Downton Abbey: Was Ethel Parks Pro-life?

If Ethel Parks had lived in modern times, would she have had an abortion?  As I watched Ethel reach out to the father of her unborn baby and watch him treat her with distain and disgust, I was reminded of my own experience of being pregnant outside of marriage.

I had just graduated from high school.  I did not live in Ethel’s age but I did live in a small town. When I began to show I received all kinds of reactions.  I had some tell me outright that I was a disgrace, or how “terrible” it was that I was a child having a child.  There were some that I encountered that would scowl others that would just stare in disgust. Many would whisper as I passed and still others would refuse to shake my hand in Church or ignore me all together.

It certainly was not what Ethel Parks went through but it was bad enough.  The irony was that there were several girls at mass that also were pregnant outside of marriage. The difference was I kept my baby and they aborted theirs.  I had a visible sign of my scarlet letter and they had hidden theirs.

As I watched Downton Abbey, I cried.  Ethel Parks did all that she could to find a way to raise her son and continued to fall deeper into despair and poverty as everyone around her cast her out.   My heart ached for her as she was snubbed and even refused any legitimate work because “respectable persons” would not associate with a woman of scandal.  Finally, after doing all that she could to prevent her and her child from starving to death, she turned to prostitution.

Mrs. Hughes, was her only friend (and later Mrs. Crawley).  She brought her food when she could, she tried to deliver a letter to the father but nothing could elevate her suffering.  I found myself screaming at the television screen when the Ethel burst into the luncheon in which the grandparents of her son, Charlie, were dining.  I screamed at Mrs. Hughes for not saying that she knew that their son fathered Charlie because she walked in on them doing it! Even Lord Grantham was aware of likelihood, a man that professed to love his servants as family, yet because he could not associate with her scandal, he kept silence to this.  The etiquette of the day and the need to always protect ones reputation was more important than restoring the honor of a “prostitute” or a “slut” as she was also called.

Justice says we get what we deserve.  Mercy says, rather than give you what you deserve, you will get what you need and it will be done with love, kindness, gentility and it is in fact justice perfected.  This is what Mrs. Crawley showed Ethel, Mercy.  She took her in and loved her despite her sin and gave Ethel hope for the future.

Ethel decided to give Charlie to his grandparents.  It was very heroic but more importantly it was an example of Trinitarian love. She loved her son so much; that she gave him as the gift that his life was, to another who could care for him. So many women could give their children to families who cannot conceive, yet because they lack this kind of love, or perhaps because we as a society do not value this as love, they have an abortion instead.

My guess is, although I pray that I am incorrect, I wonder if Ethel would have had an abortion if it where legal.  Today women do not have to struggle to find employment because they are with child outside of marriage. They do not have to bare the weight of scandal associated with carrying a child to term without a husband.  If Ethel had not had to deal with this, I wonder, would she have kept her son or would she have aborted him?

Most likely Ethel would have wanted to hide from the ridicule and ruin of pregnancy outside of marriage. Because abortion was not legal, we see her struggle play out on screen and my opinion she triumphed and transformed because of it.  She went from a selfish and vain servant girl that could not take direction or think of others, to a self-sacrificing woman that thought only of others and never for herself.  She truly bloomed.

Ethel, you are an inspiration to those who find themselves pregnant outside of marriage.  Your courage and strength to give up your son for his better good, is a demonstration of the love of the trinity and it is what we should all strive for.  I also pray for a world that strives more to be merciful than justice orientated.  In the end I would say Ethel Park’s is pro-life and I am sure that Charlie would thank his Mum for it.

Copyright 2013 Christina King

Zoe and Christina at the March for Life 2013

While at the March For Life in Washington DC this year I encountered many, many amazing pro-life speakers and apostolates.  However there was one person in particular that moved me to tears and made my heart rise into my throat as she spoke.  “I survived Roe Vs. Wade but Roe Vs. Wade will NOT survive me!” were the words proclaimed by a young 12-year-old girl named Zoe. 

As I listened to her passionate cry for an end to abortion and listened to the cheers of the huge crowd united in purpose and passion echoing her, I asked myself this question.  What can we do to ensure that Zoe’s children do not have to grow up in a country that does not protect unborn children?  This is the answer I came up with.

We must Unite, Encourage and Unify In Our Purpose. The opposite of that is to Divide, Discourage and Distract, which is what the enemy does to pro-life ministries and apostolates.

We Must Unite

The enemy divides us using Selfishness.  It causes persons to say “do it my way or no way” because my way is best. Lack of Fellowship says you go your way and I’ll go my way because I will not share any of my resources.  This is why we still have not found a cure for breast cancer.  The labs have patented their research; they do not share their work or their findings or their resources to accomplish their common goal.  They are competitors and not co-workers.  However, I would propose that it is in sharing that we would cover more ground and get faster results. Together we can be much more powerful than working alone.

Let us be Co-workers not competitors. When we disassociate ourselves because someone has hurt our feelings or slighted us, we allow ourselves to separate from the pack.  It’s like a lion that separates a gazelle from the pack.  It is easier to attack when it is on it’s own.  We are divided and eventually we fall from disappointments, discouragements, distractions and division. We are all flawed, so it is not easy to work together but if we want to overturn Roe Vs Wade, we must find a way.

Blessed Mother Theresa said that when Christ draws us close to Himself, the thorns on His crown will pierce our forehead as He leans in to kiss our cheek.  There is suffering in this life and I am guessing that in Pro-life ministry there is a lot of suffering.  Why? There are two reasons.  One, many people in the pro-life movement are part of the walking wounded.  They know the pain and ache of abortion and that’s why they want to help bring an end to it.  Secondly, because Christ suffers in seeing the murder of the innocent unborn and the lack of reverence for life by those that participate in it.  If you give your life to be with Him in this battle, your going to suffer with Him. So what are we to do? Bear one another’s shortcomings patiently, love one another and He loves us and finally we should embrace the suffering that comes from this work, knowing that we are perfected in suffering.

We Must Encourage

It is in the encouraging of one another’s success and helping others that we become encouraged.  It is in giving that we receive. Each ministry and apostolate plays a part, no matter how different, and that part is crucial in this battle.  We are many parts but we are all one body.  My leg cannot hear and toes cannot see but I need my legs and I need my toes.  There are so many ministries involved in this pro-life movement and all of them are necessary and none are more important or better or worse than another.

Well, actually they are all the “best” in their area.  Those fighting in the political arena are much better at it than a sidewalk counselor and a ministry training side walk counselor is better at that than a ministry that works with politicians to create pro-life legislature, both are important and necessary.

Wherever God has called you to fight this fight, be encouraged because it is the MOST IMPORTANT PLACE YOU CAN BE.  We need you all right where you are at, but we need to unite so we can encourage one another and help one another in our fight. 

We Must Unify In Purpose

Finally, we need to unify in purpose.  What is the goal? It should be to save souls.  Our goal is to bring Christ to others in and through our own life. Each and every person is a unique and unrepeatable person, created by God, with an immortal soul.   Isn’t our goal to save souls?  When we realize the goal is to save souls we remember to be charitable in every thought action and deed.

When we remember the goal is to save souls, we remember that Shawn Carney of 40 days for life sat in his kitchen with David Bereit and said “what can we do to bring down the number of abortions?” Through their exploration of that question they began an apostolate that is one of the most successful initiatives I have ever seen cross denominational lines as well as borders to countries, in closing down abortion clinics.  Their focus on the goal of saving souls, allowed their hearts to love Abby Johnson right out of being a director of Planned Parenthood.  Now, the fruit of their efforts has brought Abby into the pro-life movement and she is now focusing on the goal.  She too is now working to bring more souls out of the abortion industry.

Does it matter if there are abortion clinics on every corner in America if no works in them and no one ever goes in?  We must Unite, encourage and unify in our purpose and then we will become the Culture of Life, Love and Truth that accurately reflects the face of God.

Thank you Zoe, you reminded me that God raises up people every day to fight for Him and I am confident that Roe Vs. Wade will NOT survive your generation just so long as we all work together toward our common goal.

Copyright 2013 Christina King

Becoming like the Star of Bethlehem

Are you ready for another year? As we look ahead to this new year perhaps it’s wise to reflect upon what last year taught us and how to best share it with those in our lives.  We are to become the Star of Bethlehem.

The Star of Bethlehem was a light in the darkness that guided men to God. We too are to become like a star. We are to shine like a light in the darkness and lead humanity to God.

Missionary Intention: Christ, light for all humanity. That Christ may reveal himself to all humanity with the light that shines forth from Bethlehem and is reflected in the face of his Church.

What does this mean? It means that we are to become tabernacles, carrying within us the light of Christ. We are bring Christ to others through our hands and our feet. We are to radiate something so magnificent that they cannot help but to see His Truth, His Life and His love.

What does this mean? It means that we are to become tabernacles, carrying within us the light of Christ. We are bring Christ to others through our hands and our feet. We are to radiate something so magnificent that they cannot help but to see His Truth, His Life and His love. It should be reflected from our own faces as if those who encounter us are experiencing the living God in our own presence. It is not because of anything we do or say, but rather it in opening ourselves to God, receiving Him deep inside of our hearts, that He Conceives Divine Life within us and when humanity is in it’s presence their own personhood, their own spirit within them will encounter Him with us.

The star of Bethlehem guided those seeking for truth to the one true God. We live in a world where everyday there are people seeking to be filled and the only thing that can make them whole is God. In fact, that desire, that ache, that hunger was infused into them at the moment of their conception so that they would always reach outside of them self to be completed by the one and only thing that will satisfy. That “thing” is God revealed in the trinity.

How do we become a star of Bethlehem? We first have to receive Him ourselves. We cannot give what we do not have for ourself first. St. Ignatius said it is not enough to become holy for ourselves, the goal is to be filled to overflowing so that the graces fill us and spill out over us onto all that we meet. We must first receive Him but more importantly we must be transformed by Him before we can effectively help anyone else. When we are transformed, it is He would then attracts souls, not us.

We radiate Him, we cannot help ourselves because we have become permeated into every part and participle of our being. We become smaller and He becomes bigger because what is visible to others is our nature perfected by Grace. We then bring Hope, Love, Kindness, Peace, Mercy to those who are falling under the weight of their own weaknesses. The world desperately needs us to receive Him. Ask for a triple portion. He desires to give it to you.

How do we become a star of Bethlehem? We first have to receive Him ourselves. We cannot give what we do not have for ourself first. St. Ignatius said it is not enough to become holy for ourselves, the goal is to be filled to overflowing so that the graces fill us and spill out over us onto all that we meet.

We must first receive Him but more importantly we must be transformed by Him before we can effectively help anyone else. When we are transformed, it is He would then attracts souls, not us. We radiate Him, we cannot help ourselves because we have become permeated into every part and participle of our being. We become smaller and He becomes bigger because what is visible to others is our nature perfected by Grace. We then bring Hope, Love, Kindness, Peace, Mercy to those who are falling under the weight of their own weaknesses. The world desperately needs us to receive Him. Ask for a triple portion. He desires to give it to you.

When we receive Him, He begins to conceive within us a transformation of love. We then are to ask the Holy Spirit to release the operational gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us at baptism and confirmation. These are what will make the person in front of us KNOW that God is real and seeking them out PERSONALLY.

When we speaks prophetic words, or words of knowledge, exhortation, wisdom, tongues or their interpretation we emanate like a light, we radiate Him and that is what will draw humanity to Him. Like St. John in his mother’s womb, deep within their own hearts there will be a leaping for joy as well as a reverent bow within them as they realize they have encountered the power of the living God.

It is the same with healing gifts and charisms, discernment of spirits, miracles, giving, hospitality, mercy gifts and more. We are to co-operate in the plan of redemption. We are to enter into His plan by bringing Christ to the world as well as to guide others out of darkness.

It is the same with healing gifts and charisms, discernment of spirits, miracles, giving, hospitality, mercy gifts and more. We are to co-operate in the plan of redemption. We are to enter into His plan by bringing Christ to the world as well as to guide others out of darkness.

I will be writing on these in turn over the next few months to help you recognize them, embrace them and live them out with courage and fortitude because before we can Catechize we must Evangelize and these gifts are what open peoples eyes to see, their ears to hear their minds to believe and their hearts to become transformed.

Pray for the gift of receptivity. Pray for the Holy Spirit to permeate you and conceive Divine Life within you and then become a star of Bethlehem.

Copyright 2013 Christina King

Treasure In Earthen Vessels; God Works Through Cracked Pots

The story of the woman at the well is a marriage proposal and is a great place to begin in sharing how we are treasures in earthen vessels. It is strangely reminiscent of the song we sang as children “first comes love then comes marriage then comes the baby in the baby carriage”. First there was God who is love. Then the word was made flesh. Jesus is the Bridegroom.

That childhood song was a song about the holy Trinity and the call of our God into the marriage relationship of the bride and bridegroom and how we will be transformed into new creations. Theology of the Body gives us a beautiful lens from which to fully understand what the old Baltimore catechism said when it said we were created to know love and serve God to give you him forever in heaven.

Treasure In Earthen Vessels; God Works Through Cracked Pots

The woman at the well is symbolic of all of our brokenness because of the sin in our lives, all of the inadequacies and all of the ways in which we fall short and yet God comes to us and seeks us out.

This is the marriage proposal. We are made for connection we are made for relationship.

Where we struggle in this is when SHAME gets in the way of allowing others to truly see who we are or to allow others to truly see us.

That’s where vulnerability comes in.

VULNERABILITY IS NOT WEAKNESS. How many think it takes vulnerability to speak in front of an audience of 800 people? It is true that vulnerability involves emotional risk and uncertainty but what vulnerability really means is to have courage.

Vulnerability is birthplace of creation and transformation. To create is to make something that never existed before like the unique and unrepeatable person. When we have the courage to really open ourselves to look into our hearts and even more importantly let others really and truly “see” us, we become transformed. “ Grace perfects our nature”.

In the garden, we were naked without shame.

“Naked without shame” is about knowing who we were as persons made in Gods image and likeness and our nature was perfect. When we fell from Grace due to original sin shame entered into the world.

Shame is the devil’s proposal about who God is and who we are.

Shame says one of two things; “you will never be good enough” or “who do you think you are”.

Adam and Eve covered themselves because they said yes to the devil’s proposal. Because they were unwilling to be vulnerable enough to go to God and trust in who He said we are, they fell and the consequence was sin.

A very basic understanding of sin is separation from God. In the Old Testament sin is described as a transgression. It is not just a violation of the law, but because the law was meant to protect as persons and to protect our world and our environment and God’s creation it is also a violation of God and violation of us so every time we separate from God and transgress upon his will we transgress upon ourselves and of all of creation. Sin, missing the mark and falling short of the glory of God. So with three

Sin has its effects always in wounding. Sin always wounds. There is no sin that doesn’t wound. It wounds us and it wounds others around us. We have no possibility of living in this world without being wounded.

What SHAME does is it takes the guilt we feel and turns the belief of “What I did was bad” into the belief that “I am bad”.

SHAME then makes us feel that we are unworthy of connection. It is in believing we are not thin enough, beautiful enough, successful enough or smart enough that SHAME turns our focus from who we are as unique and unrepeatable persons into who we think we “should be” or “should be doing”.

Shame makes us feel we are not good enough and that we will never be good enough.

The story of the woman at the well reminds us of whom we truly are which is the beloved of the Bridegroom and that God desires to marry us.

God knows all the places we have failed him and will fail him and yet he created us anyways. Out of all of the potential people God could’ve created we were chosen to be created and to come into the world to exist in fact of this very particular time in history.

But it gets better than this! God is calling all of us to enter into the redemption of the world! God could have chose to redeem the world anyway he liked. What he decided was that he wanted all of us to enter into this great work with him.

He does this by transforming our wounds much like his own were from the power of the cross. His “cracks” were in fact the greatest gift given to the entire world. Our wounds, our cracks, our inadequacies become the very place, once transformed like a firing kiln to a clay pot, becomes the very form from which God can best shine through, pour out of and be given to others. He is magnified by our smallness and our weakness.

God is calling you and is issuing a marriage proposal in which He desires to transform you and touch the lives of those around you through your fiat.

A treasure in earthen vessels is about our unique and unrepeatable personhood, it is about our immortal soul chosen by God to be called into existence. The earthen vessel reveals that the person we are is feminine or masculine and also is a sign that we are called to love like the trinity. But the earthen vessel also speaks to us about form.

Form, and the material from which it is made reveal its purpose. If I held up a cup and asked, “What is it?” unless we were from another world where they do not use cups, we would know it is a cup and that it holds liquid. We know understand what it is because of its form

Our form is meant to be a visible sign of Christ to the world. It is not just our masculine or feminine person that our form reveals but it tells a story of the Bride and the Bridegroom.

In Caryll Houselander’s book “The Reed of God” she uses three forms to reveal how Christ “shines” through our cracks”, The reed, the chalice, and the birds nest.

The Reed grows on the riverbanks and must be cut with a knife and then hallowed out with notches cut into it to create its form. Some of our stories include this kind of shaping. We are cut and hallowed out. We may think that we have nothing to give, our brokenness, or even our sinfulness might make us believe that God could never possibly choose us. The woman at the well is a reminder that God does chose us and when we allow him to redeem us, it is as if we are pressed to the lips of the master and when His Spirit blows through the reed, lyrical music is created because of the hallowing out and the notches that had been cut.

Some of our stories are like a chalice. A chalice is made from gold that has to be first hewn from the mud, then forged in fire before it can be poured into it’s mold. It then has to be pounded by a mallet to create its form. For those whose forming came from the succession of blows or from the purification of fire, they may understand that they are like Gold, that they are good, but they may not believe themselves worthy of greatness. It is the age-old question “Who do you think you are? If we remember that we are the beloveds of Christ, that He called us into being that we are His, then we remember who we are. A chalice is used to offer the great sacrifice of the mass. For those whose form is like the chalice, God desires to fill you with the water and blood that gushed from His sacred heart so that through your form you can pour Him out to a thirsting world.

Finally, for those who are shaped like the nest of a bird, the soft downy feathers of a tender mother bird’s breast create the form. For those who may have been formed by loving parents, in a prayerful home and have no painful formation as part of their story the temptation could be to say that they do not have a unique or inspiring story. Those whose story includes love, fidelity and affirmation are not only hope and inspiration for the world but it also creates a person more fully capable of revealing Christ. This story is an example of how each of us is called to become tabernacles.

We are to bring Christ to the world with our own hands and feet, with our own stories.

Each of our stories is as unique as our fingertips, as unique as our personhood.

We are the vessel and form helps us to tell the story of who Christ is and who we are in Christ. We should never underestimate the power of conversion to work through even the most broken of vessels.

Lazarus is an example of just such a vessel. He was dead. A rotting corpse and according to chief mourners “stinking” and yet when Christ shone through Lazarus, an entire city and now every generation to come, was converted through his story and through his form.

For me, my form is the reed. I have been hallowed out, whittled and cut into. The story I have to tell is of being transformed through my children and my husband.

I’ve been able to identify specific attributes or virtues that God has helped to develop in me for each one of my children.

For Maegan it was vulnerability, for Sara it was selfless love, for Elisha it was the need of affirmation, for Gabriel it was submission, for Annamarie it was long-suffering, for Mercedes it was Mercy, for Christopher it was joy, for Jonah it was perseverance.

For each child I have received a healing of a major wound, crack, or notch cut into me. God transformed it and the grace He has given to me in each of these areas have brought me freedom to love more rightly

Each time I was cracked, wounded or cut into because of my sin or the sin of others, the enemy proposed a lie so to enter into my heart and bring me to a place of shame.

Christ helps to expose the lies and bring healing to our wounded hearts and when we become vulnerable and allow Him in to truly see us, Christ transforms our wounds and they become like stained glass windows illuminating and radiating God’s beauty, God’s light, God’s truth to the world.

They will know us by our joy they will know us by our love. In this year of faith we are called to transformation. The new evangelization is about allowing Christ to permeate us. We embrace our greatness when we dare to take what we know in our heads and connect it to our hearts. When we move from knowing God, to being in an intimate relationship with Him.

When we allow ourselves to truly be seen and to really see the person God puts in front of us everyday is when we enter into one another’s story of redemption. God works through cracked pots, because His greatness is magnified in our weakness. The truth is that the enemy puts salt in our wounds because he is terrified that if we actually go into the wounds and bring Christ there with us, we would discover that when Christ redeems them, they become like jewels in the Crown of the creator.

You are a treasure in an earthly vessel and your form reveals a call to love and to be loved from the bridegroom to His bride. All it takes is your “fiat” which is the greatest “I DO” you can ever utter.

Copyright 2012 Christina King

My Undoing

God undid me and then put me back together again.  Sometimes it’s hard to realize that in order for a house in ruin to be fully restored, it must be torn down so as to begin with a more solid foundation.  There is a part of me that feels like this is what Inner Healing has done for me. This form of “therapy” isn’t really therapy.  It healing. It goes to the foundation and helps to bring about full restoration.   I have not been fully restored all at once, but in layers.

I have begun to uncover so many agreements I have made with the “father of lies” and in doing so I had given him and his minions permission to oppress me in so many ways.  With inner healing I have been shown that when I am brave enough to trust the builder, my reward will be not just a new and sturdy house but God desires to give me a mansion.

The first thing I had to do was to become vulnerable.  That might sound easy when you read the words a crossed the page but for me it was like having the Ren and Stimpy cartoon when they pluck the roots out of the tooth sockets.  It was beyond painful.

I felt like someone had stripped me naked in front of a bunch of strangers and I had to stand before them in my nakedness.  Then I realized, that I had to go back to the garden and become naked like Adam and Eve were before the fall.  If I would be willing to become naked without shame, then I would discover what it truly means to enter into the words “Jesus, I trust in You”.

Trust is about being vulnerable.  Unless I was willing to be vulnerable, I would never fully enter into trusting God.  I thought I trusted God, but I was not relinquishing my control over the direction of my life nor that of my families.

I had come to this retreat to get some healing.  I couldn’t go home and face all the trials of my life without it! That morning the readings were about “ask and the door will be opened” kind of stuff.

Really? I thought to myself, what a joke.  I have been asking for years so where are you?  I began to get angry as I listened to scripture saying that God desires to heal us and help us and love us.  I guess that means for other people and not for me then.  The rage was welling up inside of me. I had to get out of there.   The facilitator asked what our reflections were on the readings for the morning.  You can bet that I let him have it.

“All the hemorrhaging woman had to do was to touch His garment, what do I have to do?” I screamed.

“Well, the hemorrhaging woman bled for 12 years” said the facilitator.

“Even Lazarus had to wait 3 days before he was raised from the dead” was another response.

“Well, I was sexually abused when I was 3 and I am 41 now so I think I have been waiting long enough” I snapped back.

Their comments, although meant to reassure me, just infuriated me more.  For every scripture verse they had to why it was justified that I had not received any relief yet, I had two more as to why God promised He would show up when He is needed.

I left the group and stormed up the stairs to my room.   As soon as I got to my room, I let Him have it.

I yelled at God and told Him how upset I was.  I into the bathroom and punched the shower curtain until my knuckles bled (yes, I know it was a temper tantrum).

As I began to lose steam, I yelled out the words; “What do I have to do for you to show up? Lose Control??”

That is when I heard the very small words; “yes”.

My first thought was; “What? Give up control? Hell No!”

What if God doesn’t show up? If I am not in control then all hell will break lose! Is God crazy?  It will be a death spiral into chaos! Besides, to give up control I would have to be vulnerable. I would have to open myself to the unknown.  I can’t do that! I am not ready for that!  He can’t be asking me for that!

“Vulnerable” is not a word that anyone who has known me would use to describe me.  I have prided myself on being self-sufficient.  My entire life I have taken care of my family and myself because I felt that no one else could be trusted to do it.  The thought of relinquishing control and allowing God to take the reigns terrified me.

As I considered the impending doom that would await me if I even contemplated being vulnerable, I saw an image in my imagination of myself on a horse drawn carriage.  I had one rein and God had the other.  The carriage was all over the place.  I guess letting God have one rein was a great first step but by not giving Him both reigns I was going nowhere fast.  I felt the Holy Spirit prompt me to consider giving God both reins, at least for this week so He could show me His plan and that He could be trusted.

Could I do that?   Well, I am miserable living the way I am so I have nothing to lose.  So I stepped out in fear and consented.  I decided anytime I felt Him prompt me, I would submit to being vulnerable.  Honestly, I was a little excited to see what this would feel like.  I was in a safe place to do this so the circumstances of my experiment seemed worthy of effort.

There is an extraordinary video that a woman at this healing retreat shared with me by Brene Brown entitled “The Power of Vulnerability”.  It was this video that gave me the courage to embrace vulnerability and then and only then could healing be possible.  I should note that she also has a second video that is even better (but needs to be watched after her vulnerability video) entitled “Listening To Shame”.

The first morning of my Inner Healing course I would be asked to submit control. I was asked to participate in a living sculpture of the trinity. At one point I was asked to enter into the sculpture.  I was asked to rest my head on the “Father’s” chest while the ” Son” would embrace me from the front and the “Holy Spirit” was supporting and hugging me from behind.  It felt awkward and feigned.  I began resenting the fact that I had agreed to submit to being vulnerable.

To make matters worse I was sobbing uncontrollably.  It felt like everyone watching must surely think I was a basket case and needed psychiatric care.  I could not express in words what my heart ached with or was crying out so I asked them; “Can I show you what I feel?”  The facilitator nodded his head.

I dropped to the floor and laid in a ball in front of the “Father”.  I held his ankles and laid my face upon his feet. His feet became wet with my tears and wiped them with my hair.  The room and the people in it disappeared (See the above picture by Mr. Johnson because it is an image of exactly how I felt at that moment).

I remained there sobbing and thought of Mary Magdalene and wished I had expensive perfumed oils to offer.  All I could think of was my desire for the Father to love me.  I thought to myself, I am not worthy to stand and face you but surely I am worthy to lie at your feet?   There is a great book that describes the scene of Mary Magdalene at Jesus’ feet (besides the bible of course) that describes it so very beautifully.

The scene of Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus is described in Michele Perry’s book “Love Has a Face” as thus:

“She spent her life earning a living by selling false love to any who would buy it. But the Man before her now was different.  He looked passed her reputation to her very soul. His eyes had no agenda, no desire to use her. They probed the deepest crevices of her pain but she saw no loathing, no hatred, and no condemnation.  How could this be?  She saw only compassion and mercy mingled with sadness at what He knew she had suffered.  She looked away.  She did not know what to do in the face of love that held no guile or hidden motive.  Yet her gaze drew back to this Man they called Teacher.  Her heart compelled her.


Could it really be true?  One more time their gazes locked.  She could not look away again even if she tried.  How could she return even a drop of the ocean of love in which He washed her that day?  It was inappropriate to be sure. It was in the middle of an important dinner for which she had no invitation. And it was not in the proper manner.   She could scarcely believe she had just barged right into the middle of the room.  It was absolutely undignified yet she was compelled by His love.   She washed His feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  It costs her everything, every shred of dignity and year’s wages gone in an instant as she poured out her precious perfume.


Did they know how this amount had been earned? She shuddered at the thought but it was fleeting.  The look in His eyes again captured her heart.  The room disappeared.  The jeering looks and accusations faded as He filled all her vision.


Wasteful.  Indignant.  Extravagance poured over this Man the only Man who ever showed her the face of love.  How could she not pour out her everything on Him?  Love outpoured overtook the gathering.  The fragrance of intoxicating overpowering adoration that gave all it had and risked all it was filled the room.  Inappropriate. Indecent.  Scandalous.  Wasteful.


But Jesus-what did he do?  He accepted it.  He defended it.  He applauded it.  He cherished it.   He recorded it for all time”pg 47


I have been praying for receptivity to the Holy Spirit for the past two years.  I was now being able to see that vulnerability is.  It is the predicator to receptivity.  This is what I was seeking.

Why was I so afraid of vulnerability? Why did I see vulnerability as weakness?

It was then that I got the answer.  I saw a picture in my mind of me at 3 years of age, lying naked on a waterbed being sexually abused by “Al” the babysitter.

Of Course! I had made the agreement that vulnerability means losing your rights and being unprotected.  You cannot get more vulnerable than being three years old, naked and being sexually assaulted in a strange place.  Even if I could have gotten away where would I have gone? I was alone and had no idea how to get home.  This was vulnerability to me.  I had decided at three years old that being vulnerable meant being violated, assaulted and victimized.  I thought the only person that could be trusted to protect me was myself because others cannot be counted upon.  It was this lie that I had decided to believe that set me up to be a woman that could not be vulnerable. I had misunderstood what being vulnerable means.  I had thought to be a vulnerable woman would become a woman that was weak.  

Mary Magdalene was not weak, she was brave.  She was brave enough to believe that Christ would accept her and her offering.  She marched a crossed that floor and she opened herself in a very vulnerable way.  She was not assaulted there nor did she become violated. In fact, it was her lifestyle that violated her and stripped her of her dignity.  Here, in her willingness to expose herself she was having her dignity restored.  That’s when it hit me.  If I was willing to become naked in the same way then could I be healed too?  Was I resisting being vulnerability because I was still consumed by shame?  What is shame? What does it mean to say that Adam and Eve were naked without shame?  Could it be that I must be willing to willingly become naked in front of God so that in that voluntary vulnerability I could finally experience healing? Yes, I think I needed to relinquish control so that I could let God lead me.  If I could do that, it would be the beginning of learning to trust Him.

Control has been my lover for the last 41 years.  It has made me feel strong, competent and has soothed my anxieties like drugs for a junkie.  If I could not deal with how something was happening, I would take control.  Want to know how that has worked out for me? Let’s just say I have burned a lot of bridges in my life using control as a coping mechanism.  Being vulnerable meant I would have to give up control.  This was going to be harder than I thought.

One of the nights I was at the Healing retreat I had a dream about what this control was doing in my marriage.  In the dream I was about to be attacked by a large deformed dog.  It was about to crush my skull in it’s oversized jaws.  My husband was standing in front of me, raising his fist to strike the dog beast down.  I watched, as he seemed to be slowly puffed up with air.  He was getting larger and larger but he did not release raised fist to strike the dog.  Fear began to well up inside of me.  I had to take over.   I began to scream at him.

“What are you doing? Hit the dog!!! He is going to kill me! Shawn! Whats wrong with you?! Hit the dog!”

As I continued to yell at him, I watched as the air began to go out of him and he grew smaller and smaller with every scream.

Then it was our daughter Mercedes sitting in my place.  She is our 8 year old daughter and she is a tiny, petite , little flibertyjibbit.  Surely he would rise to the occasion for his daughter?

I sat powerless to help her.  Once again he began to fill up, growing taller and larger.  His fist rose up higher and larger.  My fear that the dog would strike before Shawn would act burst out of me again.   I began to yell and holler at him to hit the dog.   The louder I yelled, the smaller my husband became.

The next morning I thought about the dream.  I realized that my desire to control as well as my refusal to be vulnerable was emasculating my husband.  I had stripped him of feeling adequate, worthy or even capable of doing, well…anything.

Could it be that me controlling the family and all of our decision was stealing his joy, his purpose, his worthiness?  If he were in that role, would he in fact become a more beautiful husband and father?  I then thought about how the man is the “head” and the woman is the “heart”.

I honestly believe that for a woman to operate in the head, she must make her heart covered in stone.  A woman is made to flow from the heart.  Even scientists and psychiatrists will tell you that a man has the ability to think through stressful situations and assess them cognitively without being drawn into the affect.  He can then compartmentalize them and rank them in according to purpose and then deal with the decisions that flow from it.

Women usually think on things simultaneously.  For me to put myself into the very stressful role of dealing with all of the difficult decisions (that come from the head) I had to shut off my heart or else I would have internally combusted.  I had made my heart into stone.  No wonder I had a hard time hugging and kissing my children! I had to turn off the affect so I could get things done! I had a house to run and finances to sort out and decisions to make and stress to deal with! I had no time for snuggling and comforting children.

It’ somewhat ironic that I went to Florida to find out why I have a hard time showing affection and ended up dealing with the very thing that the root or cause.  I thought about how arguing with the HVAC guy or electrical guy or the bank guy etc, was making me into a hardened woman not a vulnerable one.  I could not be both.  I was not made for being a manipulative woman that always found a way to get what she wanted or needed.  I was made to love and be loved.

I now had to ask myself the question is there a spiritual aspect of this issue of mine that must be addressed? “Have I come into agreement with a spirit of control?”.  I looked deeply within me and prayed to the Holy Spirit for wisdom. I had barely begun to ask the question when a resounding YES rang out within me.  It’s name is The Jezebel Spirit.  (Click the link for more information).

The next day I spent some time with the Intercessory Prayer team and we renounced lies, unbound agreements and cut the connections that the Jezebel Spirit had made to me.  I realized right away that I had come into agreement with the clever lies it had proposed to me.  It is in making an agreement that I had given it power in my life.

I can honestly say I experienced a tremendous shift in my thinking and freedom from something very powerful.  That week was another week in the journey to becoming the woman I have always been meant to be.  If I want my husband to succeed in being father, husband and man of God that he has been called to be, then I must give him the opportunity to lead our family.  It is this very thing that will fulfill him and his masculinity.

So where am I now? Well, now I am dealing with trust and overcoming the fear that wells up inside of me when I am not the one making the decisions at home or orchestrating how the days, weeks and months play out (not easy at all but I can do all things through Christ Who Strengthens me! Phil 4:13).

If I am standing on the platform then how will he ever be able to?  Everyday it hurts.  Everyday I am challenged to be vulnerable but the first step came in understanding that Jesus would never define being vulnerable as opening myself to be violated.

Being vulnerable now means that I am willing to be imperfect.  I know that I am not bad, in fact, I am the opposite, I am very, very good.  I may make mistakes and do things that are bad, but I am not bad.  In fact, I have been hard wired for struggle.  I will continue to struggle against the difficulties of life but now I realize that when I am vulnerable, I open up the door for God to come in and take care of me.

I have now entered into a trusting relationship with God in a very different way.  I try to pay attention to when I use the words “should” and “need” and “but” because they show me when I am trying to control people or things or when I am not allowing God the freedom to move in my life or the lives of others.

I am glad I had the courage to be vulnerable because if I hadn’t I would have missed a week of intense inner healing of the deep wounds I have carried from my childhood.  I am not all better yet, but I am on the road to healing.  He knocked on the door and I opened it.  I now allow Him to lead as the Good Shepard and I am continually reminding myself not to take the place of the butcher (the guy who drives the sheep).  When He leads (and I am not driving things from behind) then I can trust that He will take care of me and I can be vulnerable.   His way, affords protection, green pastures, quiet waters, it refreshes my soul and I am protected from evil.  That sounds a whole lot better than what I have been giving myself the past 41 years.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord

forever.

Copyright 2012 Christina King

The day began with my husband returning from “practice” to tell me that our daughter was told not to receive in her mouth, in fact that no child was receiving on the tongue and that he was concerned she would not be able to receive in the mouth.  As I discussed this with our daughter, she told me that no one was taught to receive on the tongue and that she “couldn’t”.  When we got to the Church, I greeted Fr. and then made sure our daughter could receive on the tongue that day.

As mass began and I looked around, the first thing I noticed was four different sets of parents in front of us, chewing gum.  Throughout mass they continued to chomp away on their gum.  Two of the four parents chewing gum continued to chew gum right up to receiving communion and continued to chew gum after communion.  I guess they put the gum in the corner of their mouth, or perhaps they just chomped Jesus right into the gum.

I watched with grief in my heart as not a single child genuflected before going into their pew.  Maybe a handful bowed as they approached the altar and only when prompted by an adult.  During the consecration, not a single child kneeled, the congregation kneeled, the catechist kneeled right next to all of the First Communicants that he helped to parade up onto the altar, but not a single child kneeled.  I was told by my child later (who I had told to kneel) that she could not kneel, she was told she couldn’t.  My heart continued to sink into my chest as I watched   several of the boys poke each other, giggling or just looked around completely oblivious to what was going on right in front of their eyes not 12 inches away from them.

signum-crucis:

Every act of reverence, every genuflection that you make before the Blessed Sacrament is important because it is an act of faith in Christ, and act of love for Christ. And every sign of the cross and gesture of respect made each time you pass a church is also an act of faith.

—Pope John Paul II

What is the protocol? Are kids allowed to be up there on the altar? I will need to check that out.  According to the EWTN website: http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/non-ordained.htm

“The Eucharistic celebration is the act of the entire community, carried out by all the members of the liturgical assembly. Nevertheless, everyone must have and also must observe his or her own place and proper role: “In liturgical celebrations each one, minister or layperson, who has an office to perform, should do all of, but only, those parts which pertain to that office  by the nature of the rite and the principles of liturgy.” (SC art. 29). During the liturgy of the eucharist, only the presiding celebrant remains at the altar. The assembly of the faithful take their place in the Church outside the “presbyterium,” which is reserved for the celebrant or concelebrants and altar ministers. [Notitiae 17 (1981) 61]

When it came time to receive not a single child bowed before receiving, only about 2 of the 30 parents bowed.  Some of the children walked right up and using their pincher fingers, plucked Jesus right out of the priests hands and then popped it in their mouth like a piece of popcorn.  One kid put out his left hand, then just popped it in with the same hand.  I think that is when I started crying.  I later told my daughter that I was crying because I was so happy for her receiving Jesus.  The truth is that I was grieved and filled with utter sorrow as I watched these 8 year old children take part in a show rather than any form of prayer (the mass is supposed to be prayer, the ultimate prayer). No wonder no one believes anymore.

This is how they are formed.  Some how, some way we need to find a better way to convey the mysterious reality of what they are receiving.  Perhaps having them receive on a kneeler would be a great way to do this.  I am in favor of that, after all if your body speaks a language then how wonderful would it be to have your body offer such a reverent posture.  If the Holy Father does his 1st Communion celebrations, why don’t we? It’s more about teaching the “rules”.  I do not desire that people just teach the rules, but rather that they are evangelized during the process of catechesis so that the love of God stirs their hearts so that they desire to know how to pray the mass because they are on fire with love of God.

Understanding the mystery of transubstantiation is a complex concept to teach children.

Some how a bread making party does not seem to be the best way to teach this, at least not in my opinion.  I realize there are some great concepts that could be shared in this way but it seems a bit rudimentary.  We skipped the Bread Making party, instead we went on a Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help to be enrolled in the Brown Scapular.

The lack of reverence throughout the mass by the kids and the parents was astounding.  The reason why so many people leave the Church is because they do not believe.  Why? Because how you pray the mass is how you believe.  If the mass is a prayer, THE prayer! If the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith and these kids are not taught to receive with reverence, are not taught the that this is GOD, then of course they will not believe.  Why not go to the Luthern Church? Why not just say a prayer at home? Heck, it’s all the same right?

I have a friend that signs her emails “lex orandi, lex credendi”.  On wikipedia it says this;

The principle is considered very important in Catholic theology. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “The Church’s faith precedes the faith of the believer who is invited to adhere to it. When the Church celebrates the sacraments, she confesses the faith received from the apostles – whence the ancient saying: lex orandi, lex credendi (or: legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi, according to Prosper of Aquitaine). The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition.”[2]

Based on this, what does it seem that parish believes in? I am not sure exactly.  I do know that my daughter believes.  How do I know? Because we have spent a lot of time “praying” what we believe and by entering into the mystery of this belief with all of the beautiful means our faith has given us.  Adoration of the blessed sacrament, sacramentals, story books, the old Baltimore Catechism, “This Is Our Faith” book series, Pilgrimage to the Shrine, praying the Rosary and so much more.  I am not saying we were some how better, I am just saying there are so many ways to teach the faith, why aren’t we using them? Why aren’t we providing them at our parishes? 

There are some families that are not active participants, they do not go to mass yet they still are drawn to the Church desiring the sacraments for their kids.  What a great opportunity to evangelize!  Why are we missing this chance to awaken their hearts and souls to God?

I was saddened that confession still is not done before 1st Communion.  When we do not give the kids confession until the 5th grade we are waiting almost 3 yrs to allow a child to be freed from mortal sin.  Having kids past the age of accountability receiving Jesus, perhaps some of them with mortal sin is a very said thing indeed. (We have some kids getting pregnant at 12, we have some kids practicing witchcraft and other things  so yes, I think that some kids are capable of mortal sin in the 5th grade).

This is why confession before communion is a good thing, I would hope and pray that this will be the last First Communion mass that will miss the opportunity to teach these children the belief in the true presence.  This was not a meal, as the song “Sharing A Meal” the song the kids sang as entertainment for the “audience”  implied.  Actually, this is more than just a meal and we should be telling them this!  This is Jesus Christ.  This is the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.  This is His sacrifice, His love poured out to the world so that sins could be forgiven. This is His Flesh and His Blood.  He who eats His Flesh and drinks His Blood will have eternal life! When the priest does this in memory of Him, the priest is actually making present once again the sacrifice of Calvary. The priest is making presence Jesus death on Calvary to save our immortal souls.  This is to give our souls sanctifying grace so we can get to heaven.  How about: “Jesus, My Lord, My God and My All” or “Behold the Bread of Angels” or “Jesus, Jesus come to me”
From the YOUCAT, no. 218:

Because God is truly present in the sonsecrated species of bread and wine, we must preserve the sacred gifts with the greatest reverence and worship our Lord and Redeemer in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

So why was I grieved? Because as I sat and watched all of this and then I entered into how our Lord must feel watching all of this take place.  I began to weep, sadness came over me as I watched them chomp on their gum and realized, they believe exactly how they pray.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTARY AFTER SPEAKING WITH SOME PRIESTS AROUND THE COUNTRY ON FIRST COMMUNION TRADITIONS

First Communion is like a wedding.  The child is going to have the God of the universe enter into them in Holy Communion.  The two will become one flesh and the grace within this food will enable their souls to be transformed.  The music should be sacred and holy, to inspire the mind toward heavenly things.  I would love to see a choir singing heavenly praises and not a song about a meal.  If I wanted a meal I could go to Perkins.

What would be a great way to prevent these things from happening in the future? Well, the first thing is to realize I do not believe giving people a bunch of rules is the answer.  Jesus came to free us from the law, he desires us to be in an intimate relationship with Him and to do things for love of Him, not because we are afraid to break the rules.  When we better educate people and then provide them an opportunity to enter more deeply into their faith, they fall more in love with God and then their actions are natural expressions of their beliefs.

As we learn our faith we discover the reasons for doing and not doing things.  When a person understands that in the Old Testament we saw the foreshadowing of many things.  One such thing is of the sanctuary.  In the Old Testament only the high priests entered this holy of holies, the Sanctus.  The reason was that it was holy ground.  The sanctuary is where the sacred rites take place.  There should not be anything distracting the faithful from entering into the mystery of the mass going on, especially not in the sanctuary.

According to the GIRM the proper posture for the faithful during consecration is to be kneeling.  The mystery of God made flesh is a complex concept to teach children.  However, we have so many rich traditions to help us draw them into this sacred mystery.      Our bodies and our souls are one.  Our bodies need to say the same thing as our soul.  The words “Amen” means “I believe”.  When we receive Jesus on our knees, our bodies speak a language of belief.  This posture says  “I believe”.  We now have our entire person in communion with our belief, body and soul expressing the same thing.

When we genuflect before going into the pew, it is not because it’s a rule, but because it is speaking a language.  To genuflect with the left knee bent is for reverencing a living person, such as a King or Queen.  To genuflect with the right knee bent is for reverencing God alone.  To genuflect toward the tabernacle before entering the pew or even if you cross in front of the tabernacle, is to say with your body that you believe that God is present before you.  It should be done toward the tabernacle not toward the altar so if the tabernacle is located in the back of Church (let’s hope not), you would need to turn around and face Him.

“When you look at the Crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you then. When you look at the Sacred Host you understand how much Jesus loves you now.”

— Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

When we learn that Jesus is truly present in Eucharist then we understand and desire not to be chewing gum up to receiving Him.  In fact the thought would be ludicrous.  When we believe in the true presence,  we realize we should not be eating or drinking anything an hour before hand because we would not want to have Jesus mixing with coffee , crackers, cereal or any other undigested substance in our stomach.

There seems to be a generation that were poorly catechized and when you add into that equation a world that seems be losing faith in God, the sacredness of life and so much more. Perhaps we need to try providing some preparation for the parents as well as the kids.  After all, there are only so many times the parents even come to the Church outside of their own personal conversions.

If we know they will come looking for God for baptisms, communion and confirmation then maybe we should seize these opportunities and revamp our preparation programs to provide a homecoming like the prodigal son’s father did.  That way they want to stay and enter more deeply into relationship.

Perhaps a retreat that is Eucharistic centered.  It should include the parents so they too can be evangelized.  We should always be undergoing conversion.  It the parents are to continue helping their children to know, love and serve God then we need to be providing them with opportunities to be evangelized.   I don’t have the answers, I just know that if it’s broke you fix it.  Please share any and all suggestions in the comments box if you have a suggestion for how we can best accomplish this.  I will be sure to pass them along and will most probably begin utilizing them myself in the apostolate work I do.

Copyright 2012 Christina King

“How to Evangelize on The Web”; The Blogosphere as one of many possible “pipes” in the New Evangelization

What the heck is a pipe and where the heck is a blogosphere? Is this a secret language or are you already saying “right on”.

I am at the Catholicon Expo sponsored by the Catholic Underground and if you feel like you are supposed to be bringing a message of hope, joy, love, mercy and salvation to the world then keep reading! (The only draw back is that the camera might “catch you” with the first frame making you look like a weirdo. See below).

I am sitting in a conference room in Houston Texas listening to Fr. Chris Deckerspeaking about the “Missionary Mindset”. What is he talking about?He is talking about stuff most of us who don’t understand when it comes to technology or computers. While some of you are like “Count me in! I love it!”, the rest of you might want to run away because it all seems to big, to complex, to scary or perhaps something that “I” could never do.

That is where you would have been wrong.

If I, as a mother of 8 children can do it, so can you! “Be Not Afraid!” was the mantra of Blessed Pope John Paul II and I am guessing it was because he discerned that it was getting scary and we needed to get out of the boat and walk on water. But guess what folks? If your eyes are on Jesus Christ (Jesus I trust in You!) then you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you. Phil 4:13

So what are pipes? Pipes are the avenues, methods, means and ways in which we utilize to get our message out there. Mankind is standing on the edge of the New Frontier and now is our time, like the pioneers of yesterday, to be the pioneers of the 21st century in the digital world.

The Blogosphere is a word that has been created to describe the internet environment that has manifested itself in which anyone and everyone has an opinion on every subject under the sun and they share it on their “blog”.

The good, the bad and the ugly are all online sharing their views in this blogosphere. While this is the norm, what needs to happen is for more Christians, annointed with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to embrace their greatness and become what they have been created for. Each of us are created in the image and likeness of God and this inherent dignity not only means that we are all unique and unrepeatable persons, but that each of us have different gifts and charisms meant to heal, inspire and lead the Church toward God.

Have you ever noticed that you might like one speaker or actor or singer but not like another? Well, that is because you are different from everybody else with different styles, tastes and ways to convey information and YOU might say something in a way that I never could. Why? Because that is the beauty of being human persons.

NOW IS THE TIME!

Blessed Pope John Paul II issued the Clarion Call to all Catholics, in fact, to the entire church that EVERY means necessary must be focused on “The New Evangelization”.

What is the New Evangelization? Well, it is the technological means at our disposal which changes by the day, to evangelize the world. Ther are so many things we can do and many of us do not even know how easy it is to answer this call. So, if you have been waiting for your chance, then let me share with you how YOU can become a modern day missionary and evangelize right from your own phone, mac, pc or other.

The best way to explain this is to tell you what I have done and for those of you who believe it is silly to re-invent the wheel, I invite you do as I I have done and fulfill your baptismal promise because we are entering into a very difficult time in the days ahead and we need you. Me? Yes, You! One person can change the world so don’t for a momment think that your gifts or desire or voice do not matter. It was one vote that voted Hitler into the role as the leader of the Nazi Party and it was one vote that decided as American’s we would speak English. If not for that vote, we would all be speaking German.

So, here is what I did. I started a blog on blogspot and wordpress. It is easy to set up as it walks you through in small steps, easy to use and it is free! Take a look at some blogs out there and get an idea of your own style and flair and then DO IT! But, make it what you feel inspired to do. Do you want to talk about cooking recipes? There are blogs for that! Do you want to talk to homeschoolers? Single parents? Converts, gardening, music whatever. You do not have to be a theologian or a professional writer or speaker to have a blog, just a desire to evangelize, a sound faith from which to tap into and an extra portion of the Holy Spirit, which, coincidentally is being POURED out onto the earth right now in what I believe to be unpresidented amounts to prepare the church for what is on the horizon.

For those of you who are reading this, this is my blog!

Then, check out some Catholic online blogging sites and submit your articles. You never know, your article may be just what they were looking for.

Then, I submitted my articles on various subject matter to some of the online blog places such as:
http://catholicexchange.com/
http://catholiclane.com/
http://catholicmom.com/
http://tobtoday.com/

There are many people who would never read a blog. They may feel it is too time consuming or perhaps they hate reading. That is why the audio and visual aspects of evangelization are key and this “New Evangelization” has something for everybody.

For instance, this past May I was offered a 1 hour slot on Radio Maria Chicago every week on Wednesday from 5pm to 6pm Central time. Not only is it a National slot but it also is live streaming on their website http://radiomariachicago.com/

Here is a link (it is on the right side of my blog as well) to a free online site that allows you to be a your own radio show host!

http://coolnetradio.com/ChristinaKing

To maximize my efforts (since I want to evangelize those who have no hope, no faith, no joy, no love) I ustream “live” at http://Ustream.tv/

This allows my show to be on a venue to a much larger audience, most of which are of all faiths or of no faith. Being a secular venue, it is hard to know what the audience is, in my mind, they are just people, perhaps searching, suffering, in need of mercy, in need of salvation or in need of answering their own call to share their gifts for God!

Funny thing about Ustream, not only can you live stream, people can join you there and talk to you. You can also automatically send an invite to everyone on your facebook page and twitter and others just by writing what you are up to in the box on the same page.

Ustream is free and also allows you to record whatever you do, so if you have a webcam, you can have a show on Ustream and then click a bottom to record, save it and either hit the “upload to YouTube” button or hit the “download” button. If you create a Youtube channel (anyone with an email address can get a Youtube channel and according to Fr. Robert Barren, it is a HUGE potential frontier in the New Evangelization).

Once your show is uploaded on your Youtube Channel then edit it with a new name and tags to draw the audience you will get there (more secular).

Hit the “share button” under the video and get the “embed” code. Go back to your blog, create a new post and put the embed code into the body, hit save and publish and you have now inserted the video into and on your blog.

I also upload to Gloria Tv, a catholic free online television channel. I just cut and past the link to my video and it automatically uploads it to my Gloria Tv channel. http://Gloria.tv/

If you download Real Player, or other online free recording devices, you can record the audio of your show and upload it on a free podcasting site called Podbean. http://www.podbean.com/

You can also embed the Podcast player on your blog in the same way as a video on the design feature as a new “gadget”. That way, if someone would rather download and just listen they can do that. I believe you can then see your podcast in the itunes forum. Cool huh? Did I mention this is all free?

I then upload to “My Catholic Voice” and a number of other places as well.

I have also signed up for a facebook page and myspace page so that I can post things there. I try to keep the same pictures and names on all of them to help lead people back to the other things that I have out there. The reason? To bring them to the Church. Ultimately it is not me that I want to share, it is Jesus through my hands, my feet, my voice, my love, my message. Caryll Houselander wrote in “The Reed of God” that if not for our hands and feet Jesus would not be there” meaning in the workplace, the grocery store the internet. We need to be the living “fiat” the yes that answers this call of “The New Evangelization”.

Just try it! It is easier than you thought and remember, have fun with it! By the way, check out the wording on the image of Blessed Pope John Paul II above. He committed the New Evangelization into the care of d Our Lady of Guadalupe. If you don’t have an image of her GET ONE! If you have not asked for her direct intercession and protection, do it now.

Mary, Star of the New Evangelization, pray for us, that we may made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Copyright 2011 Christina King

World Youth Day 2011 will be celebrated in Madrid from August 16th to 21st, 2011.

The Theme for this year is:

“Planted and Built Up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith” - Saint Paul

What is World Youth Day?

It is a great worldwide encounter with the Pope which is celebrated every three years in a different country.

Why is it celebrated?

To share with the whole world the hope of many young people who want to commit themselves to Christ and others.

Is it just for Catholics?

No, WYD is open to all young people who want to take part in a festive encounter with their contemporaries centered on Jesus Christ.

What is it “to live a WYD”?

It may be a unique way to deepen your faith and grow closer to Christ, by means of prayer and the sacraments, together with thousands of other young people who share your interests and ambitions.

This years image or icon for the event holds a treasure trove of information as to where the Holy Spirit is leading the Church and what may be to come (in my opinion at least). If I am right, then the next World Youth Day will be in the Americas. I think in Mexico City, near Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Why do I think this? Well, first of all, let’s look at the icon for the Madrid World Youth Day.

First of all, we clearly see that Jesus Christ is the source and summit, in the very cross on the crown. Who is the crown? The crown of creation is and are human beings. Male and Female He Created them. In fact, it was Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand that jokingly said it was “woman” that was the crown of creation as woman was made from the image and likeness of God whereas man was made from the dust of the earth.

So the Crown, is in fact a representation of two things, both of which are reference to the victory of Mary’s immaculate heart I think.

1) The “M” is for Mary and is fused with another M for Madrid.
2) The Crown is for Mary, specifically for “The Virgin of Almudena
3) The Crown of thorns that we are called to wear instead of an earthly one.
4) The colors of red, orange and yellow symbolize the warmth of God’s love for us.
5) Red also is the color of martyrs, perhaps we are being called to die to self.

Anyone who has read my other blogs on Our Lady of Guadalupe, you will remember that OL Guadalupe of Spain, specifically the icon given by Pope Gregory the Great was the image created by St. Luke and protector of the faithful in Spain during the Muslim/Islamic uprising. Later, Queen Elizabeth, Cortez, Bishop Zummaraga (1st Bishop of Mexico and presented with the Tilma and image of Our Lady of Guadalupe) and even Columbus all visited OL Guadalupe in Spain to consecrate and dedicate themselves and their lives work to her. Although OL Guadalupe Spain is not the same image as OL Guadalupe from Mexico, it is obvious that Mary desired for the Catholic Faith and her particular intercession and grace where going to be the soil upon which future persons living in the Americas would be “rooted”.

Notice how the image of the Patroness of Madrid “The Virgin of Almudena” looks very similar to Our Lady of Guadalupe from Mexico.

There is also a pilgrim cross and Icon that has been traveling the globe since 2003. Let’s look at the Icon and it’s many meanings that also share that Mary has and is playing a central role in salvation history. (http://BluePanJeet.net) I just want to re-iterate the importance that Icons are playing in the New Evangelization and I expect their role to become central and integral to this in the next few years.

This type of Marian Icon is known as an ‘Hodegetria’ image, a word meaning, “Guide of the Way”.

What is an Icon? An Icon is said to be “written” not painted because it is sacred art that has a purpose. It is a Catechism in color. Every line, every detail means and teaches something. That something is a theological truth about God and man’s relationship to Him. Icons are spiritual doorways because when we contemplate them, there is an internal movement towards God incarnate, which is what Icons are, and when we move toward God, He moves towards us.

Icons are God incarnate because they are the physical manifestation of theological truth. They make visible the invisible. It was said that every man and woman are icons because we are made in the image and likeness of God, male and female He created them so to see a “persons” is to see the likeness of God. Perhaps that is why we greet one another with a gesture of reverence. Some cultures shake hands and some bow in the presence of others.

So now, in a world where the belief of the supernatural is almost lost, we are once again in need of a simple catechism. Like children, we need to be re-engaged through the beauty of pictures. “Beauty will save the world” and perhaps sacred art is the very beauty Dostoyevsky was speaking of.

The eyes are the window to the soul is an expression we grew up hearing. In the case of an icon is the invitation of our very person to enter into the mystery incarnate in the image. The World Youth Day Icon invites all who look upon it to enter the mystical and spiritual doorway to God.

The words inscribed are the names of Jesus and Mary, our New Adam and Our New Eve which have, through their very gift of self, opened the gates of heaven and overcome hell itself. We are called to be redeemed by Jesus by way of Mary.

Red is for martyrdom, humanity, the passion, the blood that saves. Gold is radiance of holiness and God Himself. Blue is the divinity as well as the symbol of eternity. While these colors mean so many things through the lens of Iconography, I encourage you to learn more to discover this language of colors and art.

Icons are Theology of The Body in Color. Icons are about the incarnation and therefore the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears in fact the body and the means by which we obtain information about our world around us, which is of course the senses, are revealed in icons are instruments of holiness. While concupiscence is the effects of original sin on the body, the body itself is NOT sinful and this distinction is being revealed through sacred art, Praised Be Jesus Christ! The large almond eyes also reveals not only her holiness as well as knowledge that is beyond a mere mortal persons, but it also reveals that this sense of the body is one that we most often are effected at are very person most easily. While custody of the eyes is important, we must also remember that we can also be evangelized by beauty and looking upon beauty so the call to grow in mature purity is being harolded. What good are eyes if we can not see past the exterior or those around us? We are called to “see” the very “person” of everyone we meet.

Jesus gestures both his own name as Christ as well as a blessing and his two natures. The two fingers reveal He was both God and Man. The curvature of His fingers are the signs for the greek letters which “write” the word Christ. One finger up for the I, the next curved slightly for the C, the crossing of the ring finger for the X and the pinky slightly bent for another C. This is found in the Icon that the shroud was made from as well as the teaching Christ Icon “Christ Pantocrator”.

The upward gaze of Jesus is both an invitation to keep our own Gaze on things that are heavenward but upon where he himself looked. Where does he look? He looks upon his mother. She will be our guide in this upcoming and turbulent time ahead in the Church.

Not only is Mary our guide, but this particular painted Icon of Salus Poluli Romani, as legend will have it, is attributed to Saint Luke. The legend says that Saint Luke painted the image on the top of the table of the Holy Family, crafted by Jesus. Saint Luke listened to Mary tell of the life of her son as he painted, later recording the details in his Gospel. So you see, once again we have another tie in of Our Lady of Guadalupe from Spain as that also was an Icon attributed to St. Luke.

Their embrace reveals love and tenderness of Our Mother of Mercy and Jesus’s Divine Mercy. The figures tend to be flat and unnatural. The frontality of the figures gives fullest expression to their faces. The placement of them both as centrally located in the Icon, is deliberate because the iconographer wants to show that beauty is not simply physical, but spiritual. True beauty, is captured in holiness. Again, this is the underlining theme of Theology of The Body, that the body is not just a vehicle that moves or transports the soul but that our bodies ARE us, we ARE our bodies. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states this:

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

In summary, it seems that Mary, through inspiration of the Holy Spirit is moving us in the direction of re-establishing the dignity of the human person through Iconography as well as an invitation to the mystical and spiritual means of revelation that Icons convey by means of images. We are also being invited to contemplate the relationship of Mary and Jesus for it is in this understanding that we will be more firmly “rooted” in our faith. Finally, when we build our faith upon the Rock, upon the Church, we will be firmly rooted and a storm is coming folks. If we are not rooted, we will be flattened.

For 26 years, World Youth Day has been an opportunity for the young adults to engage their lives, their persons and their gifts. Will you accept that invitation? Because when and if you do, you will be embracing your greatness and remember, one person can change the world and that one person is you!

Check out the local technology to stay connected!

There is even an App for phones to stay connected to the day to day news, photos and events at World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid through the iGPII application.

All proceeds help to fund future World Youth Days.

Recently, I heard that in New York a newborn baby was thrown down a laundry chute to be incinerated. Thankfully, the chute was filled with garbage causing the mechanism to fail resulting in the discovery of the infant by another tenant following it’s tiny cries to the garbage room. In a town very near mine, a newborn baby was discovered last month near a dumpster in a parking lot. That baby also survived. However, many, many children do not.

So here we are again, another mother, accused of the unthinkable, killing her child. While I have not followed the specific’s of this case and therefore do not have a commentary on the case itself, I am wondering what has the world come to that every day there is another story on the television in which another beautiful little baby has died at the hands of it’s mother. The case of Casey Anthony has been live streamed on the web and cable. The entire trial can be watched at any given moment and every image pertaining to this horrific tragedy is shown to us.

The images evoke a deep a profound ache within my very being. It is not the images of Caley nor of Casey, but rather of the images of them together that are the most difficult for me to view.

Why is it becoming common place to turn on the evening news and see that a mother has killed her own child? I am sure that there are many contributing factors that have gotten us to this place, one of which is the shift from the family to the individual. The other factor is that we have lost our understanding of the human person. We have objectified life, seeing each other as objects for use instead of looking at a person and knowing that the reason they were created was to love and to be loved.

What is the antidote to this downward spiral where mothers no longer embrace their great ability to bring life into the world? It is to re-establish the dignity of the human person. What does that mean? It means we must understand our nature to understand our value and our purpose. We must help this wounded world see their inherent value and reveal that they are not something to be consumed, to be used, we are not a means to an end. We are somebody, not a something. We have fallen under the tyranny of moral relativism, that is a subjective reality that there is no right or wrong but rather we decide for our selves what is right or good. It is this error that is paving the way for people to make arbitrary rules for living out their lives.

When our own truth replaces intrinsic truth, the individual and their “rights” or their “wants” circumvent all others rights or wants. The result is mothers who kill their children and we call it “choice” in one circumstance and murder in another. Moral relativism has given mother’s like Casey Anthony “permission” to decide what actions are good or bad. Who is teaching the concepts of moral relativism, look around the voices are everywhere.

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define ones own concept of existence of meaning, of the universe, of the mystery of human life.” Planned Parenthood Vs. Casey 1992

Really? The Supreme Court has allowed us to “define our own concept” and our own “meaning” of the mystery of human life? No wonder so many mothers have “defined” it as expendable. I reject Planned Parenthood’s statement which is devoid of love and instead encourage you to consider something far more beautiful that is a remedy for a hurting world.

The remedy for this tragedy is to rediscover our value, our great goodness, our dignity which comes from being made in the image and likeness of God. Until we address the real issues, which is the loss of the dignity of the human person, we will treating the symptoms of the disease rather than healing it. (See my article on Spiritual Leprosy)

The cure for the disease is the teaching of Theology of The Body. The body makes visible the invisible. Our bodies reveal a nature and that nature reveals our creator and our creator reveals our great dignity.

Mary, Mother of Jesus, Please pray for all mothers and grant us the grace to be the mothers we are all called to be. Jesus, take our hearts and give us yours.

Copyright 2011 Christina King

If your father was not affectionate, you may have trouble showing affection to your own children.  If your father never played ball with you, you probably did not know how to play ball very well.  If your father did not have the resources to draw upon to be the father you deserved, then it may be true that you also have limited resources.

I was recently shopping at our local grocery store and encountered a scene that drove this concept home.  Behind me in line was a father with his young daughter.  Although I could not hear all of the words, the tone was unmistakable and brought tears to my eyes.  Through clenched teeth and an almost guttural voice, he snarled at the young girl who was about 4 or 5 years old.  The sound was a snake like hiss seared with venom to ensure that she would not touch anything on the shelves next to him.  She cried and rubbed her eyes quietly whimpering next to him. I noticed how she continued to reach up for his fingers which were dangling at his side as she sloped her body against his leg.  Each time her little fingers touched his own, he recoiled as if she were toxic to him and would jerk himself away from her.  He pointed his finger at her in a stabbing motion chastising her for it.

The girl fell to her knees and although she was not openly crying, she was doing that thing when you try to stop crying, like a sucking in every couple of seconds through the nose, a whimpering that  seemed to strangely connect to my own diaphragm and I felt it so deep within my own body it made me think of my own Father wounds and having had a step-father who abused me, I have many.

According to the CDC, 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys will be sexually abused before they reach the age of 18.

So many of us have wounds even those of us who were not sexually abused.  There are so many places our own parents could have been wounded which formed the person they became is it no wonder then that they could not give us what we deserved because having never received it themselves, they have no idea how to give it to anyone else.

Thanks to my growing awareness of this fact as well as my continued understanding of what Divine Mercy is, I have realized that my step-father must have had the most horrible childhood.  Raised by a mother who not only abandoned him, but also a mother who subjected him to things I will not mention here, this poor little boy, was given nothing to teach him about his value, his worth being made in the image and likeness of God.  He never heard how his gifts and talents could change the world.  He was never loved for just being himself.  Instead, he grew up devoid of affection and the affection he did witness before she finally abandoned him all together was pornographic.

So you see, the anger, hurt and hate melted away a long time ago.  As a mother of 3 boys, I have become acutely aware of how boys not only adore their mothers but they often times say they want to marry their mothers.  So this many, my step-father was stripped from the love his little soul needed as nourishment and instead his soul starved.  Many people in our world are starving to death while their bodies grow fat.  It is any wonder then that this man who would be my step-father had nothing to give me but instead sought to take instead.  Until the wound is addressed, it will continue to fester and poison and ultimately lead to spiritual death.

So this year, I wrote a letter to my step-father.  I told him all these things and my mother heart shared how he had deserved to be loved and cherished by his mother.  I apologized, yes, apologized for the women in his life who had hurt him and told him that he was made in the image and likeness of God and that he did nothing to deserve this God given dignity, but that it was a gift from God who loved him beyond measure.

I then forgave him for all the wrongs that he had done, telling him that I understood how you cannot give what you do not receive.  I then told him that my motivation in doing this was his salvation.  I told him that I did not want him to go through life thinking that someone like him did not deserve to be loved by God because if he did, he would loose his soul.  The devil is clever.  He can keep someone from going to church and asking forgiveness by convincing us that God is too good and does not “like” sinners as bad as us.

I then told this man who was my step-father from age 4 to 14, that he must believe that God loves him and desires union and communion with him because I would be the one person who had every right to suggest otherwise.  If I was saying it, I told him, then he must consider the fact that it is true.

I did not want the enemy using me as a reason to keep this man’s soul from God.  As far as I was concerned, I was going to allow God to use my mercy as a conduit of grace.

A few weeks ago I was at my brother’s house.  His father, my step-father stopped by to talk to him.  When he was at the door, he saw me inside and asked if he could speak to me outside.  His voice was all humility and gentleness.  I had not talked with my step-father for over 25 years.  I was scared, but I went out to speak to him.  He thanked me for the letter and for the first time in over two decades, I was given an apology for what he had done.  He was so thankful, so grateful that when he walked away, he looked taller somehow.

This Father’s day, I pray that all of us can contemplate upon our own Father wounds and pray for healing.  Many people struggle with obstacle of Father wounds in their own relationship with God.  If you are seeking healing in this area, please read my article “Healing the Whole Person” or listen to my Radio Show during the month of July where I will be focusing on wounds and healing all month with my guests from the Theology of The Body Healing Center.

Not all will are ready to do what I did, in fact the only thing I am sure of is that this was something I was called to do and by no means is it a template for others.  That is between God and yourself.  There is one thing that I do desire for this Father’s Day and that is that we realize that we cannot give what we don’t have.  That means, we must be compassionate towards those who failed us and we heal our wounds so that we can trust in God so that we have something to give to our own children.

Caryll Houselander wrote in “The Reed of God” that we are all vessels, formed in a unique way by God.  Some of us are  a reed, hallowed out with a knife with holes cut into it, some of us are a chalice, pounded with hammer and held to the fire that forms our shape, some of us are like a birds nest, our shape, our “emptiness” she calls it, made by the tender breast of the mother bird.  Whatever our shape, our emptiness becomes the vessel that God desires to fill and pour out from.  The reed, when the breath of God blows through it, creates a song for all to hear.  I for one, am not a nest, but whatever I am, I pray that God fills me so I can spill out onto those around me.  Happy Fathers Day!

Copyright 2011 Christina King

As usual, I had my day’s wrong in my mind and thought I was heading to our parish picnic where I had signed up myself and two of my teen age daughters for face painting.  As I turned down Northland Avenue, an ambulance pulled into the intersection so I turned the radio off and my daughters and I prayed a Hail Mary for the person who was in need and that the driver would get there safe and soon, Amen.  Little did I know that I would soon see another ambulance, this time to the scene of an accident I would be at.

As I drove, I continued to think and  pray about who was in need and I contemplated upon the severity of the accident.  When I turned down the street to my church, I noticed how sparse the cars were and decided to drive towards the back of the church, thinking it would make getting to the place we would be set up easier.  As I passed the first driveway, my daughter, who was sitting in the back said;

“Go back mom, there is a woman who was hit by a car, she is pinned by a pole!”

My other daughter scoffed at her sibling saying;

“I don’t think so, I am sure that is not what you saw”.

Wondering what it was that she <i>did</i> see, I turned the car around and pulled into the main driveway.  Sure enough, there was a woman under a car near a light pole and several people were standing around her.  All of them seemed to be in a daze.

At first I thought, I don’t want to be in the way, maybe I should not go over.  But then I saw that other than a woman holding the victims hand and another holding her head, it did not appear anyone knew what to do.

My mothering and bossy nature came to the forefront and I immediately yelled out;

“Is there anyone here that has more training than me? I know CPR, I have had some first aid training?”  As I looked around they all shook their heads and stared blankly, just as scared as I was we all could see the the blood forming a large pool around her.  As it poured out of this little woman the pool began to grow larger and so I knew I had to do something and I had to do it fast.

I yelled for someone to call an ambulance and then I yelled for them to get Fr. Tom outside NOW! I knee-led down next to her and she was praying the Hail Mary, over and over in a whisper.  I yelled for the people around us to pray a rosary.

“She is praying a rosary alone, please, someone pray with her”.  As I said this I heard the group begin to pray.

I now looked more closely at her injuries and saw that the bone had not only been broken and twisted completely around, but it had been pulled through the body and her entire upper thigh was ripped open.  The tissues and bone were all exposed and the blood was spurting out all over.  Out of no where, an image that I remembered from college popped into my mind.  It was a black and white photo from a first-aid manual of a tourniquet.  I realized she needed a tourniquet but was not sure how I would get it around this mutilated leg or even where I would get something to tie around her.  I yelled for someone to get me material or a belt, I needed a tourniquet.

Three people ripped off their belts and thrust them at me, I have never been so grateful to have someone hand me a belt in all of my life.  I then realized I was going to have to pull through the muscle and fat tissues and lift them out of the way to find my way around the leg.  After several failed attempts, I realized if I did not do this, she would bleed to death if she was not already at the verge of being left with little to no blood.  I yelled for someone to go and get Father Tom.

“She needs a priest! Someone get Father!” I yelled out.  Finally I saw him emerge from the church doors looking confused and then in horror and shock at what he was trying to understand what he was looking at.  One of his parishioners, a woman who sought him out after every mass to kiss his hands and thank him for bringing her Jesus, was lying under a car, in a pool of blood.  Not more than 5 minutes earlier, she had been smiling up at him.

“There’s no time Father! She needs an anointing (I did not want to scare her or any family present by saying last rites, although I clearly felt she was going to die before the ambulance even arrived)you have to give her an anointing now!”

I yelled for him to hurry and get help.  He began to turn around.  Then I yelled his name again thinking that more than help, I needed him.  She needed a priest.  I knew in that moment, the most important thing I could do would be to bring a priest to her side and give her last rites so as to make her ready to meet Jesus.  He and I both were trying to figure out what to do and what was happening.  His face turned white as a sheet and then, as if he was given an instruction internally, he turned on his heel and went back into the church.  Oh no, I thought, he isn’t coming.

“Where is he going?” I said out loud.

Someone I am not sure, perhaps Tony, who remained at Paz’s side the entire time, said to me “He is going to get the Holy Oil”.  I must have been in shock, because I did not even think of that.

The next thing I know he was back with the holy oil and was praying over her and giving her the blessing of the church and absolving her of her sins. He must have ran the whole way because he was by my side faster than I had ever in my life seen someone move.

At this time, Paz had stopped praying and looked so very afraid.  Her eyes where very wide and her mouth was open as she looked into my eyes.  I quickly prayed for the strength to do what needed to be done and I felt an interior voice say…just focus on her.  I lifted up the flesh and put my hands into her body and felt around to the other side and then quickly slid the belt along the route I had just determined I could get to as my fingers kept the skin back to give the belt passage.  I secured it and then pulled with all of my might, knowing it would need to be tight, but so very afraid I would hurt her.  I watched her face as I did this to see if there was any reaction of pain, but there was none, only confusion and fear.

I leaned over to the woman and told her not to be afraid.  I reminded her she just received the blessed sacrament.  I told her she had been given last rites and that we were praying the Rosary with her.  I saw her look at me and I told her that Mary will hold her in her arms and Jesus was with her.  I told her she was in a state of grace, she was wearing her scapular and she was ready.  I told her to trust in Jesus, to place herself in Mary’s arms over and over.  I desired to give her peace and to take away any and all fear, but let her know to trust in God, trust in Him.  Her eyes softened and it was as if all the fear and confusion melted away.

As soon as I said this, her breathing changed, first she stopped breathing, then she began to gasp and gulp.  The paramedics arrived.  I yelled to them and to the woman who was helping me telling them she stopped breathing.  The woman helping me confirmed indeed, she was dying.

I saw the blood flow slow down, but I saw the spurts continue with a pulsing rhythm.  A woman, an anesthesiologist was helping.  She told me I had to apply pressure at the groin.  The tourniquet was not enough so I had to use my hands to grip her flesh directly to try and stop the bleeding.  I reached in and held the skin and tissues with my hands as tight as I could.  The spurts stopped.

When I realized all I could do was done and a paramedic stepped in and was working on her breathing, I let go of her leg and stepped back.  Her blood covering my hands and arms, pooled in my shoe and on my knees from where I had been kneeling before her.

I slowly stepped away from her.  It was hard, because I saw her go from praying and looking at me, to dying in front of me.

As I went into the parish bathroom and washed the blood off of my hands, I saw bits and pieces of her on me, I realized that I had the blood of a possible saint on me.  She had come from Mass, she was a regular attendee and Eucharist Adoration visitor, she was wearing a scapular, had gone to confession (I found out later she attended Divine Mercy Sunday services and this is the remittance of all temporal consequence for sin) and she had been given last rites and anointing and so I may assume based on her faith and love of God, that she was with Jesus in Heaven as I washed her body from my hands.  I prayed for her and thought, was this a loving mercy from God?

I have always prayed that when I die, I would be in a state of grace, I would have been to confession, would have just received communion, would have a priest there to give me last rites, that those around me would be praying a rosary or speaking to me about trust in God and to not be afraid and here she was given all of these things.

At 95 years of age, she lived a beautiful long life.  I found out she also had all her faculties and was considered by many woman a beautiful and holy soul that inspired them to live their own faith.  She had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and shared this prayer with others.  She had been an OB/GYN had a love for the unborn and here she laid, not more than 3 or 4 feet from the memorial to the unborn.  She was surrounded by flowers and people praying the rosary for her and with her.

I met a woman named Tony who told me these things and also how  much she prayed and offered up suffering for her own son to come back to the sacraments. I offered my next mass for this and later, offered my communion at her funeral mass for him to be reunited to the church and the sacraments.  I ended up singing the Ave Maria at her funeral.  How fitting since it was the prayer we had said together as she approached the throne of God.

Was this all just a coincidence?  Was it a coincidence that I got the day wrong and drove by just at the time this happened? Was it a coincidence my daughter saw it as I was about to just drive by?

Was it a coincidence that I heard her praying and yelled for the group to pray with her? Was it a coincidence that I had an image of a priest giving last rites flash into my mind so that I would have the presence of mind to think to call for a priest?  Was it a coincidence that when he came out and heard me, he was able to subvert his natural inclination to run to the aid of an injured woman and instead of acting on it he ran into the church to obtain the holy oil in which to give her Extreme Unction?  Was is a coincidence that her death occurred within minutes of the accident, minimizing suffering, but enough time to allow for a priest to come and for the sacrament to be given while she was still alive?

I think not.  I think it was a gift.  I think it was divine providence.  How can a tragedy be a gift?  Because her death, although it still haunts me, was the way I would want to die.  For those of you who believe in heaven, then you realize what an amazing blessing it was that the hour of her death was 15 minutes of union with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, followed by 15 minutes of suffering, surrounded by people in prayer and a priest anointing her and comforting her.  The prior 30 minutes was the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  For me, that would be a blessing.  I pray her family sees it that way.

Eternal Rest Grant unto her O Lord and let perpetual light shine upon her and may she rest in peace, most sacred heart of Jesus, Have Mercy On Us.

Copyright 2011 Christina King

It is my belief that God does speak to us. He desires for us to know Him, so it would make sense that He would find a way to reveal Himself to us wouldn’t it?

In fact, God does speak to His people and He does so in a language as individual as the person in whom He is conversing with. The Venerable Pope John Paul II said in Theology of The Body that the body makes visible the invisible. God the Father, the Creator of Heaven and Earth and of man and woman, created the human person as body and soul. I contend we image God in that we are trinitarian beings in that we have body, soul and intellect and these three things are in union and communion with one another in such a way that truly reveals the gift that is man.

Our immortal soul relies on our intellect that is not just knowledge of information but is also like a spiritual lens that enables us discernment of truth when our conscience is engaged. Our bodies communicate through the 5 senses of the body. These 5 senses are the somatic means in which to gather information about the world around us. We hear, we see, we taste, we touch and we smell. So is it any wonder that God would use these very means in which He created us to communicate with us? After all, the sacraments are tangible outward visible signs of the intangible but real grace that is infused into our soul upon reception of the sacraments when we are in a state of grace.

God the Son is the lover and Bridegroom and through the marriage analogy we can enter more deeply into the mystery of how God Himself desires to enter into union and communion with us. Ultimately we were created to know, love and serve God so that we can be in union and communion with God in this world and in the Heaven.

God the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity and often communicates with us the gifts and fruits that aid us in our journey toward God and in holiness. The Holy Spirit also heals and inspires us but for purposes of this article I would like to focus on it as a means of which to “communicate”.

So how do we recognize when God is speaking to us and once we think we hear “Him” how do we know what He is saying to us?

For those of you who have asked the same questions or perhaps just feel the thirst or dryness in your own faith life be encouraged because we share this with Blessed Mother Therese who wrote about this in “Come Be My Light”.

I want to share with you my own experience in “hearing” God in hopes that you might recognize a similarity in your own life and perhaps discover where He may be speaking to you thus enabling you to enter into your own conversation with God.

We have already asserted that we are comprised of body, soul and intellect. If the body communicates with the world around it through the senses then we can agree that the things we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch affect our thoughts and consequently our souls. One example, which may make this more clear is the sacrament of baptism. As Catholic Christians we believe that the physical reception of baptism, which consists of the pouring of water onto the forehead (or submersion) of the washing water of baptism, along with the spoken words that include the words of “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” takes place externally and are therefore quite visible. However, another reality occurs simultaneously which is the removal of original sin from the soul and the pouring in of grace to the soul as it is received into the body of Christ, which is invisible. So we see, the body makes visible the invisible, we see this clearly when we contemplate the sacraments.

For me, the senses have brought images, music, movies, smells and the like that have left lasting impressions on me. Growing up in the 80′s I was affected by shows like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, “The Breakfast Club”, “Pretty in Pink” and more. I recall it affecting my moods and my thoughts and relationships. “Pretty in Pink” inspired me to be unique and brave about who I was regardless of what other people thought was cool or popular. The themes song from “The Breakfast Club” affected many kids my age who saw it as an anthem for embracing our own greatness in all it’s complexity regardless of social status of the hierarchy of High School that seems to want us all to conform or else suffer the consequences.

My childhood and adolescence was quite dysfunctional and I escaped from the world through listening to music or watching movies every free moment I had. No wonder I had pictures, lyrics from music or lines from movies randomly running through my mind often interrupting my train of thought or conversations I had with others. In fact, I was aware of this at the time and dismissed it as being what we now call ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder. If you have seen the recent kids movie “UP” that came out in 2010 I would be like the dog who at a moment notice would break conversation and scream “Squirrel!” then look back and say “What was I saying?”

So imagine my surprise when last year at a retreat I discovered this was actually God speaking to me. Let me explain. Last summer I went on a retreat in which I confided in a good and Holy counselor that I needed his advice to overcome my judgmental attitudes towards others. He asked me to explain what I meant so I clarified by sharing a specific example. There was a woman on the same retreat that I felt I was judging because whenever I was around her I would begin to see pictures of her in my mind doing things that were scandalous and I felt a great pain and ache in my soul whenever I was around her.

After I explained the nature of what those things were that I saw, he asked me if this kind of thing happens often. I told him that in fact, it was a regular thing but did not happen with every person I met.
What he said next surprised me.

“Have you ever asked the Holy Spirit if the pictures or thoughts were from Him?” he asked me very seriously.
“No.” I said, yet began to truly ponder this concept. As instantly as I pondered it, the Holy Spirit answered the question. It was as if a veil that I did not even know existed, was lifted from my mind. In that very moment, I understood that the images I was having about this woman, were not my judgments of her but were actually her own judgments about herself that were of a particular suffering she was undergoing. It was as if I felt her pain. (I am seeing another cartoon movie called “Fern Gully” in which the little fairy says to Zach “Can you feel it’s pain?”). When we are joined in the mystical body of Christ why should it surprise us that the Holy Spirit could give us the gift of discerning each others pain so that we can give our yes to Christ and in this yes, become the hands and feet in which for Christ to bring Himself to those in need and to those who are suffering or crying out to Him?

Caryll Houselander speaks of this very thing in the book “The Reed of God”. She stresses that God Himself ordained it to be that man would play a role in the redemption of the world. God could have saved us in anyway He chose yet He chose to do it our own participation. It began with Christ’s redemption on the cross providing the immaculate flesh of Mary to be conceived in St. Anne’s womb and then for Mary’s fiat or yes to God the Father and creator of all to overshadow her through God the Holy Spirit and The Word, was made flesh and became incarnate in her and through her so that God the Son could reveal the trinitarian love of God by demonstrating it with His own yes on the cross. On the cross we see God the Son, after having received the gift of love from God the Father, give Himself back to the Father as a gift in love and the fire of the love that burned between them (The Holy Spirit) was so great it became fruitful.

Without going into to much detail, let me just tell you some of what happened for it truly was a beautiful thing. On of the pictures I had been seeing in my mind was of her through a frame or square shaped box and within it I saw what appeared to be going down stairs to a place with graffitti spray painted on the gray cement walls. It seemed to me like something I had seen in a movie where prostitutes walked in a bad part of New York City. Once I realized that perhaps God was asking me to go to this person (and once I gained the courage to do what I was being invited to do) I approached this woman and shared with her what I saw and what I felt and then what I thought it meant (I was supposed to share with her that God’s love was an ocean of mercy in which the depths were unfathomable, no sin to great for Him to heal and that He loved her). Although the images made no sense to me, they did to her. It seems that this woman had been struggling for years against past addictions that had led her to do things that still caused her pain. In fact, some of these things were done in the basement of slum apartments in New York City.

This was an affirmation to discover that what I initially perceived as judgment, was in fact, a sharing in the suffering of the mystical body of Christ so to inspire charity, mercy and prayers for someone who was under intense struggle and oppression from the enemies constant “reminders” of their past.

Since this episode I have had many other interesting “conversation” with the Holy Spirit. This particular one was an invitation for me to bring Christ to another, but many have been an invitation extended to me.

You know how you listen to a song or recall a line from a movie and you are instantly placed back into a distant memory that comes with it an intense feeling or concept? Well, this was for me, a language that God used to capture my attention. In it, I began to ask for the Holy Spirit to reveal if there was anything in this sudden thought, song, picture or line from a movie that was meant for me in that particular moment and if so, what would He like me to know?

I began to hear a tender, loving and merciful savior that I am still in awe of for His ability to work through all of my flaws and my brokenness. In fact, even in this He revealed a level of Merciful love that makes me swoon to think of it. I once asked in prayer, why God used this means to reveal things to capture my attention. I felt that God was saying that because I was physically , sexually and emotionally abused throughout my life, He wanted to be very gently with me so that I would be given a chance, once receptive to it, to hear His love and mercy for me in His requests to grow in holiness. To just reveal to me straight forward “Hey! Christina ! You lack self-discipline and charity for your neighbor!” would have been like receiving a scourging instead of a loving invitation.

Truly our God is an awesome God and He speaks the language of the individual. Ask God to reveal to you Himself to you and then begin to pay attention to the things that seem to just “pop-up”. Perhaps, like me, you said-”Why did I just say that, think that, do that?” Then ask the Holy Spirit was that you and if so what do you wish me to know?” For those of you who desire to hear God, yet nothing of what I have just said hits home, do not despair. God speaks so many languages , even yours. Pray for the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe that she give you the gift of receptivity, then listen with your body and with your soul as you read scripture, meet people, sing and pray. You will not be disappointed.

Copyright 2011 Christina King

She went on to describe this new race as having no ability to hate or judge within their DNA and that Lady Gaga herself was undergoing a change to her DNA by staying in this vessel for 72 hours so that her DNA could undergo this transformation.

The person’s carrying in the womb like vessel or egg, were said to be in a “transitional stage” because their DNA needed to be desaturated and filled and would themselves be incubated back stage before the performance. It is interesting to note that they had what appeared to be bones protruding from their foreheads.  What we would call horns.  Yes, you heard me right, horns.  You can not make this stuff up.  Lady Gaga actually kept her own horns on for the entire night.  Does anyone but me see that horns on your head are what the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live would say “Oh, I don’t know, could it be….Satan?!”

Now I am not saying that Lady Gaga is Satan, but even her publicist denounced this as a mere “publicity stunt” and said in fact that “This is about our design and our destiny, this message is bigger than the both of us.”  So what is Lady Gaga’s message?

I have found that in reading and studying the Theology of The Body that I have a new lens from which to view the world through.  When I view Lady Gaga through this lens then I must ask myself, if the body speaks a language and the body reveals or makes visible the invisible (thus revealing the “person” to us) then what does Lady Gaga’s body language tell us?  What do her words tell us?

I would say that her body language to us is that she rejects God, she rejects what it means to be woman and in fact does not embrace her gift of femininity and call to motherhood but desecrates it.  Even the world around her makes visible the invisible.  We see the occult in her videos but even more readily it can be seen right in the 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper.  The back drop for Gaga’s interview was a black room in which an alter was set behind her with candles and a skull upon it much like the one we saw at the home of Jared Loughner, the young man that attempted to kill the Gifford woman and succeeding in killing many bystanders.  Why is there a skull on the altar behind her?

When the crew showed us the area in which her sound board for cutting the master track for her new record with the song “Born this Way” was cut, a large picture of the fallen angel on the Led Zeplin album was hanging above it.  They symbols on the poster written in the cipher’s created by Aleister Crowley revealing the number of the beast.

In fact, Lady Gaga typifies the culture in which we live today in regard to belief systems.  Just as there have been pagan god in our past, she too seems to manifest many of the inherent traits of pagan gods and their rituals.  One such example is the Aztec godess Tlazolteotl.  This Aztec goddess of sex and of witches and witchcraft had power over all forms of unclean behavior, usually sexual.  She was a devourer of filth and required the sacrifice of children.  Now we see our own children being led to this modern day false goddess that uses her own body as an altar on which to offer sacrifices to whom and to what? If in fact she is some how invoking the demonic entity of “lam” or “lamia” then we would not be surprised at all since this specific demon is based on Ancient Greek mythology containing several precursors to modern vampires.  In her video’s we see that she even uses technology to morph or change her appearance to that resembling a bat or bird of some kind.

The myth of Lamia is that this demon feasts on the young, sucking their blood but also preying on young men.

To break this down I will give you the raw data and some pictorial examples:

HER LYRICS;

In regard to her lyrics, they are but chants and language with hidden and infused occultic meaning.  From her “Rah…Rah” chant of the Egyptian god to the lyrics in “Alejandro” being an actual renunciation of her baptismal vows when she rejects the Holy Trinity.  I would not allow my kids to listen to this music.  The fact that this woman announces that with this new song, in fact that very night that she comes out of her “egg” she is going to “birth” a new race, tells me a couple of things that we as Christians should take very seriously.  If Aleister Crowley was a known Satanist and developed occult practices to “open portals to our world from which the demonic to enter” and if some of those practices actually include the invoking of the demon “lam” which uses an egg to purposefully conjure demons then it seems to me this publicity stunt is not a stunt but rather an invoking of something demonic into her music.  She admitted in her 60 Minutes Interview to smoking pot on a regular basis and always when she is writing her music. I have heard many good exorcist priests say that smoking pot is an opening of the soul to the demonic.

HER VIDEOS:

While many of her video has images of famous Masons, images and ciphors used by Masons and other occultic images throughout her video’s I find it especially disturbing how she uses her video’s to desecrate that which is historically deemed Holy.  For Catholics, the Rosary, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Religious Sisters and even the Nuptial Union, are deemed sacred.  This woman goes out of her way to scandalize it all.

In this above image is the Sacred Heart of Jesus stabbed with hypodermic needles.  Gaga carries this heart on a pillow as she leads a coffin into a church. The entire song Alejandro, Fernando, Roberto, the trinity of names is actually a video of her rejection of her Catholic faith in the trinitarian God, even her fingers showing the sign Jesus makes for having 2 natures, divine and human is made in this video in case you missed the point of the lyrics or images of her swallowing a rosary and wearing a satanic priest outfit.  She herself, becomes the ritualistic sacrifice, the woman altar that most satanic rituals want to desecrate because Mary, “the woman” is what the enemy desires to desecrate.  So this woman, Gaga becomes the means by which to accomplish this unholy desecration.

HER CLOTHING;

Most of her clothing seems to have the reoccurring theme of desecration and sacrilegious.  She likes to dress like a pornographic nun, a satanic priestess wearing a robe with an inverted cross on her crotch or her clothes reveal the desecration of innocence or she wears Hello Kitty, as a display of child like innocence confused by the fact that she is in a sexually explicit outfit.  Why would one want to blur the lines between a little girl’s fashion including Hello Kitty and a pornographic, sexually explicit image of this woman?

A MARTYR;

By her own admission she says she is a martyr and has acted out her own bloody death on stage and in video’s. She has shown herself being burned, raped, stabbed and hanged in her video’s and more.  She stated emphatically in her 60 minutes interview she would die on stage for her fans.  She would not deny them anything.  In returns her fans seem to have elevated her to the status of martyr.  They have put images of her depicted as one would see a Catholic Saint such as having her image put on candles as if they were holy and on t-shirts offering others to reject God as she has with her face within a sacred heart and the words “Don’t Call My Name” written on it.  Other fans have painted her image as being crowned with thorns.  .

Perhaps the most disturbing event to date is that it seems no one is noticing that their children are being exposed to the messages in this woman’s music and most probably the demonic entities she seems to have deliberately and purposefully invoked upon her music.   In the 60 Minutes interview we see her screaming her indoctrination of values or lack thereof to the multitudes and masses of youth who come to consume her and be consumed by her.  Make no mistake about it, this woman has been screaming her message to us through her images and her music. She is revealing to us that this new race she is desiring to “birth” into the world will be of DNA that is foreign to our own. Those are her words, not mine.   If the horns she sported at the Grammy’s are any indication of what kind of race that is going to be, then I would suggest she change “birth” to “conjure” because only a mother can birth something and because this woman has rejected what it means to be a mother and instead has turned her self into a “fame monster” it would seem that she is about conjuring up little monsters or demons for the enemy.  These little monsters as she affectionately calls them are our children, or perhaps ourselves for many listen only because they “like the beat”.

I hope and pray that if you are reading this, that you ask the Holy Spirit to give you the fruit of Wisdom and Knowledge to see that this is not an innocent venture but is a tactical strategy and music is means to our youth.

I pray that Our Lady of Guadalupe envelope Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ( Lady Gaga’s birth name}, in her mantle, that Mary the Blessed Mother hold her in her arms and that the precious blood of Jesus washes over her wounds so that she can be healed of what afflicts her and open her to her true calling which is to know, love and serve God with her gifts so that she can set the world on fire with Christ’s love through her own yes. Amen.

Copyright 2011 Christina King

The  quote from princess bride that says “Life is pain highness, anyone telling you different is trying to sell you something” is a profound truth for everyone on earth.  To be a loving and committed  wife, mother sister and friend, I have to carry my cross.  My cross, my suffering will be shaped formed by what I have brought to the table, my own inadequacies, my own shortcomings and my own past experiences from my childhood experiences and relatives that perhaps shaped me. Whatever the shape, it will always lead to sanctification if I faithfully carry it and follow Christ.  However, God brings all of us a Simon.  That person who helps us carry our Cross.  In the vocation of marriage, it is our spouse.

I dearly love my husband and I need him to live out my life and in fact he is was given to me by God for this reason, to help me carry my cross so that I can grow in holiness.  My husband is uniquely qualified to help me heal my wounds and grow in holiness. God makes no mistakes.  Have you ever noticed that you tend to pick a spouse that seems to bring out the worst in you at times?  That is actually a mercy.  What? Let me explain.  If you read my article on Healing the Whole person you will remember that the devil is so clever that he often hides himself in old wounds and we, of our own free will bind him there which does not allow for healing.  Well, our spouse can be a bright florescent light and it can shine deep into our most secret places and expose those wounds.  It is a mercy because without being aware of them, they fester and make us sick and infect us.

So God gives us a spouse that can help us to see the places God desires to heal.  God knew that our spouse would be the person who could best help me carry my cross.  Just like Simon, they might night really want to do it at first and resist, but just as Simon realized what he was carrying and the importance of it, so too will our spouse when we let God open our eyes to it.  Let  me help you to see.

My husband really is perfectly suited to help me become sanctified.  Where I am weak, he is my strength and vice versa but also, he shines lights into the places that I am most wounded, not because we are bad for one another, but in Christ’s mercy, God desires for us to find healing and so we are given a person that may bring to light the shortcomings we run away from.  It is not that we are mismatched but the reality is we are perfectly matched and Christ wants us to have the courage to go into the wounds so that we can bring Christ into them and turn them inside out. Our wounds, when we allow Christ in, become our greatest glory just as Christ’s wounds from our sin became the greatest glory.  Why? Because there is victory after the suffering.  I think that is why we have the bible story of Thomas asking to put his fingers into Christs hands and side.  It is to show us, that the wounds do not go away, they become transformed, they become a “sign” of victory and glory, perhaps our greatest asset.  The devil wants us to stay away from our wounds because he wants us to remain in the suffering, the blame and the shame.

Despite my husbands faults, I believe him to be a loving and generous father.  If not for the love he has demonstrated to me over the past 17 years, I would not have had the courage to go into my own wounds and do the things that I have done.  Instead, I fear for where I would be now if not for him.  It is interesting that because of my past abuse in childhood, that the most healing quality of my husband attributes is his quick humor and whit.  I truly believe that his humor is another mercy given to me by God.  In fact, when I decided to marry my husband I said to him “I am going to laugh so much in our marriage that when we are old and living in an old folks home I am going to be sitting in a rocking chair laughing, just remembering all the funny things from our life together”.  Guess what he said then?  He said “Ya, and I will be saying; Why do you keep putting me in a room with that lady I told you I don’t know her”.  It was this humor and joy that very early on convinced me that I needed to be with him my whole life long if I was going to make it through this world which can be anything but joyful.  This reminds me of another quote from a movie.  It’s a kids movie called “Surfs Up” and it is about a penguin that wants to compete in a surfing contest and meets his hero and is being given surfing lessons.  The Big Z, the hero, says to him “No joy man, no joy…fail.”  He said this because the reason the penguin wanted to compete in the contest was to prove to his family he was valuable, but in doing so was missing the whole point of life.  How many times do I do that myself.  I get so caught up proving myself, defending myself or fighting everyone that I forget to find joy in my life.

No joy, that would be me without my husband, in fact, that is why my mother is so angry and unhappy, her life has no joy.  He makes me laugh when my first instinct is to complain or judge or get angry because of my temperament (choleric) and this always diffuses my anger.

However, many people find that they are on the verge of divorce or are dealing with selfishness and addictions.  Let me tell you, that I know first hand how devastating this can be to a marriage.  However, we must realize who we are fighting and it is not each other.  “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Eph 6:12

When we realize the fight is not against our spouse but FOR our spouse then we can allow love to overcome our anger.  The rest of this article is a letter , a Valentine if you wish, that I wrote to my husband in a time of trial.  I pray that it reveals to you how powerful you can be in aiding your spouse in overcoming trials that threaten your marriage.  Then I ask you to say a prayer and then write your own spouse a Valentine that will encourage and inspire him to greatness.

Shawn,

You have worth and value that you did not earn or merit, it was a gift, you are not a dung heap covered with snow, you are snow covered with dung.  The dung is what the enemy keeps trying to heap on you, but through confession it is removed.  The sacraments give us the grace, we CAN NOT do it ourselves.  You are a unique and unrepeatable human being made in the image and likeness of God and where made for union and communion with Him.  Through your vocation of husband and father you are given a foretaste of heaven and paradise with your family.  Our marriage is meant to be an icon, pointing you to what awaits us, here we experience union and communion with each other as a foreshadowing of true union and communion.

As much as you love me and I love you, Christ the divine lover, loves and desires you more.  He thirsts for you, he aches for you, to hold you and comfort you.  The enemy will try and keep you in the bowels and stench of self loathing.  He will lead you to believe that the way you feel about yourself is the way that God feels about you, or your children, or me.  THE DEVIL IS THE ENEMY AND THE LIER.  God loves us, you are his child.  When our children defy us or act like their utmost chaotic and self destructive worst, as their father, do you hate them? Do you loath them? Is your first emotion and desire one of disgust and desire to repudiate them or punish them or to wish they never existed? No! Your first reaction, if it is like mine, is sorrow.  Deep grief and sorrow.  This is God’s heart for you and for me.  He sees how we act like animals and his heart is grieved as any father would and He does everything in His power to reveal His love to us so that we might turn to Him and believe that He knows best.

The world is a very cruel place and Satan desires to sneak in and make you believe that you have no worth, he desires to keep you weak in faith so that he can manipulate you.  Why?  Prov 23:7 – For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

The devil is clever, but God is even more so.  When you think this is too hard…tell yourself I can not do this, but God can.   Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

I believe that God gave you me because God knew how very much I would love you and since He understood how very far removed your family would take you in believing or every knowing what God’s grace and love could be, perhaps God knew that through my love that you would see God’s love and that this would give you the courage to believe He exists.

Shawn, if I could wave a magic wand and make it better I most certainly would, but God’s ways are not our ways and through these trials and tribulations our marriage will blossom beyond all expectations and our spirits will be renewed and we will find more love for each other than we possibly knew we had.  Our hearts must be stretched if we are to love more, God is stretching our hearts, which is very painful, but it is a glorious gift for us!  If we did not experience this painful stretching, our hearts would not be open or big enough to fit inside of it all that God desires to pour into us.  He is giving us more! A larger portion, because he favor’s us, be brave and remain steadfast because  Romans 8:28 “in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good”

I am only quoting scripture because I want to combat those voices that keep lying to you.  Those voices will try to get you to believe that I am somehow mistaken, that any words I use to convince you of worth are because I am somehow blinded by love and so can not see or “know” the real you.  But if I use the words of God, those voices must be silent!  God knows all, He sees all and knows everything, even your deepest darkest secrets, even the most evil thing that you have done and yet, God still loves you.  Do not depend on my love to get you through this because the enemy will use this weakness against you.  Use the love God has for you, because He loves you as you love your own children, regardless of faults and failures.  You are his son and he knew what he was getting when He created you, you are no surprise to God, yet….He wanted you and created you despite His knowledge that you would fail Him. Isn’t that great!!!  I tell myself that all the time when I am feeling miserable.  God knew  what He was getting when He made me, I am no surprise to God and He created me anyways.

Just know I love you.  This is doable.  I will continue to show you that I love you and that we can do this together.  May the blessed mother wrap you in her arms and kiss your forehead for me, may Christ’s tender mercy flow and spill out as a salve on your heart through the healing power of the Holy Spirit, May God the Father, embrace the man that he created revealing to you that you are a great joy and consolation to Him regardless of your faults.

Loving you now and forever,
Your Wife,
Christina

Copyright 2011 Christina King

That being said, I decided to go to the movie “The Rite” which opened this past weekend.  The reason I went was so that I could evangelize my husband.  You see, my husband was raised Jehovah Witness.  He was baptised Catholic in 1997 when our 2^nd child was born.  Although he was baptised and attends church regularly, he really has not embraced this faith as his own.  As a Jehovah Witness, he was taught that Jehovah is God.  Jesus Christ was His son, but not God and certainly not a gift to mankind for the atonement of sin.  So the version of God that my husband grew up with was that of a God that judges, gives rules and laws governing everything including how many hours a week must be logged in service to prove their faith.  For those who did not put in enough hours or “measure up”, they were publicly denounced as “bad association” or dis-fellowshipped.  Many times, this also involved being shunned by their own family members.

These experiences that were devoid of God’s mercy or love were what convinced my husband from a very early age that if there was a God, he did not want any part of tHim if He could be so harsh and the members of the Kingdom Hall taught him that God would not want the likes of him either.    It is ironic that the devil made more of a believer out of my husband then their Jehovah God.  When he was very young, he heard about backward masking and so he played a Queen Album backward on his record player.  What he heard scared him enough to decide to burn the album.  When he took the album outside and set it to flame, he heard what he to this day believes, were the screeches of demons and he saw what he believed were their faces within the flames.  It scared him, but it also planted a seed that if the devil was real, perhaps God was too.

Fast forward to this past weekend.  I decided to ask my husband if we could go see this movie.  My reasoning was to water the seed, which was his belief in the supernatural realm.  My hopes were that it would strengthen his faith.  My husband is always willing to please me and so agreed.  As we left the movie my husband commented on how the people around us were clearly unaffected by what we all just saw.  I have to admit, I also noticed that many of the audience members (even during the movie) made off hand comments about how ridiculous it all was.  Many of their offhand comments were made during shots that referred to the Vatican or about the priesthood or that anyone could exert power over the demonic by simply using a crucifix because of the symbol of Christ’s love and sacrifice and victory over sin.

Among other things, I heard comments revealing that many of the audience members did not believe in God, much less the Devil.  One gentlemen with a shaved head, 10 earrings in one ear and a leather jacket with a skull and references to Anarchy, expressed his disappointment that there was not enough violence and it was not a “horror” movie at all.  I guess he expected more gore or pea soup, of which their was none.

I was surprised that I did not expect the audiences reaction.  I guess I expected people to have their eyes opened. I expected them to walk out and see a new world around them. I guess I had hoped that the movie would make the audience suddenly aware that the world was one of which demons constantly prowl about seeking the ruin of souls.  What I really had hoped for was that movie goers would recognize that the Catholic Church had demonstrated to the world that the enemy is real and the church has the tools to defeat the evil one.

Unfortunately that did not happen.  I am consoled by the fact that God uses any opportunity to plant a seed and that includes this movie.  Arch Bishop Fulton Sheen said that the greatest accomplishment of the Devil was to convince people he did not exist.  He was right.  The Devil hides in plain sight.  What I liked best about this movie was the the enemies tactics were exposed.  The enemy showed us how he likes to regurgitate our faults back to us without mercy or love but rather with accusation and disgust.  The enemy disguises himself as just a thought or just a voice in our minds that continually leads us back to our past wrongs or failures and then he magnifies them in such a way that we, in pride, believe our sins are to big for God’s forgiveness.

I was no longer filled with grief but realized that this movie could be a catalyst for conversions.  My husband solidified this when he said something very profound to me.  He asked me if I thought that perhaps the enemy revealed his existence to him as a youth because as a Jehovah Witness, the enemy knew that he had no place to go and no resources to protect him.  The enemy knew that by revealing himself to my husband, that he would only be scared, despair and feel that the God he knew could never be greater or stronger, since the God that my husband had been introduced to was not one of love and mercy, but of wrath and judgement.

We began to discuss how in the movie the enemy would use many tactics.  One was that the devil would accuse the seminarian of many past indiscretions or sins.  That is important to note because he does that to every one of us on a daily basis only he does it while hiding himself.  The devil hides himself by convincing us he does not exist and then comes to us in what seems to be our own  “voice” in our minds.  This voice is one that is an accuser that is quick to point out our flaws, our shortcomings and our failures to be “good”.  Here is a good piece of advice, if the voice you hear is accusing you   without mercy, then chances are this is not of God.  It is not that God does not reveal our shortcomings or failures to us, but rather it is in the “way” God reveals them to us.  I believe my husband was very insightful.  It is true, that as a Catholic we know that God is a triune God and this relationship of three persons reveals a God of love and mercy.

God reveals and shows us our shortcomings and failures in such a way as to encourage us to grow.  An example is that recently at a retreat, God revealed to me that there was a “door” in which I did not even know existed in my life.  This door was a place I was hiding some very stinking and smelly shortcomings.  I could smell it, I just did not know where the smell was coming from. While in adoration one day, it was like He said “Psst..Over here”.  It was so gentle and so loving that even though I knew that what was behind the door smelled really bad, I was ready to see the source.  Then, Jesus and Mary took me by both of my hands and the door creaked open just a sliver and then he shut the door quickly.  I knew in that moment that God truly is loving father and merciful Saviour.  He wanted me to address my issues, but He also understood that I needed to be led gently so that I would not despair or doubt His love for me.    The enemy wants to dump the stink and filth on us so that we are consumed and overwhelmed in it.  He wants us to feel like we are drowning in our filth and failures and to believe that we are unworthy to call out for help.  He wants us to believe that our sins are too great.  But as this amazing movie pointed out, the devil is a liar. The only thing he is great at is being a great deceiver!

St. Faustina revealed to us that Christ’s mercy is an ocean of unimaginable depths and the invitation is extended to all, especially the one who has committed the most horrific of sins.

What a beautiful gift I received when I realized that the audience did in fact receive a gift even if they did not realize it.  The gift was that a seed was planted.  That seed was the seed of Divine Mercy and I heard it in the lines “God chooses us!  We do not choose Him, He chooses us”.  It is so amazing to me that God can use any means and any circumstance to evangelize, even a horror movie.  Just as I had hoped, the seed of faith growing in my husbands heart was nurtured and awakened through our discussion that transpired from the movie.  What I did not expect, was to see that God could use the devil to reveal not only His own existence as God, but to reveal His mercy.

The moment I realized this was when I heard the words John 15:16  “You didn’t choose me.  I chose you.”   for about the third or fourth time.  It was these words that  truly exemplify the love and mercy of God because these words reveal that it is only in the Christian faith that we see God coming to us, seeking to reveal Himself and to enter into a relationship with us.  As Christians our faith differs from every other religion in that God comes to us! He seeks us out as St. Augustine shares with us in the words we hear every Easter:

“What good would life have been to us,
had Christ not come as our Redeemer?
Father, how wonderful your care for us!
How boundless your merciful love!
To ransom a slave you gave away your Son.

O happy fault,
O necessary sin of Adam,
which gained for us so great a Redeemer!”

There is no limit to God’s ability to demonstrate His Mercy and love, even a horror movie.  I don’t know about you, but to quote another movie, He  had me at “Hello…”

Copyright 2011 Christina King

My first impression while viewing this video on youtube was to think that it was a joke.  I thought that his reaction could not be a serious or real one.  But as I continued to watch it, I was convinced otherwise.

The video was done by a man who seems to happen upon a large rainbow in his front yard.  Upon discovery of this rainbow he notices not only is it a “full on  rainbow” (he can see the place in which is originates, the apex and then back down to the ground) but he can also see each of the individual colors within the rainbow with precise clarity. He tries to share this beauty by zooming in with his camera.

At one point he points out that a second rainbow emerges in the clouds.  We hear him exclaim “It’s a double rainbow!”  I sensed, listening to this man, that he is in utter amazement and awe of the sight he is privileged to behold. He also seems to be in disbelief that it is in his front yard.   As I listened to the emotion in his voice I became acutely aware of an inner pain and sorrow well up from deep within him and his exclamations of joy and wonder changed to that of disbelief that he was worthy of such a gift of beauty, as if it were a mistake that the rainbow manifested itself to his eyes and not someone more worthy.

I am reminded of the scripture verse “Why am I so honored or favored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me?” Luke 1:43  His next words of “What does it mean?” declare this same question.

How could something so beautiful be in my front yard? What does it mean?  Just as he asks this question.  Which was really a declaration that he does not believe himself to worthy of such a gift. It is as if God has heard his question and another rainbow is added to the mix.  We hear the man gasp “it is almost a triple rainbow!”

As he continued to sob, with both joy and sorrow this simple sight of a rainbow becomes an act of mercy that pours out through the Holy Spirit and is received through this man’s senses.  The creator speaks to him through His creation. This video led me to a recent memory in which my husband called me from a retreat he attended in Florida called “Return To Glory” by Dr. Bob Schuchts and others.  It is a retreat for men to embrace what is means to be created “man” and how to live out that call and gift of the masculine heart.

A unique encounter with a young seminarian  evoked a similar reaction as the double rainbow guy in my husband.  My husband was asked my  this young seminarian give  him a blessing.  My husband, who was raised Jehovah’s Witness and has many wounds from his family life, has never really embraced his Catholic faith as his own and  has always felt unworthy of God’s love, much less worthy of having anything he could give to another such as a blessing to someone he perceived far “better” or “holier” than himself.  The young man convinced my husband otherwise and it had a profound affect on my husbands heart.

My husband called me shortly after this encounter and he sounded very much like the double rainbow man did in his video.  My husband was touched to his very core.  That the young seminarian demonstrated the belief he was in some way worthy of such an encounter.  The idea that his blessing was valuable to anyone was an act of mercy and love that opened my husbands heart to God.

The young seminarian, in asking for a blessing as he knelt in front of my husband shocked my husband because in this simple act, it spoke volumes to him about his own preciousness, God given dignity and value.

This was what the rainbow guy was experiencing.  The rainbow was creation bowing before the highest of all creation, which is man,  and in doing so brought the creator to him.  This revelation of was speaking to the man’s heart about his own dignity, value and worthiness.  I pray he follows this inspiration to it’s natural conclusion.  That all of creation aches for the redemption of man and that includes the double rainbow guy and that all of creation reveals the Creator who is God.

Copyright 2011 Christina King

I was in Philadelphia at the Theology of The Body Institute and was invited to dinner with a couple, Ryan and Lisa, who lived nearby.  At dinner we visited and shared our journey as parents of large families, homeschooling and more.  I liked them both instantly.  All at once, Lisa asked me if I ever looked closely at the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  I had to confess that I did not, after all I have always thought that this image was just a picture of the Blessed Mother as she appeared in Mexico, nothing more, nothing less.  Boy was I in for a huge awakening.

She left the room and returned with a votive candle, you know the ones that have images on them? This one had an image pasted on the outside of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  She proceeded tell me that one day when she was looking at the image, she discerned what looked like a line on the inner gown that was comparable to that found on a pregnant woman’s belly called a linea nigra.  This is darkening of the skin due to changes in hormones, that spans from the bellybutton to the pelvic area and is quite common to women who are expecting.

As I looked at the inner robe, I experienced a profound insight to the image that took my breath away.  Not only did I see what she was seeing, but I saw even more.  I saw how the entire inner robe looked like a torso, but not any torso.  It looked to me that of the torso of Christ.  Right down the center of the torso is the line which is in the very fabric of the Tilma itself.  This is thought by many experts to be the exact center of the original image, as it has been cut to fit frames over the years, thus changing the shape.

If I followed the line, indeed, there is a dark area of where the bellybutton would be, the line going down, then leads to a shadowed area that looks like two thighs coming together in the pubic area.  As I followed the darkened line up from the bellybutton, I saw that just to the right of it, where the heart shaped flower is (and where one would expect a heart to be inside of a body), I saw the punctured heart of Christ, there is even a curved line like that of the flow of water and blood coming from the the heart and curving into the the folds just under the 4 petaled Jasmine flower that is a glyph of truth and for the one true God.

I was flabbergasted.  Right in front of me, I was seeing the torso of Christ, whose arms extended upwards and become her arms, as if symbolically they were conveying that they are united in purpose ending with her pinkies crossed in the St. Anthony cross.  I also noticed how only four of her fingers show on each hand just like the shroud of Turin does of the crucified Christ, another Holy image said to  be a miraculous image. I have since taken both images and overlapped them and discovered other beautiful coincidences.

Upon leaving the couples home that evening, they gave me a book about the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe to read.  I stayed up most of the night reading it.  I am sure some of you are shaking your heads at me saying, “You didn’t know that it was a codex or a language in picture form to the  Nahuatl Indians?” Nope, but I did now and I was beginning to get a whole lot more.   As I read through the Handbook of Our Lady of Guadalupe I began to decipher the codex with the lens of Theology of The Body.  Something was happening, I started seeing a message related to our own times. I began to see a new purpose revealed within the image and it was a message to the world that we were created for love.  This message was filled with divine mercy and it’s grace that was literally emanating off of the picture as I gazed at Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The glyphs within the image, spoke a language in codex form to the Nahuatl Indians.  This message signaled an end to human sacrifices and that a new civilization had arrived (the shape of the heart conveyed hill or mountain, the “stems” of the flower were a glyph for river or water and together they revealed civilization) for in this image was revealed that she was bringing the one true God, which was greater than any of their gods (she blotted out the sun, thus the rays coming from behind her).

The glyph of the face of the “wise man” which can be seen within the 9 large heart shaped flowers spoke another truth to me.  Since I believed that the curved line emanating from the heart shaped flower glyph was that of the font of Divine Mercy, (after all it came from the heart just like the Divine Mercy image and it also originated from the belly of Our Lady where the incarnate Christ was inside of her womb) the rest of the revelation came to me in a tidal wave of thought.

What if the face of the wise man was John Paul II who not only canonized St. Faustina, thus giving the message of divine mercy to the world, but what if this “new civilization” was about making our hearts right, untwisting them, putting a “person” or face into our own hearts so that we would not objectify others as he wrote about in Love and Responsibility and in Theology of The Body.

Even her name, “Guadalupe” she shares with the name of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Spain, carved by St. Luke and is titled “The Queen Of Mercy” because she protected those who sought her intercession.

In the image from Spain, she is a mother, holding the Christ child.  In the image in Mexico, she is a mother expectant with the God incarnate.  The mercy of God, the reason for Him becoming man.  Our Lady of Guadalupe spoke these words to Juan Diego on Tepeyac hill “Am I not here, I who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am 1 not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need something more? Let nothing else worry you or disturb you.” She is the source of our joy.  She also called herself our merciful mother. What is in the hallow of her mantle?  Christ’s mercy, God’s love demonstrated in the incarnation.  No wonder we are told to place ourselves within the hallow of her mantle because this is where the trinity is.

More miraculous findings have been revealed within the past century.  For instanct, in her eyes, using high powered microscopes and computers images of  St. Juan Diego, the Bishop and others have been found in her eyes.  It is an interesting side note that her eyes display a triple reflection (Samson-Purkinje effect) characteristic that is found in a living eye.  In one of her eyes a discovery of a man and woman with several children are found, representing a family.  I find the images of  the family strangely reminiscent of the themes of JP2′s pontiff.  If the family is seen in Mary’s eyes, this reveals much to us about the future of the “church” since Mary is the mother of our church and we are her church.

“The family is the domestic church”. The meaning of this traditional Christian idea is that the home is the Church in miniature. The Church is the sacrament of God’s love. She is a communion of faith and life. She is a mother and teacher. She is at the service of the whole human family as it goes forward towards its ultimate destiny. In the same way the family is a community of life and love. It educates and leads its members to their full human maturity and it serves the good of all along the road of life The family is the “first and vital cell of society”. In its own way it is a living image and historical representation of the mystery of the Church. The future of the world and of the Church, therefore, passes through the family.” Homily of Pope John Paul II November 30, 1986.

John Paul II brought us these messages in Theology of The Body and Love and Responsibility.  Within them, he desired to share with us the relationship of God, which is the trinity (father, son and Holy Spirit).  The trinity reveals profound theological truths to us about who God is.  We are called to “know” God.  Just as scripture says “and Mary knew not man” this knowing is one of intimacy and relationship and is how God desires to “know” us (union and communion).

JP2 desired to reveal that each one of us are called to this union and communion.  JP2 also worked tirelessly to share the dignity of all life and our call to love freely, fully, faithfully and fruitfully.  This is how we would know, love and serve God so that we could enter into union and communion with God not only in Heaven but right now on earth. I believe all of these truths are revealed in this image.
http://wcr.ab.ca/WCRThisWeek/Stories/tabid/61/entryid/357/Default.aspx

I have begun to read every book that I can on  the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  I have come to see many things in the glyphs, in the codex, in the icon like image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  What is the most important thing that I believe is revealed in the image?  I would have to say the most important image I see is overwhelming symbols of the trinity.

God the father (creator and giver of life, expressed in her receptivity of motherhood) so loved the world that He humbled Himself and became Man (incarnation of Christ in her womb). God the son, (revealed through sash signifying pregnancy as well as the torso of Christ seen in the inner robe)so loved the father that He gave Himself as a gift back to the Father(the flowing blood and water from the pierced “heart” comes out of the “mouth” of the glyph of the wise man found inside of the heart) the flow of blood and water cascades down the 3 folds (symbolic of the one true triune God?) just under the 4 petaled jasmine flower (truth, God) showing us that the Father received the gift of the son.  This love was so complete and full that it became life-giving (the three folds as well as the fact that her pregnancy is a result of being overshadowed by the power of the Holy Spirit).

Identical twins result from the splitting of a single embryo, one flesh becomes two sharing the same DNA.  In this image we see that Christ takes his humanity from Mary’s flesh alone (no biological father) and in doing so, gains the hands and feet in which to give himself as a sacrifice to mankind.   Archbishop Fulton Sheen says that “since a woman played so great a role in the fall of man, would not woman then play such a great role in the salvation of man?”

Interestingly, the constellation of Gemini, the twins, is located on his torso indicating this profound truth that God made the body that made His body. They are flesh of the same flesh, united in purpose conveying union of purpose and love as well as communion since not only does every participle  of her DNA exist within Christ but she is also carrying his infant form within her womb, giving him the blood and water in which to give Him life.  He then reciprocates by giving us his blood and water in which to bring us all, through his mercy into the next world.

Eve, was brought into the world through the gift of himself and through the flesh of Adam she came to be.  Now the New Adam, through the self-donation and gift of the New Eve, will receive His flesh from the flesh of Mary.  So it would seem that God really does make all things new.  In the beginning, Eve in her no, of her own free will, took, with her no to God and in doing so she brought the fruit (knowledge of Good and Evil) of death into her body and subsequently brought death to all of her offspring.

All is made new when the New Eve, Mary, of her own free will, gives herself as a gift and in doings so brings into her body the fruit of life and of all knowledge, into her body and subsequently brought life to all mankind.  Mary is the ark, she is the first tabernacle and we see her her standing on the moon as if it were a patent, suspended by an angel that venerates her.

I found many “secrets” that I have not seen documented anywhere.  I am not sure if they are meant for my own faith or for others. I thought I would share this one insight because to know that I am created for love and that God’s mercy is so great that He would do anything necessary to bring this message to me, seems like too large a treasure to keep to myself.  Indeed we are created for love.  I hope your Christmas season is filled with the revelation that God is with  us and He came to be with us physically in the flesh of mankind so that we might participate in the salvation of mankind.  In the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, God reveals that there are no lengths in which He would not go to reveal His love to the world.

Copyright 2010 Christina King

In some of my many travels I had the opportunity to talk with a retired FBI agent who interviewed a child pedophile and convicted murderer of children. When I asked him several questions regarding the cases he was in charge of this is what he told me. That many of them were unsupervised by parents and were abused or neglected. Many of them, were witness to pornography at a young age (not being supervised) many of them found their victims by driving around and just looking sometimes at night through open shades. So to me, I will definitely micromanage my young children’s lives until they understand the complexity of every day living in a society where many have no respect for life.

Perhaps I do not fully understand what it means to micromanage, but I am guessing that many of you would classify me as a parent who micromanages things. I figure, it is not the same as 50 years ago when you could send your child outside to play and not see them again for several hours and everything was fine. You could have your kids sleep over at a friends and not worry about abuse, exposure to violent or pornographic movies, you did not have to worry about a lot of things that I believe we clearly do now.

When I went to take my daughter to college, they made this big schpeel about helicopter parents and just let them go. I thought really? What a joke! I am going to send my Catholic daughter, who is saving herself for marriage into the world for the first time and just wave at the corner good bye and good luck! Think again. I did not birth my children into the world so that I could throw them into the cesspool of water and say “sink or swim”.

So what did I do? I encouraged her to pick a college close to home for her first year. That way she had an opportunity to get out of the house and learn to live on her own but had a way to come to the place that she felt safe and loved if she felt the need or was overwhelmed with the new environment. I came for lunch once in a while so she could show me around and have a sense that her “place” was her place. I called or texted regularly just to encourage her. I sent gift baskets at finals time to get her through the long nights of study. When she was sick, I picked her up and brought her home to help her get through it, helped her with her laundry and then took her back.

What! Some of you are saying. For crying out loud, let her grow up. But hear me, what message did my actions say? One day, I will be gone, dead and buried and what message did my “hovering” send her? That no matter what, I will love her, I will server her, I will be involved. When she has her first baby, if she desires, I will come to her house for the first week and do laundry, help her to take a nap, encourage her, whatever it takes so that she too can embrace her role as heart of the family.

What do others think? Are you as infuriated by the term “helicopter” parents? Perhaps all homeschoolers are helicopter parents? After all, I homeschool to keep the innocence of my children intact, to take into account their different learning styles and cater to that, to know who they are associating with and to ensure that they remain close to Christ. I know that I have received ridicule for being overprotective and that homeschoolers are not letting kids be socialized.

As a helicopter parent, I think that my actions have been the reason that all 8 of my children are still alive. It also may account for why none of them have been sexually abused and why all of them know that they can not get away with anything because mom is on the job. I don’t allow sleep overs and I supervise even family members as they are in proximity to my kids (having been abused my family members growing up, I realize even a “walk” with the wrong relative can prove tragic).

Don’t get me wrong, I could not possibly run after all 8 kids at once, I am just VERY involved. I am sure that many teachers can’t stand me (some of my kids have gone into school), many parents think I am over involved and some of you reading this are sighing and rolling your eyes and I don’t blame you, I am not denying a thing.

However, here is the fruit of labor; My oldest is almost 21 and although she rolls her eyes at me at times when I am hovering, she also has expressed to me that she has on many occasions been grateful for me being there for her as she learns to make her way in the world.

I have also had my 15 year old tell me she prefers to go to the mall with me than her friends because I am more fun.

My children learned about the birds and the bees from their father and I, they are safe, healthy, love Christ and the Church, know they were made to know, love and serve God and believe they too have a purpose to being created.

So, I do not plan on changing my technique anytime soon, but would love to know from others what their take is on this subject.

Copyright 2010 Christina King

I then talked about the 3 things that will oppose them in battle; The World, (Jersey Shore and pornography) The Flesh (The senses and temptations to use/lust and not love others), and The Devil: The Enemy, The Evil one, who uses many tactics to destroy them.  The Evil one uses the following tactics;  1. Break down communications with headquarters (God) by sloth, or to make undisciplined a man so that every excuse, impediment or obstacle stands in the way between a man and God.  2) Propaganda: The Evil one uses lies and faulty information in the messages we hear and the way he tells men that they do not have what it takes or that they are phonies.  He will use any and all means to introduce lies into our lives.  He desires only that we listen.  Jesus never entered into dialogue with the enemy, instead, he pulled out the sword of truth and cut that dragon in half by quoting scripture to him, thus revealing the lies.  When we dialogue with the Evil one, who is superior in intellect, we make the first mistake.  Once we listen, he works on getting us to believe and make agreements with him about  the lies.  “You never do anything right”, Ya..what is wrong with me?  Right there, an agreement has been made and the door has opened for the enemy to gain a stronghold and affect our relationship with God.     As an enemy always watches the Perimeter, (3) so too does the enemy knows our weakness and chinks in the Armour.  He will expose them and use them to deceive us, to destroy us, to win the battle.  Men  must know his tactics so that they do not allow him to exploit these chinks. All men are meant to fight the battle.  In Combat (4) The Evil one uses the intellect, body and our soul/spiritual receptivity to manipulate our feelings and our thoughts so that he can incapacitate us. I then lead the boys through the prayer in scripture of putting on the Armour of Christ. Since only a man can bestow masculinity, I made sure to tell them to listen close to Doug Barry’s talk later that day as he would lead them on the adventure to fight the battle for his Bride (spouse or the church).  As a woman, I told them my gifts are to inspire them to this call and through my feminine heart, to lift them up so that they too can learn to be receptive to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The girls talk was “Captivating Beauty” and it was about how women were created to Know God.  This means he desires an intimate and personal relationship with with her through the father who desires to protect and care for her.  He desires to know her through the son who is her lover and romancer of her feminine heart and an inspiration to men through the power of her feminine beauty.  He also desires to know her through the Holy Spirit who is the life giving healer and voice of God who spoke through out scripture and continues to speak to our hearts to day. Woman with her unique ability to receive and be receptive is called to bring Christ as Mary did in her womb to men of the world. We are called to be mothers and to be tabernacles!  Just as Mary brought Christ in her womb to Elizabeth, so are we called to be tabernacle, bringing Christ to the world.  We are to be the hands and feet that Christ desires to bring his love and presence to others. We are called to Love through our femininity.  We are the Bride and Christ is our bridegroom.  The Bride and the bridegroom analogy shows how much Christ desires for us to see we were meant to be in communion. I talked about the creation of woman in the Garden, out of the image and likeness of God and not the dust of the earth like man was…his creation shows his rugged creation of wilderness within him revealing his impending adventure, battle and need for Eve.

We were created out of the image and likeness of God, which shows our precious dignity as well as our design from the original invention of man which is to give and receive love to our bridegroom (spouse or consecrated religious life or consecrated single life).  We too are called to change the world with our fiat, to serve through motherhood (spiritual or physical) and we too will face the challenges of the World, the flesh and the devil.

The world tells us our physical beauty is the most important thing we have of value.  This is a lie.  WE are Body, Soul and Intellect.  Our femininity is infused throughout this relationship that makes us the “person” that we are.  Not only this, but God says just being a woman is beautiful.  Why? Because only a woman can carry another human being within her body.  We are touched by the finger of God as he knits the body and soul of new life within our wombs. So to have a womb, to be woman, this conveys our beauty and is why the devil hates us so much. I expounded on the the need to invite God the father in and heal our father wounds, to invite God the Son in to romance our hearts, to invite God the Holy Spirit in to heal us and to speak to us so that we can change the world with our yes.

I also talked about renouncing any agreements or vows that we might have believed from previous Father wounds that the evil one tries to exploit to keep us controlling, angry or unable to trust.  I talked about forgiving others and using the sacraments as the means to physically experience God through the physical reception, to spiritually experience God as we are receiving the Grace from the sacraments and to intellectually receive God has our will is conformed with His Will through the meeting of the Holy Spirit in the sacraments.

This young woman put together this amazing conference in the Diocese of Nevada.  It is too bad that only 50 students came.  Because her conference was not supported by the person in her diocese that is in charge of faith formation for teens, she was unable to bring this amazing opportunity to more teens there.  We, like this young woman, are called to stay faithful no matter the obstacles.  I am grateful that she did not give in to the spirit of discouragement.  Instead of giving up, she worked hard to bring confession, adoration and mass to the youth of our church.  She, through her feminine gifts, opened herself to the Holy Spirit and received the gift of counsel (by virtue of her baptism) and in this counsel, she knew God desired for her to show the youth of today that they are in a battle for their souls and she gave them the truth of the faith to fight that battle!

This is only one way that she has shown to the world her feminine receptivity to God.  She is showing her mother heart, her desire to share and teach the faith, to love and encourage others.  This is what a mother does.  This is what we as women are ALL called to do!  We are called to be “impregnated” as Pope John Paul 11 said in his encyclical of the dignity of woman, we are called to be filled, infused, impregnated with the Holy Spirit.  To allow it to grow and transform our lives with in us so that we can give our fiat, our yes to God and through our yes, God will “birth” and bring forth the life Christ from our feminine hearts. This demonstration of trust and being a child of God reveals the Father to the World.  This passion and desire to love others reveals God the Son.  This receptivity and obedience to open herself and receive the word of God and to listen to it and then convey it to the world reveals God the Holy Spirit.  All women are called to Motherhood.  A mother is one who loves, nurtures, instructs, encourages, gives life, gives her very self to the world as a gift.  So that through her gift of femininity and of motherhood, others will see the face of God, they will see Christ in her…they will hear His voice and know they are loved.


Copyright 2010 Christina King

My daughter was listening to the radio while doing the dishes and a Brittany Spears song came on.  The subject matter of the song was about how Brittany believes that there are only two kinds of people; those who entertain and those who are entertained.  My daughter drew my attention to the song and made some kind of comment about how she knew that there was something wrong about the lyrics but was not sure why.  As I listened to the lyrics the answer hit me like a ton of bricks.  This is what I told her.

Brittany was missing out on the full truth of what it means to give  yourself as a gift.  It is true that some of us are more comfortable with being in the lime light however, that was not Brittany’s point.  Her lyrics were not about sharing her gifts with others but with being consumed and used by others as an object or a commodity in her “entertainer role”.  She was packaging herself and saying that the “person” Brittany is not as important as her role as an entertainer.

We discussed how sad this was because she was missing out on what it means to be a person made in the image and likeness of God.  She was also missing the point that her gifts in music were a gift and should be given away, but Brittany was not seeing this value, her value was being measured by cheers, leers, the ability to tantalize.

We agreed that Brittany was not understanding the basic foundational truth to what it means to love.  If she never came to understand this, no matter how successful she became she would still be consumed with emptiness, a feeling of not being at peace with herself and would not be fulfilled in life.  St. Catherine of Sienna says that if a person is doing what they are called to do, they will set the world ablaze!  We see Brittany’s desire to do this, but she will forever fall short if she does not grasp the fundamental truth that she  and her life are not an object for use by others.

My daughter and I continued to talk about it for awhile and she began to then extrapolate what I said and apply it to other things going on in school between a best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend.  I am grateful for that moment because we might not have talked about these other things had I not seized that moment as an opportunity to teach her something about love, her faith and the dignity of the human person.  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, take my heart and give me  yours”.


Copyright 2010 Christina King