How the Glorious Mysteries Teach Us to Love Mothers and Babies

There is a growing outcry among the deceived that we need to stop having babies to save the planet.  There is a growing bloodbath of aborted babies for the sake of convenience.
There is a growing society that cannot and will not support a larger family.
There is a growing general fear, even among the faithful, of having "too many babies."

Many faithful women have stated that while babies number 1 and 2 are generally met with great cheer, any pregnancy beyond that is met with less enthusiasm to downright disdain.  This is NOT how the faithful should respond.  If we do, we are joining ranks with those deceived and their deceivers that babies are bad.

As I prayed the Joyful Mysteries today, I realized how each mystery teaches us how to love mothers and babies:

First Joyful Mystery:  The Annunciation of the Angel to Mary

News of a pregnancy should be received with grace and a "yes" from the parents.

Second Joyful Mystery:  The Visitation of Mary to St. Elizabeth

Shared news of a pregnancy should be received with great joy and celebration.  Family and Friends ought to embrace and support the mother (and father) like Elizabeth did.

Third Joyful Mystery:  The Nativity of Jesus in Bethlehem

The birth should be supported and celebrated.  The mother's need for rest and "purification" (time to heal from the birth, bond with baby, rest, and get her milk supply and nursing down pat) should be of utmost importance.

Fourth Joyful Mystery:  The Presentation of Jesus to the Temple

The Body of Christ, the Church Family should be a support system, too.  No one in the Church should be negative about this new creation, this baby.

The Fifth Joyful Mystery: The Finding of Jesus in the Temple

The Body of Christ needs to be the "village" that it takes to raise a child.  Proper teachings, prayers, and good examples must be kept.  Community ought to be established to help a baby grow in a safe, loving, Christ-filled environment.

From the Mouths of Babes

My daughter posed this question to me, today:

Mom, if Jesus is perfect and holy, and Mary is His mother, does that mean that she didn't have any pain when she gave birth to him?

So simple a child can understand.  She has never heard this doctrine before and yet she thought of it.

Different Catholic Churches

I'm not sure why, but apparently aesthetics of a church are very important to me and my sense of well-being there.  The older the church and the more traditional, the more content, centered, and reverent I feel there.  I tried a more modern local Catholic church building and I did not like it much at all and wished to be back in the older church building.   In the older church building Adoration is held in the unattractive 1970's chapel off the side of the church.  While I sit there and pray, a part of me wishes I could be in the dark sanctuary, instead.

Maybe I am just selfish or too preferential.  Or maybe there is importance to aesthetics.

When I exit my churches

I feel sad when I exit both the Catholic Church and my Baptist Church, but for different reasons.

I feel sad when I exit the Catholic Church because I am still an outsider.  I belong there, but I don't.  Jesus welcomes me there, but I am not in full communion with Him.  I don't understand it all.  I am not connected, involved, part of the community.  I'm just a visitor and not a family member.

I feel sad when I exit the Baptist Church because I am still an outsider.  I feel like I don't quite belong there.  I also don't feel like Jesus is really there because it feels more like a Christian social club that a church.  It's a fellowship party every Sunday focused so much on the Body that the Head feels ignored.  And they removed the crosses.  I haven't seen one in so long.

Nuns: Because of Jesus

Catholics are wrongly accused of Mary worship.  To be honest, as an outsider looking in, it does seem like they put more stock in Mary than Jesus.

I have this need.

Protestant:  I'll pray to Jesus for you.

Catholic: I'll say 3 Hail Marys for you.

This is very hard to understand for an outsider.  It boggles the mind.

As I explore the various sisters religious, many many of them have a strong devotion to Our Lady.  It can seem like nuns are women who worship Mary.  But ask any one of them why they became a nun and they will tell you, "because of Jesus."

I have heard evangelicals say that Catholics barely even acknowledge Jesus when everything about Catholicism points to Jesus.  Catholicism is so deeply Jesus, richly Jesus.  Sure, all the pomp and the thick Catechism can seem like distractions.  Protestantism tends to strip all that away.  The problem is they've stripped so much away that I find it hard to even find Jesus in evangelicalism.  Instead, I find the varied opinions of man.  In Catholicism, I find Jesus.  If I look to Mary, she is pointing to Jesus.  If I look at the cross, Jesus is there.  If I listen to the priest, I hear the Word, which is Jesus.  If I cross myself, it is the Trinity.  If I kneel, it is before Jesus.  When the bell rings during the Eucharist, Jesus is there in body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Eucharist.  If I see icons of saints and apostles, they are serving Jesus. If I pray to them, they are running to Jesus.  The clothes I choose to wear, the veil on my head, is because I am coming before Jesus.

Catholicism is so RICHLY Jesus, so centered on Jesus.

How can an evangelical church that has removed even the cross from the sanctuary and replaced it with pictures of themselves, or cute earthly sayings or decorations, accuse the Catholic Church of not being for Jesus?  How can they say that a church filled with images of the saints who served the Lord with their very lives is wrong, yet a concert-like stage backlit with blue and purple lights while people applaud how well that pastor or worship leader gets them worked up isn't wrong.

Really Bad at Lent

I was all gung-ho for Lent the week before.  I have since failed miserably.  I'm not in condemnation.  Just sort of sad at my selfishness, but working to understand my feeble humanity.  People have this misunderstanding about Catholicism that it only works with works.  Catholics accept that we are wretches, but that God is gracious and merciful and just above all.

Catholicism isn't this or that.  It is both, and.  Are we saved by grace?  Yes!  Does it take our own merit?  In a way, yes!  I cannot be saved by just being a decent person.  I NEED Christ.  But, part of that is obedience and following Him.

Think of it this way.  Yesterday, my daughter, who is ill right now mostly by her own lack of self-care, prayed that God would heal her.  I replied, "then stop making it so hard for Him!"  I was somewhat teasing.  Nothing is too hard for God, but the point was that yes, God can heal her, but she continually works to counteract that by not taking care of herself and refusing doctor's orders.  (It's so bad that part of the reason I want to homeschool her is so that I'm not losing 8 hours every weekday of monitoring her, and so she doesn't have to ignore her natural bodily rhythms to accommodate the school rules about bathroom usage and eating.)

Yes, we are saved by grace, but we cannot keep living a worldly life.  We must do good works!

I digress.....

Anyhow, I am really bad at Lent.  I have this vice of when something is restricted from me I indulge in it all the more.  Fasting?  FEED ME, SEYMORE!  No facebook, I spend HOURS scrolling until I am dizzy.  Prayer and Bible reading?  See the previous statement.  Seek God?  I google.

At least through my faults, through my faults, through my most grievous faults, I am seeing them for what they are.  They are being revealed and brought out to be dealt with and cast away.

1.  I am addicted to facebook.  I don't use that term loosely, either.  I am truly addicted to the point where I ought to just delete my account, but I run our businesses on them and most of our photos are are stored there.  Better to cut off my hand, though, so, oh whatever shall I do?

2.  I have developed media laziness and I absolutely need to retrain myself to be able to read, keep a schedule, do my chores, pick up a hobby again, instead of just grabbing my phone.

3.  I NEED to fast and pray.  Simple as that.  Nothing will come to me if I keep ignoring this need and making excuses.

4.  I must reorganize my life to a better functionality.  Right now, my life is disorganized around my humanism that refuses self-discipline, and the chores and tasks that must be done to not look like a sloth.  And I see the affect this has on myself and my family.  This entire household is subtly disordered and undisciplined beyond the bare minimum to look like functioning, decent citizens with good excuses.

All of this is coming out of my failing Lent, so that is good, too.  God can work with our short-comings if we acknowledge them and bring them to the light.

What Happened, and Why I am Not Catholic Right Now

Around October 2018 I had had enough of the inner debate and prayed for the Lord to reveal to me whether or not I should become Catholic now by giving me a sign.  I saw laying out my fleece, so to speak.  I prayed in faith, and I didn't share this with anyone until closer to the end.  Even then, I only shared it with my sister-in-law and my husband.

I asked for a simple sign and had many opportunity for it to come to pass.  I asked for a random rosary to just be given to me before December 31st if I was to become Catholic.  If the rosary wasn't given, I would give up my Catholic pursuit and simply stay with my husband in the Baptist Church and plug in there.

January 1st came and no rosary had been given to me.  I never even saw a rosary!  I was in the Church.  No rosaries.  I was in Catholic homes.  No rosaries.  So, I stopped attending Mass and decided to just align everything with hubby and the Baptist Church.

Even though I had explained all this to hubby, every Sunday he would ask me, "are you going to Mass?"  Or if we slept in too late he would apologize to me for missing Mass.  I found myself missing Mass terribly and making excuses to skip attending the Baptist church.  Recently, I missed Mass again and hubby said, "we have to make sure you get to Mass next Sunday."  So, I did and everything came flooding back.  I even went to Adoration.

What does this all mean?

I read the Liturgy of the Word.  It's the only devotional that I'm drawn to.  I find myself listening to Catholic radio again and being fed.  I watch youtube documentaries on nuns in convents and enjoy the peace.  I watch Journey Home and understand the journeys of the converts.  I find myself defending the Catholic faith on social media.

What in the world does this all mean?!!

And now I want to pour out my thoughts here again!

Why didn't God send me that sign?  I don't know.  But, this time, I am not looking to the right or to the left for answers and explanations.  I am simply looking to Christ.  I think, instead of pursuing Catholicism, I am simply going to just find myself there.  Maybe not.  I don't know.  Let the Lord do His work.

Pray for me.

Emotions and Works

Growing up Assembly of God, faith-alone and anointing of the Holy Spirit were drilled into me every Sunday.  I was consistently preached that it isn't about emotions.  We shouldn't trust our emotions.  We shouldn't rely on our emotions.  Our emotions are deceptive.  Being emotional isn't a sign of the Holy Spirit, necessarily.  Then, in church, especially when a charismatic evangelist or missionary was guest speaker, it would become an emotional roller coaster in the church.

I remember sitting there as a child watching the other congregants crying, wailing, speaking in tongues, dancing, clapping, even being "slain in the spirit" and wonder why I was just sitting there feeling, well, not much, really.  Was I not holy enough?  Not saved enough?  Was I selfish and didn't believe enough or selfish and refused to let the Holy Spirit "take control"?  Just before leaving the AG church, I found myself completely drained every Sunday by the craziness of emotions.  From the music, specifically designed to work us up, then bring us back down, to the urges from the pulpit of praying more, harder, deeper until we were sobbing or shouting or dizzily babbling tongues, to powerful sermons that tugged at heart strings, I was exhausted.  And I was picked on for not participating in the emotional tirades.  Sure, I may have shed some quiet tears thinking of my Savior and what He did for me, but I wouldn't throw myself on the "alter" up front and sob.

But, it wasn't about emotion.  That's what they said.  So, when I later explained how moved I felt in a Catholic Church, how I loved the beauty, tranquility, and sanctity, I was told I shouldn't rely on my feelings, my emotions.  It isn't about aesthetics or outward experiences.   If I felt or experienced something during Mass, it was just my own emotions and they shouldn't be trusted.  But, if I felt or experienced something in an AG church, well, that was the movement of the Holy Spirit!  It's not ok to find joy in Catholicism, but it is perfectly ok to sob and carry on in an AG church.  To experience peace in a Catholic Church is an emotion that shouldn't be trusted, but to emotionally spend myself in an AG service is an experience of the Holy Spirit.

Let's move on to works.

One of the reasons I left the AG church was the confusion of faith-alone, not works.  Not works.  It isn't works.  Catholics are saved by works, and that's wrong.  We are saved by faith, not by what we do.  Faith, just faith.  Only faith can saved you.  Works can't.  But, you're doing it wrong.

It was this constant "never enough" subtle theology that brought horrible condemnation and confusion to me.  You're saved by faith, not by works, but you're doing it wrong.  It was never outright spoken, but inferred so often that it began to anger me.  Evangelists constantly came in giving some formula for success as a Christian.  Not exactly health and wealth gospel, but yes, it was.  Funnily enough, they would condemn Catholics for their prayers, sacraments, and practices that could earn them fewer years in purgatory, or salvation, or whatever.  But in the same breath say that if you tithe 10% of your gross income faithful, God will bless you financially.  Or if you have enough faith, He will heal your illness.  Or if you speak in tongues you'll get fill in the blank.  Or if you aren't receiving earthly blessings, you must do A B C and D and you'll get them.  Works.

AGers also do not believe in once-saved-always-saved, which I agree with.  But, there you go again.  If you are saved by faith-alone and not by works, then how can you lose your salvation by doing or not doing the right or wrong works?

My conclusion is that we cannot escape our emotional experiences.  Nor can we fully rely on them.  They are part of how God made us and how we experience our faith, but they are not the final say on how we are doing or where we are in our walk.  I now believe that it most certainly is important that I feel more at peace within the walls of certain Catholic Churches than I do within the walls of certain Protestant Churches.  The older churches call to me.  I cannot stand Vatican II modernism, nor can I stand modern Prot Churches.  Nor can I stand older churches that have kicked God out or have embraced modernism.  I can only stand to go to my current protestant church because the people are nice.  I can only drag myself there because I consider it a social club and not a church.  Why?  Because they removed the crosses from the sanctuary.

(Just as a side note, it is funny how protestants complain that the Catholic Church has allowed indulgences, and yet those aren't Saints or Bible people staring down at us from the stained glass windows of protestant churches that have them.  They are benefactors of the church immortalized in glass and lead.)

I also conclude that we cannot escape from works being part of our walk and salvation process.  To have faith is a work!

Protestantism, I believe, is basically trying to answer questions that Catholics already answered or what Catholics faithfully call mysteries.

Evangelicalism, I am growing to believe, is nothing more than humanism wrapped neatly in Christianized paper.