Now normally, no matter what, that song stops me short of joyful tears with its beauty, both in execution and meaning.  But the singer and orchestration in this case was showy and hearing the superfluous flutterings and bells and such put me off.  I was about to change the station when my father who is in the middle to advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, joined in the singing, hitting every note and every word perfectly and I had to stop and listen.  Dad’s ability to hold a conversation comes and goes and visiting with him requires that one be hyper vigilant about when he is fully present.  In the song, he was fully aware and fully singing.  How I longed for the song to play on another three verses if only to hear him sing more.  I had been mildly irritated and simply focusing on “getting to mass,” getting the job done.  My father’s voice snapped me awake.

Advent is about being blessedly awake, blessedly present.  This wakefulness involves blessedly acutely preparing for the birth of Christ.  The trimmings of Christmas, the cards, the presents, the expenses, the menus, the schedules, the preparations can rob us in that moment of being able to see or in my case, hear the beauty that remains undimmed by all the tinsel.  That version of “O Holy Night” now will always permanently echo his singing in my heart; it will snap me awake.

But there are so many things that can lull one to sleep spiritually in this season that we need the candles of the Advent wreath, we need the songs about Mary and the stars on the tree. We need all the symbols this season holds to keep redirecting our very distracted souls towards Christ.  How in this 24-7 nonstop chattery twittery blackberry cyberspace world of permanent distraction, do we quiet ourselves enough to look up and see the star and feel that awe of God or fall on bended knee before the infant in the stable?

Invite Mary the Mother of God into our homes as a permanent guest, as if she were to be sitting at our table as we eat breakfast or by our sides as we trim the tree or clean the kitchen.  She who was pregnant with Christ, remains permeated by Him and knows how we can come to know her son better.  She was and is the wakeful virgin, the model of blessed waiting in all things. Letting her quiet instruction guide how we respond to the minutia and the bigger things in life, we will find a lot of unnecessary things fall away.

Asking Mary to be present is asking to have her eyes, to see the sacred in the everyday in everyone. Letting her be in your heart involves practicing due charity, joyful patience and benevolent graciousness even when sales clerks, the people in the line in front of you, the kids in the car or the news of the day seemingly justifies a rant, snarl, rage or a snarky ungenerous or unkind thought, let alone comment.

Advent is about making room in the Inn, allowing the Holy Family to stay in your life and heart.  So let us begin today to practice wakefulness by letting Mary sit at the hearth of our homes.  She will direct us via her words, “Do whatever He tells you.” And her actions, “Let it be done to me according to His will.”    Have a blessed Advent.



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

10) Go to Sunday weekly mass. On time. Stay until the last song is over. It’s a start, and it’s a sublimation of sorts albeit a small one. A relationship with Christ is best understood, best grown through Christ’s own words and Christ himself. Turn off the pragmatic Martha lists in your head, because we all have ten things we could be doing and that will have to get done later in the day because of going to mass. Turn off the music critic and sing, ignore the “Who is here and who isn’t curiosity” and the comparative shopper of Churches who thinks about how this priest is better than that one and be still and know He is there. The Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist are the surest path to growing one’s soul. Go. Listen. Allow ears to be opened and the heart to be fed.

9) Enlist the help of a specialist. Gyms have trainers, banks have financial advisors, there are closet organizers, whole industries devoted to helping anyone get themselves from point a to point b with respect to self or home improvement and they all cost money. The Church is replete with devotions and saints with wisdom on how to become Translucent for Christ; they all have sure counsel and they are all free. Pick a Saint and learn about his or her life, prayers, the stories, the way they manifested Christ’s love here on earth or pick up a daily devotional from our current very gently poetic but strongly faithful Pope Benedict the XVI.

Garner support from family. Tell them you are working on improving your relationship with God, that you need 15 minutes to pray, or invite them to be a part of your process by having a family rosary or daily recitation of the readings for the day. It might be a way of starting the evening meal or turning prime fight time in the car after school into something more productive.

(One resource I highly recommend is the Magnificat. The Magnificat is a monthly periodical, readily portable for busy families; for any person who doesn’t have a lot of down time but does want to strengthen and grow his or her faith life. It contains the readings for each day, reflections and brief stories about the saints being acknowledged for any given day. I keep it in my car in my bag o’stuff for when I’m sitting in a parking lot waiting for someone).

7) Seek forgiveness. Frequent reverent reflective participation in the Sacrament of Reconciliation is critical for the ongoing strengthening and nourishing of one’s soul. Sin damages our relationship with God and others. Absolution from that sin helps us to avoid it in the future and to retool our relationships to be as God would have them, not as we would orchestrate.

6) Serve. Look around your parish. There is something that needs doing. Someone that needs help. Ask the Holy Spirit to place you, let yourself say yes to something you see or are asked to do and get involved.

5) Pray daily a formal prayer. I find having a set devotional helps me to remember to do it, just as having a set time to exercise helps one to make sure that chore gets done. Often in the course of the route prayer, I find I have a lot of people to pray for, and that in turn reminds me to be mindful of the blessings of others in my life, and to consider the trials and tribulations that many I love face. Commuting is often a good time to use in this manner, it is certainly less stress inducing than listening to the news and more uplifting. But the prayer doesn’t have to be long, just a prayer for the day, for those you love and for the grace to live today for God. It does however, have to be daily.

4) Try a little fast. Give up something once a week. Maybe it’s a food, maybe it’s the computer, maybe it’s the television. But abstain for a day, a set day each week. Allow yourself to practice the discipline of denial as a form of obedient free will for God. It’s amazing how important that thing becomes on that one day you give it up. I know I still struggle with the Sunday fast from the computer.

3) Study up on your Catechism. Everyone thinks they know what the Church says, but few avail themselves of the wealth of wisdom, thinking, writing and reflections preserved in 2000 years of seeking to follow Christ. Read a bit every day and see where you are pulled and pushed beyond your perceived understanding of this Catholic Faith.

2) Create a bit of deliberate beauty. Deliberate acts of kindness, charity, mercy and beauty are examples of our attempt to imitate God’s love. God created this beautiful Earth with its seasons and creatures and flora and fauna, with its abundance and startling beauty at all times of day and in all types of weather. Giving flowers, making a cake, surprise visits to family and friends, cards and phone calls, all of these types of giving are little things with great love, and they grow love, which is to say, they reveal God.

1) Visit the Blessed Sacrament and ask for that mustard seed sized faith. Make a conscious effort to go to a parish where this devotion is possible and make it part of your week. Everything will follow and you will be fed and strengthened by the visit in ways you cannot as of yet imagine.

The most important part of all of this process is the willing heart of the prodigal soul to turn back towards Our Father’s house. The process of growing one’s relationship with God starts the instant we feel that tug to move forward. And we know, there will be a great feast set in anticipation before we get even halfway close. Let’s start our great walk to Home.

Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

What I felt in that moment flooded my heart and brain. I knew whether I had one or ten, I remained inadequate. I cannot fill anyone completely, for I am a flawed and incomplete child myself and my attempts at service are those of an ungrateful servant at best.

In that moment, I saw myself plunging into an ocean, not to drown but to be immersed, surrounded, enveloped lovingly by the waters around me. God was that ocean. Being pulled deeper by grace even as I sought to drown in the small shallowness of sin was the daily struggle I faced; especially when the cares of the day, the needs of all nine, of the home, of the world required that I act and act and act again. I kept wanting thanks when what I was doing was no more than what was needed and required.

“Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field,’Come here immediately and take your place at table’? Would he not rather say to him,’Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished’? Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded? So should it be with you.” I both love and hate it when the Gospel so closely mirrors my reality that I cannot escape it without denial.

But how? What my friend had said had the ring of reality to it; after all it was true, I couldn’t do everything. I admittedly tried rattling off the various clever systems or methods we’d devised over the year for laundry, for dishes, for chores, for homework, for schedules, for menus. They somehow felt like pale weak answers to a strong hard question. These were methods of providing for needs, but they didn’t address the deeper resonating longings that some of my children might be hungry for and I not know because I was so busy trying just to triage through our basic obligations.

And I remembered another friend who told me, “Whenever you doubt yourself, remember that God really loves your heart infinitely and let that be your guide.” I tried to explain that it isn’t impossible, just some days hard and some days, unsuccessful. But each day, we try again.

The conversation moved on to other more mundane things and eventually ended, but the image of the ocean, and of my resistance to the word “impossible” and yet it’s truthfulness remained. Hanging up the phone, I looked about at the house, 9 loads of laundry needed doing and the dishes from that afternoon still had to be unloaded so the next run could start and there was paper work to fill out and little available for dinner. “Impossible” whispered at me, “just agree it’s impossible.” There was homework to sign and help a child correct, a squabble over the tv remote in the other room, two boys I’d stopped from making water balloons who were decidedly up to it again, and hour seven of what seemed like an endless number to work on the basement. “Impossible.” The word lingered like smoke in the air, daring me to agree to breathe in it’s toxic embrace, to be smothered rather than surrounded. To be choked rather than refreshed and enveloped; yet it seemed so reasonable to think it.

And I prayed, for I feared I’d inhale. “Show me how.”

The daughter who struggled so mightily with school that my tale of her troubles had in part prompted my friend’s comments, came into the kitchen. She noticed me wrestling with the dishwasher and began unloading without a request. In a few minutes, she remarked, “This drawer needs organizing.” and began work in earnest. Twenty minutes later, three drawers were cleared out, cleaned and orderly and she beamed, “I’m becoming good at organizing.” She had surprised herself and me with this sudden spurt of clarity. She went to tackle more and promised to help me get the kitchen in order. When I asked “Why?” She smiled and said, “Because you’re a good mom.” and I felt humbled by such praise.

My three year old came into the room. “What’s for dinner tonight Mom?” she asked. I remembered we had some chicken. I’d use the one box of pasta as a starch and could throw together a salad and microwave frozen broccoli. I rattled off the menu. She nodded and looked at the table. “We’ll need a few more chairs.” I looked at the table. We had five, she was right we’d need four more for all who were home and Paul would be in his high chair. I started cooking. She left the room. She came back pushing a chair. Putting it in place, she left again. I watched fascinated. She dragged in a second seat. I hadn’t asked this, this was her gift and I felt a hint of the ocean around me as she brought in the third folding chair and commandeered her brother to get the final one. She then surveyed her work with satisfaction. I was floored when she began setting the table with paper plates, forks and napkins. No one had taught her this; she had simply picked it up from being.

After dinner, it happened again when my oldest daughter unbeckoned began doing the dishes. I had not asked and it is not her custom. It was a gift. As she simply went about the task of cleaning up from the meal while I got the littles dressed for bed, I felt the waves lovingly lapping everywhere.

And so it is, that to feed these nine and the one not yet born, to keep them on task and well, happy in heart, mind and body is nothing more than part of that list of things which the Master has commanded be done. And what dawns in my brain is I do not do this alone or in isolation; for they are all with me and we are doing this, not I, not just my husband and me, not just any of us, but all of us in union with God. God has given this gift of this family to all of us, so God knows there is a way for each of them including me to be nourished if only I would cease trying to carve out my nitch and allow myself to instead be fitted in His heart.



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

In 1984, after graduating from high school, I stood at the railing of our family’s beach house and in a half whine, half prayer aloud I wondered to God if I would ever meet someone who would love me just for me.  I saw my future husband the first day I was dropped off at college, and began dating him on the third day.

A few years later, a college friend was battling cancer. She asked us to pray for a miracle.  Amongst those witnessing her suffering from afar, a debate emerged with the discussion being, “Should we be encouraging false hope by asking for a miracle?”  “Should we be limiting our prayer?”  The discussion got a bit tense, if only because none of us wanted our friend to die.  Her family told us that a miracle had happened, in that she was able to say goodbye to all of her family, to those she loved, rather than drift out without that one last beautiful smile.

But the argument stuck in my head, “If you can’t be unreasonable with God, who can you be unreasonable with?  Who to ask for a miracle but God?” And recalling the potency of God’s responses to my high school summer prayer, to snow and others, it was hard not to feel awe even though the outside world would say, there was no miracle or the answer was “No.” because she died. The logical and sometimes cynical part of me tried to argue the point but I couldn’t shake the deep knowledge in my heart that the answer to all our prayers is always, “Yes beloved.” and that this was a “Yes beloved” even if it took time for us to discern how.

More recently, in 2001, I remember taking assessment of my adult world and praying, asking God to help me find friends; not casual people I liked saying “Hi” to in passing, but real solid friends.  That year, I met one of my first long term friends in Maryland.  We talk. We spend time laughing as we trip over each other discussing common loves like books, food, education, Catholicism, our kids and our kid’s school and dissecting and debating Washington politics and seeking hard truth.   She was and is part of the beginning of an answer to a prayer and a reminder to me, to be unafraid to speak my heart’s desire; to do otherwise, is to lie to myself and God and others.  Four other women who are dear in my life have been what I would call immediate responses to prayers to God for a broader community, for friends. All of them have been like mana in the desert.

Miracles happen daily, small discreet ones that we blip over in the midst of trying to get through all that needs to be done in a day and dramatic gorgeous ones that ought to be proclaimed for the outrageous acts of love and courtship of our souls that they are.  These gifts from God, be they a much needed job, a healing of a relationship, a solving of a problem, or an unexpected pleasure are just that, gifts given freely by God.  They are given to us not as proof, not as a show, not as a means to win the lottery of life, but because we are fallen and we are broken.  Some days, we need that lavish outrageous extravagant generosity of God to shine through and pour over us and coat the world like snow or a lifetime beloved spouse or a friend.   When sin and despair and suffering threaten to rob our daily life of joy, love, beauty and truth, miracles are God’s love rendered in an unmistakable worldly visible manner.  And I think of my friend’s goodbye smile, of the endless patience of my husband, and of all the steely friends I treasure.

Jesus tells us to ask and we shall receive; our children ask us for countless things on any given day because they remain secure in the knowledge we love them. They ask for drinks, for food, to go out to a park, to go to a movie, they ask, ask, ask, ask and they are not ashamed of asking.  And all our answers, yes, no or maybe, if we are parenting correctly, if we are not asleep at the switch, are a “yes beloved.” even if we deny them the actual requests.  They do not cease asking, being children, and perhaps that is God’s means to remind us that neither should we.

Most of us fear asking God because of what God’s response might mean for us or require from us; or wait to ask until we think the time is right, or we’ve built up sufficient lag time from our last petition of God, as if we can somehow balance the scales of when we ask and keep God from crashing into our lives too intimately.  Sometimes we play mental games with ourselves about God, opting not to ask for ourselves because we know there is so much more than what we have here that matters; this is vanity.  We don’t want to ask because we sin and we are sinners and we fear being otherwise.  Inviting God into your life so intimately is hard.  It cannot not mean something profound, to be willing to ask.  Asking will by it’s very nature, asking must invite healing and forgiveness and the opportunity to be closer in communion with God.  Jesus heals all ten lepers, not just the one who returns to give thanks.  He says “Yes beloved.” to all ten.  All ten souls have the chance to return and none lose the  healing that took place for not returning to say thank you, thank God.

The truth is, we need to ask more than we need not to; a humble innocent heart asks, a penitent heart asks, a loving heart asks, a fearful heart asks, a hopeful heart asks.  God considers who we are here no matter where here is, infinitely valuable, infinitely of importance, and He answers every prayer from every heart; “Yes beloved.”



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

The soul trapped by the worldly condition of Alzheimer’s is still the soul we’ve always loved and are still called to love.   We’re just being called to love more perfectly.  Alzheimer’s takes away that part of the person that can in this world and in this time, reciprocate.  Because of our failed and fallen condition, what we see sometimes takes over as the whom we serve, eventually becomes less and less capable of reminding us of why we love.  Undergoing the sorrowful mysteries of life is supposed to grow our understanding of what it means to love as God loves, as Mary loved.  But the long hours and minutes of strain and stress of the day often cloud our ability to serve with pure obedience and perfect humility.  In those moments, we serve of memory and obligation and not always with a full heart. These are times when we falter, when we only can see the veil.

What all people who have this diagnosis become to the rest of us is the constant reminder to be present.  At some point, they may not know or be able to show that they know, but we know we are present and that they live.  When we kneel or sit or stand before the Eucharist, we cannot see Jesus, we cannot smell him or touch him or put our fingers into his wounds but we know that host is Christ, not in symbol, in substance.  As Catholics, we believe this in our hearts and bones; that Christ is the Eucharist, the Eucharist is Christ.  We know Christ is fully present every time in every consecrated host, in every drop of sacramental wine.

We are called to love as God loves; and that means, we don’t get to place a barrier between our hearts, and those whose lives come into contact with ours.  To be Catholic is to have a vocation to love, a covenant with God to imitate His love on Earth, to be Eucharist to others; to bring Christ to others and others to Christ.

Just so, we know that even if the one we love is unresponsive to our calls or our touch, the soul remains within the body, and we must love that person as we would love the Eucharist, knowing that the true person is there even if the veil of Alzheimer’s and our own worldly eyes and heart or hands cannot feel their presence.  We are not called to have ecstatic validating moments to proclaim our faith, we are called to love when those ecstatic validating spiritual moments are absent; it is those moments when loving requires everything, that our faith is not proclaimed but revealed.

The suffering of those we love, calls us to prayer, to fall on our knees and beg for grace as nothing else on this Earth can.  The suffering of those we love reminds us that the road to the cross is one we are always traveling. It does not make the suffering any less painful, to watch a person fade, but knowing that even this can be made to have meaning, to reflect love’s endless capacity to heal does make it easier to keep walking even in the face of death; to get through this moment, and the next or the next or the next, with the knowledge that the grace will come tomorrow to get through tomorrow if we just keep going and keep loving.  When we get to that point, where what we do feels like nothing, but we do it anyway, finally, we will have for that moment, loved as God loves.

In the total that is our lives, we will play every part of the passion at some point, and always, we have a cross waiting that is just our size and designed to bring us and as many people as possible along with us to Heaven’s door.



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

Our neighbor is everyone; we know this even as children, but like children, we find the application of that knowledge hard to manage.   We find it hard to think that God requires we include our enemies both real and imagined.  Our neighbor is the lady down the street who listens to news or political stuff we don’t like and the man standing outside the grocery store who seems fully able to work and instead asks everyone who passes for fifty cents and the people who make the news for their poor judgment, evil acts or self indulgence.   Our neighbor is the elderly woman who sings badly and out of her range at church and the teens who play loud music late in the night. Our neighbor includes the kid who picks on our kid, the teacher we didn’t like in high school, every person who ever drove us nuts, made us work, made us do their work or made us miserable.   Our neighbor includes the people struck by tragedy, both the just and the unjust; the sick and the well, the kind and the unkind.  And God calls us all to love them all as ourselves.

Recently, I was online in a forum where there was a discussion about individuals who use radical Islam as a means to justify evil; suicide bombers.   How do we love people who wish us actual harm?  We must pray for them.   It is the first best thing we can do.   It is a terribly difficult thing to do when we can see on the television and read online how visceral in some cases, the violence done in the name of a religion out of misplaced zealotry can be. Surely God, you can’t mean them.  Yes, God does.  We must pray.  It is not nothing to pray for one’s enemies, and it has an immeasurable effect; even though we may never know what that effect was.

To be Catholic, is to know two things for certain: 1) God does mean them, every single one of them, and 2) every one of us seeks to justify ourselves in our own seeking to limit the people to whom we would be willing to extend our love, we all seek to say, “But not these.” at some point.   By praying for those who cut us off in traffic, who say things we find offensive, for those with whom we disagree and even for those we fear, we are asking for God to love those people as we find we ourselves cannot.  We are hoping that we will be surprised by no one we meet in Heaven, because we are trusting that God’s justice will be served, and knowing that God’s mercy will be sufficient for everyone who asks.  To be Catholic is to ask for God’s grace even for those who hate us.  “Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do.” What could be clearer?  So today, when you hear news that makes you angry or see a person acting in a way that makes your heart frown, be a good Samaritan and pray for that person or those people and ask for them to be freed from all anxiety and have the peace that Christ offers.   For it is only through prayer that peace will settle in all our hearts; it is only by loving as God does, unreasonably to the undeserving –infinitely for all of us fallen creatures, that we will be acting as the good Samaritan to the rest of the world.

Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

Then, I’ll really talk about it.  Not because I’m an expert on it, quite the contrary, but because I understand why people are afraid of it.  Understanding the method or the charts or the temperatures or the rhythms, that’s all the how of practicing NFP, but what makes people chose to practice it or try, is not the how, but the why.  Why chose this imprecise method when there are countless methods out there via modern science that take all of the thinking, the submission, the obedience and the trust out of the situation?   Precisely because this process requires all the thinking and submission and obedience and trust that the other methods prevent or minimize.

Children are the easiest way by which God expands our hearts and He seeks to make all of our hearts like His.   The instant there is an other, our body submits, taking calcium from our teeth, affecting all other systems to sustain this new person.   But the heart and the mind of the mother, I know, sometimes take longer to acquiesce, to sublimate.  We are made for this, we are made for loving others, but our fallen nature makes all of this always harder to bear.  Because I’ve never sought children, every time I discover that we are expecting, I go through the same great mental wrestling, how will we manage X number?  I can’t manage X-1?  And I stress about all the countless things I can anticipate and not fathom and all the things I can fathom and not fully anticipate.   At mass, in prayer, sometimes in the past at adoration, I’ve complained to God about how He keeps demanding I keep surrendering, I cry about how I’ve been good and it is never enough.  Haven’t I taken one for the team?  Haven’t I shown my stripes?  When do I get a break?  How come everyone else gets a break?  How come when I have all these dreams and desires and hopes, I’m still here changing diapers for the 17th year with at least three more to go?  How can you ask more of me?  Why are you asking more of me?

It is more like a howl, not of anguish or despair but the crusty fight of pride. Whatever scabs have taken root over time as I been about the business of mothering has led to just enough thinking, this isn’t so hard and I’m pretty good at this and maybe I could …instead, to put up a fight.   Those sins resist being pried open and pulled away.    The great line of “I’”s line up, they’ve all shown up each time, waving the Ph.D. I don’t have or the book I haven’t written in front of me, the school I don’t run and the classes I don’t teach, all the glory that isn’t and might not ever be, acting like phantoms taunting me with their non existence.  If only….and I sit there frustrated because you would think I’d have let this go by now, that maybe I’d have licked it but I haven’t.  Sometimes, I withdraw from the world, allowing myself to do less, nursing my emotional wounds rather than pouring myself out as we are all called to do.  Eventually, there comes the moment where the self I am becoming is less and less pleasant and prayer is harder and the love of my family and grace of God finally forces me to admit what is the crux of why I struggle:  I’m afraid.

I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid.

And I think of Peter sinking, God asked him to walk out on the water, and as long as he trusted Jesus, he could and thus I know the only reason I am sinking.  We are supposed to trust in God, to be willing to freefall in our faith with Him on a moment to moment daily basis.  Like the people who shun NFP, like Peter, we all want our safety ropes, our bungee cords so that we won’t really have to trust.

How can God ask us to love infinitely? How can He ask this again? How can I live a life with this unknown always ever present?  What God gently reminds me of is 1) the unknown is ever present because there is just so much I cannot know and 2) with the long hard process of the nine months of waiting, is “Yes, I want you to love infinitely, but only one second, one moment, one minute, one day at a time so stop fretting already and 3) Trust me, I love you infinitely.   Now, walk out of the boat.”

So I want to talk about NFP in part to explain that all the charts and temperatures and measuring and notations in the world will tell you only so much about Natural Family Planning. These things are all important and they’re all the method.  But what you are choosing, what you are asking for by being obedient and by allowing your marriage to be open to God’s power and presence, is to live a pre-fall existence in that part of your marriage.  The funny thing is though; God always expands outward and never stays just where we put Him.  If we allow God into our marriage via our willingness to be open to life, God will work to teach us how to love as God intended, infinitely and openly and unafraid.

My final pitch will be to remind everyone that because God loves all of us despite our fallen state, He does begin this process in the comfort zone of our marriage; just as Christ began molding Peter on the boat by helping him to catch fish.

Only eventually, after teaching and revealing ever more to Simon, does Jesus invite him to walk on the water.  Being open to children is being willing to accept the initial invitation to cast out your nets.  Being blessed with a child is the invitation to walk out on the sea.  And even then, we can be not afraid, He will hold onto us even if we stumble in our faith.

Now, consider NFP as your invitation to contemplate walking out of the boat.



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

That afternoon, my husband and I had held a budget conference and we were feeling the teeth of our economics keenly as we had discussed just how tight things had become. I’d tried to shunt them aside at mass but knew I was full of worry despite having just asked to be protected from all anxiety and asked for peace and forgiveness in preparation to receive. Yet once I saw it, I could not stop looking at that woman’s smile. I knew she had other children as well, and all I could think was I should be smiling with the type of confidence and inner joy that this woman held so publicly. Here I was worrying about something as stupid as money when we were in line to receive Christ himself. She had gone to the front smiling and joyful. I wanted to be like her.

Returning to our pew, my youngest daughter announced she needed a change and I was forced to shuttle her back to the bathroom. In leaving the back of the church, I once again came into view of that luminous woman and there was the smile again, being beamed at each of her four other children. I could not help but marvel as I then hustled downstairs to give a toddler a quick cleaning up. In that moment, I could see that this was how God hoped each of us would be for each other, luminous and filled with the joy of our vocation, transparent and filling at the same time to anyone who would see.

I don’t know her name because I wasn’t able to snag a moment to introduce myself after the mass ended, but I do know, her face is burned in my memory as an example of how all of us are called to joyfully take up our cross and follow Him, and of how we are to receive the Eucharist. The worries would still be there, her son was no less handicapped, but his smile and hers transformed the reality of their crosses. Our money issues did not cease to exist, but I knew He would be with us and free us from all anxiety, and if we followed Him, he will help us such that we would consider whatever our cross, the burden to be light.



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

As a result, I’m often cleaning when others are playing and then feel almost unable to play myself even when presented with the opportunity.  Sitting down to watch TV, I can see the laundry needing to be folded, and so both get done at the same time.  It’s my choice to multi-task; but I forget that little fact and as such, start resenting that others aren’t doing as I do.   Then there’s the constant vigilance that prevents me from even wanting to play cards unless the kitchen has been cleaned first; and so I often lose out on the opportunity.  It’s not that I’m uninvited; it’s that I stupidly say “No.”  or at least, put off all the time until later, until the later means never and I stop getting asked.  Listening to my daughter rant about how much she had to do before she could have fun, I realized, she is cut from the same cloth.

My husband wisely sees through this and frequently insists that I play first, and then again, and then once more just to be sure I won’t be throwing myself back into crazy cleaning frenzy lady self.  He’s instituted rules like no To-do lists over 15 and no work after 10 pm.   He also will commandeer the children who willingly agree to clean up after; and he sees to it they comply.  It’s helpful.  My husband explains, “I want our children to remember playing with their mother.”  and he’s right.   But my daughter’s lament shows what they see more often.   So why do I fight having fun so fiercely that I don’t seek it first or even think of it sometimes first?  Why do I keep choosing the worst part? Why have I modeled it so completely that my daughter has internalized it as a norm?  I told her we’d have to work on learning to be okay with not getting to everything.  I could see her face tighten at the prospect.

She argued that she had to get her homework done.  I agreed but suggested she go for a run first; that it would help her organize her thoughts, get calm and distress from the day.  She didn’t want to be alone.  She suggested I come with her.  Now it was my turn to fight the wisdom I was offering.  She gave me the look I’d given as I started to indicate how  that the dishes and laundry needed to get done and I needed to fix dinner but we both realized, we’d become very good at putting people off with our chores;  watering our lives down to duty.   Dinner and homework could wait twenty minutes. We went for the walk.

I jokingly told my priest I suffered from the sins of Martha and he reminded me, that no less than Christ told her, “You are anxious about many things.”   And to chose the better part.  This is what I should be teaching; this is how I should live.  I wish I could say I’ve taken those words to heart, but I still struggle with letting myself play and be present when there is so much to do.  I still find myself distracted from the beauty of the domestic church by the disorder of the domestic life.  But my daughter having seen her own fault reflected in me and vice-versa has taken up the battle cry and now asks me every day, “What did you do for fun Mom?” and if my answer is unsatisfactory, we go for a walk.  It’s a start for both of us.



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

As mothers, it is our want to pad the tables and add plug covers and have band aids at the ready, to soothe all the cuts that come from growing up as best we can; but there are simply times when our love is inadequate to the task. A sharp insult in the hall, gossip in a text message, all the slings and arrows of elementary and secondary school can sting and sting and sting and still, we bundle them off to face that world every day, hoping that this day, the others will see our children with the eyes of love we have been granted.

Mary understands that our love cannot change the reality of our children being on the receiving end of pain, be it childhood insults or handicapping conditions or struggles with learning disabilities or weight or whathaveyou. Mary knows this path well. She stood at the cross. She witnessed the road to Calvary. She knew ahead of time, her heart would be pierced. So do we all if we pause for a moment. These children we love so desperately will struggle; they will make choices which make their struggles harder and ours as well. Her love was perfect and it did not change the reality of others committing evil unto her son, it changed her reality of how she responded to that evil. Sublime grace indeed to be able to endure such a scene, to hold in her heart full awareness of how much her son was Love incarnate; and how the world could not tolerate such intimacy.

Mary understood how the world’s eyes that do not love our children, can gnaw at our hearts, making us want to become flinty towards the others in our world that cause our beloved pain. But we are called to have open Marian hearts, not stony ones. We are called to turn the other cheek, to pray for our enemies and to teach our children the same; to love despite rejection and pain not because of the lack of it. At the end of the game, the mother talked about how her daughter really connected with her 80 year old mother who lived with them and suffered from dementia. She spoke proudly of how lovely the two of them got along and could visit for hours.

It seemed at least to me, that this child’s capacity to relate to her “Grandma” was the counterpoint/blessing of her struggle with her peers. If children had filled the void in her daughter’s heart, she would not seek out her mother’s mother to talk about her day; but the loneliness in both people’s worlds was abated by the presence of each other. God uses all gifts, all our brokenness, all our struggles to bring us to him; to create the opportunity for communion and community. And so, though our hearts may be pierced again and again and again like Mary’s, by our witnessing of our children’s great struggles big and small, the bottom line is we must trust that God will use all of this, even this, to bring all of us closer to Him. It is our job simply to imitate Mary and take all these things into our heart to ponder as we go about the business of mothering.



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

My husband had recently begun going to daily mass during lunch and I had to admit, I was not only envious but felt I was somehow stuck and left behind.  I was overwhelmed by laundry, by the fiscal bleakness of the middle of February, and by the fact I had hit my all time high and weight and we had hit a low in finances owing to Christmas.  The weekend held two basketball games, one Father Daughter Dance on Friday, scheduled mass at 7 on Sunday and I wanted quite frankly to flee. I felt tired tired tired.  The house was a mess.  I dutifully picked my daughter up and then got lunch.  I dutifully drove to pick up the other three at noon and then the two from Mother’s Day out.

The kids played on the computer and Nintendo and I tried to “push the reset button on myself.”  I called my husband and asked that he come home so I could go to adoration that night.  I figured, I’d complain to God.  Hearing the stress in my voice, he said, “I’ll come home so you can get blessed for St. Blaise’s Day.”  Saint Blaise was a special Saint to me because of my long battle with tracheotomies.  I even had named a son after him, so today I had to go; I knew I would feel better if I could get my neck blessed.  Heartened, I went about the business of the afternoon, fixing snacks, keeping the babies clean and fed, getting kids to practice their instruments and maybe clean up a bit.  We fixed dinner, we talked about the day, things were looking up I thought.  Seven o’clock.

Seven-thirty.  The older kids began to watch a movie while I bathed the younger two and tried to persuade a stubborn son to take a shower and wash his hair. I have finished drying off and diapering my toddlers when my husband arrived and we both remembered the father daughter dance.  My older daughter opted out because of her headache and fever –I felt guilty about having wanted to keep her at school now, but my husband planned to be back early so I could go to adoration and the service at 9.  He and my other daughter left and I felt alone in a house full of people.

Then things break down.  My daughter is very feverish so I take her temperature and bring her a drink.  Meanwhile, another daughter starts crying.  What’s wrong I ask?  She begins to have serious diarrhea.  It is so bad I throw out the pants without even a second thought.  We get her in the bathroom, saving the carpet but causing the floor in the bathroom to look very gross.  I toss her in the shower. Too cold, too hot, just right.  Meanwhile, the toddler has taken off his diaper and is cavorting around the house naked.

I shout to summon my oldest son and only ally.  I plan to give him a choice, diapering his brother and dressing him, or dishes, I know what he will choose.  He responds valiantly, running up the stairs.  My stubborn unshowered son has been blissfully working on an extensive delicate model plane made of legos.  It is an undeniable work of art.  I had been begging him to take it to his room during the day for fear one of his siblings knowingly or otherwise would break it.  He is finally doing this task at that very second that his brother bounds up the stairs.  Amazingly, they do not collide.  The toddler gets diapered but not before he leaves a wet spot on the carpet.

The bounding up the stairs awakened the baby.  Before I can address these two new issues, a third issue arises.  Wails of absolute emotional agony piercingly trump the shower, the crying baby, and the phone that has just started ringing.  My son has dropped his delicate model. It has shattered into a billion pieces and with it, his psyche.  What do I do?  Answer the phone.

My husband called because he didn’t know he needed to get a snack for the Girl Scout dance or pay money, he has neither with them, and so they went to the bank to get money.  There is a problem with the atm machine.  I promise to call the bank and hang up.

Taking a deep breath, I think about the order of operations to proceed.  I ask the older brother to help pick up the legos and put his brother back together.  He agrees and together they  pick up the model.  I grab the squirming toddler and dress him in pj’s and put him in my room, in my bed.  I strip his bed and then turn to the baby who has cried herself to sleep.  Getting the sick to her stomach girl out of the shower, I dry her off, wipe down the bathroom with Lysol and put all the dirty clothing in a laundry bag to clean up later.

I put my puffy eyed three year old in a pull up and comfort her and dress her, and put her to bed.  She does not protest. I go downstairs with the bad laundry.  I find throw up she forgot to tell me about.  I grab the phone and the vacuum.  Cleaning up the vomit while waiting on hold for a financial person to answer from the phone tree of the bank about the ATM, I wonder which job is less tedious or icky and then vote both since I’m doing both at once.  I talk to the bank while starting the wash.  The teller fixes the problem.  Marc calls about the time the baby wakes up crying.  He tells me he took his daughter to eat instead and is coming home.  I say thank you and relate all that has happened since his last phone call.  “Don’t, worry, we’re coming home and you can go to St. Francis.” He tries to comfort me, but we are both worn and very frustrated by the utter oblivion of the evening.

Having nursed the baby to sleep, I did a final check on my two daughters and both have crashed. The two brothers are rebuilding the model –God Bless them; and my toddler is asleep in my bed.   When my husband and daughter got home, and I drove one block to St. Francis but the St. Blaise service is over.  People are doing Benediction but I am just not in the mood for public prayer.

I am angry, tired and absolutely ready to cry or rage or something after dealing with multiple bodily fluids and having such a crazy and stressful string of events.  I know St. Francis usually has adoration on Friday night.  I go to check.  Christ is the one person I know I can pour all my troubles to, and maybe, there will be a priest I wistfully think, and I can go to reconciliation for all of my sins of just TODAY.

The door is locked but I can see into the adoration chamber, a priest.  He is moving so reverently that the act of putting the Host into the monstrance itself, is a prayer.  I watch through the two glass doors and feel like the distance and the locked doors are reflective of my own spirit at the moment.  “Please, I think, please turn around and open the door.”   I have knocked but I don’t think he can hear me and I don’t want to bang.  A woman sees me as she is coming into the room and opens the door.

Thank you. I say as I step into the warm small chamber with pews and a statue of Mary and St. Joseph and in the middle, a crucifix above the altar where the Monstrance is placed.  The priest is there and I ask him to bless my throat.  He points out he does not have the candles but does the blessing anyway after I tell him of my history with Saint Blaisé.  He nods and performs the blessing.

Then I ask for reconciliation and proceed to tell him of the day, of the fear of managing all these people, of our finances, of my momentary pettiness.  Things come out I hadn’t expected.  My daughter had been diagnosed with a weird fungus that makes her lose her hair.  She is becoming quite mangy and it hurts my heart.  I suddenly look at the priest I am telling this to, he is bald.  I tell of my worries of raising seven children, he tells me he is one of ten.  I tell him of our concerns about our house and our finances.  He tells me how he grew up in the depression and how as a child, he loved it when his dad was out of work because they could go to baseball games together.  God had picked this priest for me, with all of his life experiences, to help transform my worry and pain in a single moment of grace.

God had answered my unspoken prayer by placing this beautiful priest with all of his life experience here at this moment, to help reflect to me how all this struggling is a vehicle for the Holy Spirit.  The exactness of God’s answer to my needs indicates the unmistakable intimacy of God’s knowledge of our hearts and how it is both overwhelming and soft at the same time.  Peace be with you He said to us back then, and still, that is what He wishes for us now, peace.  Even the bad days have purpose to bring us to God and sometimes, if we’re blessed, we get to witness the meaning made clear of those bad days when we see clearly how they bring grace to ourselves and others others.

Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

Currently in the United States, much research generated through Autism Speaks, is focused on the cause, specifically identifying genetic markers in much the same way Down Syndrome is currently determined via amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling (CVS), and percutaneous umbilical blood sampling (PUBS). While these tests have shown themselves to sometimes have false positives, the consequences of these prenatal screenings are far reaching and fatal. 90% of children with Trisomy 21 or Down Syndrome are destroyed as result of that diagnosis before they are ever born. So should a marker be found, this test will be proscribed as part of good prenatal health.

If one day we have tests to reveal Autism as we do now Down Syndrome and maybe MS and Muscular Dystrophy and Parkinson’s and Cystic Fibrosis and eventually perhaps ADD and schizophrenia and perhaps predilections towards alcoholism or bi-polar, these too will be reasons to abort “for the greater good.” The euphemisms will emphasize our guilt in failing to abort. “You don’t want your baby to suffer do you?” Think of how hard or difficult their lives would be. To allow someone to suffer like that would be cruel.” It will be more cloaked and sophisticated than that, but the appeal will be to disguise selfishness, “I don’t want an imperfect child or one that pushes me to love more than I want to be bothered” as charity. “I don’t want my child to suffer.” It is the same argument used towards the elderly and the dying and the permanently disabled now. The quality of life determines the value and the quality of life itself is only determined by those who are not living it.   “The Duty to die,” to not be a burden on the next generation is a pernicious and seductive theory to embrace as long as you are not actually the one getting old.

We will become a designer world by default, eliminating everyone not predetermined to be perfect. We will tolerate deviation eventually less and less as we quest to be perfect and anticipate and eradicate all flaws by aborting all who can be determined pre-birth to have flaws. We will be able to love fewer and fewer people well because we will be unable to bear people being beyond what we expect or needing more than we want to innately give.

Once we get to that point, what will stop us from eliminating those who come out not as advertised?



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

There were the obligatory first few minutes of child tetris while I figured out which combinations would result in the least number of fights.  Hearing the readings, my six year old asked, “Am I a sheep?”  “Yes,” I nodded. “And Dad and I are your shepherds.”   Meanwhile, my husband was imitating a border collie, rounding up two wandering lambs.

And yet, as I looked at my sons and daughters and listened to the songs and the readings, I could feel that this was close to heaven, this blessed chaos.  Even with the two trips to the bathroom, the three kids shuffling their small chairs, the passing of the baby between the teenagers as a means of distraction, this was the mass. At the sign of peace, there was the usual mad scramble to shake the 54 combinations necessary to make sure all 11 got to each other, plus those around and I knew, this was why we are all always asked to all come, so that all of us would be present, so that none of us would be lost, so that all of us would receive and understand that we are to bring the Eucharist to everyone.  No one of us could reach everyone, but each of us could reach some and each of us was called to be the Eucharist to everyone.  Each of us are to be fed and to go feed the 5000 with what we receive in every mass. Each of us is to wash each others feet, to cast our nets in open waters not knowing what will happen and to imitate Christ in all things.  We will fail, but each of us is a shepherd to another, and a sheep ourselves needing to be brought home.


Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

We spent Holy Saturday clearing out the basement of papers, sorting what could be salvaged.  Because my husband was at the office preparing for a Monday business trip, I drafted all my children into work. Trips to the grocery store were postponed.  Trips to the department store for shoes for one child were forgotten.  By the end, my helpers had discovered Lord of the Rings was on television and one by one succumb to watching.  I’d cleaned all day and still in the end, I was left alone.

Clearing out lesson plans from my teaching days of 17 years ago, it made me angry. It made me frustrated.  I saw all these fun things once ago I planned that I was no longer doing.  I saw all my kids doing fun things and I was here cleaning the smelly spidery basement.  Even my shop vac quit on me.   I felt tired and unready for Easter even as I mused that a wish I’d held, to clear out the back basement had been fulfilled. The cleaned out room did not bring me joy.  It only meant I could now see how the rest of the house needed work too. I felt just as messy and spidery and smelly and empty.

At mass the next day, we arrived looking a bit unready.  One child was wearing a dress that was a bit too old for her, we had no shoes for the baby, three kids had struggled with their hair that morning and it showed.  Sitting in a pew all by ourselves, I was forced twice to take kids to the bathroom. But somewhere in that morning in the midst of the song at the presentation of the gifts, I felt unbidden, the understanding of what these past 40 days had been supposed to be about for me.

I have nine children.

For the past year, I have been becoming adjusted to managing all of them; but it has been about treading water, making sure we got through the bare minimum of any given day.  Teeth brushed, three meals, homework done.   It has been functional.  I’ve done more sometimes, but at that mass, I felt the dull recognition that I had become conditioned to seek to do the minimum and no more.  Looking at those old lesson plans made me realize I had somehow drained a lot of the color out of parenting for function.

Parenting should be about every color and sparkles and stickiness and joy bordering on garishness.  It wasn’t that I’d been depressed, it’s that I had suppressed myself.  The practical gritch had sought to remove all fun from parenting by emphasizing how much effort fun was, and to keep me from even participating.

“You have this very light cross to care for lots of people.  It is now time to put on the joyful mask.” I remembered how much fun I’d had as a teacher. I could hear in the whispers of the choir’s song at the bringing of the gifts.  My gift I had been hording unto atrophy, burying it.  It was time to dig it up and start bringing it to the altar every day and offering it.   Walking up for communion, it was hard to keep from crying or smiling or laughing, I felt all three and the overwhelmed hope that I wouldn’t forget this lesson that seemed so obvious and so easy and yet so hard to embrace.

It is Easter, it is Spring. Rejoice.  It is time for something new.



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

We started looking at all the lists and tips designed to improve lives while creating a baseline that is usually taken to be the requirement rather than the starting point. It became a game between us. “Twenty minutes of music practice.” I reminded him. “Body mass index.” My son chided. “Speed limits.” (He’s learning to drive). “Tax brackets.” (We were driving to the accountant). “S.A.T. scores.” He winced in anticipation of that that one and we both had a good laugh.

Measuring one’s carbon footprint, one’s body fat, watching a 401K, all of these “pay attention”and “Do this” moments reduces the experience of living to a math equation where you know the needed outcome. The extenuating circumstances for failing to meet the minimum or maximum or desired number become irrelevant. Taken in total, they can make one feel constantly ill at ease. The check list for the day becomes the obligation which becomes the drudgery of constantly being weighed, measured and found wanting.

But it struck me, that in prayer, in loving, there are no limits. We cannot pray too much, nor can we love too much. We cannot pour ourselves out for God enough. Yet we often limit ourselves with God while we abuse the limits of our behavior in every other opportunity. We rush out of mass or come late. We rush through prayers with a mindlessness rather than mindfulness. Could we not stay awake for even an hour? It doesn’t mean we abandon all the good things we must do in a day, (I’d just penciled into my list reading for each of my younger children). Instead, all these tasks which must be done, must be cloaked with a certain permeated attitude and if we’re not feeling it, a joyful mask. We are called to live an unlimited life of love. Sometimes the love is simply dedicated service when it is hard, sometimes love is sheer obedience with all its cost; other times, it is as easy as breathing.

I added into my list, kiss each child good morning and hug them good night. It made my list longer with the dry cleaners and the doctor’s appointment and the paper work, but it is the reason any of those other tasks have any meaning. It’s not that I want to make my life one big syrupy Hallmark moment, it’s that I want the end of my day to include some aspect of the over the top color and joy and beauty of Spring, of God’s whimsy; and moments of love and actions of love are those necessary flourishes for well lived lives. In the end, I told my son the 5-2-1 rule wasn’t so bad or oppressive, he’d still get his time to enjoy facebooking his friends and downloading music, but that limits on all things save love were necessary if we were to live a balanced and healthy and holy lives and gave him a hug.

Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

Abortion advocates do not admit a distinction between these two pictures that any eyes can see.  One is a live child growing at an exponential rate, the other is a child deceased.  The fundamental reality of being is hard to deny when a person is seen, a heart is beating, when we see face to face.   This is why those who want abortion to continue unquestioned, unstopped, do not want ultrasounds offered as part of the full disclosure of facts to the mothers considering abortion.   It would make deciding to end the life of their unborn much harder because they would be unable to rest comfortably in the lie that it isn’t a baby, that the baby doesn’t feel anything, that the baby doesn’t have a heart beat but only “heart tones.“  It would silently speak to the lie that abortion does not kill.

Opposition to the pictures indicates not simply a willful refusal to face the reality of abortion, but a concerted effort to deceive those seeking abortion from considering fully what they intend and what their actions will mean.   If the people are pro-choice, were truly pro-choice, the choice itself would be irrelevant.     But the pro-choice advocates aren’t simply neutral benign enlightened individuals, they are motivated by an ideology that argues 1) all children are a burden 2) freedom from any responsibilities to anyone else is true liberation and an end worthy of all means including dismemberment and deception 3) having an abortion has no long term effects unless you let it.

Pro-choice advocates cannot bear the pictures of the dead (aborted) or even the living. Recently they decried a billboard depicting a little live baby with the words Chose Life as inflammatory.  The unreal cannot stand in the presence of the real; so even the tacit acknowledgement of children’s faces gives rise to SELF righteous wrath amongst those who want abortion to continue unabated.     As the ultrasounds produced by science get better and better, the lie that the unborn are not human, are mere blobs of tissue becomes harder and harder to hold.

My favorite ultrasound shows my youngest son Paul at four months in utero looking straight ahead as if at the camera, smiling.  His eyes are wide open and the grin is unmistakable.  You cannot see his Down syndrome, you only see him.  It’s hard to argue with the 1000 words of a beautiful face.   This past week, we lost a battle in promoting a Pro-life culture, but the truth will out. If there will be universal healthcare that allows for abortion, we must insist upon full disclosure for each individual so they can’t not know what they do.   Seeing a live picture of one’s child may not save everyone who goes into a clinic, but it will save some, and each one that survives the Rubicon of the womb is one step closer to a society that embraces all souls and protects the innocent.   The argument against abortion has always been one that must be made one heart at a time; showing each woman the face of another’s heart, might be the swiftest surest way to change each individual heart and mind.

Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

Pregnancy Centers in Baltimore and Montgomery County, Maryland now must advertise they do not provide abortions or birth control medications, while abortion clinics need not announce they kill the unborn.  The Arch Diocese of Washington DC has ceased providing foster care today because of the District of Columbia’s pending same-sex marriage law that will obligate all outside contractors dealing with the city to recognize gay couples. Catholic Charities adoption agencies were run out of Massachusetts for the same reason.  In California, Catholic hospitals are being pressured by the courts to provide emergency contraception and abortion or birth control services via insurance for their personnel.

The current proposed healthcare program will require that all tax payers, Catholic and otherwise pay for abortions, all manner of birth control and sterilization.  To say no to any of these things now is the equivalent of hate speech, rendering the writer/person/group/institution a non worthy entity with nothing worth hearing. It is pernicious to say that Catholic Charities in California, in Massachusetts, in DC, and Catholic hospitals have not engaged in following the beatitudes, caring for the sick, the lost, the forgotten and the dying; because they have not been willing to ignore their own value system; but have been willing to live it by serving someone else.  The same value system that led these same people who arrange adoption, manage foster care, care for the sick, that says these other things like abortion, birth control and non marital sex are not good.

One suspects, that if pressure were brought to bear on Catholic institutions by outside forces in the form of a discriminatory law suits, that the policies will be altered to meet demand, because the alternative is to close up shop. I suspect, and this is the Cassandra Canary in the Coal Mine tweeting when I say this, that there is an attempt to get the Church to cease its social justice outreach unless the social justice outreach trumps and silences all other values the Church might hold.

The Cloak of Christ cannot be divided, and I hope that the Church through its many people and services, will find a means of reestablishing itself as a source of support for the poor and sick and abandoned, even as its current means have been choked off by modern predators who do not love the Church or the poor, but seek to use the later to alter the former. Christ would heal the modern day leper of his illness but would also still say, “Go and sin no more.” and that would apply to all those who brought the leper before Jesus as well.

The pressures being brought to bear are removing the Church’s physical witness to the world, making them chose, “You can keep serving the poor, just denounce this value.   Otherwise, you can’t serve the poor and you don’t want all those people not to have what they need do you?”  But it is a false choice.  It is a choice designed to undermine either the Church’s physical witness, or moral authority or both.  Morality has been reduced from what I do that affects my relationship to God and others, to I can believe what I want as long as I ensure that my actions never affect anyone else’s decisions to You can’t believe THAT.

Fortunately, Catholicism isn’t about social justice, social justice is an outreach of the Church manifesting Christ’s love to the world.  Catholicism isn’t about equity, because all of us seek to be the least in the Kingdom of God, by serving the least here.   Catholicism ultimately, is only about one thing, the Eucharist. As long as we hold to that, everything else flows, everything else follows; and nothing the State or the Federal government does to limit the Church here on Earth can stop it.   Recently, I was in a conversation where someone asked why stay in the Catholic Church?  If you could find another iPod shuffle version of Christianity that took out the things you didn’t like, why stay?  Then I read story from a woman who wondered why she needed to go to mass. As I considered what would come of the Church if she were closed off from being able to act out the beatitudes as a result of ruthless and relentless legislation designed to demand that values be stripped away from service, the answer in my head was the same for all three situations.  The reason to stay in the Church, the reason to go to Church, and the reason not to worry about the world’s many attempts to destroy her was the same, the Church is not defined except by its devotion to and understanding of and love for one thing; “It is the Eucharist.”



Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

The stereotypical self induced guilt that often gets slapped on a Catholic’s head like a scarlet “C” is a misunderstanding of what we’re supposed to discover by engaging in self reflection and conscious examination.  Every time we begin to look at our relationship with God, we can see how it could be, could have been and should be deeper.  We all know our own temptations and rationales for our own moments when we allow ourselves this one exception. “God will understand.” And He does, but do we understand what we are asking when we ask for that one exception, that one sin we cling to so fiercely?

Prayer and fasting, mass and penance, the point of all of these exercises is to break past the perpetual spiritual plateauing that “good people” mistake for progress.  Modern thinking subscribes to the theory that “I’m a good person ergo, I’ve arrived.” but a soul that embraces that sort of thinking ceases to seek, it stops and atrophies in its contentment which eventually devolves to bored self satisfaction.  It is a common error for anyone who can look at their life and say, “I’m praying. I’m going to mass. I receive the sacraments. I’m taking care of the kids or my spouse.”  God always asks of us more than we would of ourselves because He knows and loves us deeper than we do ourselves. Christ doesn’t say, “Take time for you.” and “Be sure to get in some “Me time.”  He says, “Take up your cross and follow me.” He always seeks our whole hearts in all things.

To love an infinite God is to want to love infinitely.  To do that, one must never cease increasing one’s willingness to love.   To love without limits means constantly knocking away the walls that sin and one’s own self and the age and the culture and others would put into place as reasonable.   It means dropping the fishing nets to run towards Jesus, it means being willing to step out onto the water; it means filling the cisterns with water; doing whatever He tells you, and passing out the loaves and fishes that were once only five and two.  It means walking all the way to the foot of the cross and returning to the tomb on Easter.  It means seeking God in all people and loving Him in all the things we say and do every day.

We’ve only taken our first step into the desert, and every subsequent step forward is an act of will, of obedience . The great gift of Lent is it can bring us to a place we would not seek absent these forty days.  Being fallen, we constantly seek to carve out a bit of ourselves that is not for anyone else, even God. These forty days can make our hearts for God alone and that takes courage to even pursue.  Fortunately, Christ also says, “Be not afraid.” And so we know, we are never alone in this 40 day desert. Walk on.

Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti

Everywhere I felt distracted.  Everywhere, I felt I wasn’t giving the time and attention necessary; and the days got harder and harder and harder.   Cooking the meals; doing the dishes and even reading the stories, there was something of me holding back, being unwilling to give or be present because as I rationalized, I was doing so much.  It was true in all things, everywhere, I was restless; everywhere I was somewhere else.  For a time, I told myself I was being too critical and to relax and ignore it.  After all, I was still praying.  I was still doing. But the prayers done on the fly while still a gift, were not done mindfully; and the tasks done on the fly, while still acts of service, were not done mindfully.  I was cheating myself of the full presence of God and others by being distracted.

Our parish priest suggested kneeling or going off into a room and light a candle to bring about a more prayerful mindset.  I knew already that this was the correct advise because my brain came up with a thousand reasons not to do as he said.  I could hear with all those excuses of what I could be doing if I just prayed as I worked, “Martha, you are anxious about many things.”  And I was.  “How could I subdivide my time even more?” I wondered. The answer was, I wasn’t supposed to subdivide at all.

“Could I not stay?” I could hear.  It wasn’t harsh in my head; it was more like a request, an invitation.  Could I go on a date with God daily or not?  If I would learn to be fully present to those I loved, shouldn’t I begin by being fully present to the One who is love?  This was the spiritual food for which I had been starving but unable or rather unwilling, to seek.

The first stint lasted only seven and a half minutes; but tomorrow, I’m setting the timer for ten.

Copyright 2010 Sherry Antonetti