The CatholiCity Message

Volume VI, Number 16 – August 14, 2002

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

This will hopefully be one of those Life-Changing Messages, though, we have to admit, changing your life (for the better) is always our goal; any time we connect with each other as Christians, it's Our Lord's most natural supernatural way of changing us through the flow of grace. Before we get any more esoteric, let's just rev up the ole CatholiCity turbo-diesel engine, throw the break, and knock that peddle to the floor...whoosh...

1. UNCLE MAXIMUM
As you can tell in the byline above, we're composing this on the feast of Saint Maximilian, the hero and model of the Mary Foundation and CatholiCity, and as you longtime CatholiCity Citizens know, we start one of our coolest 54 Day Rosary Novenas tomorrow, 15 August, Feast of the Assumption, to end on the Feast of the Holy Rosary, 7 October. Wanna change your life–or somebody else's? Try joining us and thousands of CatholiCity Citizens in this powerful group prayer. The "Catholic" stars line up for this particular novena in mystical ways beyond our ability to explain, too, and we're adding two or three special intentions this year, and we guess we're saying we need your help. So, please join us. More details here:

http://www.catholicity.com/support/praywithus.html

By the way, Uncle Max will be 109 years old this coming 8 January 2003, and we will throw a big birthday party for him, and as usual, we won't tell the ladies at the bakery precisely who he is when they decorate the cake with "Happy 109th Birthday, Uncle Max!" They always remark, "109! Wow! He's still alive!" and we reply, "Yup. And he's quite active. Sharp as a tack."

2. WHAT ONE MAN CAN DO ANOTHER MAN CAN DO
Lately we've been pondering what it means to be working as a lay apostle, and it's occurred to us that there are hidden, powerful, "little" apostolates we can do together, or, as individuals. Just about all of you will be participating in what we call "The Apostolate of Praying With 70,000 CatholiCity Citizens" before this message ends, for example. Many of you have changed souls by taking part in the Apostolate for Giving Out Mary Foundation Stuff. Or, here's a sublime, brand new apostolate just started by a few friends of mine during World Youth Day, known in the long form as the Apostolate for Going Out to Dinner:

(WEBPAGE NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

THE BACK TO BEAR THE BURDEN
We also have heard of a young professional woman has recently started what she calls "The Apostolate for Wearing My World Youth Day Backpack." She lives in Toronto, and although it doesn't always match her professional attire, she has continued to wear her WYD "pilgrim bag" (easily recognized by just about everyone in that fine city after JP II took the place by storm) and it has led her to fruitful, interesting spiritual conversations with strangers who see her around town. She even merits a few nasty looks, but there's grace in that, too. A mutual friend of hers "joined" her apostolate, started wearing his WYD backpack, and it led him into a wonderful conversation with a good soul in Butte, Montana, of all places, on his way up to see Our Lady of the Rockies. You, too, can join the Apostolate for Wearing My WYD Backpack–even if you didn't attend WYD–by investing in the official authorized pack (it's quite comfortable, fairly "gender-neutral-looking"--even for us tough guys–and for twenty bucks, an inexpensive Apostolate initiation fee):

(BACKPACK NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

YES, TRY THIS AT HOME
Tired of turning down requests to go to Catholic "meetings" from well-meaning members of prayer groups and lay movements? Then consider joining the ultra-elite, supremely-secret Catholic lay movement we founded (privately, of course) years ago called Opus Christi: the Apostolate for Staying Home with Your Family. The hyper-challenging "norms" of this apostolate are not for the faint-hearted; we take on such spiritual crosses as eating dinner together, praying the Rosary out loud every evening, Doing Not Much of Anything on Sundays, and our favorite, Falling asleep draped all over your spouse in the sanctuary of your own bedroom. Of course, we cannot, and absolutely will not, reveal any of the norms to you (since it's so secretive) and neither can you as you turn down requests to go to meetings, and some of our members are so immersed in this apostolate that they don't realize they are in it. So let's just keep this between us and our seventy thousand Catholic friends reading this.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"Because each of us, our families, as well as our warm inner circles of Catholic friendship comprise the sanctuary of the Holy Trinity, Who Himself scorched the face of Moses, we must endeavor–with the care and skill of devout medieval artisans–to fashion our characters through pure grace in such a way that to the eyes of evil men or evil spirits, we appear as gargoyles guarding tabernacles housing unfathomable spiritual wealth. We must appear so Good that we are repulsive to Evil. We must appear so Ugly to Evil that the Good is more than just True, it is Beautiful."
G.K. MacBrien

HOMER'S WISDOM
"Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel."
Homer Simpson

3. LET US PRAY
...all 70,000 of us, together, as one body, the following prayer, which we're going to make up on the fly, as the Spirit leads, off the top of our heads, from the core of our soul...

"Dear Jesus, You know us better than we know ourselves. So You know precisely what we need, down to every little detail into every gigantic longing all the way to the parting of the hairs on our heads, and so it's okay for us to accept that it is really just a waste of words to try to describe to You what we want. We don't even know, not compared to Your perfect knowledge for us, as our creator, our brother, our savior, our friend, our king, and our spiritual lover. Instead, we will offer the prayer of One Word. We, the CatholiCity Citizens You have gathered, pray Your Holy Name as we gaze into Your Holy Face: Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. We want it all! Jesus. Amen."

(pause. smile.) You guys are the best. We're considering, peacefully, about asking you and offering you something different the next time we contact you. Sacrifice. It will draw us together. Don't forget: we are brothers and sisters through Baptism. We are friends.

With Christ,

Your Friends at CatholiCity