In the search for deeper sense of identity in Christianity, one tends to oscillate between two choices: to adapt the way we live to the Church teachings or tailor the Church teachings to fit the way we live. Which choice do we identify with? If we allow our way of living to influence the church teaching, as the way we live changes from age to age so will the teachings of the church. In a few years such a church will find itself with teachings which are diametrically opposite to what it taught a few decades ago. That day will demonstrate that that church teaches no truth but only a changeable doctrine of convenience. Then why church at all, government can do that for us?
Church is not a simple administrator of code of social conduct. It is much more than that. It is a vehicle to reach the divine, a place of worship, a place of gathering in prayer and unity in time of crisis, a place where one can come face to face with God. In the Catholic Church, we practice our faith in continuity with the faith of the apostles. Therefore, if we are wrong today then they were wrong then. However, nearly two thousand years of history of the faith, our spiritual heritage passed down to us through saints, mystics and simple believers testify to the contrary. Therefore, many among us adhere fast to the root of our faith not only because it is rich and ancient, but also it contains fuller truth of the divine Christ. So why do we attempt to dilute the truth of our spiritual heritage to fit the way we live today?
Church is a bridge between God and man who lives in the society. In the eyes of many, Catholics and non-Catholics, Roman Church seems to have lost touch with reality. It seems so from time to time. That is because man wishfully thinks that God would adapt to his whims and fancies. He would like to worship God according to rules set by him and not by God and he wants the Church to understand his many needs. Therefore, the Church is caught between God and man. But man by nature is prone to change his views and opinions. What he professes to be as true in the morning, he rejects it as false in the evening. He is here today and gone tomorrow. So knowing what it knows about man, Church rightly and wisely adheres to God who is unchanging and eternal. It is not the Church that has lost touch with social reality of the day it is some of us who have lost touch with eternal reality of the Church.
Search for deeper sense of identity should be a sincere exercise to understand why we do what we do as a Church and not to dismantle the fabric of our rich faith. Yes, the Church does not always fully grasp the truth about natural reality. But I believe it has the Truth about God. That Truth is neither a fossil nor a line in the sand. It is never out of fashion. It does not need an extreme or partial make-over.
(I am neither a theologian nor a sociologist nor a church historian. I am just a practicing Catholic. What I wrote in this post, I wrote from the perspective of an ordinary church member. I may be totally, totally wrong.)
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Pope Benedict XVI
Poem of the Month
The Dead
The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats
of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
— Billy Collins from Sailing Alone Around the Room
Father, I bring thee not myself, -
That were the little load;
I bring thee the imperial heart
I had not strength to hold.
The heart I cherished in my own
Till mine too heavy grew,
Yet strangest, heavier since it went,
is it too large for you?
Emily Dickinson
Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see swallow immeidately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike,
I am not cruel, only truthful -
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers
faces and darkness separates us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Sylvia Plath
Good-Night
A latch lifting, an edged den of light
Opens across the yard. Out of the low door
They stooped into the honeyed corridor,
Then walk straight through the wall of the dark.
A puddle, cobble-stones, jambs and doorstep
Are set steady in a block of brightness.
Till she strides in again beyond her shadows
And cancels everything behind her.
Seamus Heaney
Flight
The city green steepled and calm,
words strung like beads worn close
to the skin to count and recount and
the nearest we get to heaven today
is in seeing a distant osprey
lift its wings, prepare for passage,
bear all the weight of our imagining.
Charmaine Cadeau (from what you used to wear)
A Coat
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they had wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
William Butler Yeats
To a Reader or
In praise of grief
I’ve watched memory wound you.
I felt nothing but envy.
Having slept in wet meadows,
I was not through desiring.
Imagine January and the beach,
a bleached sky, gulls. And
look seaward: what is not there
is there, isn’t it, the huge
bird of the first light
arched over first waters
beyond our touching or intention
or the reasonable shore.
Robert Haas (From Praise)
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost
(One of my favorite Robert Frost poems. Many perhaps know this one by heart)
By such strange means did I sustain
A thousand starry flights in one,
Since hope of Heaven yet by none
Was ever truly hoped in vain.
Only by hope I won my way
Nor did my hope my aim belie,
Since I soared up so high, so high,
That in the end I seized my prey.
St. John of the Cross
(The last stanza from “ Other verses with divine meaning”)
Having Misidentified a Wild-Flower
A thrush, because I’d been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.
Richard Wilbur
(I would like to thank Catherine Nolan @ The Alexandrian Blog for introducing me to the poems of Richard Wilbur)
Choruses from the Rock (Opening Stanza)
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.
T. S. Eliot
The dead are always looking down on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats
of heaven
as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to close our eyes.
— Billy Collins from Sailing Alone Around the Room
Father, I bring thee not myself, -
That were the little load;
I bring thee the imperial heart
I had not strength to hold.
The heart I cherished in my own
Till mine too heavy grew,
Yet strangest, heavier since it went,
is it too large for you?
Emily Dickinson
Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see swallow immeidately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike,
I am not cruel, only truthful -
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers
faces and darkness separates us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Sylvia Plath
Good-Night
A latch lifting, an edged den of light
Opens across the yard. Out of the low door
They stooped into the honeyed corridor,
Then walk straight through the wall of the dark.
A puddle, cobble-stones, jambs and doorstep
Are set steady in a block of brightness.
Till she strides in again beyond her shadows
And cancels everything behind her.
Seamus Heaney
Flight
The city green steepled and calm,
words strung like beads worn close
to the skin to count and recount and
the nearest we get to heaven today
is in seeing a distant osprey
lift its wings, prepare for passage,
bear all the weight of our imagining.
Charmaine Cadeau (from what you used to wear)
A Coat
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they had wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
William Butler Yeats
To a Reader or
In praise of grief
I’ve watched memory wound you.
I felt nothing but envy.
Having slept in wet meadows,
I was not through desiring.
Imagine January and the beach,
a bleached sky, gulls. And
look seaward: what is not there
is there, isn’t it, the huge
bird of the first light
arched over first waters
beyond our touching or intention
or the reasonable shore.
Robert Haas (From Praise)
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Robert Frost
(One of my favorite Robert Frost poems. Many perhaps know this one by heart)
By such strange means did I sustain
A thousand starry flights in one,
Since hope of Heaven yet by none
Was ever truly hoped in vain.
Only by hope I won my way
Nor did my hope my aim belie,
Since I soared up so high, so high,
That in the end I seized my prey.
St. John of the Cross
(The last stanza from “ Other verses with divine meaning”)
Having Misidentified a Wild-Flower
A thrush, because I’d been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.
Richard Wilbur
(I would like to thank Catherine Nolan @ The Alexandrian Blog for introducing me to the poems of Richard Wilbur)
Choruses from the Rock (Opening Stanza)
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.
T. S. Eliot
Our Lady of Guadalupe
Adopt a Patron Saint. They are not dead heroes. They are living Saints. We need them in our midst.
Stretch out Your hand from above;
Rescue me and deliver me out of great waters.
(Psalm 144:7)
Rescue me and deliver me out of great waters.
(Psalm 144:7)
Benedict in Brazil
About Me
"Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me........" (Luke 9: 48)
Patron Saints Forever!
St. Anthony of Padua
St. Dominic Savio
St. Joseph
St. Jude Thaddeus
St. Michael the Archangel
St. Philomena
St. Pio
Our lady of Guadalupe
St. Dominic Savio
St. Joseph
St. Jude Thaddeus
St. Michael the Archangel
St. Philomena
St. Pio
Our lady of Guadalupe
St. Pio
Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You.
Earth Rising
Science and Health
Can eating chicken help reduce colon cancer? Want to know more? Read here.
How about Aspirin? Find out more here.
Obesity and Cancer - Old theme, new analysis.Read here.
In primary cells, activated oncogenes are known to induce senescence and apoptosis. By using genome-wide RNAi screening , Michael Green’s group identifies one of the proteins responsible for this phenomenon in activated BRAF induced senescence. The protein they have identified turns out to be IGFBP7, a secreted protein of 33 kDa. Nice article! You can read or download it here.
This is another article which uses large-scale siRNA screen to identify proteins involved in interesting biological events, in this case HIV-1 infection. According to this article, there are 250 or so cellular proteins that facilitate many facets of viral infection. It is another interesting article. You can read the abstract here. Full article by subscription only.
A recent article by Yamanaka’s group demonstrates the feasibility of converting adult human dermal fibroblasts into pluripotent stem cell (iPS) like cells. Although, these cells have stem cell properties, they are still different from real human embryonic stem cells. These results only show a means to obtain stem cell like cells from mature dermal fibroblasts and help understand the process involved in the transition from stem cell to nonstem cell. But it is very unlikely that the cells themselves can ever be used for any regenerative therapy because of the fact that they carry retroviral vectors in which the four transcription factors are cloned in. But at least, we now know four transcription factors that play a role in maintaining the “stemcellness” of stem cells. Details here.
In the heart of a tumor is a small population of multipotent, drug-resistant cells known as cancer stem cells (CSC) which are responsible for tumor growth and recurrence after therapy. These CSCs are mostly found in the tumor regions well protected from apoptotic stimuli. In neural tumors, these sites are called “vascular niches.” The idea of targeting CSCs as a critical line of offense in cancer treatment is gaining a wide acceptance in the cancer research community. Read the article here.
Canadian Cancer Society News and Research Findings.Read here.
A large percentage of breast cancers (70%) are estrogen dependent. Therefore, antiestrogen like tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors are successfully used for breast cancer therapy. But from time to time, these tumors develop resistance to antiestrogen therapy. This article describes the possible cause behind developing drug resistance behavior of these tumors. You can read the full article here.
Bcr-abl, the fusion protein product of Philadelphia chromosome, is a key to the genesis of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). The fusion protein is a constitutively active tyrosine kinase. STI-571, an inhibitor of signal transduction, can effectively inhibit the kinase activity of bcr-abl by locking it up in an inactive confirmation. The drug can effectively treat early stage CML. However, in late stage, BCR-ABL gene undergoes mutation that destroys the binding sites for the drug thereby making it ineffective. This article describes those mutations very elegantly. For the full article click here.
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