In the midst of Fiesta wreaths going up in my San Antonio neighborhood, today I proudly hung our Mardi Gras wreath for the benefit of no one else but my husband, two sons and me.

Prompted by the sight of the wreath each time we come through the door, I notice we all start humming Carnival tunes excitedly anticipating our visit this year.  The wreath also reminded me of a blog I wrote last February for the Pilgrim Log and am posting here. . . .

. . . . New Orleans, here we come!

Soul Searching at Mardi Gras

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Nan Balfour

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My family loves Mardi Gras parades. My husband, two sons and I return often to our hometown New Orleans so we can join this annual party. If you’ve never experienced a Mardi Gras parade, let me tell you it’s quite an interactive event. As floats roll through the streets, throngs of people line the route yelling, jumping and waving their hands in the hope of getting the “throws” that are tossed or more often hurled at the crowd by the masked riders. These “throws” are traditionally plastic bead necklaces, plastic cups, stuffed animals, plastic swords, and wooden spears; in other words, pretty worthless junk. I am not a fan of crowds so I prefer to stand back while most, including my family, push their way up screaming, “Throw me something, Mister!” It’s very entertaining to watch all the ways people try to get the attention of the riders and what lengths they will go to get this junk.

“Miss Louisiana” by thepipe26

One year, an interesting revelation came to me when I noticed what often happens after the victor gains his spoil. Without even a backwards glance, the throw is tossed in a pile and forgotten. I realize that it’s not the throws but getting them that is the fun. The whole value of a throw then is the few brief seconds from when it is spotted in the rider’s hands until it makes into the victor’s grasp. After that, it reverts to junk and will soon be stuffed into a box and stowed in the attic or garage until an industrious spring cleaning day relegates it to the curb.

…which is just how Satan views our souls.

Satan will try any antic to get our attention and like a Mardi Gras throw, once he wins our souls we are tossed away never to be thought of again; left to the boxed confines of our sins. Because you see, the devil has no desire to spend eternity with us; he only wants to get us so he can make sure God does not. He hates God; we are simply a means to an end.

The good news is that the devil is not the only searcher of souls. Our Lord is there as He always is, waiting for us. But unlike that pile of beads that ends up in the trash bin, garages or storage sheds in New Orleans, He has wonderful plans for you and me. . .

I know well the plans I have in mind for you; plans for your welfare and not for woe. (Jeremiah 29:11)

Why then, if our Lord desires such great plans for us, do we more often feel as worthless as those discarded pair of plastic Mardi Gras beads?

“Christ Embracing St. Bernard” by Francisco Ribalta (16th-17th century)

I received the answer to that question over ten years ago when my choices had brought me to my knees lost, alone and weary from battling the grasps of darkness. My Lord came to me, picked me up, put His arms around me and loved me out of my debilitating depression. He promised I would never feel alone again as He gently led me back to His Church and my Catholic faith.

In my return to the faith of my youth that I so ignorantly dismissed as archaic and unnecessary for my happiness, I discovered that God does not want to get us, but rather He wants to be with us now and forever in the complete and continuous exercise of our free will. We cannot be passive and expect to find the joy we so desire. God wants us to want to be with Him and joins us in discovering our happiness through Church teachings, His word in Scripture, through the Sacraments and most significantly by joining our suffering with His in the Eucharistic Celebration of Mass.

God does not view our souls like cheap plastic beads to be tossed at the mercy of the rider, but rather active participants in His wonderful plans for our happiness. We have a choice in whose hands we land.

The devil could not care less whether we cooperate with him or not. Since the beginning he has lied and tricked to get his way like when he told Eve, “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil,” (Genesis 3:4-5) but failing to mention that along with the knowledge of evil will also be the desire for evil and the consequences to pay. He flat out lied when he told her you will not die. He will make any effort to grasp our souls and keep them away from God and His wonderful plans for us.

My Catholic faith has taught me that I am not to find happiness on my own and there are two good reasons why. Firstly, no matter how intelligent, educated, willing or brave any of us may be, we are no match for the cunning and sinister ways of the devil.

Secondly and so very wonderfully, that is not God’s plan for us. We need our God with us just as He has wonderfully planned, “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

I look toward the floats and imagine the people clamoring for God rather than throws. I see our Lord reach down and pull people up into His arms calling each by name. He searches the crowd and when our eyes meet, He holds out His arms for me.

I run to join the party.

A fruit of the Constant Woman

You know you are progressing in holiness when the attractions of the world no longer entice you. It is a slow progression because our Lord never jolts or demands but with gentle care and concern holds out His hand for us to take.

With just a few steps in His direction, we discover riches we never imagined and we are hooked. No longer do silly television shows, gossipy magazines and shallow books catch our eyes. We don’t even notice them.

You will know you possess this fruit when you sit in the hair salon and the magazines that were once your guilty pleasure sit idle and undesired while you hungrily indulge in Jesus’ love for you found in the current book you carry around with you everywhere. You now relish the moments in line waiting to check-out at the grocery or post office or sitting in the doctor’s office, moments you once dreaded and that oh so irritated you, because now you can be with Him; your heart's only desire.

From Psalm 84

My soul yearns and pines

for the courts of the LORD.

My heart and flesh cry out

for the living God. (3)

Blessed are those who dwell in your house!

They never cease to praise you. (5)

I had rather one day in your courts

than a thousand elsewhere.

I’d rather lie at the threshold of the house of my God 

than a home in the tents of the wicked. (11)

How to Keep Your New Year's Resolution

This is being re-blogged from the Pilgrim Center of Hope: The Pilgrim Log: Helping You Live Your Daily Pilgrimage

With every new year comes the determination to improve ourselves. We want to be fit physically, emotionally, financially and spiritually. Hope springs eternal as they say but if we are honest with ourselves we have to ask, “I am the same me in January that I was in December, what will be different by just turning the calendar page?”  This honesty has inspired me over the last few years to just not bother with resolutions. Progress is necessary for our sanctification though, so this is not healthy either.

St. Catherine of Siena teaches that to progress we have to know ourselves and thanks to a request from my mother, I have discovered the sure-fire way to not only know myself but to progress in all areas of my life. My mom is getting to the point she no longer wants to drive. She asked me to take her on her regular Wednesday errands and one of them is her hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament in the St. Gregory Catholic Church Adoration Chapel.

I decided during this hour to take advantage of a technique I heard once by a priest.  He said when we visit the Blessed Sacrament in Adoration we should humbly present ourselves to Him. He recommended no prayer books, spiritual reading or devotions. The way he said it was, “I sit before Jesus and I simply look at Him as He looks at me.”

The fruit of my visits with Jesus have been nothing less than astounding! All my long-held desires to improve have shown positive results:

• My stress level is lower and I enjoy much calmer and peaceful days.
• My distorted passions for food and drink have tempered.
• My tendency to extremes (i.e. too much exercise or none at all)  have moderated.
• Priorities have been put in proper order and projects completed within deadline.
• My life-long issue with arriving late is being remedied.
• I am enjoying increased understanding and clarity in what I read.
• I experience more confidence in my relations with others and in my abilities.

So how does this act of Adoration help me to grow in self- knowledge and make improvements.in my life?

I am sure there is some deep theological explanation for these profound consequences, but the best way I can explain what happens is that the One who created me, explains me to me and I grow in self-knowledge.

Progress happens because in offering my presence to His Presence, I am giving Jesus what He thirsts for  . . . . me, and because He cannot be outdone in generosity, He returns my small act of self-giving by fixing all that in me needs fixing.

If would like to take advantage of this guaranteed way to a better you but do not know where an Adoration Chapel is, then visit the website: http://therealpresence.org/ for a listing of churches and chapels that have Eucharistic Adoration.

Seized by Christ

Weary, limping, drained of energy, I fall into a clump on my bedroom floor. Tears flow but soon even they become too exhausting. I am spent. I don’t know how long I continue to lie there; no thought, no word, nothing is left.

Then, I hear them. They are coming for me.

For years they have stalked me. Their snarling whispers and laughter at every stumble have been my companions for as long as I can remember. They have been waiting for their prey to give up the fight and are giddy with excitement that today is the day.  I feel a tug at my ankles and slowly feel them dragging me closer to the edge.  I try to resist but am just too weak. 

A fire begins to flicker deep inside of me.  Where is it coming from?

Is it something beyond dread creeping up to the surface to stake its claim or something else altogether; a strategically placed trigger being tripped just in time? Whatever the source, it is ugly in its anger yet desperate in its plea as it escapes my lips, “I give up. What do you want from me? I am so tired. You just have to take over because I cannot do this by myself anymore. If you don't show up, I am finished trying!"

Images begin to appear; memories offered randomly. A question forms in my brain, “What is this?” Then swiftly I am caught up into two strong arms and held tightly. Like a corpse being hidden in a blanket, I am wrapped in a thick, warm covering that pins my loneliness and imprisons my despair. My Captor whispers in words so piercing they cut right into my heart, “You are exactly who I created you to be. I love you. I promise you will never feel alone again. I am with you always.”

I have been seized by Christ.

Peace is the blanket that comforts me and Love is the Stranger who has clutched me from the pull of the abyss. I hear the snarling, drooling complaints from the edge. They have worked so hard and for so long to just give up and let their prey be taken without a fuss. Surely they know they are no match for my Liberator, but I cannot blame them.  With an eternity of suffering, even just the brief second of victory in capturing a soul from God must be a relief worth pursuing.   

My Rescuer looks away from me for only an instance to face my enemies. He looks them directly in the eye and with a fearsome sound that shakes the ground He speaks, “She has chosen Me, now Go!”

And like St. Mary Magdalene before me, my demons flee trembling.

D'Jesus Uncrossed vs Jesus Crossed: The Ultimate Revenge

In my  life-long quest to be like St. Mary Magdalene’s “Constant Woman” and imitate her love for Christ, I feel impelled to weigh in on the D’Jesus Uncrossed debate regarding the Saturday Night Live skit which aired a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, it was sick and offensive, but the reason it hit so many nerves was because it was just so wrong!  The talking heads on the news channels argue the double standard of offending Christians with ease but hesitating to do the same to Muslims and Jews but I am sure members of both those religions can find many examples of the same type of persecution.

Perhaps the reason it strikes more harshly with Jesus is because the message of this skit flies in the face of Truth. It is precisely in being “crossed” that our Lord wreaks His revenge.

The Passion Cross, called so aptly a sign of contradiction, conquered violence by accepting violence. All of humanity's sinfulness past, present and future was heaped onto our Lord's body during His Passion as the price for our souls.  Instead of dishing it out, He simply took it . . . . for us.

Jesus Christ came down from His lofty throne at the right hand of God, the Father where He was glorified and worshiped 24/7. He willingly out of love for His Father and for us put Himself into the hands of His creatures for one simple reason: we had gotten it all wrong and needed to know that God desires charity not vengeance, even if waged in His name.  God wants us to know He loves us and as His creation we are also to love.

That is why this skit was just so wrong because though Jesus is fully man, He is also fully God and therefore incapable of the actions portrayed.  Our souls cry out in the face of such offense against God.

So instead of engaging in the same offense, let us Christians seek revenge by praising God for giving us His Son for our salvation. Let us forgive those ignorant SNL writers and actors because it is obvious they know not what they do. Let us admonish them in charity, pray for them in community and humbly draw them to God’s Mercy.  

And let us always boast of Christ Crucified and the reason for our hope.

How to Cure a Sick Society with St. Mary Magdalene

The FIRST station of the cross: Jesus is Condemned to Death

Mary Magdalene’s heart must have felt it had broken in two when she heard these words. Her Lord who had scooped her up from the dirt both literally and figuratively was going to be killed. He was the one man who she learned to trust completely and who she knew deeply loved her and now He was being forcefully taken from her.  What is her response?

The response of any of us is a sum of what we have been taught and what we have learned. At the feet of Jesus, Mary Magdalene was able to discard the lies of the seven demons because these lies were no match to the Truth that pierced her heart. She could now see the lies for what they are. How did she respond?  A true character of a person is how he or she responds to the information given. Are we quiet in the face of persecution or do we speak out? Do we act in anger or forgiveness for the wrongs done to us?

For the individual and for the society this is a life-long process and can only be done if we are informed of the best practices that yield the most good. We modern people think that we are smarter than our ancestors but I propose we are stupider than ever. Why? Because though we are inundated with 24/7 information; it is all opinions and agendas.  We have no arsenal from our collective education to know either how to discern fact from propaganda or how to properly respond to the information that is provided.

I read today in an article by George Weigel that democracy as a way of self-government depends on the character of a people. If the collective character has no virtue, has not learned how to think but only what to think, is distracted from what really matters to what only excites the senses, than so goes the society.  We spend more money on education than ever before and yet are more ignorant  than ever before.

The missing ingredients from the debates on gun control, violence, drug abuse, immigration, economic solutions, etc. is a people steeped in a liberal education that teaches “how” to think and children raised in the art and science of the virtues. With each generation lost, we become a people more pliable and more willing to comply with the power at hand.

My in-laws were purging items from their house recently and asked us if we wanted a set of books they purchased when my husband was young. It is a set of encyclopedias from Britannica Great Books titled, The Great Conversation. Included in the set are books by Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, St. Augustine and Sigmund Freud just to name a few.  I am intrigued since these have always been names I recognized as great, but never read what they actually wrote. I have made it my New Year’s Resolution to read the entire set of books.  I’ve started with the introductory book written by Robert M. Hutchins which explains why these books were compiled. This introductory was written in 1952 and posits that a liberal education is a must in a democratic and industrialized society like the United States.  Without it, people will have too much leisure time and no way to fill it except with idle pursuits. Sound familiar?  He says that if every citizen was taught a liberal education based on the writings of great thinkers then leisure time would be spent debating and putting into practice great thought. This set is based on Western Civilization but he says upfront that Eastern Civilization is just as important but not the scope of this particular set. He lamented what would happen if our (this is 1952 remember) current educational system would be left intact that rather keeps children busy until they are adults and tells them what to know instead of teaching how to think.

I sat back and realized his worst fears have been realized.  We are that stupid society that spends more time talking about the antics of the Kardashians than what is the best response to quashing the evil raining upon Southern Sudan.  We are idiots being molded into whatever the current powers want us to be.  If you have ever watched The Matrix, you can imagine that instead of Neo – we are the dupes in the barrels with probes screwed into our heads.

So how do we reverse this? How do we stand up to this propaganda and say, “My mind does not belong to you?”  We have two ways and they are all at our fingertips thanks to the internet: We teach our children and ourselves the virtues and we pick up these great books by the great thinkers . . .  and we read them!

We put into practice what we discern as Truth.

The virtues, which by the way are the antidote to the seven demons also known as the vices that so plagued Mary Magdalene, build character and teach how to respond in all situations.  They are prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance. These four are the human virtues that are rooted in the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.  I leave it up to you to research how each is defined but just by looking at them you can see that our society is sorely missing their influence.

The good news is that rising from a lump of putty - or out of the barrel - into a thinking and discerning person of character is very do-able.  Just as St. Mary Magdalene had the good sense to sit at Jesus’ feet despite the chiding of her sister (Luke 10:38-42), we can take charge of our own education and the education of our children.  Turn off the television and put down the fashion magazines and learn how to be the change that you want to see in the world.

So how did St. Mary Magdalene respond when she heard the news that our Lord was condemned to death?  She persevered. She remembered what Jesus taught her and relied on His Truth to keep faith in God and hope in His promise.  In other words, she practiced her virtues.

How to choose God . . . even in a zombie apocalyse

Author's Note: This blog was originally published at the Pilgrim Log blog for the Pilgrim Center of Hope   (http://pilgrimcenter.wordpress.com/) under the title: Simple and Complicated: Thoughts on John Paul II and the Walking Dead

G. K. Chesterton, English writer, thinker and Catholic convert wrote many books and essays on the nature of man, God and life. On his death bed he summed it up in one sentence:

“It is between light and darkness, and everyone must choose his side.”

A friend of mine once spoke of how complicated our Catholic faith is. I have come to realize that both Chesterton and my friend are correct. The Catholic faith is both complicated and simple.

God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. Jesus gave us the eight beatitudes and two commandments,

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. "

We Catholics turned these commandments and beatitudes into the Catechism of the Catholic Church and libraries full of documents, writings and studies on our faith. Our Catholic faith is both complicated and simple because humanity is complicated and God is simple. In fact, God can even reduce His twelve commandments and eight beatitudes into one word: Love

God is Love.

So what is our response to this love? This is where we like to complicate things.

After watching Witness to Hope, a film about the life of Pope John Paul, II, I became intrigued with this man of God who has given the world, Theology of the Body – teachings on how the human body is created to respond to God. As someone who always hated her body; his teachings have turned my Catholic faith inside-out, upside-down and set it on fire.

A few weeks ago I bought the book,  Witness to Hope written by George Weigel so I can learn by reading what I should have learned by living through.

This book is not light reading. It is thick with facts, but the gems of wisdom are so precious they compel me to painstakingly read every word for fear I will miss one.

A few weeks ago, I am huddled in my corner chair reading the book while my sons and husband watch their favorite show, the Walking Dead. This show set amidst a zombie apocalypse pits a small rag-tag group of survivors against a majority population of walkers; dead people who somehow are still able to walk and eat.

As I’m reading, I find one of the gems of wisdom: Person and Act, a study by JPII. George Weigel writes about it (emphasis is mine):

Our personhood, he argues, is constituted by the fact of our freedom, which we come to know through truly “human acts.” In choosing one act (to pay a debt I have freely contracted) rather than another (to cheat on my debt), I am not simply responding to external conditions (fear of jail) or internal pressure (guilt). I am freely choosing what is good. In that free choosing, I am also binding myself to what I know is good and true. In this free choice of the good and true, Wojtyla suggests, we can discern the transcendence of the human person. I go beyond myself, I grow as a person, by realizing my freedom and confirming to the good and the true. Through my freedom, I narrow the gap between the person-I-am and the person-I-ought to be.

I sit back contemplating this, when I realize it is being played out on the TV:

The leader of the survivors, Rick, has to deal with a situation: A member of his group has been bitten by a zombie walker, but not killed. Fellow group members are yelling at Rick to kill the man before the inevitable occurs. He looks around and sees his wife, son and the others with terror-stricken faces. Rick knows this man will eventually become a flesh-eating zombie, but for now he is still a man and member of their group.


He turns to the bitten man trying desperately to decide what the correct response is. A scuffle begins as some of the others attempt to take matters into their own hands. Rick makes his choice and shuts it all down with the words, “We don’t kill the living.”

In a complicated situation, Rick chooses a simple good.

Our Catholic faith teaches various way to obey God’s simple command to love. It is why our faith is often described as a web because no matter where you land, you can take intricate strands back and forth, up and down but they all eventually reach the middle . . . . God is love.

I have been making a conscious effort to decide how I “should” respond in the decisions and choices I make every day. To know the simple good, I have to know my faith. Because of God’s simple love for us, He provides it in as many complicated ways as we humans need, by way of Scripture and the Catechism.

Though I will never have to encounter zombie life or death, I may face issues in my family of unwanted pregnancy or removing life support. It’s comforting to know that our Lord will provide the simple answer to these complicated decisions. I trust my Catholic faith to narrow that gap between the woman-I-am and the woman-I-ought to be, and show me how to simply choose the good.