The CatholiCity Message

Volume XVI, Number 4 – April 26, 2012

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

Let us get right to things you will not read anywhere else this month. First, a true story, then a few quick things.

MY BROTHER IN HEAVEN
My amazing mother was twenty-one on the day of her wedding and was thirty-one when she delivered her tenth child. On May 4, 1973, I was ten when my mother left for the hospital to deliver her eleventh more than three weeks past her due date. In my yearly boyhood routine in New Jersey, just like with Christmas or Halloween or my birthday or the Last Day of School, my Mom would go to the hospital then bring home a baby a week later. Every year, my sisters and brother and I would practice reciting our names out loud as fast as we could with a big gulp of air and an "And..." before adding the newest baby's name. To this day, most of us can clearly list off all eleven kids in our family faster than most people can name the two or three siblings in their own (seems impossible, I know, but this really is a core Macfarlane skill-set).

"Ro-Anne-Beth-Bud-Pat-Maria-Joe-Geraldine-Maureen-Angela...and..."

And a brother, I ardently hoped. I was old enough to be truly excited about the prospect of a brother but naïve enough to not understand the serious risks of childbirth. I am not sure if any single event had more impact on my life than my father waking me up to tell me that my baby brother had died during childbirth. Later I found out that a perfect storm of bad luck and mistakes conspired to end the life of a perfectly healthy little boy, who bled to death when his umbilical cord was torn before he could make it out alive.

My grandma told me later that as my dad had held his dead son in his hands, a bloodless twelve pounds, he baptized him by desire and christened him Jude, a different name than he and my mom had planned, after the apostle and patron of hopeless cases who had interceded for so many miracles in his life. O Jude, my brother Jude, lived quite well for almost ten months on this earth, though he never directly breathed its air, straddling the January 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, his heart beating beneath my mother's.

After Mom got home, we referred to him as "Baby Jude" and not long after, my sister Cathy was born. A decade later, while praying before the Blessed Sacrament in my dorm at Notre Dame, I was given a keen insight. In my mind's eye I saw Jude for the first time, really. There he was, standing before me, a heroic, strapping, clear-eyed man looking past me into our futures, standing before a phalanx of many such men in heaven. My faith informs me he will not have a glorified body until the final judgment, but as with all our baptized relatives who died before the age of reason, going back to the apostles, such saints are complete persons, perfect and sinless--and adults--in their union with the Holy Trinity. I have always felt an unexplainable closeness to the brother I never met, and I know Jude has had my back during my darkest hours, just as he will help you, if you ask him, during yours.

Two decades ago, I purposely gave my mother the impression that I would name my first son after myself (William), and she broke into tears when I told her minutes after he was born that I had named him Jude Thaddeus Macfarlane II, fulfilling a secret vow I had made to myself on the May morning in 1973. And now, in 2012, when the late afternoon California sunlight is just so, as we stand together in front of the old shack on a mountain at Thomas Aquinas College, and he turns to look past me, towards the far-off ocean beyond the orchards and valleys and forested peaks, my son Jude, impossibly tall, athletically tan, and with clear-eyed virtue, a lover of life, looks just like my brother.

AND THE WORLD DOES THIS WITH YOU
Smile. Now, to yourself. More, as a gift to your kids, spouse, friends, and strangers. Today and tomorrow and all month, to form a habit. It helps people.

TAKE YOUR PICK
When was the last time you listened (or re-listened) to a Mary Foundation talk? They really are the best Catholic talks in the world. With a prayer to the Holy Spirit beforehand, your faith will be fortified. Always free: listen online, download, in bulk CDs for your parish for next-to-nuffin, or have personal copies whisked to your front door:

http://www.catholicity.com/cds/

NOTABLE SAINTS AND HOLY DAYS OF THE MONTH
We have Saint Joseph the Worker on Tuesday, May 1
Saint Damien on Thursday, May 10
Holy Day, the Ascension, on Thursday, May 17
Pentacost, Sunday, May 27

QUOTATIONS

"The more my opponents practice Birth Control, the fewer there will be of them to fight us."
G.K. Chesterton

"Every devout Catholic over the age of twenty is, in some way, a convert."
Joseph Wood

"If you want to change your life and relationship to God in the most efficient, effective, and efficacious way, start going to daily Mass."
Isabella Gomez

"Between us and heaven or hell there is only life, which is the frailest thing in the world."
Blaise Pascal

"Those who have least power in the decline of a State, are priests, soldiers, the mothers of many children, the lovers of one woman, and saints."
Hilaire Belloc

THE AMAZING FATHER JOHN
For the latest articles by Fr. John McCloskey, including "2030: Revisited," click on the link below. To receive an email notification whenever we post a new article by the Productive One, click on the SIGN UP link just below the Recent Articles headline.

http://www.catholicity.com/mccloskey/

THE COMING CATHOLIC TIDAL WAVE
My article detailing why and how devout Catholic families will explode in numbers over the next generation, and how it is already and will continue to impact the institutional Church has received almost universally positive reaction. In case you missed it, and to comment after reading it, go here:

http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/macfarlane/bright-future.html

ALL OF US, PRAYING TO THE JUDES
As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water, and perhaps my brother Jude has helped me out on this. I have long suspected that Saint Jude the Apostle is such a powerful intercessor because he was a relative of Jesus and they almost certainly hung out as children, which means that Mary and Joseph also have a soft spot for him. I picture them as ten-year-olds running full-speed, awkward-gaited like puppies, from a house Joseph was working on for a neighbor, banging through the front door, grapping cups of water off the table, then gulping them down between out of breath heaving, wiping their mouths with their forearms, blurting "Thanks Mom!" and "Thanks Aunt Mary!" then running back out with her smile warming their backs. Seriously, could Jesus turn down a request his cousin Jude felt was important, no matter how impossible or hopeless, after they had shared so much since childhood, including crucifixion? I have a friend who has been suffering for a long time, and he needs relief. You know someone in dire straights. Let us pray for all our impossible cases, together, tens of thousands of us...

"Dear Saint Jude, and all holy Judes in heaven, along with all our relatives in heaven and their personal angels, intercede on behalf of (NAME OF PERSON IN DIRE NEED), and ask Cousin Jesus to bring supernatural and miraculous hope to this hopeless problem, to solve it with miracles if need be. We trust you, and want to be with you. Thank you. Amen."

With Immaculate Mary,

Bud Macfarlane
Founder