The Passion - As I mentioned earlier, I've returned to listening to The Dolorous Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ (also freely available as online text) during a portion of my commute time. I've made it through the NINE prefacing meditations (not your typical book) and am now finally in chapter 1. Chapter one contains Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich's visions of the Agony in the Garden. While these visions have no formal dogmatic stamp of authority from the Church, they still are useful for reflection on Christ's sufferings. In light of the events of the past few years (priest scandals, our culture of moral relativism, etc), I was really struck when I heard the following:
The soul of Jesus beheld all the future sufferings of his Apostles, disciples, and friends; after which he saw the primitive Church, numbering but few souls in her fold at first, and then in proportion as her numbers increased, disturbed by heresies and schisms breaking out among her children, who repeated the sin of Adam by pride and disobedience. He saw the tepidity, malice, and corruption of an infinite number of Christians, the lies and deceptions of proud teachers, all the sacrileges of wicked priests, the fatal consequences of each sin, and the abomination of desolation in the kingdom of God, in the sanctuary of those ungrateful human beings whom he was about to redeem with his blood at the cost of unspeakable sufferings.
The scandals of all ages, down to the present day and oven to the end of the world-every species of error, deception, mad fanaticism, obstinacy, and malice--were displayed before his eyes, and he beheld, as it were floating before him, all the apostates, heresiarchs, and pretended reformers, who deceive men by an appearance of sanctity. The corrupters and the corrupted of all ages outraged and tormented him for not having been crucified after their fashion, or for not having suffered precisely as they settled or imagined he should have done. They vied with each other in tearing the seamless robe of his Church; many ill-treated, insulted, and denied him, and many turned contemptuously away, shaking their heads at him, avoiding his compassionate embrace, and hurrying on to the abyss where they were finally swallowed up. He saw countless numbers of other men who did not dare openly to deny him, but who passed on in disgust at the sight of the wounds of his Church, as the Levite passed by the poor man who had fallen among robbers. Like unto cowardly and faithless children, who desert their mother in the middle of the night, at the sight of the thieves and robbers to whom their negligence or their malice has opened the door, they fled from his wounded Spouse. He beheld all these men, sometimes separated from the True Vine, and taking their rest amid the wild fruit trees, sometimes like lost sheep, left to the mercy of the wolves, led by base hirelings into bad pasturages, and refusing to enter the fold of the Good Shepherd who gave his life for his sheep. They were wandering homeless in the desert in the midst of the sand blown about by the wind, and were obstinately determined not to see his City placed upon a hill, which could not be hidden, the House of his Spouse, his Church built upon a rock, and with which he had promised to remain to the end of ages. They built upon the sand wretched tenements, which they were continually pulling down and rebuilding, but in which there was neither altar nor sacrifice; they had weathercocks on their roofs, and their doctrines changed with the wind, consequently they were for ever in opposition one with the other. They never could come to a mutual understanding, and were for ever unsettled, often destroying their own dwellings and hurling the fragments against the Corner-Stone of the Church, which always remained unshaken.
[... later in the text ...]
Bearing a prominent place in these mournful visions which were beheld by the soul of Jesus, I saw Satan, who dragged away and strangled a multitude of men redeemed by the blood of Christ and sanctified by the unction of his Sacrament. Our Divine Saviour beheld with bitterest anguish the ingratitude and corruption of the Christians of the first and of all succeeding ages, even to the end of the world, and during the whole of this time the voice of the tempter was incessantly repeating: 'Canst thou resolve to suffer for such ungrateful reprobates?' while the various apparitions succeeded each other with intense rapidity, and so violently weighed down and crushed the soul of Jesus, that his sacred humanity was overwhelmed with unspeakable anguish.
You can read the whole chapter of the Agony in the Garden online. Of the hours I've listened to, it has been the most moving.
Daniel - Michelle has a meeting with the school to discuss Daniel's progress this year and agree to testing. The testing is to determine his progress compared to last year's evaluation. Michelle will have a similar meeting regarding Michael in a week. While the boys have all made great progress this year, Michelle's leaning towards having the twins go to 'Readiness' next year rather than first grade. Such Readiness classes were a new concept to me. It's an optional grade offered between kindergarten and 1st grade to give those who might be a little behind some extra time to prepare for 1st grade.
Mobile work - Last night I did some more work on the mobile format side of the site. I also tweaked the software so that a notice of comments would Cc: to my cell phone. While I sit at a computer most of the day, it's not a computer that sees my personal email where comment notices go. It can be most of the day before I find out about a comment.
Speaking of cell phones, my cell phone's displays are acting flakey. I may need to replace it today. It's ironic because this is one of Motorola's "rugged" design models. Hopefully there's some reasonable warranty. It's less then a year old. The small external display went out months ago and now the main color display is occasionally not responding. It's a shame because I was really starting to get used to it.