The sacrament of touch
Feb 6, 2018
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(Unsplash/Joey Yu)
Last spring, my wife, Terry, was diagnosed with a Stage 4 glioblastoma brain tumor. Since then, she has been through successful surgery to remove the tumor; three weeks at a rehab center; and six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation. She’s now in the midst of a second round of chemo treatments, and thankfully there has been no recurrence of the tumor.
Terry has experienced several side effects from all this. She’s lost her appetite, and when she does eat, hardly anything tastes good to her. She has extreme cancer fatigue, which means she spends much of the day in bed. She perseverates a lot — the same thoughts keep looping in her head, and she repeats them over and over to whoever happens to be with her.
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She’s always been an anxious person — now she becomes anxious at the smallest deviation from the day’s plan. In social situations, she becomes panicky and wants to leave after just a few minutes.
We are members of St. Vincent de Paul Parish near downtown St. Louis. We almost always attend the 9 a.m. Sunday Mass. And like most good Catholics, we almost always sit in the same pew with the same group of fellow parishioners.
This past Sunday we went to the 9 a.m. with our oldest grandson, Brandon. All through the Liturgy of the Word, Terry seemed fairly calm and engaged. She even stood for the Gospel reading and the recitation of the creed.
It all started to go south during the presentation of the gifts.
“Mark, I have to leave. I won’t make it.”
“You’re doing fine,” I whispered. “It’s just a little bit longer.”
“Mark, you promised we would leave if I couldn’t make it.”
“I know. It won’t be much longer. Brandon has to bring the food we brought up to the altar.”
“I want to go.”
On and on. And on.
By the time Brandon returned, I had given up. I told him we would have to leave early, and I started to zip up my coat.
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Then I looked back at Terry. She had stopped perseverating. Her anxiety was gone. She sat calmly, at peace, eyes fixed on the altar. What had happened?
And then I looked down. Sheila, one of the “regulars” who was sitting with her husband and daughter in the pew in front of us, had turned around and was holding Terry’s hand.
As tears welled up in my eyes, all I could do was look at Sheila and say, “Thank you so much.”
A few minutes later, another of the “regulars,” our friend Jeff, took over. As he held Terry’s hand he whispered to her his admiration for her courage and inspiration.
We stayed for the remainder of the Mass. Terry was attentive and responsive — she even walked all the way to the front of church to receive Communion.
Terry had been healed — by the simple, sacred act of touching.
As we know from the news these days, touching is a profoundly ambiguous gesture. An unwanted touch can be a violent act, an assertion of power, an assault on the bodily integrity of another.
But as Sheila and Jeff demonstrated, touching can be an act of peacemaking, of communion, of healing.
I was reminded on Sunday that we are the eyes and ears and hands of God. God does not dispense the grace of healing from the heavens. We — God’s incarnate presence on earth — are responsible to bring God’s healing to our brothers and sisters in pain. God is waiting for us, God is depending on us to heal one another.
That day I witnessed firsthand the sacred — dare I say miraculous — power of human touch.
Sheila’s hand was the hand of God. Jeff’s hand was the hand of God. A miracle of healing took place on Sunday. Terry was healed — and so was I.
[Mark Etling is the spiritual programs coordinator at the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, Illinois. He is also an adjunct assistant professor for the School for Professional Studies at St. Louis University.]
Is Technology Disconnecting Us?
Technology Moves so Fast! Our society is continually and rapidly advancing in technology. We can get information and communicate with others literally in seconds. No more having to go down to the library, hopeful to find the right book in the card catalog, and hoping that someone hasn’t already checked it out. No longer do …
Source: Is Technology Disconnecting Us?
Prepare for a Prayerful Lent
Let us use this season of Lent to get closer to God, maybe closer than ever before, so that you can be what God created you to be: living signs, living witnesses, living instruments of His infinite love to the world.
Source: Prepare for a Prayerful Lent
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Pope: This Lent, ‘May Our Hearts Be Ever More Ardent in Faith, Hope and Love’
Holy Father said in annual message: ‘Lent summons us, and enables us, to come back to the Lord wholeheartedly and in every aspect of our life.’
VATICAN CITY — In his message for the upcoming Lenten season, Pope Francis urged people to renew their enthusiasm for the faith, using this season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving as an opportunity to stoke the flame of charity in their heart.
“Above all, I urge the members of the Church to take up the Lenten journey with enthusiasm, sustained by almsgiving, fasting and prayer,” the Pope said in his message, published Feb. 6.
“If, at times, the flame of charity seems to die in our own hearts, know that this is never the case in the heart of God! He constantly gives us a chance to begin loving anew.”
At the Easter vigil, we will light the Easter candle, he said, explaining how it symbolizes a “new fire,” and will “slowly overcome the darkness and illuminate the liturgical assembly.”
“May the light of Christ rising in glory dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds,” he continued. “By listening to God’s word and drawing nourishment from the table of the Eucharist, may our hearts be ever more ardent in faith, hope and love.”
Written on the Solemnity of All Saints, the Pope’s message for Lent is on the theme: “Because of the increase of iniquity, the love of many will grow cold (Matthew 24:12).”
In the message, he warned against both cold hearts and “false prophets,” which he said tempt us to be led and enslaved by our emotions or by a desire for wealth. “How many of God’s children are mesmerized by momentary pleasures, mistaking them for true happiness?” he wrote.
This is the core of Pope Francis’ Lenten message: to draw attention to the fact that there are many experiences that “whittle away all of [our] enthusiasm and zeal” for the faith, Cardinal Peter Turkson told CNA Feb. 6.
Head of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, he said that living as a disciple of Jesus has a lot of challenges, and Francis’ message highlights the need to rekindle the fire of our faith.
“Love can become cold because there are very many things which prevent it from sustaining the warmth of enthusiasm that it had,” Cardinal Turkson explained. Therefore, this message invites us, through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, to re-inspire our love of God and neighbor.
“And this is crucial because all the good works that we decide to do … are all animated by a sense of love,” he continued.
Seeing the problems in the world and within ourselves, the solution is to turn to the Church, Pope Francis said, because along with the truth, she “offers us in the Lenten season the soothing remedy of prayer, almsgiving and fasting.”
One of the biggest obstacles to charity, he continued, is the evil of greed of money, which is what almsgiving helps to counteract.
“How I would like almsgiving to become a genuine style of life for each of us!” the Pope said. “How I would like us, as Christians, to follow the example of the apostles and see in the sharing of our possessions a tangible witness of the communion that is ours in the Church!”
Almsgiving is very fitting during Lent, he continued, but added that he hopes that “even in our daily encounters with those who beg for our assistance, we would see such requests as coming from God himself.”
Almsgiving, along with prayer and fasting, are intended as instruments to fight both sin within ourselves and its effect on the world. For, from greed, follows “the rejection of God and his peace,” he said. We begin to prefer “our own desolation rather than the comfort found in his word and the sacraments.”
Greed also may lead us to violence, he noted, pointing to how we as a culture often lash out, in particular, at those we think threaten the “certainties” of our lives, such as the unborn child, the elderly and infirm, the immigrant, or even just the neighbor “who does not live up to our expectations.”
Almsgiving is a way of setting us free from greed, acknowledging that “what I possess is never mine alone.”
In fasting, too, we are given the opportunity to grow, he said, both by experiencing the hunger that many people around the world experience daily and by expressing our own “spiritual hunger and thirst for life in God.”
“Fasting wakes us up. It makes us more attentive to God and our neighbor. It revives our desire to obey God, who alone is capable of satisfying our hunger,” he said.
He explained that devoting more time to prayer also helps us to root out vice from our hearts and to find consolation in God, who is our Father and who “wants us to live life well.”
“Lent summons us, and enables us, to come back to the Lord wholeheartedly and in every aspect of our life,” the Pope said. “With this message, I would like again this year to help the entire Church experience this time of grace anew, with joy and in truth.”
He also said that the Church would again be celebrating the “24 Hours for the Lord” initiative, which is a day for the whole Church to focus on the celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation, within the context of Eucharistic adoration.
This year, it will take place March 9-10, he said, inspired by the words of Psalm 130:4, “With you is forgiveness.” In each diocese, at least one church will remain open for 24 consecutive hours, he said, offering opportunities for adoration and sacramental confession.
Led by Pope Francis, “24 Hours for the Lord” is a worldwide initiative that points to confession as a primary way to experience God’s merciful embrace. It was launched in 2014 under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.
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Is the FBI for America’s interest or for certain Americans?
Carter Page was an FBI undercover employee in March 2016. In October 2016 the FBI lied, convincing a FISA judge that Page was a Russian spy
Kudos to The Conservative Treehouse for its fine work connecting the dots that puts an exclamation point on the FBI’s criminal corruption in applying for a FISA warrant to conduct surveillance on the Trump campaign.
In March 2016, Page was an undercover employee for the FBI in the case against Evgeny Burakov. Just seven months later, the FBI was in front of a FISA judge with the fabricated-from-thin-air, 35-page lie we now know as the Trump dossier to convince the judge that an individual they had trusted and was on their payroll in March was now (October 2016) a Russian spy and warranted surveillance, which, of course, gave the FBI expanded surveillance surveillance authority of other members of the Trump campaign.
Pay close attention to the dates in the following timeline. They prove the sinister intent of Barack Hussein, Hitlery Clinton, DOJ, and the FBI, as well as their multiple crimes against not only an American citizen but a candidate for President of the United States by his political rivals in powerful seats of authority.
In 2013 Carter Page was working as an “under-cover employee” (UCE) of the FBI, helping them to build a case against “Evgeny Buryakov”. In March 2016 Carter Page remained their informant pre-trial leading to a pleading of guilty from Buryakov.
[Note – Pay close attention to dates, names in descriptions amid all citations]Sources: ♦ In 2013 the U.S. Department of Justice, Southern District of New York, announced an indictment against a Russian Operative Evgeny Buryakov. LINK HERE In March of 2016 Buryakov pleaded GUILTY:
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and John P. Carlin, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, announced that EVGENY BURYAKOV, a/k/a “Zhenya,” pled guilty today to conspiring to act in the United States as an agent of the Russian Federation, without providing prior notice to the Attorney General.
[…] The FBI obtained the recordings after Sporyshev attempted to recruit an FBI undercover employee (“UCE-1”), who was posing as an analyst from a New York-based energy company. In response to requests from Sporyshev, UCE-1 provided Sporyshev with binders containing purported industry analysis written by UCE-1 and supporting documentation relating to UCE-1’s reports, as well as covertly placed recording devices.(more)
♦ In 2016 Reuters published an article, based on the ongoing court case, going into detail about court records and how the FBI built their case. Reuters also describes the FBI UCE-1 (Under-Cover Employee) with strong detail. LINK HERE
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The FBI eavesdropped on meetings involving Russian intelligence personnel in New York City, including a suspected spy posing as a trade representative, by hiding recorders in binders containing supposedly confidential information about the energy sector, U.S. prosecutors said.
The hours of covert recordings from 2013 were disclosed in papers filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday in the case of Evgeny Buryakov, a Russian citizen who U.S. prosecutors say posed as a banker while participating in a Cold War-style spy ring.
[…] According to prosecutors, in April 2012, Sporyshev met an undercover FBI employee posing as an analyst at a New York energy firm at an oil and gas industry conference.Over the next two years, they met to discuss the industry and other economic and political issues, prosecutors said, with Sporyshev providing gifts and cash for information.
In 2013, the FBI employee began providing Sporyshev with the binders containing purported industry analysis he wrote, supporting documents, and “covertly placed recording devices,” prosecutors wrote. (more)
♦ In April 2017, writing a story about Carter Page (trying to enhance/affirm the Russian narrative), the New York Times outlined Page’s connections to the Trump campaign. However, New York Times also references Page’s prior connection to the Buryakov case. If you ignore the narrative, you discover the UCE1 description is Carter Page. READ [Notice how the story is shaped] LINK HERE:
Russian intelligence operatives tried in 2013 to recruit an American businessman and eventual foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who is now part of the F.B.I. investigation into Russia’s interference into the American election, according to federal court documents and a statement issued by the businessman.
The businessman, Carter Page, met with one of three Russianswho were eventually charged with being undeclared officers with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R.
The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Mr. Page of wrongdoing.
The court documents say that Mr. Page, who founded an investment company in New York called Global Energy Capital, provided documents about the energy business to one of the Russians. […] To record their conversations, the F.B.I. inserted a listening device into binders that were passed to the Russian intelligence operatives during an energy conference, according to a former United States intelligence official. (more)
When you read The Times article (2017), against the backdrop of the Reuters article (2016), and the DOJ release (2016) it is transparently clear that Carter Page was the Under-Cover Employee (UCE1) of the FBI in the 2013 case.
Carter Page was working for the FBI. Page was the “analyst from a New York-based energy company” who “began providing Sporyshev with the binders“.
However, in 2017 the New York Times, using information from “a former intelligence official“, conflates the FBI/Page Relationship. Heck, the NY Times tries to entirely change the relationship between Carter Page and the FBI.
Why?
Likely because on October 21st 2016 the FBI claimed to a FISA Court; to gain a “Title I” surveillance warrant; that Carter Page was working on behalf of a foreign government.
Carter Page was an FBI Under-Cover Employee in 2013, and remained the primary FBI witness through May of 2016 throughout the case.
If Carter Page was working as a UCE (FBI undercover employee), responsible for the bust of a high level Russian agent in 2013 -and remained a UCE- throughout the court caseUP TO May of 2016, how is it possible that on October 21st 2016 Carter Page is put under a FISA Title 1 surveillance warrant as an alleged Russian agent?
Conclusion: He wasn’t. The DOJ National Security Division and the FBI Counterintelligence Division, knew he wasn’t. The DOJ-NSD and FBI flat-out LIED.
Now, go back to the March 2016 DOJ Press Release of the guilty pleading for Evgeny Buryakov, announced from the New York office:
…”Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and John P. Carlin, Assistant Attorney General for National Security, announced”…
Because “FISA Title I” surveillance authority against a U.S. citizen is so serious (the U.S. government is essentially calling the target a spy), only a few people are authorized to even apply for such surveillance warrants. One of the four people authorized to make such a filing is the Asst. Attorney General who is head of the National Security Division of the DOJ. That person is John P Carlin.
The same John P Carlin who, together with the FBI counterintelligence unit, conscripted Carter Page as an FBI Under-Cover Employee, gains a guilty plea, then turns around and six months later accuses Page of being a Russian Spy.
Why? Likely because the DOJ-NSD and FBI CoIntel needed to find a legal way to spy on the Trump campaign. The 2016 FISA Title 1 surveillance of former FBI employee Carter Page became that legal way. [“The Insurance Policy”]
In October of 2016, at approximately the same time the DOJ was making the FISA Court filing against Page, and successfully gaining the surveillance warrant, Asst. Attorney General John P Carlin resigns as head of the DOJ-NSD. –SEE HERE– Did Carlin resign in protest? or, did Carlin resign knowing he too had served a larger purpose?
The entire FISA Title I surveillance authority over Carter Page was cover, most likely retroactive cover, for the DOJ and FBI conducting surveillance on the Trump campaign.
The DOJ-National Security Division and FBI Counterintelligence Unit didn’t care about Page because to them he was a useful tool. It wasn’t Page they needed, per se’, they just needed someone, anyone, who had contact with the Trump campaign that they could apply the label “foreign agent” upon. The DOJ/FBI just needed someone they could position to gain the FISA “Title I” surveillance approval that would retroactively make all prior campaign surveillance legal. Who Carter Page was simply checked the right boxes.
Page wasn’t a “plant”, or a “participant”, he was a useful body upon which they could attach a label to justify their surveillance and monitoring. Nothing more.
Clear enough?
Carter Page testified to the House Intelligence Committee that DOJ-FBI officials leaked his identity, his role in the Buryakov case, to the media. This is secondary and direct confirmation from Page himself that he was indeed the FBI UCE-1
Obama’s FISA Men In Black Played Key Role in Russian Election Conspiracy
Obama’s FISA Men In Black Played Key Role in Russian Election Conspiracy
Source: Obama’s FISA Men In Black Played Key Role in Russian Election Conspiracy
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