“God is Love,” also known by its Latin title “Deus Caritas Est,” was Pope Benedict XVI’s first papal encyclical given on Christmas Day 2005. As the title suggests, it focuses on the nature and importance of love. The title comes from 1 John 4:16 which the Pope uses to open this letter. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” He states that he wishes to use this encyclical to “speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in turn must share with others.” The Pope’s writings are always well-thought out and rationally argued. He is a consummate theologian.

However, even he acknowledges (in an introduction he later added) that “at the beginning, in fact, the text may seem a bit difficult and theoretical. As you continue to read, however, it will become clear that I have only wanted to respond to a couple of very concrete questions about Christian life.” Those questions are “Is it truly possible to love God? And again, can love be imposed from the outside?” The second question is “Can we really love our ‘neighbor’ who is unfamiliar to us or whom we may even dislike?” The final question is “With her commandments and her prohibitions, does not the Church turn to bitterness the joy of eros, of being loved, which urges us toward the other person and wants to be realized in union?”

The Pope succeeds well in his task of answering these questions. He explores the true nature of love in all its forms and how it should impact all of our lives.

Here are two important quotes from “God is Love” about how our love should extend to our neighbors:

“We contribute to a better world only by personally doing good now, with full commitment and wherever we have the opportunity . . . The Christian’s program – the program of the Good Samaritan, the program of Jesus – is ‘a heart which sees’. This heart sees where love is needed and acts accordingly.”

“Those who practice charity in the Church’s name will never seek to impose the Church’s faith upon others. They realize that a pure and generous love is the best witness to the God in whom we believe and by whom we are driven to love. A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and to let love alone speak.”

Most of us have been blessed with a few good teachers in our academic careers. Perhaps there was one who had a particular influence on you, who brought something out in you that you hadn’t known existed, or took the time to offer some extra help which made all the difference in understanding a subject. Teachers in schools have one of the hardest jobs on earth and are not valued nearly as much as they should be.

But it is important to remember that no matter how incredible the teachers are in school, parents are their children’s first and primary teachers. I look back on my own life and know that to be the case. I was blessed with an excellent Catholic school education with many great and memorable teachers. Yet, it is my parents who shaped me into who I am. From my mother, I learned my faith. Prayer and her relationship with God was and is her priority. I am eternally grateful that she passed that gift along to me. From my father, I learned the value of hard work and persistence. He was also always happy to play a game with me. Those are lessons I have always held on to – work hard and play hard and do all you do with purpose.

Now that I am on the other side of the parenting fence, I realize what a huge and awesome blessing and responsibility it is to teach one’s children. Our children look to us for so much in life, and what we do matters more than what we say. They watch how we spend our time, how we use our money, how we treat others, and how we care for them. In my own life, I have taken the role of parent as teacher one step further in that I homeschool my children. It wasn’t a role I had planned on, but one that God called me to. We start our third year tomorrow. It has been, and will no doubt continue to be, a challenging and rewarding journey.

People have varying reactions when they hear I homeschool: Are you crazy? I could never do that! I would love to do that, but I would never have the patience. You must be a saint! Truly, it isn’t as hard as people think, and I would encourage anyone who wants to do it to try it. But every parent, regardless of whether they take on full responsibility for their children’s academic careers, is a homeschooling parent. Every parent who sings the ABC’s, or helps her child with her homework, or teaches them to ride a bike or tie their shoes or to cook or do laundry is educating them. Especially in matters of faith, a parent’s example is of the utmost importance. Every parent who takes his child to Church or says prayers with them or shows them the value of charity is educating his child.
The lessons learned at home, for good or bad, are the ones that stick. Make them matter. Your children will appreciate it someday.

Have you ever experienced a “God Moment?” – a time in your life when God worked behind the scenes to move things in a certain direction. Some people refer to these as coincidences, mere situations of chance. For those who believe, Someone much more powerful is pulling the strings. “God moments are very special and significant events that have great meaning and purpose. They may involve angels, saints, people, animals, or anything in God’s great creation. Always they involve an encounter with the Divine. Perhaps they are meant to challenge or change us, encourage and inspire us, motivate us, sooth us, or prepare us. Sometimes they occur over time for reasons that we do not immediately understand. . . Our challenge is to recognize, believe, take action, trust, or sometimes wait, always loving in greater measure.”

In “God Moments: Stories that Inspire, Moments to Remember,” Michelle Elena Bondi has compiled a collection of personal stories that reveal God acting in our lives. Organized into the categories of Love, Discernment, Faith, Healing, Suffering, Miracles, and Reconciliation, the essays share both intimate and public moments of contact with God.

For example, one mother tells of her eighth-grade son expressing his need for space. She had put her hands on his shoulders in front of his friends, and he removed them and said “Bye, Mom.” She understood the developmental stage, but was still hurt by it. Yet, it was a God moment because it caused her to reflect on her own relationship with God. “How does God feel when he desires to be with us and we respond, sometimes in front of others, ‘Bye, God.’ Perhaps we think to ourselves, ‘Not now’ or ‘Not in front of my friends’ or ‘I do not want to be out of my comfort zone’ or ‘What will people think?’ Does God feel rejected, slighted, or hurt like I did when I was so glad to see my son and he wanted me to go away? Perhaps we reject God without even realizing it.”

Another person tells of how a random phone call to a hotel led to an opportunity to talk about her faith with a man who desperately needed to hear it. She writes, “I was totally moved by this experience. God can use us at any time if we just make ourselves available. I’m sure that man’s wife has been praying for him for years. With God all things are possible. So I’m praying for that man and asked me to contact me at any time.”

“God Moments” is a testament to the many ways God works in our lives. God loves each of us so much. “Share in the delight God has for every person He created. His works are constantly on display and there is a show going on every moment. Admission is always free.” “God Moments” will encourage you to be more open to His plan for your own life and to see Him at work in your daily life. It is a beautiful book that will do much good.

God Moments will be available October 2010 from Joseph Karl Publishing, www.godisatworkinyou.com, and also on Amazon.

by Elizabeth Ficocelli
Waterford, MI: Bezalel Books, 2010

From a child’s perspective, priests can sometimes seem very mysterious. After all, they dress differently and live differently and do different things than all of the other people in their lives. It can be hard to imagine that they were once little boys. Elizabeth Ficocelli has written a charming, informative book “Where do Priests Come From” which attempts to answer many of the questions children might have about priests and the lives they lead.

Ficocelli talks about how priests are called by God to the priesthood, how they may have dreamed of being an astronaut or a doctor or a fire-fighter, but one day they heard a quiet voice in the hearts inviting them to become a priest and they said “Yes.” She discusses the discernment process and the time in seminary. She mentions the different types of priests and the vows they take. She mentions the long list of ways that they minister to other people, but also emphasizes that they are still people who also have a need to relax and enjoy hobbies. They also sometimes make mistakes and need to go to confession (this was the fact that my own two sons were most surprised by!)

This book is intended for young boys to encourage them to think about becoming a priest. As such, it is a great vocation tool. Ficocelli has done a wonderful job with this book. One can only hope that there will be a companion volume for girls: “Where Do Sisters Come From?”

As a long-time fan of Richard Paul Evans, author of “The Christmas Box” and several other best-selling books, I was so excited to pick up his latest offering, “The Walk.” Alan Christofferson had it all – a beautiful wife who loved him, a hugely successful business, and all the things that money could by. Truly, he led a charmed life. Yet, in the matter of six short weeks, he loses it all. He wants to end it all, but his wife had made him promise he would continue to live. Heartbroken and homeless, he decides that he he is going to take a walk – a long walk. His plan is to journey all the way from Seattle to Key West, Florida. This first book of a five-book series takes him across Washington state. It is a journey of discovery and faith and healing. This book truly did not disappoint and I am already looking forward to the next in the series.

“Angels and Wonders” is actually a reprint of a 1996 book “Where Wonders Prevail” so if you own that one, you don’t need to buy or read this one. It also means that the stories and references in this book all refer to things from the 1980s and early 90s. That doesn’t make the stories any less miraculous, however. In the preface, Joan Wester Anderson writes of a crocus that bloomed one day eighteen years after it had planted by her father, on her father’s birthday 4 years after he had died. It was a simple miracle but it forever built her faith. Anderson states “Although faith should never depend on such things, we are mystical as well as physical beings, and we need a touch of the sacred now and then to remind us of our eternal home.” There are plenty of stories in this book to help build anyone’s faith. From the story of baby Logan who came back to life after an hour and eighteen minutes of being dead, to children who saw ghosts of loved ones who had just died even before they were informed that the person had passed on, to the photograph of four women (including one stranger who had been of great help) which when developed showed only three people, to the woman running from a dangerous boyfriend who was able to travel four hundred miles on a near-empty tank of gas. If you need a little help to believe in miracles or that God really cares for people, you need to read this book. It will warm your heart and encourage your faith.

“Brothers and sisters,
You have forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children:
‘My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord
or lose heart when reproved by him;
for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines;
he scourges every son he acknowledges.’
Endure your trials as ‘discipline’;
God treats you as sons.
For what ‘son’ is there whom his father does not discipline?” (Hebrews 12:5-7)

We don’t like to think of God as disciplining us. The image of God that is most popular today is one of love, but not a parental love. Rather, it is more of a friendship sort of love. God will stick with you no matter what. God will walk with you and have your back and make sure that nothing bad happens to you. God will look the other way when you sin. In the long run, it won’t matter. God will always be there.

It is definitely true that God is always with us. He doesn’t abandon us. We are the ones that turn away from him when we sin. However, as this passage tells us, God’s love is not merely that of friend. It is parental, and as all parents can attest to, this involves not always being your child’s favorite person. It means that sometimes (most of the time) you have to be the one who lays down the law and makes sure it is followed. It means caring more about how your children are developing as moral, socially-responsible people than whether or not they like you at the moment. It means taking away privileges and enforcing time-outs (later known as groundings.) It means taking away car keys and making curfews, and saying “No, you cannot do that” and holding your ground even when you are told repeatedly, “But Mom, everyone else is doing it.” It means teaching hard lessons and sometimes inflicting punishments that hurt you every bit as much (if not more) than they hurt your child. It means watching your child cry and knowing it is for his own good even as it breaks your heart. And we are only human parents with human parental love! Imagine what this must be like for God.

God doesn’t want to punish us any more than we want to punish our children. He doesn’t do it to be mean or to exert His incredible power. But, sometimes, we force His hand. We make some bad choices and He lets us suffer the consequences of our actions. He wants us to learn a lesson and correct our lives for the benefit of our eternal souls. Sometimes, we can be quite stubborn and it takes a great deal of correction for us to get the message. But, it is always for our eternal good.

God does love us with an everlasting love. He doesn’t want us to suffer. Our suffering is a result of sin, both the general sin in the world, and our own personal sin. Like the parent who must discipline as part of bringing up a child, God has our best interests at heart. He wants us to learn and make progress on our spiritual journey. When we are being disciplined by God, it is a sign of His love. It means He hasn’t given up on us. For that, we should be incredibly thankful.

St. Francis, who lived and preached in the 13th century, is one of Christianity’s most beloved saints. Like many saints, however, time has served to separate him from the actual life he lived. In many minds, he is known only as the lover of animals. He is usually seen with birds, often as a statue in a garden. While St. Francis certainly had that side to him, he was much more than that. “Saint Francis” by Robert West, a book in the Christian Encounters series by Thomas Nelson, sets out to show Francis in all his complexity. He was a saint, yes, but like all saints, he was also very human.

This is a no-holds-barred biography of Francis. West does not gloss over Francis’ wild youth. In fact, he makes much of it in order to contrast it with the man he later became. Yet, the charisma that would make Francis such a compelling preacher and leader was already at root in the boy and young man. Francis was meant to be a leader.

West discusses Francis’s conversion and does his utmost to make his love of “Lady Poverty” understandable to the modern mind. He shows the battles Francis had with his own bodily desires and the lengths he would go to in order to overcome them. He wanted nothing to come between him and God. West also examines his relationship with the men that would come to join him as well as his relationship with St. Clare, who also gave up everything to follow him.

Francis’ life was certainly not without its challenges. His way of life was so austere that many begged him to relax his rules for those who followed him, but he would not relent. As a result, there was infighting among the brothers, especially when Francis was not physically present. It took considerable effort for his order to be recognized by the Pope. His dream of converting the Muslim Sultan during the crusades did not go the way he had hoped.

Yet, Francis is most known for his miracles, his communing with nature, and the stigmata he bore on his body. West examines some of the legends that grew up around the life of Francis, and despite a healthy skepticism, is willing to admit that at least some of them were possible.

West’s “Saint Francis” is a highly readable well-researched biography. It serves as a valuable introduction to the life of the man behind the statues.

It might seem a bit early to be thinking about Christmas, but Advent will be here before we know it, along with all the hustle and bustle that goes along with that time of year. “Christmas is About Jesus” is a lovely little book that will help children (and their parents) focus on the true meaning of Christmas. Each day from December 1st through the 24th features a Scripture verse and a reflection on a symbol of Christmas and how that symbol reminds us of Jesus. Some of the symbols covered include snowflakes, candy canes, ornaments, St. Nicholas, Christmas trees, Christmas lights, cookies, songs, and stars. As the days get closer to Christmas, the devotions focus on those who were at the first Christmas – the wise men, shepherds, Mary, and the most important one of all, Jesus.

The book is attractively designed and easy to use. It could be used at home or as part of a religious education class. The reflections could be used alone or combined with a craft for a longer lesson. “Christmas is About Jesus” will help keep minds focused on Jesus during the Advent season.

Prayer to St. Faustina

Saint Faustina,

Amen.