easter, the second reading will be from 1 Jn 4:7-10.

So, we’ve been hitting John’s first epistle really hard this Easter season, and he wrote extensively in this letter about love. So far, since Easter, we’ve talked about:

• What it looks like when we love God back,
• how obedience of the laws of God factor into our relationship with him,
• how incredible is God’s love for us,
• the necessity of our act of trust in the context of our loving relationship with God,
• and the necessity of loving those who are not in Christ.

The Most Important Thing to do in Marital Interfaith Dialogue

Daniel and I were married in the Catholic Church, but only I am Catholic. He is a Presbyterian of the PCA variety. Our marriage works, in part, because our churches’ values are the same. Even though their doctrines differ in some very significant ways, practice is nearly indistinguishable in everyday life.

Every few months, we have one of those serious religious conversations in which we each learn a great deal about what the other does (or doesn’t) believe about a given subject. They tend to be mostly about doctrine, rather than practice.

One of my posts from a few weeks ago sparked one of those conversations. I will make a post outlining that discussion and its repercussions, but this is not that post.

I want to emphasize that these are not fights. They are serious conversations. No voices are raised, and we are careful not to hurt one another’s feelings.

Some of these are more productive than others.

The Best Thing I Ever Did for Lent (Part 4/4)

For the last three weeks, I have been posting a series on the best thing I ever did for Lent. If you haven’t read the rest, I recommend beginning with the first post.

Last week, I left off when I misplaced my copies of Redemptoris Mater and Secret of the Rosary. And I never had gotten “unstuck” from that passage right before Easter. I had spent a few weeks spinning my wheels over that section before they went missing… Yes, at the same time.

I know that at least one of those can be obtained for free on the internet (Here or Here), but I never did go out there to get them. I’m not sure if I didn’t do it because something was telling me not to, or just because I was lazy, or maybe it was because I was closing in on seven months pregnant and I had more pressing things on my mind. (Come to think of it, that’s probably why I lost them, too!)

In any event, they stayed lost until the Summer/Fall of 2014, when I attended a bible study at St. Thomas More parish entitled A Biblical Walk with Mary, by Dr. Edward Sri.

The Best Thing I Ever Did for Lent (Part 3/4)

For the last couple of weeks, I have been writing about the year that I decided to square myself with church teaching on the Blessed Mother. Here is a link to the first post, If you would like to begin there.

I have to admit, things were a little rocky at first. I really was starting out from the place of a skeptic who needed convincing.

Among the first things I learned was that I didn’t actually know most of the Mysteries of the Rosary.  I decided to start out saying the Sorrowful Mysteries, because I knew I didn’t have any objections there… and when I got home, I definitely discovered that I had a few Stations of the Cross mixed in. (oops…)

I was reading one(ish) numbered section from each of my books every night. Sometimes I read a little more, and sometimes I had to spend a couple of days chewing on one section.

Secret of the Rosary, as I think I mentioned, is a devotional book, so getting through that amount was pretty easy.

Redemptoris Mater is theology, though, so the reading was dense and difficult. I frequently had to stop to try to mentally diagram a sentence to figure out what it said or to back up and reread several numbered sections to figure out how their contents worked together.

It was a lot of hard work. I had a high level of trust for the material therein, though, (The encyclical was written, as I mentioned before, by Pope St. John Paul II, and the edition I read also had an introduction, by Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger)) so effort, was a bargain of a price, as far as I was concerned.

I did allow myself about a week’s worth of sporadic “exceptions” in my Rosaries (or maybe a little more) to listen to Catholic Radio, because during that particular Lent, we got a new Pope, and I was curious about him like everybody else. (Go figure, something really, truly, important happened in the life of the Church.)

I think it’s important to say that I didn’t get all the answers I was looking for during those 40 days. I even got “seriously stuck” on a section in Redemptoris Mater, about a week before Easter, and my reading came to a screeching halt while I struggled with it.

However, I did experience very good fruit.

1. I became a lot more at ease with The Rosary. There are devotions I prefer, but I no longer resist the Rosary as anything approaching a matter of principle. I even know all of the mysteries, now.
2. I was able to explain a lot more about the teachings of the Church on the subject of the Blessed Mother.
3. Pitter-Patter, with whom I was pregnant at the time, has been the world’s easiest baby since the time she was born. (Pretty sure there’s a direct relationship here!)

And these are just what I’ve been made aware of so far.

That year, I never did get good and comfortable with the Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. In fact, I may not have said them at all that year, even on Wednesdays.

Since I was thoroughly enjoying my reading, I resolved to continue it, but somewhere along the way, both of my books got lost…

And I think that’s enough for today. (Yeah, I know. Huge cliffhanger, right?)

Part 1   |   Part 2   |   Part 3   |   Part 4

The Best Thing I Ever Did For Lent (Part 2/4)

Last week, I started telling the story of the best thing I ever did for Lent, and I left off, having described my attitude toward the pseudo-worship that I thought I was perceiving among the pews. Here is a link to last week’s post, if you would like to read it.

So things persisted like this for some years, before a change happened, because I didn’t know what to do about any of it.

In those years, the rift between me and the “incorrect practices” surrounding Mary grew.

I know that God must have been working hard on me, because I don’t remember any external circumstances that led to my change of heart. All of a sudden, one day in late 2012, I decided that my attitude was a problem that I needed to do something about.

My thought process was (more or less), “I am Confirmed, for crying out loud! At some point my formation is my own responsibility!”

The real problem was that, in my heart, I was not submitting myself to the teaching authority of the Church that Jesus established, and therefore, I was no different than any other dissenting Protestant or cafeteria Catholic. I knew I needed to bring myself under that authority.

That very next year (2013), for Lent, I decided that that was going to be my “thing” that I did. Two thousand years of continuity and doctrinal unpacking, and I just KNEW the answer had to be out there, this was just a problem with my catechesis, just like any other problem in catechesis. All I had to do was dive in, and find it.

It's in there somewhere, right? Oh, heavens, what have I gotten myself into!

So I went to my local Catholic bookstore, to find some educational reading material. I knew that my objections were due to a blank spot or a gray area in my training, so learning more about Marian doctrine and it’s history and it’s development over time seemed to be the most logical place to begin.

I was fortunate to find the encyclical Redemptoris Mater. It’s about Mary in the life of the Church, by Pope St. John Paul II. And I started reading it. I read a goodly portion of it during Lent that year, and I highly recommend it for anyone who’s struggling in their relationship with the Blessed Mother. The edition I bought also had an introduction by Pope Emeritus Benedict, before he was elected Pope.

I also stumbled upon the book Secret of the Rosary. It’s about the proper practice of devotion to the Rosary and the fruits of this devotion that are enjoyed by many. It is primarily, I think, devotional reading. It was interesting, but it wasn’t nearly so helpful (at the time) to me as Redemptoris Mater was, because my problem was basically a rebellious attitude about something I thought might be wrong.

I knew there was no way that I’d finish reading (and absorbing) even both of those in a single Lent, so I figured if I didn’t get everything I wanted from them, it would at least be a good start.

In addition to these, I also committed to daily rosaries during my commute.

My strategy was this: I would (a) learn as much as I could about why church teaching is what it is, (b) learn about the closeness (how, why, and otherwise) others experience with Mary, Marian doctrine, and Marian devotions, and (c) spend time with her.

I was (essentially) trying to improve my relationship with the Blessed Mother. When you forge a relationship with someone, you learn about them and you spend time with them, and that’s what I was resolving to do.

I guess that’s enough for today. This post is already getting pretty long.

Part 1   |   Part 2   |   Part 3   |   Part 4

The Best Thing I Ever Did for Lent (Part 1/4)

I’ve done a lot of different kinds of things for Lent, but I think the one best thing I ever did was the year I decided to square myself with Church teaching on the Blessed Mother. My Monday posts for the next few weeks will chronicle what I did, what my experience was, and the fruits I have observed.

For years, I went round and round with myself about the dizzying height to which I thought some Catholics tended to elevate the Blessed Mother.

I couldn’t think of any other devotions that regular people did every. Single. Day. And quite frankly, it seemed like this pseudo-worship was kind of encouraged by local church leadership. Lay leaders, mostly.

I use the term “pseudo-worship” deliberately, because I knew that worshiping any beside God is not correct Catholic practice, but it seemed like everybody wanted to close group prayers with either the “Hail Mary” or “Hail, Holy Queen”.  And while I recognize that those prayers are not worship in themselves (nor even problematic), when they’re coupled with an incorrect attitude toward the Blessed Mother, they can lead one into error, and even into idolatry.

Moreover, it’s really difficult to make my Presbyterian husband feel welcome coming to church events when the same stumbling block gets thrown up at him over, and over, and over.

It bothered me. I mean, it really bothered me. What was wrong with all of the other prayers I ever learned when I was a kid?

When you get right down to it? Not a thing. Nothing was wrong with them, so why did everybody and his brother default to one of those two? It got to where it made me kind of mad that her devotions and her intercession got such vastly preferential treatment in the pews.

But like I keep telling Daniel: you don’t judge a religion (or a church teaching) by all of the flawed people that practice it incorrectly.

That said, some of the exceptions I had actually did rise to the level of dissenting against official church teaching, though never vocally. I was happy to keep my objections to myself and just trust that they weren’t wrong about anything really important. I just wanted an explanation. It didn’t have to be much… just point out what I’d been missing all these years.

To be specific, I had reservations about some of the later Glorious Mysteries because there appeared to be no biblical foundation for them. I wasn’t really comfortable with “proofs” taken from the woman in Revelation 12, because Revelation is highly symbolic, and difficult to interpret. Daniel often reminds me that John Calvin wrote a commentary on every book of the Bible except Revelation, and I have to agree that that choice wasn’t without good reason.

It wouldn’t have taken much to make a case for me - I was Catholic, after all. I just needed to see something other than the woman in Revelation. Even a good history of the Mysteries of the Rosary would probably have satisfied, but I never have seen one.

It looked like something got pulled out of someone’s hat somewhere up the way.

It looked like the Protestants might have gotten that one thing right.

I would recite the Rosary. Sometimes. When somebody else started it. What are you supposed to say when someone asks you if you want to pray the Rosary when you’d really rather not? No? (Ah, Sarcasm. My old friend.)

Of course not. You bite your tongue and you say the Rosary with them - because you’re wrong, and you know it. On occasion, I would even pray the Rosary alone, but it was rare. Less than once every three months, I think.

And then there was the language in which we discuss the sort of intercession done by Mary and the Saints. In my experience, calling it “prayer” is confusing to Protestants. The reason why is that most of my Protestant acquaintances (your experience may be different) very much blur the line between “praying to” and “worshipping”; for them, the two go hand in hand.

Prayer, for my Protestant acquaintances, is a kind of worship, because you (in their eyes) ascribe to the hearer of your prayer the ability (in and of themselves) to do something about it - in and of their own power, independent of the merit or assistance of anybody else. It is hard to explain the difference to them.

For a long time, I didn’t recognize my attitude as problematic. After all, saying the Rosary wasn’t mandatory, and it seemed apparent to me that the incorrect practices of some were damaging the credibility of the rest.

And… I think that’s enough for today. We’ve got the groundwork. More to come next week.

Part 1   |   Part 2   |   Part 3   |   Part 4

Baptism: A Big Responsibility

First Sunday of Lent

This Sunday, the second reading will be from 1 Peter 3:18-22, I’d encourage you to read the rest of the readings.

The new covenant in Christ’s blood, of which we are partakers, is prefigured in great detail in the Old Testament.

The flood, Peter says, prefigured Baptism.

By coincidence, I happen to have recently had a lengthy discussion with Daniel about what Baptism is, and what is its function in the Christian life. (See the CCC 1214-1284, for its treatment on Baptism.) (Yes, we know. We’re both nerds who love the Lord.)

Peter says that Baptism is an appeal to God for a clear conscience. My Bible notes that the word “appeal” could also be translated “pledge”, which I think adds an important dimension of meaning to the passage.

If we are not baptized as infants, we also make a commitment when we get baptized, a pledge to live in accord with the precepts of the Gospel. It is expected that those baptized (or their parents, for infants baptized in the church) will do what is in their power to assist that faith to grow and develop into a more complete and mature faith.

For those of us who are parents, this is a very big and weighty undertaking, and very humbling when we realize the full scope of the task:

You mean I have to teach her everything in the textbook?

 And the Cliff Notes? 

But I haven’t even finished reading them myself!

There have been two thousand years of family history and development in our understanding of Christian doctrine.

We can’t hope to cover it all even once, so how do we make this look possible?

Three things come to mind:

(1) You can’t do it alone, and you aren’t doing it alone.

You have your spouse, and the godparents to help and support you in this undertaking, along with family and friends, when you need them. Call on them for their support and insight when you have a problem.

And aside from these, even the single, divorced, widowed, and disowned have another support - the Church herself. So, call on your parish to support you, too!

(2) Pray! Pray, pray, pray!

Jesus promised us that whatever we ask in his name (there are some strings attached to this "in his name" clause) will be granted. How might we suspect that the salvation of our children is anything but in accord with his holy will?

So, pray without ceasing. Ask others to join their prayers to yours. Storm heaven with your prayer!

And then...

 (3) Trust.

We have from God’s word that for him who has faith, all things are possible. And whoever has even the faith of a mustard seed can move mountains.

Trust that once you’ve put your best foot and prayed earnestly, God will take care of the rest.

 Let’s pray this week that the Lord will open the eyes of our hearts, so that we can see the next step in our own formation, and in that of our children.  Let us ask that he help us to make time for that next step in our busy schedules, to take it, and to do it as well and as completely as we can.