Running the Good Race

Photo courtesy of globalnews.ca

This past Mother’s Day, I joined family and friends at the starting line of the 10 km (6.2 miles) run for Camp Oochigeas, a camp for children with cancer. It was a brisk morning with gusty winds that made the sub-normal temperatures feel even colder. No matter. Everyone who was there was running directly or indirectly for kids who have had or are living with cancer. Many people were running in memory of a child who has died from cancer.

Our group, Team Bryan, was running in memory of a courageous seven-year old boy whose one year battle with a brain tumour ended one year ago just days before last year’s run. That year, the memory of his fight was very raw and we carried our sorrow with us when we participated. Time has healed some of the pain but this year we ran again to honour him and all the other children affected by cancer.

Twenty-seven thousand people were there that morning, ready and willing to give their time and physical ability to run for children who can’t. I realized that I could look at this as merely a sporting event or I could learn deeper lessons from the experience.  I couldn’t help thinking of St. Paul’s exhortation to run the race as if to win. “Do you not know that in a race, runners all compete but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.”(1 Cor. 9:24 -25) Life, I observed, is very much like this race and not all of us will finish.

There were random acts of kindness from participants as people moved aside for faster runners, smiled and talked to complete strangers and much faster runners slowed down to keep pace with their slower teammates. The overall atmosphere was one of congeniality.

In the race of life, that is as it ought to be. That is how we are to run so as to win the race: with consideration and charity towards our neighbour, putting their needs before ours and supporting their efforts to run the race well.

There were people who were running that had more blind faith that they would finish than actual physical ability to do so. Their race was predicated on the hope that they would make it to the finish line and I’m sure most of them did. After some of our team had finished and were heading home, we saw people still straining towards the finish line. Some were grimacing, some were limping, some were smiling but all of them continued forward towards their goal.

Isn’t that the way it is in our lives? We fall and we suffer but we continue on. Many times we run with difficulty but often with joy knowing that what is important is that the finish will be truly spectacular and all the sprains, strains and struggles serve to purify and mold us before we receive our winner’s crown.

At the fifth kilometre, a woman held up a sign that read: “Running is a mental sport. You are all insane.” The same has been said of Christians running the race for Christ. The world looks at us as crazy and out of touch. Most people don’t understand our witness to the Truth of the Gospels and it takes courage to live out our beliefs. While our witness, like the race, is challenging and imperfect, we keep at it knowing that Jesus was not accepted either. “If they persecute Me, they will persecute you.” (John 15:20)

By  the ninth kilometre, I began marking my pace from traffic light to traffic light, landmarks that guided me towards the end. I compared this to the lives of Catholics who are called to live from Sunday to Sunday, Mass to Mass, Holy Eucharist to Holy Eucharist. Jesus in the Sacrifice of the Mass, His Real Presence in the Eucharistic Host and Precious Blood is the sustenance that fuels our race and sets the pace of our lives.

On the back of our Team Bryan t-shirts, Bryan’s parents had requested that the words “faith, hope, charity” be printed in white to contrast against the red background. The theological virtues of faith, hope and charity are what we cling to on the race of life. They are what help us to make sense of sorrow, give value to our happiness and enliven our efforts.

When we reached the finish line, we were greeted with cheers and applause from racers who had finished ahead of us. We received a medal and we had the consolation of knowing that we had done our best. Isn’t that what Heaven will be like? We will be welcomed into our Heavenly home by the communion of saints who have gone before us and we will finally receive the Heavenly crown that will not perish. We can then say, like St. Paul, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” (2 Timothy 4:7)

This is an abridged version of an article to be published in a future print edition of Catholic Insight Magazine.

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Deo Gratias

Honouring Our Mothers and Fathers

Also posted at Catholic Insight, catholic insight.com

He gently leads his dad down the aisle.  Mass is about to begin and he knows it will take a few minutes to get him settled.  The son’s hand firmly grasped around dad’s elbow, they continue slowly, carefully to their favourite pew.  The younger instructs the elder to hold the back of the pew in front of him and he guides his father gently down into the seat.  He places the sturdy cane on the floor and then helps dad remove his scarf and overcoat.  The old man insists on standing when the entrance hymn begins and so his son expertly supports the father’s elbow and helps him up.  Every Sunday the ritual is the same.

“Mom hasn’t been feeling well in the past few days,” the daughter explained as she let the nurse into the house.  “We don’t know what’s wrong with her.  Can you talk to her?”  Two unmarried daughters; one very sick mom.   One daughter is able to work from home; the other daughter works very odd hours so her work day can finish by noon and she can come home to help care for mom.  Mom worries that caring for her is killing the daughters but they say they are only doing a little of what she has done for them.

His responsibilities at the seminary kept him very busy and his dad’s mental and physical health were deteriorating quickly.   Every time his phone rang, he checked to see if it was the nursing home.  It was sometimes very difficult caring for his dad, especially since it was just the two of them, but each time the nurses asked him to come, he dropped everything and hurried over.  Everyone at the seminary banded together to give the father of one of their own a beautiful funeral.

His mom’s Alzheimer’s Disease had progressed and she was unable to remain at home.  Denied a leave of absence, he resigned his position.  Each day, he would go to the nursing home to be with her, feed her, love her.  “It was nice,” he reminisced, a peaceful smile lighting up his face.

Dad had been in the hospital for two weeks, diagnosed with pneumonia which is common in the very late stages of Parkinson’s Disease.  Death was imminent and my mom refused to go home.  The nurses gave her a cot so she could spend the night and I made a make-shift bed from some chairs in the palliative care room.  Exhausted, mom fell asleep as soon as she lay down.  It had been a very long day keeping vigil at dad’s bedside.  I alternated between lying down to rest and listening to dad’s laboured breathing.  “Terry,” said the kindly palliative care doctor, “you have to stop thinking like a nurse now and just be his daughter.”  I cried when he said that because I knew what he meant.  At about 5:30 in the morning, I noted a significant change in dad’s breathing.  The trauma of watching dad die would have been too much for mom in her state of early dementia so I let her sleep. Instinctively, I grabbed my rosary and began praying the Divine Mercy Chaplet.  At 5:53 a.m. I put my rosary away and went to find dad’s nurse. Then I woke mom up.  In her confusion, she thought she had watched him die.

After Ruth’s and Orpah’s husbands died, their widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, instructed them to return to their families so that they may marry again.  Naomi now had no sons and no husband.  She was elderly and alone.  Orpah did as her mother-in-law told her.  Ruth clung to Naomi, saying:  ” Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”(Ruth 1:16-17)

As the King of the world hung on the cross, he turned his bruised and bloodied face toward His mother and the apostle He loved, John.  ”Behold, your mother,” he said, and John took her home and cared for her.

Looking after elderly, often ailing parents is not for the faint of heart.  It requires courage, stamina, patience, and the willingness to sacrifice many things – time, sleep, career, finances, control, relationships.  These are the same things we sacrifice when we have children but now the children have become the caregivers and the concerns are on a grander, more urgent scale.

It is heartbreaking when parents lose precious memories and devastating when they forget the names of their family members.  Watching the strongest person in the universe transform into a completely dependent state reminds us of our own mortality.  Journeying with a parent at the end of their life and keeping vigil until death matures a person in a way that nothing else can.  In sickness and in death, they continue to teach us priceless lessons of patience, forgiveness, compassion, faith and redemptive suffering.

When we care for mom and dad, we are given, in a unique way, the grace of uniting ourselves to the sufferings of Jesus on the Cross.  We experience our own suffering in the enormity of our responsibility.  At the same time, we are Simon of Cyrene and Veronica, providing aid and comfort to mom and dad as they carry their cross that is too heavy for them to bear alone.

There is no doubt that caring for elderly parents can be challenging and exhausting.  Through no fault of their own, many people break under the strain.  At the same time, it is a great grace to be able to share such a significant part of their life.  It is an honour to show the person who bore us, raised us and loved us that their life matters, their contribution is important, and that their love for us is not in vain.

Deo Gratias

Photo courtesy of guardian.co.uk

To All Moms from the Pure Jerzy Kidz

Tomorrow, Mother’s Day, a group of us, friends and family, will be participating in the Sporting Life 10 km. run to raise funds for Camp Oochigeas, a summer camp for kids with cancer. It will be our second year taking part and  we will be running in memory of our courageous young friend, Bryan, who died of a brain tumour one year ago this weekend.

In thinking about how best to wish all moms a happy Mother’s Day, I came across Mark Shea’s post over at Catholic and Enjoying It on Patheos.  I’m posting it in its entirety here and encouraging you to visit Mark’s always interesting blog.  Thank you, Mark Shea, and happy Mother’s Day to all the moms in your life.  Also, check out the other wonderful links on this post.

Enjoy the video, moms!  Happy Mother’s Day! (especially to you, Catherine)

Producer Julie Linn writes:

I wanted to give you a heads up on a music video that I’ve just finished producing, in collaboration with my good friend and former pastor, Rev. Edward Namiotka.  I think he may be a FB friend/follower of yours.

Father Ed is not only a terrific priest, but a fine lyricist and melody writer.  We’ve worked on several projects, which I’ve either set to music or produced.  The one I am referencing is called the “Mom” song, and it has been recently launched on ITunes, Amazon, several Internet Radio stations, and now, today, on YouTube.

And here Father Ed writes about the human and heavenly inspirations for the “Mom” song on his blog:

http://www.fr-ed-namiotka.com/2013/04/my-mom-song.html

Our collaboration has been in response to a shared zeal for the New Evangelization, and particularly as it relates to the vision of Bl. John Paul II’s call for artists to evangelize the culture through art and beauty.  The “Pure Jerzy Kidz” and all the people in the video are a very blessed group, which was part of my strategy: to show both the look and sound of true beauty —  grace  –  which has been so lacking in Hollywood and all media for decades.

I was a producer for the video, and director/producer for the audio, which, as I mentioned, is on ITunes.  My daughter Christy’s fiance, Kevin S. Rivera, was the filmmaker.  I had enlisted a former voice student of mine, Scott Armato, a music theater director and composer, to write the  Billy Joel-esque accompaniment.  I then auditioned and gathered children from area schools (Southern New Jersey)  who have a connection to Father Ed and recorded them at an Emmy and Telly award recording studio.

I hope you will be blessed by it, and if you are, I would be so appreciative of anything you might advise or any help you might give in getting the word out.

We’re asking that people “Like” and “Rate” it on its FB pages and especially on You Tube and ITunes -

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/mom-single/id635902235

https://www.facebook.com/momsongandvideo?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/purejerzykidz?fref=ts

- because it’s our hope that its joy be spread – well,  everywhere!!   I know this sounds ambitious, but the response we’ve had so far has been tremendously positive, so who knows how the Lord might use it ?

Deo Gratias

St. Therese and the Canticle of Love

When I recently met with my spiritual director, I told him about the restless desire I have been experiencing to go deeper into my faith life and the feeling of wanting more.  He identified what I described as being spiritual poverty which theologian Johannes Baptist Metz explains “is a necessary ingredient in any authentic Christian attitude toward life……Only through poverty of spirit do we draw near to God; only through it does God draw near to us.” (Poverty of Spirit, Paulist Press, New York. 1968, 1988)

For my results driven, type-A personality, the solution to my longing was one of action:  more prayer, more spiritual reading, more doing.  My spiritual director thankfully had other ideas.  He saw that I needed to strive to be “little” and to open my heart to whatever the Lord wants to give me.

“So how do I do that?” I asked.

In response, he gave me the example of St. Therese of Lisieux who in her short but full twenty-four years lived a very simple and hidden life.  Her “little way” was so spiritually profound that Bl. John-Paul II, in 1997, gave her the title Doctor of the Church. In his Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte, he called her an expert in the “scientica amoris”, the science of love.  In his book, Holy Women (Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 2011), Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said that she “is one of the ‘little’ ones of the gospel who let themselves be led by God to the depths of His mystery”.

As part of  his usual wise counsel, my spiritual director advised me to read and pray the hymn, St. Therese’s Canticle of Love, written by Sr. Marie-Therese Sokol, OCD.  The words of the hymn are taken from the Little Flower herself.

“It’s all there,” he said. “No homily needed.”

And he’s right.

St. Therese’s Canticle of Love

How great and tender is our God,
who has smiled on the lowly,
eternally my heart will sing a new canticle of love.

Come all who hunger, all who thirst,
all who long for fulfillment,
the God of mercy waits for you,
as a mother her child,
oh come to the living water,
fear not your weakness,
forever trusting in God’s merciful love.

Through the shadows of this night,
love will be my guiding light,
presence hidden from my sight,
till the clouds are put to flight,
beneath your gaze, I’ve blossomed forth
as a rose in the sunshine.
With joyful heart, I give it all
to the mystery of love.

In peace, I will come before you,
with empty hands,
relying solely on your merciful love.

Through the veil your face appears,
beauty shrouded bathed in tears,
bread of sinners I will share,
rose unpetaled everywhere.

Oh, My God, I will sing of your love,
for this one eternal day,
for this one eternal today.

Transformed in love’s consuming fire, lifted up in glory,
her fragrance filling all the earth,
drawing us unto her,
until in eternity,
we join in one chorus,
forever singing of God’s merciful love.

Canticle of love, song of love,
this eternal day, I will sing, sing of your love.

Deo Gratias

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Your Spiritual Idiolect

One of the greatest things about blogging is getting to meet (albeit on-line) wonderful people who passionately blog about their Christian Catholic faith.  Our unique personalities and experiences are evident in the way we write and even in the design and layout of our blogs.  We are different bloggers expressing the same message: God loves each and every one of us and He is calling us to live in His Love.

Connie Rossini @ Contemplative Homeschool had the inspired idea of gathering us all together and forming a new blogging community – Catholic Spirituality Blogs Network.  I’ll let her explain:  Everyone has an idiolect–a collection of personal speech habits that is different from anyone else’s. Have you ever thought about your spiritual idiolect? Since your soul is unique, you have a personal way of speaking to God that no one else completely shares. Today I am announcing the creation of a new blog that will help you find and fine-tune your spiritual idiolect.  Read the rest here:

Deo Gratias

 

St. Gianna and the Working Catholic Mom

Also posted at Catholic Insight, catholicinsight.com

First, a clarification: All moms work, whether they stay at home or go out and earn a paycheque. For this post, I’m defining “working mom” as those of us who work outside the home.

In the twenty-five years that I’ve been a mother, I’ve worked as a full-time and part-time RN. I was also a stay-at-home mom for a few years, homeschooling for three of those years.  Currently I’m an RN in private practice and own a healthcare-related small business.

The Catholic Church has a patron saint for every situation in life.  Working moms have a role model and ally in St. Gianna Beretta Molla, a mom of three who practiced medicine in a time when mothers who had jobs and careers were rare and female doctors even more so.  As a registered nurse, I’m especially drawn to her because we both chose careers that care for the sick.

The reasons for holding down a job or pursuing a career while raising a family vary.  Some work out of necessity; others because they really enjoy it; still others because we feel we are called to do both.  In the biography, Saint Gianna Beretta Molla:  A Woman’s Life (Pauline Books and Media, 1994), author Giuliana Pelucchi tells us that St. Gianna “considered her work her mission” and was a practicing physician until “just a few days before her death”.

For working Catholic moms, it’s very easy to lose sight of Christ in a very busy day.  The demands of the job coupled with the needs of the family can all but bury one’s prayer life; but from personal experience, I’ve learned that it is in those crazy busy times that we need Jesus the most.  The moments we think we have no time to breathe are exactly the times when we need to get down on our knees and pray.

St. Gianna had a thriving medical practice but she understood the importance of beginning each day in prayer.   Her biography includes personal writings on work and prayer: “The most essential condition for every fruitful activity is stillness in prayer.  The apostle begins work by kneeling.  An apostle should never let a single day go by without including time for recollection at the feet of God….The more we feel the desire to give, the more often it is necessary to go back to the infinite fountain of love that is God……”

As working moms, we often think creatively in order to meet professional and personal obligations.  We can apply that same creativity to our prayer lives.  Take time to pray in the early morning, on the daily commute or part of the lunch break.  My day begins very early, before the rest of the family wakes up.  In the stillness of the early morning, I pray Morning Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours.  As the family starts trickling into the kitchen, I’m finishing the daily Mass readings.  On my morning commute, I pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet and Rosary.  Offering up the day’s work with all its frustrations and rewards is a powerful prayer.  The day ends with Evening Prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours and, on most nights, the family rosary.

For a working mom, one of the many fruits of prayer is the grace of discernment in work-related decisions.  Every new opportunity has to be weighed against its impact on the family.  Promotions, contracts, relocation, transfers and working more hours affects the home .  A vibrant prayer life helps us to maintain our priorities: being a wife and mother first. With that in mind, I recently turned down a tempting offer to be a nursing instructor.  Between juggling family and self-employment, I’m busy enough; accepting a teaching position would have been a bad choice.

The needs of a growing family sometimes means that we have to put our careers on hold.  Gianna’s practice grew at the same time as her husband Pietro’s responsibilities as an engineer meant long absences from home.  When he asked her to consider giving up her practice,  the look she gave him in response discouraged him from asking again. Eventually she agreed that if they had a fourth child, she would give up her practice “even though that would be difficult for me.”  We know that she died shortly after Gianna Emanuela was born, giving up her own life for the life of her daughter.  If she had lived, would she have eventually returned to her medical practice?

I can identify with her reluctance because of a similar situation in my life. When our sixth child was born, I stopped working for a few years but with my husband’s encouragement, I maintained my nursing license.  I loved nursing and hoped I could return to work some day. We eventually had eight children.  When our youngest child entered kindergarten, I upgraded my nursing skills and joined a community health team.  Part-time hours quickly escalated until I was often working seven days a week so I resigned.  With St. Joseph’s guidance,  I was inspired to take specialized courses and  enter into independent practice so that I could control my working conditions.  Many working moms face similar situations.  Committing to prayer and trusting in Providence are the only ways to properly discern the right decision.

Having a job or career while raising a family is challenging and rewarding.  While going out to work has many critics, it has become the norm.  What’s important for a Catholic working mom is that she feels inner peace and confidence that her decision is the best one for her family and for herself.   St. Gianna continues to teach us the proper attitude: “work can be prayer…..if we offer to the Lord all the actions that we perform, so that they might serve His glory.”

Deo Gratias

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Salvation is Communion

“God Himself shares His life with us and we also see how absolutely necessary it is for us to examine how and with what dispositions we approach the Altar for Holy Communion.”  Fr. Marco Testa is a priest of the Archdiocese of Toronto.  Here is his homily for the sixth Sunday of Easter (C)

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” (Jn. 14:23).

Since Easter Sunday, the Scripture readings at both our Sunday and weekday Masses have been a specific invitation to enter more deeply into the Mystery of Christ. From earliest times the Church has used a specific term to describe the liturgical preaching or catechesis of the Easter Season. It is called mystagogy. Its aim is to initiate people into the Mystery of Christ; both the newly baptized and also those of us who renewed our baptismal vows on Easter Sunday. During this Easter time, there is a particular grace that enables us to proceed from the visible to the invisible; from the sign to the thing signified, from the sacraments to the mysteries (Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1075); and the ultimate Mystery is God Himself.

In this manner for example, we perceive in the Paschal Lamb a sign of the Lamb of God, Jesus, who by His Death and Resurrection leads us to the Heavenly Jerusalem. In the Gospel of the Mass, our Lord makes a promise: “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” (Jn. 14:23). It is a promise fulfilled through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of salvation then, is more than liberation from sin and death. Salvation is communion, a union with Jesus and the Father, but also a union with others who share the same life. This is the deeper mystery that God is calling us to share – not simply a solidarity of sorts with those around us who share our faith but a union with our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father in the Holy Spirit. The term that describes perfectly this mystery is mutual indwelling (perichoresis). OurLord says, “Abide in me, and I in you” (Jn. 15:4).

“Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” (Jn. 14:23). Jesus dwells in us by virtue of His humanity. As St. Hilary explains, Jesus is in the Father by reason of his divine nature; we are in Him by virtue of His human birth and He is in us through the mystery of the sacraments (Cf. St. Hilary, Treatise on the Trinity, Liturgy of the  Hours, Vol. II, pp. 778- 780). This unity or mutual indwelling is what we experience especially when we receive Holy Communion. Jesus Himself bore witness to the reality of this unity when He said, “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him” (Jn. 6:56). This then, is our union with the Son, a union brought about through the Eucharist. Our Lord also said, “As the living Father sent me and I draw life from the Father, so he who eats my flesh will draw life from me” (Jn. 6:57). If we but take these words at face value, we see how great is our dignity; that God Himself shares His life with us and we also see how absolutely necessary it is for us to examine how and with what dispositions we approach the Altar for Holy Communion. In the earliest written account of the Eucharistic celebration St. Paul reminds us: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself” (1 Cor. 11:27- 29).

Our devout participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is a clear expression of our understanding that the desired end or goal of our participation in the Church’s sacramental life is an experience of and a participation in the Mystery of God’s life, a mutual indwelling; a communion with the Father and the children of the Father, God and neighbour.

Salvation then is not something external – simply a state received; but a sharing in the communion of life that is God. It is a work that Jesus accomplishes both for us and with us. If this is what we affirm to be true about revelation and salvation, then we must also affirm that God can only be known  in a personal way: through prayer. When we arrive at this truth, everything changes. We recognize the dignity of every person and we begin also to understand the mystery of the Church “established by Jesus Christ as a communion of life, love and truth” (Lumen Gentium, 9).

This life is ours because of our Lord’s Paschal Sacrifice. An ancient Christian author explained: “The knowledge that Christ is the Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for us should make us regard the moment of his immolation as the beginning of our lives. As far as we are concerned, Christ’s immolation on our behalf takes place when we become aware of this grace and we understand the life conferred on us by this sacrifice” (Pseudo-Chrysostom, An Ancient Easter Homily, Liturgy of the Hours, Vol. II, pp. 645).

On Easter Sunday we renewed our baptismal vows as did many, many others who sadly have not returned to Mass since. Let us give them the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, in their absence and in our own presence let us ask this question: Are we sufficiently aware of this grace and do we understand the life conferred on us by Christ’s sacrifice? It is very easy in life to take things for granted, especially if one has always possessed them. At the Easter Vigil this year, seven people were baptized and others were received into the full communion of the Catholic Church. When we met after the Easter celebration, the neophytes were asked to speak of their experience of receiving the sacraments. One of them, Hamid, said that he now felt free. He said that he had felt like a caged bird and that now the cage had been opened and he was free. This metaphor expresses the essence of the meaning of salvation – freedom. “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). Only in freedom can we choose, only in freedom can we love, and only in freedom can we sacrifice. Each Sunday we have the privilege to celebrate the immolation of Christ sacramentally in the Eucharist. Each Sunday is truly a new beginning of our lives until at last, having gone from Sabbath to Sabbath we enter into the rest of God in the eternal Sabbath; when God the Father calls us to Himself to dwell in the Heavenly Jerusalem, the city that gleams with the splendour of God (Cf. Rev. 21:11). Each and every time that we celebrate the sacraments we are “conformed to the mysteries of God’s might love” (Cf. Prayer over the Offering, Sixth Sunday of Easter, The Roman Missal). Please God, our celebration of the Easter Mystery has brought us to a deeper knowledge of the life that is ours in Christ. As we look forward now to the Feast of Pentecost, may we continue to strive “to learn Christ” (Eph. 4:20), that He may dwell in our hearts through faith; and that we, “being rooted and grounded in love, may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge, that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17-19).

Deo Gratias