VIDEO: "Catching up with Dawn Eden"Mark Judge interviews me at the Basilica

Mark Judge very kindly took time off making his Whittaker Chambers documentary to make this fun clip of me signing copies of My Peace I Give You and meeting people yesterday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

The editing is whimsical; you would think I throw back my head and laugh all the time!

Meeting friends at "Mary's House"

Had a lovely time yesterday signing copies of My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (popularly known as "Mary's House"). That's me at center in the photo above, with friends Magdalen and Father Paul. I love Magdalen's expression because it captures her gift for bemusement (and it is a gift in a warm-hearted friend).

One of the great blessings of the National Shrine signing for me was meeting a layman who heard about My Peace I Give You from a chaplain of the Courage apostolate, which ministers to people who have same-sex attraction. I recommend Courage in the resource guide at the end of My Peace I Give You, and am honored to have the book recommended by one of the apostolate's spiritual advisers, because it does such important work to help men and women draw closer to the love of Christ.

I hope to spend the entire summer speaking to people in parishes, recovery groups, and apostolates such as Courage around the country. See this blog entry (scroll down to "Bring My Peace to your place") to learn how to bring me to your area, or just e-mail me.

VIDEO: Talking about My Peace at D.C.'s Catholic Information Center

Washington, D.C.'s Catholic Information Center today released its video of what was for me a very grace-filled evening: my first talk about my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints.



The video captures the entire event: my introductory remarks (00:00-15:10); reading from My Peace I Give You (15:10-43:52); and the question-and-answer period (43:52-end).

It was wonderful to see how interested people were in asking questions. I answered them for twenty-five minutes, and still wasn't able to get to everyone. Among the things you'll hear audience members ask about are whether My Peace can help non-Catholics understand the Church's veneration of saints (it can indeed), how the book addresses the topic of forgiveness, and the Catholic understanding of what it means to be a "victim."

Although most of My Peace I Give You is about the saints, you will hear something of my own story in this video. If it moves you to pray for me, and to pray that the Lord may use my book and speaking apostolate to help others heal, I am very grateful.

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Bring My Peace to your place: Would you like to invite me to speak to an audience at your parish, recovery group, or other venue? It's easier than you think!

As it stands, besides upcoming events in D.C., Philly, Connecticut, and Wisconsin,, I have tentative plans to speak in California, Michigan, Missouri, and New York (please e-mail me if you are in those cities and want me to speak at your venue). However, many more bookings are needed if I am to tour throughout the summer.

So, write if you would like to host me (click here to see my e-mail address), and don't let a lack of funds stop you. I will volunteer my services to speak about My Peace I Give You anywhere as long as my transportation, meals, and accommodations (at a convent or private home) are provided by the sponsor. The message is that important to me; I see this as an apostolate.

AUDIO DOWNLOAD: Telling stories with Canadian radio host Drew Marshall

"This next guest of ours, I really stinkin' like. ... How the heck did you go from rock journalist to, like, this sort of Catholic storyteller?" So begins the delightful Drew Marshall's interview with me about My Peace I Give You, my first time speaking with the popular Canadian talk-radio host since he interviewed me about The Thrill of the Chaste back in 2007. The interview, which aired live last Saturday, is now available as a free download from Drew's website. Just go to the site's download page and look for my name under "April 21."

AUDIO DOWNLOAD: Talking about My Peace on "In the Heartland"

Signing books at the Catholic Information Center, April 23, 2012 (I'm seated at far left)
It was a joy speaking at the launch event for My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints at the Catholic Information Center last Monday. Many thanks to everyone who prayed for me before I gave my first public talk on the book. I felt very prayed-for, and the warmth with which those present received the message made me all the more eager to speak about My Peace throughout the country this summer.

Another highlight of recent days was being interviewed by Dr. Tom Neal and Lisa Bourne for the Diocese of Des Moines' radio show "In the Heartland with Bishop Pates." It was a real grace to converse with hosts who had reflected deeply on My Peace and were in great sympathy with my efforts to help those who had suffered childhood sexual abuse find emotional healing through the saints' lives. The interview is now available to download or hear online at the following links:

Dawn Eden on "In the Heartland"—Part 1

Dawn Eden on "In the Heartland"—Part 2

Dawn Eden on "In the Heartland"—Part 3

Click here to learn about the My Peace tour and how you can bring me to speak in your town (it's easier than you think).

Chez Shea today

Many thanks to Mark Shea for enabling me to write a guest post on his blog about how I came to write My Peace I Give You. As Mark would say, checketh thee out!

TODAY: My Peace on Son Rise Morning Show

Looking forward to speaking about my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints today at 7:45 a.m. on the "Son Rise Morning Show" on Sacred Heart Radio (Cincinnati) and EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network (click the show's title to listen online).

My next scheduled live media appearance after that will be for online TV— Friday, May 4, 2 p.m., on FoxNews.com Fox News Live's "Spirited Debate" show with Lauren Green.

Revolution neinWeekly Standard publishes my review of The Beatles in Hamburg

Weekly Standard Books & Arts editor Phil Terzian thought I was thinking a bit too much about saints and not enough about sinners, so he kindly assigned me to review The Beatles in Hamburg, a new book about the Fab Four's early years playing seedy Reeperbahn taverns. I'm thrilled to see that it's the lead review in the magazine's current issue. It begins:

Back when the expression “longhair music” evoked Handel, not Hendrix, William Mann made history as the first “serious” scribe to give a well-manicured thumbs-up to the Fab Four. On December 27, 1963, the Times of London critic declared in his column that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were “the outstanding English composers” of the year, raving about the group’s “pandiatonic clusters” and “submediant key switches.” Most famously, he praised the “Aeolian cadence” in the group’s album track “Not a Second Time,” likening it to the chord progression that ends Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. (Lennon, in one of his final interviews, confessed, “To this day, I don’t have any idea what [Aeolian cadences] are. They sound like exotic birds.”)

Weekly Standard subscribers can continue reading on the magazine's website.

Peace is on the way

I'm excited to hear from friends who have been e-mailing me to say that Amazon has finally shipped their copies of My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble should soon have the book available in electronic formats as well.

My hope is that, as people read the book, they will talk to their pastors or book-reading groups about bringing me to speak. My first public talk on Monday night at Washington's Catholic Information Center was exhilarating, and I am looking forward to touring all summer if enough opportunities arise.

GUEST POST: Knight and pagesHow St. George's feast became the "Day of the Book"

A guest post by WILLIAM NEWTON

It's appropriate that my friend Dawn Eden's book launch for her latest work, entitled My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, will be taking place April 23, 6:30 p.m., at Washington's Catholic Information Center. Since 1995, April 23 has been marked by UNESCO as the International Day of the Book, to encourage reading around the world. However I suspect most readers of this post may be unaware that this particular occasion has its roots in a custom which arose in the city of Barcelona in the Middle Ages, which came to be combined with a recognition of literary history.

Many of us are familiar with the medieval legend of St. George and the Dragon, in which the valiant Roman soldier and convert to Christianity saves a princess from a demonic monster that liked to feast on human flesh. It has been the subject of countless works of art for many centuries, firing the imaginations of artists such as Raphael, Rubens, and Dali. The popularity of the saint led to his being adopted as a patron by many countries and communities across Europe, one of which was the city of Barcelona, in the then-kingdom of Catalonia (now part of Spain). The Catalans adopted St. George's standard of a red cross on a white field as part of the city's flag and coat-of-arms, and he is first mentioned as being one of the patron saints of the city as early as the 8th century, though he did not become chief among them for several centuries after that.

Various versions of the St. George legends exist, placing the action of the story in present-day Libya. However in the Catalan version, the scene is the beautiful walled town of Montblanc, located in a mountainous region west of Barcelona. This retelling of the legend says that when the Dragon was dispatched by St. George, it spewed blood, and from that blood a miraculous rosebush sprouted and burst into bloom. St. George then selected the choicest flower from among these roses, and presented it to the princess whom he had rescued, as a token of his favor.

This action might seem rather superfluous of course, given that he had just saved her life. However this was precisely the type of fantasy and romanticism, designed to teach the listener about virtues such as bravery, chivalry, and faith, which characterized many of the tales and songs of the Middle Ages. In fact, the town of Montblanc still re-enacts the legend of St. George and the Dragon every year in an elaborate, costumed play, as the highlight of two weeks of revels celebrating St. George and the town's history.

As for the magic rose in the story, it soon became a popular custom for a man to give a rose to the woman he loved on St. George's Day, in imitation of the saintly knight's chivalrous act. Medieval merchants soon realized the commercial possibilities of this custom, and so a Rose Fair began to be held in Barcelona every year on St. George's Day. The first written account of such an annual fair dates from about the time that St. George was declared the patron of the city in the 1400s.

On the day itself, in a tradition which continues to this day, officials and dignitaries would gather in the chapel of the Generalitat, the palace of the Catalan government, to hear Mass in the palace's Chapel of St. George. After the liturgy, the doors to the palace would be thrown open to the public, who were allowed open access this one day a year to visit the building and admire its courtyards, reception rooms, and gardens. Men would then escort their ladies through the stalls in the surrounding streets, selecting their tokens of love from the Rose Fair merchants, in homage to the legendary acts of the chivalric knight.

However St. George is not the only person associated with April 23. Arguably the two greatest writers of their respective countries, William Shakespeare and the Miguel de Cervantes, died on the same day, April 23, 1616. Noting this coincidence between The Bard and the author of Don Quixote, back in the 1920s Barcelona's publishing houses began to hold an annual book festival called "The Day of the Book" on St. George's Day. Stalls and kiosks are set up in the center of town to hold sales of new and re-issued titles, and to host lectures and readings by popular authors. The "Day of the Book" gradually became the most important publishing day of the year for the book trade in Barcelona, since it was the largest center for book-publishing in both Spanish and Catalan in the world.

Because the "Day of the Book" fell on St. George's Day, it eventually became conflated with the medieval tradition of presenting a rose to a favored lady. Thus, while a Catalan lady might expect a rose from her suitor, he in turn might expect to receive a volume chosen by her, especially for him—perhaps a book of romantic poetry, epic adventure stories, or a play about star-crossed lovers. One might argue that the man had the easier and less-expensive task in this, but then again perhaps this is rather appropriate: after all we men ought not to complain about the fact that women are so often capable of going above and beyond what we ourselves are capable of doing. Today, the Catalan way of marking St. George's Day has not only been recognized by UNESCO, but parallel celebrations take place around the world through cooperative agreements between the cultural authorities of the Catalan government and their counterparts in cities like London, Paris, Tokyo, and New York, where participants can exchange books and roses with one another.

The fact that Dawn Eden's new book is premiering in the nation's capital on this day, therefore, is wholly appropriate in and of itself. As a Catholic writer, and a woman who loves books, Dawn could have no better patron for the success of her latest work than a knight who saves ladies from monsters, gives roses, and watches over the publishing world. Yet it is also appropriate that the example of St. George speaks to the subject matter of Dawn's book itself.

In My Peace I Give You, Dawn looks at the lives of the saints and how they provided her with hope and with healing as she examined her personal trauma of childhood sexual abuse—something that is one of the great monsters of our time, more fearsome in its harsh reality than any mythical dragon. The men and women whose lives she recounts in the course of her journey through the pages of this book suffered sexual abuse themselves, or from great temptations and mistreatment. In their respective examples, she is able to consider how God's love for all of His children can help them to overcome the pain and suffering which they have been through.

The story of St. George and his efforts to defend the princess and restore her to herself and to her family is something which certainly parallels the journeys which survivors of abuse must make. Acting as God's instrument in the story, St. George not only defeats evil, but he also rewards the young woman who has had to suffer the tortures of that evil—and does so in a chivalrous, pure way. Fairy tale it may be, but perhaps our medieval ancestors were not so wrong in perceiving how much we have to learn from St. George and his battle with the dragon, after all.

Special offer for those attending my book launch

There's a special reason why I chose April 23 as the date for my talk at the Catholic Information Center to launch my new book, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. It is the birthday of one of my favorite not-yet-canonized patron "saints": Father Daniel A. Lord S.J., who whose writings and  joyful witness in the face of terminal cancer helped shape my own understanding of what it means to suffer in union with Christ.

Knowing my fondness for Father Lord and my desire to share his writings with others, the good people at the CIC (1501 K St. NW, Washington, D.C.) have agreed to make a special offer on the night of my talk there (that's this Monday, April 23, at 6:30 p.m.): The first fifty people who purchase My Peace I Give You will receive each receive their choice of a beautiful reprint of a classic booklet of prayers written by Father Lord—his Sacred Heart Novena or his Infant of Prague Novena. If you receive one of them, I hope Father Lord's writing brings you as much comfort and inspiration as it has brought to me. It was he who, in a time of depression, said to his Lord the sentence that I quote at the start of My Peace I Give You: "It may well be that I shall find you in the depths before I shall find you upon the heights."

Listen to archived audio: Talking about My Peace on WGMD, 4-16-12

Delaware talk-radio host Bill Colley of WGMD has posted the interview he did with me Monday afternoon, in which I discussed my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. Click here to listen.

Discussing forgiveness with author Father Scott Hurd at Guadalupe Radio

This morning, thanks to the ingenuity of WMET Guadalupe Radio Network host Irene Lagan, I had the joy of meeting an author who had given me advice and encouragement while I was writing My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. He is Father Scott Hurd, who, besides being Vicar General of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, is the author of Forgiveness: A Catholic Approach, and our meeting came about because Irene booked us both to appear on her "Catholic Matters" show.

That's me above with Father Hurd in the WMET studio, with Our Lady of Guadalupe aglow over Father's shoulder; we are each holding a copy of the other's book.

If you are in the Washington, D.C., area, please come to the official launch event for My Peace I Give You this coming Monday, April 23, at the Catholic Information Center Bookstore, 1501 K St. NW, at 6:30 p.m. I'll be giving a talk and signing books. (For those on Facebook, the CIC has an event page for the signing.)

I'll also be speaking in Philadelphia next month and have tentative plans to speak in Michigan, Missouri, and New York. If you are in one of those cities and would like me to speak at your parish or other venue, know that I am eager to spread the message of My Peace I Give You. Click here for more about my touring plans (scroll down to "A personal message").

My next media appearances are:

April 20, 10 a.m.: "In the Heartland with Bishop Pates" (guest host: Tom Neal) on KWKY (Norwalk, IA) and KVSS (Omaha and Lincoln, NE)

April 21, 3 p.m.: "The Drew Marshall Show" on CYJE (Oakville, ON, Canada)

May 4, 2 p.m.: FoxNews.com's Fox News Live—"Spirited Debate" with Lauren Green
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Don't be discouraged by the "May 14" publication date that's showing up on the Amazon page for My Peace I Give You. The book shipped to stores last week. Those who pre-ordered on Amazon should receive their copies within days.

New interview: Jennifer Fulwiler asks me about 'forgiving the unforgivable'

Jennifer Fulwiler (left) of Conversion Diary is one of my personal inspirations, as a woman who is profoundly conscious of her need for God's grace. She writes about her journey as one would write to a best friend, with love and great good humor. So it was a joy for me when she answered my request that she be the first writer to share my story about the writing of My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints—a story that includes my experience as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

Last week, the National Catholic Register ran the first part of Jennifer's interview with me. Today, Jennifer has the second half of the interview on Conversion Diary. In it, I talk about "forgiving the unforgivable."
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As I noted earlier, don't be discouraged by the "May 14" publication date that's showing up on the Amazon page for My Peace I Give You. The book shipped to stores last week. Those who pre-ordered on Amazon should receive their copies within days.

'Was Ignatius a trauma survivor?'

That's the question asked by Loyola Press senior editor and author Jim Manney in a thoughtful meditation posted to the dotMagis blog, which covers Ignatian spirituality.

Manney takes as his starting point a recent blog entry of mine, which in turn was drawn from thoughts I shared about Ignatius in My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. I'm very encouraged to see that he and his commenters share my belief that the Jesuit founder's spirituality—and particularly his Suscipe prayer, with its offering of memory—provides an entry into healing for those who have suffered emotional trauma.

Dispelling myths on saints and sex abuseI talk to Catholic News Agency about the martyrs of chastity

Catholic News Agency today published an interview with me about my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints in which I seek to correct inaccurate notions of why martyrs of chastity such as Maria Goretti (right) are saints. My goal is to bring the healing truths of the Catholic faith to those who—like me—suffered sexual abuse in childhood:

Eden says she eventually found great solace when she realized that the Church "has always taught that virginity resides in the will to remain a virgin."

"According to St. Augustine's City of God and St. Thomas Aquinas's 'Summa Theologiae' – and this remains official doctrine today – a virgin," Eden explained, "who was raped is still a virgin in the eyes of the Church. He or she is not a 'secondary virgin,' but a true virgin."

In the case of St. Maria Goretti, Eden clarifies ... that Goretti's sainthood comes not from the fact that she "wasn't violated," but "because she lived a holy life and was always making of herself, body and soul, a gift to God."

"Because of her recognition that her body was a temple of the Holy Spirit," Eden said, “she resisted her attacker. But her sanctity came from her will to resist."

Read the entire interview on the Catholic News Agency website.

Catholic News Agency also has an excerpt from a chapter of My Peace I Give You.
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A personal message: I am very happy that my interviews with Catholic News Agency and the National Catholic Register interviews have come out just as My Peace I Give You hits stores, because that increases the likelihood that parishes and other venues will book me for talks this summer while there is still time. So far, I have appearances lined up in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, with possible dates in Michigan, Missouri, and New York (please e-mail me if you are in those cities and want me to speak at your venue). However, many more bookings are needed if I am to spend the entire summer touring, which is my hope.

The reason I need to tour this summer is because I want to get the message of My Peace out to as many people as possible, and the summer is the only time when I have leisure to travel. Since I am studying full-time at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception towards a sacred-theology licentiate (a degree licensed by the Holy See, which I need in order to study in Rome for a sacred-theology doctorate), I will have to stay close to my home of Washington, D.C., during the fall.

So, if you would like me to come to your parish or other venue, please write to me (click here to see my e-mail address), and don't let a lack of funds stop you. I will volunteer my services to speak about My Peace I Give You anywhere as long as my transportation and accommodations (at a convent or private home) are provided by the sponsor. The message is that important to me; I see this as an apostolate.

Last, if you would like to support my plans to spend the summer volunteering to speak about My Peace I Give You, please consider making a donation towards my support. As a full-time student at a school that does not offer scholarships to lay students, I am living on student loans, my credit line, and the kindness of Dawn Patrol readers. If I see any royalties from My Peace, they will not arrive for at least one year. So, if it truly is God's will that I spend the summer giving talks about healing from childhood sexual abuse, I will need a bit of extra help. If you would like to chip in—no amount too small—please use the donation button below. In any event, I am very grateful for your prayers, and am praying daily for all who read my writings or hear me speak.

'I have waited years for this book' Mother Agnes Mary Donovan on My Peace I Give You

Last spring, as I began to prepare for writing My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, I longed to have the opportunity to discuss the book's message with others who had been sexually abused in childhood, to find out if it would be as helpful to them as I hoped it would be.

The opportunity to do so came when the Sisters of Life invited me to speak to the people they serve at one of their homes—pregnant women and new mothers who, were it not for the respite offered by the Sisters, would be at the mercy of abusive family members or boyfriends, or out on the street.

I spoke to the group of women about how the saints' lives had helped me to find healing, and talked in particular about the little-known Blessed Margaret of Castello. The life and witness of that young woman—cast out by parents ashamed to have a child who was blind and deformed—reveals how, in the words of Blessed John Paul, "people who unfortunately cannot in any sense claim membership of what could be called in the proper sense a family" are "particularly close to the Heart of Christ" (Familiaris Consortio 85).

Seeing how the women at the Sisters of Life's home, who had suffered so much, took inspiration from Blessed Margaret's story, I gained the affirmation I needed that the saints could help other abuse victims as they had helped me.

So, when it came time to seek someone to write a foreword for My Peace I Give You, my first thought was to ask Mother Agnes Mary Donovan S.V. (left), General Superior of the Sisters of Life. To my great joy, she accepted. Now, thanks to columnist Matt C. Abbott, you can read her words online:

I have waited years for this book. As a psychologist and a consecrated religious, I am sobered and sorrowed by the sheer number of adults whose lives are marked by the shadow of sexual abuse. This failure to protect a child's innocence reverberates throughout a victim's entire life. In my knowledge, a victim of sexual abuse often struggles, even as an adult, to conquer the relentless temptations of self-condemnation. In the pages that follow, readers find an alternative to self-loathing; they find hope and a cause for joy.

Read the rest of the foreword in Abbott's column on RenewAmerica.com.

'Asking Christ's precious blood to bleed into all my past'Jennifer Fulwiler interviews me about my journey to healing from childhood sexual abuse

On this day, as my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints is being shipped to booksellers, I am publicly sharing for the first time my own experience as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.

From Jennifer Fulwiler's interview with me in today's National Catholic Register online:

Abuse victims are sometimes resistant to seeking healing because they fear that it will involve reliving traumatic memories. Is that a necessary step for finding peace in Christ?

It’s very important to distinguish between what are appropriate psychological methods of healing to be done under the care of a qualified mental-health professional and what are appropriate spiritual approaches to healing. For example, for victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, there is a type of psychotherapy whereby a person relives certain traumatic experiences. For some people, that can be therapeutic. However, if done outside of a controlled setting with a medically qualified practitioner, it can be dangerous.

Moreover, there is a theological problem with telling people that Christ can only heal you if you relive each memory. You can see this when you look at how he heals people in the Gospels. When Jesus healed the leper in Galilee, did he touch every single part of the leper's body? Of course not. The leper said to him in faith, "If you will, you can make me clean." Jesus simply stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean."

The message in the Gospels is that our wounds are cracks where Christ's light can get in. When we open ourselves to his healing light, we can trust in faith that he'll reach all those dark places. Whether or not I can consciously remember every single thing that was done to me, all those experiences contributed in some way to who I am today. So when I offer my whole self to Christ, and ask him to enter in, I am asking Christ's precious blood to bleed into all my past. Carrying that image of the Precious Blood and the light of Christ entering into my entire life is much more beautiful than trying to force myself to review every single wound.

The full interview is on the National Catholic Register website.

Thanks so much to all the readers who have been praying for me as I have undertaken this work. Please keep up the prayers for me and for all those whom I hope to help find healing in Christ through the lives of the saints, particularly for adult victims of childhood sexual abuse. If you are a writer and are interested in interviewing me about My Peace or having your website be part of my upcoming "blog tour," please e-mail me.

My new book, My Peace I Give You, now available for online preview

Today is a joyful day for me, as my second book, My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, is shipped to stores. It'll take a few days or more for the book to arrive in the Amazon warehouse and become available on Kindle, but already it is available for online preview using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. (The book is also available for pre-order from Barnes&Noble.com and will soon be for sale in the Nook format.)

What's more, my publisher's website is now showing links to the table of contents and "Sample Text" of My Peace. The sample text is the first several pages of the book's introduction, which is also available as a free PDF download.

'This is the night'A Holy Saturday meditation from My Peace I Give You

Holy Saturday is a particularly meaningful holiday for me because it was on that night in 2006 that I received the Sacrament of Confirmation, after being received into the Catholic Church on Holy Thursday. In the following excerpt from my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, I write about how, in the liturgy of Holy Saturday, the meaning of Passover is revealed in Christ:

A Catholic friend recently asked me to pray for a Muslim woman in one of the Persian Gulf states who is considering becoming Catholic but fears being ostracized. He told me that, when she was a child, the woman had a dream in which Mohammed reprimanded her severely for all the ways she had failed to be a good Muslim. Having been taught that dreams of Mohammed are always real, the frightened girl resolved to observe Islamic law perfectly—and did, to the best of her ability.

The years went by and the girl became a woman, still striving to be faultless in the practice of her faith. She hoped that one day Mohammed would once again appear to her in a dream, to let her know he was no longer displeased with her. But he never did. Instead, not too long ago, the woman dreamed of Jesus—who spoke to her quite differently than had Mohammed, my friend said.

Now, as a Catholic, I am thankfully not required to believe that private revelations are "always real—otherwise I would have saved the prayer card a strange woman gave me depicting "Our Lady of Bayside, Queens." Just the same, the message the Muslim woman received in her dream of Christ struck me to the core.

Jesus said to her, "We only keep the good stories."

That is the voice of a loving father speaking to his child. I hear in it the promise in the Book of Revelation that God himself will dwell with human beings: "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more" (Rev 21:4).

When I was a child, reading the Passover story, I remember being surprised to read God’s words to the Jewish people that the month including Passover "is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year" (Ex 12:2). It didn't seem to make sense, because Passover and the Jewish New Year's Day, Rosh Hashanah, occurred several months apart. Yet, I did get the feeling it meant there was something new about the Jews’ exodus from Egypt, just as it was said at the Passover Seder that my family observed each year: "This night [is] different from all other nights." It was to be an absolute beginning.

Years later, on the third evening of Passover in 2006, I would experience an absolute beginning of my own. It was Easter Vigil, the night I received the Sacrament of Confir- mation. In my mind, I am back there now. The light of the Paschal Candle shines from the pulpit; a share of its flame flickers on the candle I hold as I listen to the chanting of the Exsultet (Easter Proclamation).

The Exsultet is a communal purification of memory—a "This Is Your Life" for the People of God. It recalls the most painful and damaging events of humanity’s past, revealing their true meaning within the context of divine providence. The effect is like that of a camera panning back from an extreme close-up, revealing that what first appears to be a blotch of murky darkness is actually the center of a stunning sunflower. In the light of Christ—represented by the Paschal Candle—the Jewish people’s dark period of slavery in Egypt is revealed as a necessary chapter in the world's most beautiful story. God's liberation of the Jews presages his ultimate liberation, freeing all humanity from sin and death. Past pain becomes prologue to future joy:

These, then are the feasts of Passover, in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb, whose Blood anoints the doorposts of believers.

This is the night, when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.

This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin.

This is the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin,
leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.

This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.

Why is this night, Easter Vigil, different from all other nights? Because the Resurrection begins the restoration of all things in Christ (Rev 15:2).

As the Exsultet’s joyful strains fade into memory, the priest blesses the baptismal font. I see the vertical line of the Paschal Candle, representing the supernatural life of the risen Christ, intersect the horizontal line of the water's surface, representing the natural life of humanity. The symbolic union moves me to reflect upon how my own baptism, six years prior, built upon the life that began with my natural birth. It marked the start of my active participation in God’s providential plan for me.

Thanks to my baptism, my life is no longer limited to a horizontal dimension, measured by how close or far I am on the journey toward death. It always has a vertical dimension, measured by how close or far I am on the journey toward heaven—a heaven that can be tasted on earth via the life of grace. These dimensions are my personal latitude and longitude, my spiritual global-positioning system; together, they form a cross.

In the Paschal Candle's glow, I see more deeply how God’s loving presence has always been with me, like the pillar of fire that led the Israelites out of the darkness of slavery. And I begin to ponder how God permitted evil to enter my life only so he might draw from it a greater good. A verse of the Exsultet returns to mind: "O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!" Jesus can truly say, "We only keep the good stories," because all the good stories end in him.

Read more in My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever fine books are sold. (Note that, although Amazon and B&N list a May 14 publication date, the book's release has been moved up to Easter Monday, April 9.)

Is the My Peace tour coming to your town? Click here to find out. If I'm not yet scheduled to be in your area and you would like to engage me to speak about My Peace, please write to me: click here to see my e-mail address.

Illustration: William Blake, "Christ Appearing to His Disciples After the Resurrection"

Purchased at a price

A young television actress who writes and directs her own work recently told an interviewer why she has chosen to put herself in nude scenes.

"To feel some kind of ownership of your own body," she said, "the way getting tattoos does."

I don't know details of this woman's personal background beyond what she has chosen to share, so I can't say the extent to which her artistic oeuvre—in which she creates for herself characters who are treated as sexual objects—may reflect events in her own life (as she suggests it does). In any case, she seems to be sincere; what is more, there are women, or at least young female television reviewers, who think she in some way speaks for them.

So I think it is very, very sad that she believes her body is something to be "owned" as one owns a slave—displaying it tattooed and naked.

In my new book of Catholic spirituality for adult victims of childhood sexual abuse My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, one of the stories I tell is that of St. Josephine Bakhita. The Sudanese-born saint knew what it was like to be "tattooed" at the will of her slavemaster—not with ink, but by patterns cut into her body. Having been bought and sold five times during her childhood and teens, she must have also known what it was like to be paraded naked before strangers.

For St. Josephine, who discovered the love of Christ and, obtaining release from slavery, became a Canossian Sister, freedom did not mean the freedom to put new marks on herself. It meant the freedom to offer herself with all the scars she bore, emotional and physical, as an acceptable sacrifice to her loving Father. In the same way, freedom for Bakhita did not mean the freedom to disrobe in front of strangers. It meant the freedom to be robed in a habit, making herself present in love for her religious sisters and for all those that it was given to her to meet, as a member of the family of God.

Perhaps most of all, freedom for Bakhita did not mean to "own" her body. It meant the freedom to belong, body and soul, to her true Master in heaven, being incorporated through baptism into the Mystical Body of Christ.

Pope Benedict writes of Bakhita's experience upon being introduced to Christian faith by the Canossian Sisters that she would come to join:

Here after the terrifying "masters" who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of "master"—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name "paron" for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a "paron" above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme "Paron", before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. [Spe Salvi 3]

I invite you to join me this Holy Week in praying for the freedom of those who are bound with invisible chains, whether from their own sins or from the traumatic effects of sins that were committed against them, that they may find the freedom Bakhita found—in the open arms of their loving Father.

"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body."—1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Ratzinger: "Redemption is ... more than psychotherapy"

If I had to condense the message of my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints into a single paragraph, it would look a lot like this one I just discovered from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI):

"The momentous moral questions of our age, which beset young people in particular, find their proper place only within the context of belief in God, the trinitarian God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and only within the context of faith in the incarnate Son. Within this framework it will also become obvious that redemption is more than the fight for political utopias and more than psychotherapy. For we cannot shoulder the responsibility that the ethical challenges of our life impose on us if this responsibility is not supported by the redeeming love of God which comes towards us in the cross" (A New Song for the Lord, 35).

Not everyone who has suffered childhood sexual abuse will need therapy, but all who have experienced evil need to know the healing love that is found only in Christ and His Church.

Photo by Dawn Eden.

My Peace makes the Benedict Blog

Longtime Ratzinger/Benedict bloger Christopher Blosser alerts me to the fact that his latest Pope Benedict Roundup features a mention of my new book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints. Go there and you'll find a link to my recent article on how Pope Benedict's "theology of saints" can help bring healing to those who have suffered childhood sexual abuse.

Note: Although Christopher, following the information on the Amazon page for My Peace, says the book is coming out in May, it actually ships to stores next week. See the Ave Maria Press website for more on My Peace, including endorsements from Father James Martin, Alice von Hildebrand, and Barbara Nicolosi. The book carries an Imprimatur from Donald Cardinal Wuerl, making it the first-ever book on healing from childhood sexual abuse to receive ecclesiastical approbation.