Faith is Proven in Suffering

ChelseaFaith, Prayer, Suffering1 Comment

Well said, Mother Elvira!
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Faith is not something magical: “I believe, so God has to give me the miracle I’m praying for,” or “I pray. Why hasn’t God given me what I asked for?” Let’s look as an example at Mary ’s faith, a solid, sure, strong faith. We can’t even imagine how much she suffered! I wonder what her reaction was to the fact that nobody opened the door to her, even though she was about to give birth. “There is no room for you!” She, too, must have felt fear and anxiety, because she felt her labour pains, but nobody would welcome her—and she knew that she was about to give birth to the Son of God!

Looking at Mary, I realize that sometimes faith is proven in suffering. It always becomes stronger when we go through pain, rejection, exclusion, when we are not recognized, or when even our basic rights are not respected. It is precisely when we are suffering on the cross that the strength to believe is born within us, the strength to believe that joy will come and that we are more mature, more balanced, more sensitive to others, and more capable of loving. There is no other reality like pain to teach you to love, for suffering is the moment when you verify your faith! I assure you that, after the experience of suffering, you will not be childish anymore nor the eternal teenager that you were before. Instead, you will be more truly Christian, more mature, believing and trusting more.

Faith wins! We have to be convinced that if we continue to believe, even in a situation that hurts us, demands from us, and accuses us, it will bring so much good to us and to our family, especially if we are able not to vent that pain, making someone else pay for our interior suffering. Instead, we have to enter into trusting prayer, venting upon God everything that worries and wounds us, trusting Him who is our Father. I am certain that Mary and Joseph, while knocking on the doors of the inns to see if there was a place for them to stay, kept on praying in trust. Faith gave them the certainty that the Lord would not abandon them, that someone would welcome them and that a place or a door would open.

Faith is Someone within us who is stronger than our disappointments, stronger than every closed door. The Blessed Mother carried this presence inside her, within her womb. In her, faith was incarnate. It was the life of that Child whom she pro- tected and by whom she felt protected. Faith is something to take care of, which at the same time takes care of us!

Let’s not waste the immense richness of a faith that is tried. Let’s exercise our faith in the small moments of suffering. Let’s experience that God is with us, He doesn’t abandon us, and He is faithful to His creatures who cry out to Him.

If things in your life don’t go well, or you don’t yet understand them fully, ponder them in your heart. Mary “treasured all these things in her heart.” She, too, did not always understand everything immediately, but she persevered through the moments of uncertainty and suffering with trust that heaven would open and God would win.

In this you rejoice, although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Although you have not seen him you love him; even though you do not see him now yet believe in him, you rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, as you attain the goal of (your) faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:6-9)

Winning the Hand You’re Dealt

ChelseaPro Life1 Comment

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision. -Helen Keller

In a world where the quality of human life is measured by one’s physical or mental capabilities — a world that grants two otherwise healthy men their request for voluntary euthanasia because they might go blind…someday — the joyful witness of people like Nick Vujicic is invaluable.

Here he is on a recent episode of Oprah’s Lifeclass:

Supreme Court Approves Expanded Fed. ESCR Funding

ChelseaEmbryo Experimentation, Embryonic Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

court-stem-cells.jpgLast week, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the legality of Barack Obama’s expanded government support of human embryonic-stem-cell research. Plaintiff’s in the case, which was first filed in a lower court in 2009, revolved around the prohibition by Congress of funds for “research in which an embryo is destroyed, discarded or injured”, a phrase in the Dickey-Wicker amendment enacted by Congress every year since 1996.

Rebecca Taylor has a good article with a good history of US Federal ESCR funding, this lawsuit and why the Dickey Amendment is so important (it’s not just about stem cell research).

I have written about this extensively here, as well.

Suffice it to say, currently the United States, which most people consider behind the rest of the world when it comes to stem cell research, has absolutely no laws banning or even restricting research that involves the creation, use and destruction of nascent human lives. The only thing we have here is Dickey which prohibits the funding of such research.

The original ruling on this lawsuit from district court judge Royce Lamberth was correct: “If one step or ‘piece of research’ of an E.S.C. research project results in the destruction of an embryo, the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding.” President Obama’s executive order and the NIH’s subsequent new guidelines violate Dickey by allowing funding for research using new cell lines after derivation using other sources of funds. The ending of this case in favor of the Obama administration and the NIH means that a your tax dollars will be responsible for a great deal more human embryos being destroyed in this research.

Unfortunately, these days it seems that many pro-lifers almost dismiss embryonic stem cell research as a major threat anymore because it hasn’t been as “successful” as it’s more ethical counterparts. We have certainly seen some encouraging developments in recent years — most notably the announcement that one of the largest biotech companies in the US and the first to start trials using embryonic derived stem cells in human patients was dumping its entire ESCR program — but scientists are far from abandoning research that cannibalizes tiny human beings altogether. While Geron scrapped it’s trial on spinal cord patients, another human trial using ESCs to treat macular degeneration is still currently underway and word is Geron’s now defunct ESCR program could be purchased by another company and the human trials it started recommenced. Let’s also not forget that regenerative medicine is not the only thing scientists are interested in using these stem cells for.

It’s bad enough that, unlike other, more progressive countries the United States has no laws protecting the smallest of our species from being torn apart in the name of science, the least we can do is enforce the one law we do have preventing taxpayers – many of whom have serious moral and ethical objections to it – from footing the bill for such research.

If you’re interested, the Family Research Council has links to the various filings and some stories, going back in time to the origin of the case.

TOB Tuesday: Our Bodies Tell the Story

ChelseaTheology of the Body, TOB Tuesday1 Comment

Still not sure if you want to pick up Christopher West’s new book Fill These Hearts? Here is another sneak peak for you:
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From CHAPTER 7: OUR BODIES TELL THE STORY

Several years ago a friend gave me a picture book called Magic Eye: Beyond 3D2 that promised to enable the viewer to “see what is invisible.” It was my first experience with stereograms— those amazing 3D images that look like a bunch of jumbled shapes and colors until you adjust your focus and gaze into them. At first it was frustrating. You really have to train your eyes to see in another way, to look through the two- dimensional surface. But once you do, all of a sudden the hidden image “pops” in 3D and you’re inside it. Whoa! There it is! And you wonder how you didn’t see it before, how it was right before your eyes but remained invisible.

Adjusting our focus to see into a stereogram is a great metaphor for what we’re trying to do in this book. Recall that our goal is to learn how to live our lives in 3D: to learn how to aim our desire according to God’s design so we can arrive at our eternal destiny. Our own lives, our own bodies as male and female, and the world all around us is like a stereogram. If we were to adjust our focus when we look at ourselves and the world, what hidden mysteries might “pop,” what might we see that we didn’t know we could see? We look at people and things all the time without seeing into them, and as a result we’re often stuck in a very flat, 2D vision of existence.

NATURE IS SINGING TO US

The intricate design of creation speaks of the intimate designs of the Creator: his plans, his purposes, and his invitation to men and women to enter into his own Mystery, his own Love and Life. All of creation tells the story, but, for the sake of example, have you ever taken Jesus up on his invitation to “consider how the wild flowers grow” (Luke 12:27)? What mystery might he be inviting us into here? I have a Catholic priest friend who’s a bit of a botanist with a mystical flair. He absolutely loves flowers. I once asked him what the attraction was, and he said dumbfounded, “Christopher, have you ever seen a flower?” “Of course I ha— ”— “No, no, no! I mean have you ever really seeeen a flower?” What follows is a window into the mystical view of creation he shared with me that day.

Read more…

Kathryn Jean Lopez gives it two thumbs up (in so many words)!

President Obama Ironically Defends the Lives of Children

ChelseaMarch for Life, Pro Life9 Comments

This really is a clever little promo.

Last month, after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, CT, President Obama, Mr. Abortion, himself, unwittingly gave probably one of the best pro-life statements by any president in modern history. Let’s pray that someday he pays attention to even his own words.

A Waste of a Woman

ChelseaWomenLeave a Comment

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Saw this image on Facebook. Not sure who, exactly, it should be attributed to. Some have said CoCo Chanel (that’s who is pictured here), others the movie I Don’t Know How She Does It with Sarah Jessica Parker. Either way, it makes me think of another quote from the great Alice von Hildebrand

“Unwittingly, the feminists acknowledge the superiority of the male sex by wishing to become like men. They foolishly want to alter inequality rather than to achieve truth or justice. Femininity is a linchpin of human life; once it is uprooted, the consequences are disastrous.” -Alice von Hildebrand, The Privilege of Being a Woman

Read more at: How Modern Feminists Acknowledge the Superiority of Men

HHS Mandate Information Central

ChelseaHHS Mandate1 Comment

I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time keeping up with all the lawsuits against the HHS Mandate. I’m seeing headlines of a victory here and defeats there. Of course, Hobby Lobby was the major news story last week when tens of thousands of freedom-loving Americans rallied to support the craft store as it risks fines of up to $1.3 million per day after a federal court denied the company’s request for a temporary injunction against the mandate while their litigation proceeded.
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Many thanks to the Becket Fund, which is handling several of these lawsuits, themselves, for giving us HHS Mandate Information Central — a resource page for all HHS Cases and news. It even has an interactive map so that you can easily find information on specific lawsuits.

Check it out and, please, continue to pray that these cases bear some good fruit!

TOB Tuesday: Fill These Hearts Now Available!

ChelseaTheology of the Body, TOB TuesdayLeave a Comment

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Good news! Christopher West’s new book, Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing, is now available.

Even better news! Brandon Vogt is giving away three copies of the book on his website. Click here to enter. Winners will be selected on Friday.

Here is the publisher’s description of FTH:

Fill These Hearts is a book about desire. Not trivial wants or superficial cravings, but the most vital powers of body and soul, sexuality and spirituality, that haunt us and compel us on our search for something. Weaving life-altering lessons together from classical and contemporary art, pop music, movies, and the Christian mystical tradition, popular theologian Christopher West explores the ancient but largely forgotten idea that the restless, erotic yearnings we feel in both our bodies and our spirits reveal the cry of our hearts for God. Along the way, West blows the lid off the idea of Christianity as a repressive, anti-sex religion by demonstrating that Christ came to stretch and inflame our desire for love and union to the point of infinity.

Click here to read the first chapter. Click here for Kathryn Jean Lopez’s interview with West about the book. And, most importantly, click here to order your copy!

UK IFV Numbers: 93% of All Embryos Created Never Used to Generate Pregnancy

ChelseaPro LifeLeave a Comment



For the past couple of years I’ve really been harping on what I consider the human rights disaster that is IVF. This is (one of the many reasons) why. Via the UK Telagraph:
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Official statistics show that almost half of embryos used to help a women conceive through in vitro fertilisation were thrown away during or after the process.

The embryos are created from female eggs and male sperm during the IVF process, with some introduced into the womb, put into storage, discarded as unwanted or used in scientific experiments.
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Since August 1991 more than 3.5 million human embryos have been created, producing only 235,480 “gestational sacs” or evidence of successful implantation.

Of the embryos created, almost 840,000 were put into storage for future use and more than 2000 were stored for donation. Almost 5,900 were set aside for scientific research.

Almost 1.4 million embryos were implanted in the hope of beginning pregnancies, with fewer than one in six resulting in a pregnancy.

Nearly 1.7 million were discarded unused and a further 23,480 were discarded after being taken out of storage.

UK Daily Mail has more as well and, according to their calculations, this means that 93% of all embryos created for IVF are never used to generate a pregnancy.

The key word there is pregnancy. Note that these figures do not show how many of the successful implants resulting in pregnancies went to term. So, the number of lives lost or destroyed in the name of this “compassionate” medicine are even higher. According to these numbers, the Daily Mail calculated that 15 embryos are made for every child conceived through IVF. Two years ago, their numbers indicated that the number of embryos made per successful birth was twice that.

Losers

ChelseaAbortion, Roe v. WadeLeave a Comment

TIME Magazine has a provocative new cover for it’s January 14 issue commemorating the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

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If you can’t quite read that, it says: “Forty years ago abortion rights activists won an epic victory with Roe v. Wade…And they’ve been losing ever since.”

Really, after 40 years of legalized abortion and 55 MILLION unborn children killed, it doesn’t seem like abortion rights activists have lost much ground. But, as TIME writer Kate Pickert explains, the movement to protect unfettered access to abortion has dwindled over time, thanks, in large part, to prenatal ultrasound and advanced neonatology, among other things:

The cover article by Pickert is available by subscription only, but Jill Stanek has excerpts of its major points.

While this is encouraging, let’s not forget that the biggest losers here remain the unborn children who, despite the fact that the number of Americans who identify as “pro-choice” is at an all time low, are still losing their lives at an astronomical rate.

Also in TIME online is Susan B. Anthony List’s Emily Buchanan on why “Pro-life and feminism aren’t mutually exclusive.” Check it out.