Agents of Love

It is because the Beloved is who the Beloved is that one at once becomes more enthralled in the pursuits of the Beloved as it is, in degree, directed towards the One Who Is Infinitely Lovable.

Such a pursuit attaches a portion of the Infinite to the Finite and beauty to what is not yet perfected. Love becomes a journey in the perfection process, not simply for gain of one's self but so also the whole world and all contained therein. It is there that we fill in what was in Christ's afflictions were 'lacking.' (cf. Col. 1:24) His Sacrifice lacks nothing except our participation, as St. Paul says, in the works that the Lord has "prepared for us to enter into." (cf. Eph. 2:10)

One's acceptance of imperfection is one of it being in the past, yet there is a perfection that we are called to in the same Spirit of the One Who Is. We mustn't be discouraged when faced with imperfection or imperfect love but, rather, be patient with the Other as He is patient with us. As the King is to his servant, so must we as his servants be patient to our fellow servants lest we be required to "pay to the last penny." (cf. Mt. 5:26)

This is the secret of love and mercy. We are called to be agents of change in this ineffable love. We are called to be agents of Love; we are called Disciples of Love.

May He be praised.

John Paul II's "Magnificat"

Magnificat

My soul, magnify the glory of the Lord,
Father of great Poetry — and so good.

With wondrous rhythm he fortified my youth,
on an oak anvil he hammered out my song.

Resound, my soul, with the glory of the Lord
who made knowledge of angels, most kindly Maker.

Now at your heavenly banquet, I drain
a chalice with wine overflowing — your servant in prayer:
in gratitude for the angelic glow You lit for my youth
whittling its rough shape from the wood of a linden tree.

You omnipotent, the wondrous woodcarver of saints,
there are many oaks on my road, many birches.
I am a village field, a sunclad flower bed,
A young face jutting from the Tatra rocks.

I bless your sowing with sunrise and sunset;
Sower, I am your soil — widely scatter your grain —
may a field of rye and a castle of spruce
grow from my youth cradled in yearning and pain.

Let happiness magnify You — a great mystery:
with primordial song you have stretched my lungs,
made my face sink into the blue of the sky,
a shower of music falling on my strings —

and in this melody You came as Christ, a vision.
Look ahead, young Slave, look, the solstice fires!
The sacred oak is still in leaf, your king has not withered,
but become for the people a lord and a priest.

Magnify the Lord, oh my soul, for your calm foreboding,
for Gothic yearning in spring’s incarnation,
for youth aflame — wine chalice of elation,
for autumn born in the likeness of heather and stubble.

Magnify Him for poetry, for you and for pain:
the joy in mastering earth, gold, blue skies,
the passion of generations in words incarnate;
You will harvest this ripeness when it falls and dies.

The pain is evening sorrow of things half-uttered,
when beauty overwhelms us, and ecstasy is ours,
God bending to the harp — but on a rocky track
a sunbeam breaks, and words lose their power.

Words fail, and I am like a fallen angel,
a statue on marble pedestal — stone on stone —
but You breathed yearning into the marble arms,
the statue longs to take off — angel again.

And I magnify You also for the haven there is in You,
the reward for each song — day of holy quest,
for the joy that sings the hymn of motherhood,
the quiet word of fulfillment — Eli manifest!

Father, be blessed for the angel’s sorrow
for the song that crushes falsehood, for the soul’s inspired fight.
Break all love of words in us, and destroy
The puffed-up form parading like a fool.

A Slav troubadour, I walk Your roads and play
to maidens at the solstice, to shepherds with their flock,
but, wide as this vale, my song of prayer
I throw for You only, before your throne of oak.

Blessed are you, oh song among songs,
blessed the soul’s sowing and the seeds of light.
Let my soul magnify Him who threw over my shoulders
princely satin, velvet’s soft delight.

Blessed be the Carver-of-saints and prophet and Slav.
have mercy on me, a publican inspired.
Magnify the Lord, oh my soul, in humble love
singing the hymn: Holy, Holy, Holy!

Now the song is one. Poetry, descend!
The seed like the soul yearns, insatiable.
May my road keep to the shade of oaks and birches,
and may my youthful harvest be pleasing to God.

Slav Book of yearning, on the last day resound
like brass, choirs of the resurrection
in virginal holy song, in poetry that bows
with the hymn of humanity — God’s Magnificat.

Karol Wojtyla - Cracow, spring-summer, 1939
Published in Karol Wojtyla's Collected Poems, 1982. Translated by Jerzy Peterkiewicz.

Conversion & The Abiding Love of the Father

Faith is not the reason for God's forgiveness. Not even is hope the reason, though it does not disappoint. Even when we are off at a distance and on our way, He comes with haste to meet us and forgive the contrite. Faith is how we see His forgiveness in our lives because it is out of faith and hope that love, and, in it all, conversion comes to those who return Home.

In both the older and the prodigal son, we should see how we could fail. His love does not fail or falter, not even for a moment... His love remains no matter how far we run, but He will not impose the love He holds. Neither to the returning nor the remaining son does He desist in His abiding love. He waits for both sons' conversions. It is there that He reminds us of all the lavishing He wishes to impart on us and how He wishes everything He has to be our own.

"Conversion is where obedience turns into love." - Father David Konderla

Love Does Not Doubt Love

The sacrifice of an immediate joy for a greater and far longer one, though thought in the moment as a folly or farce, is far more fantastic and favorable to one's very self than being gorged on the temporal pleasures or the immediate response of even a great good in its own right. It is often, in the delayed gratification resulting with a gift given of a far greater good than had one hoped first for, that its delayed but not demurred joy is not only larger and more lively a gift but so also more effective, covering every suffering or lack of happiness thus preceding. Love, though never counting the costs nor counting the returns, profits more from the latter one of delay than the former of the moment. Love does not answer always in the most perceptive of ways, but often it is in the quiet wait that its joys and its beautiful installment of what is yet to come is shown as a sweet enveloping light from Heaven, and then we recall that "He so loved the world that He gave us His only Son." (cf. Jn 3:16)

"I know that love strengthens every vocation, that love is everything, that it embraces all times and all places, because it is eternal." - St. Therese of Lisieux

And in that truth the hope and faith in Love Divine rests. In that Truth Love bears out the hope that is Hope for it was not seen and the Faith of the one who had not yet seen. Love, thus, does not doubt Love, and thus it waits steadfastly for the faith of the Fallen, of the Broken, of the Ones weakened but not lost to sin to then render their hearts and not their hands and thus make known fully how His Love has made their lives' "steadfastness manifest" for Love does all these things for its own sake and because its own property is mercy and truth itself.

"Faith without charity bears no fruit, while charity without faith would be a sentiment constantly at the mercy of doubt. Faith and charity each require the other, in such a way that each allows the other to set out along its respective path."

Benedict XVI, Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei

Deo gratias.

Love on the Way: Take Courage!

How easy is it to remain on the mountaintop and pitch the proverbial tent! It is very good to be here... but where is He calling you? Where? Reach into the depths, beyond the fears that remain. How can He do anything with you if you do not first release the fallacious fears of recollection that rest on past failures and past falls. Perfection lies not in the past but in the future.

Ultimately, love is about the future in Communion, not the past of disunion. Make the daily offering to unite all the Little Things to the Lord and His Sacrifice for His union with His bride, and He will show you the way to love without fear, to take courage without despair, and to give, in turn, what you have been given. Love finds His way to His Beloved.

Learn from the Master how He loves His Beloved. Take courage! With Him, He carries His Cross and helps you with yours on the Victory March to Love! Love takes His form with every breath, with every step, with every drop of blood, of sweat. Love finds His way to His Beloved.

His love does not dither to the harshness of the present life, nor does it to the past. Its luminance lasts beyond the night, and it harkens the days to come. His love is grace itself, and it shares with us His Victory March. The battle for Life has already been won. Rejoice in His love and share it with others on the Way, on that Way of Sorrows. Take courage! Rest with Him in His Communion; rest in preparation for the good works ahead He has prepared for you to enter into. Love finds His way to His Beloved.

Beloved, rest in His love. His Wedding Feast awaits!

Love Requires Communion

Love does not require two people, and yet, at the same time, it cannot be forced or coerced. It must be a gift to be accepted or denied, received or rejected. Love is not a pure emotion, though emotions and passions can drive it, but a willed act. It cannot be as fickle as the winds or the rain, or exacted like a science or weather phenomena. Love cannot be predicted for the simple fact that it requires a free will ready to return that love which has been first given, and thus to be shared with the Other, with each of the ones surrounding. Love requires Communion.

It is there that Love takes on all its properties and all of its varied and diverse forms. It is here in this moment, when it is shared that the seed of faith grows, that hope is renewed, and that Love takes root.

Any setback, any humiliation, any perceived foible or failure possibly seen by others, any heartbreak, any loss of possession, any separation of affection and touch, or even the sense of abject failure need not go unpurposed, unused, or wasted in the pursuit of this Communion of Love. The Spirit of God gives us fruits of grace especially in these humble moments when the consolations dry up and the earthly happiness ceases. The rains of grace shall come again, and the new day shall dawn once more and break from on high. This temporal winter so too shall pass. And even in these dry moments, there Love is.

"Love and truth will meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth will spring from the earth; justice shall look down from heaven." Psalm 85:11-12

And so it is, Love through Communion and Communion through selfless love. It isn't so much that we go wandering the world in search of Love in all the wrong places; it is that we have forgotten that it wasn't we who first loved but that we must realize that we must first be loved before we can learn to speak adequately in the language demanded by Love and of the One who created us. No single response is exactly the same to the demands of love. And those demands, which may seem high and distant at times or number many, distill into each the basic callings that each person receives as the seed to their very "vocation to love," as St. Therese of Lisieux once said.

"In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love because he first loved us." 1 John 4:17-19

Her struggle to win herself over to her "Little Way" is as legendary as it is simple: to be all things to all, she must first be love for the other in her own distinct, simple, child-like way. She was not everything, and yet through Love's massive expanse she became, through the Communion of Love and through the Faith and Hope she professed, the Love she desired so much. She did not allow the stumbling block of fear to obscure the "lamp upon [her] feet" and "light of [her] path" (cf. Psalm 119:105).

Love has no other ultimate end besides Communion with God, who is Love. And so, while the impostor examples placate in the interim, anything that does not lead us to that ultimate end of Communion with Him—be it trifle or tempest, longing or largesse, silence or speech, climax or desolation, height or depth—we find ourselves unable to be filled, by which we are unable to be in lasting peace, and in the end through which we are unable to have everlasting life itself without this aim. No matter its tried and noble path, if it not end in love, then it would be all dross. Without this Love, supreme of all virtues, we would be nothing, for without Him we are. And with Him, no matter the past, Love conquerors all not by force but by simple unending Truth in Communion with the Creator Blest. "We love because he first loved us." (1 Jn 4:19)

Where else but first at the Sacrifice of the Cross at Calvary in the bloody form and then at the re-presentation at the Altar under the unbloody form of the Eucharist first instituted by Christ himself as a Sacrament of Love? Where else can Love come down to be poured into all the Faithful to both strengthen them and to show them Love's most sublime way of entering into Communion with His bride, the Church? Love has no end, except in Him. Let us return in love by whom all loves so beautifully excel in bringing one another God, in whom we are strengthened for the blessed race still to be run but that has already been won, and through Him we have everlasting life.

"At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood. He did this in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the centuries until he should come again, and so to entrust to his beloved spouse, the Church, a memorial of his death and resurrection: a sacrament of love, a sign of unity, a bond of charity, a paschal banquet in which Christ is consumed, the mind is filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us." (Sacrosanctum Concilium 47)

Sacramental Life: A Fiat to Truth

The moment one forgets that the imperfection isn't an end but merely an illusionary setback, that it isn't an indictment alone but a vindication based upon the One Who Saves, upon His mercy, and upon the grace that flows from Him as a font of every blessing here on Earth below; not until then do we realize that His love, which is mercy and truth itself, is reason enough to strive for perfection in and by, and through His grace. Love has no further end but to beget further love in the deepest recesses and places of the heart of one's beloved and in the heart of whom, who bears Love's origin. It becomes senseless and without meaning, which it is to say life itself, when man forgets that primordial truth which springs from existence itself—that we are loved and that we are called to love within the boundless confines of eternity. Without a fiat to this truth, man cannot love, and if he cannot love then mercy and salvation cannot be fully accepted.

Love has no end until Love is espoused to the Other and in that espousal the Lover becomes fully known to the Beloved and the Beloved becomes fully known in the most intimate of espousals to the Lover.

This is the meaning of the Sacramental Life. That is to say: everything has meaning between the Lover and the Beloved, and the one who is loved—that is, the Beloved—wastes no time in reuniting with the Lover and desires nothing less than Communion, blessed Communion, with the One who loves without any reservation or fear.

We love the Other, not because we are first, but because "He first loved us" and because He first "espoused us."

King of Cotton

As white as Cotton... As bold and bright...
As shining as the light... As loud as thunder and quick as lightning...

This day, my friends, my brothers in arms,
My brothers of Maroon and White... This day shall not be forgotten.

Speed on throughout the land, to all corners, to all who with us stand.
Let the Spirit ring forth, the Spirit of Aggieland!

We are in the Land of, the King of Cotton! Let this not be forgotten!

Love as Vocation

Vocation is an interesting topic. Much is often said about it in Catholic circles, especially for those of "religious" vocations, as though there only some specific religious vocation. Hardly is this the case, but it is quibble of the language to be sure.

Or is it only a failure of the language? Is it only an oddity of the English language as the word is? Is it shackled to conceptions that might be ill-formed or, perhaps, only under-formed? Could it be a lack of blossom in the modern conception of the word of "vocation?" Perhaps.

Vocationally, at least within some very reverent and holy groups of Catholics, the idea of the priesthood as the singular "holy" vocation—that is to say, in a way, religious—has historically been the priesthood or consecrated vocations. However, this might as well be a slighted perspective. Not always has this view been the case, but it has prevailed more often than perhaps is necessary. It belabors the earthly joys that the particular vocations offer up in one way or another. However, all authentic vocations do just this besides, in large or small ways, throughout the history of the Church. As it ought to be in the first case.

Nevertheless, we do hear prayers for the religious vocations to flourish. That those with these internal callings to be supported and rightly so. It is necessary, it is needed, and it is helpful. However, it could be say it is also a hindrance to the larger perspective.

How can we raise society merely from these—pardon the evocative language—"miracle cases?" Where are the ordinary cases of holiness? There lies the basis for each authentic vocation lived out as a testament to the Gospel preached. It is the Gospel preached without words but with actions.

God does work miracles, everyday miracles, and ones of intense conversions. Rightly and beautifully so, He does. However, He also works the smaller miracles, the ordinary miracles as well day in and day out within the Domestic Church. Building the Family into the Holy Family, in parcels or parts, raises the watermark for all subsequent actions. The holiness—the set-apart reality of grace—flows from this consecration of the ordinary, as Blessed John Paul the Great taught with his call for a "universal call to holiness" born out of the Second Vatican Council and one of its Apostolic Constitution, Lumen Gentium, as well as John Paul II's Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte" and his Apostolic Exhortation "Familiaris Consortio."

Certainly each vocation builds upon and supports the others, but it takes an initial spark of the Domestic Church, the "Holy Family," the hidden years of toil and work, to bring foundation for the work of the Vineyard at the summation of each person's vocation.

With regard to one's vocation, the heart should burn for consummation, which is to say: to consume and be consumed and yet remain as ever before, constant and unhindered for eternity, a burning bush that remains unburned as zeal presses on in beauty bright. One's vocation shouldn't be the path of least resistance, to the easy way out. It should be the innermost selfless desire wrapped in the greatest good with one's gift set—nothing more, nothing less. It should bear itself through trial and rejection. It should be peerless in its presence, open to questioning, yet receiving no doubt. In the end, the vocation is Love Itself, so in Love should one wait who is discouraged in the Vocation set, in its timing and its wait that Love so gently begets. Come, O Love Divine. Teach us thy ways to peace. Thy name be blessed.

"The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; It signifies Love, it produces Love." - St. Thomas Aquinas

It's been such a blessed time to spend so much of it in reflection at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, which has a re-presentation of the Holy House that Lady Richeldis was instructed by Our Lady to build in model of the Holy House in Nazareth.

There is a great joy to be in the Holy House in Nazareth and contemplate God's inner wisdom, the beauty of Love come down. To be at the prime example of the Domestic Church and thus pray for the whole world.

I was given the view, the quiet peace at the Sunday Mass of the Feast of the Holy Family at Our Lady of Walsingham to see a young family, a young suited man with his wife and their young child who kept smiling through out the High Mass, peering back perhaps at the organist and the choir in the loft. Not a cry or frown came from her. I couldn't help but focus there as the readings went on, as it was the Feast Day of the Holy Family... and I was enthralled with the smile, with the image of them. They were among those who went for a wedding anniversary blessing, which I thought was fitting to the time. The joy and contentment of such an example to reverberate and echo the liveable example of the Holy Family.

It amplified to me such a wonderful reverberation of the following reflection:

"[From the family in Nazareth] we learn silence. If only we could once again appreciate its great value...the silence of Nazareth should teach us how to meditate in peace and quiet, to reflect on the deeply spiritual, and to be open to the voice of God's inner wisdom and the counsel of his true teachers. Nazareth can teach us the value of study and preparation, of meditation, of a well-ordered personal spiritual life, and of silent prayer that is known only to God." Pope Paul VI, 5 January 1964

Let us live these words with joy for the New Year ahead. Deo gratias, Anno Domini 2013!

A Shepherd's Chorus

On holy ground we trod...
Glory be to Him Who Is, to our living God.
Will His grace come down again this morn,
This day when He, the Christ child, was born?

Will His grace come to us and visit us this day?
Heaven come down upon us, descend down to us,
Cover us in the grace to stay
For us this Christmas Day.

Manger-born, lowly-lived,
More than this, more is He than this...

A King in squalor
Raised up with selfless valor
For Love, a babe, is born unto us,
Love, our Love, He—Christ Jesus!

Good Christian men, join in!
With all voices begin
The Chorus to end all choruses then...

Join with us, the Praises now;
Join with us, as zeal allows!
Christ is born, Christ the King!

All glory now be;
All glory now rest!
Christ is near; Christ is here!
Christ be forever blest!

Dedicated to Our Lady of Walsingham,
Houston, Texas, December 25, 2012.

To the One Whom Heaven Has Hidden

To the One whom Heaven has hidden... What glorious vision,
He for whom Time obeys and space diminish!
Sight remains obscured and the distance hidden,
This the Royal Road He hath given!

Speak of the one whom You have held from me, O Gracious One...
Speak of her as radiance that reflects the Light of Your Son!

Love, O Love, won't thou speak of the Other and in us indwell
Love's Spirit, and in all the tyrant temporal tempests quell.
O Love come now to us and dwell!

Make of us a shelter to weather the storm,
Out of the dust and air to form
Us in your likeness and to us transform,
That which is Love Outpoured.

Come to us, O Love in hiding...
Give us the grace to trust Your timing.

Tota Pulchra Es: The Virgin's Example

Love requires action, and thus sacrifice, at the very least to prove that our faith is not dead, to provide the fruits of the hope of what is to come in the Vineyard when the Springtime comes and the Wedding Feast is upon us. The action is but a kiss of truth to the beautiful words: "I love you."

Without the fruits that follow, the words are but bitter fruits not yet ripened for the harvest and are best disregarded until the maturation process has begun. Love, like new wine, cannot bear itself from unripened fruits. Even when borne the process takes years to age a wine or mature a love that is not easily forgotten or is utterly praiseworthy.

We must say yes to the love that abides, not because it depends on us, but rather, because it depends and begins with Him who is.

What better earthly example of these gifts put into action than our Blessed Mother, the Virgin conceived without Original Sin? Why should we limit those whom God so richly blesses? Is it a matter of Scripture? Who is this is so "Full of Grace?" And why? Because of her merits? Hardly! However, for God's own plan and desires has she been made spotless and yet still complete in free will! Why denigrate the mother of our Lord and Savior? Why is there no reverence at the gift of His mother to the Beloved Disciple? Are we not called to be the Beloved Disciple, too? Are we not to take her into our homes?

Can we live a life of love in action, not simply of movement but also contemplation, to the love that has been so richly poured out to us that we, even in graced moments, cannot fully fathom here during our limited time on Earth with our limited purview?

Even the most graced souls, as it was with our Blessed Mother, did not have full view of God's plan and yet, in Mary's example of her fiat, proclaimed in her graced words, "Be it done unto me according to thy word" (cf. Luke 1:38). It was Simeon who foretold that a sword would pierce her heart for the sorrow to be experienced and so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed (cf. Luke 2:35-36). We must share in that sweet burden if those thoughts are to be revealed.

We are called to be faithful and fruitful in whatever we do, so that His glory may be shown through us, not for our own sake but for His glory. With this simple truth in mind, let us unite our prayers with those of our Mother in gentleness and kindness, that God's mercy and love will endure through our many faults. Let us love with the Heart of Mary the Sacred Heart of Christ, who bears all things for He, in union with Father and the Holy Spirit, is Love made manifest.

Let us rest in this ineffable truth, this beauty too wonderful for words and, like our Blessed Mother's example, let us treasure all these things and ponder them in our hearts (cf. Luke 2:19).

The Marks of Love: Fruit That Remains

It is into the final hours of the day, the deepest recesses of the mind that one reaches... as set upon the shores of an Eternal sunset, as slumber sets into sight.

All the desires, the deepest dreams of the heart bear out to the Creator from the Created... as a whisper into the cold, dark night.

Love has its end, not in the take, but the give. Therein is the wellspring of every dream, of every request: to see his Maker, to make his redress.

But to the human heart there is more: to love whom Love has given, to give to whom one has striven... To confess of all the hopes and desires and the dreams on the one whom Love has blessed.

The heart requires both the Creator and the Other. It requires the Triune Love of the Other with the Divine.

Love does not die out; Love does not return to the Creator without first bearing fruit. And with that Love, it is fruit that remains. It does not die on the Vine.

Love bears it all into one, for the endurance of the Spirit is greater than the failures of the flesh and the weakness to believe not the Truth in Love and the Love in Truth.

The rejection does nothing to mute the Truth, nor does it demur the ardor of the Love. It is still the same; it is still the Faith confessed.

Love presses onward undeterred, without ceasing. The chorus of the divine music of the heart resounds again and again: "Perfect love casts out fear."

Love never ceases.

To All Whom Sleep Doth Possess

To all whom sleep doth possess,
May all honor and glory in the Christ believed
Be now at once seen, and all with one voice confess
That Christ is King and reigneth over the See Eternal
With one voice in compact unity and share the Kingdom Blessed.

To all whom labors doth distress,
May all glory in the Royal Road trod be seen,
That Christ's road is ours now, too, in our egress,
And the joy of following the Master on the Way
Be at once made sweet and sorrowful in times of duress.

To all in the Holy Train, to all who Confess...
Join us here below, in our thoughts and in our prayer,
Join us in the dying of the night and the rising of day,
That with newness of heart we purge all that would keep us away
From that Communion in the Sacred Heart of Him who is,
Who was, and who will be ever be, One God Living and True.
To Him be all honor and glory, world without end. Amen.

In Memoriam Benita Eggemeyer Bankston, October 30, AD 2012.

Walsingham Way: Our Lady of Walsingham & Mary's Dowry

How does one enter into a people's spirituality? Is it something to be grasped? Can it be designed, manufactured, or even laid as one does stonework? Or rather, is it like all greatness, chiseled out of the rock, to resemble the masterpiece that was beneath the rock face all along?

Certainly a personal spirituality is not limited to one's person at all, even though it is personal. It cannot be, especially for the Christian. It is corporate. It is meant to be shared, not placed under the proverbial bushel basket. It is part of a greater body, as St. Paul wrote. And so, yes, one can enter into a people's spirituality.

I believe it to be important to recognize this point, even—or rather—especially in the quieter moments for the contemplative reflects into the active moments. It is important because we are not islands unto oneself, with our own spirituality or our own beliefs. We are part of the great Body that is meant—and is designed in our very being—and most optimally—to be transformative.

And yet I can claim to have discovered a people's spirituality laid deep beneath a spiritual rock face that is being, day by day, recovered from beneath—a masterpiece to be revealed once more for and by the people within Holy Mother Church. It is a personal discovery that continues to shape outside of the personal and into the corporate, into the very Body of Christ and into the personal of countless others. It is not the stirring of my own act but rather a cooperation with my own into and of the greater Spirit at work and of Our Lord and Our Lady. It is a witnessing to those acts brought about by their work and Our Lady's intercession.

And so the transformative begins.

My experience with this renewal of spirituality—and its implicit marks of the Church—began on All Saints Day in 2010. This great solemnity is as great a day to demarcate a new beginning, especially for one from New Orleans, but it was unplanned and fortuitously blind as could be expected from the mundane exercise of scheduling and execution of a plan for attending Mass for All Saints Day on a Monday evening in the Catholic Church here in the United States when the obligation of such a Mass is removed for the Faithful, a happy fault that should gain me such a blessing!

I was led with great curiosity, as I am prone to do, to wander—and thus, wonder—upon the Anglican Use parish (now Principle Church of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter) of Our Lady of Walsingham. On that faithful day in 2010 began a personal unearthing of the Spirit alive within the Church and those coming into the Church that continues to this day.

I recall those first two weekend Mass homilies that followed by the retired Fathers Noble—as they have said, "Noble by name, not by birth." I especially recall the first homily of theirs on the "Seven Words." As it went, there are four words you do not want to hear and three you do. The four being "You are under arrest," and the three being "I love you." And with those seven words, Fr. Bruce Noble began an exhortation onto the following the life of St. Thomas More, a dear saint to my heart. It was indeed spiritual kindling for the fire within. And though Fr. David Noble has passed, it brings great strength to those first days of discovery until now.

As so it has continued until now this past week, with the new rector, Father Charles Hough IV's homily on the weekend preceding the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, which was cause for great celebration in the first year of the new Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter created by Pope Benedict XVI and has also spurred this post forward though her feast day has come and passed on September 24th. For it was with the medieval noblewoman Richeldis de Faverches that Our Lady appeared in 1061 A.D. and gave instructions for a replica of the Holy House at Nazareth to be built there in the tiny hamlet of Walsingham. It was a standing testament of the Faith of the people of the British Isles and for hundreds of years hundreds of thousands made pilgrimage to that Holy House to recall that domesticity of the faith enkindled there, first with the Annunciation.

It was indeed with one holy "yes" that faith continued to be rekindled by the Faithful in movement towards that holy "yes." And then, there was nothing... If we are so to believe history, as Henry VIII and the English Reformation brought them into fire and destruction in 1538, most violently. Said of the images of Our Lady of Walsingham by one Hugh Latimer:

"She hath been the Devil's instrument, I fear, to bring many to eternal fire; now she herself with her older sister of Walsingham, her younger sister of Ipswich, and their two sisters of Doncaster and Penrhys will make a jolly muster in Smithfield. They would not be all day in burning."

Further more approved and executed:

"It was the month of July, the images of Our Lady of Walsingham and Ipswich were brought up to London with all the jewels that hung around them, at the King's commandment, and divers other images, both in England and Wales, that were used for common pilgrimage ... and they were burnt at Chelsea by my Lord Privy Seal"

And so it was, the place of pilgrimage of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Holy House were no more than ruins and a distant memory for centuries until both the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics renewed, first with the re-establishment of the 14th Century Slipper Chapel in Walsingham in 1897 and the recognition of the pre-Reformation pilgrimage by the Anglican Father Alfred Hope Patten SSC in the 1920s, even down to a replication of the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham based off her image in the medieval priory seal.

And so it was and is, a death knell at first appearance but a rebirth in the latter. And so it continues, as is witnessed both there in England and here in the States, as the movement of hearts back towards unity and away from division continues. It is said that England is Mary's Dowry, referred to both by the English from medieval times during the times of Henry V and then given papal recognition by Pope Leo XIII in 1893. Even so, the Faith remains strong, for it so.

For in Houston, of all cities, lies this new shrine for the Faithful here in the States to aid in that spiritual pilgrimage back into the Faith fully, and to aid those within the Faith a place of respite and hospitality to those sojourners on the journey of life on the Way. For as was related to me in this beautiful unfurling of the Faithful banner to Him, the most important route in all of medieval London—Walsingham Way. And so it is now, renewed, the Walsingham Way.