Unsolvable problems. God must give them to you to cause you to stretch toward him through the pain and discomfort they cause. I have been reading Mark Roberts book No Holds Barred. It suggests the Psalms as models to use to get some passion into your prayer. I admit that I consider my problems trivial, though they plague me. A distant, angry family member that I cannot communicate with is nothing like starvation, lack of food or shelter, terminal disease, depression. I want a closer relationship to Christ, but I need to approach him with something more dignified than a whine. I guess this might lead him to bestow a larger problem on me to "solve" my problem.

I have started praying the rosary. I remembered a prayer from my youth, called the Angelus, I think:
"Remember O Most Gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known, that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, My Mother. To thee I come before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy, hear and answer me. Amen."
I'll let you know how it goes., but once again, I'm skeptical.

The second aspect of Mark Robert's book is his clear personal experience that the fullness of God's presence follows the offering of any prayer that matters to us. Am I too blase about my relationship to God. Should I insist on His attention. Once again, I feel a whine coming on. I want the relationship, but I want to show my respect for God, too. Can I be passionate and keep my dignity? I cry easily when speaking to others about my problems. In my prayers, I'm stoic. I can't be a child to Him. Does that disallow Him being a Father to me.

Dryness.

Wednesday I visited St. Joseph's parish at mass time (7:30 AM). My daughter, mid-week, had asked me why I didn't go to a Catholic church. My wife has always claimed that I am "really" a Catholic, not a United Methodist, though up until two and a half years ago we had attended a UM church for over thirty years straight, missing Sunday worship rarely, if ever. This had come up because I said to her that I believed that I could receive the sacraments in a Catholic church though my wife could not, since I was born, reared, baptized, confirmed, and attended a Catholic church for my first 18 years. It's not true.

St. Joseph's is an inner-city Hispanic congregation, whose entire church, including its awesome collection of statuary and stained glass, was refurbished by Historic Denver recently. The church is staffed by the Redemptorist order of priests: vigorous, masculine older men with a tangible intensity of faith and intellect. On my quest to establish my Roman Catholic bona fides, I found myself in a confessional with Fr. Tim after mass. I had not received the Eucharist, but I wanted to. I began my confession as I remembered from my childhood, "Bless me Father, for I have sinned...it has been many years since my last confession." He stopped me there. "How many?" I told him. Then, "Are you married?" Then, "In the church"? When I said "No", he said, "Let's talk first," and offered me a chair around the corner from the kneeler and screen where I knelt.

Here I found out that my membership in the Methodist Church had invalidated my Roman Catholicism. My marriage "outside the church", was not recognized as valid. He got to hear the story of my youthful apostasy, and he filled me in on many problems with my current status, fully, confidently and without guile. He was talking to a fallen-away brother, not an unrepentant sinner. He was kind and firm, like the priests I remember from my youth.

We visited for about thirty minutes. He told me what my options were to restore a right relationship to the church. He told me what needed to be done to true my marriage to the requirements of the church.

After our discussion, we discussed the new pope, Benedict XVI. This priest was both orthodox and aware of current prophecy. He gave me a book on the Vassula Ryden sessions, a mystic who journals conversations with Christ which she has had nearly daily since 1986. He told me that she was accepted by the church, though not endorsed. Vassula is an attractive Greek woman, athletic looking, with long blond hair, and nearly fifty, who is a member of the Greek Orthodox. She was approached by an angel while living in Bangladesh in 1985, who prepared her for a visionary relationship with Jesus. I have read about 12 pages of the book he gave me so far. I will report back on it when I am finished. There is also a website here: www.tlig.org He also introduced me to www.spiritdaily.com , a website which is a Drudge Report for prophetic postings from around the web. I have read some of the postings. He suggested we talk again and indicated that I might profit from saying the rosary. He said that "some of us" believe that the fifth Marian prophecy (of Fatima) is about to be revealed by this new pope and that we were nearing the ending of the age. Later on Wednesday, one of my co-workers, a young apostate Catholic woman who has never evidenced any spiritual or religious life in the two years I have known her, out of the blue, handed me a rosary!

OK, Lord, you have my attention.

The Anglican Communion Primates for worldwide Anglicanism, in a recent communique to the ECUSA (Episcopal Church USA) has made a few unequivocal statements. The ECUSA amounts to 8% of the Anglican Communion, yet in arrogance, has put ordination of a homosexual bishop and acknowledgement of same sex unions over two thousand years of doctrine and polity. Here, according to Reverend Canon David C. Anderson, are the essential elements of the Primates Communique:

1. It clearly upholds the authority of Holy Scripture in ordering our moral and common life;
2. It reaffirms the teaching of the Anglican Communion on human sexuality as articulated in Lambeth 1.10
3. It expects ECUSA to withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) for a period of three years;
4. It is unprecedented: never before has a province been instructed to stand down for a specific time frame;
5. It makes clear that failure to embrace and uphold Biblical teaching and practice will result in permanent consequences.
In my view, the ECUSA will ignore these actions and continue to hold to a "higher" gospel, which includes the social gospel of "inclusiveness", thereby becoming still another split in the church and a new denomination as a result. The traditional and observant churches which are part of the ECUSA will "walk apart" from the "new" denomination. There may then be a huge fight in the denomination over the church properties, since the surviving denomination may hold the keys to all the property.

I pray for the ECUSA, as I assume that the other 92% of the Anglican Communion are doing, to repent and return to the fold. So far, officially, the ECUSA is in denial that anything at all has happened. There has been no news of the split in the diocesan newspaper, for example. The "spin machine" is characterizing this huge rift as a discussion. They have even decided to suspend all ordinations, though only asked to suspend the ordination of acknowledged homosexuals, effectively holding the denomination hostage to the gay agenda. There are currently two denominations in the ECUSA, composed of those who hold "inclusiveness" as the highest value, and those who are traditional. A formal split cannot be far away.

I have thought more about the early church. According to the book of Acts, the early church spent time receiving teaching (from the Apostles), celebrating the sacraments of baptism and the holy eucharist, in fellowship, and prayer. Those were the basics. That was the routine. So, that should be our focus at Epiphany Church, and so far, it is. I think we can do other things, too. But we should all devote ourselves to these basics assiduously. Maybe we can hand out a commitment card with these categories on them and give people something to shoot for each quarter in each. For example, "teaching" could be met with adult education classes, book reading, special classes, etc. I'm very encouraged by all the opportunities our church gives to live up to the standards of the church as described in Acts by Luke. What a blessing it is to have such a wonderful church!

A recent article in Christianity Today online entitled "Jesus' Spiritual Formation" or some such, discussed the probably use of the Shema, which was referred to in Jesus' answer to the lawyer who asked what was the greatest commandment. He stated: "Love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength", and the second is like it, "Love your neighbor as yourself". Last night I heard Judge Roy Moore interviewed, or browbeaten by Bill Press of MSNBC and Wall Street Journal columns, occasionally. Press accused the judge of overstating his case because, as far as Press could tell, the first four commandments were not the basis of American Law.

Moore looked at him with disbelief. He stated that the whole fight he was in, which caused him to lose his post as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was about the direct and important applicability of just these commandments to American/Alabama Law, and to the other six as well. Like Jesus and the lawyer, Moore needed to explain that without identifying our transcendent, loving God as the source of our law, the practice of law comes to be about power struggles among those of differing opinions who have sufficient power to use the courts to assert their view. Now, in a time of hyper-activist judges, according to Moore, federal jurists have placed themselves in the place of God. The result will be, and has been, a heightened political power struggle and tug of war, which, incidently, is shredding our constitution. Both sides call foul, accusing the other side of excess, but the real problem is that those who wish to legislate from the bench, due to majority rejection by the electorate of their elitist social agenda, are forcing compliance to their views by enacting, from the bench, laws that the people did not make and do not agree with.

Press, in what he thought was a clever ploy to identify Judge Moore as a bigot, asked him if homosexual behavior should be against the law. Press carefully characterized this behavior to be "what two consenting adults do behind closed bedroom doors". Moore responded, without hesitation, that sodomy and other homosexual acts were against the law in Alabama and most other states until a federal court had ruled, citing foreign laws, that these acts were protected under the U.S. constitution, even though on this, the court was even reversing itself in important rulings in the last forty years. Every point Press made was rebutted in detail by Moore. Even selected, edited quotes by the framers of our constitution, which were supposed to be devastating arguments in opposition to Moore, were rebuffed. Moore not only knew the quote cited, but knew its context, its precedents, and was able to quote the exact language of the law and the important documents from memory. Judge Moore is a powerful spokesman for "willy nilly" judicial law making. We will hear a lot from and about him in coming days.

A commentator Sunday asserted that the last Fatima visionary predicted the death of Pope John Paul II to within two days of the correct date. It makes me wonder about the cosmic events in our future. Does it you?

In Maryland, where there is fog, I would wake in the fall of 2000 to look out at the gloom in the winter dark. Across the three acres between our house and the church, the church lights shimmered, giving security to the church and graveyard with some dim light. At the time, I would wonder if the end times had come. I would wonder if a time of testing would come on the earth, bringing suffering and redemption. I was ready then and am now, but the passing of a great soul like John Paul II brings me back to that nighttime sense of wonder and anticipation. I'm afraid of God...and I adore Him. I want the coming of the Lord, but with dread and fascination. Could it come now? Only the Father knows the time or the hour, but we are all waiting, waiting.

The first pope I remember was Pius XII. He seemed remote and impersonal and anachronistic to me. John XXIII was round john and disruptive to All Saint's parish. We were confused when the Latin mass was eliminated, when the priests turned around to face the congregation, turning away from the ornate, vaulting altars from which the mass was "said". It upset my Irish Catholic family. I left the church. I paid little attention to Paul VI. But Pope John Paul II was something else again. His vigor and physicality, his matinee idol good looks, his purposeful engagement with the world, sparked renewed interest. I didn't return to the church, since I was now a Methodist. But, I admired him.

I'm not saddened by his death. He was a valuable man in our times, but he deserved a good death and was, no doubt, welcomed by choirs of angels and reception lines of former popes and religious leaders in heaven. I wonder about the times we live in and who will follow him. I wonder about the spectacle of his death and burial. CSPAN idologues who hold GLBT and feminist idology as their highest value have been bashing him this morning. They show whose they truly are. Reuters has listed about ten potential successors, many of whom are cardinals in the third world. This pope had such a great effect on keeping the church orthodox, that a follower who was not of that mode is unthinkable. The follower must be approved by two-thirds of the cardinals. I look for a rapid replacement.

I'm tired. I hope to rest today.

John Paul II, requiescat in pace. May perpetual light shine upon you. In Jesus Holy name.

This link has a very interesting post this morning: markdroberts.com. Mark D. Roberts is a "godblogger", like me. The difference between us is that he has a lot of theological education, is ordained, has his own local church, and is famous. He can also write, but let's not go there. Mark writes about the Nicene Creed that unifies Christians. He mentions that Mary and Pilate are the only human beings mentioned in our creed, and that Mary's purity is offset by Pilate's corruption. He writes that our Protestant reserve with respect to Mary is tempered by our understanding that her status and honored place highlight the humaness of Jesus fully, pointing our worship to his sanctifying grace and our salvation. He was finishing a series of posts on the role of Mary in the church. Peruse them if you've the time.

In continuity from my last post here, let me state the obvious: He is Risen! Hallelujah! I hope you had the wonderful Easter morning that this fact deserves from us, every year and every day.

This, again, is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.