It’s been out for a couple of years now, but if you haven’t read Gargoyle Code, then you really should. It is my  book for Lent. It follows the style of C.S.Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, but it is updated, written for Catholics and has one letter per day all through Lent–beginning with Shrove Tuesday and ending on Easter Day.

Slubgrip is the demon in question, and while he looks after his elderly patient–a traditionalist Catholic–he is advising the junior demons on how to cope with a lukewarm young Catholic who has just begun to discover his faith for the first time. It’s funny and thought provoking and bound to annoy you no matter what kind of Catholic you are. My friend John Zmirak wrote about the book here last year.

Connect here is you’d like to buy a copy. While you’re at it–why not read it with a study groups, a parish Lent group or a group of High School students? Discounts from the author for bulk orders! Go here to purchase

It’s been a hectic week guest blogging for the Anchoress. She was going to retire to her anchorage and not blog, but she couldn’t resist. There was too much going on, but it was nice for her to come back here and pay us a visit while we were holding the fort.

Why the sexy title for this post? I have avoided blogging here on the big stories of this week–the HHS power grab and the Komen-Planned Parenthood debacle–but thought I would sign out as guest blogger with this cross-post from my own blog. It considers the real issues behind the stories of the week.

Jump over to my blog here to read the story.

Thanks for being here this week with me, and I hope to greet more of you as I move my blog to join the rest of the motley crew of bloggers that Elizabeth is hiring here at Patheos.

What do St Benedict and St Therese have to do with one another? The link was keyed when I was reading the last chapter of the Rule of St Benedict where he says, “I have written a little rule for beginners” Ah! the light bulb lit up! The Little Rule and the Little Way. So I began to research both saints and found that they complement each other beautifully. Here is an excerpt from my book, St Benedict and St Therese–the Little Rule and the Little Way:

To study two saints together is to perceive three things: their unique personalities, their similarity to one another and the way their lives and teachings complement each other. When Saint Benedict and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux are studied together the contrast between their personalities is striking. One is an Italian patriarch of the sixth century, the other a bourgeois French girl at the end of the nineteenth. Benedict writes from the edge of the middle age. Thérèse writes from the edge of the modern age. Benedict writes a monastic rule, founds monasteries, rules as an abbot, is visited by royalty and dies an old man. Like a French Emily Dickinson, Thérèse hardly moves beyond her provincial family circle. She has a pious father, lives an enclosed life, writes poetry and a quaint biography, and dies a painful death at the age of twenty four. Like Aquinas and Francis, Benedict and Thérèse are radically different personalities; also like Aquinas and Francis, they complement one another in surprising and profound ways. Augustine wrote about the Scriptures that ‘the New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old made manifest in the New.’

So it is with the writings of Thérèse and Benedict;  the remarkable insights of Thérèse are hidden within Benedict’s simple monastic rule, and the universal wisdom of Benedict is made fully manifest in the writings of Thérèse. In the two of them Thérèse’s picture of the saints in heaven comes true, for in Thérèse and Benedict ‘a simple little child becomes the intimate friend of a patriarch.’

In ‘studying’ a saint one is never drawn only to their writings. The first attraction to any saint is to their unusual life. The saint’s teachings are nothing without their life because their writings and their life are one. As Gregory the Great said of Benedict, ‘he could not have written what he did not live’ and Hans Urs Von Balthasar says ‘Thérèse protected herself from ever writing any statement that she herself had not tested and that she was not translating into deeds as she was writing.’

Hagiograpny and biography are not the same thing. We do not study the life of a saint as we might read the story of a dead celebrity. We can’t study the story of a dead saint because there’s no such thing.  The saint’s life is dynamic because in Christ the saint is still alive. Thérèse is famous for anticipating the great work she would do after her death, ‘I will spend my heaven doing good on earth,’

she said.  We venerate the saints and ask for their intercession not because they have written fine words, nor because we think them especially powerful in heaven. Neither do we venerate the saints and ask for their intercession simply because they are holy and good. We venerate saints and ask for their help because they have become our friends. They may be friends, but they are exalted friends. We relate to the saints as we might to a member of the royal family who has come to call. We are fascinated by them because they are greater than us, but we’re more fascinated because they’re not greater than us. They might wear satin breeches, but they step into them one leg at a time. Because the saints are like us and unlike us they not only show us what we are but what we could be. Studying a saint therefore, is a work of devotion not diligence. It is a relationship, not a report. We study a saint not for the love of knowledge but for the knowledge of love.

Certainly Benedict and Thérèse are attractive personalities. Benedict stands as a regal patriarch, calling his followers to a spiritual path of simple moderation. He offers them a civilised and liberating balance of prayer, work and study.  The monasteries that followed his rule kept the memory of learning alive during a dark age and laid the foundations for modern Western culture. Benedict is a true gentleman of the spirit. He is realistic about human nature, but always optimistic about the chances for progress. His personality is cautious and modest, yet fervent with brotherly love. Most of all, he is exhilarated by the spiritual life. Disciples of Benedict have been drawn from every corner of the world for over one thousand, five hundred years. Men and women, religious and laity have heard his youthful call to run with him…’in the path of God’s commandments with hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.’

Thérèse of Lisieux also draws multitudes with her blend of innocence and unrelenting love. She may be the ‘little flower’, but Southerners in the United States would call her a steel magnolia, for her fragrance and purity is undergirded with a determination and resilience like no other. As time turned into the darkest century of human history, Thérèse offered her life and writings as a testimony to the universal values of innocence, faith and child-like trust.  Anyone who perseveres with her writings finds an astounding spiritual depth communicated by a witty and delightful personality. She is tough and tender. She soars with a rhapsody of emotion yet has no time for shallow sentimentality. Anyone who blames her for promoting sugary religion has not read her book to the end.

After the vows of stability and obedience is the third vow of Conversion of Life. This is the part where the spiritual life gets some kick and zing. Obedience and stability seem dull and pedestrian, but conversion of life is what it is all about.

Conversion of life is not just that a person seeks to be converted the way an Evangelical ‘gets saved.’ Its certainly a good thing to repent and accept Christ’s saving work, but for the Catholic ‘conversion of life’ means much more. First of all, it means a life that is constantly, every moment seeking to be converted. ‘Converted’ means changed, and the Benedictine way is always alive, always alert to change and growth–always looking for new ways the Spirit is seeking to convert the soul.

There is a larger dimension to it still: we seek conversion not just of our own individual life, but of Life–meaning the transformation of our entire existence. We work with the Spirit to change our family, transform our communities, transform our world through the conversion of our own lives. We are all interconnected and the best thing I can do therefore for the conversion of the world is to be truly and completely converted myself.

Conversion of Life is the central, driving goal of the whole spiritual life. Everything else–the liturgy, the prayer, the discipline, the service and the self denial–all are focussed on this greater goal of conversion of life. We pray and read and work so that we may be totally transformed into the image of Christ. For the Catholic this is a constant opportunity and reality. We do not believe that sanctification is accomplished for us like magic, or that it is a legal fiction the way some Protestants do. Instead it is a work of grace, through which we participate in the great adventure of becoming saints. We work with God to complete this work so that in the end we live the life of grace in joyous freedom–then as St Benedict says, “we will run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with an inexpressible delight of love.”

Mrs Brady is a sweet old thing. She qualifies as ‘steel magnolia’. Firm in her Catholic faith, she doesn’t tolerate fools, but she remains kind to all. Go here to meet her as she gives advice to one of her many visitors.

Earlier in the week Kathy Schiffer mentioned the old woman who swallowed a fly… and tomorrow is St Blaise day with the blessing of throats–which you would need if you swallowed a fly or a bee, and now Fr. Z posts here on what a priest is supposed to do if a creepy crawly of some sort gets into the chalice after the consecration. It seems the old books tell you what to do, and Fr. Z–with his usual attention to rather arcane detail outlines the process.

It all has to do with pins from maniples, drying and burning the poor creature and disposing of the cremains.

Which is much more mundane solution than that of a friend of mine who had a wasp zoom in the window and dive bomb into the chalice right after the consecration. The yellowjacket was mad as a hornet–if you like–and swimming around in circles. The astonished priest was also quite experienced as an exorcist, so almost without thinking he leaned over the chalice, closed his eyes and the stared at the offending insect and said, “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, I command you to come out!”

At which point the insect leaped up from his swimming, out of the chalice, circled once to get his bearings and flew out the window.

Of course John the Baptist had another solution to pesky insects. He ate them with a delicate dressing of honey.