Formerly the Thinking Catholic Strategic Center
Confirming Culture=Religion+Politics
Vic Biorseth, Sunday, June 09, 2024
https://www.CatholicAmericanThinker.com/
I was sworn in in the first of my two three year enlistments in the Army at the ripe old age of 17 back in 1960. After basic training and advanced individual training (radio operator) I was stationed with the 2nd Armored Calvary regiment in Nuremberg West Germany. It was there that I was first introduced to Judo, Jiu-Jitsu and Karate, in the on-base dojo ran by a staff sergeant black belt. It was fun, it was free, and it was a further honing or polishing of the military skills.
The principles underlying all of the martial arts that must be learned and continually polished were, first, heavy repetition of various movements so that they become "muscle memory" movements, made instinctively without thinking with instantaneous situational triggering. Second, relaxing your body as totally as possibly while remaining alert, because a relaxed muscle reacts much more quickly than a tense muscle. And third, emptying your mind of all thoughts, so that you may immediately react correctly to immediate movements without anticipating, predicting or trying to out-think your opponent.
The first principle, of repetition, is the easiest; you just do these movements over and over and over again. But relaxing your muscles and emptying your mind of all thoughts takes some fairly serious meditation. You actually have to think about not thinking, and then stop thinking about that, too. The novice has to spend a lot of time learning and doing it, and eventually it gets easier to do it more quickly just before a randori (mixing it up with and opponent) or a match. The masters can do it almost instantaneously, as soon as any threat presents itself, and that is always the goal.
Until many years later I never made the connection between these seemingly solely worldly meditations with seemingly strictly worldly purposes with the Eastern or Oriental religions they were born of. Shintoism, Hinduism, Budhism, Zen, Taoism and probably more all have variations on that same theme. I wonder today if all the Americans who practice Yoga are even aware of its connection to Hinduism.
Much as I hate to pop a lot of oriental bubbles, the spiritual aspects of their religions/ideologies are just flat out dumb. It's like the "Zen Golf" displayed in the movie "Caddyshack": becoming "One with the ball".
Is all this calming, relaxing and, I believe, healthy meditation related to the martial arts a potential back-door entry of unreal religions competing against the one true religion for souls? The answer to that question is both yes and no. There are probably as many masters of various oriental or orient-originated martial arts in the world today who are blissfully ignorant of the religious connections as there are those who are devotees of any of those religions.
Are these meditation disciplines potential back-door evangelizing or proselytizing exercises to steal souls from the Lord? Yes. But so are all forms and parts of ordinary hedonism, materialism, atheism and agnosticism back-door lures of Satan and his demons.
One key to not being seduced by them is to be aware of them; another is to know your identity, your grounding and your purpose for being.
The peacefulness that results from the getting-your-mind-right martial arts pre-randori meditation is temporary. But serious Christian prayer produces a sense of calm and peace that is potentially permanent. Like the martial arts, to get good at it, you have to keep doing it. Other than the potential permanence of Christian prayer as opposed to the temporary immediacy of just mind and body relaxing meditation, both achieve the same real-world sense of peace and calmness.
But Christian prayer has the added bonus of being pleasing to God. There is and can be no peace the equal of being in the grace of God.
Many years ago I remember seeing a Mother Angelica episode where she spoke of an email or comment of some kind from someone in the orient, I don't remember the country, who heard her program on the radio and commented to thank her for the wonderful programming, and also for the "beautiful Buddhist prayer".
Now, Mother Angelica was not given to Buddhist prayer. As close as she or anyone else could figure out, the person was referring to the repetitious reciting of the prayers of the Rosary. To this person, it was like the chanting of a mantra.
A mantra is a supposedly sacred utterance in Hinduism or Buddhism with some spiritual or mystical power. The most supposedly powerful word used as a mantra in Hinduism is om.
I don't know about that, but in Christian prayer there is much to recommend repetitious prayer. Many believe it is the most efficacious form of prayer, since it follows the instructions of Jesus Christ, God Himself, when the Apostles asked Him, Lord, teach us to pray, and He responded, Thus shall you pray, and He gave them, and us, the Lord's Prayer. [Luke 11:1-13; Matt 6:9-14]
Don't look now, but that is a repetitious prayer, probably competing with the Hail Mary for the most repeated Christian prayer on earth, and quite possibly competing with om for the most repetitions in history.
More importantly, the Lord's Prayer is perfect, in that it asks for the things that should be asked for, in the way they should be asked for and under the conditions they should be asked for, while recognizing and bowing before the majesty of "Our Father". It is a prayer recited by Catholics and Protestants alike. Even Jews, who do not believe that Jesus is God, if they can put that part of it aside for a moment, can recognize the fact that the "Father God" invoked in this prayer is the same God that they worship.
And the Protestant "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever" additional words added in their King James version are perfectly acceptable by Catholics because of what they say and how they were erroneously included by the Protestants. It is a "doxology", which is a short hymn or praise of God, traditionally added at the end of canticles, psalms and hymns.
Before the printing press was invented, Bibles were hand-copied by monks, and there were two things printed in the margins of pages: corrections of errors, and doxologies. Doxologies were not part of original scriptures, but small prayers or meditations for the readers. At some point in copying a Bible, a monk made the error of taking "For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever" written in the margin as an error of omission, and wrote it into the actual scripture. And that copy was multiplied by other copies of itself before being caught and corrected, and that became one of the many errors that wound up in the King James version used by the Protestants.
So, Catholics recognize it as an error but accept it as a worthy doxology. There is nothing wrong and everything right with saying it at the end of the Lord's Prayer, when actually praying it and not quoting scripture.
Where mind-emptying meditations and chanting of mantras may bring a relaxing, calming and peaceful effect, that effect is temporary and strictly of this world. Real prayer, which is to say Christian prayer, has the potential to bring a peaceful and euphoric effect that is potentially permanent, because it is directed to the only God Who Is.
The most repetitive prayer in Catholicism, besides the Mass itself, is the Holy Rosary. Prayed properly, mystery by mystery, and especially prayed in community and in unison, it may be the most efficacious of all prayers. The Rosary is not "mind-emptying", but mind-filling; it is a contemplative prayer. It contemplates the most important mysteries of the life of Christ on earth, while repeating the Hail Marys of the decades of the Rosary.
We discussed the long established 15 Mysteries in On Concupiscence, Time and Prayer and you can read about them there. Here I want to mention the new Luminous Mysteries, the "Mysteries of Light" given to us by John Paul the Great in his Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, or Rosary of the Virgin Mary.
These new contemplative mysteries are:
I seem to be in the minority among fellow Catholics in wanting to pray these mysteries on Thursdays, especially the mystery of the Eucharist. What could be more central to Catholic faith than Eucharist? In Eucharist, we can truthfully say that God is with us. Not theoretically, not hypothetically and not even just spiritually, but substantially.
Who else can say it?
In the rosary we ask Mary to pray for us, over and over again. And who better to ask than Mary, with her unique relationship to the Triune God, as
What better intercessor could one have than that? And please don't tell me you don't need an intercessor. If you have ever prayed for anyone you were an intercessor; if anyone ever prayed for you you had an intercessor. The saints, and our lady the blessed virgin Mother of God are not dead; they are alive, and they are potential intercessors, and better intercessors than anyone still in this life on this earth.
Lectio Divina prayer is done in four steps.
Done well, Lectio Divina can raise you beyond meditation to internally experiencing the text as reality, as experience, as contact with the one speaking the words.
My own "breakthrough" in Lectio Divina was prompted by Romans 10:17:
Faith then cometh by hearing; and hearing by the word of Christ.
For me, that was the key: hearing. Not reading, not reciting. Hearing.
With that, I began putting myself in the time and place, and being spoken to by the the speaker of the words. Especially for the Gospels, for these were most often quoting the words of our Lord Jesus Christ. I imagined, or contemplated, being there and being spoken to by God. It was a real breakthrough for me.
Now I read the Mass readings for the day at home well ahead of time, multiple times, and have them in mind before I go to Mass. And when the Priest reads the Lesson and the Gospel, I close the Missal and Listen. I Hear, with my Soul. I am spoken to.
It puts a whole new light on the Word.
We still maintain that the Lord's Prayer is the most perfect prayer in existence. Short though it is, each clause, indeed each word can be plumbed for deeper meaning than surface appearances.
We can't go to Trump rallies although we would like to. But we watch them all on NewsMax, and we always record them if we can't be home in time to watch them live. We've never missed one.
But Trump's rehashing of the story of "The Snake" is starting to get a little long in the tooth. After the 20th time or so, nobody really needs to hear it again. President Trump could and should replace it with the Lord's Prayer.
It would be easy enough for him to just call a rally's attention to the dangers facing America, and the need to pray for America, and ask the Rally, if they want to, to join him in, not a "moment of silence", not another political "thoughts and prayers" bromide, but an actual prayer, and then take off his hat and recite the Lord's Prayer, with rally accompaniment, for America.
We believe the response would be electrifying.
A presidential candidate leading rallies in open prayer to God.
The Marxocrats would go into apoplectic shock.
His will be done.
The only thing Truth has going for Him in this world is us.
The restoration of Truth = Reality in the hearts and minds of men is now totally dependent upon you and me; if we don't do it, it won't get done.
Join Cardinal Burke's Storm Heaven Rosary Campaign.
Get behind the Trump-Vance Ticket, and make America Constitutional again.
Pray for the strategic alliance of Abp. Vigano and President Trump.
=====
EENS: Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus
(Outside the Church there is no salvation)
With fear and trembling, work out your salvation--Phil 2:12
Seek the Truth; Find the Way; Live the Life.
Please God, and Live Forever.
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"We belong to the Church militant; and She is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass Her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator's supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights." --Pope Pius XII
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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.—Ayn Rand
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