Why I Won't Be Taking the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

If you are reading this blog, you have been on the Internet long enough to know about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge - where people dump cold water over their heads, challenge three friends to do the same, and donate to the ALS Association.  While I may accept a challenge, I won't donate to ALSA.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), otherwise known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a progressive degenerative neuromuscular disease that results in death.  We need to find a cure and the phenomena of the Ice Bucket Challenge has been nothing short of amazing in raising awareness and funding for research.  I don't have a problem with that.  What I cannot support, however, is research that involves the use of embryonic stem cells - those are stem cells from aborted babies or embryos artificially created (in vitro). 

Abortion is wrong - it is the killing of an innocent life.  Period.  On the other side of the spectrum, humans are creating life in vitro, probably with the goal of becoming parents.  The problem with the in vitro process is the dilemma of the "extra" ones - whether they are selectively aborted after implantation or discarded because they are not used.  In both cases the child's fundamental right to life is discounted.  By using embryonic stem cells for research, we compound the ethical challenges.  We cannot play God.

It is not ethical to use a human being as a product.  Selling organs is unethical (and illegal in the United States).  Donating blood or an organ to save the life of another is great as long as we all (including the donor) respect the donor's life.  People can't donate their hearts while they are still in use.  When we challenge a person's right to life by accepting that his parts might be more important than his life, we have reached new levels of societal collapse.  We are one small step away from marketing embryos explicitly created for medical research, selectively choosing whose life is expendable for parts (the mentally ill, disabled or elderly) or allowing someone to commit suicide because he is more valuable dead than alive.  The means don't justify the ends no matter how promising medical research or transplantation is.

So, what's an ALS Ice Bucket Challenged person to do?  Donate to a charity that supports ethical medical research.  I will donate (with or without the bucket of ice water) to the John Paul II Medical Research Institute in Iowa.  They focus on ethical ways to use adult stem cells and cancer cells for research on a number of diseases, including ALS.  They also use more than half of their budget on the actual research.

Let's also pray for an end to all debilitating and life ending diseases.

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Kids Got You Down? I've Got a Saint for You!

Today would have been my mother's 85th birthday.  She shares this day with St. Monica, a saint she definitely admired.  You see, St. Monica is the patron saint of mothers.  (No, not the mother of all patron saints!)

She lived in the 3rd Century and married a man who wasn't exactly the nicest guy.  He didn't beat her, but he was loud and mean and a womanizer.  What was her response to the verbal and psychological abuse?  She prayed.  Yep, that's it.  She prayed and he converted.  Her cranky mother-in-law was converted too!

Monica also had three children.  Her oldest son was a brilliant thinker, but a pagan with a bad temper and a wandering eye just like his father.  He lived with a mistress and fathered a child out of wedlock.  Monica and her tears followed him from Africa through Italy, much to his chagrin.  More important than her tears and her tailing him was her prayers.  She constantly prayed for her son and his conversion.  Finally, he relented, converted and was baptized.

Her son was St. Augustine of Hippo, one of most greatest thinkers and theologians of the Church.

Her life wasn't easy and her patience was sorely tested during all those years of praying without an answer, but she persevered.  She is a model for mothers.  You don't need "bad" kids to know that being a good mother always involves patience, doggedness and prayer.

St. Monica, pray for us.

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Sorrow and Suffering

I have been thinking about this topic for a long time, but have struggled to find the right words to describe it. The final impetus came with the suicide of a certain famous actor.  The circumstances are truly tragic:  a well-loved personality seemingly so full of life suffering from a deep depression and the early stages of a chronic debilitating disease.  How is it possible to find good from this?

I'm not addressing the issue of why God "allows" the existence of suffering and sadness.  Books have been written on this topic and my short explanations would seem trite.  However, God has a way of bringing good from sorrow, suffering and evil.  But how?

Human beings are naturally positive beings and we find value in courage and perseverance.  Fortitude is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who brings beauty from ashes.  Isaiah 6:13.  "The world we live in often seems very far from the one promised us by faith.  Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice, and death, seem to contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it."  Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 164.  When faced with pain, we must look to the witnesses of faith.  Salvation history is a series of people who suffered and persevered; these are the people we look to as examples.  They let God shine through their pain to impact the world in ways we could never imagine.  We can have the same impact when we persevere through suffering and sorrow.

No one wishes to suffer.  Even Christ begged the Father to avoid suffering:  "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will."  Matthew 26:39.  (Certainly Jesus knew what was coming, but perhaps He said that to show us His human nature.)  Would we appreciate the gift of the Incarnation if He had not suffered and died?  Can you measure the good that has come to the world from Christianity? 

Good is already beginning to shine through the untimely celebrity death I mentioned at the beginning.  Awareness of the impacts of depression, an understanding of the causes of suicide and the impacts of Parkinson's disease are just a few good things that are emerging.  Who knows how many lives will be transformed (or saved) as a result of this heartbreaking death?

God's will be done.

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FDR's D-Day Prayer

Today is the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy, France. On that day many courageous men offered their lives to defend and liberate a people from a morally bereft regime that put more confidence in genocide and genetic engineering to create a world it envisioned rather than God's plan for the salvation of all souls.

Today in a world that is moving ever closer to an apathy and indifference that will again create a power vacuum, let's remember the sacrifice of the men who died and others who were forever changed on those beaches in France 70 years ago.  Please listen to the prayer of President Roosevelt as he pleaded with God to accompany the sons of this nation into a righteous battle. Would a government official say a prayer today - in an address to the American public, or have we already given our government over to godlessness?

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This Is the Tough Part

Jesus Christ was a man.  Fully human.  He was also fully divine.  (Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 470).  Unfortunately, as we approach the Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday), we don't want to think too much about that human side of Jesus.  Yes, he suffered and all, but he is God, so how hard could it be for him?  Better yet, I don't want to think too much about that suffering part.  It's bad enough he had to die, can't we just get on to the Alleluias and Easter candy?

At the risk of being labeled an Arian heretic, I like to think about Jesus' human nature and how hard the Passion was for him.  I'm not talking about "The Passion of the Christ."  I know Jesus' passion was very violent and physically painful (really torture), but what about the mental anguish?  He clearly had second thoughts about dying the way he did:  "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me."  Matthew 26:39.  Jesus was not running from the ordeal he would suffer, ("Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will." Mark 14:36), but the Gospels are unified and very clear that he was distressed: "He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground." Luke 22:44.  He wished it could be different; he was distressed; he was afraid for his disciples: "Get up and pray you may not undergo the test." Matthew 26:41.  Clearly, this could have gone another way.  Was he afraid?  Did he think there could be a different path before he accepted the Father's plan?  My heart breaks that he went through all that anguish for me.

That's the Jesus I think of during Holy Week - the man who was mentally tortured about how his death would go down and the fallout for his disciples. I also think about the same God who "so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life."  John 3:16.

Would you watch one hour with Him?

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Life or Death

Today I attended a funeral.  An old friend of mine lost her husband to colon cancer.  He was 52.  During the homily at the funeral mass the priest talked about how her husband found it so hard to beat the cancer but that several days before he died he had a sense of calm and peacefulness.

Why do people die "before their time"?  If we, as people of faith, know they are going on to a place where every tear will be wiped away and there is no more suffering, why do we grieve them so much? Shouldn't we be happy for them?  Why should someone fight an inevitable terminal illness and work so hard to stay alive even if life for them is so painful?

I thought a lot about these questions today.  I definitely understand why we grieve.  It is frightening and difficult to accept that someone we love so much, someone who is our life partner, someone with whom we are so intimately entwined is gone.  Even people of great faith feel a deep sense of loss and pain.  But what about the person who is dying?

God has made everything appropriate to its time, but has put the timeless into their hearts

so they cannot find out, from beginning to end, the work which God has done.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

As I pondered it, the answer came roaring at me like a flood.  Life is a unique and special gift from God.  It's a one shot thing.  We only get one chance.  Even people who don't know God have an instinct to preserve their lives.  I think it's because everyone understands life has purpose and worth.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 1721 says it best:  "God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve him, and so to come to paradise."  We inherently know we are here for a specific reason, even though we might not be so sure about what that reason is.  I believe that's why we fight so ferociously to stay alive, even when the end is so close and we are suffering.  The mind and the body want to live.  We want that chance to know, to love and to serve.

I'm sure for many people death can be very scary, especially if you are not sure what comes next.  I don't claim to have any special insight into that and the unknown scares me too.  However, in the core of my being, the same core that will struggle to stay alive for as long as possible, I know one thing:

I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.

And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God.  Job 19:25-26.

I am so blest to know that.  It makes me want to know, to love and to serve that same redeemer.  However, when it is finally time to go on, those of us who remain need to say with gladness and joy:

May the angels lead you into paradise;

Upon your arrival, may the martyrs receive you

 and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem.

May the ranks of angels receive you,

and with Lazarus, once a poor man,

may you have eternal rest

Rest in peace, Mike.

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Silence

It's been a week now since Lent began and it's been quite a week.  I gave up three things for Lent:
(1) refined sugar;
(2) use of my cell phone for anything other than telephone calls or text messages (no apps, FB, Twitter, etc.); and
(3) use of my car sound system (radio).

I really thought sacrificing refined sugar was going to be hard and I am reminded of Christ's suffering every night when I really want something sweet.  However, I was not prepared for the real mortification - going without my car radio.

I drive 60 miles a day during my work commute.  I'm not used to sitting in silence.  It feels weird.  When I get into the car, I immediately feel like something is missing.  It's just automatic - I want to hear noise.  The silence is deafening and it's hard to be a captive to the silence.

I am making good use of my time.  I'm praying.  Lots of rosaries and Divine Mercy chaplets.  They have been great, but I am still looking for more.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses this issue:

"Contemplative prayer is silence, the 'symbol of the world to come' or 'silent love.'  Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love.  In this silence, unbearable to the 'outer' man, the Father speaks to us his incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; in this silence the Spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus." CCC 2717

Sometimes it feels like He's not speaking to me, but I know that can't be true.  I think I'm so used to noise, I don't know how to listen.  I'm working on it.  It is a sacrifice for me to go without audio stimulation, but I'm hoping through this sacrifice to get a better sense of what it feels like to be quiet and wait for God to speak.  

"My soul waits in silence for God only;

From Him is my salvation" Psalm 62:1

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