Asking the right question

What does it mean to “live a Christian life”? The reading that I’ve been doing lately has caused me to ask this question which, after 43 years of being a Catholic - sometimes practicing, sometimes lapsed, always sinful, and lately yearning for a deeper understanding of my faith – I feel embarrassed to admit that I've never really considered before. I’m starting to discover my likely answer to this question would be, if not wrong, then at least far from complete.

I’ve been reading some of the great Carmelite saints over the last year or so, along with other complementary books about the spiritual life. I’ve been primarily influenced by St. Teresa of Avila’s Way of Perfection and Interior Castle, St. Therese of Lisieux’s Story of a Soul, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, Fr. Thomas Dubay’s Fire Within, and St. John of the Cross’ poems The Dark Night and The Living Flame of Love. I’ve also read John of the Cross’ Ascent of Mount Carmel. I make no claim to have any kind of definitive understanding of any of these works and will not try to offer a scholarly analysis of what each writer is saying. And since I don’t have the time to cite too many direct quotes, I would encourage you to go to the sources yourself and let them speak directly to you. All I present here are some of the thoughts about the Christian life that these works have provoked in me in the hopes that they may help others who wish to grow closer to Christ. With that disclaimer, I’ll press on, asking the Blessed Mother to help me to communicate well the little bit of knowledge I have gained.

Besides teaching me that I am a baby (or, to be more precise, an impulsive toddler) in the spiritual life, these Carmelite masters and their fellow travelers have taught me that the Christian life is – first, last, and always – about union with Christ. Everything else has to flow from this union (or the desire for this union) to prevent my faith life from becoming something foreign to Christianity. Where I have usually (and subconsciously) thought of the Christian life as being mostly about external practices, I'm now coming to appreciate more fully how central a personal relationship with Christ is to my Christian faith. Just writing that makes me see how absurd it is to think that a person can be Christian without Christ being at the center of everything, but I also have to admit that I’ve been guilty of this kind of practice of my religious faith. I’m learning that I have a Pharisee, a Pagan, and an Atheist all lurking inside of me and that seeking union with Christ offers me the best protection from these errors.

First, the Pharisee. I know how easily I can slip into a practice of religion that is all about the letter of the Law without paying sufficient attention to its spirit. I can make a good show of being a great Catholic by observing all of the externals while internally I'm hardly thinking about my relationship with God at all. As for showing love to others, that really doesn’t cross my mind when I am in a “Pharisee phase” and it shows in my impatience, my critical spirit, my judgmentalism. It’s a practice of faith that is disconnected from God and it is empty and it is destructive.

I also know how to be the Pagan. I know how to offer up sacrifices and prayers in the hopes of placating or manipulating the Deity whom I fear. I will perform this religious ritual, Lord, and in return, I want you to bring prosperity to me and my loved ones and protect us from all harm. I will fast from that meal, Lord, and in return I want you to reward me with weight loss. I will say these prayers, Lord, and in return I expect the answer that I want, on the terms that I have set, at the time that I want it (i.e., right now). When the Pagan in me begins to assert herself, I lose the sense of God as the transcendent, omnipotent, loving Creator and begin to see Him as a spiritual vending machine that will dispense the product I want if I feed Him the right currency. I begin to worship a god made in my image and likeness and fall into idolatry, crowding out the true God and forgoing all of the graces He wants to give me.

Then there is the Atheist in me who whispers doubts in my ear, mocking me for buying into a fantasy. The Atheist is especially active in trying to discourage Eucharistic piety in me, whether at Mass or Adoration, and her voice is an insidious, seductive one because she knows how to make a good case. “Do you really mean to tell me that you believe all of this? God in that piece of bread? You believe that? It doesn’t even look like bread, much less God. Does it occur to you that it is silly to kneel down and worship bread?” It is the Atheist who shakes me to my core, but then again, she also sends me to Scripture and to the Fathers of the Church for reinforcement, and to more time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, so maybe she’s both my worst enemy and my best friend. If nothing else, she does keep me on my toes.

The antidote to these temptations, as I am coming to understand from my Carmelite friends, is to zealously seek after union with God. I am made for this union and I will not be able to rest, as St. Augustine says, until I rest in the One who made me and saved me and sanctifies me. But in order to grow in my capacity for union with God, I need to first empty myself of everything else. It’s as if I’m jealously guarding two big handfuls of worthless rocks while at the same time God is offering me precious jewels. I can’t accept the jewels until I drop the rocks, but it’s hard to let them go. I’ve convinced myself that they’re valuable and I'm not 100% sure that God will come through on His end of the bargain. I need faith and courage, along with the humility to remember that God knows more about what I need than I do. I need to enter into what John of the Cross calls “the purgative way.”

The purgative way is, from what I understand, a growing detachment from all created goods which allows the soul to become attached only to God. It’s about saying “yes” to God and saying “no” to the self, but it’s not about being a doormat. I would compare saying no to the self to being the parent of an unruly toddler who makes many demands, all of which he thinks must be met immediately. The parent has to teach the child that some demands can wait, while others would only harm the child and must be denied. So then, I say “no” to the demands that my unruly self constantly makes as a way of bringing those desires under control. This I have to do over and over and over all day long as the self is persistent.

At the same time, the purgative way is about saying “yes” to God just as often as I say “no” to myself. How this plays out will depend on a person’s vocation or state in life. For me, a wife and mother to four young children, my opportunities to say “yes” to God usually involve saying yes to the needs of my husband and children. Not indulging their whims at the expense of my needs, but responding to their needs while setting aside my whims. For example, if I would rather read a book than do a load of laundry, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. If I would rather sleep late than get out of bed and get breakfast ready, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. If I would rather spend money on expensive clothes for myself than on food for my family, I must say “no” to my whim and say “yes” to my family’s need. I need to realize that God may never ask me to submit to martyrdom for my faith, but He does ask me to die a little bit every day for love of Him and those He has entrusted to me. And if the day does come that He asks me for my life in martyrdom, these little deaths along the way will help me be prepared to say “yes” even to that.

This growing detachment will lead to what is called “the illuminative way.” In The Three Ways of the Spiritual Life, Father Garrigou-Lagrange quotes a Jesuit writer who described the purgative way as the devotion to the service of God and the illuminative way as surrender of self entirely to perfection. The purgative way is active – we choose to say “yes” to God and “no” to ourselves – while the illuminative way is passive – something God does to us which we choose to submit to. I’m not sure that I can articulate this very clearly, but it seems to me that the illuminative way is about acceptance of the trials and sufferings that God sends in order to further purify the soul and cleanse it of remaining self-love. Since I can barely grasp the implications of the purgative way, I’m not even going to try to elaborate on the illuminative way. But it’s clear from what I’ve been reading that the third stage, “the unitive way,” will not be reached without passing through these other two.

The unitive way should be the goal of all Christians. In the last stanza of The Dark Night, St. John of the Cross speaks poetically of this union with Christ: “I abandoned myself and forgot myself,/ laying my face on my Beloved;/ all things ceased; I went out from myself,/ leaving my cares/ forgotten among the lilies.” The soul has left everything behind, even itself, and has given itself over completely to Christ. The soul is in a state of peace, and has ceased even to experience desires because its only true desire has been satisfied. This is the Christian life in the full. This is what we are called to. This is the relationship that God wants to have with all of us. This is what we have been created for. And yet I have spent my life up to this point not even knowing that this is the goal, much less trying to reach it. It’s not anybody’s fault but mine. I’ve always been all too happy to satisfy my “animal appetites” at the expense of my relationship with God. So, what now? Now that I know, how will things be different going forward? What am I going to do with this realization?

I wish I could say that starting now I will enter into the purgative way with enthusiasm and seek opportunities to say “yes” to God and “no” to myself so that I can allow God to begin this great work in me. Being a little more realistic about myself, I’m going to say that starting now I will beg God to help me to grow in my love for Him so that I may have the grace to drop the pile of rubble that I’ve been holding onto for all these years. I’m going to ask Him to help me trust that my hands won’t stay empty for long, that He will fill them with treasure beyond all imagining. I’m going to pray that my growing relationship with Him will serve as the catalyst for a more sincere practice of my faith. I’m going to continue to do battle against the Pharisee, the Pagan, the Atheist, and all of the other disordered attitudes within me that impede my ability to love God with all of my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength and to love my neighbor as myself. I’m going to try not to seek after extraordinary mystical phenomena, but to put my energies into serving God while trusting that He will give me everything that is good for me. And I’m going to continue to read and reflect on what these great masters have written so that one day, by the grace of God, I'll be able to join them in union with God for eternity.

The one thing I know is that I want this union, and this union won’t come without suffering. I can either embrace the suffering - the opportunities for purgation - that God sends me in this life, or I can wait and suffer that purgation in the next, but I won’t get to skip Good Friday and go right to Easter Sunday. It just doesn’t work that way. But I don’t want to spend any more of my life desiring less than God wants for me. I want to realize Christ’s promise to give me life and give it to me abundantly. Now that I have a better understanding of the goal, I feel like I have a shot at reaching it. That’s not much, but it’s something.

Temperament and Holiness

Book 1, Chapter 14 of the Imitation of Mary is titled, "The Humble Soul Tries to Conceal from Men Its True Value in God's Eyes." The primary message of the chapter is that when a soul receives favors from God, he should keep these favors to himself, except to share them with his spiritual director. De Rouville says, "The Spirit of God communicates Himself in secret and desires that whatever goes on between Himself and the beloved soul should remain secret" (57). He cautions against the soul becoming attached to these favors at the expense of attachment to God alone and says that such attachment can lead the soul to to seek admiration from men who "should never have come to know of these favors" (58). He goes on to say, "If such men had had the interior disposition of the Blessed Virgin, that is, her spirit of humility, God would constantly have enlightened them, inspired a distrust of self, and taught them to see the tricks that self-love plays" (58).

De Rouville's admonition calls to mind St. John of the Cross' repeated warnings against the soul seeking out or becoming attached to revelations thought to come from God. St. John's warnings are so prevalent that I only had to look for a minute or two in his book The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, which is so long and so packed with information that I've been reading it for about 8 months, to find an example. In Book Two, Chapter 21 of The Ascent, St. John says, "God is rightly angered with anyone who [dwells on His favors], for He sees the rashness of exposing oneself to . . . presumption, curiosity, and pride, to the root and foundation of vainglory, to contempt for the things of God, and to the beginning of the numerous evils into which many fall."

It's pretty apparent, even to someone like me who can be a little dense, that it's dangerous to fixate on or blab about spiritual favors. We should be recollected and resigned, humble and meek, slow to talk, pondering things in our hearts like the Blessed Mother did.

In other words, if we want to be holy, we'd better be introverts.

I'm kidding, of course. Well, sort of kidding. In the book The Temperament God Gave You, which I cannot recommend highly enough, Art and Laraine Bennett define and explain the four temperaments and help the reader to identify which temperament or temperaments are dominant in them and how these temperaments effect their thoughts, actions, spiritual life, relationships, and way of seeing the world. (And so much more. It's a really great book and you should read the whole thing and not rely on my incomplete summary.) I want to share some of the traits associated with each of the four temperaments and then go back to my somewhat tongue-in-cheek statement above.

Extraverted Temperaments

1. Choleric - quick to react, forthright, eager to express himself, loves debate, argumentative, interruptive

2. Sanguine - life of the party, talkative, frank, sociable, can be superficial, prone to vanity, social butterfly

Introverted Temperaments

1. Melancholic - thoughtful, spiritual, likes to be alone, introspective, self-sacrificing, sensitive

2. Phlegmatic - quiet, diplomatic, peaceful, sensitive to others, dutiful, peace-maker, patient, tolerant

Now, I admit that I've cherry-picked the above traits from long lists and it's important to point out that each temperament has its strengths and weaknesses. I also know that it's reductive to say that we are our temperaments. People are so much greater than their temperaments and, of course, we have free will and God's grace to keep us from becoming enslaved to our personality defects. But temperament does relate to a person's basic tendencies and I think it's fair to say that overcoming these tendencies requires hard work and conscious effort. If you're extraverted, you're not going to wake up one day and be quiet, thoughtful, and introspective. You're going to have to break a sweat, spiritually, to develop those traits. If you'd like a clue to my temperament, let me just share a verse from the Psalms that has, once or twice, been assigned to me for a penance: "Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord, keep watch over the door of my lips!" (Ps 141:3). I'm sure you can figure out from this verse whether I'm an extravert or an introvert and, therefore, which traits from the lists above best describe me.

So, I ask again, if the Blessed Mother is the model creature, which I know she is, and if the traits that are typically associated with her tend to be those common to introverts, what's an obnoxious extravert like me to do? If an important part of growing in humility (and thus holiness) is keeping one's mouth shut, and I've been given a mouth with no off-switch and no filter, am I doomed? Can I ever hope to have the interior disposition of the Blessed Mother when my basic disposition is so . . . exterior?

To say that this issue has come up occasionally with my confessor would be an understatement (but I don't want to tell you too much about what we talk about because I don't want to blab and I want to ponder these things in my heart, even though I really do want to tell you - really, really badly. But I'm not going to. I'm just going to shut up now.) Of all of my many defects and failings, this has to be the one that causes the most difficulty for me and, probably, those around me. I don't want to get discouraged, but it's hard not to. I look at the introverts I know and think, "It's easy for you to be holy." I know that's not true and that everyone has struggles and failings, but it's a temptation for me to believe that imitation of Mary and holiness is just easier for introverts than it is for extraverts.

So, if discouragement isn't option, then what to do? I haven't cracked the code on this completely, but I do have some strategies. First of all, spend a lot of time on my knees in prayer, especially in Adoration. Next, ask the Blessed Mother to show me how to develop these traits that she possesses in a superlative way. Also, never shy away from confessing the many, many times that I fail in this regard. And avoid near-occasions of sin like talking on the phone too much or letting a couple of beers make my tongue even looser than it normally is. Finally, believe that God is pleased just by my earnest desire to grow in my imitation of His mother, whether or not I ever achieve this imitation perfectly.

It's the last one that gives me hope and makes me want to keep trying, with God's help, to become more like Mary and more the person He created me to be. I know that He'll bless my efforts even as the people around me are shaking their heads and thinking, "Doesn't she ever shut up?" And for this patient, fatherly love and understanding, I give thanks to God!

The Imitation of Mary - Book 1, Chapter 8

This chapter is titled, "Choice of a State in Life." When I first started reading the chapter, full of wisdom about the way that a Christian should discern his vocation, I thought, "Oh well, a little late for me. My state in life is pretty well determined now, seeing that I've been married for 15 years and have four kids." But as I read, I realized that the wisdom contained in this chapter is important for me as a mother if I'm to help my sons discern God's plan for them.

My husband and I take this responsibility pretty seriously. From the time our boys are young, we present the "What do you want to be when you grow up?" question as, "What do you think God wants you to be when you grow up?" We talk to them about the fact that God gave them special gifts and talents and that their lives will be happiest if they discover how God wants them to use these gifts and talents for the building up of His Church and society. We present the priesthood and religious life along with other possible "career" options. We explain that God calls most people to be married, but that He calls some to live their lives completely for Him. And we explain that following God's plan for them will not be impossible because God always gives us the grace we need to do His will. Most importantly, we pray that our kids will be able to hear God's call for them, and we pray for their future wives or vocation directors.

I will risk pulling a muscle as I pat myself on the back and say that we've done, I think, a pretty good job of communicating the message to our young sons. They talk about the priesthood as a real possibility and they seem to understand that life isn't just about getting a job and making money. For example, about a year ago, my 12- and 10-year old sons were teasing their 5-year old brother by saying that he was going to marry a girl at their school. His response, expressed loudly and firmly, was, "No, I'm NOT going to get mawwied. I'm going to be a pweist! I'm going to be mawwied to the Church!"

So, I have to say that I've felt like we've pretty much got this whole vocation discernment thing under control.

But as so often happens when engaging in spiritual reading, my complacency and laurel-resting was disturbed while reading this chapter. The writer talks about Mary as a model of discernment in her simplicity, her silence, and her unity with God's will. He then gives practical advice for discerning God's will:

"Pray to the Lord, therefore, and consult Him if you are deciding on a state in life." Sounds like good advice to me. Next he says:

". . . consult those who on earth are His representatives." Also good advice, and something I think even good Christians fail to consider. Now comes the jolt:

"Consult your parents only insofar as duty may require this. For it is always to be feared that they may give their children advice inspired by the principles of the world."

Ouch. That's definitely something to think about as a parent. Do I really want my kids to follow God's call, where ever it may lead them? It's easy for me to say that I do when they're young and still under our authority. And it's easy to say that I do when I consider the possibilities in an abstract way: marriage, priesthood, religious life. No problem, right?

But what if God is calling one of my sons to marry a woman who has a mental illness? Do I want him to obey God's call then? Or what if God is calling one of my sons to be a missionary priest in a dangerous foreign land? Do I still want him to obey? What if one of my sons is called to live as a single layman? Will I encourage his obedience, or will I badger him to find a wife and produce some grandchildren? How about if one of my sons is called, in imitation of Christ, to give up his life for God and His Church? Will I imitate Mary and help him to obey that call? Or will I try to persuade him to ignore God and save his life? I don't know, to tell you the truth. So I can see the wisdom in the warning offered by the writer. I'll never be able to look at my boys with detachment. It's just not in me as a mother. My husband would probably be better at it than I am, but he's never going to be completely objective about our kids either. They'll need to be able to consult with people who will see them as the men they are becoming, and not as the little boys that they will always be, at least in some ways, to me. They'll need to have the freedom to discern their vocation without constantly thinking, "Is this what my parents want me to do?" Because the heart of discernment is asking, "Is this what God wants me to do?" And discernment is personal, between the soul and God. Even well-meaning parents run the risk of placing obstacles between their children and God if they're not careful. So, I guess maybe this chapter does have a thing or two to say to me on this topic after all.

The final piece of advice given in Chapter 8 is one that I love because it just gets right to the point of it all:

"Finally, consult death, as it were. That is, make the choice you will wish you had made as your life is drawing to an end."

Our vocation here on earth is not the be-all and end-all of our existence. Like everything else in this life, it points to eternity. Vocation discernment is summed up by the answer in the old catechism to the question, "Why did God make me?" "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life and to be happy with Him forever in the next." I pray that I'll be able to get out of the way and give my sons the space they need to answer God's call so that they will indeed be happy with God forever in eternity.

Imitating Mary

In his homily at Mass this morning, my pastor pointed out that today's celebration of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, is Mother's Day for Christians. He also said that we could ask for no greater mother, and that she could give us no greater gift than the gift of her Son, the Son of God. How beautiful.

I love that the Church calls us to celebrate Mary on New Year's Day. This celebration reminds me that I'm called not just to make some vague resolutions focused on self-improvement during the new year, but that I'm called to seek ways to grow in virtue so that I may grow closer to Christ and become more fully the person He created me to be. Mary, that sinless creature, filled with God's grace from the moment of her conception, is the ultimate model for those of us who wish to undertake this task which, absent God's grace, is not just daunting but is truly impossible.

So, with the help of God's grace, I'm going to go for it this year. I'm going to try to imitate Mary and to help me on this journey, I'll be reading the book, "The Imitation of Mary," by Alexander de Rouville. In the first chapter, de Rouville lays out the program by listing some of the qualities of the Virgin that we need to imitate: lively faith, prompt obedience, deep humility, selfless intentions, generous love. To simplify things, I've chosen two words to help me in my daily struggle to grow in my imitation of Mary. The first is, "Yes." Yes to God and yes to those He's put in my life, especially my family. The second is, "No." No to my selfish, comfort-seeking impulses. I know from sad experience that my failures will be many as I try to become more like Mary, but I'm going to try to avoid discouragement by remembering that she really is my mother and really will help me as I struggle to be more like her, as any good mother would help her needy child. And I'll try to remember that her Son also wants me to be more like His mother and will provide every grace that I need to acquire these Marian virtues. I have pretty good teammates; I just have to do my part. Against all odds. So I say, "Jesus, I trust in You."

I hope that everyone will have a happy and blessed new year and that you will feel the motherly care and support of our mother, Mary, the Mother of God as you seek to grow closer to her Son. Thank you, God, for this gift of Your Mother. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Queen of the Holy Rosary, Pray for Us!

Today is the memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, the day when the Church celebrates the victory of Christians over the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto. Read more about it here. As this blog is dedicated to Our Lady under the title of Our Lady of the Rosary and was inspired by the belief that through prayer, especially of the Rosary, we can achieve victories over evil today in the same way that through prayer Christian warriors achieved victory at the Battle of Lepanto, we offer up heartfelt thanks to Our Lady for her maternal care for her children and praise to God for all the favors He grants to those who trust in Him. Let's not be afraid to proclaim that we are soldiers of Christ doing battle against the enemy who seeks to destroy souls. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us!

He Loves Me Anyway

I have been blessed throughout my life to know unconditional love. I first experienced unconditional love from my parents. It pains me to know that there are so many people out there (I've met some of them) who grew up in an environment where they felt that they constantly had to prove themselves, to earn every morsel of praise. My upbringing, in contrast, was one where love and acceptance were taken for granted. Even those many times when I was(and am) so far from lovable, my parents loved me anyway. They knew me and they loved me, just because I existed. It's an amazing gift that I hope, despite my many failings, I will pass on to my own children.

I also experience unconditional love from my husband. I cannot express fully the gift that this is and I have not always believed that he loves me unconditionally. But the longer we are married and the more opportunities I give him to love me less, the more he shows me that he, too, loves me anyway.

So, I've been trained, really, throughout my life to expect and accept unconditional love. But I haven't always trusted that God loves me unconditionally. For a long time, I didn't really think about God and His love at all - taking for granted yet again a love that comes to me without merit. Since I've returned to the practice of my faith, and with that return come face to face with my selfishness and my pride, it's been even harder at times to trust that God really loves me anyway. He knows that I've given Him plenty of reasons to just cut me off, wash His hands of me, and move on to a person with more potential. But He knows me, better than I know myself, and He really does love me anyway. Even with all of my experiences of unconditional love on a human level, I still find this so hard to take in sometimes. Yet I know it's true.

I often wonder, if it's so difficult for me to believe that God, in His perfection, can love me, in my imperfection, without my having to do anything to earn it, how much harder must it be for people who have not experienced unconditional love from parents and spouses and friends to believe it about themselves? Do they ever rest in the knowledge that this God, who created them from love and for love, loves them so completely that He will never cut them off, will never turn His back on them, will never give up on them? And how exhausting life must be for someone who never finds this rest.

So, no great wrap-up, no great insight, just a heartfelt thanks to my parents, my husband, and my Father for loving me anyway. And a plea that I will show this same unconditional love those He's put in my life.

What We Did on January 22

I'm sure most of you know that January 22 is the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that essentially legalized abortion on demand in the United States. For 37 years, people have been going to Washington DC to march for life while others have participated in events in their own communities. Here in Springfield, we've typically marked the day with a pro-life rally at the Capitol building on the Sunday closest to January 22.

This year was a little different. As I wrote about here, Planned Parenthood in Springfield announced last fall that they would begin offering RU-486, commonly known as "the abortion pill," starting sometime in early 2010. This will be the first time elective abortions will be available in Springfield. Many of my friends and I (those who blog here as well as others we are friends with) were, to put it bluntly, pretty ticked off about this news. We felt like we couldn't just sit back and let Planned Parenthood have their way with the women and children of our community. So, we decided to fight. And if you know what this blog is all about, you'll guess that we naturally turned to our most powerful weapon - the Rosary.

We started compiling an e-mail list of pro-life people and sent out notifications whenever we heard that someone was going to Planned Parenthood to pray. We posted notices on this blog. We tried to get the word out any way we could. We wanted to build an army of prayer warriors to combat this evil.

The response was . . . not great. There are as many reasons that people didn't come as there are people on the e-mail list. I'm going to suggest a few: work conflicts, lack of adequate childcare, health problems, other charitable commitments. And, if the people on the e-mail list are anything like me, there was another reason they didn't come: fear. The fear of possible confrontation. The fear of being "outed" in your own community as being one of "those people" who do things "like that." The fear that once you put yourself out there publicly, there's no turning back. And if they're anything like me, they weren't actively looking for a way out, but were happy to have something else to do that prevented them from going to Planned Parenthood to pray.

Still, we weren't ready to just give up. We knew we wanted to do something to show Planned Parenthood that there are plenty of people in this area who oppose their work. So, we kept praying about it and asking the Holy Spirit to lead us where He wanted us to go.

God took us up on our offer. Where He led us was to organize an all-day prayer vigil outside of Planned Parenthood on January 22. We were blessed to have the support of Springfield Right to Life and our Diocesan Office for Social Concerns. We made up fliers and started getting them distributed to the area churches, Catholic and otherwise. We were hoping to get about 30 people to participate - enough to have 2 people praying during 14 30-minute shifts over the course of the day.

As so often happens when you go into a partnership with God, we gave a little bit and God responded with abundance. We had at least 100 people come to the vigil that day. Though people signed up for 30-minute shifts, many stayed far longer. We had school-aged children, moms with pre-schoolers (though we left the pre-schoolers in a safe place with snacks, videos, and plenty of other moms to watch them), business men and women, retirees, clergy and religious, high schoolers, home schoolers - you name it, we had it. And I'm sure we would have had more had our compatriots who went to DC for the March been home at the time. The vigil was peaceful, prayerful, and a beautiful testament to the commitment so many have to the protection of innocent human life. You can read the story about it from our Diocesan newspaper here.

I learned a lot while planning the vigil. I learned that God is waiting for us to make ourselves available to Him. I learned that He really will give us all we need to do His Will. I learned that when we do God's Will we sometimes suffer, but that God gives us consolations that make the suffering seem manageable and even, in a way, a gift. I learned that when we seek to do God's Will, what we end up doing is not our project. It's God's project. We don't have to be perfect, we don't have to be completely in control, we don't even have to be particularly well-suited for the task at hand. Whatever is lacking in us, God will supply many, many times over.

The most important thing I learned is the lesson I will have to keep learning for the rest of my life - that God really is God and that I can trust Him. There were times while planning the vigil that I would start to feel anxious about things that were not under my control. I had to remind myself at those times to stop and pray this prayer, "You are God. You are the Creator of all human life. You will do with this vigil whatever needs to be done for the salvation of souls. I'm going to trust You on this." Every time I prayed this prayer - every time - I was filled with peace. Sometimes, I was given an overwhelming sense of God's presence. I can't explain it, but I would know that He was right there next to me (or, to be more precise, within me), guiding me and giving me the grace I needed to keep moving forward.

This post has gotten pretty lengthy, so I think I'll wrap it up, though I have many more things I could say. Like an Oscar winner, I'll close by thanking people, realizing that I'll probably leave someone out. I am grateful for the women God has placed in my life, especially those who helped plan this vigil. I am grateful for the people at the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois and Springfield Right to Life, who provided support and guidance throughout the planning process. I am grateful for my pastor, one of the holiest priests I have ever known, for his courageous witness in so many ways to the sanctity of all human life and for his advice, guidance, and prayers for me. I am grateful for all of the people who prayed at Planned Parenthood last week, for those who supported us in prayer, and for those who helped by babysitting our children. I am grateful for my husband, who supported me throughout the whole endeavor and took time off of work to pray with us. I am grateful for my older sons, who joined their father and me in prayer. I am grateful for my younger sons, who behaved that day while in the care of my generous friends. And, of course, I am thankful to God, the Lord and Giver of Life, for the graces He showers down on me. If I have forgotten to express my gratitude for anyone else, please be assured that I am thankful for you too.

I hope that we will have more prayer vigils and that one day, abortion will be one of those horrible things that people did in the past that we can't imagine ever doing ourselves. Until then, I'll be working the beads and I hope you will too.