Perfect Intellect and the Blessed Virgin Mary

Our family prayed the Rosary last night, and while meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries, I tried to ask God to help me develop certain qualities - ones that would help me be a better imitator of our Lord and His Blessed Mother.

I was meditating on the Agony in the Garden, and I thought about how I need to learn to submit to God's Will in my life. I need to be less selfish - less of a control freak - and trust God. This is what Jesus did during His Agony; He submitted Himself to the Will and the Plan of the Father.

As I meditated more, I thought of His Blessed Mother's submission to the Will of God. Her assent - her fiat - was perfect. Her will was in union with God's. Submission was a pleasure for her, and this was helped by the fact that her soul did not carry the scars of Original Sin. For an explanation of this important doctrine of the Catholic Church (called the Immaculate Conception), Catholic Answers offers, in part, the following:

The Immaculate Conception

It’s important to understand what the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is and what it is not. Some people think the term refers to Christ’s conception in Mary’s womb without the intervention of a human father; but that is the Virgin Birth. Others think the Immaculate Conception means Mary was conceived "by the power of the Holy Spirit," in the way Jesus was, but that, too, is incorrect. The Immaculate Conception means that Mary, whose conception was brought about the normal way, was conceived without original sin or its stain—that’s what "immaculate" means: without stain. The essence of original sin consists in the deprivation of sanctifying grace, and its stain is a corrupt nature. Mary was preserved from these defects by God’s grace; from the first instant of her existence she was in the state of sanctifying grace and was free from the corrupt nature original sin brings.

When discussing the Immaculate Conception, an implicit reference may be found in the angel’s greeting to Mary. The angel Gabriel said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you" (Luke 1:28). The phrase "full of grace" is a translation of the Greek word kecharitomene. It therefore expresses a characteristic quality of Mary.

The traditional translation, "full of grace," is better than the one found in many recent versions of the New Testament, which give something along the lines of "highly favored daughter." Mary was indeed a highly favored daughter of God, but the Greek implies more than that (and it never mentions the word for "daughter"). The grace given to Mary is at once permanent and of a unique kind. Kecharitomene is a perfect passive participle of charitoo, meaning "to fill or endow with grace." Since this term is in the perfect tense, it indicates that Mary was graced in the past but with continuing effects in the present. So, the grace Mary enjoyed was not a result of the angel’s visit. In fact, Catholics hold, it extended over the whole of her life, from conception onward. She was in a state of sanctifying grace from the first moment of her existence. ...

(For the exact definition, broken down bit-by-bit with explanations, see the Catholic Encyclopedia at the New Advent site.)

Because Mary was conceived without Original Sin, she was in a better position to accept God's Divine Will and to align her own desires with His. Instead of her judgement being clouded by the aftereffects of The Fall, she was able to remain without sin throughout her life.

Which led me to ponder further...

When Adam and Eve were created, they had an enlightened intellect. In other words, they had innate knowledge of God and His Will. They could freely choose to accept or reject this (and we all know how that ended up), but they knew full well what that Will was. It was the sin of Pride that led to the Fall, hence "Pride comes before the Fall." But, make no mistake, they were smart enough to know what they were doing. Our intellects are not clear, they are not complete. Our intellects are like broken bones that are not quite healed properly. We are weak, our souls are weak, and our wills are weak. Anyone who thinks they are different is wrong, for even Saint Paul lamented that he was unable to avoid sinning (Romans 7:15).

But Mary - she was preserved from Original Sin, pre-emptively given the very Salvation that Christ Jesus would offer to us all. This is a basic belief that the Church has held since the earliest days of Christianity. Catholic Answers points to St. Irenaeus' writings in the Second Century:

"Consequently, then, Mary the Virgin is found to be obedient, saying, ‘Behold, O Lord, your handmaid; be it done to me according to your word.’ Eve, however, was disobedient, and, when yet a virgin, she did not obey. Just as she, who was then still a virgin although she had Adam for a husband—for in paradise they were both naked but were not ashamed; for, having been created only a short time, they had no understanding of the procreation of children, and it was necessary that they first come to maturity before beginning to multiply—having become disobedient, was made the cause of death for herself and for the whole human race; so also Mary, betrothed to a man but nevertheless still a virgin, being obedient, was made the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race. . . . Thus, the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith" (Against Heresies 3:22:24 [A.D. 189]).

"The Lord then was manifestly coming to his own things, and was sustaining them by means of that creation that is supported by himself. He was making a recapitulation of that disobedience that had occurred in connection with a tree, through the obedience that was upon a tree [i.e., the cross]. Furthermore, the original deception was to be done away with—the deception by which that virgin Eve (who was already espoused to a man) was unhappily misled. That this was to be overturned was happily announced through means of the truth by the angel to the Virgin Mary (who was also [espoused] to a man). . . . So if Eve disobeyed God, yet Mary was persuaded to be obedient to God. In this way, the Virgin Mary might become the advocate of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so it is rescued by a virgin. Virginal disobedience has been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. For in the same way, the sin of the first created man received amendment by the correction of the First-Begotten" (ibid., 5:19:1 [A.D. 189]).

So if the Blessed Virgin Mary was without sin - and without the broken-ness that comes from being born with Original Sin on one's soul, does this mean that she, too, had a perfect intellect, as Eve did before the Fall?

If you know, please, point me towards some information on this. It's fascinating to me that Mary might have had the same perfect intellect that our First Parents had!

Wordless Wednesday: Ingalls Homestead

Anniversaries and Times and Seasons and Prayers

This Saturday is our anniversary: 17 years! My sweet husband likes to add, "16 of them happy," with a wink, making a reference to my two agonizing pregnancies.

It's hard to believe we've really been married for 17 years now. December will mark 20 years of being together as a couple. That is half my life.

Time is a funny thing. When we're young, it crawls by so slowly, you wish for Superman to come along and speed things up a bit. A school year to a first grader is an eternity. And that's not surprising since one year is 1/5 of his life! As a child in elementary school, going from Christmas to Christmas takes forever (especially when the purple and pink candles come out - it's doubly slow then!), but as adults, it seems to sneak up on us a little faster each year. My anniversary seems to be just a few weeks back, but here it is, mid-August again!

If we think back on our lives as children, we see how hard it was to wait for anything we

wanted. We looked forward to being older, getting to do more things, and those years of waiting were dreadfully long. Big Girl, for example, is one of the few children in her age group at church who doesn't have a cell phone. She's been asking again and again when she can get one. Now this is a topic Travel Man and I talked about when we first started seeing teens with cell phones. We had decided that until the girls are working, they don't need one. Scratch that. Make it this: Until they are DRIVING, they don't need one. Period. And even then, maybe they only need to borrow it sometimes.

So our answer was this, "When you turn 16, we'll start talking about it." (Notice that independent clause: start talking about it.)

This elicited the following reaction:

"WHAT????!!!!????" (Please imagine it starting at a high pitch and rising as the one-syllable word becomes something more like a long note sung.)

See, Big Girl is nearly 12, and four years before the discussion even starts is 1/4 of her life. To us, it seems like it's just around the corner. To her, it's NEVER GOING TO GET HERE.

About the only way that helps me understand this idea of time when I'm dealing with little girls - or, really, not-so-little girls - is to think about being with my husband.

It's been 20 years since we started dating. Half my life. And, frankly, I barely remember what it was like without him. A little bit, but not a lot.

Basically, it's like ... forever. It's as though he's never not been such an intregal part of my life.

Imagine how much more our little annoyances with waiting amuse God, who is Eternal. No beginning, no end. A day is like a thousand years. How He must chuckle at our indignant answer when He tells us to wait before He answers a prayer.

"WHAT????!!!!????"

I'm sure that Him asking us to wait for something is in our best interest, but we are like children: we can't see it.

When I pray, I must remember that there are three answers to my prayers:

1. Yes. We like this best. It is when we pray for something that is beneficial to us - to our souls, especially - that we get this answer. Of course, being our Father in Heaven, God also likes to give good gifts to His children. Not all "Yes" answers are purely for our spiritual benefit. Some are just because we're getting a nice present from Daddy.
2. Wait. We like this, but not nearly as much as "Yes." After all, we're like our own children, who when they are told they must wait until Christmas morning to open presents Grandma sent last week (and Christmas is three weeks away), sit and stare longingly at the presents under the tree, occasionally begging again to open it now. But sometimes, the wait is worth it. And sometimes, we aren't really ready for that "Yes." Oh, we think we are. We're very grown-up, you know. But what we are, sometimes, is that 12 year old asking for permission to drive the car. The 12 year old thinks she's a great driver. We happen to know a bit better.
3. No. This is the answer that so few people like to talk about, and none of us really like. Oh, sure, deep down we understand that God has other things in store for us. Better things. But no child likes being told no. Even if you're asking for a pony and you live in the middle of suburbia. Even if you're asking if you can bring home the baby bear you found rummaging in the trashcan outside your rural mountain home. But God, being a Good Father, knows what's best for us. He has to tell us "No" sometimes.

What's really tough for us, as His children, is seeing the difference between God's "Wait," and His "No." Sometimes we are certain that He's said no. And we whine about it. We cease actually praying for our intention, but instead complain. Now, if it's a "wait," often there is a reason, like Christ perfecting the Samaritan woman's request, testing her motives and faith. As a mother, I do this sometimes, making sure that my children have good intentions behind a request, or even that they really do want the thing they're asking for.

God is the perfect Father! He will do the same for us. However, just as I will know the girls really want what they're asking for by listening to them ask (politely) again, God will also allow us to ask him repeatedly for our intentions.

However, if instead of polite requests I get whining and complaints, I am WAY less inclined to give in. Ever. Can our reaction to our children be that vastly different than God's?

So, I remind myself here that I must approach my petitions to God with reverence. I must always remember to take a good look at my own motivation for asking. Is it for good reasons? Am I asking for something that will be spiritually beneficial, or am I asking for the equivalent of a pet bear cub?

And, when God's answer seems to be "no," I must also re-evaluate and see if my petition is, indeed, appropriate. If I'm asking Jesus for a pony while I'm living in an apartment or for a pet cat that I'm terribly allergic to, I need to accept His "no" and move on. But if it is, I should do as Jesus instructed and persist, purifying my motivations and faith along the way. And I need to remember that just like it's 1/4 of Big Girl's life before we even begin discussing a cell phone, God's time is not my time, and His ways are not my ways. I might have a bit of a wait until I hear "Yes" from my Father in Heaven.

[image source]

Homeschooling and Organization

I used to be an organized homeschooler. I need the organization, but when I worked part-time from home while we worked on our debt snowball, I became a kind of molecular opposite of organized. Our school work started to suffer, and when it came to a breaking point, my husband and I made the decision that I'd quit. That was last year, and October 1 will be the anniversary of Mommy's Freedom Day; however, I never did get reorganized. I seemed to be in so many different places in the girls' school subjects that I made a hodge-podge of the end of the school year. There are subjects we just plain didn't finish. Others subjects became a "read-it-yourself" study.

So I'm a little trepidatious about the new school year. Little Girl will be in fourth grade, which is still not too bad as far as scheduling and work load, but Big Girl is starting seventh grade. Middle school is firmly underway. And I have to help her be ready for high school and beyond.

So I've spent the last few days working on her first quarter lesson plans, and I'm ever so glad I did it this early! She's got some heavy-looking research, a lot of writing, and a need of some science materials I wasn't expecting just yet. (A bunsen burner? A plate balance? Seriously??)

All day today, I've been touching up the girls' lesson plans and making copies of materials they'll need to use all year. I am determined to be better organized and to be a better teacher. My laziness as their teacher has helped make them lazy as students. And I'm not doing them any favors this way!!

Next for me will be looking for movies and books that will help them along. I've got a terrific book by Maureen Wittmann, For the Love of Literature, that will help me locate wonderful books to make the girls' learning more fun. If you're working on a literature-based education, this is a fantastic resource to have.

I made a few unexpected changes to our homeschool:

First, I changed Little Girl to Catholic Heritage Curricula. I'd read about it and thought it looked more appropriate for Big Girl, who is a very kinetic learner and needs to be able to make choices within some structure to feel good about school. I've often said that she is probably a prime candidate for a Montessori education, if only I weren't so completely not wired to provide it. (Seriously, I have a degree in education and was taught about the method and how to teach with it. I am not able to wrap my brain around it in any meaningful way.)

I was surprised at the accessibility of the books, and decided to use the same program with Little Girl starting now. We went over her school books today and talked a bit about how things will work, and we're both excited. Whereas Seton focuses very strongly on basic skills to achieve academic success, CHC works a little more organically. Seton is very workbook-intense, while CHC is more project-based. CHC probably leans a little more towards a Whole Language approach, but still has enough basic drills and memorization to make me feel confident that the girls are going to learn things in an organized manner.

Second, I have made a big change in religious education curricula. One of the subjects I've always loved from Seton has been their religious education. I still used it, even when I wasn't using anything else from Seton, for both girls - until this year. I knew I needed to get Big Girl out of the workbooks and into something different. So I decided I wanted to start her in the Faith and Life series this year. My plan was to leave Little Girl in the Seton books until seventh grade, as well. Until I got a good look at the books, that is.

Faith and Life, while still very careful to cover the faith in depth, has a wonderful layout and a flexible structure. It's designed for a classroom in a parochial school, but is easily adapted to home or even Sunday school classes. I am totally sold on it. I've made plans for all kinds of art projects for both girls that tie into the lessons. It's going to be great!

I'm adding something big for Big Girl this year.

We'll be reading Humanae Vitae together. Seriously. I'll let you know how it goes, but it makes me nervous.

The only thing that hasn't gone to the CHC curriculum choices remains math. We're sticking with Math-U-See for as long as I can see right now. The hands-on has been good for both girls. My biggest regret is that we are really badly behind in Math. I have to make a commitment (and stick to it) to cover a lesson every week or so. I think we'll be on a better track with it, and I've got plans for giving them some activities to work on their math. There are a couple of apps on the iPod that I've downloaded for them, and they actually enjoy them! I'm sure I'll discover more as time goes on, but these were not too spendy and they've helped the girls shore up their basic facts knowledge.

So there we are, ready for school to start. Well, ready except for about 100 pages of copies I still need to make. Thank God Sam's Club has boxes of copier paper and I own an all-in-one printer!

Wordless Wednesday: High Tea at Anne Hathaway's Cottage

While visiting family in South Dakota, we had an opportunity to have High Tea at the Anne Hathaway Cottage in Shakespeare Garden, Wessington Springs, SD.

Even the men attended! (We needed seven of us for the tea, and one of the ladies who volunteers there - and is friends with Travel Man's grandparents - completed our party of eight.)

In Which I Prove I Cannot be Trusted to be Mature

Okay, so I write this great post about being a good wife and building up your husband, and my follow through is this video, found via this post by Simcha.

I'll also repeat her warning about the video because it's funnier than anything I'd think of writing (just like most of her posts):

(WARNING: video shows a female bare back, and has a bleeped-out swear word. If you are likely to be upset by that, then for the love of mike, please do not click on the link.)

In Which I Have an Off-Site Post

Sarah at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering asked if anyone wanted to do a guest post. Funny how her request came just after I had been feeling like I had something important I wanted to talk about to someone.

I'm honored to be a guest poster at her fine blog. (Please check her out regularly if you don't already!)

Here's the beginning of my article, but please click on over to her blog for the rest:

Early in my marriage, I heard some advice that I scoffed at (a bit) initially. “Never, EVER say a negative thing about your husband in front of another person!”

“Never?” I thought. “Seriously?”

At the time, we were in network marketing, and some of the women I admired had decided to take this advice to heart. So I decided to try it, too. ...

She's even got some nifty pictures to go along with it!

Seven Quick Takes: What I Did on My Summer Vacation Edition

Jennifer is our lovely hostess for Seven Quick Takes Friday! Head over to her blog for lots of Quick Takers, including much more interesting writers like Simcha, who has a themed list that is pretty much Made of Awesome.

Here we go, with my list of seven neat things we saw/did on vacation!

1. No vacation of ours would be complete without me taking at least one picture of clouds and/or fog. I have dozens. This is the first picture in our vacation set on iPhoto, so you see I did not forget just how important the fog pictures are.

2. We were with my mother-in-law for this vacation, and spent Independence Day with her. We sat up on her little rooftop balcony and watched the fireworks over the trees.

(Big Girl is at an age when this is the face she makes in every. single. picture. I take of her. Just wait until she tries dating! These babies are coming out again. She'll regret her constant photoboming!)

Inexplicably, the finale took place low to the ground, and so this is the best shot I have of the fireworks finale.

3. For Little Girl's birthday, Travel Man's grandmother arranged for us to have high tea at the Anne Hathaway Cottage at Shakespeare Gardens in Wessington Springs, SD. The garden was in full bloom, which only adds to the quaint charm and beauty of the cottage. I did not get lucky enough to snap any pictures of the three garden snakes that were there. I was nice enough not to snap pictures of my mother in law when she saw them, either. And Big Girl was smart enough not to try to pick them up - even though they are non-poisonous - in front of her grandmother.

4. We went to De Smet, by way of Huron. There we saw the World's Largest Pheasant.

Travel Man quipped, "I want to build a pheasant in our yard 1 inch bigger, then set up a sign that says, 'Huron is lying.'"

I love my family.

5. Did you know that De Smet is the last place that Laura Ingalls Wilder's mother and father lived? It's the tiny town's Claim to Fame. EVERYTHING there is connected in some way to the Ingalls family. We went there to see the Ingalls Family Homestead and all of the other neat stuff connected with the family. It was interesting and worth the price of admission.

We saw a sod house.

It is not like a Hobbit hole.

We saw Ma's House.

I was surprised that the volunteer (college boy) did not have the answer to a teenaged girl's question as to why it's called "Ma's House." She asked if they had separate houses. (Ah, the Divorce Culture's effects!) Neither really "got" that it's Ma's house because Pa built it for her: everything in that house was made to make her life as easy as he could make it. He built it out of love. He built it with his own hands. It was for her, and it was hers.

These days, that doesn't happen much. You go and buy a house that someone else built. Not quite the same effect.

By the way, have you ever thought how soft we are these days? Could you live like the Ingalls Family? I couldn't.

6. Did you know that De Smet is named for a priest? And they have a big statue of him in town!

7. Travel Man had a business trip to Indianapolis the week after we were scheduled to be in South Dakota, so we decided to tag along and be tourists while he worked hard to supply us with all of our comforts at home. (He's my hero!)

The girls and I had a walkabout in downtown Indy one day and went to the Children's Museum on another day. (I posted a couple of other pictures here.) Here are some neat things just from Indianapolis.

St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church: oldest parish in Indy. Former proto-cathedral. Not wreckovated. Full of Awesome. (And the Real Presence is the main Awesomeness, but this church has Confessionals. The old kind with the curtains. I was in love.)

Outside the Indiana State Museum was this sculpture. RUN, GIRLS! RUN!!! RUN AWAY!!!

*ahem*

And, finally, one more picture from the Children's Museum. Van Halen fans (and David Lee Roth fans, as well) might recognize this car:

From these videos:

Happy weekend, everyone!

The Puppy in Our Pool

I'm cooling off after mowing the lawn, goofing off on the computer while the girls swim outside. Suddenly, I hear weird animal-like noises from outside and the door opens as Big Girl strolls into the half-bath near the door.

"Um, what's that noise your sister is making?"

"Oh, we're pretending she's a puppy, and she's howling because I walked away to go to the bathroom and she doesn't know where I am."

"So ... she's crying like a puppy."

"Yup. Because I'm in here and she doesn't know where I went."

Why do they need an actual pet when we can have this kind of fun?

PS: Little Girl howled the entire time Big Girl was in the house, plus a little extra for good measure. Just like a real puppy might whimper at you when you come back as if to say, "See how scared I was? You are so mean!"

My kids are awesome.

Wordless Wednesday: Indianapolis Children's Museum

Outside the museum:

Lucille (yes, the Lucille):

James Hetfield's '53 Skylark (he's got a matching guitar and amp, too):

Glass sculpture that's five stories high:

View from under the sculpture (I'm planning on blowing up at least one of these for the girls' room):

I was told that this was the best children's museum in the country. There's no denying it's definitely the biggest (five stories filled with exhibits, displays, hands-on, a planetarium, and a children's theater).

But the level of cool there is unmatched. In addition to the items above, they've got exhibits on Barbie (complete with a #1 Barbie doll and a lot of memory-inducing displays!), Etch-a-Sketch (it's 50 years old now, and there are some people who make more than stairs on them), and the exhibit on rock stars' guitars and cars (I saw two guitars that were Elvis', the Axe Guitar from Gene Simmons, one of Jimmy Hendrix's, etc., plus some really beautiful cars and a checkered John Deere). This isn't even counting the ongoing dinosaur exhibit with actual paleontologists on hand who answer questions about the actual dinosaur bones they are extracting from rocks in front of you!

Sometimes, bigger is better.