She Went By Gently

        Maura tends to Sadie as if she is her own child while she is in labor. She becomes completely involved with making sure that Sadie is in the best care to ensure a safe delivery for the baby. Once Maura walks into the room her focus is to make Sadie as comfortable as possible. Despite Sadie not being her child, Maura treats Sadie as her child. In addition, Maura embodied a parent when she was able to put Sadie’s bad actions aside while she was on her way to help Sadie during birth. Once the baby is born, Maura treats the child as though it’s her own. She makes sure the child is healthy and succeeds in baptizing the child to make it apart of God’s kingdom.

            Maura is saying that she was able to bring the baby into a life where it was adorned with the grace of God to combat the world full of sin. As a baby coming into the world they are new and unaware to the encounters coming their way. Therefore, it is a monumental moment to cast God’s spirit on a child whom is oblivious and inexperienced with the antics of the world. The baby is saved because they are now a true member of the one who makes all things possible. This baby now has God in its life to help ignite love upon it.

            The purpose of Maura’s description to her house is to illustrate how this woman is an apostle of God who succeeded in fulfilling her mission to be a teacher of Christ. The story accounts the woman’s trip to Sadie and the trip back to her house. These two scenes are significant because it shows how an apostle of Christ is always on a journey to exhibiting true sanctity among themselves and God’s children. As apostles, they are a working project to fulfill god’s grace for them. As an apostle, it is their responsibility to go back on their life to help them grow into better people.

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit

1.         I see the gift of the Holy Spirit working in my life through counsel. As a Peer Minister I have noticed the spiritual calling that is a necessary component in performing my role as a leader. It is imperative that I express counsel because despite my urges to do the wrong thing, because it is only better for myself and the community if I set the right example. I am a leader among my peers as a Peer Minister. I set the example through preparing for Masses, organizing retreats, and leading prayer for the community. I also serve as a mentor to my peers to supply them with a student confidante to advise and uplift them. It is also my job to counsel by bringing the community together with God as the driving force that binds us as a family.

            I have seen the gift of piety working in my life when I do service. Piety is the ability to serve God, which transpires to his children when I serve them as well. I had the great privilege to really focus on the heart of service when I went on the Holy Cross Immersion trip this past March. I went to different sites over the course of four days, and after, I had to reflect on my experience and relate it back to God. More often than not, I do service without tying God back into the equation. I become so consumed with the task itself that I forget to maintain the sacredness in doing service. Throughout the trip I was able to learn that the content of service is not always the center of everything. It is important to engage in an activity that will help someone’s life, but it doesn’t always have to be this extravagant thing. My problem during the trip was that I believed I was doing too much gardening, and I did not understand how gardening was going to help improve someone’s life. I slowly came to learn that it wasn’t just about gardening but it was about our heart’s intent and our willingness to forget about our worries to combat someone else’s. The purpose of helping others is because I am a steward of the earth who serves God when I also serve my brothers and sisters. In conclusion, when I serve, piety should be the mission and the one thing that I strive to not only do for a certain amount of hours, but every day.

2.         I need understanding the most because in a world where I am always in contact with people it is a helpful tool to be able to understand people. When I am able to understand someone I am more capable to give them what they need. In order to love someone it is necessary that I can understand them before truly being able to love them. When I can understand someone I am able to tend to their needs to infiltrate the affection and care that I
 have for that person. As I experience relationships with friends and family throughout my life, I want to gain more understanding in order to strengthen the bonds through the ability of deciphering one’s feelings in order to love them and treat them better.

            As a current Peer Minister, it is necessary that I am capable of understanding a student’s situation even if I do not fully agree with it. Things such as Kairos serve to bring students more aware of their lives, of the direction of their lives, and of the direction of their relationship with God. As I heard stories on my November Kairos I realized how important it was to understand someone’s situation and the feelings despite my personal views. Because when I was able to understand the person’s situation, I was more capable of responding to them in the form of heartfelt consolation.

            I also need understanding of my relationship with God in order to deepen our bond. I need to understand what God needs from me in order to carry out his mission for me. If I am able to allow his grace to come into my life, then I think that I will be able to understand my calling and find more strength in our relationship.

Grace and Sacraments

1. Ludwig’s problem is that he doesn’t understand why people present grace as being something selective. He always perceived grace to be selfless because it’s a reflection of God’s love which is universal. He felt that is singled the people out who were not able to receive certain pieces of grace, such as not being able to be baptized.

2. The church does not look to exclude those who didn’t receive baptism so they can deny them of God’s universal love.

3. The Church upholds the idea that God’s redemption and salvation is for all, therefore he does not look to exclude anyone.

4. He is able to give his grace through Jesus. The word became flesh when God came down to earth in the form of Jesus. He did this to unite and connect with our spirits.

5. The Christian doctrine that states that God came down as human in the form of Jesus.

6. It states that God is up in space, meaning that he will never immerse himself in our world to unite with us. They believe that this type of spirituality is to disconnect from everyone else who is not at a higher power like God. In order to compensate, they foster the idea of blood sacrifice or baptism to stay in connection with him.

7. The Christian repudiation is that God likes matter. He continued to do this until he became matter when he came down as flesh in the form of Jesus Christ. He did this to completely connect with us spiritually and physically.

8. He did this so he could rise from the dead bodily. It symbolizes that we will rise as human beings and not as scary spirits. Our whole bodies will be ascended to live in love with God.

9. It means that God didn’t just reveal himself through Jesus, but through his love. It was a physical symbol used to represent an emotional sign of his love for us.

10. Chesterton said that sacramentality is the fact that God needed to be with us and connect with us in flesh. He could not just be a spirit in the skies, but a human down on earth with us.

11. Grace is when God comes up close and in touch with us to connect with us. It is when we are face to face and in complete connection with one another.

Sacraments

“These are the Sacraments”

                In order for someone to understand sacraments someone needs to have a “divine sense of humor”, which is the ability to look beyond the surface of something. When Jesus came to earth, he brought down the “divine sense of humor”, but he was extremely serious about the soul. In other cases objects such a s sheep, wine bottles, lightning were turned into parables that to explain the Kingdom of God. Jesus has a divine sense of humor because through him someone is able to see that the universe is sacramental.

                A sacrament has two components, which are a visible sign and an invisible sign. The visible can be seen, heard, or touched and an invisible is cannot be viewed. Things such as a handshake or spoken word are sacraments because you can hear, see, or feel it. However, there is also something that’s felt from the rituals as well.

                A world without a divine sense of humor loses its relationship with each other and architecture loses its decoration. Things in nature used to represent signs and they had connections to people. Now the objects in nature are just objects because they convey no meaning to the heart for people. Because the spirituality between architecture is gone, then it symbolizes nothing. This corresponds to the fact that a man without a soul is just a man, he goes no deeper than the use of him.

                The acts of cutting God off or to be puzzled by him are two errors that ruin our understanding of God. The world around people is a sign of God, every little thing has God’s presence in it.
 

“Sacramental- Bible is Sacramental”
 

            The Bible has a background and a foreground. The foreground is the stuff that we can actually see, but the background represents is the influence of God. Fulton used the example of brazen serpent that God used as a symbol to test his people’s faith. It was not supposed to be viewed as a poisonous serpent that would kill them, instead it represented faith because it showed that they listened. The serpent represents Christ because it was hung on the tree to get healing from the poison. Just like the serpent, Jesus was hung from the tree with poison (blemishes and bruises) to heal us of our sins.

            In Greek the word sacrament means “mystery”. Jesus is seen as a mystery because he is seen as a combination of many: eternal, temporal, visible, invisible, human, and divine. His divine and humane sense marked the reason behind our justification and sanctification of him. He is the sensible sign of God, so the sacraments are the sensible signs of God’s grace.

            Jesus is divine and human because he represents a material thing, which helps the material thing symbolize something more than its visible sense.
 

“Sacraments-What the Sacraments Bring to Man”
 

            Grace represents a higher life, and it’s what Jesus came down to bring back to us. As people we may live at three different levels of life, which are senate, intellectual, and the divine. Someone who lives the senate lifestyle represents someone who only lives by the flesh, and it looks for nothing more. They simply settle for what they only see and know.  The intellectual side is someone use reason and thought to go through life. The divine life is led by someone who is not drive by reason, instead the will is led by power and the heart is led by love, which all encompasses grace.
 

            In our world today, Jesus is represented through material things to represent himself. The church is an example of something that represents his divine life that’s used to carry on his life. This relates to how he came down to earth in a divine state to connect with us.
 

            There are two kinds of contact, one of which is the visible. Jesus exhibited this through his power to be seen and understood by an average person. But then there’s the invisible contact, which is Jesus’ ability to still cast us with his grace and love without us having to see it, instead we have to believe.

“Sacraments-Seven Conditions of Life and Efficacy of the Sacraments”

           The five conditions of leading an individual are that one must be born, he has to be fed, he has to mature, he has wounds that should heal, and his diseases must be taken away if he is infected. Being a part of society causes an individual to obey according to the government and live out justice, and he must continue on with his ability to procreate.

                In order to live a Christ-life one must first be baptized. Secondly, they must receive nourishment through the Eucharist. Thirdly, they will mature through Confirmation. The wounds that he acquires will be healed through Penance. To take away the diseases, Anointing of the Sick is applied. To live under the spiritual government, Holy Orders is present. Lastly, in order to sustain the Kingdom of God, marriage is the answer.

                A sacrament must be an institution by Christ, an outward sign, and giving the divine life retrieved for people through the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

                 Blood is a sacrifice that is required to bring us to the sevenfold sanctification because life is in the blood and so is sin.  It is the most fitting symbol for sacrifice because it represents the life of people. The blood of Jesus has infinite value due to his divinity.

                Calvary is a place of divine life because there are seven types of sanctification. People receive the divine life when they receive the sacraments. The sacraments are able to dispel grace because they are connected with Jesus.

                A sacrament is received according to the need of the person receiving it. If the person needs to be given faith or healing then the sacrament will reach out to that need and fulfill it.

"What is the Divine Sense of Humor?"

                Humor is not just something that's funny. But it's the ability to see through things. It's the act of seeing things as though they were looking through a window. There is an invisible and visible meaning to different things. A divine sense of humor goes beyond the literal discernment of the eye, but it dives deeper into the spiritual meaning of thing.

                This relates to what we've discussed in class because the idea of sacraments is that they are signs with deeper meanings. The idea of bread is something that gives nourishment, but the more spiritual meaning demonstrates Jesus' body and the nourishment and love that he gives us when we follow him and allow his grace to fall upon us. In conclusion, sacraments are symbols that go beyond their physical appearance usage.