Ivars' Voice

Our world is awash in noise, especially if you live in a big city. There is no way we can get away from it sometimes. If you have to wait on the phone, there is music. You ride in an elevator there is piped in music. The store aisles are filled with music and other noises. People have cell phones with them all the time and they are always on. Then there is the I-Pod, the radio, the computer, the T.V. Maybe you can list a few more.

What to do about it? If you really want some quiet in your life, then you will have to do something about it yourself. Don’t turn on your cell phone unless you need to, others can leave you a message. Don’t turn on your car radio, just sit in quiet and listen to the silence, or speak to God, or pray the rosary. When you get up in the morning, the very first thing you should do is take 10 or 15 minutes to read a short section from the Bible – maybe say morning prayer from our web-site, then close the Bible and sit there in silence talking with Jesus. He is your best friend and is always there for you.

If you do this everyday you will be amazed at how much your inner life calms down and is at peace.
Peace,

Abbot Thomas, O.S.B.

# posted by Ivars: 9:59 PM ikrafts@msn.com  0 comments

After describing an e-mail received from an ex-seminarian from Argentina, Ryan writes:

….He made me question my own motives for remaining in the church.

The most obvious and simple reason is that I’m used to it. I was born and brought up Catholic. I happen to be Catholic just as I happen to be American. It’s an empirical fact-the rather prosaic underpinning of my fidelity.

Because I’m a Catholic, I go to Mass on Sundays (or Saturday evening), and I’m relatively at ease. I know when to sit, stand, and kneel, and I know the responses. I am deeply aware of Eucharistic theology, and I want to respond to this gift with all my being. Yet I often feel as though I’m just going through the motions. The people around me are strangers, the music is led by a choir singing a couple of octaves above what most of us are capable of, the songs themselves are sickly sentimental, and the sermon is often insipid. . . . At church, I have the impression that we are a motley crew fulfilling an obligation. There is a clique of dedicated people in the parish who keep things rolling, but I’ve never been tempted to become part of that group. I simply don’t have a vocation to lay ministry. These are very good people who are trying their best. The worst of it is that I haven’t a clue as to how things could be improved.

So I can’t stand outside and throw stones. The very things that pain and disappoint me in the church exist in myself, and I don’t like them there either. Often I feel like a hypocrite among hypocrites-all of us pretending to live something we are constantly contradicting.

That is the nitty-gritty level. In the larger context, there is a whole litany of complaints: the church’s obsession with micromanaging the sexual life of the faithful and imposing its one-size-fits-all regulations; its courtship of the rich and powerful (who are the laypeople who sit on diocesan boards and consulting committees? Are they representative of the people of God?); the political posturing (morality must be legislated). The litany could go on and on.

* * *

Is it simply out of inertia that I continue to be a Catholic? I hope not. Faced with so much that puts me off and the temptation to simply walk away, I find myself replying with Peter: “To whom else will we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

-- Jerry Ryan “Why I Stay Catholic: The Bonds of Belief & Friendship”

# posted by Ivars: 10:50 PM ikrafts@msn.com  0 comments