Roles of Men And Women In The Catholic Church

There has been somewhat of an on-going discussion between my groups of friends over feminism in the Catholic Church. In one group we have been discussing the roles men and women should play in the Church. Basically why women should not be priests and why we should only have girl "altar boys" only when desperate. In the other group we talked about how there is the wrong kind of feminism and the right kind. Just because women are capable to do the things men can does not mean we need to prove it to everyone. We may be capable, but that is not what we are called to do.

My favorite Bible quote to reference when I speak about this topic is; Ephesians 5:22-33.

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church-- 30 for we are members of his body. 31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." 32 This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

It is quite obvious here that men and women are called to do different things. Men to take the lead and be strong to help protect and defend the Church. Women are called to follow the men's lead. Even though Men are called to be in leadership roles, women still have a lot of power in their parishes. Women are made to be caregivers and teachers. We as women are the ones put in charge to form the minds of the future of the Church. That is a huge deal to be entrusted with. We are also called to be Sacristans and make sure the sanctuary stays clean and beautiful because a building housing the tabernacle should be kept in the best shape. Women have equal rights to be sponsors at Baptism and Confirmation.They can be readers at Mass, extraordinary ministers (laypersons who assist the priest at Mass to give out Holy Communion, sometimes call Eucharistic ministers) if needed, and they can work in the parish office.

There is a downside for those who try to push the interchangeability between the roles of the sexes. It often results in society encouraging men not to be strong leaders and not to take roles of leadership in their families, in their parish, and in society. We don't want to give an excuse for men to become wimpy. We want all of our Catholic men to be strong and ready to take action when called to do so.

I know I am probably going to be considered a little old fashioned to some who may read this, but it is how I feel.

The Best Verse In The Bible....

Psalm 46:10
'Be Still and Know that I AM GOD'

Sometimes this can be easier said then done.....

"The Voice Within"

"Yes! My Word, the Scriptures. Read them, study them; store them in your hearts, use them as you use a lamp to guide your footsteps.
But remember, My children, My Word is more even than that. It is the Voice that speaks to your hearts, that inner consciousness that tells of Me.
It is the Voice that speaks to you intimately, personally, in this sacred evening time. It is even more than that. It is I you Lord and Friend.
'And the word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' Truly a lamp to your feet, and a light to your path."

Which is why we should read it....:)

Revelations 1

This year my friends and I are part of another Bible study. This time around we are looking more in-depth at the book of Revelations. Today was our first meeting and we spent a lot of our time going over what the significance of numbers and colors are in this book along with discussing the first chapter.

There is great meaning held behind the numbers and colors. The number 3 stands for a few or a limited time; 4 means fullness; 6 is incomplete; 7 means completeness and perfection; 10 means limited; 12 is also completeness because it is a multiple of 3 and 4; and lastly 1,000 means numbers to large to count. When the color white is mentioned is symbolizes victory; red means blood shed or violence; scarlet means royalty and blood shed; purple just means royalty; black means famine; and pale green is for death.

As we went through the first chapter of Revelations we noticed that there is some important happenings going on. If you look at Daniel 7 you would come across, "I beheld thrones were placed, and the Ancient of days sat: his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like clean wool: his throne like flames of fire: the wheels of it like a burning fire."
This is important to keep in mind as you look at Revelations 1:13-14, "And in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, one like to the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. And his head and his hairs were white, as white wool, and as snow." Our group came to the conclusion that this is another way to show how both God and Jesus are the very same person.

There is a little bit more to this first chapter that we covered, but sadly I do not have the time to go much farther into right now. I am thinking this will be one interesting Bible study.

"The Truth About Mary And Scripture"

I stole this video from a friend who posted it up on facebook... It is very good. If you have the time you should watch it...

Yes, I am still alive. :)

Well I have realized tonight that I haven't written up a blog post on here in quite a few days. I have just been so busy with a lot of different things that I haven't really had the time to sit down and write out a blog... I was busy with work, retreat reunions, movie night, playing ultimate frisbee, going to a friend's band concert, bowling, confirmation classes, and Bible study, add on family drama to that... Just a lot going on. Not much free time at all.

Tonight for Bible study we studied the book of Tobit. It is my very favorite book of the Bible. Me a hopeless romantic and all, this particular book, along with Song of Songs, totally works for me. It is a love story with lots of different drama going on in the story... It starts off with Tobias, Tobiah's father, a very righteous and holy man who becomes blind. He becomes distressed and prays to be able to die.

While this is going on there is a woman named Sarah who has issues of her own. She had married seven times, and each of those seven husbands ended up being killed by the demon of lust on their wedding night. She finally gets to the breaking point and starts to plan her own death. She changes her mind from committing suicide to asking God to take her life, and even at the end of her prayer she hands everything over to him and says that if He wants her to live, so be it, put to take pity on her.

At this point of the storyline, God finally sends out the archangel Raphael (Raphael actually means healer) to help answer both their prayers. Raphael goes with Tobiah to go in search of his wife, Sarah. Along the way they come upon a fish, and Raphael tells Tobiah that if he wants to get rid of Sarah's demon he must use the insides of this fish to cause him to flee, and then afterwords he and Sarah must pray to God in thanksgiving. He also said that in order to give Tobias his vision back he has to use the guts of the fish and wipe it on his eyes.

Finally Tobiah meets Sarah and they both do as Raphael told him on their wedding night, and the evil demon flees without hurting Tobiah, and then they kneel down and pray in thanksgiving for their vocation of marriage to each other.

Tobiah and Sarah finally head back to Ninevah where Tobiah helps bring his father's vision back. When Tobiah goes to give Raphael money for going on his journey with him Raphael finally reveals who he is to the two men... and then everyone lives happily ever after...

Here is the prayer that the Tobiah and Sarah prayed their wedding night...

Tobit 8:4-8

When the girl's parents left the bedroom and closed the door behind them, Tobiah arose from bed and said to his wife, "My love, get up. Let us pray and beg our Lord to have mercy on us and to grant us deliverance." She got up, and they started to pray and beg that deliverance might be theirs. He began with these words: "Blessed are you, O God of our fathers; praised be your name forever and ever. Let the heavens and all your creation praise you forever. You made Adam and you gave him his wife Eve to be his help and support; and from these two the human race descended. You said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a partner like himself.' Now, Lord, you know that I take this wife of mine not because of lust, but for a noble purpose. Call down your mercy on me and on her, and allow us to live together to a happy old age." They said together, "Amen, amen,"

My New Understanding of the Parable of the Good Samaritan

Tonight I had the enjoyment of attending a talk at my church for our parish renewal. It was about understanding the call to discipleship. The speaker for the night, Fr. Dennis. He talked about our faith life should be like a journey... There are three parts... the door, the road, and the destination. Since I am really tired this evening I will focus more on the "door" part in this entry and talk more about the other two tomorrow.

For the door he focused on the Good Samaritan parable from Mark's gospel. He talked about how most of the time the priests will always say, "who are we supposed to be most like in this parable? The good samaritan of course." Well the truth of the matter is that we are not the good samaritan. In reality God is the good samaritan in the story and we are the stupid one who thinks it is a good idea to go through a dangerous place and make it out ok. When we don't and we get hurt the moment we realize who that person is (God) we automatically recoil away and don't want anything to do with Him, but that does not stop Him from coming down and saving us. After going through that parable Fr. Dennis said that the only way we can leave the door is when we know who we really are and once we know who we are we are ready to go onto the journey.

It was interesting to hear his take on that parable, but it makes complete sense. I know that I make stupid decisions thinking I know what is the best for me, even though it may be very stupid... I end up getting what I deserve when I do that and sometimes do not want to admit that I messed up, so when I know I have to turn back to God I don't want to... I recoil from it, but that doesn't stop Him from still coming down and dying for me to save me... it doesn't stop Him from forgiving me over and over for stupid things I have done. He will not let anything stop Him from loving me. It was a great talk.

As I said at the beginning, I have had a longer day today and I am pretty tired, so I will focus on more of this talk tomorrow night.

I am so blessed to have the community of faith that I have. :)

Tonight was a refreshing kind of night spent with great fellowship. It was "holy" hour here in town, and tonight we broke a record of attendance. There were I think 26 of us that came. A large part of that had to do with the publicity given to it at the end of my kairos retreat, but I feel like I helped by kind of pushing my small group to come along. It was so much fun being with these people. St. Paul's on Wed. nights has quickly become a nice place to just fall after a week of craziness. The people that have come every week have become a nice community that prays and worships in Eucharistic adoration together and then during drop-in it is so nice to just catch up with everyone. Talk about the happenings that went on in our lives. I have come to really enjoy Wed. nights! I love my group there dearly.

"Holy" hour is not the only place I have a strong community of people who live out their faith. At St. Charles, my home parish, I have just as many dear friends. Every Sunday night we meet up and have a Bible study. The funny thing about this Bible study is that there is just as much catching up with each other and joking around and getting off topic as there is in studying the Bible. I have learned so much more about the Scripture than I knew before I went to this Bible study. I have found myself reading ahead of what we are supposed to just because I have really finally been interested in the stories... Right now I am in the middle of the book of Joshua. Go me!

Without these two groups of friends I think my life would have been so much more depressing for me. I have realized that having faith and trying to follow it is SO SO SO much easier when I surround myself with the people who are trying to do the same. So to all of my friends I have met while working on retreats and teaching Confirmation classes and praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament, and going to Mass together with, I just want to say I am eternally grateful to God that I met each and every one of you! You will always have a place in my heart.

Paralleling with the book of Numbers

Tonight in Bible study we tried to focus on the book of Numbers. There is a really interesting parallel in this book over how God handled "venial" sin and "mortal" sin before Jesus and how now after Jesus we are lucky to have the amazing sacrament on confession....

In the book of Numbers 15:22-31 it talks about how the people are to be punished due to which level of seriousness of their betrayal.... If a community or a person inadvertently does something wrong without truly knowing what they are doing is wrong then the whole community, or the person that did the fault, has to offer a holocaust of one bull to be forgiven of that fault.... If a person knowingly realizes the seriousness of their fault and does it anyway then he is to be cut off from the community.... In the next section of that chapter verses 32-36 it speaks about a man who did indeed do something on purpose ended up being stoned to death through the orders of God to Moses and Aaron.

After Jesus came He brought to us the sacrament of confession. Even though both venial sin and mortal sin harms us spiritually as they did before, Jesus gave us a way of mercy... We are blessed to have the Sacrament of Reconciliation today. I for one find it very helpful and spiritually reviving to receive that sacrament on an annual basis. I do not know what I would do without it.

It was a very interesting Bible study night, as usual.

Typology: Moses and Jesus

As I mentioned in my last post, my Bible study group has just finished studying the book of Exodus... I found this little graph that shows the typology between Moses and Jesus if anyone is interested in reading it....

MOSES	JESUS
An evil king/Pharaoh tried to kill him as a baby: Exodus 1:22	King Herod tried to kill baby Jesus: Matthew 2:16
He was hidden from the evil king/Pharaoh: Exodus 2:2	An angel said to hide the child from the evil King Herod: Matthew 2:13
Moses was sent into Egypt to preserve his life: Exodus 2:3-4	Jesus was taken into Egypt to preserve His life: Matthew 2:13-15
He was saved by women: his mother: Exodus 2:3; Miriam 2:4; Pharaoh's daughter 2:5-10	Saved and helped by His mother, Mary: Matthew 2:14
Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses: Exodus 2:10	Joseph adopted Jesus: Matthew 1:25
Moses became a prince of Egypt: Exodus 2:10	Jesus is the Prince of Peace: Isaiah 9:5; Matthew 28:18; Luke 2:14
Long period of silence from childhood to adulthood	Long period of silence from childhood to adulthood
Moses had a secret identity	Messianic secret = Jesus the Son of God
He tried to save a Hebrew kinsman: Exodus 2:11-12	Jesus came to save His Hebrew kinsman first: Mark 7:26-28
Went from being a prince to a pauper: Exodus 2:15-19	Went from being God to being man: John 1:1-3; Mark 6:3
Saved women at a well: Exodus 2:15-19	Saved a woman at a well: John chapter 4
Became a shepherd: Exodus 3:1	He is the Good Shepherd: John 10:11
Moses' mission was to redeem Israel from slavery to Egypt	Jesus' mission is to redeem mankind from slavery to sin
Moses was loved and supported in his ministry by his sister Miriam [in Hebrew, Miryam]	Jesus was loved and supported in his ministry by His mother Mary [in Hebrew, Miryam]
He was often rejected by his own people	Jesus was often rejected by His own people
Moses will give God's law on the mountain of Sinai: Exodus 20:1-31:18; 34:1-35	Jesus will give the new law from the Mt. of Beatitudes: Matthew chapter 5
Moses spent 40 days fasting on the mountain: 24:18;34:28	Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert wilderness: Matthew 4:2
Moses performs signs/ miracles	Jesus performs signs/miracles
Moses offered his life for the salvation of his people after the sin of the Golden Calf: Exodus 32:33-33	Jesus offered His life for the salvation of the world: Isaiah 53:12; Romans 5:12; 6:10; 2 Corinthians 5:15-21; Colossians 1:19-20; 2:14-15; 1 John 1:7; 2:2; etc.
Moses is the prophet of the Old Covenant Church	Jesus is the prophet, priest, and King of a New and everlasting Covenant = the universal Catholic Church [note catholic means universal]

My busy day

It is always fun to have a group of friends over for dinner... That is the plan for my evening... My Bible study group has just finished studying all about the Exodus and decided that for this week since finals week is this coming week, we would do something a little silly and fun. I invited everyone over for a delicious dinner and then we'll watch "The Prince of Egypt." I have spent my morning cleaning the bathroom, kitchen, living room, my car, and my room for the seven people coming over...
In just a little while I will begin making dinner. The menu will be baked ziti, garlic bread, a salad, and for desert a friend is bringing over cheese cake and people could also choose to have a root beer float too.... I didn't realize my friend was bringing over cheese cake until this morning, so we have a lot of vanilla ice cream and root beer extra. Hopefully someone will want one of those, but I don't think anyone would choose that over cheese cake.. well except for me... I've had a bad experience with cheese cake when I was a kid, and I've never really been able to enjoy it sense....
Anyway, after I cook I will then get ready for Mass, which all of us are attending together, and then coming back here for some good food... There won't be much studying for finals tonight... that's for sure!
It is always fun for me to host house parties... I don't do it very often with the whole family here because with everyone's busy lives there isn't always a good time to host one... when I am able to I have a lot of fun with it. :) I know that when I finally am on my own I will probably enjoy having more time to have friends come over for dinner. That's one of the things I am looking forward to the most.

"When You Believe"

This past few weeks I have been on an "Prince of Egypt" kick. I blame it on some of the people in the Bible study I attend. Once we started talking about Exodus everyone kept referring back to this movie. I have always enjoyed watching it, myself, and when they all started talking about it, it made me want to go pull it out and watch it again. I hadn't been able to watch it until this week-end because of my busy schedule. It's one of the things I put on my "to-do" list and finally got around to doing some of those things. My favorite song in that film has to be "When You Believe" because it is so true. It's amazing the strength a person gets by just believing and having faith that God will find a way to take care of us. I have a feeling I would be ten times more stressed out with my crazy life if I didn't have faith. I put the lyrics below in case someone wanted to read them.....

When You Believe

(Performed by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston)

Many nights we've prayed
With no proof anyone could hear
In our hearts a hopeful song
We barely understood
Now we are not afraid
Although we know there's much to fear
We were moving mountains
Long before we knew we could

Chorus:
There can be miracles
When you believe
Though hope is frail
It's hard to kill
Who knows what miracles
You can achieve
When you believe
Somehow you will
You will when you believe

In this time of fear
When prayer so often proves in vain
Hope seemed like the summer birds
Too swiftly flown away
Yet now I'm standing here
My heart's so full, I can't explain
Seeking faith and speaking words
I never thought I'd say

Chorus

They don't always happen when you ask
And it's easy to give in to your fears
But when you're blinded by your pain
Can't see your way clear through the rain
A small, but still, resilient voice
Says help is very near

Chorus

Abraham and Isaac..... God and Jesus

Tonight at Bible study we focused on a lot of Exodus.... we also talked about Abraham and Isaac...
I happened to be the one reading the story of Abraham's sacrifice. After I read it some people mentioned how hard it must of been for Abraham to have to sacrifice his son whom he had been waiting for for such a long time.... while they said this I had a though... I looked at them and told them that really God wasn't asking Abraham something He wasn't going to do Himself... after all God did in fact sacrifice His only son for us. They looked at me as though a light bulb went on in their heads. After I said that we re-read that story again and realized that just like Jesus, Abraham had Isaac carry his own wood that he'd be sacrificed on... and just like Jesus, Isaac trusted Abraham and did not question him once. So really this relationship between Abraham and Isaac kind of symbolizes God's own relationship with His Son. I never looked at that story in that way before. It just was very interesting. Oh the things I learn at Bible study....