10 books for the year of faith...other than the ones you SHOULD be reading.

Recently I had seen an article entitled “100 books for the year of faith”. Upon reading it I found that it was just a plethora of “100 books that comment on spirituality” and were not necessarily distinct to the theme of the Year of Faith. Also, I’m not even confident enough to say that I have read 100 books, so the article seemed to be exhausting. That is why I’ve made 10 suggestions for the year of faith...aside from the 3 you should already be reading, and we’ll start with them.
1. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Especially read the section on the Creed. Learn what we confess to be true.






2. The Documents of Vatican 2
Instead of hearing the usual spirit-of-vatican-2-rhetoric, go right into it yourself. The language used is not beyond the comprehension of the everyday person. Go through it, document by document, and experience what really happened during a most historic period of our church



3. Sacred Scripture
....because you’re a Christian.



The following are my own suggestions. I haven’t read all of these books, but I plan to based on what they potentially have to offer. These books are in no particular order.

1. Priority of Christ: Toward a post-liberal Catholicism by Fr. Robert Barron
“For a long time, Christians have tried to bridge the divide between Christianity and secular liberalism with philosophizing and theologizing. In The Priority of Christ, Father Robert Barron shows that the answer to this debate--and the way to move forward--lies in Jesus. Barron transcends the usual liberal/conservative or Protestant/Catholic divides with a postliberal Catholicism that brings the focus back on Jesus as revealed in the New Testament narratives. 

Barron's classical Catholic post-liberalism will be of interest to a broad audience including not only the academic community but also preachers and general readers interested in entering the dialogue between Catholicism and postliberalism.” –Amazon.com

This would be a handy tool when dialoguing with those who believe the church to be corrosive to society.

2. Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
This book was originally in three parts: The Case of Christianity, Christian Behavior, and Beyond Personality. “Aside from the Bible, every Christian should read this book.” –Peter Kreeft

As it turns out, this is a video for another book, but Peter Kreeft quotes Mere Christianity.

3. Evangelium Vitae by Pope John Paul II
This encyclical exercised a great authoritative tone of the Church in the defense of human life. Reading this would give a Catholic the clear and concise stance of the Church and how to participate in the culture of life.

4. The Gospel Without Compromise by Catherine Doherty
“This collection of meditations will inspire you, encourage you, set you on fire, eager to live The Gospel Without Compromise.

Learn how to live Gods great commandment to love; recognize His great love for us; find peace and happiness in loving Him back. Change the world and whatever needs changing through His transforming power. Discover the sublime challenge of His call to us to live the Gospel.

How strange that modern Christians seem to miss the greatest point of their faith! To so many, God is The Man with the big stick. The great commandment to love God with all ones heart has been turned into a threat: Toe the line or else youll go to hell! Yet the gospel can be summed up by saying it is the tremendous, tender, compassionate, gentle, extraordinary, explosive, revolutionary law of Gods love.”
Amazon.com

I chose this one because I’m Canadian. I know many people who have been moved by the book and remain to work in fulltime ministry.






5. The Power & the Glory by Graham Greene
“In a poor, remote section of southern Mexico, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest strives to overcome physical and moral cowardice in order to find redemption.”
Amazon.com

Though the author was a controversial figure, this book articulates well how all of us, no matter how messed up we are, are beckoned to a higher calling and relationship with God. I loved this book.





6. Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to Augustine by Pope Benedict XVI
“Pope Benedict's Church Fathers presents these important figures of early Christianity in all their evangelical vitality, spiritual profundity, and uncompromising love of God. Benedict tells the true story of Christianity's against-all-odds triumph in the face of fierce pagan Roman hostility and persecution. He does this by exploring the lives and the ideas of the early Christian writers, pastors, and martyrs, the men so important to the spread of Christianity that history knows them as "the Fathers of the Church”
Amazon.com

As we embark on the journey to the New Evangelization and renewal of society, let’s look to those who first spent their lives for the gospel. This one is on my bookshelf right now and is staring at me right in the face.





7.Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master by Fr. Robber Barron
“The life and spiritual teachings of the Catholic Church's greatest classical theologian as seen through the eyes of a contemporary theologian. Robert Barron examines the life and work of Catholicism's premier scholar and discovers a saintly deep in love with Jesus Christ.”
Amazon.com

Before we all dive into The Summa Theologica, let this book be an introduction to who St. Thomas was and how to properly read him in the intended context. I’m currently reading this one and, yes, it’s challenging. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to dive in. Sometimes our noggin needs a floggin’.

8. Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller jr.
“Winner of the 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel and widely considered one of the most accomplished, powerful, and enduring classics of modern speculative fiction, Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz is a true landmark of twentieth-century literature -- a chilling and still-provocative look at a post-apocalyptic future.

In a nightmarish ruined world slowly awakening to the light after sleeping in darkness, the infant rediscoveries of science are secretly nourished by cloistered monks dedicated to the study and preservation of the relics and writings of the blessed Saint Isaac Leibowitz. From here the story spans centuries of ignorance, violence, and barbarism, viewing through a sharp, satirical eye the relentless progression of a human race damned by its inherent humanness to recelebrate its grand foibles and repeat its grievous mistakes. Seriously funny, stunning, and tragic, eternally fresh, imaginative, and altogether remarkable, A Canticle for Leibowitz retains its ability to enthrall and amaze. It is now, as it always has been, a masterpiece.”

If you’re not familiar with history, this is basically a retelling of the fall of Rome set in a horrible dystopian hellscape. CAN’T WAIT!






9. Yours is the Church: How Catholicism Shapes our World by Mike Aquilina
“Yours Is the Church focuses on the key role the Catholic Church has played in culture, history, and society, detailing the many reasons we can be proud to be Catholic. While not skirting the issues and failures that have plagued the Church, the author’s goal is to inspire everyday Catholics to recognize the Church’s proactive role in courageously preserving spiritual freedom and nourishing culture from its inception through the present day. Yours Is the Church is a breath of fresh air, sure to renew the confidence of Catholics everywhere.”
Amazon.com
I just ordered it. I can’t wait to learn from this guy.

10.Credo by Hans Urs Von Balthasar

“In the twelve months before his sudden death, Hans Urs von Balthasar had been writing a series of reflections on the twelve articles of the Apostles' Creed. These texts, which are undoubtedly among the last things he wrote, take on the character of a legacy, a spiritual testament. For they amount in their extraordinary compactness and depth to a little "summa" of his theology. What he had set out in detail in numerous books over five decades, he summarizes here in contemplative plainness and simplicity.”
Ignatius Press

All Saints Day

With All Saints Day just around the corner, here is a Fr. Barron Comment to help us better understand the saints and their role in our lives.

Many parishes are offering a special All Saints Day Mass in the evening. We strongly encourage you attend mass and bring a friend. If you have any questions contact your parish or diocese.

I have nobody. I need somebody: The loss of Amanda Todd

In an online video, Amanda Todd gives her personal testimony of abuse. In this video, that has gone viral, she gives an autobiography of bullying that spans over the course of a few years. In it she uses cue cards, with her face hidden, to recalls the various abuses in her life that lead to her ultimate decision. She begins by recounting the need to seek online chat rooms to “meet and talk to new people” because of the amount of bullying she was experiencing at school. Online she met a boy who, through offering her compliments that exalted her physical beauty, coaxed her to expose her breasts on camera.


 

A year later, after having to move from experiencing a great deal of bullying at her previous high school,  that same young boy who convinced her to expose herself online, revealed he knew her identity along with her school, address, friends and family members. He threatened to make the pictures he possessed public if she didn't “put on a show” for him. She describe that over the Christmas holidays those pictures were exposed, thereby subjecting her to more bullying and torment by her peers. Last week, on October 10^th, Amanda Todd took her own life. 

In her video, Amanda reveals to world something more personal and intimate than her leaked photos ever could. She exposes the deepest, most sincere yearnings of the human soul, she unveils the abuses perpetrated by lust, the true beauty of the feminine genius, all which articulates, and makes public, the current state of our society.

Regardless if every individual is willing to admit it, humanity at its very core has profound yearnings for absolute truth, beauty, power, salvation, love, etc. A mid-nineteenth century atheist philosopher and anthropologist, Ludwig Feuerbach, realized these deep wants and desires of the human person. In his opinion, the Christian notion of God, a contrived notion he would argue, was influenced by these motivations. Known to some as the father of modern atheism, he hypothesized that If we crave absolute power, we would then invent a deity who would fulfil that craving. Though he is correct in symptoms, he falls short in his diagnosis. The desire for something does not disprove its existence or prove it as fiction. If one is hungry, they will desire a sandwich. Does this prove that sandwiches don’t exist? No. The equally, if not more likely argument, is that the deepest yearnings in Ms.Todds heart are proof that absolute relationship and love does exist.

In his famous Confessions, St. Augustine has a famous line “Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te” which is translated as “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you”. These motivations, though twisted and mislead by her own anguish, I believe were at the centre of Amanda Todd’s life. From my own experience, six years ago I found myself in the psyche ward of a local hospital after trying to end myself. It was the most surreal moment of my life. Some would consider ending up in such a place to be ‘hitting rock bottom’. The beauty of being at your lowest point is that, as long as you don’t kill yourself, you’re improving. A part of the agreement of my release is was that I would begin to seek counselling. After seeing a councillor for a few weeks he made some remarks that perfectly articulated what was taking place in the depth of my heart. He told me that some seek suicide as a means to find God. They are disinterested with the finite world and wish to seek out something everlasting.

Amanda Todd goes on to describe how, in her severe loneliness, she was used by guys, one guy in particular for sex. She simply describes through her cue cards  that “he started to say he liked me...led me on.” He invited her over to his house, to which she regretted “huge mistake” and “I thought he liked me..”. Amanda transmits and reverberates the same cry that countless young girls repeat in their minds over and over again “I thought he liked me...”. More often than not, men are praised for their anonymous sexual endeavors. As a man, to be counted amongst your peers as an equal, to be successful with “getting what you want” is a prerequisite.

A CTV online article reporting on her death was entitled “Amanda Todd: anotherchild who just fell through the cracks”. To me, this is an insulting and short sighted interpretation of the events of her life. To think that the answer to Ms. Todd’s pain solely relied on the actions of an institution is entirely missing the mark. With the aforementioned illustration on masculinity, it is clear that Amanda’s suffering came from the hands of the society itself.
If we look at the first decade of the 21^st century, we see a ‘revolution’ of sorts in the issue of climate change. Al Gore’s famous documentary entitled “An inconvenient truth” sought to expose the evil of green house gas emissions and how it’s affecting our world. To me, Mr. Gore is witnessing to an issue that covers a wider spectrum than just the environment, the tendency to take the resource or desire and divorce it from the responsibility. We use the world’s resources like we treat the physical beauty of humanity. Take the gratification and reduce the outlet to a disposal object.
 I would challenge anyone to find an article that decries her death and issues that WE as a society need to change. Venerable Fulton Sheen writes in his book “Way to happiness” that the greatest revolution is waged in the depths of heart. He writes:
“Our Lord has instituted the revolution of humility in words before; now He put it into practice after the Last Supper, when "He laid his garments aside, took a towel and put it about him; and then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the feet of his disciples, wiping them with the towel that girded him". Slaves were assigned, in those days, to do such menial tasks as this. It was a topsy-turvy event on a gigantic scale to have the Master of Masters, the King of Kings kneel down at twenty-four calloused, sweaty feet and make them clean- as His absolution still makes clean our calloused hearts and our soiled souls. All human values were forever reversed in the starling revolution Christ declared in these words: "The man who exalts himself will be humbled and the man who humbles himself will be exalted."
At the moments these words were uttered, Caesar lost his throne. The principle of exaltation was undone, and arrogance and pride were shown the door.”

If Amanda encountered men and women of this temperament, I believe the course of her life would be drastically different; I believe she would still be alive. In our society we are to find purpose and value in it according to our own specifications.  Ultimately this leaves our own selfish desires pitted up against another’s, leaving one will to subdue the other; this is an animalistic survival of the fittest.

Christ did not solely offer us an example of selflessness so that we would imitate him exclusively as a role model to look up to. He offers us a relationship with that very Love itself. If St. Augustine is right and we were created by Him, for Him, then it would be perfectly sane to conclude that through this relationship, we become more fully what we were made for. St. Catherine of Sienna said “If we are who we are meant to be, we will set the world on fire”.

On a personal note, the news of Amanda Todd’s passing has enraged me. I too was teased in High School a great deal. To those who have never experienced bullying, you’re left with an impressive feeling of loneliness. I call it impressive because sometimes, no matter how many friends you may have to support you, it sometimes only takes the jeers of one bully to put everything you thought you knew about yourself and your world into question. Although I have felt a pain like the aggressive hurt that Ms.Todd had experienced, I cannot claim to be innocent. Those same selfish desires that are ingredients in this cultural soup of narcissism dwell within my own heart. The loss of Amanda’s life should be viewed in its proper context, not as the failure to be helped by social programs, but a victim of our senseless worship of the ego.

Characteristics of Faith by Gilles Urquhart

Based on Catechism of the Catholic Church Paragraphs 153-165

What is Faith?

Faith is trust.  Faith is belief.

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that it is the evidence of things not yet seen.

We use faith in the human sense all the time:

-         when a couple marries they trust each other enough to commit to each other.  The trust the word and promise of the other.

-         When we sit on a chair we trust that it will hold us.

-         When we eat food in a restaurant we have faith it is not poisoned etc..

Without this basic faith we would not be able to function, to have confidence in things.

Faith in the divine sense is similar to that.  When we hear the Gospel something stirs in our hearts to believe it.  To trust in its veracity, to have confidence in its reliability.

Abraham

Biblically speaking the father of all who believe in God is Abraham.  When we look at his life, his example lays a foundation upon which all other believers stand.   In fact, all the great monotheistic faiths look to Abraham as their example.

By a special grace or gift of God Abraham comes to realize that God is not found in the idols of his people.  By grace and by using his reasoning he knows that God who made heaven and earth is beyond the scope of our comprehension and at the same time is knowable.

Faith enabled Abraham to leave his homeland to go to a new land, to trust in God’s promise, even in times when the promise seemed far away.

-thus faith is a grace CCC 153

-a fully human act CCC 154

-in accord with human reason CCC 155-156

-faith has a certitude CCC 157

Mary

One of my favorite and one of the most beautiful stories in the Bible is the Annunciation in the Gospel of Luke.  It is such an example of faith, of trust in God’s will and providence.

When the Angel tells her she will bear a son she asks, “How can this be?”

St Augustine said,  “ I believe, in order to understand; and I understand the better believe.”

Mary’s question was not that of a skeptic but that of seeking to better understand what was happening.  Our faith is not based on a random collection of unrelated propositions grounded in nothing.   Mary uses her reasoning to better develop her faith in God.

All of us would gain so much by asking questions so we too an deepen our faith.  As the CCC puts it: “the grace of faith opens the eyes of your hearts to a lively understanding of the contents of Revelation.” CCC 158

The Annunciation also brings us to the question of the relationship between faith and science.  The idea of a virginal conception sound ridiculous to a “rational” mind.  The miraculous and the scientific are both part of God’s plan as “ the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God.”  CCC 159   The authentically miraculous are not myths on the one hand nor is the scientific opposed to belief in God.

When speaking of Mary we also think of the notion of Free Will.  All of the things God did concerning Our Lady in no way took away her freedom.

Mary’s “yes” was free, full and faithful.

A Great Cloud of Witnesses

“Without faith it is impossible to please God”  (Hebrews 11:6)

One of my favorite verses in the Bible comes from Sirach 2: 11

“Look at the generations of old and see: who ever trusted in the Lord and put to shame?”

The Bible challenges us – even dares us – to find anyone who was disappointed by the Lord.  Oh they have been persecuted, put to death, endured trials… but no saints of the Old Testament, New Testament and through the ages of the Church would ever say that the Lord has abandoned them.

Faith is what saves us.  Not by itself, for on its own it isn’t faith until it leads to action.  Authentic faith helps us walk through the trials and storms of life and still believe.  This is why familiarizing ourselves with the great saints can encourage us today.

If our relationship with God is like a marriage, then we must stick through it in good times and in bad.  St Paul tells us we see through a dark glass the realities of God but if we hold firm we shall arrive at that place where faith will be no more and we shall see hism face to face.

My MANifesto

On December 6^th, 1989 I was 4 years old. The same day 25 year old Marc Lepine brought his Mini-14 rifle into a Montreal University classroom and shot 28 women; 14 women died. This event will forever be known as “The École Polytechnique Massacre”. Many Canadians still remember this day and mourn for those who were lost in a senseless scene of brutality. A piece of information that was unknown to many is that this engineering classroom was not only populated by women. Aiming his rifle to the classroom, he told all the male students to separate themselves from the women. After firing a shot in the air to prove that it wasn’t a kind of prank, every single one of the 50 men complied and moved aside.

Back when I attended the CSE the guys read a book by Dr. Larry Crabb entitled “The Silence of Adam”. In it he recounts the scene that took place in the garden, where Eve is tempted by the snake.  However, through analyzing the narrative in its original text, it’s reveal that Adam, the one who was to protect Eve, was sitting on the side lines as the whole thing was taking place. Even the first man failed to act.

My name is Bill Dykstra and I help run the CSE’s young adult program called “Emmaus”. This year I’ll be participating in a global campaign to raise awareness and funds for Prostate Cancer and other men’s health issues. The campaign is called MOVEMBER. During the month of November men grow mustaches to raise awareness for men’s health.

This year I have decided to organize an initiative to host a Movember Men’s Brunch. On November 24^th at 11am, we will gather to have brunch and be informed on men’s health issues (venue tba). In addition to this a video will be presented entitled “The Man Talk” by Catholic apologist Matt Fradd.

Young boys are often given no role models to look up to. Men, do you want to have occasion that you can spend time exclusively with other men and gain a deeper understanding of how and why you were made this way?

Society and the media have portrayed fathers as unintelligent, miserly, lustful, oafs. Women, do you want to see men break the “Homer Simpson mold”? Do you wish to see men become empowered to live virtuously?

In planning this event I will need your help. On October 17^th after Emmaus at 622 Tache, there will be an organizing meeting for those who wish to be involved. Men and Women are both more than welcome to be a part of organizing. Emmaus begins at 7:30pm.

If you would like to contact me ahead of time, email me at b.dykstra@inbox.com