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The #YearofMercy : Ideas, Links, and Modest, Merciful Goals

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My column that appears in this weekend’s print edition of The Catholic Post, and here in just a few days, essentially involves me admitting I haven’t made any plans for the Year of Mercy.

My column does offer books that relate to it, but for me, writing that column prompted me to take a minute to “get with it” and make some plans and modest goals for living out this tremendous year. And it’s well-known that writing plans down makes them more likely to be achieved.  In addition, I will be glad to have a place to capture all of my thoughts, important links, and other notes.  So here goes:

The Divine Mercy Chaplet: I’m not sure if this is ironic or something else, but one of my first thoughts was when I heard about the Year of Mercy, was “I’m going to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet every single day of the year.”  That may seem like an ambitious plan, but really, I end up saying it more days that not.  Making it an explicit goal should help me be sure to do it every day, right?

Here’s the ironic/funny part: I’ve barely said it (maybe twice?) since the Year of Mercy started last week.   So I’m laughing at myself (in mercy? see how I did that?), and also resolving to find a regular time that I can pray the Chaplet.  I’ve loved this prayer for at least 18 years, I’m pretty sure since my oldest was a baby. Praying it as much as possible this year is doubtless a good idea.

As many people know, I am a big user of apps for prayers and novenas.  I find most of the Divine Mercy chaplet apps fairly annoying, including the “official” one. App developers, get rid of the sound effects, or give us the opportunity to in settings, already.  This is a very simple and effective one for iOs I’ve discovered recently.

 

Looking for Mercy:  Here is the Vatican document, called “Misericordiae Vultus,” which released on Divine Mercy Sunday (the Second Sunday of Easter) this year to announce and prepare for the Year of Mercy.  Just glancing at it, though, makes me want to read the entire thing, more slowly, to get a sense of what the year is meant to be for people and the Church.

Pope Francis’ Prayer for the Year of Mercy: Pope Francis composed a prayer for the Year of Mercy.  Our family will try to pray this prayer, perhaps in advance of saying night prayer.  I’ve already formatted it nicely in a document–perhaps I will try to put it in an edit. Another modest goal.

Pinterest Board: It occurred to me that a good way to capture articles and ideas for the Year of Mercy is to create a board on Pinterest. I’ve begun that  (and will pin much of what I’m gathering here), but what I really need to do is just keep coming back to the Year of Mercy board created by local blogger Katie Bogner.  Here is just one of her blog posts about celebrating the Year of Mercy, but her board includes resources from all over the Web.

Visiting Pilgrimage Churches and Chapels: The Diocese of Peoria website has a “mercy” page with Bishop Jenky’s Festival Letter, as well as a list and photos of all the churches and chapels designated as “pilgrimage” sites.  I thought it would be a great way to celebrate the year as a family to try to get to all those sites sometime during the year, and walk through the doors of mercy in all those locations. Wouldn’t it be great to get to Rome to go through the Jubilee Door in the Vatican?  In lieu of that, visiting the local sites ( or looking into ones places we travel this year) would be a great way to keep mercy in mind.

Living the Year of Mercy in the Family:  Marcia, another local blogger and dear friend, has compiled a list of ideas for living the Year of Mercy in the family. I love the idea here of “virtually” visiting the Divine Mercy Shrine in Poland, and many other ideas here.

Confession: Confession seems to me the most important sacrament this year. So perhaps working on not just going to Confession more often, but trying to make better confessions.  Related here would be trying to be more merciful and forgiving to others and myself.

I know I will come up with many more ways to celebrate and mark this Year of Mercy.   You’ll notice that I’m not listing a lot of books.  I read so much as it is, and I want to be sure to try things that can  involve more than just me, or allow me to reflect on the year. What I will do is create a shelf on my GoodReads for the Year of Mercy, and add books to it as time goes on. Suggestions welcome!

What are some of your ideas for the Year of Mercy? What do you have planned?

I will update this post with any other ideas I have, and I’d love to hear (and perhaps add!) yours.   If you’d like to be added as a collaborator on the “Year of Mercy” Pinterest board, please let me know, or send me a message on Pinterest.  I’d love for it to be a group board with lots of ideas.

Promoting Vocations Within the Family {Talk Notes}

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Following are notes for my portion of the talk that my husband Joseph & I will give to the “Wake Up the World: The Joy of Consecrated Life” conference in Peoria September 19.  Surprisingly, I am recommending a lot of books (ha), and so this post helps people recall the books without having to take copious notes.  Also, for those who are not able to attend but might care to see.

Joseph & I have discussed about the division of labor for this presentation, and I’m really looking forward to what he has to say.  He’s a much more experienced speaker than I, so part of me is also hoping to get my notes down here in a slightly more “polished” way so that I will be slightly more “polished” than normal for me.

I’d love to hear your book suggestions on this topic, as well as any other ideas you have on this.  The survey I reference very briefly below (I hope to do a longer post about it when time permits) reflects many perspectives, and I was so grateful for all those voices.  If you are interested in taking the survey I reference, let me know in the comments and I will send you the link.

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Quite a few months ago, a religious sister we know well asked my husband Joseph & I to give a talk at a vocations conference.  We were honored, but also felt un-equipped to speak on the official topic, “Promoting Vocations in the Family.”  After all, we only have two teens and a tween at our house. But Sister Sarah reassured me, (and I quote), “I have full faith and confidence in you.” So I’m hanging my hat on that.

We are each going to take different elements of “promoting vocations within the family.” We heartily believe that each of our children has a vocation—it may be to the priesthood, or religious life, or marriage. Helping them understand and discover that vocation, and being open themselves and being open to their journey, is a chief goal of parenting.

Here’s what I plan to cover:

*FAMILY AFFAIR:  how forming your family in faith, as individuals and as a family, is super unique, and there’s no formula to.  Related to that is that no family is perfect, and bickering and differences are  completely normal.  At least I hope so. 🙂

*BOOKS, BOOKS, and more BOOKS.  How books, and individual stories, can help anyone, young person, adult, or others, understand a little of how someone experiences a vocation to consecrated life, and how families and faith communities can be open and supportive of those journeys, wherever they lead.

*FINALLY, the MYSTERY of VOCATION.  I’ll share some thoughts from those who live out a vocation in religious life or the priesthood, and a survey I sent out to them and how it reflects on this mystery. We’ll also reflect on how we are ALL called to VOCATION, and how that will look for each person is very different.

I hope to expand on my notes for each category in either future posts or updating the posts, but right now here are just the highlights and chiefly, book links to my prior reviews, of the books mentioned.

  1. A FAMILY AFFAIR

*forming children in the faith

*looks different for every family: “Prayer is as individual as a fingerprint.”

*what works best for your family? Is it family Rosary? Night Prayer? Mass together? Separate?

*do what works best for your family.

*don’t be afraid to abandon what doesn’t work, or no longer works in this season, or to try new things.

Scripture from Night Prayer, Saturday night:

from Deuteronomy 6:4-7

“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

2.  BOOKS, BOOKS, and more BOOKS

Yes, God!: What Ordinary Families Can Learn about Parenting from Today’s Vocation Stories by Susie Lloyd.

Here is my review. A quote from that:

“Each chapter of Yes, God! Susie Lloyd profiles one of ten priests and religious from families, large, small and in-between; broken, barely intact and robustly healthy. The book shares how each family shaped in some way each person’s vocation path, and what makes it unique.

Is there any similarity between the families, a formula that guarantees kids who grow up happy and whole, much less following a vocation? No, and that’s what makes Yes, God! so fascinating. The stories of five men and five women who followed religious vocations is fingerprint-personal to each of those featured.

Tolstoy (yes, in Anna Karenina) famously wrote that “all happy families are alike, and each unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.”  But as I wrote in a college paper way back, I think he got it backwards. There are myriad ways to be happy and therefore holy.

Look at the saints. Aren’t you grateful there isn’t just one kind of saint or path to holiness? Most of us would be doomed, and I am grateful to hold dear the saints who most speak to my life and spiritual gifts. Yes, God! offers that kind of variety.

At the end of each biographical sketch/chapter, Lloyd offers a reflection of “Saying Yes,” to different virtues that informed the person’s path. For instance, “saying yes to patience,” “saying yes to strength,” and her own thoughts on how this quality helped the person say yes to God’s invitation, and how readers might adopt that virtue. She offers some interesting and quirky reflections from her own family, and offers a peek into the mystery of a vocation.”


Reflections from Rome: Practical Thoughts on Faith and Family by (local author) Monsignor Richard Soseman.

Here is my review: “Tapas for the Soul.” A quote from it:

“The reflections in the book are both realistic (as fits a rural Illinois native) and intelligent (as Monsignor’s many degrees attest, including canon law and Spanish, which is why I know Monsignor won’t mind me comparing his book to tapas).

The reflections are not written to talk “down” to people, but rather build them up. He offers such a wide variety of teaching, Catholic varia about the saints or some point of doctrine, and simple wisdom that he makes it look easy.”

And here is a Q&A with Monsignor Soseman, an old friend of our family.


The Grace to Race: The Wisdom and Inspiration of the 80-Year-Old World Champion Triathlete Known as the Iron Nun by Sister Madonna Buder.

Here is my review,  and here is a Q&A with Sister Madonna.  The book is really strongest talking about how she came to know her vocation, as well as out she lived it out over the years. A quote from my review:

“Sister Madonna’s book is part fine spiritual autobiography, part triathlete war stories, and throughout, true inspiration to the rest of us to really “reach” for more in our spiritual and physical lives.

Born to a life of privilege in St. Louis, Sister Madonna Buder considers a vocation from her early years, but still dates and immerses herself in an active, happy family life. Her decision time approaches as she reflects during a summer trip to Europe:

“Once safely on the train coursing along the scenic Rhine, I began to collect my thoughts. My Irishman! Monsignor Doheny! My European adventures! The past, the present, the future! What was God really asking of me? Then, from the depths of my soul, came an interior voice, ‘Can any one man satisfy you when I alone dwell in the deepest recesses of your heart?’ The message was seeping in just as surely as the waters flowed along the banks of the Rhine. My true longing was becoming clear.”


He Leadeth Me by Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.

Here’s a review from the Lent Book Series, “A Lesson in Letting Go.”


The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey from Hollywood to Holy Vows by Mother Dolores Hart.

Here is my review (where I said she was much more interesting than another top book from that time, Lean In).  An excerpt from that review:

The Ear of the Heart offers space for pondering and reflection, no matter your age or life path, on living life fully and intentionally, on spiritual friendship, and on maturity.

Like all good spiritual autobiographies, The Ear of the Heart really takes off once the vocation begins. Struggles with early doubts, times of desolation, community struggles and more, make for fascinating reading.”


Treasure in Clay: The Autobiography of Fulton J. Sheen


A Priest Forever: The Life of Eugene Hamilton


The Miracle of Father Kapaun: Priest, Soldier and Korean War Hero


I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You: My Life and Pastimes

What other books do you recommend for learning about how vocation to religious life or the priesthood happens?

3. THE MYSTERY OF VOCATION

*my survey of several dozen: priest, religious, or lay people who had spent time in seminary or a convent, discerning a vocation.  Inspired by Susie Lloyd’s book, but more focused on how to foster an openness to vocation, whatever that means.

*questions included how supportive/surprised/ unsupportive was their family and/ or faith community, how the family can foster and support young people discerning what God wants from them, and how lay people can support those in consecrated life and priesthood. So many of the survey respondents were generous with their time and sharing their vocation stories and thoughts about this.  I hope to do a longer posts with more of their beautiful words.

*some common themes:

-prayer

-family members varied in their support, surprise (maybe parents supported, but siblings did not, or everyone surprised, except the dad)

-pursue holiness as individuals, as families

-be comfortable with religious and priests–invite into your home, visit their monasteries, etc. natural relationships

-pray for religious and priests

-recognize “the consecration of the baptized” & the universal call to holiness

-ongoing dialogue about vocation, whether religious life, priesthood, marriage

-openness to whatever God wants

-everyone in a community can be a support to vocation, not just the parents or siblings

-an active, dynamic relationship with Jesus

Renewal, and Books {Lent Book Series}

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I had the great good fortune last weekend to go to the University of Notre Dame for a Catholic women’s blogging conference.

I have been scheduled and registered to attend at least three other blogging conferences in past years, but one thing or and another and another forced me to cancel plans.

So I was super grateful when local friend Bonnie of A Knotted Life invited me to attend, and even more grateful that I got a chance to ride along with Bonnie and Katie of Look to Him and Be Radiant.

I wish I could say this Lent has been all about renewal, but instead it’s more like the Lent you are given. Those are often the most fruitful Lents, but at the time it can feel like hard, hard work.

The opportunity to be with other Catholic women for an entire day, pray with them, learn from them, and just enjoy fellowship and great food, was a gift and a grace.

I must confess I enjoyed being the oldest at the conference, often by several decades.  But best is that I was the learner, and I’m still soaking up super helpful and encouraging presentations by Nell of Whole Parenting Family and Rhonda Ortiz of Real Housekeeping. I also loved the general conversations and input by the other bloggers, and getting to visit the Grotto, however briefly, and eat dinner with the group at this delicious restaurant.

As shared here before, I’ve been in blogging burnout, off and on, for several years.  I hoped the conference would help inspire and encourage.  It’s done that and more–here’s hoping that will be reflected here a Reading Catholic in coming months.  Baby steps.

No one will be surprised to learn that I spent much of my time in conversations with the other women suggesting … books.    And so, as part of the Mid-Lent Reset, I’m going to share books chosen specifically for the Catholic Women’s Blogging Conference.FullSizeRender

Some books are ones I individually recommended to women last weekend, and others struck me (on a scan of several bookshelves)  as apropos of last weekend’s the group.  I wanted to pick a range of non-obvious books perhaps off the radar of younger women, but are worthwhile reads.

Ralph McInerny’s memoir is a good fit since the conference was at the University of Notre Dame, and he was a longtime professor there. I wrote about it briefly here (and talk about what he thought about my chocolate cake).

This one just jumped out at me. So good.  Here’s my review. 

I’m only about halfway through this one–one of my sisters suggested it, and I am in tears about every other page. I want to be a Jesuit when I grow up.  Very good Lenten reading.

It turns out this book was updated several years ago as G-Dog and the Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles.  Adding that to the TBR list.

I mentioned this book as several “background reading” ideas to one of the bloggers who’s working on  a book. I’m not sure if her book plans are public, so I won’t name her or the topic, but I am very excited to read and review it when it does come out. Here’s my review of Gawande’s book.

Mary Eberstadt wrote what is one of the best, if not the best, retellings of C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. I re-read  The Loser Letters a few months back when my older teen was reading it, and I still loved it.   I reviewed the book here and interviewed Mary Eberstadt here.
I read this book in late 2013 or early 2014, and my younger teen and I did a modified version of her “seven” during last year’s Lent (seven foods, seven articles of clothing, etc.).  I was reminded that I still have not written about this terrific book and its impact on us yet when our family recently discovered re-runs of her home renovation show on HGTV.  Someday…

Good Reads from Pope Francis’ Bookshelf {Lent Book Series}

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This post is part of the 2015 {Lent Book Series}.
FullSizeRenderLooking for some Lenten spiritual reading inspired by or recommended by Pope Francis?

First, begin with the Holy Father’s Message for Lent 2015. Every year, the pope releases a message for Lent, and it begins and is based on a Scripture verse. This year, the Scripture verse is James 5:8: “Make your hearts firm.” Pope Francis’ theme is overcoming indifference, whether the Church as a whole, parishes or small communities, or individual Christians.

The Lenten messages are always short (this year’s is under 2,000 words—just a few pages) and reader-friendly. It is well worth taking 10-12 minutes to read and reflect on it.

Once you’ve finished that, now you’re ready for some of the Holy Father’s favorite books to jump-start your Lenten journey, here are some of the more familiar titles among his spiritual and literary favorites.

These are taken from the back-of-book page titled, “Bergoglio’s Bookshelf,” at the end of The Great Reformer, Austen Ivereigh’s recent biography of Pope Francis (click the link for my review of that book).  All are easy for readers to obtain at local Catholic bookstores. Some of the “classics” are available as free or almost-free e-books.

The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of the Little Flower, by St. Therese of Lisieux. Many have read this classic by “The Little Flower,” but it’s worth a careful read any year. Something to ponder as you read or re-read this book: What does it mean that it is one of Pope Francis’ favorite books?


The Lord by Romano Guardini. Perhaps the best-known work of Romano Guardini, an Italian priest and 20th century intellectual giant, it influenced countless priests from the 1940s on, including Pope Francis as a young Jesuit. Another Guardini option is to read the accessible Learning the Virtues: That Lead You to God
a recent Sophia Institute Press re-publication.

If novels are more for you, here are two ideas from Pope Francis’ favorites:
The Betrothed: I Promessi Sposi, Alessandro Manzoni’s 1827 novel that’s the first historical fiction written in Italian. It was a favorite novel of Pope Francis’ grandmother, and he knew of it from a young age. It cover the heroism, holiness, and lack those, in priests and the faithful in 19th century Europe.

Lord of the World by English priest-author Robert Hugh Benson. Lord of the World was written in 1907 as a futuristic end-of-the-world novel. It was a dystopian novel before the genre existed, but with more depth than most of the current crop.

Have you read any of these?  I’ve read Story of a Soul several times, and years ago read Lord of the World after it was suggested by a priest friend, but I don’t remember it at all.  I think I tried to read The Betrothed some years back, but never got any traction on it.  Maybe I need to give it another try.

{Lent Book Series} 2015: Books to Reset Lent

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At Mass on Sunday, I actually said to a friend, well, Easter is just a few weeks away!

Turns out it’s nearly five weeks away.  That is not my definition of “few,” so clearly, I am ready for Lent to be over.  As I shared,  I am missing chocolate something terrible.

(And, yes, I know I’m not supposed to give up chocolate but instead do great things.  I use “chocolate” as a shorthand for all my Lenten practices.  I do admit, however, to giving up actual chocolate every year because it’s hard). 

Are you feeling the same way?  Feeling like a failure already at your Lenten practices and promises? Need a boost or a mid-Lent re-set?

Me, too.

So, over the next few weeks, I and some other local writers will be sharing books to reset your Lent.

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This will end up being the 2015 edition of {Lent Book Series}.  If I can be totally honest, I had really planned for this to be a full-fledged book series, running all Lent long.  However, several things–mostly the busyness of life and my neglect of this space.  First, I got a late start in asking writers to join in.  A bunch responded. And then I  just dropped the ball;  life getting in the way, too.  And then Lent started and I still hadn’t begun.

So, operating on the principle of better late than never, and knowing that I and many others need a Lent “reset” after a few weeks, I reframed the series.  I hope you’ll find some of the ideas helpful in making your Lent fruitful.

Check back here on Friday, when I’ll share some of Pope Francis’ favorite books, and why they might make good reads on your Lenten journey.   Several times a week, I or others will be sharing good reads, and before you know it, we really will be just a few weeks from Easter.

Memento Mori, or We Are All Going to Die {My March column @ The Catholic Post}

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Following is my March column, that appears in this weekend’s print edition of The Catholic Post.

While listening to a radio story recently reporting the “death rate” for those who exercise was reduced by some very high percentage, I actually laughed out loud—what could the reporter possibly mean? 

Even I, an avid runner, am unconvinced.  Everyone, whether the person perfects couch-potato status or completes Ironman triathlons, is going to die.  We are all called to be good stewards of life, but there is no way to reduce the 100 percent death rate among humans.

It may seem like a downer, but memento mori —basically, “remember you are going to die”— is not something to fear, but something to embrace, especially during this season of Lent. “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” we are told as we receive ashes on Ash Wednesday. 

Many people today— with good reason—are concerned about, and even fear, the dying process and what can be highly-medicalized end-of-life care. An excellent new book, Atal Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, offers much food for thought to understanding the way we die in our current culture, and what we should change about it.

Gawande is a surgeon who’s written several popular books, including the acclaimed The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right that posited how airline checklists could be successfully applied to health care and other fields, with great success.

In Being Mortal,  Gawande uses stories, statistics, and history, to get at why and how we die in the 21st century.  It is both fascinating and a little frightening.  He shares stories of his own patients and family members, and of how he, as a physician, has gotten it right and wrong with patients and loved ones about their end-of-life journeys, not just from a medical, but a human perspective.

He shares what he has learned from others in medicine, bioethics, hospice, and philosophy, and offers not so much a how-to, but a blueprint for people to begin discussions about how they’d like to live at the end of life.

Gawande is not Catholic, but in many ways Being Mortal  is a deeply Catholic (and catholic) book.  He is a gifted writer, and reflects on the nature of dying and of living well, chiefly through the concept of ars moriendi, or “the art of dying.”  (Ars moriendi was first popularized in a series of books about dying well written by late medieval Catholic monks.)  Gawande applies this beautifully when he stresses, over and over again, the interconnectedness of human life:

“Our lives are inherently dependent upon others and subject to forces and circumstances well beyond our control.  Having more freedom seems better than having less.  But to what end?  The amount of freedom you have in your life is not the measure of the worth of your life.  Just as safety is an empty and even self-defeating goal to live for, so ultimately is autonomy.”

Being Mortal is not a perfect book, nor is it fully Catholic—Gawande implies a qualified support of doctors writing prescriptions to terminally ill patients, but he calls that “not a measure of success… it is a measure of failure.”  His support of this is so uncharacteristic, since the vast majority of the book is respectful and life-affirming on the value of living and dying well, compatible with a Catholic vision of the truth and infinite worth of human lives.

For a more explicitly Catholic perspective on death and dying, consider Susan Windley-Daoust’s Theology of the Body, Extended: The Spiritual Signs of Birth, Impairment and Dying. 

Windley-Daoust, a professor at St. Mary’s University in Wenona, Minnesota, has written a careful and wide-ranging analysis of how St. John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” relates to birth (she writes of childbirth, “it is charged with the Holy Spirit”), those who encounter or experience disability, and those in a dying process.  She, too, shares how the Catholic vision of ars moriendi can shape a spiritually healthy and integrated life.

Yes, it’s theology, but very accessible to mere mortal readers (like me!).  She shares stories and practical applications about how we live our faith through our bodies.

Clearly, Being Mortal and Theology of the Body, Extended were not written together, but they can be read as companion books.  Both books reflect, from somewhat different, but complementary, approaches, on the immense value of human life and human connection, even and especially in our most vulnerable moments.

Read both books this Lent, and start some great discussions with your loved ones about memento mori.