Wednesday 29 May 2013

The Chaplet of Divine Fire

In the wake of Easter this year, and especially Pentecost Sunday, I have been praying for more of the Holy Spirit. One night, I was thinking of the words of St. Ambrose, "Leati bibamus sobriam profusionem Spiritus," which means, "Let us joyfully drink up the sober intoxication of the Spirit," when I began adding prayers to that thought until eventually I had built a whole chaplet around it. I'm calling it the Chaplet of Divine Fire and it goes like this:
  Begin by holding the crucifix and reciting the following paragraph from Pope Paul VI's Credo of the People of God:
     We believe in the Holy Spirit, who is Lord and Giver of life, who is adored and glorified together with the Father and the Son. He spoke to us by the prophets; He was sent by Christ after His resurrection and His ascension to the Father; He illuminates, vivifies, protects and guides the Church; He purifies the Church's members if they do not shun His grace. His action, which penetrates to the inmost of the soul, enables man to respond to the call of Jesus: "Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect."
Then, holding the next bead, begin the Come, Holy Spirit:
     Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in us the Fire of Your Love. Send forth Your Spirit and we shall be created and You shall renew the face of the Earth.
          Amen.
Moving to the three bunched beads, pray the following words from Luke 1 on each bead, asking Mary to assist you. I call this prayer the Ecce, Sum:
     Behold, I am the handservant of the Lord,
     Let it be unto me according to Your Word:
     Holy Spirit, come upon me;
     Power of the Most High, overshadow me.
          Amen. (x3)
Then on the last bead before the Rosary Centerpiece, recite the second half of the Come, Holy Spirit:
     O God, Who by the light of the Holy Spirit did instruct the hearts of His faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations through Christ our Lord.
          Amen.
Finish by saying a simple prayer invoking the Holy Spirit's action in your life:
     Come, Holy Spirit, cast Your Fire on the Earth,
     Fill me, also, with Your Fire and make me a Saint.
          Amen.
This concludes the opening portion of the Chaplet.
This next section is much simpler as far as the prayers go, but also far more meditative. Like the Rosary, it includes meditation on a set of mysteries: the Five Mysteries of the Divine Fire (aka the Holy Spirit). First, I'll explain the prayers of each decade and then I'll explain what the Five Mysteries are.


On the Rosary Centerpiece and each respective large bead, say a Hail Mary asking Our Lady to help you ponder each of the Mysteries as she pondered everything in her heart:
     Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
     Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
     Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
          Amen.
On each bead of the decades, pray this prayer for the whole Church as you ponder the Mysteries:
     Loving Father, please engulf the entire Body of Your Son
     In the Fire of the Holy Spirit as with a new and greater Pentecost;
     Let us joyfully drink up the sober intoxication of Your Spirit.
          Amen. (x10)
After each decade, pray the following prayer for the World and for yourself:
     Come, Holy Spirit, cast Your Fire upon the Earth,
     Fill me, also with Your Fire, and make me a Saint.
          Amen.
Then, start the next Mystery as above, beginning with the Hail Mary, etc. When you've finished praying all five Mysteries, you close the Chaplet with the following prayer:
     Breathe into me Holy Spirit, that all my thoughts may be holy. Move in me, Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Attract my heart, Holy Spirit, that I may love only what is holy. Strengthen me, Holy Spirit, that I may defend all that is holy. Protect me, Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy.
          Amen.

The mysteries are as follows:
     The First Mystery of the Divine Fire: the Holy Spirit in the time of Moses and the Judges.
     The Second Mystery of the Divine Fire: the Holy Spirit in the time of the Prophets.
     The Third Mystery of the Divine Fire: the Holy Spirit in the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
     The Fourth Mystery of the Divine Fire: the Holy Spirit in the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
     The Fifth Mystery of the Divine Fire: the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church (from Pentecost onward).
Each of these mysteries involves a wealth of activity of the Holy Spirit and tells us a great deal about who He is and what He wants to do in, with, and for His People. I'm sure we could meditate on each one of them for the rest of our lives and never run out of things to learn about the Spirit of God. Let us pray that everything we learn becomes a part of our relationship with the Spirit and a part of who we are as followers of Christ.

It is my prayer that this chaplet will be shared around the internet and prayed by sincere Christians everywhere, especially by my fellow Catholics, until the Fifth Mystery of the Divine Fire becomes the undeniable reality of daily life around the globe: a new, global Pentecost with miracles, healings, signs and wonders that will shake the world to its very core. So, in the words of my favorite Captain of the Starship Enterprise, let's "make it so!"

P.S. In case you'd like to pray the chaplet and would like to have it all typed out so you can just scroll through and pray it without too much extra work on your part, I've given it its own page on my website here.

Monday 6 May 2013

Beyond a Mere "Code of Honor"


The following is from one of my websites: Soul Trek: TNG. It's my latest meditation on the episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation. It's a slow-moving project, due to my life as a stay-at-home dad, but I'll keep plugging away for as long as it takes...
     This refers to the TNG episode called "Code of Honor"; see the link for a synopsis.
     
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This episode should cause us to look at the way we view and treat the people around us. Lutan's constant choice to refer to the people around him, especially women, as "things," and the Enterprise's crew as "strange, alien things"-as though simply denying their personhood isn't insulting enough-is a crass way of expressing verbally what many of us do only subtly. As Pope Blessed John Paul the Great so wisely taught us in his Theology of the Body, one of the tendencies that Original Sin has saddled us with is this very same urge to see others not as persons, equally worthy of the respect due every human being, but as mere tools to be used for our own self-gratification, for the advancement of our personal and selfish desires. For Lutan, everyone, even his "first one" Yaree
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na, is simply a tool, a pawn to be used to give him the power and the undefined but all-important (to him, at least) "honor" he craves.
     But where he seems to do this consciously, we tend to do it thoughtlessly. We see the people driving the cars around us, for instance, as obstacles to our desire to arrive swiftly at wherever it is we're going, and so we curse at their perceived stupidity-after all, they can't hear our obscenities, so it isn't hurting anyone, right? We grumble when our loved ones ask us to clean something around the house, or when our children want us to play with them, because they're just getting in the way of our desire to vege out in front of the TV and/or computer after a long day of work.
     These are the little ways that we devalue and disrespect even those closest to us, but our culture teaches us constantly to keep using others in much more damaging ways than this. We are repeatedly taught, in practically every TV show, even at times in Star Trek, that sexual intercourse should be expected and encouraged as quickly as possible after a couple admits mutual attraction to one another. However, biologically and spiritually, this is the worst kind of abuse of another. As my wife, a family physician, likes to point out to her patients, the most common sexually transmitted disease is depression, because intercourse biologically tells our brains to be linked emotionally for the rest of our lives to the person with whom we've just mated, especially the woman's brain. So when the couple that just started going out (or worse, just "hooked up" for a one night stand) parts ways because their relationship had no stronger basis than physical attraction, their bodies don't know how to cope; their hormones tell them they should feel as bad as if their spouse had just died.
     This is just one way in which intercourse outside of marriage hurts us. This is only one of many scientific reasons, reasons which God knew before we ever thought to study them, that God's command that intercourse be reserved for marriage is anything but arbitrary.
(1) Like all of God's laws and commandments, this is given so that you "may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10b). He loves each and every one of us because we are unique, unrepeatable persons, created in His image and likeness, no matter what our physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual deficits, no matter our current situation, and even no matter how much we bump heads with one another.
     So let's not be like Lutan, seeing each other as stepping-stones or stumbling-blocks on the way to the precarious glories of being "on top." And let's also not be like the writers of this episode who saw the Ligonians too a mere obstacles to the crew's humanitarian mission of procuring the vaccine, as though it was law (the Prime Directive), not each Ligonian's (even Lutan's) inviolable dignity as a human(oid) person, that stopped the crew from squashing the Ligonians like bugs and stealing the vaccine simply because they could. Instead, let's be like Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (a.k.a. Mother Teresa) and look at each and every person we interact with today and every day as though they are the dearest person to our hearts. Let's drop everything that's important to us and make their needs come first. Let's respect them enough to honor them for who they are, before even considering for a moment how we might use them to make ourselves feel better.
​     Let us pray:
     
     Blessed John Paul the Great, you reminded us of the absolute sanctity of every human person, of each unrepeatable person's inviolable dignity as a child of God. Pray that we would never forget that lesson and never cease to practice self-donative love because of it.
     Blessed Mother Teresa, you taught your sisters to see the face of Our Host Holy Lord, the King of Love-Come-Among-Us, in even the most destitute and seemingly unlovable of persons. Help us, by your prayers, to likewise see His Adorable Face in that of every person we meet today and every day.
     Amen.
     
This is only a portion of the content available at the Soul Trek: TNG website, so if you enjoyed it, please head on over and check it out!
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For more information on the science and wisdom behind the Catholic Church's teachings on sexual morality, I recommend reading 
Sex Au Naturel
 by Patrick Coffin.
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