Pilgrims Log

Ahh…New Age Religion. I remember that.

I grew up in the nineties, a magical time when the Celistine Prophecy was a best seller…wait, maybe that wasn’t so magical. New Ageism seemed to be pretty much be at its height then and it still is now. I think its popularity stems from the fact that it often seems to say, ‘if you know right from wrong, and your actions don’t hurt anyone then its okay’. Its like a node to permissive society. To me its often an excuse to not have to really try to believe in anything…not even yourself. I mean ‘know right from wrong’, the world is not black and white, lots of decisions oftne fall into a muddy grey area, without my faith I don’t think I would even come close to making the good decisions. And just how do we know our actions don’t effect anyone, last time I checked my omnipresence is non-existent, I simply cannot possibly know all the consequences of my actions…I just pray they dont’ impact negatively on anyone.

I think we are all little jaded at times, and we all have our moments of saying oh this religion stuff is just so convuluted, can’t it be simpler! Well it is pretty simple really, Love one other, be good to each other and consider the other persons in the world. That’s Catholicism in a nutshell to me.

You know, I don’t really have problem with New Age religions. But you have to be careful. Christianity, like any major religion, has been thousands of years in the making. Many men and women, far better human beings then me, who completely devoted themselves to their faith came up with ways to live a truly good life and made the Catholic faith what it is today… From Moses to our own Mary Mackillop for instance. This faith has been tested and survived. New religions tend not…thats a scientific fact.

New Ageism tends to say ‘You are fine the way you are!’, but thats kind of sad…don’t we all want to be better. For me my faith says, ‘your okay but God believes you can be a finer human being and there is room for growth.’

Ain’t that the truth for all of us!

I received an email asking F and I how we came to Christ…basically our spiritual journeys. The entry is about mine.

We are both cradle Catholics (don’t you love that expression), Polish (often seen as synonym for Catholic! Catholic! Catholic!), I went to Catholic primary and secondary school and Filip didn’t leave Poland till he was 15. So I think we can safely say that our backgrounds are pretty solidly Catholic. But in my case this didn’t always mean I was extremely reverent or liking of the Catholic Church.

As a child I adored going to school mass which was aimed at us kids…so it was heaps of fun and let us express ourselves and our budding faith in our own childlike ways, but then I became a teenager. Now I didn’t instantly start thinking that the Catholic Church was way outdated, out of touch and perhaps not for me…but by the end of Yr 12 I sure was close. Now, in my defence, our RE classes weren’t exactly relevant and you always got the sense that the teachers didn’t really believe what they were telling us anyway. We did have our shining RE teachers but they were few and far between. Back then (the 90’s…showing my age!) I don’t remember hearing anything about JPII’s theology of the body…which as a teenager, whose brain was obviously curious about the S word, may have been something worth bringing up. But, even though I had developed some very Strong ‘liberal’ opinions on things during High School, i still went to mass regularly (did I mention I’m Polish?) and, on the whole, was really respectful Jesus’ teachings…but thought on some issues i might be more Anglican than Catholic.

I might have continued drifting in this manner if it hadn’t been for one fateful Sunday morning in mid Decemebr 1997. Back then I went to the mass in the Polish church in Maylands. After Mass the youngins’ would stay outside the Church while the oldies’ went to have some tea, coffe, and Polish donuts and other cakes. We were probably a small group (About 8 people) and we just chatted about this and that. On this beautiful sunny December day, one of the members brought a friend, he was tall, had windswept blonde hair and goregeous big blue eyes (not too mention a pair of lips that just seemed to say ‘kiss me!’). Yep, that was my Filip.

Now you may be asking yourself, how is this relevant but just bear with me…

Filip and I hit it off instantly ( I am ridiculously chatty and giggly), and after getting over the initial problem of him thinking I was 15 (yikes!) we were regularly meeting at Church, then we dated and the rest as you could say is history. We got married on April 24 2000. Getting married at 20 (I always say if we got married in March I could say I was 19) was no easy feat. Fil’s parents were all for it, I mean we had been dating for 2 years, it was about time as far as they were concerned. But my folks, needed some convincing. They probably thought I was too young, didn’t know what I was doing etc. But there was no stopping me. I prayed (I think you could say I was a rosaryholic at this time), I fought with my parents and eventually they gave in (with some extra help from Fil’s folks). It was a tough time for me, but I wanted to marry Filip so bad and vice versa that the wedding was a forgone conclusion in our heads. So in the new millennium we started of as husband and wife.

Filip was always far more Catholic than me. His family (A lovely bunch of people) really kept the faith and passed it on to their kids (Filip has a sister 11 years his junior). His father was an altar boy for JPII when he was still an Archbishop in Krakow. In someways I really think sending Filip to me so early (just in case your wondering he was my first boyfriend, kiss, etc.) was God watching out for me.? Without him I don’t know who I would? be…or whether I would like that person. With Filip’s help I stayed close to Catholicism but still had issues with it.

But I think the moment when I really saw the light,was the sad events of April 2005. JPII, our rock, the only pope I had ever known died. Being Polish, I think our sorrow was double, we were losing not only our pope but also a countryman, who kept the country strong and, largerly to his non-violent stand, ensured a peaceful (well as peaceful as you could hope) transition to capitalism from communism. For someone not incredibly Catholic it shocked me how much I mourned his sickness and eventual passing. It was, to use a cliche, like having the rug pulled out from under my feet.

His death made me reassess my position on many things, and with Filip’s help, I came closer and closer to the Church. At the time I lived near UWA so I had the opportunity to go to mass daily in the evening at St. Tommy More, I prayed, I recieved the sacrament of Reconciliation and I enjoyed the loving embrace of my Church…all thanks to JPII. There were also many more personal changes. Filip and I were finally fully united on our faith.

Filip’s story will mention St. Ignatius of Loyola ( the saint who strated the Jesuits), the Spiritual excercise and more, but I will leave him to tell his own story. (Plus this blog entry is already way to long.)

Nowadays, I look back to the months after JPII’s death as a great gift. Since then I sometimes waver in faith (but don’t we all), but overall I stay true to God and Jesus. JPII’s moto “Do no be afraid!” is kind of my life motto, I try to have full faith in God’s will, pray more often to be open to it and to take risks that perhaps I wouldn’t have otherwise…like this pilgrimage and group for instance!

Well that’s my story. To me finding God was unbelievably easy…but I suspect thats a matter of perspective. Whatever sacrifices i made in my journey, or battles i had to fight, I just don’t see as such. God was always there for me..he was just waiting for me to see him…and opeing your eyes can be so easy sometimes.

K.

Father’s homily yesterday started me thinking about how we percieve God’s prescene and the prescene of religion in our lives. We live in a very secular world where saying your Christian is often tantamount to saying you read the bible cover to cover on a weekly basis, pray at every possible moment and shout ‘Halleljuah! Praise the Lord’ (imagine cheesy Kentucky or Texan accent) at the drop of a hat, and waiting for the Judgement Day to crush all the infidels!…that, or your a carbon copy of Ned Flanders (Not that there is anything wrong with that…wait a minute, what am I saying! there is something very wrong with saying ‘diddly’ in every senetence construction!). Saying your Catholic often seems to spark some deep seated suspicion that you worship the ground the Pope walks on, think his word is gospel and that ‘Papal Infaliability’ means that what the Pope says is divine! (talk about twisted perceptions..incidentally Papal Infalliability refers to a Pope’s statement not the person and has only been invoked twice, both times to assert something about Mary, like the Immaculate Conception).

Of course for the everyday Christian or Catholic all this is definetely not the case. First of all Catholics are not a bunch of drones blindly following the faith as set down by the Catholic Church. I think it might shock people to know that Catholics think for themselves and often disagree with what the Church or Pope says on a no. of issues. There is nothing wrong with that! Its what keeps the Church vibrant. I mean we have a long history of prominent discent…sure it didn’t always end well for the discenter but it didn’t always lead to burning at the stake either.

But, you may then ask, why stay Catholic if you don’t agree with everything the Church says? Well, my answer is that there is far more to Catholicism than following Canon law…and anyway, I don’t agree with everything my dad, mum or hubby say, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to leave my family. The Church is also my family, its not perfect but I love it.

Catholicism also offers me a no. of different ways to engage with God and make him present in my life. The sacraments all aim at bringing me closer to God and letting him know that I am open to his precence and will. God only wants me to be happy, and the sacraments help me stay close and open to that fact. Sure, he doesn’t need Reconciliation, or Confirmation, but I do because these sacraments remind me that He is there, guiding me. I think sometimes people forget that the sacraments are not there for God, there there for us. We are human and its easy for us to drift and get distracted form our faith, make mistakes and blunders. The sarcaments, like Reconciliation, say that ‘that’s normal, come to me and we will help you get back on track’. Who doesn’t feel special after Absolution!

There aren’t to many certainities in life but i know for a fact that God loves me and wants me to be happy, and that being part of the Catholic Church is one way to remind me of it.

K.

Well, I am finally back from my Easter Celebrations! For Easter Sunday we (me, my hubby Filip and my mum) went to New Norcia (check out the gallery for our pics!) for mass.

This was a bit of late decision on our part, since we came up with the idea on Saturday afternoon. We had been invited to a friends ’shack’ in Grey (near Cervantes) for Easter, but we couldn’t make it for the whole weekend. Initially we weren’t going to go but by Saturday we decided we had to go somewhere because if we stayed at home only one thing would happen….mum would clean, then we would have a little Easter breakfast and that would have been pretty much it. It just didn’t seem appropriate. So on Saturday Filip thought ‘hey why not go up to Adam’s (said friend’s name)’ and then he thought ‘why not first go to New Norcia for morning mass and then go to Adam’s’. This sounded great…until we realised we would have to leave at about 7:00am to ensure making it to the 9:00am mass…but we were committed, and so, come Sunday morning, we were off….half an hour late.

But we were still in good shape to make it to mass on time…until we hit the the roadworks, which reduced the usual 110km/hr limit to 60km/hr for ages! But we could still make it. Then we got stuck behind a ute which resolutely decided to drive 70km/hr. But we eventually managed to overtake him. This left us with just a little time to spare, but we thought with a little bit of prayer we would still make it. Then we caught up with 2 halves of a large shed (really it was starting to look like someone really didn’t want us to get to mass at all!). This slowed progress quite a bit, and we started to think we wouldn’t make it. But then we miraculously got a chance to overtake the shed and we were on our way. We ended up making it to mass only 10mins late and it looked like it had started late. It was a beautiful service: simple, reverent and a great homily. We took heaps of pics of the church and some of the surrounds, so our gallery is full of Benedictine stuff.

After church we went to the store and stocked up on New Norcia bread, wine and other tidbits and had our little Easter breakfast. Itself an experience. It was windy, the table cloth would not stay and as we finished it started to rain. But nothing beats eating Easter morning breaky outside with the birds and nature and freshly baked Benedictine bread…yumm.

Once we finished we were off to Adams to enjoy the rest of the long weekend. (For more on this part of our holiday see my ramblingmouse blog @ ramblingmouse.com/blog in a day or so)

Below is a video of our Blessing of the Fire on Easter Saturday at the Vigil Mass. I wil be psting more pics form this mass in the coming days.

This is our Easter basket just after its been blessed. Its a Polish tradition to have a small (or sometimes rather large) selection of food blessed on the Saturday before Easter Sunday. Ours included the traditional eggs (for new life), salt (protection agianst corruption) bread (life again), smoked sausage (well, its always in there but i don’t think it really has any symbolism, and butter (kind of like oils, again, protection form corruption). Tomorrow we will share the eggs between our family and eat the rest of the food. Mmmm…writing this post is making me way too hungry…can’t wait till tomorrow!

Happy Easter !