Private Vows in The Laity/Spirituality

[Pax17]

Barb, there is certainly a place for Netflix in our lives...as well as greasy cheeseburgers, heating pads, fuzzy socks and anything else we use to keep our mind off things, especially pain.  Having lived with endometriosis for many years (it has run its course), I know how debilitating pain can be. 

And as a retired writer/editor, I know that you need energy to write anything, even a sentence in a greeting card. 

I admire your faith.  You are in my thoughts.

[BarbTherese]

On 6/28/2022 at 8:49 AM, Pax17 said:

Barb, there is certainly a place for Netflix in our lives...as well as greasy cheeseburgers, heating pads, fuzzy socks and anything else we use to keep our mind off things, especially pain.  Having lived with endometriosis for many years (it has run its course), I know how debilitating pain can be. 

And as a retired writer/editor, I know that you need energy to write anything, even a sentence in a greeting card. 

I admire your faith.  You are in my thoughts.

I have no idea what has been happening, or the why of it rather.  I have been unable to post into Phatmass, though it was showing I was logged in.  I had to change my Password to be able to lov in this time.

I dont know how to make a New Post!  Hence, please excuse me Pax.  The only way I can Post, it would seem, is by quoting an existing Post.  

I have missed my Pham Phamily HEAPS AND HEAPS AND HEAPS.  At least, thnk The Lord, I am now back in.  JOY JOY JOY   Much has been happening and my DECIDEDLY ANNOYING physical problems, I am almost blind and crippled, get the better of me a dreadful lot.  I have told The Lord, I unite anything I go through to His Cross, if He would Mercifully, Most Mercifully, accept the poverty of my offerings since I bear my sufferings appallingly...........i.e. much cussing!  I mean, if He can accept me..............who on earth can He refuse and therein my primary ambition!!!

My jolly alarm has gone off on my cellphone telling me it is time for medication...............I am so happy to have found my home again.

 

[BarbTherese]

Ok!!!  Now I can Post without quoting a Post.  There you go Ol Nik, FOILED AGAIN BY A CRAZY BIPOLARER LADY !!!  sO much for the most intelligent of angels!  

You have no idea out therre in cyberspace just HOW HAPPY I AM TO BE BACK ON PHAM.  JOY JOY JOY 

I return after sO MANY awols AND DISCOVER MY RANK IS NEWBIE.  ....................dUSt, you have to be joking mate!

The following is what I should post:  " I took the road least travellled and now.............scuse me, where the heck am I?  Still on Phatmass I hope!"  All you are good for Ol Nik is complete unmitigated CONFUSION. 

[BarbTherese]

My son, now living in another state, was here for a few weeks and he has done absolute wonders in my back pergola especially, buying many plants and installing an automatic watering system.  What has caused me wonder is that those plants that can flower i.e. not the ferns, are all in full flower.  It is winter here and a very cold winter with very little sunshine and yet my pergola garden is in full flower.  My back pergola is my private prayer space and I have and do give much thanks.

He also installed a big screen connected to my computer and I can watch Netflix and surf on YouTube on the big screen.  Early this afternoon my IT man w9ll be here to connect everything on my computer to the big screen, making things much easier for me to read with my poor .eyesight.

I have much more to fill in that happened while I could not connect to Pham, but I will leave it for another time and after my big screen is connected.

One great blessing that has come about is that a Jesui Church )it is a Church, not a chapel) close to me has now a 12 noon weelday Mass.  This has filled me with much Joy and Happiness - truly have I experienced ;that "unoless you eat of the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you shall NOT HAVE LIFE IN YOU"..

Bye for just now...............

 

[BarbTherese]

Thank you for the prop, Luigi.  I often read your Posts into Pham as I respect your knowledge and concepts shared.  It is an encouragement too for me to see that other members whose Posts I can understand^^^ though they are obviously educated are indeed reading this Posts into thread. at times  I do happen to know that respected Lurkers have a read on Pham now and then and this should also be an encouragement to @dUSt to continue this site, which is paid for by him.  And that is a really good reason for support for him and therefore Phatmass by donations.

*** The Dominican nuns responsible for our college education would not accept a 'big word' if ordinary everyday words could be used instead.  God bless their white cotton pickin 'socks'.(stockings actually) That particular insistence was to be of incredible support to me in evangelizing attempts in this my later life after college.  We MUST get The Gospel into the vernacular, so ordinary everyday people can understand.  This is i the footsteps of Jesus - He used parables for that purpose.  Also we MUST walk the talk !!!  The very ordinary person 'in the street' is remarkably quick in identifying insincerity and/or falsehood.

  

[BarbTherese]

Thank you for the prop, Luigi.  I often read your Posts into Pham as I respect your knowledge and concepts shared.  It is an encouragement too for me to see that other members whose Posts I can understand^^^ though they are obviously educated are indeed reading this Posts into thread. at times  I do happen to know that respected Lurkers have a read on Pham now and then and this should also be an encouragement to @dUSt to continue this site, which is paid for by him.  And that is a really good reason for support for him and therefore Phatmass by donations.

*** The Dominican nuns responsible for our college education would not accept a 'big word' if ordinary everyday words could be used instead.  God bless their white cotton pickin 'socks'.(stockings actually) That particular insistence was to be of incredible support to me in evangelizing attempts in this my later life after college.  We MUST get The Gospel into the vernacular, so ordinary everyday people can understand.  This is i the footsteps of Jesus - He used parables for that purpose.  Also we MUST walk the talk !!!  The very ordinary person 'in the street' is remarkably quick in identifying insincerity and/or falsehood.

  

 

 

_________________________________________________

 

 Apologies!  My IT guy has been and now everything is on the big screen.  Laudate Dominum Deo Gratius!

However,  I have lost the actual Post I had ready to go but what has happened is that what has posted is actually now the previous Post posted twice.

Cant win em all, but jolly good to ever win at all !   S***t happens, but thankfully not all the time.

 

 

[BarbTherese]

 

[BarbTherese]

 

Not for everyone, but certainly for students of psychology and psychiatry as well as practising specialists.....and the interested ...  (perhaps especially psychiatric patients who have the ability to grasp more complex p&p teaching).  I am going to copy this for my own psychiatrist who has proven for over 20 years she has an open and enquiring mind.  Some of my experiences and only if I choose to share them, she wants to listen to - and I suspect does what I sometimes do and puts it on my (metaphysical) 'mind-shelf' for later to think over and about when I have time and space in my day or night.

My psychiatrist's mother-in-law is a truly fundamental Catholic and every so often my psychiatrist checks out that something mind boggling, to me, her MIL has said, is the actual Catholic teaching.........But...........and no.....in.....at the end of sentences, or at the commencement.  Apply which rule applies !

Punctuation is of vital importance too to the grasping of reader to a body of writing.................yeah yeah, I know.......I know..........

                  

....and read both signs is essential............

[BarbTherese]

 

 

                                   

 

 

     Very easy to grasp meaning:

........................and a very important video..............

 

 

                             

[BarbTherese]

 

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/100

PSALM 100 (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: USCCB)

1.  A psalm of thanksgiving.

Shout joyfully to the LORD, all you lands;

2. serve the LORD with gladness;

come before him with joyful song.

3. *Know that the LORD is God,

he made us, we belong to him,

we are his people, the flock he shepherds.a

4. Enter his gates with thanksgiving,

his courts with praise.

Give thanks to him, bless his name;b

5. good indeed is the LORD,

His mercy endures forever,

his faithfulness lasts through every generation.

 

 

 

[BarbTherese]

If The Lord had called me to religious life, I would have been praying with all my heart for a vocation to the strict Carmelite Monastic Life..........

 

[BarbTherese]

 

 

My Carmelite Prioress OCD pal often calls me "Honey".............
 

 

My Carmelite Prioress - OCD - pal is, I think, a real miracle worker and I am her evidence should anyone doubt it..........she stayed constantly close to me as my closest confidant and pal, over and above totally the call of duty***, all ALL through my bipolar illness from beginning to grave.......whenever.....She is now in her nineties a little over midway..........

('scuse the Benedictine habit in above image......)..............

 

*** Can't fill in in any detail just how much over and above the call of any duty.......the 'squares on board' our incredible ship would have a heart attack probably; however, St Teresa of Avila would have been as proud as punch fer shure.............her original Constitution for her nuns has a few hidden type secrets.....not really hidden at all but a couple of things I read just would not sit right - a bit of prayer and thought.........and aahhhh....all then sat revealingly right....

The Vatican has revised her original constitution and then did revisions on the revisions.  But my Carmelite Prioress OCD pal gave me a copy of her original constitution.  St Teresa had written in one part that her nuns were to have donkeys for travel.  My CPP OCD said : "Dont get a donkey, honey, I suggest you get a bike".  We laughed.  I did buy a bike and did quite a bit of travel until one day flying into the driveway of Bethany, I came a  huge cropper.  That ended my bike days too and two legs became my primary means of transport.

 

                                  

Come a cropper:        https://www.theidioms.com/come-a-cropper/

Edited August 11, 2022 by BarbTherese

[BarbTherese]

 

  

 

Must add that the Constitution and especially the original by St Teresa MUST be read in conjunction with the Ancient Rule of Carmel by St Albert.

 

 

[BarbTherese]

 

  

 

My original priest, theologian and religious, confessor and SD said to me: "You are a new type of religious sister", when I was enquiring where on earth I would fit in in The Church and other questions after deciding I would make private vows and choose deliberately to remain Laity. Back then I had never heard of private vows before and wondered what on earth was I contemplating?  Much later, years later,  I read in the CCC :

Quote

 

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p4.htm

919 Bishops will always strive to discern new gifts of consecrated life granted to the Church by the Holy Spirit; the approval of new forms of consecrated life is reserved to the Apostolic See.459 The eremitic life

 

The above quotation does not refer specifically to the Bethany way of life, rather what did come home was that, of course new forms of religious living, commitment, call it whatever - a rose by any other name and all that jazz (as opposed to religious life as in Canon Law Consecrated Life) is a potential in The Church.  Nothing can be official until approved by Rome, at which time, in the normal course, the way of life is incorporated into consecrated life - no longer Laity.   That is not what Bethany is about.

We certainly cannot put fences/borders/enclosure around The Holy Spirit.  All that is good comes from God, has God as Alpha and Omega.  That applies to the most minute to the greatest of good in our world.

Bethany as a way of life is specifically 'founded' as a way of life that is fully Laity in nature.  Never to change.  It is a bit more complicated than that, much too long to go into here, but built into the Bethany rule of life.  A previous Archbishop (now deceased) was really interested in the concept of Bethany as a way of life in the Laity and so I wrote to him about it, enclosing a diagram of an imagined Bethany monastery.  Long story!  Short possibly of it all is that Bethany is dedicated under the title "of Our Lady of The Way".  A while after I wrote to His Grace, he opened a chapel just of the main CBD and shopping mall/street in Adelaide.  He titled it "Chapel of Our Lady of The Way" and Mass was celebrated every week.  Sadly, it had to close after a short while due to lack of attendance.   Boy! I sort of know the story, Your Grace! 

That same priest theologian and religious, my confessor and SD, asked me to write a rule of life for Bethany, which I duly did.  After reading it, he gave it back to me saying that he though it was ok.  Next visit, I lamented to him that  after that last visit I had left the rule of life on a bus stop and lost it.  He kept laughing and I loved his laughter - it was a rollicking laughter that came from deep inside embracing his whole being.  But all I would hear was a gentle "TeeHee, TeeHee - Lost on a bus stop.  TeeHee, TeeHee - lost on a bus stop" every so often.  I thought to myself that I know of the Hound of Heaven, but this dear Lord is getting ridiculous.

Failure?  Nah, might have lost possibly many a battle but the war continues...........

 

               

 

 

Did Jesus Ever Laugh?

Excerpt only: "The great saints who in their lives reflected the life of the Lord knew the value of laughter and good humor.  Only those inclined to a pessimistic spirituality would condemn laughter.  St. Teresa of Avila, one of the great mystics of our Church, once looked around the chapel and saw all of the serious looking sisters; she blurted-out, “Lord, save me from these sullen-faced saints!”  St. Teresa was also able to laugh at life and herself:  once she commented about convent life, “Experience has taught me what a house full of women is like.”

Other saints too knew the value of laughter and joy:  St. Ignatius of Loyola taught, “Laugh and grow strong.”  St. John Bosco said, “I want no long-faced saints.”  St. Francis de Sales said, “A sad saint is a sorry saint.”  St. Thomas Aquinas taught, “Happiness is the natural life of man.”  What would have inspired these saints to make such statements if not meditating on the life of our Lord?  Not to take away from the great example of St. Anthony Claret, but joyful love of the Lord and well-placed laughter has made more converts than harsh penances and sullen faces.  Archbishop Fulton Sheen summed it up well: “The only time laughter is wicked is when it is turned against Him who gave it.”

 

 

I never saw Fulton Sheen on TV or video as a child, I don't think we had TV back then in Sth Aust anyway,  but I used to love to hear him talk on the radio.  We didn't have a TV at home until years after it was established in Sth Aust.  My heart ALWAYS lifted when he said "Bye now......and God Love you" on the radio.  I love it even more to see him say the words at the end of a video on YouTube.....with raised arms and his gleaming deeply ascetic deep brown eyes a-twinkling.  Now there is a man who can laugh - and I think I see mischief too in those eyes.  A great man and leader in Catholicism - a true Gift of The Lord.

                               "Goodnight.......and God Love us ALL"..........

1.30am almost on Friday 11th August.  It is really great to me to be back on Pham again!  Oh how I missed it not wanting to simply read posts as I would not have the opportunity to butt in a say my tuppence worth.  Deo Gratius Laudate Dominum.

[BarbTherese]

I never actually founded the way of life I titled "Bethany".  It simply unfolded in my journey until my confessor and SD said that I was already living a religious way of life, which was a surprise to me until time and space in my journey gave me time to reflect about what Father had said.  What I had been doing was simply responding to my life circumstances at any given point.  That became a cause that, of course, had an effect, which effect became another cause.  It was an unfolding of cause and effect in my journey.  I never despise the secular - The Holy Spirit blows wherever He Will.  He is not bigoted and certainly is in our life circumstances, very often as His Invitation to a certain action or response to what is cause in our life.  The Holy Spirit can crop up in the most unexpected people and/or places.  Crop up, that is, sometimes to teach, to proclaim or state something.  This is what I hear as it were when Jesus cries: "Listen! You that have ears to hear!"  I recall too something else Jesus said:
 

Quote

 

John 14 From Verse 26 on: "Jesus answered and said to him, "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.  "I have told you this while I am with you.

The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name - he will teach you everything and remind you of all that (I) told you.

Peace 12 I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. You heard me tell you, 'I am going away and I will come back to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I.

And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.

https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PXM.HTM

 

I read when researching Gestalt Therapy "get the basic energy up to the ears".  In other words, learn to listen not only to others but to our own inner world.  This is something that has become an acute spontaneous awareness for me due to physical inability to get out and about as my poor overworked bones start to protest most loudly indeed.  Due indeed to Grace DGLD.  Disability became cause and was a life circumstance.  I responded (effect) very much so by listening and hearing especially to my own inner world - nothing much else I could do and due to circumstances i.e. severe disability.  That listening and hearing, in turn, has become cause that now exists as an invitation to "sit quietly in your cell and your cell will tell you what to do" (read in Thomas Merton that those were the words of a formator senior monk to a monk novice.  The young novice had asked his formator what he had to do).

So I am now sitting quietly alone in Bethany insofar as normal human contact is concerned.  Normal, of course, means what is embraced in the herd, in society, as the rational, the sane.  There is a question looming before me as it were: "What indeed IS sane and sanity, what IS reality or real."  I am at either end of a polarity: On one end is sanity and on the other end is what society calls insanity. Frankly, there is deception in either.   How can opposites become one.  Heck, I dunno, haven't got the foggiest notion! But Catholic Spirituality is full of paradoxes,  "All things are possible to God" and therein I rest secure and Joyful, giving thanks and praise "Oh! What a God have we!"

Writing these Posts I am often working myself out.........or on a way or road to it rather: Jesus said "I am The Way, The Truth and The Life".

 

  

Think about it

"and lead us not into temptation" (Pater Noster)

"Take up your cross and follow Me"

I cannot state what I am trying to say.  Even I do not know just now.

 

 

Oh heck, don't tell me I have travelled all this way to arrive at what I thought in the first place.    .............Ah well, c'est la vie, that's life and life only and Life, I love You.

........and yet......and yet............haven't got a clue just yet.............something doesn't quite fit.  There is a jarring in it.

.............and thus, on I go................4.30am almost and still awake writing and thinking.  How I love the late nights and early mornings:  no doorbell, no phone.  Just wrapped in the Complete Silence that is Presence........a True Gift of advanced age and severe disability is that today, Friday, I have no appointments whatsoever and I can switch off my cell phone sounds and just check it every so often.............Peace and Quiet............then suddenly that jolly doorbell.......drat the jolly thing!.............Murphy's Law applies here nowadays...........