Category: Noah’s Thoughts

How awesome that god shares His beloved mother with us.

Our Lady has helped me with so many things. Most importantly of all has been to truly forgive. Forgive and thank those who have hurt, mistreated, and taken advantage of me. I never fully understood how that could be until praying the rosary I was struck that not only did my sins place our Savior Jesus Christ on the cross, but that Mary knew it. She knew and still advocated on my behalf. She saw firsthand all that was done to her precious Son and through God’s grace was able to forgive and not just forgive, but love in spite of it. Through her love, I have been able to share the grace of forgiveness.

Our Mother has even helped restore my own relationship with my birth mother. She is so powerfully loving that if you let her, she will guide and lead you to her Son in repentant joy.

I have been trying to understand how a parent could love the people that are responsible for the things that were done to her Son. The only thing I can really come up with is grace. Grace from the Father, and knowing that the final and perfect sacrifice would not be an ending but a continuation of the will of the Father. Since Our Mother is “full of grace”, she is best suited for leading us all to the forgiveness of Christ.

I am so grateful that Jesus shares His Mother with us, and how God has built this amazing familial foundation and structure. In His love and mercy He has created such a rich and beautiful existence.

Rest is important for us. So important that in sacred scripture we are told that God rested after His work.

I mean if God takes rest, then if can’t be bad for us, especially if we are made in His image and likeness. Now this doesn’t mean to fall into sloth, or take every chance to lounge around but taking rest in the Lord Our God, especially when observing the Lord’s Day.

What does it mean to rest? To abstain from servile work, to enjoy our freedom given to us by Jesus Christ. To celebrate that we are free and no longer slaves. That through Him and His sacrifice we are freed.

It is so easy to get caught up in the gotta move and work mentality, that sometimes overlooking rest comes at the expense of our wellbeing; physical and spiritual.

Let us give each other grace and celebrate our freedom through Jesus Christ by resting in Him.

I was thinking about the bronze serpent in Exodus that God commanded Moses to build to cure those who had been bitten by the snakes. The statement of faith that was made when the Israelites looked at the serpent, and received healing is akin to the statement of faith made every time we partake of the eucharist and receive healing. It is a fervent belief that the thanksgiving feast and memorial sacrifice is truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The unspoken proclamation made when receiving the body and blood is that Jesus’s words were true and trusting in Him is how we should live. Much like the bronze serpent, the external and visible application of God’s grace is always efficacious; but how much more for us when we cooperate and respond in faith to Our Father’s will for us.

I have come to understand that almost every thing we do can and should be a reflection of our faithful convictions. We should be joyful servants of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us receive gracefully and plentiful the love of Our Father that we can share that much more with our brothers and sisters.

I have struggled with forgiveness for a long time and in a number of different ways. I struggled with how to truly forgive someone, that forgiveness was not a forget me not pill, and that by my forgiveness my perpetrator was released by grace from the bondage of the sin I refused to let go of.

That is some heavy stuff, and rightfully so. Our Mother is the one who truly touched my heart and taught me about forgiveness. I was early on my journey to joining the Church, and had decided I would try to pray a rosary every day. I was praying the rosary one evening, and Our Mother touched my heart during the Sorrowful Mysteries and I realized that I was such a hypocrite.

There I was, praying and meditating on the life of our Lord and Savior and not fully realizing how I betrayed him in the garden, how my sins got him scourged, how my sins affixed his brow with the crown of thorns, how he carried the weight of my sins in his cross, and how my sins nailed him to the cross, pierced his side, and gave him vinegar to drink.

I was blinded by pride at how I was trying to “do better” in my relationship with The Father. When confronted with the harsh realities of how serious my sins were, well how could I judge someone else of a sin I did not think was justifiable or was more wrong? How could I not forgive things done to me, when all of our sins are the reason Jesus gave himself up to the will of The Father for our sakes.

I was listening to Father Mike and Sister Miriam a few days ago and it struck such a cord how they were speaking of forgiveness and the beauty of confession and removing anything between us and Jesus; and how forgiving someone was a release for both parties. It was beautiful.

We should confess to each other when we have wronged one another and we should forgive when forgiveness is asked. That doesn’t mean to be a doormat or to let ourselves be hurt and abused, but forgiveness also means that we unite our pain and suffering with our Lord and Savior Jesus and through him we can be healed.

There are times when I feel so strongly connected and rooted in my prayer and faith life that I feel the Holy Spirit so literally close to me. Then there are times where I feel, if I am honest a bit like a fraud. Where I don’t “feel it”, but continue on with the devotionals, meditative prayer, and reading of scripture. I struggle with these feelings still, but not near as much as I used to.

I believe these moments of Spiritual Feast are a reconnecting, or maybe more of a recharge of my spirit. Where I am more acutely aware of God, and more sensitive to His will. I understand that some of these feasts are where I am at in my relationship and journey through and to holiness, and some are fruits of the Spirit.

Just as much as the feasts are important, so is the Spiritual Famine.

I view these seasons in a more positive light now, than at any other point in God calling me. I want Our Father to know that no matter what fickle feelings I may have, that I love and desire to know and love him forever and ever. So especially when I do not “feel” like doing my devotions, or praying my daily rosary, or reading something to increase my time with Him. I do it anyway, and I do it because I’m sure Jesus would have preferred not go through all he did, and the God would have preferred it if satan didn’t rebel and corrupt a number of the angels with him. So I want Our Holy Family to know that my love is a covenant, and I (with the help of the Holy Spirit) want to keep up my end.

I am more peacefully joyful and do not feel like I am riding a roller coaster in life hardly anymore, and that had taken a little getting used to. I am truly grateful for all the times I have with Our Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit. When I feel so close and when I know that it is my time to grow to feel them again.

What is a covenant? It is defined as a mutual promise between two parties. What is a family? I prefer the definition of spouse and children. I take the covenant of family literally to mean a promise on top of the promise of the covenant of marriage that husband and wife will live faithfully according to the new covenant that Jesus prescribes through His teachings. I am discovering that there are a lot of covenants between God and his faithful children.

Let’s get more specific. The covenant of family is a physical, literal, and metaphorical institution of part of Heaven on earth. So it takes the covenant of marriage and adds to that how we promise to raise our children, to ultimately return to God.

That is I think the whole point of family. We follow God’s instructions (the commandments), using the sacraments to help us in living righteously and growing in holiness. As we go through life, we get married and create life (children). Then as current children of God, Our Holy Father wants us to share his love with these new lives so that we can call be children of the Most High God the Father.

He loves us and wants to share his goodness, that is why he lets us create life. Even this is a narrowminded approach, because people who never submit to His will or acknowledge his love can create life. I have come to believe this is another way for His goodness to be made known to the world when people who will never have children of their own (biologically) can care for the downtrodden children that have been cast off by their parents or are rich in tragedy.

All of these are statements of faith, that are rooted in the things God has shown me by keeping me alive and being with me through all of my foolishness. I know that I don’t have to understand or be able to see the “big picture” to trust in Him!

The more I pray and read, and read and pray, the more I firmly understand that I barely know anything about Our Father, faith, the Church, and our holy family. Don’t get me wrong, I have learned so much from great Christian theologians, and early church fathers. I guess what I specifically mean is that I am barely scratching the surface of this incredible existence and what Our Father has created. How much everything touches everything. He has so cleanly and orderly setup all things that when we think we understand something, he will reveal to us how this thing actually is related to something way out of our purview.

For example, I was typing up about loving our neighbor earlier today and was struck that sharing grace and love that Our Father shares with us, with our brothers and sisters/future brothers and sisters is a correlation to the parable of the Sower. That the Holy Spirit can work through us to grow the seed of faith inside others!

Loving our neighbor can be an unnecessarily difficult thing, if we let our pride cloud our vision. I have and still struggle with this, more than I care to admit. But I do admit it, because I truly believe that when we confess our sins, temptations, and shortcomings in faithful action we allow God’s grace to work in us and hopefully encourage our brothers and sisters in Christ to give each other the same grace.

Pride is the biggest hinderance to loving our neighbors. From my perspective, when satan tries to drive wedges in between us; where the Holy Spirit would otherwise bring us together, it is the sin of pride. It makes us unintentionally see ourselves as better than those around us, even those we love so much.

Specifically pride blinds us to an obvious fact regarding creation. That all of creation is infused with the essence of God. If all things exist because it is Our Father’s will, then all people who exist are here because it is the will of Our Father, and since God takes direct part in the creation of life; even more should we see the goodness of God in all people.

Let us hope and pray that the Holy Spirit will open our eyes, and shape our souls so we can see the goodness of God in our current and future brothers and sisters.

Jesus spoke very strongly about marriage and family life. The sanctity of marriage is I think part of what is supposed to come out of the Holy Union of man and woman in covenant with God. That is life, new life, that is part of the man and part of the woman and the essence of God. God literally gives us the ability to create new life with his blessing. That is why marriage is so special, and should not be entered into lightly. Jesus was very clear on marriage, again I think because of what it brings. When we enter into a marriage covenant, it is not just the husband and wife before and under God; but with God. We are recreating Heaven on earth and participating in the act of creation. Like the love between the Father and the Son, comes the Holy Spirit (always existing for ever and ever). So from the love of a man and a woman comes children. How incredible that Our Father shares the ability to create life with us! Through our children, the Kingdom of God can increase by our faithful instruction and honest lives. Our children will see the truth of His words, and the fruits of the spirit in us. God working through us will bring their hearts to him also.

We are made in the image and likeness of the triune God. In the image of God, we have a soul that is a spirit. In the image of Jesus, we have a physical body. We participate in the love between the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit. We were originally created to share and partake of God’s holy goodness by sharing and giving our whole selves to our Father and Him revealing Himself to us for eternity.

We got a little sidetracked by original sin and cycles of steadfast faith, rebellion and debauchery, and sorrow of our past rebellions.

Throughout history God has been so graceful and shown us great mercy. He even gave himself up as sacrifice through Jesus Christ the Son, to save us from ourselves.

Praise and bless the holy name of the Lord Our God!