A Nun in the Unlikeliest of Places

A young woman who I am acquainted with via pro-life work has her vocation story shared in.....Marie Claire magazine!  How cool is that?!  This is a wonderful opportunity for the love of God to be shared with many who are searching...

"How do I grow as a woman without being a wife and mother?", she continues.  "While I give up the natural expression of my sexuality, I of course retain my sexuality as something to be cherished.  The void that these missing relationships leaves is kept empty so as to make room for God.  While this emptiness can be difficult, it is also my greatest joy.  I'm deeply in love with God." Sister Maria Teresa is radiant as she speaks, "By being a nun I am able to love in the most radical way imaginable, by giving up everything for my Beloved.  This finally satisfies my immense need to love and be loved, to know and be known.  The relationship is more intense, more intimate than any human relationship could be:  I do have a husband, He is God."

Click here to read the whole article.

Emotional Chastity/Virtue

Girl meets guy.  Girl immediately starts planning the wedding and writing her first name with his last name all over her notebook to see if it flows well.  Girl puts guy on pedestal and thinks he can do no wrong (which puts way too much pressure on any person).  And thus begins a story that involves a lot of wounds and heartache.

I don't think I've ever met a girl (including myself) who hasn't, in some varying degree, dealt with this at some point or another.  Guys, you're not off the hook either, you can just as easily dream up some idea in your head as well.  So what, pray tell, must be done?  Emotional Chastity/Virtue.  Live in reality and strive for truth, beauty and goodness.  Reality can actually be quite good and allows a relationship to flourish and blossom because neither person is putting too much pressure on the other to be perfect (which helps when apologies and forgiveness are necessary) and when each person sees the other for who they really are then they can both make an honest choice to love each other where they're at and help one another become more virtuous and be the saints they were made to be.  There is a lot more that could be said on this topic, but unfortunately I don't have time to write out a discourse on it right now. So for now, I point you to the following:

Women have a unique ability to identify and draw out the good in another person, thereby contributing to others’ personal growth.  Furthermore, desire for love is in itself natural, good, and even noble. Women court danger, however, when they fill their minds with unbridled sentimentality that ignores the truth about their relationships.

Why would sentimentality or a romanticized vision of love be such a bad thing?  Consider a necessary distinction between romantic sentiment and sentimentality. Sentimentality can easily be detached from reality, thereby threatening healthy relationships, as it is primarily a disproportionate emotional response to sexual attraction.  Emotional sentiments may spontaneously happen to a person and provide a distraction from developing authentic interpersonal interaction, which is rooted in choice, healthy decisions and habits. The role of romantic sentiment, on the other hand, can be a positive one.  Romantic sentiment, if properly integrated into a relationship that also includes mutual knowledge, healthy trust and commitment levels, and true friendship grounded in virtue, comprises one of the key ingredients in authentic love and indeed can be the seed from which authentic love blossoms. If left unchecked, however, sentimentality becomes divorced from reality and this departure from truth about the situation can be harmful.

Read the rest here.
Also check out Emotional Virtue, a website by Sarah Swafford.

Joy of the Presence of the Holy Spirit

When we do the will of God our lives are filled with joy:

A Few Good Men

Five young men who recently began study for the priesthood at the Pontifical North American College in Rome - all from different backgrounds, all different stories, one call:

Discernment: Sincerity or Avoidance?

Read this post at Conversion Diary about discernment - most people will easily relate.  In this quote she's talking about how St. Francis of Assisi responded to God's call to rebuild the Church :

Let’s contrast the way he responded to that message to the way someone like me would heed the same call:

Francis: [Gets up, walks out of the church, and gets to work  gathering stones.]

Jen: “‘Rebuild my church’? What church? This one? Or did you mean my home parish church? And what did you mean by ‘rebuild’ — are we talking a symbolic spiritual renewal or physical renovation? If the latter, exterior or interior? Or both? Or, wait…did you mean capital-C Church?!”

Basically, I would have analyzed it, thought about it, talked about it, and done whatever the 12th Century version of blogging about it was. And I would have taken no action until I felt like I had perfect clarity on it — which means I probably never would have done anything at all.

Contrasting my way of discernment with St. Francis', it becomes clear that mine is all about control: I feel like it rests entirely on me to get it right. The weight of the world is on my shoulders alone. I act like God is powerless to work things out without me interpreting his call with 100% accuracy. Yet again, my mentality is, “IT’S ALL UP TO ME!!!”

Read the rest here.