Father Richard Beyer - Catholic Heart Day by Day: Uplifting Stories for Courageous Living

A Catholic Heart
Day by Day

A Catholic Heart Day by Day: Uplifting Stories for Courageous Living

2011 First Printing

Copyright 2011 by Richard Beyer

ISBN: 978-1-55725-963-9

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations designated VULGATE are from the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible.

This edition is an abridged version of The Catholic Heart Day by Day.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the original edition of this book as follows:

Beyer, Richard J.

The Catholic heart day by day : uplifting stories for courageous living / by Richard Beyer.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-55725-600-3

1. Devotional calendars--Catholic Church. 2. Christian life--Catholic authors. I. Title.

BX2182.3.B49 2008

242.2dc22

2008030877

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press
Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

Readings

WHEN THE FOLLOWERS OF JESUS founded the first Christian communities and conveyed the gospel by word of mouth, through story and personal experience, they resonated the enthusiasm and joy of the first Pentecost. It took three and a half centuries for the selected writings of the Church finally to be compiled, canonized, and reproduced as a New Testament by Emperor Constantines scribes. Through three long centuries of persecution, the Church relied on storytellers who were on fire with the Holy Spirit, traveling throughout the known world to tell the story of Christ over campfires and in marketplaces. To be sure, the Church eventually developed doctrinal divisions, theologies, and philosophical categories to articulate its experience of the Risen Christ, but even today the first thing a convert is told is a story.

By their nature, stories address the heart as well as the mind. A personal experience, story, or image can sing the truth and not just tell it, invoking in the hearer an intellectual response, but also a personal and emotive one. As John Henry Newman taught, universals can delight and inform the mind, but only particulars can move the heart to action and commitment.

A Catholic Heart Day by Day is a kaleidoscope of stories, images, allegories, and portraits that seeks to complement our faith, not so much in theology or doctrine, but in living love, living action, living heroism. As we spend this year exploring the heart of Catholicism, we will be exploring at the same time the deepest and most beautiful aspects of our own humanity and its limitless potential.

The title Mother of God (from the Greek Theotokos, or Godbearer) has great significance in the church not only because of its connotations for Mary, but also for the whole mystery of God made man, the Incarnation. To begin with, the Virgin Mary conceived and brought forth, in his human nature, the One who is God from all eternity. She did not, of course, conceive the divine nature of her Son, but is Mother of God in the sense that from her own flesh and blood she gave to God a human nature like hers. And this human nature was more than flesh; it included the very personhood or humanness of our God, Jesus Christ.

When we reflect that from Jesus earthly birth his divine nature was integrated and united completely to his human nature, we begin to see the full import of the title Theotokos. It speaks of the mystical union of the human and divine that formed the God-man, and it actually says more about Jesus than it does about Mary.

In the early church there were many false teachings about Christ, especially Arianism, which taught that Jesus was not coeternal with the Father, but was created by him. The title Mother of God was declared a dogma of the faith by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 as a clear statement of the true nature of Jesus Christ. It is also the most ancient title of Our Lady, used by fathers of the church as early as AD 200.

One evening a man sat in reflective silence after reading St.Lukes account of the Incarnation. Theres no point to God becoming a man, he mused. Why would an all-powerful God want to share even one of his divine moments with the likes of us? Even if he did, why would he choose to be born in an animal stable? The whole thing is crazy. Surely, if God wanted to come down to earth, he would have chosen some other way.

Suddenly, he was roused from his reverie by a strange sound outside. He went to the window and saw a small gaggle of blue geese frantically honking and aimlessly flopping about in the snow. They seemed dazed and confused. Apparently, they had been left behind in the flight formations of a larger flock on its way from the arctic islands to the warmer climate of the Gulf of Mexico. Moved to compassion, the man tried to shoo the poor geese into his warm garage, but the more he shooed, the more they panicked. If they only realized Im just trying to do whats best for them, he thought to himself. How can I make them understand that I want to help them?

Then a thought crossed his mind. If for just a minute I could become one of them, an ordinary goose, and communicate with them in their own language, they would know what Im trying to do. Suddenly, he remembered Christmas, and a smile came over his face. He pictured that ordinary-looking infant, lying in that stable in Bethlehem, and he knew the answer to his Christmas problem: God had become one of us to direct us to our homeland, to affirm his love for us by the only means possibleby becoming one of us.

Its interesting that the story of Christs birth came first to shepherds. They were despised by the orthodox Jews of their day since they were unable to keep the details of the ceremonial law and could not observe all the meticulous hand-washings and rules and regulations. Their flocks made far too constant demands on them, and so the orthodox looked down on them. But it was to simple men of the fields that Gods message first came.