Hi, I’m Robert Fontana. I see you are a Christian.

Yes sir, brother, the Lord took over my life on August 7, 1978 at 6:30 p.m. when I repented of all my sins, and accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was filled with the Holy Ghost and have followed Jesus ever since. I belong to the Church of the Holy Immovable Rock Eternal Word on FIRE of Prophecy Open Bible Fellowship in Kirkland. And where do you fellowship at, brother?

Ooh. I was a little nervous. I did not really want to say because I knew I would get the “Evangelical Doubtful Eye!” That’s the quizzical, mystifying look that says, “Impossible.”

Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, West Seattle.

He paused. And as if in slow motion his eyebrows began to expand, his eyes eased out of their sockets, and his mouth stretched wide open as if he wanted to show me his tonsils. Worse case of “Evangelical Doubtful Eye” I had ever seen. He was frozen in place, staring at me in mystified disbelief. I waved my hand in front him. No response. Finally he came to his senses and said to me,

Brother, I am having what psychologists call “Cognitive Dissonance.” My brain cannot wrap itself around what I just learned. YOU ARE A CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN?

I ain’t NEVER met one before.

This was news, indeed, for all the evangelicals working in the shipyard. I could see my new friend talking to others and pointing my way. Some would come up to me and ask me about my favorite Bible passage or when was I saved or what did I think about praying to Mary. These people found it hard to believe, but could see in my actions that I was indeed a Christian, and I was indeed a Catholic.

I was the one who stepped in to break up fights that were occurring in the parking lot between Communist marchers and shipyard workers as May Day approached. And when some of the protesters where hurt, I was the one who helped them get up and made sure they were okay. And I was the one who initiated a Friday prayer meeting during lunch at a small corner of the shipyard, and carried with me a New Testament (and a rosary).

There were some Christian workers, however, who could not accept that a Catholic could be a Christian. I remember a couple of Korean Christians yelling at me, “Robert, you Catholic? No, no. Very bad, very bad.”

Of course, the very odd piece of all of this is that I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT – Catholics who have not had a personal experience of God, and therefore appear to follow rules and regulations, but not Jesus. They attend Church on Sunday, but that experience seems disconnected from their lives. Here’s what the evangelicals say:

Sitting in a Church Sunday after Sunday will no more make you a Christian, than sitting in your garage Monday after Monday will make you a car.

It’s a cute, quick one-liner, and it has a good point, but it is not totally accurate. I like to say that there are two encounters of Jesus in a person’s life. We can meet Jesus through the community of faith, the disciples of Jesus who pray, love and forgive one another, do good and avoid evil day-by-day, and care for the elderly and poor. This is how our baptized children meet Jesus.

It is also how unbelievers meet Jesus, like at a Billy Graham crusade. They see Jesus alive through the people carrying out the crusade and through Graham’s preaching. Meeting Jesus by meeting the followers of Jesus, prepares the ground for the second meeting of Jesus in the depths of our hearts, when we discover that God loves us, forgives us, and has a plan for our lives.

It’s that second meeting of Jesus that the evangelicals are saying is absent from Catholics. Don’t let that be true in your life. Do not be the reason that evangelical Christians say “I never met a Catholic Christian.” During this Easter-Pentecost season, take some time to meet Jesus, deeply, personally, and in the depth of your heart.

by Robert Fontana

Ah, yes, it’s the holiest time of the year, that “week of weeks,” when Christians the world over follow Jesus from triumph to tragedy to triumph again (Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Morning). This is God’s powerplay on all that is nasty, mean, and ugly in our hearts and in the world, in past history, and in history yet to come; when God (and all that is good, faithful and beautiful in life) WINS! And Satan, sin, and death (and all that is rotten and mean) LOSE! YEAH!

And that is ultimately what this week is about. Easter should remove all fear from our lives, fear from the “what ifs,” and free us to be our best selves and do what is right, true, and good in all circumstances. With that being said, let’s discuss two other important topics that come to mind when I think of Easter: Women and Fishing.

Why do I think of “Women” at Easter? BECAUSE AFTER JESUS, THEY ARE THE HEROES!

These women followers of Jesus have nerves of steel. When Jesus is arrested and his male brethren lose all bravado and run like rats, who follows him to the cross but his female family of disciples, led, I might add, by the true “Wonder Woman,” His mother. But these women are not really that unique among women; this is how women behave when someone they love is involved.

Who but a woman can endure nine months of nausea, a body that stretches from a size 10 to a 25, and an eight-pound mass of arms, legs, head, and toes passing through her in child birth? If it were the men who gave birth, there would be no population problem, no overcrowded elevators, no European migration chasing the Indians off their land, and no need for bunk beds.

Jesus must have thought his women friends were pretty cool too, because when he rose from the dead he selected one of them to announce to the others (especially the men), “I have seen the Lord!”

An Easter thought: if a woman can proclaim the Gospel message that Jesus is risen to the first Pope, Peter of Galilee, and the other disciples, including women gathered in the upper room, why can’t a woman proclaim the Gospel to us today at Sunday Eucharist? It is past time for women to be ordained deacons so that the gifts of women can be used for preaching, baptizing, and leading public prayer.

So then, what does fishing have to do with Easter? WHAT? IF YOU HAVE TO ASK THE QUESTION, YOU WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND THE ANSWER. Fr. John, you try to explain it to them! (Fr. John Seymour is a well known fishing mystic and guru.)

Men (and some women) for centuries have been lured by the mystical pull of the catch to go deep, deep, deep into the deep to encounter the hidden God, as did Moses at the burning bush, Elijah on the mountain, and St. Peter on the Sea of Tiberias (John 21). This is a very important chapter of Scripture that has been overlooked by most scholars. The crucified Jesus has just shown himself to be alive and breathed his Holy Spirit on his followers. What does Pope Peter do with this awakening of faith and gift of the Holy Spirit? I’ll let him tell you in his own words. Simon Peter said to them, “I’m going fishing.” They said to him, “We also will come with you.” (John 21:3)

And here’s the cool thing. They don’t catch any fish, but that’s not the point. How many men have gone fishing and not caught anything, and then go right back to fishing the next day? Peter and his pals are bonding the way men like to bond. Jesus knows this. He understands men. So he decides to show up in his Risen form and cooks them breakfast. And when Jesus shows up, people’s lives are changed!

What can we learn from this? The risen Jesus even today comes to us in the most ordinary of circumstances, like fishing with our friends, if only we have the eyes of faith to recognize His presence.

Happy Easter! Send us your prayer intentions.

by Robert Fontana

Once while Jesus was walking with his disciples, he noticed that they were arguing among themselves about who was the greatest. Taking a cat onto his lap, Jesus said to them,

“Unless you become like a cat, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God!”

I know what you are thinking. “Where is THAT in the Bible?”

Well, of course, it is not in the Bible, but you miss the point. I was praying one day, and I’m a disciple of Jesus, and I heard him distinctly say to me, “Unless you become like that cat of yours, you cannot enter the Kingdom.”

I was stunned. What did Jesus mean? Our cat, whose name is Scout, is the most self-centered, demanding, pushy, lazy, good-for-nothing parasite that has ever manipulated his way into the loving care of a human family! Oh, Scout is as clever a cat as he is lazy. As a mere kitten he finagled a chicken bone into a small basket, soaked himself in water, and stationed himself outside a bowling alley where he knew my bleeding-heart-liberal son was coming and going and would never turn away from the “meow” of such a poor and helpless orphan abandoned by all.

Andrew brought him home, pleading, “Mom, can we keep him?” Of course he returned to college, and we have been left with a pet. But the way I see it, I’m the “pet” and Scout is the master of the house. He eats and sleeps when he wants to, comes and goes at his leisure, and does nothing to help. I mean, he does not kill mice or chase away other cats who wander in the yard. And God forbid that he should show us any gratitude for waiting on him hand and foot.

The most insulting aspect of Scout’s behavior is when he wants to be scratched and petted. He is a bulldog. Every morning I settle into my prayer chair to commune with the Lord, and every morning Scout comes and hops into my lap, pushing his face against my hands to demand that I scratch behind his ears and under his belly and, don’t forget that spot just above his tail.

Seriously, this is the only time I have ever seen him smile and show the least bit of gratitude. Then he kneads his claws into my lap and proceeds to fall into the deepest sleep as if I was made for this moment, to be his massage therapist and cozy bed.

This scenario had repeated itself for the umpteenth time when I heard Jesus’ words:

“Unless you become like a cat you cannot enter the Kingdom of God!”

So I began to think about Scout; and two things came to mind. Scout is comfortable in his skin. He is completely free to be himself and does not conform to anyone’s expectations. “Wow,” I thought. “Isn’t that the essence of the spiritual life, to be yourself before God and others without any pretensions or fear?”

The other thing that stands out about Scout is this; when he wants something he is relentless in demanding it until he gets what he wants. This is especially true when he wants a relationship with me, when he wants to rest in my lap, or when he wants the bliss of a belly rub. Should I not learn to pray like Scout? Didn’t Jesus give us an example of praying relentlessly in the widow who demanded justice from an unjust judge? And should I not learn to let go of all my cares and concerns and rest in God in complete trust?

Now I am not about to tell Scout that God has used him to challenge me. If he knew, there would be no end to his self-centered, demanding, pushy, lazy, good-for-nothing parasitic “you owe me a living” manipulative ways.

So what are the lessons of Scout the Cat? Be yourself, be persistent in prayer, and learn to rest in God knowing in faith that “all is well.”

Send us your prayer intentions; and if anyone, especially one of your children, brings home a sweet adorable kitten and asks, “Can we keep it?” you must yell emphatically, “NO!

by Robert Fontana

You may have not seen the Gary Cooper movie, but you know what “High Noon” means. It is show-down time between the good guy and the bad. I’ve been down this road before. Each Lent I prepare for this main event down the dusty main street of my soul to meet my nemesis, the “Poison P’s: Position, Power, and Possessions.

They are a gang of cutthroats, thieves, and desperados. We’ve been a-fighting all my life like the Hatfields and the McCoys. It’s a blood feud, winner take all. They want my soul; I want my life.

Position screams his insults at me. You no-good, stupid, good-for-nothing boy. You are a-nobody, DO YOU HEAR ME? You can’t do squat, never could, never will. (He spits out a stream of tobacco juice and then continues.) When are you gonna be somebody like your brother The Lawyer or your friend The Engineer. What are you, a minister? Phew!

If I listen to him long enough I begin to believe his lies. Maybe he’s right. What am I good for? Maybe I need more schooling, a better job, a big title in front of my name – Robert Fontana, Founder, Director and Chief Executive Officer of IMFLMSPAFPE (Inter-national Marriage and Family Life Ministries Serving the Poor and Abandoned Families of Planet Earth.)

Then Possessions sneaks up on me. All of a sudden I’m thrust into a downy soft chair, with a built-in massager, a stereo system set up in a Man Cave with a 15-ft-wide large screen T.V., with complete Internet access in the basement floor of a three-story camp built high in the Olympic Mountains overlooking Puget Sound. The camp is equipped with mountain bikes and all the back-packing gear a hiker like me could ever dream of. Possessions speaks to my mind “You would really be happy if you had all these things!”

And then there’s Power. He is really the tricky one. “Look at the poor. If you had more money you could do so much good. If you were not so old and unattractive everybody would like you and want to listen to your ideas. You could do marriage workshops for Bill and Melinda Gates, be the keynote speaker for the next World Youth Day, and organize Vatican Council III.

Well, I’ve fended off these bums over the Christmas holidays, but they’re back. Lent is coming and I guess it’s time for a showdown. It’s time that I put them in their place so they won’t be showing their ugly faces for a lonnnnng time.

This High Noon is different than the one Gary Cooper faced. I won’t be carrying a six-shooter, wearing a cowboy hat to block the sun, and walking all alone. I’ve been trained by the best lawman this side of the Pecos, a lawman who knows the ways of the Poison P’s and all the other gangs of darkness better than Bat Masterson, Wyatt Earp, and Elliot Ness! Here’s Jesus’ plan for facing the Poison P’s at High Noon – Prayer, Fasting, and Almsgiving.

That’s it; it’s that simple, and here’s why: the Poison P’s hate prayer, fasting, and almsgiving! Position whines and screams that my well-being is based on what I do and the titles that I hold, but prayer roots me in the truth—that my well-being is based on being loved by God.

Possession allures and seduces me to believe that all the gadgets and gizmos of life, the creature comforts and shiny things will make me happy, but fasting from food, drink, noise, and buying what I do not really need frees me to find joy in people, not things.

And Power bullies me into believing that only by being number ONE, when I can dominate, have things my way regardless of the cost, will I find contentment and satisfaction. But “almsgiving” my time, energy, and money to serve others rather than me has always brought me greater peace and joy. If I have power, I understand from Jesus that it is not to be used to build my kingdom, but His.

My feud with Power, Position, and Possessions is lifelong. Lent is a special time to even the score, to take them down a bit. I have a secret weapon that they either do not know about or simply discount. The Holy Spirit is on my side helping me out, and I also have Lori at my side. Power, Position and Possessions can sometimes wreck havoc with me, but they are no match for her!

Happy Lent. Send us your prayer intentions.

by Robert Fontana

It is the New Year, and my thoughts turn to being raised Catholic at a time when Catholics knew how to practice their faith. We were good at it. We knew how to fast from meat on Fridays – ALL FRIDAYS, receive ashes in Lent, attend May crownings, pray the stations of the cross, make the sign of the cross while passing Catholic churches (not Protestant ones), bless our new homes, new babies, and, in Louisiana, the shrimp boats, with holy water.

We did not necessarily understand Catholicism; it was all a mystery anyway, but we knew how to practice the religion of our ancestors, even from the time we were very young. For example, when I was a child, probably at my first communion, I was given a brown scapular; two pieces of cloth, generally about an inch square, each with an image of Mary on one side, connected by cords and worn around the neck.

Wearing a scapular was serious business. The one spiritual truth I remember about it was that no person wearing one at the moment of his or her death could ever be sent to hell.

Honest! My brother Francis, who is a year older than me, and I had an intense conversation one day, about how this was possible.

Francis – I never take my scapular off. NEVER!

Robert – You mean you even take a bath with it? Ain’t that a sin, I mean getting a holy scapular wet?

Francis – No, stupid, not with a scapular. If you drown in the tub, or a hurricane knocks down a tree on the house, smashing the bathroom with you in the tub, you want to be wearing the scapular. It’ll keep you out of hell when you die, so wear it even when you take a bath.

Robert – Wow!

I had thought it was a sin to get a scapular wet, like it was a sin to chew the communion host. But a scapular’s having the power to save me from the torment of hell, that was something else.

But I was confused about one thing.

Robert – What if you have a mortal sin on your soul, will you still go to heaven if you die wearing the scapular?

Francis paused. He was stumped. That was a theological issue that he had not considered, and no sister of Mt. Carmel, who taught at the school which we and every child in a 10-mile radius attended, had yet explained.

Francis – I don’t know what happens then. Maybe it just falls off if you are dying and have a mortal sin on your soul. Mother Petronella did say that we have to be good when we wear the scapular. (She was our first grade teacher.)

As I said, we Catholics were pretty good at practicing our religion even though we did not fully understand why we were doing what we were doing. That may have worked in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s when Catholic culture was intact and the pressing issue was keeping immigrant Catholics from becoming Protestant, but it will not work today. The world has changed. The fundamental challenge to Catholic

Christianity is not Protestantism, even in its Evangelical variety. These Christians are our allies. The challenge is greed and selfishness that has run amok as men and women of all ages pursue what Franciscan Father Richard Rohr calls the “Poison Ps – Position, Power, and Possessions.”

POSITION, POWER, AND POSSESSIONS swallow one up in a never-ending game of status-seeking, wielding influence, and acquiring things.

POSITION, POWER, AND POSSESSIONS suck the life from one’s soul and leave one looking like what Jesus described as “white-washed tombs on the outside, but deadmen’s bones on the inside” (Mt 23:27) or perhaps like Donald Trump.

POSITION, POWER, AND POSSESSIONS blind entire communities to the needs of the unborn and poor, to the desecration of the earth, and to the demands of justice.

BUT REMEMBER THIS! We cannot avoid the Poison Ps.

We are immersed in them because the pursuit of position, power, and possessions is a foundation of the dominant American culture. They are the “water we drink, the air we breathe.” We cannot avoid them, BUT we can transform them!

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. Romans 12:2

How are we to do this? This is what I think:

1. Remember, Jesus came to bring heaven to earth, not just get us to heaven.

2. Wear the scapular and anything else that reminds you that you are a child of God, but also read the Gospels, and stay close to Jesus.

3. Join a Cenacle or small community of faith. Doing church on Sunday is not enough to transform the “Poison Ps.” We need the wisdom and example of others to help us.

4. Talk with any person of good will who is dissatisfied with the madness of pursuing position, power, and possessions, and learn from them as well. God (and the Reign of God) is much bigger than any church can contain. Learn from all men and women of good will.

Have a great 2012 and send us your prayer intentions!

by Robert Fontana

Catholics are very sensitive about Mary. We are used to Protestants, especially those of the evangelical variety, ranting their usual rant: “Why do Catholics worship Mary?” By the way, the answer is, for the millionth time, “WE DON’T!”. Gee whiz; she’s the Mother of Jesus, and therefore the Mother of God, and shouldn’t you evangelicals give her a little more respect??

That aside, I do have a problem with how we Catholics have understood Mary over the years.

WE’VE MADE HER INTO A NUN!

Now think about it. When you see pictures of the angel speaking to Mary, what is the young 14-year-old Jewish woman usually doing? Kneeling and reading a prayer book! And because we hold that she was a perpetual virgin, which means that she and Joseph lived a peaceful and harmonious life as brother and sister, Mary looks like, well, a nun! BUT MARY WAS NOT A NUN!

So here is the story of Mary according to Robert as I read the Scriptures and consider the Church’s marvelous vision of human sexuality expressed in the Theology of the Body.

Mary’s country was occupied by a terrible enemy who spoke Latin, worshipped their emperor as a god, and ate endless amounts of pasta. The local ruler was a Jewish Benedict Arnold named Herod who was as mean as a pit bull and so accustomed to doing evil he would feel at home sitting in Hitler’s living room. Mary’s dad and mom were poor folks, probably farm workers, who scratched out a living in Galilee working on the estate of one of Herod’s rich friends. They worked hard, and Mary and her sisters worked hard too.

Mary’s mother interrupted, “Joachim, will you stop this silliness and tell us who is Mary going to marry!” He laughed, “All right, it’s Joseph, the carpenter’s son.” And the women all shrilled with delight, especially Mary. They knew Joseph to be a hard worker like his father and respectful to his mother. He would be good to Mary.

Now let’s pause for a moment. Mary and Joseph are good Jews raised on the stories of the Patriarchs. They were well versed in the married love of Abraham and Sara, of Isaac and Rebecca, and especially of Jacob who was deeply in love with Rachel. And certainly they read the Song of Solomon that describes the sensual desires and longings of a woman and man in love in poetic and evocative language. A celibate marriage was the last thing they had on their minds.

We know the story. She was found pregnant by the power of God. Joseph felt betrayed but, true to his nature, he decided not to shame her —or worse, have her killed. He planned to divorce her quietly. It took divine intervention for him to come around and trust Mary’s explanation of her pregnancy. (Some men are just so hard-headed.)

The baby was born in Bethlehem, but Joseph and Mary had to quickly “get out of Dodge” because Herod the Evil was up to his old tricks. They fled to Egypt. Did their families flee with them? Who knows? But the Gospels do speak of Mary’s sister being at the cross (see John 19). Most probably, given the kinship nature of Jewish life, Joseph and Mary took off with their child and some relatives and friends for more peaceful territory in Egypt.

I wonder: did Mary and Joseph give of themselves to one another through intimate touching as Pope John Paul II describes in the Theology of the Body? Did they hold hands, hug and kiss, with deep, long, passionate smooches? Were they affectionate with one another? Did they give each other backrubs and massages? And when they went to sleep, did they… sleep in separate bedrooms or… did they sleep together with their arms wrapped around each other and their legs intertwined? My story continues…

At the end of the second day of their flight to Egypt, Mary was exhausted. Joseph was a poor craftsman who did not own a donkey or burro on which Mary could ride. She had to walk along side her husband, carrying Jesus on her back and a pouch of food and water slung around her neck. Joseph also carried food and water, some carpentry tools, their bedrolls, and an iPod with ear phones that he and Mary shared so they could listened to contemporary Jewish tunes.

After Mary had finished nursing Jesus she did that same for Joseph. Then they lay next to one another, her arms covering her son, and his arms covering her, and they slept a deep and secure sleep.

In addition to presenting Mary as a nun, Catholic piety has also presented the Holy Family as a family of three. Because of the nature of Jewish kinship and clan life, families lived in clusters together with individual dwellings linked by common walls and back doors opened up to common space. If Jesus was an only child, as Catholics teach, he hardly knew it. He was raised among and with the help of relatives. There were uncles and aunts, perhaps a surviving grandparent, and “cousins” (see Mark 6:3). Mary and Joseph would have helped raise the other children as much as the other adults and older nieces and nephews would have helped raise Jesus. When it was time to take a family picture at Walmart, the whole clan showed up. We get an insight into this with the story of Jesus near the time of his bar mitzvah when he goes missing from the clan.

Two days had passed since the great feast of Passover. The pilgrims were a short journey away from Nazareth when Mary realized that she had not seen her son since they had left Jerusalem. That was not like Jesus. Yes, he always wanted to hang out with his cousins, and they with him, but usually he checked in with her. “Joey,” Mary said. (She always called her husband Joey as his mother did, because he had childlike eyes that were playful and kind.) “Joey, have you seen Jesus?” Joseph thought for a moment, looked around, and said, “I can’t remember when I last saw him. I think he was with James and Joses at the back of the caravan.”

The caravan was actually stretched out for a couple of miles. It took him half an hour to run the distance and back. Jesus was not to be found. Mary, pondering the situation in her heart, said to herself, “That boy!” She took out her cell phone and texted her four sisters that Jesus was missing and that she and Joseph were heading back to Jerusalem to look for him. Each of them told their husbands. Esther texted back that she and her husband would get all of the children home so that the other sisters and their husbands could join Mary and Joseph in the search. They gathered food and water for the trip back to Jerusalem and left in haste.

NOW HEAR ME OUT. I am not directly challenging the perpetual virginity of Mary, though I will admit that I have some problems with it. But I resist the image bequeathed to us by pious Catholic artists that Mary was some sort of (married) contemplative nun, and that she and Joseph lived happily and strictly as brother and sister as they raised her son.

She was a Jewish woman who brought to her marriage the fullness of her life as a Jewish woman, which included love and intimacy with her husband, and a large family clan that included other children whom she helped raise. She cooked, cleaned, made clothes, went to the community well to gather water, gossiped with her friends, watched the latest Jewish novella on TV, rubbed her husband’s aching shoulders when he returned home after a hard day of work, and snuggled up against him when it was time to bed down for the night.

I do love Mary, regularly pray the rosary, and often repeat to myself the wisdom Mary left us at Cana: “Do whatever He tells you.”

During this Advent and Christmas season I am awed how this young woman listened to God speak to her through an angel and, without asking permission or even discernment from her father, in whose house she was still living, or from her betrothed, in whose house she was destined —both of whom she was bound by the Law of Moses to obey— she stepped out of the safe boundaries of her cultural norms, and said yes
to God. WOW!

Nuns are terrific in their own right, but I for one am glad that Mary was not one. Let me know what you think of this article. Merry Christmas.

by Robert Fontana
My children cannot comprehend the world in which I was raised – Latin prayed at Mass, rosary and Eucharistic processions, making the sign of the cross every time I passed a Catholic Church (but not a Protestant one), and Catholic school sisters dressed liked penguins.

My fourth-grade teacher, who was one of these sisters, was named Mother Holy Agony. Truly! Well, maybe not truly, but by the time I had her she had taught my five older brothers, and somehow she became associated with that name. I’m sure that she may have had an opinion on who inflicted the most agony on whom, but the Fontana brothers passed on to me the horror stories of:

• her icy cold stare when you stepped out-of-line;
• her powerful smack with a ruler on your bare hand;
• her tying students in their desks with string to keep them from squirming;
• and her insistence that you offer up the pain and suffering of being in her class like the great martyrs and saints.

Mother Holy Agony identified with the suffering of the martyrs and saints and thought that she would inspire us to become saints (and sisters and priests) by telling us the stories of their heroic deaths!

MHA – Think of dear young and beautiful Perpetua. (We had never heard of her). A young mother with a child at her breast.(It was the first time I had ever heard that word “breast.”)

She refused to offer sacrifice to the pagan emperor who claimed to be a god. She gladly suffered for her sweet Jesus. Her child was taken from her and she, with other Catholics, was set in the midst of wild animals who tore them to pieces. And when a Roman gladiator came to her mauled body and discovered she was still alive he thrust his sword into her heart.

Mother Holy Agony said all this with great feeling, pride, and… with a curious look in her eyes as if she was asking each one of us ten year olds if we could do the same.

My friend Greg whispered to me, I’d rather be the Roman gladiator.

We heard the stories of St. Peter who was crucified upside down; St. Ignatius who was fed to the lions; St. Paul who had his head chopped off; and St. Joan of Arc who was burned at the stake. And then Mother Holy Agony would ask us, Don’t you want to be a saint?

Mother was not very good at reading her audience. She seemed proud of her presentation and felt like she had us in the palm of her hands. Certainly we were staring at her wide-eyed and in rapt attention. But it was fear and disbelief grabbing our souls and not inspiration. She continued.

Of course, most of you need not suffer real martyrdom to become a saint; you can suffer a spiritual martyrdom by offering your life completely to God by becoming a priest or sister.

She then launched into her vocation talk. Whew, we were off the hook; we could become saints without literally burning to death or being dinner for lions.

However, she had little clue that her talk was backfiring.

Greg raised his hand.

Mother, do I need to become a saint to get to heaven?

No, Greg, but if you become a saint you spend less time in purgatory, and if you are martyred you skip purgatory and go right to heaven.

Will my mom and dad go to heaven? (Greg’s parents had only birthed six children, worked at a family business, and sent all the kids to Catholic schools.)

Well, of course they will.

There was a long silence. Finally another kid, Eileen, who always had interesting things to say even in fourth grade, spoke up.
I want to get to heaven like Greg’s parents!

And the class erupted in a loud “Me too!” and “I do too!”

All of my classmates chose the path of Greg’s parents as their path to heaven, including me. Of course, none of us had any idea of the suffering that marriage and parenting would take us through as we matured into loving spouses and sacrificed, as our parents did, so that our children would succeed in life.

Greg’s parents were an example of saintliness that was not offered to us as fourth-graders, but it is the example of saintliness that most inspires me today. May you love God and the people in your life, with the help of God, as best as you can; isn’t that what a saint does?

And please send us your prayer intentions.

by Robert Fontana

Isaiah the prophet heard God’s call while having a vision of the heavenly glory. When the divine voice asked “Whom shall I send?” Isaiah responded, “Here I am, send me!”

My call to go to Tanzania was less dramatic. I also said, “Here I am, Lord,” but then quickly added, “Where’s my passport?”

I was asked to go by George Mulcaire-Jones, M.D., director of Maternal Life International, a medical nonprofit dedicated to the health and well-being of women around the world. George had developed a family life program called “The Faithful House” as a way of strengthening marriages and preventing the spread of the HIV virus. Catholic dioceses in eight different African countries have implemented this program with great success.

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has assisted in the funding of “The Faithful House” and partnered with Maternal Life to sponsor a two-week training of lay leaders for this program. The training was to be held in Arusha, Tanzania. George asked me to represent Maternal Life and use my skills to help the leadership couples become more effective in their implementation of “The Faithful House.” I was going to teach relationship skills development every morning for a week.

But it almost never happened!

My first challenge was to get through Tanzanian customs. The problem was that I did not write down any of my contact information. That’s something Lori usually does, but she was back in Yakima teaching 4th graders. I slept very little over the two days that it took me to reach Kilimanjaro Airport, so I was a little cross-eyed and weary when I deplaned and approached the customs agent. (Keep in mind that the custom agent spoke English with a thick Tanzanian accent which cannot quite be captured in the following dialogue.)

Custom Agent: Where will you be staying?

Robert: At the Catholic Archdiocese or with Catholic Relief Services.

Custom Agent: Where?

Robert: Here, I guess.

Custom Agent: Here is the airport; where will you be staying?

Robert: I’m sure they told me but I cannot remember. If I could open my laptop…

Custom Agent: Who is your contact person while you are in Tanzania, and what is an address and phone number where you can be reached?

Robert: Gonzaga, but I don’t know his last name. He has a wife, but I can’t pronounce her name. And I have no idea where they live. I think they are from Uganda.

Custom Agent: They are from Uganda and they are your contact persons here in Tanzania?

Robert: Well, they are very popular.

Custom Agent: Do you have a yellow international medical card?

Before I could answer, he answered for me: “Of course you do not. Go to that room over there.”

I go to the room and a man takes my passport, directing me to sit down.

Man: You do not have the yellow medical card. Have you been vaccinated for yellow fever?

Of course, I have no idea. Surely with all the mosquitoes in Louisiana and the deadly diseases they carry my mother and dad would have made sure that I was vaccinated.

Robert: I have no idea; probably not.

Man: It is good for ten years and costs $50. We can waive it if you want but you may die before you leave (or something like that… I didn’t understand all that he said because of his thick accent, plus, he was talking in Swahili and laughing with his friend who was seated at the nearby table. I was their entertainment for the day).

I received my vaccination and finished going through customs without having established where I was staying and who my contact person would be during my stay in Tanzania. Perhaps the rosary in my pocket helped convince them that I really was heading for the local Catholic Relief Service office.

I was the last person through customs. When I finally made it through, it dawned on me that my ignorance was complete. I had no idea who was going to pick me up. I grabbed my bag at the luggage claim, the last bag to be retrieved, and stepped into the airport lobby wondering, “What next?” And there, to my delight, was a Tanzanian carrying a sign with the letters CRS written on it. I had arrived!

Rob in Tanzania: the Real Story

I worked hard during my days in Tanzania. I helped the leadership couples gain some skills to succeed in their own marriages and as leaders of “The Faithful House.” They were greatly appreciated. The evaluations were outstanding: “You gave us the tools we needed to become better listeners in our marriages. We also know that marriage is a “Holy Communion” and you showed us how to problem-solve in a way that protects our marriage communion. Thank you.”

However, the real story here is the work of Maternal Life, “The Faithful House” Marriage and Family Life Program, and the leadership couples committed to its implementation. One consistent fact of African life that came through the stories of the couples was the abuse of women by men. One woman told me that when she was a young woman and thought about the abuse she would endure as a married woman, she seriously considered entering the convent. And when she did marry a man who was very good and kind to her, her girl friends asked her, “What magic potion did you give him to make him this way?”

They were serious.

Through “The Faithful House,” Maternal Life has found an effective and practical way to undermine one of the most enduring and vicious prejudices that damage human dignity: sexism, the use and abuse of women by men. I could see this truth unfold before me through the kindness and respect that the husbands who were present showed their wives. This was no more evident than in the beautiful story of Boaz and Joyce which I include with this story (below). A typical African man in the same situation as Boaz would have abandoned his wife.

The leadership couple for “The Faithful House” in Africa are Paskasia and Gonzaga Lubega from Uganda. This couple is raising three small children and maintaining a small farm where they grow the food they eat while serving as Maternal Life’s directors for the Faithful House in Africa. They do great work against enormous odds. I want to invite the CLM family to learn more about Maternal Life International by going to their website at mlionline.org or writing George at 326 S. Jackson St., Butte, Montana, USA 59701. Phone/FAX: (406) 782-1719. Email – mlicares@yahoo.com. Please consider making a donation to continue their work!

We are grateful to all of you for your prayers and financial support — which make our work at CLM possible! Send us your prayer intentions!

An African Marriage Success… In Spite of HIV Infection

A CLM Interview with Boaz Onyango Agai and Joyce Anyango from Nakuru, Kenyan, Luos tribe

Joyce: We met in Nakuru when we were neighbors and became friends. I was 21, and Boaz was 31. But before Boaz I had a relationship with a boy who was 19, when I was 17. I knew that he had multiple girlfriends and was sleeping with them, but I thought I loved him and so I slept with him too. I was raised in the Anglican Church, but my faith was not strong.

I was very aware of HIV/AIDS and I knew about sexually transmitted disease. I knew better, I did not like what I was doing, but I had run away from home because my parents did not accept him. I finally left him because of the other girls.

Boaz: When I was a young adult I had no idea about HIV/AIDS. I did not have a steady girlfriend, but I was sexually active and it is only by the grace of God that I was not infected. My father took me to vocational training in electronic repair, and I have worked in electronic repair ever since. I was looking for a wife.

Joyce: After I left my boyfriend, I went back to my mother and father’s house. They accepted me and I finished secondary school at age 18 in 1999. I left my rural home to stay with my elder sister, and there I met Boaz.

Boaz: My parents were Protestant Christians. I really liked the singing in church and continued to go. It was a Baptist Church, but I had no real faith. We started dating and after just a few months we lived together as husband and wife, but we did not have a formal marriage.

Joyce: I got pregnant after being with Boaz for nine months and was very happy about it.

Boaz: I too was very happy about it. And when the baby was born in 2002 I felt so blest by God because I know that it is God who gives children to their parents.

Joyce: By 2005 there was much awareness in the community about AIDS. My Uncle died of AIDS when he was very young and I also had a friend who got sick from AIDS and was sent by her husband back to her parents’ home to die.

Boaz: My father advised me that if I wanted to marry we should be tested. We knew that we should be tested but we put it off.

Joyce: We did not get tested until 2007 when our daughter was five years old. We were in a counseling room and my husband was to read my results and I was to read his. He was negative.

Boaz: I told my wife that she was positive.

Joyce: My heart stopped beating. Moving out of the counseling room, I thought the best thing to do was to separate, but he insisted that we stay together.

Boaz: I loved her and would not leave her even thought she was HIV positive.

Joyce: I was not convinced that he would stay. I was worried about him all the time. By then we had another child. He proved to me that he loved me by staying with me even though I was HIV positive and he was not.

Boaz: I tried to convince her that we must have our children tested.

Joyce: It scared me to death to think about my children being HIV positive. We took the two of them to be tested and our daughter was HIV positive, but our son was not. I felt like I was dead. I could not bear it. I started becoming sick, but not because of HIV, but because of stress. I was imagining what my daughter would have to go through in life and I could not accept it.

Boaz: I also was very worried. The daughter is so young, and we wanted her to reach to being an adult. We thought that we had cut her life short and I was very sad.

Joyce: My husband is more courageous than me. We had to take our daughter to the hospital and learned that she had tuberculosis. It was so scary. The doctors gave her an aggressive treatment plan and she began to get better. She is HIV positive but does not have AIDS, and that is true for me too.

Boaz: We began to get more involved with our church. We talked to one another about the message from the service.

Joyce: We became very active in the Church and we became peaceful with living with HIV. We believe that we can make a better life for our children and that life is still possible. We are going to live until we become old. I have to take care of myself and take my HIV drugs, just like my daughter.

Boaz: Our church and God has brought us together in a great love that HIV cannot separate.

Joyce: Our daughter was going through a program sponsored by the Catholic diocese to help her cope with HIV. We were asked to get trained as Faithful House facilitators to implement this program for the church.

HIV has many challenges because it makes someone have a total behavior change. The life with HIV is quite expensive for drugs and a balanced diet. It requires proper hygiene and needs proper attention in terms of medication when you are sick. The doctor must know about it so that I can get the right drugs. One does not die of HIV but dies because of opportunistic infections.

Boaz: Those who are infected should encourage members of the community to go for the test. It is important to know their status. If we had not learned of our status we would all be dead by now.

Joyce: There is life after HIV. We are very happy.

This is not something of which I am proud. I was a good Catholic kid, raised with a very strong consciousness of sin —even for something as simple as having the wrong intention for doing the right thing. So lying to Dad must have ranked among the most serious, grave, and mortal offenses! Especially when you hear what I lied about: praying.

I grew up in a Catholic community which taught me to “say prayers.” This was not a bad thing. It gave me an awareness of God. We prayed at home before meals, and during Lent we were on our knees every night saying the rosary and up early every morning for Mass. In Catholic school we said the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be at the beginning of class, before taking a test, or to help us win at football.

But we did not do spontaneous prayers. The only person I knew who prayed “spontaneously” was the parish priest who sometimes came over for dinner. I only knew how to say the prayers that I was taught. So when I prayed in bed at night just before falling asleep I turned to what I knew and said the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be.

BUT IT TOOK SO LONG! At least that’s what Robert in 8th grade thought. For a while I said those prayers, but said them as fast as I could. I tried to do all three in 30 seconds flat. Finally, even that was too much trouble, so I just stopped.

I stopped praying at the very time my parents were having a revival in their faith. Mom and Dad began going to a prayer meeting, met Jesus, and were baptized in the Holy Spirit! Their lives were turned upside down. They learned to pray using their own words, not out of duty, but to build a relationship with God. My brothers and I could certainly tell something was going on. Catholicism by law was being replaced with Catholicism by love.

One night, as I settled down for an evening of watching TV, Dad walked into my bedroom. He asked me, “Do you pray?”

He caught me off guard. I expected, “What are you watching?” or “Let’s play cards,” but “Do you pray?” YIKES!

For all of three seconds I thought of being honest:

“I used to pray, but it was too much work… I know it’s a terrible sin, and I will go to Confession on Saturday, and… do you want to say a Hail Mary right now?”

But, I LIED and blurted out: “Yes, Dad.”

He did not say another word, and left. But his question stuck with me. I even heard myself say the truth, “No, but I want to.”

Dad’s question was loaded. He really was not asking me if I said the rote prayers I had learned at school as a duty bound Catholic. He was asking me if I had a relationship with God and was nurturing that relationship by spending time with God in prayer.

Prayer had become a duty that I learned to do as a child and, for the first time, I was being asked to transition from a child’s faith to a young adult faith of someone actively seeking to know and love God.

I began praying that night. I had seen the changes in Mom and Dad’s life, and in the lives of some of their close friends, and I wanted that change for me too. Dad’s question opened the way to that change: knowing God’s love in Jesus and seeking a relationship with God through prayer.

Do you pray? Do you spend time consciously working on knowing God’s love in Jesus and seeking a relationship with God through personal prayer?

Fall Retreat on Prayer — Catholic Life Ministries is hosting its annual fall retreat to help you deepen your life with God by calling you away to a beautiful place in the mountains and giving you ample opportunities for quiet personal prayer, and prayer with others. Please join us.
Click here for registration information or Click here for a flyer

Thank you for your support of CLM; send us your prayer intentions! We pray for you every Thursday!

Something very strange is happening. Our children are getting married faster than they were conceived. I have reviewed the contract and this is not supposed to happen. On August 6, we will have had our third wedding in two years. THAT’S NOT FAIR!

Now if we had had twins or triplets, I could understand God doing this, but we had the children the old fashion way, ONE AT A TIME, with reasonable spacing between births. I suppose God is trying to teach me something. And, as I look back on Steven’s wedding to Britt, and Clare’s wedding to Ryan, and Mary’s upcoming wedding to Jakob, the lessons that I need to learn are becoming clear.

LESSON #1: TRUST YOUR CHILDREN My adult children have chosen outstanding spouses, and without my help! (Can you believe it?) If these were the days of arranged marriages like in the play Fiddler on the Roof, I would have matched each of our children to a Catholic offspring from among our CLM families and friends. But the Fontana children did not need my help in finding their mates. And they found outstanding partners for their marriage journeys. One indication that this is so is that their spouses and fiancé clearly bring out the best in their Fontana mates. My adult children are better people because of their spouses.

LESSON #2: ELOPEMENT OUGHT TO BE A SERIOUS OPTION. Had we given our engaged children $1,000 dollars and a ladder and urged them to elope, it would have brought them and us untold peace. We would have avoided the seductive trap of the marriage industry that creates certain expectations that every wedding should have but, of course, comes with a large price tag: engagement rings; bridal showers; bachelor and bachelorette parties; dozens of bridesmaids and groomsmen, each with new dress or tie; rehearsal dinners that include all out-of-town guests and relatives; photographer with 100,000 staged photo shots taken before the wedding including several at the zoo sitting on an elephant and one in Puget Sound riding an Orca; the wedding event itself with family minister friend flown in from Tim-buck-tu to preside over prayers; post-wedding pictures with all the families, the elephant and the Orca; a reception at a cool night spot with amazing food and enough alcohol to float an aircraft carrier; dance music that lasts until the wee hours of the morning; and a post wedding brunch to say hi to the cousins you missed saying hi to the night before; and… COLLAPSE!

LESSON #3: GO SHOPPING WITH THE CALIFORNIA COUSINS. This takes a little explaining; Steven bought me cuff-links prior to Clare’s wedding, but I could not find a store in all of Yakima that sold cuff-link friendly shirts. So I put off shopping for one until we were in Seattle on the morning of Clare’s wedding. I mentioned this to my dear California cousins Chuck and Rosie (cousins with whom we had only recently reacquainted), and they wanted to join me in this hunt which we began at our upscale department store—Nordstroms.

We found a shirt right away, but the price tag was between OUCH! AND ZING! Before I could politely disengage from the saleswoman to move the search to a discount store, Chuck stepped in and bought the shirt.

WOW, DID IT MAKE ME LOOK GOOD!

On Sunday following the wedding, as I was walking Chuck and Rosie to their car for their trip home, I very gratefully and humbly thanked them for my shirt. Chuck cut me off saying, “What you gave us is priceless; you gave us our family. Thanks to you, Lori, and your kids!” He and Rosie loved being included and reconnecting with my siblings and meeting our children.

So maybe I would rephrase Lesson #3 as “INVITE THE COUSINS!” (and skip Lesson #2!) Weddings are wonderful opportunities to bring the extended family together to reconnect, tell stories, and celebrate the continuance and expansion of the family through the marriage of each beautiful young couple.

Our Mary will marry Jakob on August 6, Fr. Dennis Berry, ST, presiding over their wedding celebration. Pray for them and send us your prayer requests.