Category: RCIA

I’ll Take You As You Are

I grew up Catholic in the ‘70’s. My Bible came in chunks which were read aloud at weekly Mass. From time to time I talked to God, but I could better quote from the book, I’m Okay, You’re Okay more than any Bible verse. I went to confession on a fairly regular basis but was too self-absorbed to recognize the philosophical incongruence between my choice of reading material and my faith. Not until much later, after a failed marriage and numerous other mistakes, did I admit for certain I wasn’t Okay.
Despite the fact that I was far from Okay, I’d find myself compelled to share stories where Grace overrode the ugliness. At times I felt convicted, a hypocrite. But sometimes I’d hear that quiet whisper: it’s okay, I’ll take you as you are.

Who is out there to do His bidding but the flawed and scarred? Since no one leaves this life without their share of mistakes and pain we are all “eligible”.

Before Communion we say, Lord, I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed. Here is where we admit our brokenness and submit all we are to Love.

Sometimes I imagine I hear Him say, I will take you in your brokenness. I will take you in your weakness. I will take you with every scar. I will take you with every flaw. I will take you, not despite these conditions, but because they are part of the human condition and I love you.

~~Sheila LaSalle

Tags communion

Christianity RCIA Saints Spirituality

Mary Magdalene Showed Up

July 22^nd, is the Memorial of Saint Mary Magdalene. According to the Gospel of John, it was Mary Magdalene to whom Christ first appeared and spoke to after His resurrection.

On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. … as she wept, she bent over into the tomb and saw two angels in white sitting there… She said to them, “They have taken my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there, but did not know it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” She thought it was the gardener and said to him, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” which means Teacher…

Why Mary Magdalene and not Peter? I can’t even speculate the answer to that, but I believe we can find answers to other questions with which we grapple within the context of the original question: why her? Questions such as, how do I live, on a day to day basis, as a Christian within a secular society? How am I supposed to move forward in my life after tragedy and loss? How do I acquire that burning love or that burning faith that the disciples and saints shared?

Mary came to the tomb while it was still dark. Imagine what that alone must have been like. Consider the wilderness, the hungry, nocturnal wildlife roaming about the land. Her deep craving for Christ outweighed any fear, or struggle, or threat. Despite the darkness, despite her grief, she went to him. She showed up. Love knows no limits. When we struggle, encounter a tragedy or loss, those who truly love us show up. This is the love that Mary Magdalene displayed. And I believe this is the answer to the questions that we encounter from time to time.

How do I live, on a day to day basis, as a Christian within a secular society? Show up. Read scripture, pray. As Catholics, we have the privilege to engage in an encounter with Christ, in the highest form of prayer, on a daily basis: the Mass.

How am I supposed to move forward in my life after tragedy and loss? Show up. Even when our grief is blinding and every forward step feels daunting, we need to show up because that is the most surefooted path to a healing encounter with the risen Christ.

How do I acquire that burning love or that burning faith so many others have shared? Again, show up. We choose which relationships we do, or do not, nurture in life.

Reading on, although she spoke to him, Mary didn’t recognize Jesus until He said her name. Showing up, despite the unknown, despite our pain, despite our secular apathay is only the first half of the equation. Once we do show up, we must listen.

~~Sheila LaSalle

Tags communion, faithfulness, saints

Catholic RCIA Spirituality

He Knew You

Before He sang the stars into existence,
before He separated mist from the sea,
He knew you.

Before He broke the bread and took the cup
before He said, Do This in Remembrance of Me,
He knew you.

Before He carried a cross through dusty streets,
before iron nailed his palms and feet,
He knew you.

He knew your struggles, your search for refuge
and for your whole life,
He’s loved you.

He’s loved you whether you be saddened or elated
and for your whole life,
He’s waited.

He’s waited for this very day, for You
to come to His banquet, enter in and forever more
feast on Him.
Sheila LaSalle

Tags communion

Catholic Christianity RCIA Saints

The Persistence of a Saint

Post author By SheilaLaSalle
Post date July 2, 2015
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Growing up, celebrating All Saints Day involved much more than dressing up in a costume on the first of November. For weeks leading up to the celebration, each student chose a saint to research and write a report. The culminating activity: dressing up as that saint on All Saints Day.

Upon entering the school library, girls with names like Theresa and Monica rushed to the saint section to find the saint that shared their name. Not a strong reader yet, I waited for them to select their books before I searched the bottom stack of picture books for a saint named Sheila. “Looks like I’m off the hook,” I told a friend, “there’s no saint Sheila.” Within minutes, most of my classmates heard my declaration, as well as the librarian, and I was instructed to choose a saint from the collection anyway. Book after book, every cover captured a smiling saint in the image of perfection. Clean and tidy. They must have been born perfect, I thought and I found it difficult to look at them. I was a tom-boy. I played Little League baseball, and spit. Scuffed knees and dirt under my finger nails was a badge of honor. I looked nothing like these saints, and I was far from having the patience of a saint, a term I heard my mother use to describe my older sister, named after Saint Catherine. Then and there, I determined that I was not born a saint, would never be perfect, and my mother knew it when she named me Sheila.

Not until I was far into my adulthood did I get to know any of the saints. I learned that they really didn’t start out wholesome and perfect. But what made them a saint was that at some point in their life they turned toward God, embraced the Trinity, and lived their life dedicated to Christ. It was this dedication that resulted in a holy communion with God in heaven. Around this time, I heard a priest define a saint as a friend of God, which is when It all began to make sense. If someone were to be with God after passing from this life, it stood to reason they would be a friend of God during this life also.

It requires a certain dedication to develop and maintain a friendship. Consider the effort we put into our friendships, the hours spent being together, the countless conversations. Over time, as we gain new responsibilities and are pulled in other directions, it requires a certain persistence if we intend for our friendships to last.

As a friend of God, saints also engaged in this behavior. Their faithfulness was more than keeping the commandments and being a “good person”. Their faithfulness was evident in their persistence and dedication to their relationship with Christ.

To be a friend of God and come into union with Him, it is not the patience of a saint we need to adopt, but rather the persistence and dedication of a saint.

Sheila LaSalle

Tags communion, faithfulness, saints

Catholic Christianity RCIA

Come Holy Spirit fill us with your Love

Post author By SheilaLaSalle
Post date July 1, 2015
3 Comments on Come Holy Spirit fill us with your Love

“…the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom 5:5)

If I only knew…. If I could go back and do it all over again…. I wish I would have held my tongue….

Most of us have experienced regret. “If I spent less money on trivial trinkets and clothes, I would have more disposable income to share with my neighbor who just lost her job.” “If I only knew the last time I saw my son was really going to be the last time, I would have expressed how proud I was of him and hugged him a little longer.” “If I had been less self-conscious and prideful, I would have asked for help and life today may be quite different.” Regret may indeed be a part of the human condition, but why?

Because we are not perfect, our actions are not always rooted in a spirit of love. But as Christians, we are called to something greater, we are called to have a loving spirit which requires more than being a nice person. And I don’t think we can manufacture it on our own.

In Hebrew, the word for spirit is ruah, meaning breath, air, wind. When we pray, asking for the Holy Spirit to fill us, we are essentially asking to be filled with that breath of love so powerful it took on a life of its own. We are asking for the most ancient love of all to reside in us, to take up residence, to live there. So that as we encounter the maze of human trials and relationships, both personal and societal, we do so with a love that surpasses what we alone can summon.

Sheila LaSalle

Tags Holy Spirit

Catholic Christianity RCIA

Icons Among Us: Why do Catholics do That?

Post author By SheilaLaSalle
Post date June 23, 2015
No Comments on Icons Among Us: Why do Catholics do That?

Before I returned to the Catholic Church, I began to collect small statues of Mary. My husband, a wood carver and devout Protestant at the time, started the collection with a six inch wooden replica of our Blessed Mother with her hands outstretched. I found it comforting to have her “around”. But I never prayed near her and with the exception of dusting and rearranging, I never touched her. I found the act of touching the feet of Jesus or kissing the cross to be an archaic, left-over tradition from centuries past when mankind had not connected the dots between exposure and contagious disease. So when I first knelt before the statue of Jesus in St. Joseph’s chapel on Mt. Royal in Montreal, I never intended to join the long line of people waiting to do just that. I watched them. When they finally came before him, some clung while some barely grazed his feet with their fingertips, but no one pulled out a handy wipe before or after.

When the line dwindled down to one person, my husband leaned over and asked me if I was going to “go up”. I thought of all the crutches that lined the walls in the entrance to the Oratory, each one bore witness to a miracle. In a burst of humility, I stood up and approached the ceramic Jesus.

Touched by so many before me, his feet hardly resembled feet, but I held them anyway and prayed. The act of treating an inanimate “person” with as much reverence as I would a live being reminded me of the night I held my twenty year old son Luke, six days after his unexpected death.

While my father sat beside him, quietly praying the rosary, I stood as close as I could, without climbing into the coffin, and placed my hand on his chest. He felt doll like, very un-real, and yet, I didn’t want to withdraw my hand. Turning to whisper to anyone else in the room, moving to the left or right so that my husband and other family members could see him, I kept my hand attached to some part of his body. I touched him with no less love than I did when he was a little boy sleeping, because touching the place that once housed his spirit was meaningful.

Four and a half years later, I find that same meaning when I gaze at pictures of him. Pictures serve as a reminder that he was here, that the love and laughter he shared was real, and that I’ll see him again, God willing.

As Catholics, we do not pray to statues. But statues serve as a reminder of the realness of the one it resembles. Just as with every image of our Blessed Mother that I placed in my home also included my plea, lead me to your son, kissing a cross or clinging in deep prayer to the feet of a ceramic Christ is a very real example of the spiritual gesture we are engaging in.

~Sheila LaSalle

Christianity RCIA

When We Go to Mass

We go when we’re content, when we’re guilty and afraid. We go when we’re grieving and when we’re filled with joy. We go when we need to connect or reconnect with something larger than ourselves, when we need to remember that we’re not alone. But sometimes we go because there is simply no other place else to go. Because we have exhausted every other avenue in our search for completion; shopping, drinking, flirting, working, and we still come up short. We go because on some level we recognize that it is only through this connection that we ever come close to completion. Because when we go, we come into union with a divine essence that settles into the fibers of our heart and transforms us.