December Diary | 16th

Only nine days left!  Today I'm going to try to finish my wrapping and maybe bake a batch of jam thumbprint cookies. The weather has been sunny and cold--perfect for walks in the woods. We went to the pond five days out of the last seven. There is a skin of ice over the shallow water now; the Canada geese, hooded mergansers, and coots keep to the middle of the pond. This morning it looks as though it might snow. I hope it does. : )  We watched White Christmas on television last night; I really love old musicals. In these times it is more important than ever to surround ourselves with goodness and light. 

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me--put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. Philippians 4:6-9

Here's something that we don't want to face: God's peace is conditional. He offers it freely to everyone, but we need to rise up to receive it.

"Lift up your hearts!" We lift our hearts when we pray, when we think noble thoughts, and when we practice the virtues.

Human virtues are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections of intellect and will that govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reason and faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a morally good life. The virtuous man is he who freely practices the good.

The moral virtues are acquired by human effort. They are the fruit and seed of morally good acts; they dispose all the powers of the human being for communion with divine love. ~From The Catechism of the Catholic Church on the Four Cardinal Virtues (CCC 1804)

"We’ve forgotten the true cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance) and traded them in for the universal “virtue” of Tolerance (our secular religion).  And now we’re so darn tolerant that we even tolerate sin and evil," wrote Matt at Fallible Blogma.  He has written some excellent posts about tolerance (the new "virtue") and its destructive power in society.

As a mother of a six year old and a New Englander, the last few days have been really emotional. How do you make sense out of senselessness?  I don't know. But, I think that we have opened a large window to every evil with our spirit of tolerance.

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”  Isaiah 5:20

Without the four cardinal virtues to guide our hearts, society is left with no moral compass. Our culture has embraced a "new normal" in which we tolerate everything as good and equal. Even people who are a danger to themselves and others are tolerated because they can't help that they're that way.

Matt at Fallible Blogma wrote:

“The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin. – Pope Pius XII (in a 1946 address to the United States Catechetical Congress)

We need our sense of sin to know when we are sinning – to know when we’re injuring our souls. And our culture says, “No, the problem is not that you’ve sinned.  The problem is that you just need to get over that guilt complex you’ve got – it’s not real.  It’s all in your head.  And it’s keeping you from enjoying what you want to do. (oh, and here’s some pain medication that will help with that too).”

The answer to all of society's ills, of course, (so we've heard)  is more and better education. Sexuality, recreational drug use, bullying, violence--let us have a class on these topics, one that is carefully tolerant of every view. In the words of C.S. Lewis:

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.