Religious Life

Jesu et Maria sit nobis in via!

This summer, Eau Claire will be losing one of its most valuable and hidden treasures, St. Bede’s monastery. Benedictine sisters have lived and worked there for some time, and have been part of Eau Claire for even longer. They have been teachers primarily, and their lessons flowed from a life of prayer and close communion with each other and God. In their wooded retreat just beyond city limits, they lived quietly, observing the 1500 year old Benedictine way of life through vows of obedience, stability and devotion to the monastic way of life.

Sadly, this monastery, like many across the States, is suffering from a loss of vocations. The Benedictine nuns will be leaving Eau Claire and merging with their motherhouse in St. Joseph, MN. American soil seems particularly unfertile for new vocations. But such is life. As the oldest institution on the planet, the Catholic Church is familiar with the waxing and waning of devout populations. In the long run, Christ’s bride is unafraid. The Lord did, after all, promise that the Church built on Peter would not fail (Mt 16:18). The Church is only saddened that so many will not enjoy answering Christ’s call.

There are many different forms of religious life, but there are two sweeping categories that most fall into: the actives and the contemplatives. Active monks and nuns are those who have an “apostolate” or active ministry in the world. They might run a school like the St. Bede’s sisters, or a hospital, such as Sacred Heart Hospital, which used to be run by Franciscan nuns. Active religious work in the community during the day, but retreat into their “cloister” which is closed off from anyone who is not part of their monastery. There, they pray the Psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours and sleep, knowing they are safe in the palm of the Father.

Contemplative religious dedicate themselves wholly to prayer. They are often strictly cloistered, meaning they rarely, if ever, leave the confines of the monastery; the strictest only accept family for visitors and then only twice a year. Thus physically separated from the world, they become hidden spiritual fathers and mothers of the world, as we discussed in Reginae Eclessiae. They realize the depths of their uselessness and so commend the world to God in constant prayer. Their lives are not separate from the world, but aimed at serving it purely. They give up all worldly possessions and desires, not because these things are evil, but because after leaving them behind, they are free to pray always. Their goal and purpose is to be a well-spring of prayer that the Church might draw from to quench Her thirst.

There are many orders of religious life: Benedictines, Trappists, Cistercians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and many more. My personal favorites are the Carthusians. Over 90% of their waking day is observed in silence. The only sounds are the tolling of bells, the occasional hand saw, and a melodious chant at Mass, Vespers, and Vigils. Each monk lives in a four room cell with a small garden. In one room he works, in another he prays, another he studies, and the last he uses only to pray a quick Hail Mary when returning from the three times a day he leaves his cell.

Their life is spent in silence and solitude; their only company is the Lord. No visitors are allowed into the monastery nor do they ever leave, yet the monks have a peculiar knack for getting martyred. Three were killed after the Anglican Church was founded and the Papists were persecuted. More were killed when Carthusians in Italy opened their doors to refugees fleeing the Nazi armies. Apparently, the Nazi’s did not like the monks protecting Jewish and Italian families. It’s amazing how these monks reacted to their torture and subsequent death. “The Silent Summer of 1944,” which was run in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, retells their tale. “Brother Gabriele, for example, had a burning flame repeatedly held up to his beard. The monk courageously faced the pain wordlessly and calmly looked at his torturer, who finally gave up, confused by such behavior.” Dom Giovanni Abetini was beat with a rod while balancing a Breviary on a board. If the book of prayer fell, he was beat and ridiculed. These stories come from a 2004 trial held in La Spezia, Italy. Vincenzo Rizzo was a young man protected by the monks, who testified to many other horrors the monks and refugees were subjected to.

Contrary to popular marketing practices, the Carthusians are content not to advertise. The American Charterhouse has a website with an extensive description of their type of spirituality, but that’s about it. It consists mostly of extended quotes from non-Carthusian authors, simple photographs of the monastery, and quotes from the Rule written by St. Bruno 900 years ago. They’re up front about telling people interested in joining the Carthusian ranks that most likely they won’t make it. They refuse all honors from the Church. None of their monks go on to become Bishops. Nor do they pursue the canonization process for any monk who shows exceptional virtue. Instead, they bury him in a grave marked with a plain white cross. The monks say “laudabiliter vixit” which is the Latin equivalent of “he did alright.” In the grave, the monk is happy to finally fade away into obscurity, remembered by no one but the Christ. Yet, in their 900 year existence, the brothers are still around. Despite their attempts to be forgotten by the world, their lives are like cities built on hills, beacons of light in the darkness.

Men and women in religious life are essential to the body of Christ. Christianity could not hope to survive without them. They are God’s promise of salvation in their little oasis, safe from most worldly desires. They are models of the interior life that all souls seduced by the Lord are called to. Nothing is more important to them than God, and their poverty, silence, and solitude shows this. By observing their outward lives, we laymen learn how our interior lives should be orientated. It may be necessary for us to live in houses, earn adequate amounts of money, and other activities that aren’t conducive to contemplation of God, but we are to strive to be detached from all created things. Never should we put our faith in our possessions or even other people; they’re going to fail us eventually. We can love these things, accepting them as good, but that is very different than trusting in them. Instead, we ought to follow the example of the monks, abandoning our trust in things and placing it all in God.

Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat!

Eucharistic Mercy

This is a selection from St. Faustina's Diary:


This morning after completing my spiritual exercises, I began at once to crochet. I sensed a stillness in my heart; I sensed that Jesus was resting in it. That deep and sweet consciousness of God's presence prompted me to say to the Lord,

"O Most Holy Trinity dwelling in my heart, I beg you: grant the grace of conversion to as many souls as the stitches that I make today with this crochet hook."

Then I heard these words in my soul: My daughter, too great are your demands.

"Jesus, You know that for You it is easier to grant much rather than a little."

That is so, it is less difficult for Me to grant a soul much rather than a little, but every conversion of a sinful soul demands sacrifice.

"Well, Jesus, I offer You this whole-hearted work of mind; this offering does not seem to me to be too small for such a large number of souls; You know, Jesus, that for thirty years You were saving souls by just this kind of work. And since holy obedience forbids me to perform great penances and mortifications, therefore I ask You, Lord: accept these mere nothings stamped with the seal of obedience as great things."

Then I heard a voice in my soul: My dear daughter, I comply with your request.


How little Christ can deny us, Him who took flesh for us, who suffered the humilation of His Passion, Death and Descent into Hell for us! It would be foolish to think that we are not called to the holiness of the saints when we consider that He is most willing to grant us our every wish: He died for that privilage!

Christ told one saint (I want to say St. Rita, though I'm not sure) that He would have instituted the Eucharist for her alone. Think! Christ would have submited to His Life and Death, the most miserable a man could have experienced, all so that one simple woman could be one with Him for but a moment!

How could we possibly submit ourselves for Communion in a thoughless manner or not offer a most unworthy thanksgiving afterwards when we realize the excessive condescencion of God's Love! What could be more excessive than giving your whole self to a man who did nothing to deserve it. Luke warm companionship would have itself been excessive, and yet Christ gives us perfect love!

The saints considered their whole lives both a preperation for recieving the Eucharist and a perpetual thanksgiving. How pitiful are our inadaquate practices.

The Eucharist from Scripture

“And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne;” (Rev 8:3). When the Catholic Church pulls out all of her traditions, this passage comes to life in the liturgy. The priest takes a thurible filled with incense. Walking around the altar, he incenses it and man can see his prayers ascending to God. However, what I find most amazing, is that there is an altar in Heaven.

Why would there be an altar? This is Heaven we’re talking about! There doesn’t need to be any more sacrifice for sins. Why would we need to sacrifice? Won’t everything be perfect? Yes, it will, and perfect love demands sacrifice. Jesus revealed this when He told his disciples, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her living put in all that she had” (Lk 22: 4). This was true love for God. In Heaven, we see the 24 elders falling down before the Lord while “they cast their crowns before the throne” (Rev 4:10). These were the crowns that God gave to them, but they recognized that He gives us gifts so that we can glorify Him.

Yet, any sacrifice offered by us, including those Heavenly crowns, would be, in a sense, insufficient. Certainly not worthy using Heaven’s golden altar! Our lives are worthless. There is only one Lamb pure and holy enough to be an eternal sacrifice: Jesus. As St. John continues his revelation the Lamb appears “as though it had been slain” (Rev 5:6). Whoa! Jesus is appearing… dead in Heaven? Well not quite, the Lamb is very much alive. St. John is expressing the nature of the life of Christ. He perpetually offers His entire self for the glory of Father and those He loves. We couldn’t expect anything less from the perfect King. He is the good Shepherd who always lays down His life for His flock, eternally pouring His life, His blood, into our souls. Think, if He loves us shameful humans, He couldn’t possibly, even for a moment, withhold the tiniest sliver of love from His Father. Jesus offers His perfect life always to the One who begot Him, Him whom He loves so sweetly. The altar in Heaven is for Christ.

It is the glorious mystery of Christianity that we should follow Christ wherever He might go. Therefore, we offer ourselves “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rm 12: 1). God calls us to offer up our lives to praise Him, our perfect Good. Yet, should our worship stop there; I couldn’t help but fall on my knees and weep. Even if I should live a perfect life, I would have nothing worthy to offer God (cf. Rm 11: 35). So holy is our Father that nothing but the sacrifice of an infinite life equal to His own could satisfy Him. Blessed be the Lord that He has made this possible! Or are you unaware that by being sons of God, we share the inheritance and priesthood of Christ (cf. Rev 1:6)?

The core of the Old Testament and priestly life is sacrifice. At the institution of the Passover, Moses tells the Hebrews to buy a male, unblemished lamb. He instructs them to follow the two components of a sacrifice by first, slaughtering the lamb, and second, eating the lamb. Then, Moses has his people smear blood over the doorway to mark them as safe from the Lord’s wrath (Ex 12: 1-13). In Leviticus, a similar sacrifice is institutionalized and codified into law for the celebration of the harvest. Interestingly, there’s an addition. It is written, “you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the LORD. And the cereal offering with it shall be two tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, to be offered by fire to the LORD, a pleasing odor; and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, a fourth of a hin” (23: 12-13). Here, the sacrifice of lamb and the offering of bread and wine are placed together, side by side.

Another Old Testament practice was the “bread of the Presence” which was placed on a golden table (1 Kings). This was housed in the temple of the Lord, signifying God’s presence. This bread was always present physically as an offering to God. The Law declared the bread holy, not merely normal. Jesus discusses this in Mt 12: 4. “Have you not read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?”

I ask you brothers and sisters, if God loved Israel so as to give them signs of His presence and means to offer sacrifices to Him and somehow, we as priests will participate in the sacrifice of Christ in Heaven, what are we sacrificing now?

The eve of the Passover. The one True, perfectly unblemished, paschal Lamb lifts up a loaf of bread saying, “this is my body which will be given up for you.” Jesus completes the link between the bread and wine and the sacrificial lamb. In less than 24 hours, the Perfect Lamb would hang limp on the Cross, sacrificed. Jesus reveals at the Last Supper that His death on the Cross is the offering of bread and wine, not separate from the crucified Lamb. The bread and wine are fulfilled in Christ. Now if the sacrifice of Jesus was real. If He actually died, and it wasn’t just a symbolic death, we need to finish the sacrifice and actually eat the Lamb (cf. Ex: 12:8). Oh that is cannibalism! How can Jesus give us His flesh to eat? “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and you drink his blood, you do not have life within you… for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks by blood remains in me and I in him” (Jn 6: 52-56).

The Apostle Paul says this explicitly, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10 16-17.) If we “participate” in something, we are part of that reality. Participation definitely does not mean symbolic, but to share a nature. The species of Bread share the reality of being Christ’s body and the wine, His blood. Paul continues that through this marvelous reality that something miraculous occurs: we who are many become one body. How can a merely symbolic presence do this? “I speak as to sensible men; judge for yourselves what I say” (1 Cor 10:15).

I am astonished that people believe Christ came to earth and gave us more symbols and powerless rituals to observe. He came to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth. Christ is present; Christ is King now. He was not here to mess around with human symbols and holy bread, but to give to us the reality of Heaven. Of course, we’re not ready to see this face to face, so like Moses who came down from the mount, His face shining, Jesus also veils Heaven for us. He gives us our Eternal Happiness in a reality we can cope with (Cf. Ex 34:29-33).

As “a high priest after the order of Malchizedek” (Heb 5:10), Christ too offers bread and wine (cf. Gen 14:18), but because Christ is infinitely greater than this mere mortal, His offerings and sacrifices cannot be merely symbolic lest we dishonor Him by saying that His gifts to us are equivalent to those of Moses. Nay, while the holy bread on the golden altar signified the presence of the Lord in the temple, the Eucharistic Bread is greater. It is the presence of the Christ’s eternal sacrifice on the altar of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven is here (Alleluia, Alleluia!); Christ has ascended His throne and rules the world. He is Emanuel, God with us. Heaven is in our midst like a fig tree about to blossom. Its beauty is here, its fullness concealed beneath the sepals, safeguarded from the elements of the world. Because Heaven is here and truly now, we offer the same sacrifice of Heaven: the Eucharist, Jesus the Christ.

Sacred Sex

Jesu et Maria sit nobis in via!

If the simple question of "What do you enjoy?" were to be asked around campus we can imagine some of the common responses. Drinking, hanging out with friends, watching movies, playing video games, ect. But if we were more honest about what we truly enjoy the common responses would probably look a little different. Perhaps something like this? Sex, porn, masturbation and (still) drinking. We desire, seek out and consume all of these because they seem to bring us great pleasure.
Sexual desire is universal in all of us at some point in our lives. Some of us control it, and some of us are controlled by it.

There exists a common misconception about what the Church teaches on the matters of sex. However, the truth is really quite simple and agreeable. Anyone who claims to be a Christian and believes that sex is bad, wrong, dirty, etc. could not be farther from what the Church holds to be true. Sex is sacred. We hold that sex was designed to be an expression of love.

So then why is it that the Church stands so much against any form of sexual activity outside of the covenant relationship of marriage? Because it is not sex, it is lust. It should be well noted that even in marriage a couple is capable of indulging in lust rather than in a true act of love. Yes, in biological terms sex is simply a physical act. However, sex is more than just the physical, it is a much deeper uniting of the body, mind and soul. Beyond this, it is a pure expression of love. And what is it that we mean by love? To will the good of the other. And does anyone among us take issue with such a charitable and honest definition?

This last paragraph brings many questions even to Christian minds, but a fundamental question lies beneath these. Why must sex outside of marriage always (and even sometimes inside of if) be an act of lust rather than love?

Perhaps it would be best to make a few points clear before addressing this question. First of all, we completely agree that sexual impurity brings great pleasure to the human body. We also hold as true that the sexual activity is often mutual and can even bring a form of happiness to many people.

Then why does the Church stand so defiantly against it! Does God not want us to be happy? Yes, He does, but God invites everyone to a greater, more fulfilling happiness.

Not one of us is commanded to abstain from all hints of sexual immorality for the sole sake of saving ourselves from something, in this case sin. Rather, we are saving ourselves for something. Even before meeting our spouse we have the opportunity to be madly in love with them. And by what means? The same means those of us who are currently married show their spouse how much they love them, by faithfulness. Would any of us experience joy as the result of the infidelity of our spouse? Of course not, so we see that trust and love flourish when chastity is practiced. How great a joy it would be if all who are called to be married would preserve their body, mind and soul for the sake of their spouse to be. How much greater would the trust and love be between the two, as they know they have both been loved by the other before ever meeting!

But is this too Utopian? Could this ever really happen? It matters not what the rest of the world does in this regard; rather, if we see that chastity is right, good, and true, are we not called to follow and lead others in it's ways?

In the light of the merits of chastity, we can see the short comings of lust more clearly. Even a hint of lust results in an imperfect love. Lust does not put what is truly good, chastity, for the other above one’s personal pleasure. If it is true and good to be faithful to one’s spouse even before meeting them, then all other sexual activity is unfaithfulness.

So to you who do not share our belief in the merits of chastity, we wish to pose some questions. And while these following questions and the words they contain will have different definitions to all readers, we ask that you please do not consider the hypocrites among us, rather the idea of chastity itself. So then, does this way of life cause an increase in love or an increase in hate? Is it a reasonable (not provable) way to go about one's life? Is it a life you would like to see in your future spouse or children, yet choose to not live it out yourself?

And to you who profess a life of chastity, may this article urge you to live out life accordingly.

By this article we do not mean to propose a complete defense of all Church doctrine in regards to sex and alike; rather we simply hope to clear up a common misconception of our day. So let it be known that we do not practice such virtues as chastity because of the so-called 'evils of sex;' rather we practice such virtues so that we may love our God and our spouse more fully.

Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat!