Reading for Comprehension for She Went By Gently by Carroll (Blog Post 14)

A gift of Baptism is the ability to love others as God loves us. How is this ability seen in the woman’s treatment of the girl?

Although the girl may not be seen as accepted in society because she does not care about who uses her body the woman did not really care about that fact. The other men in the room told the woman to not touch her because of how unholy she is but the woman did not pay any mind to them. She helped the girl regardless of her social status. God loves us no matter what we do and forgives us no matter how grave the sin we commit just like the woman in the story did for the girl.

At the end of the story the woman says in regard to the infant “I saved him.” What does she mean by that statement?

                No one wanted to help the girl give birth because she was considered a whore by society. But the woman didn’t care, she wanted to save the baby. A baby is a baby, it doesn’t matter who the mother is. The other people did not want to even to help the girl but the woman did not care. She helped the girl give birth to her baby boy. Soon after the baby was born, she baptized the baby absolving his original sin. So “saving him” was really baptizing him. Saving him spiritually by performing the sacrament of baptism.

The author describes the journey of the woman to her own home. What is the purpose of this section of story? What is he trying to convey about the woman through his descriptions?

                The purpose of this section of the story is to show how calm and spiritual the woman is. The man with her could care less and was just bored. But she was actually thinking about what she did and was praying the rosary as she walked along. At one point they cross over a bridge and she pauses to contemplate over the sound of rushing water. Paralleling the rushing water beneath her with the little baby boy she just saved. 

Gifts of the Holy Spirit Reflection - Blog Post 13

Please read the handouts (can be found on the handouts page) on Confirmation by Bishop Sheen and James Seghers. In light of the readings, answer the following two questions with a short essay for each.

(Each question must have a response of at least 200 words.)

1. How do you see the Gifts of the Holy Spirit working in your life?

                I see the Gifts of the Holy Spirit working in my life through my faith. I have been practicing the Catholic faith since I was baptized as a baby. I have been attending mass almost every Sunday since then. Of course when one is younger, mass is not really taken all too seriously. Partly because a five year old does not really know what is going on symbolically throughout the mass yet. But through the years of going to mass and attending Catholic school, I came to know the meaning of mass. During Confirmation, the Holy Spirit is working to bring the person being confirmed closer to God and to better understand his ways and works. Every gift is hopefully being explored by the confirmed and is being strengthened and used daily. The Holy Spirit is an important aspect of the trinity, bringing the seven important spiritual gifts one needs to be truly one with God.  My faith has grown stronger by attending mass and it has to be because the work of the Holy Spirit in my life strengthening my faith in God. The Holy Spirit has helped me grow stronger through my prayers and grow closer in my relationship with God.

 2. Which Gift of the Holy Spirit do you think you need the most in your life today?

                The gift of courage is what I need most in my life today. I need to be brave. I need to have courage to face my future which is frighteningly growing closer every day. High school is finally ending and a new chapter of my life is unfolding. I don’t know exactly what is going to happen yet and that is scary. I do not know which college I am going to yet. I am sure of my major but what if I do not like it when I start. I will be living away from my parents for the first time, which does not sound too bad right now but it is still something new that I have never really experienced. My grandmother is possibly moving back to the Philippines in next year or so and that thought is always haunting me, bringing me to tears sometimes. The idea of having to be so independent in basically half a year from now makes me nervous. Courage is a gift of the Holy Spirit that I definitely need right now. Everything in my life is about to break away from a pattern that has pretty much been my life for eighteen years. It sounds over dramatic but it really is different from what I have been experiencing. 

Are Sacraments Narrow? (Distance Learning #3)

Answer the following questions on your blog (be sure to write the questions as well):

Are Sacraments Narrow? By Mark Shea 

1.      What is Ludwig's problem?

Ludwig doesn't know what it means to say grace is imparted through sacraments. He thinks that it’s a narrow way to see grace. Because he’s protestant, he doesn’t understand why grace needs to be shown through the sacraments. To him grace is simply unmerited favor.

2.      Explain what the Church is not thinking about when it comes to “sacramentality”.

The Church does not propose sacraments to deny God’s universal love and will to save. It does not hold that unbaptized people of good will (like the good thief cruicied with Christ) are necessarily denied salvation simple because they missed out on the “magic spell” of baptism.

3.      Explain what Church is thinking about when it comes to “sacramentality”.

a.       Both the universal redemption of Christ and the possibility of salvation for each person is forcefully maintained by the Church against carious Christian sects who assert that Christ has only redeemed a few or that God actively desires the damnation of certain people.

4.      How does God reveal and give to each individual human being his universally offered grace?

a.       The Church refers us to the primal Sacrament of Sacraments, the Incarnate Son of God. For as we shall see, all the Church’s sacraments are simply extensions of his power and work in the world.

5.      Which Christian doctrine is the foundation for the Sacraments?

a.       “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God revealed himself to us through Jesus. He poured himself into his son and made him human just like us so we can relate and understand him even more.

6.      Explain what the gobs of modern “spirituality” tell us.

a.       For such spirituality oftens speaks as though God is a sort of extended ether in the cosmos that He would never sully himself with the crudeness of matter. To be spiritual is to be more or less disembodied, to well in the realm of intuitions and concepts and secret mindset. It is assign of barbarism.

7.      Explain the Christian repudiation of “such spiritual snobbery”

a.       God likes matter. He not only declared it “good” at the beginning of creation, but he continued to manifest himself through it right up until the time that He took upon himself a real, life physical body of matter and united himself, not only to our spirits but to our whole beings.

8.      “But that was so that he could put this gross body of flesh to death on the Cross and revert back to pure spirituality, wasn’t it?” Answer and explain:

a.       It was so that he could rise from the death bodily. It means not only that we will live again, but that we will do so as human beings, not as disembodied spooks floating in the ether. God gave up his life on earth so that we could live on Earth peacefully. If not we would have all died, it was because of his sacrifice that we are living today.

9.      Explain: “That is why the sacramental worldview sees more than just a symbol in a sacrament.”

a.       They impart grace as the physical hands and breath of Christ imparted healing to the bilnd man and the Holy Spirit to the apostles. For they are the divinity of Christ. They are the physical means of grace that both signify what they do and do what the signify.

10.  Explain what G.K. Charleston said:

a.       Sacramentality comes from the odd nature of Christianity itself with its stubborn insistence that the world was saved when God, who had always been omnipotent and universal, became small and “local” so that he could touch us and call us by name.

11.  What does grace do?

a.       Grace touches us personally and that’s exactly what God did through Jesus Christ. He came to us, person to person, face to face, so that he might touch us spiritually and physically (so that we can fully believe that he is real).