A beginner's guide to Father Daniel A. Lord S.J.

After Father Joseph Mary Wolfe MFVA read Father Daniel A. Lord S.J.'s article "Cancer Is My Friend" in his homily on EWTN yesterday, many people were moved to search online for the article. I know this because their web searches led them to some of the posts I have written on this blog about Father Lord (1888-1955), whose life and witness is a great source of inspiration to me. (Click the "Daniel A. Lord" tag below to see those posts.)

Since several readers have also written to me during the past day to ask for information about Father Lord, here is a brief "beginner's guide" to help those who would like to get to know him better:

• Articles: Via Google News' archive, here is Father Lord's "Cancer Is My Friend." For more background on his life, see David J. Endres' article in America, "Dan Lord, Hollywood Priest."

• Audio: A spoken-word LP record by Father Lord titled So I'm Dying of Cancer! is available online as a free download (right-click the album title to download). The first half of the recording features an interview with Father Lord from June 1954, five months after his diagnosis with terminal cancer, while the second half is a talk of his that was apparently given before his cancer diagnosis, perhaps in February 1953 (judging by the Sunday Mass reading he mentions). If you thought Father Joseph Mary's homily was inspiring, listen to this recording to hear the same message in Father Lord's own voice. It was generously put online by Kliph Nesteroff of Classic Television Showbiz, who owns the only copy of the LP known to exist.
  
  Another type of audio offering of Father Lord's work that is available for free online comes via a very thoughtful woman known only as Marie Therese, who has created audiobooks of three of his novels. (That link will take you to the listing of the novels' titles; click on an title to see options for downloading the book.) I've listened to one of them so far, Red Arrows in the Night, and found it very engaging. It's a delightful World War II-era spy thriller with heroes and a heroine who find time for attending morning Mass together.

• Books and pamphlets: The best books to start with are Father Lord's autobiography Played by Ear and Letters to My Lord, a posthumous work comprising letters he wrote to God in January 1954, before and after his diagnosis with terminal lung cancer. Both are beautifully written, with Letters to My Lord being particularly poignant (a brief excerpt is here, adapted into the form of a poem). Used copies of both titles are available cheaply from online stores, and Played by Ear is available as a free download from the Internet Archive.
  
  Although Father Lord wrote many books, he was better known in his time for writing about three hundred pamphlets, which had combined sales in the tens of millions. I have found two websites that offer free PDF files of some of them. To make your search easier, here are specialized links that will take you to Google's lists of the Father Lord pamphlets to be found on each of the following sites: CatholicPamphlets.net and pamphlets.org.au. (Note that these sites' webmasters have re-typed the pamphlets, so the text you are reading is not necessarily the original text. Usually, save for some typographical errors, the re-typed versions are faithful to the originals, but one webmaster occasionally inserts his own commentary in brackets, which can be intrusive, as with "That Wonderful Sunday Mass.")
  
  If you would like to see what Father Lord's pamphlets originally looked like, "All American Girl," a vocation story about a Carmelite, is available as a free download from the Internet Archive. (That link will take you to a page that lists all the Father Lord downloads available from the archive, which also include the beautiful children's pamphlet "The Story of Christmas," as well as Played by Ear and the audiobooks already mentioned. Two links for "All American Girl" are listed—click the one that's farther down the page, as the first one doesn't work.)

I hope these links help you get to know and love Father Lord as I do. His work has greatly inspired me, particularly in writing my upcoming book My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints (due April 2012 from Ave Maria Press). In particular, his apostolic spirit, which is so contagious, has increased my desire to bring those who are suffering an understanding of God's fatherly love. One day, after I complete my studies in theology, I hope to postulate his cause for canonization, as I believe that, like his heroine St. Therese, he is spending his time in heaven doing good on earth.

UPDATE, 10/29/11: Some readers are looking for more of Father Lord's writings on how his cancer diagnosis became an occasion to draw nearer to God. The "Cancer Is My Friend" story linked above is essentially a shorter version of an article he published in the July 1954 issue of Catholic Digest titled "My Good Angel of Death." If you would like to read the longer piece, I would recommend e-mailing Catholic Digest's editors and asking them to post it on the publication's website. They have posted articles from their archives in the past, so perhaps they would post the Father Lord one if they knew there was a demand for it. You can find the editors' names, along with links to their e-mail address, at the "Meet Our Team" page at CatholicDigest.org.

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EWTN homilist revives interest in Father Daniel A. Lord S.J.

UPDATE, 10/29/11: Because so many people have found this blog looking for Father Daniel A. Lord S.J.'s article "Cancer Is My Friend," I've moved the link to that article, along with additional information about its author, to a new post: "A beginner's guide to Father Daniel A. Lord S.J."

The recent interest in Father Lord was sparked by a homily by Father Joseph Mary Wolfe MFVA that was broadcast October 27 on EWTN. Father Joseph Mary discusses Father Lord and reads "Cancer Is My Friend" at about 8 minutes 40 seconds into this clip:



I am very grateful to Father Joseph Mary for bringing Father Lord's inspiring witness to a new generation, and placing it so movingly within the light of this week's Mass readings.

Au revoir, mes amis

With a heart full of gratitude to the many people who have enriched my life over the past seven and a half years while I have maintained this blog, I am going on indefinite hiatus from blogging, effective now.

I have taken blog vacations before, but intend this one to be much longer -- for good, I hope.

When I started The Dawn Patrol in February 2002, it was with the goals of furthering my writing career and becoming a more social creature. With much thanks to readers, I have accomplished both goals beyond my wildest dreams, but now find myself at the point of diminishing returns.

Where writing is concerned, although I continue to freelance and would love to pen a second book if given the opportunity, right now I need to focus on my master's thesis. (I am preparing to enter my second year of M.A. studies and intend to earn a PhD, with the goal of becoming a moral-theology professor at a small Catholic college.) As far as being more social, although my blog continues to bring me into contact with wonderful people, the time I spend online now eats up my life to the point where I cannot well maintain the friendships I have -- let alone build new ones.

To be honest, I have suffered from an Internet addiction for the past several years. Just as there is no such thing for an alcoholic as "one drink," there is no such thing for me as a quick e-mail check and a perusal of the day's online headlines. If I sit down at the computer, I remain glued to it for hours on end. I might excuse myself by telling myself I am reading about important world events or doing research for school. But the truth is that I allow myself to be distracted by whatever comes to mind while I am at the computer, to the point where it becomes a self-medication for loneliness and boredom. And why do I become lonely and bored? Because I waste so much time on the Internet, of course.

St. Thomas Aquinas had a word for this vice that causes one to fail to moderate one's quest for knowledge: curiositas. With all the years of my life that I have spent in online curiositas, I have precious little wisdom to show for it.

There is no guarantee that forgoing blogging will make me become a better student, writer, or friend, but it will make it harder for me to excuse my spending so much time in the virtual world.

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Although the topic has yet to be refined, the current plan for my master's thesis is to compare and contrast modern-day popular catechesis on marriage and sex with preconciliar popular catechesis on those topics. Although I expect to find ways in which modern-day catechists do a better job of explaining what the Church has always believed, my goal is to highlight pre-Vatican II approaches that are worth recovering.

For the preconciliar part of my research, I am using as a model the writings of Father Daniel A. Lord S.J. (1888-1955), particularly those from the collection of his works that is kept in the Special Collections section of the Georgetown University Library.

The Father Lord collection consists of 41 linear feet of material in 30 file boxes. Although it includes photographs and other memorabilia, more than 90 percent of it is Lord's manuscripts, published works, and letters. Even that is but a small fraction of his writings, especially given his prodigious correspondence. The Rev. Godfrey Poage C.P., who worked for Lord's Summer School of Catholic Action, later wrote of him:

In the five summers I spent with him I could not begin to calculate the number of letters he wrote. I recall how once he worked all day on letters as we travelled together across the country in a Pullman. At the station I mailed about forty letters for him and thought he was through for the day. Later that evening he came to my hotel room and inquired: "Do you know where there is a mailbox?" In his hand were seventeen more letters.

Lord's output included some 300 pamphlets, scores of books, and dozens of stage shows, including large-scale musicals whose casts numbered in the hundreds. As Father Poage observed, he often wrote them on the road, taking his typewriter on trains as he traveled the United States and beyond, giving talks and retreats. Sometimes he included his railroad mise-en-scene in his writings, as with the pamphlet "Man says -- 'If I Were God ...", composed June 1940:

As I write these lines, the Pennsylvania train is carrying me through the splendid valleys that lie between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. They are so glorious I find it hard to keep my mind on the work in the typewriter before me. A variegated flow of glorious countryside rushes by my Pullman window: green, warmly clear, friendly hills that rise above foamy streams; farms that alternate ploughed fields with vineyards and the bright beauty of springtime orchards, mountains so rich in minerals that men are endlessly digging up the coal and steel ore that make possible the train I ride, clay pits from which are fashioned bricks and china for the bride’s wedding table, man-made canyons rendering unlimited-supplies of building material; little green and blue lakes that furnish prosperous cities with cool, clear, refreshing water.

Just a moment ago we swung around the famous Horseshoe Curve outside Altoona and, though I have seen it a score of times, I had to stop typing long enough to drink in the beauties that the gracious Creator has laid as surface drape over the rich resources stored away in the earth for the needs and luxuries of His children.

I shudder to think how many fewer boxes would be in Georgetown's Daniel A. Lord collection, had the author lived at a time when he could take a laptop on a train equipped with wi-fi.

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There is one reason for forgoing blogging that I have not mentioned. I believe that, as a student of theology, and as one who hopes to become a better witness for the Faith, it will help me to become less involved in the day-to-day dialogue about "inside Catholic" issues whose importance becomes magnified out of proportion within the blogosphere's insular walls.

Last week, at the Envoy Institute Catholic apologetics conference, I was approached by a young man who told me he had been raised Catholic but was now attending a nondenominational Protestant church. He said he got a feeling out of the Protestant services that was greater than anything he had felt at a Catholic Mass.

"But you realize," I said, " that at the Catholic Mass, Jesus is really and truly present on the altar?"

I expected an argument. Perhaps the man would say, "He's present at my church just as much as He is in the Mass."

But he didn't. He looked at me innocently and said, "No. I didn't know that."

I told him what I could, and urged him to ask one of the priests present at the conference what was really happening during the Mass. He did end up speaking to a priest there -- for about nine hours, I am told, praise God.

The experience left me thinking that perhaps it was time to reorient myself towards learning how to explain the Church's deepest and most basic truths -- and spend less effort writing about things that, while perhaps important, are essentially tangential.

This is, again, something I am learning from Father Lord. Many of his writings, as well as the wonderful audio recording of a sermon he gave shortly before his death, stress the importance of giving people a principle of return. However necessary it is to communicate the Church's teachings regarding the way one should live, I see more and more that the most important thing to share is how to get back to God if one has fled from His arms.

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There are many other things I would like to write, but I need to finish typing in time to get some sleep, and I want to put this behind me so that I may no longer feel a responsibility to blog.

Many, many thanks to everyone who has read this blog, and especially those who have prayed for me. You have done more for me than I could ever express. Everyone who reads this blog has been, and will continue to be, in my prayers. I am forever grateful for your prayers, and for the feedback and encouragement you have given me over the years.

I continue to give talks from time to time, and from now on will update dawneden.com and thrillofthechaste.com with upcoming dates. (The dawneden.com page is updated more frequently, as I update it myself, while thrillofthechaste.com is maintained by a friend.)

With my newfound time, I would like to make more flesh-and-blood friends, as opposed to virtual "Facebook friends." If you are in the Washington, D.C., area and would like to meet, contact me via my feedback form.

I also remain in hope of marriage. My feelings about this have not changed since I wrote an essay on the subject a few years ago. Since writing that piece, I have been encouraged by Father Peter Ryan S.J.'s article on discerning the elements of one's personal vocation. Father Ryan stresses that, while we are all called to holiness, God does not require us to succeed in our calling. What He does ask is that we put our best efforts into whatever He calls us to do. For me, this is a great comfort, because it answers the question of how one can believe one is called to marriage, and yet perhaps never achieve marriage. It is not a issue of "missing one's vocation," as some would have it. It is, in fact, living out one's vocation to strive, and giving God the sacrifice of accepting His mercy.

One last note: Last year, I offered a free copy of The Thrill of the Chaste to any Catholic priest, deacon, seminarian, or vowed religious who requested one. However, I failed to fulfill all the requests. If you requested a copy then and did not receive it, please let me know and I will remedy the error.

In living colorEaster morning, DeMille style—from 1927!

Jesus rises from the dead, meeting His mother and Mary Magdalene in this gorgeous Technicolor sequence from Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 blockbuster "The King of Kings." You may prefer it with the sound down, as the contemporary soundtrack is overbearing. Also advised: Have a tissue handy.



Steven Greydanus has more on this classic film, which benefited from the advice of the great author and speaker Father Daniel A. Lord S.J. DeMille remained friends with Father Lord for the rest of the Jesuit's life, as he wrote in his autobiography, more than 30 years after the making of "King of Kings":

"Father Lord and I did not always see eye to eye on artistic matters, but I never lost my admiration and love for that devoted, manly, brilliant Jesuit, whose quality of soul was never better manifested than when he was dying of cancer and I ventured to ask him if, out of that soul-searching experience, he would write for the benefit of others a little statement that I could use in my work as an officer of the American Cancer Society. He complied, with the utterly calm courage which had its unfailing source not in this world.

"One of my brightest memories of the making of The King of Kings is of Father Lord celebrating Mass in the open air soon after sunrise every morning while we were on location on Catalina Island. It was like a continued benediction on our work, which began on the first day of shooting with a short service of prayer participated in by representatives of the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, and Moslem faiths."

RELATED: Click the "Daniel A. Lord" tag below for more on Father Lord, including the only known audio recording of him.

Quote of the dayDaniel A. Lord on 'playing God'

"Whenever I hear or read of anyone who has a strong desire to play God, I feel like shouting, 'Well, why don’t you?' When someone boasts in my presence about what he would do or not do if he were God, it comes to me with a shock that he constantly has a chance to make good his boast and evidently is not aware of it. For throughout our lives God is constantly asking us to substitute for Him and do for our fellow men the godlike things that will make life beautiful and rich and full.

"Sometimes we answer this challenge rather well, and the happiness that follows for ourselves and others is glorious. Sometimes we fail miserably, disgracefully, and unhappiness ensues. On a thousand occasions mothers stand to their children in place of God. Isn’t the world a vastly happier place because they play that part so well? Many a fine physician plays God when he saves a life, brings back health to those who call upon him. I think that a cook in the kitchen plays God for those she feeds quite as much as a great lawyer plays God when he wins justice for a frightened client. I think the young man who protects a girl from sin and temptation plays God very beautifully and strongly, as does the young woman who adds to the beauty of the world the sweet fragrance of her own virtue.

"Yet, given the chance to play God, we have a way of failing too, too frequently. We are appalled at human cruelty and thoughtlessness and sin in others. Then God gives us a chance to do His work for someone, and we refuse. ...

"I do think that, before we start telling God how to run His world, we might prove that we, given a chance to stand briefly in the place of God, have done a first-class job with ourselves. If we have played God beautifully in the little corner of the world that depends on us, we may have some right to aspire to higher responsibilities. I notice that people who really try to do a Christ-like job in the spot they occupy are usually too humble about their work to aspire to run the whole world, and usually so busy spreading happiness where thay are that they haven’t time to taunt God or even to think too much about His running of the universe."

— Father Daniel A. Lord S.J. "Man Says — 'If I Were God ...'" (1940)

Quote of the day

"For my Church opens the welcoming doors of its hospitals to Christ’s sick, shelters the forsaken orphan from the cold-hearted inhumanity of men, shields the Magdalen from the men who first pushed her into the gutter and then would stone her, closes the eyes of the forsaken aged in their last sleep.

"I hear much talk nowadays that is shudderingly at odds with the charity of Christ. There is talk of lethal chambers, where unprofitable members of society will be painlessly killed. A savage euthanasia is suggested for the helpless old. Sterilization of the insane and mutilation of the criminal is talked of in high courts. The doors of life are ruthlessly shut in the face of babies in an age that prides itself on making life eminently worth living.

"The doctrine of the 'survival of the fittest,' loudly praised in my youth, has not had a pleasant sound in the ears of the frightened weak and sick and poor. The soft footfall of a Catholic Sister of Charity has come with reassuring gentleness. For, in the face of this thoroughly pagan inhumanity that is sweeping the world, those Sisters come, mercy and love as their twin angels. The Church recruits them in increasing numbers and they selflessly and tirelessly do Christ’s work among the world’s outcasts and forsaken. They repeat in every generation the moral miracle of Christ’s charity and boundless love; and any seeing man may watch the miracle at work. As for myself, no one will ever know what the mere presence of the Sisters in my Church has meant to my faith."

— Daniel A. Lord S.J., "My Faith and I," 1931 (not 1958, as the linked page states)

RELATED: The spirit of Father Lord's beloved Sisters lives today in such institutes as the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady, Mother of the Church, the ,Sisters of Life, Visitation Sisters of Georgetown, Maronite Servants of Christ the Light, and Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Church.

Quote of the day

"It was a soldier of Christ that I became at Confirmation; but, with terrifying stupidity, after Confirmation I seemed to act as if the struggle was mine alone, which I must fight single-handed and unaided. I was like a half-witted soldier who wandered off on to the battlefield to carry on his own particular guerilla warfare, sniping and then running, taking a quick blow at some unsuspecting or weak foe and then retreating like mad before the assault of an organized enemy. I fought with almost no reference to the Strong Spirit in my heart.

"It would be surprising, indeed, in view of our dumbfounding neglect of the Spirit of God, if we did not often feel and often play the paltroon, the ignoramus, and the coward. With cocky self-assurance we draw upon our own wisdom and fall back upon our own strength. We are annoyed and often frightfully discouraged; we feel put out with ourselves and at odds with God when we fail Him because we have failed ourselves. We have failed ourselves because blindly, stupidly, and with more than a brush of egoism, we have failed to call upon the God within us.

"What is frightfully needed is a society for the Proper Understanding of Confirmation.

"What is pressingly wanted by the vast majority of the Catholic world is an apostle to cry out: 'Turn to the God within your hearts.'

"Perhaps the prayer we most need when we are beset by the doubters who hate our faith and the rebels who have declared war upon the Kingdom of Christ is 'Come, Holy Ghost.'"

— Daniel A. Lord S.J., "The Sacrament of Catholic Action" (1940)

Lord's day

Today is the 121st anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite authors, Father Daniel A. Lord S.J. You can join me in celebrating by listening to the only known recording of him, from an LP with the memorable title So I'm Dying of Cancer! (right-click link to download MP3 audio file).

The recording begins with radio interview with Father Lord circa May 1954, a few months after his diagnosis with terminal lung cancer (he would die the following January). Following the interview is a wonderful talk he gave that same year, focusing on the Love Commandment. To learn more about him, click the "Daniel A. Lord" tag below.

Quote of the day

"Christ’s figures of speech are always both charming and consoling. But never was any other figure of His more consoling than that by which He spoke of the burden of the cross as a yoke. Joy shared is doubled; sorrow shared is halved. That is the ancient phrase. And the yoke is uniquely a thing that must be borne by two. 'My yoke is sweet,' cried the Saviour. And with a blind faith the Christian thrusts his neck into the yoke that is Christ’s. He accepts the burden of sorrow and pain that is, he knows, inescapable. The weight of the rough yoke presses down upon him. Then in a sudden miracle it seems to grow light. For, bent as he is, he looks to the side and makes his great discovery: A yoke is for two; a yoke is not meant to be borne alone. Carrying the burden that has been placed upon him, the Christian sees the head of the Saviour near to his own. The other half of the yoke is borne by Jesus Christ."

— Daniel A. Lord S.J. (1888-1955), "Life's Many Joys and Crosses"

RELATED: Last month, I posted the only known recording of Father Lord as a free download.

'I found out all of a sudden that life looked very precious'FIRST TIME ON WEB: Ultra-rare recording of Daniel A. Lord S.J.

FREE AUDIO DOWNLOAD: Father Daniel A. Lord, So I'm Dying of Cancer! (right-click to download MP3 audio file)


"God's that wonderful Saviour who walked the highway looking for you because He loved you. And when He couldn't find you, He climbed up on a Cross, hoping that He could see you from that elevation. And then He died rather than let you die."

I have something very special to share: the voice of a man I believe is an unacknowledged saint.

He is Father Daniel A. Lord S.J., and his voice is on a recording of an interview, followed by a sermon (from which the quote above is taken), both recorded in 1954, less than a year before his death at age 66. The interview and sermon comprise an ultra-rare long-playing record with the eye-popping title So I'm Dying of Cancer!.

As David Endres wrote in America on the 50th anniversary of his passing, "Though now forgotten by many, Lord was a larger-than-life figure in the seemingly confident, cohesive preconciliar church in America. Catholics, especially the generation that came of age during the interwar years, were undoubtedly influenced by Lord’s work. He directed the sodality movement and edited its popular magazine, The Queen’s Work, wrote hundreds of literary and dramatic works and led the crusade to safeguard Americans from immoral films." (The "Daniel A. Lord" tag below will take you to some excerpts I have published from his books and some of his approximately 300 pamphlets.)

The recording of the Lord LP comes from the collection of Kliph Nesteroff, a Canadian freelance writer disc jockey who is fascinated with arcane and off-the wall expressions of pop culture. (His blog, which, like his radio show, is called Generation Exploitation, features an exhaustive history of the line of Christian Archie comics.) Kliph has been extremely generous to upload the album onto the Web at my request after I heard a snippet of it on one of his radio shows.

Side 1 of the LP (the first half of the MP3 recording) is an interview with Father Lord by George Cushing for the Detroit radio station WJR, later rebroadcast by Montreal station CJAD and released on the Genesian Meme label. Given that it is after his diagnosis of terminal cancer, which I believe was in January 1954, and that Father Lord mentions during the interview that he has just given the commencement address at Marquette University, I would place it in May 1954. Five months later, he entered the hospital in St. Louis where he would pass away on January 15, 1955.

It is striking to hear the contrast between Cushing's subdued, concerned tone—which is understandable, given his subject's illness—and Father Lord's buoyance. The Jesuit's fortitude is disarming. Refusing to sugarcoat his condition, he places the subject of his impending death firmly within the context of an undeniably vibrant life.

Also striking is Father Lord's response to Cushing's attempt to draw a parallel between the cancer of the body and the cancer of Communism. Instead of taking the bait and throwing out a simple slam against the ideology, he responds with a challenge to listeners. The best strategy for defeating Communism is the same as that for defeating cancer: "Develop your healthy cells." His point (which he makes even clearer in the sermon that follows the interview) is that it is not enough to merely attack a bad philosophy; one has to uphold and live out a good one. The challenge is particularly relevant in the face of contemporary threats to marriage and the culture of life.

Following the interview, we are treated to Side 2: a rip-roaring sermon delivered to a Canadian audience, perhaps during the Toronto trip Father Lord mentioned in the interview that he was to undertake later that spring. Again, it would have been within months or perhaps only weeks before his final visit to the hospital.

The sermon is very rich and has given me great food for thought, such as Father Lord's observation that, while priests—including himself—often focus on the Ten Commandments, Jesus focuses on the Love Commandment. His message is not that the Ten Commandments are unimportant, but, rather, that moral teachings must be understood in light of the call to love. In this way, I think he was anticipating the work of later theologians such as Servais Pinckaers O.P. and laying a foundation for those who would defend the Church's moral teachings in an increasingly secularized world.

READ MORE: Father Lord's autobiography, Played By Ear, is available used from Amazon.com and may be read online for free at the Internet Archive.

GIVE BACK: The audio file of Father Lord's talk is hosted by noncommercial radio station CITR. If you would like to express your thanks to CITR with a donation, details of how to donate are on the station's Web site.

P.S. It is my hope that the Jesuits' Chicago Province, to which Father Lord belonged, will introduce Father Lord's cause for canonization. He was an untiring servant of God in his earthly life, and I believe he is quite busy in heaven and eager to take on more work. He is one of several saints and saints-to-be whom a friend of mine, petitioned for intercession while undergoing chemotherapy; that same friend just got the wonderful news that his treatment is working.

'Thanksgiving in Time of Desolation'By FATHER DANIEL A. LORD S.J. (1888-1955)

The following is from Christ in Me (Bruce Publishing, 1952), a book of thanksgiving prayers to be said after Mass. Father Lord intended it especially for nuns and other religious who receive Holy Communion daily.

1. Lord Jesus, present in my heart, I confess to you the sorrow and desolation of my soul. I ask you to speak to me, to console me, to give me the vivid realization that God my Father loves me, that you my Saviour have come to me as my nearest and dearest Friend, and that the Holy Spirit dwells within me, waiting to light my darkened way and warm my chilly soul if I will only give Him the chance.

2. How easy and meritorious it is, dear Lord, to serve you when you are sweet and tangible and my way stretches smooth in the white and gold of the sunshine! How hard it becomes to serve you when the clouds lower, the thunder rumbles, and the earth seems to quake under my feet! Yet my service when things are easy is perhaps hardly worthy to be offered to you. When your grace is making my tasks light and my burdens sweet, when my cross is entwined with roses, what have I really to offer to you, my Saviour? Now I have something worthy to present to you. I give you my service because I find service hard. I offer you obedience because inwardly I rebel against obedience. I smile despite the loneliness of my heart. Because I myself am sad, I will hurry to do what I can to make those around me happier. That may be worthy offering to you, dear Saviour. May I ask your acceptance of this offering?

3. "Into each life some rain must fall, some days be dark and dreary." Do you mind, dear Lord, if I quote thoughtfully those rather commonplace lines of a poet? Today those words happen to be particularly true for me. Life is measured in sunshine and rain, in laughter and tears, in happiness and pain, in crowns won and crosses borne. No life can be exempt from this motley division and diversity. I cannot expect to be different from the rest of mankind. For some the early days are easy and the latter ones hard. To some is given the disappointment of never reaching your house or following their desire to enter your services. Some know the pains of sickness. Some are weighted by a sense of continuous failure. I must have my share of trial. May I then, dear Lord, accept what you send me now as my portion of the darkness of Good Friday? Life knows only a very small proportion of unhappiness compared with the happiness that you constantly shower on the world. Perhaps what I now experience is my rightful share of unhappiness. Let me be aware how trial and storm sent or permitted by you hold the implicit promise and unspoken hope that, knowing storms and problems now, I shall know not too remotely my full share of happiness and peace.

4. A soul is tempered in trial. This too is platitude; but to my consolation it remains absolutely true. I have too deep and unreasonable a pride; surely I cannot continue to be proud now that I know how far down I can go into depression and near despair. I have a love of physical comfort; but now I know that physical comfort fades in the presence of spiritual trial. I could easily be cold and hard toward others; never again should I be otherwise than tender and sympathetic with others' weaknesses and sorrows, for I have known weakness and been acquainted with sorrow. I have learned pity because of my need for pity.

5. Lord Jesus, it is your desire to see me happy. In religious life I was meant to know real peace and joy. You have been good to let me know my sorrows early. Once the storms have passed, I can be certain of my share in serenity. If now you are silent, I can wait in the certainty that you will speak soon. The cross is heavy now. But your shoulder is under that cross, waiting for proof of my courage before you take it wholly upon yourself. You are giving my soul its trial by fire; out of that trial it should emerge purified, tender, merciful, and kind.

Lord Jesus, I accept my time of depression. I ask you to use that depression for my soul's advancement and for the development within me of deep understanding for the trials of others. I await your voice whenever you are ready to speak again. I look forward to the peace you have promised we shall someday know. Out of my depths let me rise to a new stature of purity and courage. It may well be that I shall find you in the depths before I shall find you upon the heights.

                                               Amen.


FURTHER READING: Father Lord's autobiography, Played By Ear, is available used from Amazon.com and may be read online for free at the Internet Archive.

'I Don't Like Lent'

Mrs. Bradley gathered herself to spring conversationally into the ring and separate the two contestants. But she was not as quick as the priest. To her relief, though, his voice was pleasantly calm and his manner totally unruffled. ...

"The precise point missed by people who failed to understand the saints in this: Saints, perhaps more than other men in the world, understood beauty. They were the great lovers of beauty. They thought the world was all so marvellous that only God deserved to have it for His own.”

"Bosh!" said Dr. Allenby, rudely. And then he had the good grace to laugh at himself. "Sorry, Father. I've been terribly rude. But really, I haven't your gift of playing with words. I'm not a Jesuit."

"Neither am I,” said Father Hall, “and believe me, I'm not playing with words at all. I'm playing with hard facts back of a human phenomenon. I'm talking about the very thing that makes the Christian ascetic—whether a hermit in the desert or a shop-girl giving up a strawberry sundae at noon, or a nun keeping silence from twelve to three o'clock on Good Friday, or a business man refusing to put salt in his soup, though a dash of salt would vastly improve it—different from all the others you talked about. To the Christian, the world is too, too beautiful. It isn‟t evil. It‟s lovely. That is why one has to be careful what one does with it."

"I don‟t understand you at all," said Shirley Green.

"Too deep for me, and I'm supposed to be a Catholic," chimed in Grace Melville, feeling that the priest was talking just a little like the ghost of Chesterton.

He saw he had to explain.

"In the first place, remember that a Christian does not merely renounce unless the thing is wrong or a matter of sin. He renounces in the sense of giving to God. Now, nobody would insult a friend by giving him something that he thought was evil or ugly or that he himself didn‟t like. A lover doesn‟t walk up to his ladylove and say, 'Of course, I know this is a bunch of milkweed, and nettles; but because the horrible bouquet is so hideous, I am giving it to you.' That‟s not a gift or a sacrifice; that‟s an insult. A man doesn‟t say to his friend: 'Here, you take this steak I ordered. The darn thing is tainted and, anyhow, I don‟t like steak.' 'Here‟s my dog. It's got a vicious temper; I suspect it's infected with rabies, and it will probably bite you and the children; but please accept it with my compliments.'

"So the Christian wouldn‟t offer God the sacrifice of something which he regarded as ugly or vicious or worthless or belonging to the devil. No; the Christian ascetic renounces because he realises that the world is so glorious that only God can rightly wear its jewels upon His hand; only God can rightly enjoy the world‟s great music; only God who painted the great landscapes of earth can properly appreciate them."

—Daniel A. Lord S.J., "I Don't Like Lent" (1938), well worth reading in its entirety.

RELATED: Marcel of Aggie Catholic explains it all for you with his annual Lent FAQ.

'The Story of Christmas' (1944)Download the children's booklet by Father Daniel A. Lord S.J.

Thanks to a kind soul who donated a PDF file of the classic booklet to Archive.org, Father Daniel A. Lord's "The Story of Christmas" is available for free download.

Written to be read to very young children, it's worth it for the beautiful full-page illustration of Our Lady alone, but I also love the devotion that shows through in Father Lord's prose. It is deep and occasionally profound, as when he writes of the place where Our Saviour was born, "There was no door in the cave. That was so that everyone who wanted to enter could find the way."

Right-click here or on the image below to download (131.5 MB), or go to the booklet's main Archive.org page.

'May I Be Worthy of Your Trust'

For some strange reason, Lord, you depend on
 me.
What possible need could you have for my
 shoulder?
Why should you lean on me? Yet you do just that.

I am grateful. It is a challenge
and a trust,
an inspiration and a call to character.

If you are willing to depend on me,
weak and clumsy as I am,
I am eager not to fail you.

Lean on me, dear Lord.
At least pretend to find me a help.
May your sweet pretence
make me worthy of your very real trust.

— Father Daniel A. Lord S.J.

The above is from a series of prayerful reflections made by Father Lord after he was diagnosed with incurable cancer.

My friend Jeff recently had a recurrence of cancer and is going into chemotherapy today for the first time. Please pray for him.

Quote of the day

"While my Catholic philosophy, the rational basis of my faith, is sound and dear and one, I find that I am opposed, not by one consistent series of belief, but by a thousand dissonant, divergent, contradictory, topsy-turvy theories, as changeable as the style in women's footwear and just a shade less practical and durable. That, I must admit, was one of the great surprises of my life. It still is. The more I see of modern thinkers the more I know they agree in nothing except the one stridently proclaimed belief that the Catholic Church is wrong; and, believe me, as I look at that mad circus without one presiding ringmaster, I grow more and more satisfied with the calm, rational, provable, and proved philosophy that the Church offers me. I return to my Catholic books as a man returns to his own familiar study after a jangling, uproarious afternoon in Bedlam.

"Don‟t let them fool you with the impression that arrayed against Catholic truth is a solid and united army of religion, science, and philosophy. There isn‟t. Hardly can two scientists, once they pass the facts they can see under a microscope or appraise in logarithms, sit down to chat without running off down different theoretical roads or pulling noses. Any three philosophers in a smoking-car are pretty sure to represent as many entirely different types of thought— probably three different ideas about so fundamental a thing as whether a man can know anything positive about the world or God or himself or the pancakes on the breakfast table. They won‟t be sure whether they themselves are animals or slightly more complicated machines, or a mind that only thinks it has arms and legs and eyes, and wears rubber gloves and carries an umbrella. It sounds silly, but it is pitifully, ludicrously true.”

— Daniel A. Lord S.J., "My Faith and I," 1931

Quote of the day

“'My god,' wrote an atheist to me, 'is humanity.'

"Out of my heart I felt sorry for him. Atheist though he was, he admitted he had a god. But imagine any man serving and reverencing and adoring the human race, the best-known member of which is, as far as he personally is concerned, himself. ... Imagine bowing down to the race which is represented by the man whose face rather revolted me this morning as I looked at it in the shaving mirror. Fancy having as one’s god this mankind which, for all its genius and achievements, is capable of murder and lust and brutal cruelty and filthy speech and obscene thinking. ...

"The most unsatisfactory god in all of the modern pantheon is undoubtedly the god called humanity. I might be able to adore the smooth, gleaming statue of the Greek Zeus. I might conceivably worship a golden calf. I am certain I cannot find anything innately divine about the person I know and live with and find as inadequate and as thoroughly, humanly unsatisfactory as I find myself.

"Yet, scratch the most arrant atheist and you’ll find a believer in some absurd god whom he worships tirelessly, hopelessly. The more vehemently a man denies he has a god, the surer I am that he is serving, with the sacrifices and labours of a lifetime, some god of his own crude fashioning."

—Daniel A. Lord S.J., "Atheism Doesn't Make Sense" (1936)