Write for God

Cesar Chavez

I met a very sharp and independent 98-year-old today. He drove to our office, filled out a sheaf of paperwork and, other than some hearing loss, he seemed at least 20 years younger than his age. I don’t know his secret for longevity, but it was amazing that this gentleman was born before World War I.

Today, March 31, would have been the 82nd birthday of Cesar Chavez, one of my heroes. If he were alive today, he would be many years younger than the energetic senior I met today. Chances are that, if Chavez were still alive, he would still be fighting for farmworkers, fasting and protesting injustice instead of enjoying his retirement years. One of the few items I keep on my writing desk is a pin of the first-class stamp issued by the US Post Office to commemorate Cesar Chavez’ remarkable life of service to others.

The founder of the United Farm Workers died in 1993 at the age of 66. A pioneer of rights for Latino immigrants who work for slave wages in agriculture, Chavez stayed true to his Mexican heritage, his sense of universal justice, his unwavering belief in the power of nonviolent protest and his authentic commitment to human rights. Senator Robert F. Kennedy once called him “one of the heroic figures of our time.”

In terms of what our materialistic society values, Chavez was a failure. He had only an eighth-grade education, never earned more than $6,000 a year in his lifetime and left his eight children no estate to make their lives comfortable.

Yet, Cesar Chavez was rich in what God deems valuable: an earnest heart, a genuine concern for all people and a courage beyond measure. Chavez showed that the least of our brothers who band together for justice are a powerful moral force. He testified to the power of nonviolence as a weapon stronger than hate. This simple man spoke to millions and made us see that the produce on our tables is a result of the sweat and blood of people whose lives are spent in abject poverty that is ignored by the residents of the richest nation on Earth. 

Here is Cesar Chavez’ prayer for farmworkers struggling for justice: 

Show me the suffering of the most miserable;

So I will know my people’s plight.

 

Free me to pray for others;

For you are present in every person.

 

Help me to take responsibility for my own life;

So that I can be free at last. 

 

Grant me courage to serve others;

For in service there is true life.

 

Give me honesty and patience;

So that I can work with other workers.

 

Bring forth song and celebration;

So that the spirit will be alive among us.

 

Let the spirit flourish and grow;

So we will never tire of the struggle.

 

Let us remember those who have died for justice;

For they have given us life.

 

Help us love even those who hate us;

So we can change the world.

St. Roque Gonzalez de Santa Cruz

“God draws straight with crooked lines” is supposedly a Portuguese proverb. Wherever it comes from, it’s a true statement.

Sometimes God means for you to make a discovery and yet you imagine you’ve been put someplace by mistake. It isn’t until later that you see what God already saw when he led you there in the first place.

While scanning the news this morning, I read that the great film composer Maurice Jarre had died. He will be remembered for the lush Dr. Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia scores that added so much grandeur to those great classics. Somehow, I thought that he had composed the score for The Mission, one of our favorite spiritual films. The film tells a fictionalized version of real events during the colonial period in Central America when the Portuguese and the Spanish agreed to a treaty that expelled the Jesuits so that each nation could claim the native labor for their own.

Robert Bolt, one of the most intelligent screenwriters ever to work in Hollywood, wrote the screenplay. The film stars Jeremy Irons, Robert De Niro, Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn and, in a very small role, poet and peace activist Father Daniel Berrigan, SJ.

I emailed my husband Jarre’s obit and added that I thought he had also composed the music for The Mission. Something ineffable–the hand of God–led me to look up the credits for the film. I discovered that another talented composer, Ennio Morricone, had created the haunting mix of Spanish and Central American Indian music for The Mission.

Suffice it to say that one thing led to another and I eventually found St. Roque Gonzalez de Santa Cruz, the Jesuit priest who inspired the saintly, nonviolent Father Gabriel played by Irons in The Mission. Father Gabriel “conquers” warlike Indians in colonial Central America with his Christian love and the oboe on which he plays a haunting theme that soothes the savage breast. (The scene when Father Gabriel dies, Monstrance in hand, in The Mission never fails to move me. It reminds me of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero’s death and St. Claire’s use of the Monstrace to repel the enemy.)

In mistaking one great composer for another, I found a great saint today. The inspiration for Father Gabriel was canonized by Pope John Paul in 1988 when he became the first Paraguayan saint.

St. Roque Gonzalez de Santa Cruz was of noble blood, but he gave his life to making life better for the natives who were being exploited by colonialists in the early 17th century. He built churches, missions, homes and schools for the natives. In living with the indigenous people, he combined their native traditions with Catholic celebrations. He made many converts by living the Gospel instead of forcibly shoving the Gospel down the throats of conquered people, as the colonial lords did.

Unlike the scene in the film when the mission is taken away, St. Roque pleaded the cause to the authorities and actually convinced the Spanish government to allow his mission to stand. While celebrating the Mass, he was killed by an arrow to the heart. A local medicine man who was losing his power base as his people converted to Christianity killed St. Roque and two other Jesuit Martyrs of Paraguay, St. Juan de Castillo and St. Alonso Rodriguez.

When I was very young, six or so, I read La Edad de Oro, a collection of articles written for children by the Cuban poet and patriot Jose Marti. He had published a few issues of a magazine to educate children in the 1890s and the materials had been collected in a book whose title can be translated as “the golden age,” referring to childhood.

In reading La Edad de Oro, I learned how the Spanish had brutally converted the Americas by violence and intimidation and how some religious like Fray Bartolome de las Casas had used love to bring the Gospel. Every Cuban child knows the story of Hatuey, the native chief who was burned at the stake for refusing to convert to Catholicism. (Never mind that Hatuey is now better known as a brand of Cuban beer with a logo of his image in profile.)

I recall being ashamed of the tactics used to bring the God who is Love to natives through genocide. Hatuey had asked the friar at his burning if there were people like him in Heaven. When the friar said there were, Hatuey replied that he didn’t want to to anywhere where those allowed to commit atrocities would be.

The criminal history of the conquest of the Americas created a fervent and growing branch of Catholicism in the world, even if it was engendered in blood. It also created holy men like Fray de las Casas and saints like Roque Gonzalez de Santa Cruz and the other martyrs of Paraguay. The simple faith of the people of Latin America has enriched and blessed our Church in great measure. Let us pray for the descendants of those who were martyred during the colonial conquest who are now such a vital part of Christ’s flock.

And let us thank God for the crooked lines he uses to write straight so that we can discover moments of grace in an otherwise ordinary day, as I did today.

Two of our children have graduated from public schools in Florida and the two youngest will be entering high school in the fall. In all the years that our children have been enrolled in various schools, I’ve signed permission slips for everything from approvals to use their photos in promotional materials to okays to watch PG-13 movies in class.

Last week, our 13-year-old son wrote a cryptic note on his daily planner that read “Navy.” When we asked him what that meant, he told us that recruiters from the Navy and Marines had visited his eighth-grade class. Eighth grade. My son doesn’t shave, he won’t drive for several years and he’s more interested in rec-league basketball than in career choices right now. He was given a hard-sell pitch to join the military in the eighth grade.

Our son said that the message from the recruiters was that “they did fun things.” They brought a Junior ROTC candidate who had graduated from eighth grade the previous year to speak to his peers about all the fun he was having in the kiddie military.

Not one permission slip came home for our approval to have our son listen to propaganda about the hijinks he can expect  in the military. In our area of Florida, a group called Veterans for Peace has been protesting how the school system allows military recruiters free access to our kids while the nonviolent, anti-war message isn’t given the same platform or respect. Veterans for Peace would not tell my son that the military is fun and neither would we.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 gives the military the right to pursue our children. Technically, parents can “opt out” of having their children’s names and contact information given to the military. My husband and I sent notes to the principal at our oldest children’s high schools when the law went into effect, but we still received calls and direct-mail pitches from all branches of the service. The Do Not Call list does not apply to them. We didn’t expect them to start hounding our kids in the eighth grade.

I never served in the military, but my husband did. He enjoyed certain parts of his Navy service, especially being aboard a ship working as part of a crew that ran things smoothly. Now, he is a “waging peace” warrior who supports antiwar causes and issues. Since my husband was a young man pushing helicopters off the decks of Navy ships during the evacuation of Vietnam in 1975, he has seen soldiers used by hawks in government to do their bidding overseas. My husband is a staunch antiwar advocate who lives according to the principles of nonviolence learned from Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Franz Jagerstatter and countless other war resisters in history.

At home, we have plowshares, not swords. As it says in Isaiah 2:4:

And he shall judge between the nations, and shall reprove many peoples: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

The fiascos of Vietnam, Gulf War I, Iraq and Afghanistan have marked generations since the 1960s with blood that was shed for gain, ideology and politics. We’ve seen soldiers not cared for when they come back maimed. We’ve heard  lies being used to justify the deaths of their friends and the loss of their limbs.

As a friend of mine says, we’re good at building body armor that protects areas where soldiers might get killed instantly, but we’re not good at protecting the ones where you live maimed. Another friend told me that her brother, a Vietnam veteran, has still never spoken about his experiences there. He wants to forget what he saw and what he did.

An elderly Korean War vet told me a horrible story about how he buried his war memories by being a workaholic at a Fortune 500 company. After he retired, he turned on the TV one morning and saw the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/01. The sight of the panicked people covered in dust and screaming for help brought back scenes that reminded him of Korea. After much torment, he finally went to a counselor to help him deal with his war experiences he had tried for decades to forget.

A year to the day before he was assassinated, Dr. King delivered a powerful speech he titled Beyond Vietnam:

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

We are living through immoral wars created by those in the Bush administration who had power, but no compassion, and might without morality, as Dr. King observed about Vietnam. President Obama’s recent decision to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan will not mean fun and games for anyone in the military, their families back home or the people of that battered nation.

Our sons already know what “conscientious objector” means and how military spending is burying our nation in trillion-dollar debt. They’re been raised to know that there’s no fun in killing. Between a PG-13 film in class and a propaganda presentation that equates war with fun, I’d choose the film for my son. But, of course, the school system never gave me the option when they subjected him to military recruiters before he’s ever stepped foot in high school.

Veterans for Peace will have to start picketing at middle schools now. Let’s hope the military doesn’t begin grabbing our kids in elementary schools soon if the madness of war continues to require fresh recruits shedding fresh blood.

The Annunciation, Da Vinci

Today marks the Annunciation, Mary’s ultimate “yes” to God’s command. How often do we say “let it be done to me according to Your will” and really allow that acceptance to change our lives, as she does? If we imagine that we are accepting God’s will, but do it grudgingly, we are not embracing what the Father has in store for us.

The marvelous faith that our Holy Mother shows in allowing her soul to magnify the Lord is a model for all Christians. We may ask, as she does, how something impossible can be, but we can emulate her in submitting to God’s plan with joy.

Saying “yes” to God is the Amen to every prayer. With love and a willing spirit, we can accept how He moves in our lives.

Archbishop Romero, 1917-1980

He was shot holding up the Eucharist and his blood spilled on the altar where Christ sheds His blood at every Mass. The grave sin of killing one of God’s holy anointed ones was never punished by the same government he had spoken out against in his homilies.

Twenty-nine years ago today, March 24, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, was shot in San Salvador during a Mass where he spoke about how a grain of wheat remains just that unless it falls to the ground and bears fruit. He had told El Salvador’s military hit squads that they were not bound to follow orders that conflicted with the word of God. When he said it, he knew he wouldn’t live long. In his final homily just moments before he was shot in the heart, the Archbishop offered his blood to Christ and blessed those whom he knew would murder him. (Here, you can see his last Mass and some of the funeral procession.)

I was a college student when I heard about Archbishop Romero’s death and the sacrilege of shedding blood in a holy place shocked me then, as it still does now. The dirty wars in Central and South America that were paid for by US government dollars and the covert Contragate produced the assassins trained at the Army’s School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA. Archbishop Romero wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter in an effort to halt US funding for terrorism in El Salvador:

“You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people.”

Nuns and lay workers were raped and killed on roadsides, priests were shot and countless numbers of poor peasants who wanted to live in peace were slaughtered in campaigns that had American military help. The thousands who take part in protests at Fort Benning each year to call for the closing of the School of the Americas, which has changed its name but not its tactics, are heroic Christians who risk time in prison to speak out about evil condoned by a government that always used to have the moral high ground in human rights. (Watch the documentary Taxi to the Dark Side to feel shame in how America’s treatment of post 9/11 detainees is nothing more than medieval torture condoned by a cavalier, know-nothing President for whom everything became a game, not matter how reprehensible an act it involved.)

The pastor at our church spoke about Archbishop Romero’s assassination during Sunday’s homily. He had read the Gospel passage about the blind man healed by Jesus. Our pastor reminded us that the people of El Salvador didn’t expect much of Archbishop Romero after his appointment. After all, he was quiet, bookish and very conservative. They imagined he would side with those in power instead of standing with the poor.

“Archbishop Romero’s eyes were opened by his people,” said our pastor. Like the blind man healed by Jesus, the Archbishop suddenly saw the light and followed it. A fellow priest who was a friend of his had been assassinated on the road with the old man and little boy who were accompanying him. Archbishop Romero saw the three bodies and then observed how the murders weren’t investigated. The blindfold fell from his eyes. The day before his death, Archbishop Romero made a plea to the military men who were killing their own people:

“In the name of God then, in the name of this suffering people I ask you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: stop the repression.”

Actor Raul Julia played Archbishop Romero in a beautiful feature film that brought the martyr’s story to many more who might not have known about his sacrifice. One of my favorite singer/songwriters, Ruben Blades, wrote the heartfelt El Padre Antonio y el Monaguillo Andres (Father Antonio and the Altar Boy Andres), which is a fictionalized account of Archbishop Romero’s death at Mass for speaking out against the military.  In the song, the murder of the priest is seen alongside the death of the active little altar boy who dies ”without ever meeting Pele.” As Blades says in some versions of the song, “In Latin America, they kill people, but not the idea.”

Since Archbishop Romero’s death, he has been celebrated as a courageous shepherd and a martyr who will one day be canonized. Perhaps he will become the patron saint of the churches in Central America or of those religious who speak out against government wrongdoing. Let us call on this holy man who chose to be wheat that fell on the ground for others to inspire us to follow his example.

At 18 weeks' gestation, a baby can suck its thumb.

We have a new granddaughter who likes nothing more than to eat and sleep. Fair enough when you won’t be three months old for a few weeks yet. Soiled diapers and spit-up are in the mix there, too.

The quality that makes Isabella so beautiful is her pure innocence. Her big, dark eyes look up with curiosity at anyone who holds her, feeds her or makes her smile. Tiny dimples mark her cheeks when she finds something amusing. Isabella has two older brothers; all three were closely spaced and all three are delightful.

It’s a cinch that some of that innocence will be lost in their  kid world of who took someone’s toy and who deserves a good snitching for something done away from their parents’ eyes. For now, the “big brothers” who are toddlers themselves do their best to kiss the infant when they’re not stealing her bottle.

Isabella’s sweet-baby beauty is a wonder to behold. She doesn’t discriminate and the world is either having a full stomach or an empty one. Her dark hair sticks up, but she’s not worried about bad hair days. Life for a baby is a wonderfully simple concept.

Looking at Isabella is a joy for a proud Grandma like me. Our oldest grandchild, two-year-old JJ, can already call me “Gammaw,” which is better than just about anything I could be addressed as. The middle grandchild, a lovely little blue-eyed angel named Christian, doesn’t talk much yet, but we spent some quiet moments yesterday picking weeds that he found as beautiful as flowers.

My grandchildren and all the children in the world are miracles created by God. It doesn’t matter what their skin color or national origin are:  “Babies are God’s opinion that the world should go on,” as poet Carl Sandburg said.

The tragedy of abortion is that sweet angels like Isabella cannot bring a smile to someone’s face or grow up to change the world. Every child is God’s masterpiece, no matter whether they’re perfectly healthy  in the world’s opinion or whether they were created before Mom or Dad decided they didn’t want them.

I know a wonderful Catholic couple that adopted three beautiful baby girls whose parents couldn’t care for them. Young parents unable to provide a home for the babies gave them to this infertile couple that wanted nothing more than children. If those little girls had been aborted, a couple who are now excellent parents wouldn’t have had children to love and a young mother who might have had an abortion knows that children she conceived are happy and well cared for. Everyone wins, especially the children who found loving arms and a safe home.

In 1972, the debut issue of the feminist Ms magazine published a list of 53 women who admitted they’d had abortions. The magazine’s founder, Gloria Steinem, was among them. The latest version of their list has comedian Carol Leifer and actress Amy Brennerman as the latest victims of abortions.

Contrast that with a story about another, much more famous and talented artist. Canadian singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell became pregnant when she was an art student in 1964. She couldn’t care for the child, but didn’t kill her. In 1997, she found the daughter she had given up for adoption  32 years before.

According to the father of Ms. Mitchell’s baby, the artist never considered abortion. Mother and daughter found each other in 1997. The other famous women who had abortions could never claim a moment of grace like that in their later years.

I had an infant in 1986 when I found out I was pregnant again. The home pregnancy tests were inconclusive, so I stopped off for a free pregnancy test at a women’s clinic on the way to work one morning, not realizing that it was an abortion mill. (The clinic’s sign had a rose on it, not scissors sticking out of a baby’s skull, after all. Notice how places that perform abortions do their best to disguise what they really do.) I waited for the results of the test and a harried woman came out to tell me the test was positive.

“I’m sorry,” she said with the air of someone who might have been telling me I had cancer or herpes. “There are things we can do about it, though,” she added. My husband and I ran back to our car and his happiness at being a father again made up for all the trepidation I’d been feeling about managing two babies in less than a year. It never occurred to the woman at the clinic that we might have been happy that I was pregnant.

Our two oldest are 11 months apart and the baby whose conception the abortion-clinic worker apologized about is now a beautiful young woman who is the mother of our grandbabies. 

For facts about abortion before you consider one, click here. If you’ve had an abortion and you’re grieving, click here. If you’re pregnant and not sure what to do, click here. There are always more humane and sensible solutions than debasing yourself before God by killing your own child.

We who are mothers and grandmothers know that life truly is a gift from God. We can pray for other women who have been brainwashed to think that abortion is a solution. Remember the words of the Talmud: “Whoever saves one life, saves the whole world.”

The Christ by El Greco

There is no Christian tenet more simple than “God is love” and no prayer more direct than “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Our Sunday Gospel today was the Lenten discourse on light that tells of the blind man healed by Jesus, but the alternate reading from John 3 is one of the passages that is at the heart of our Catholic faith:

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be
clearly seen as done in God.

The Light of the World calls us to the light, but some still prefer to dwell in darkness. Basking in His light is the reward of the just and eternal darkness the punishment of the unjust. That is as simple to understand as “God is love.”

The Pharisee and the tax collector

But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’

The most convenient way for me to meditate each morning is to open my email from Daily Gospel. The day’s readings are in front of me and, at the bottom, there’s always a short commentary on some aspect of the lessons contained within them.

Today’s commentary comes from a sermon by St. Augustine, who discusses the Pharisee and the tax collector in the parable Jesus tells about who shall be first and who shall be last. About the sinner who beats his breast and doesn’t dare raise his eyes to God, St. Augustine says:

He makes himself his own judge and God pleads his cause; he accuses himself and God defends him.

Rather than exalting himself like the Pharisee, the tax collector’s sin is “ever before” him, as in Psalm 51, the Miserere, that is today’s psalm reading. He does not brag to God about his own narrow view of holiness, as the Pharisee does, but provides the words of contrition that form the simple Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, Savior, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

We sinners are always conscious of our sin if our desire is to follow Jesus. St. Augustine, the reformed wild child whose mother prayed for his conversion, must have recognized himself in the tax collector, as should we all. God does not condemn us when we fall; He condemns us when we fall and do not repent. Even the most hardened murderer has the opportunity to return to God: why can’t we whose sins are also forgiven?

The majesty of God and his power to peer into our souls should indeed make us lower our eyes to Heaven. The greatest saints sometimes began as sinners–didn’t St. Paul call himself the worst sinner?–but their contrition and their humility before the Father saved them.

The sin of the Pharisee is that he imagines he is God. He can judge others and trumpet his own virtues, but he doesn’t have the divine quality of mercy the Father has. He is a false god, a fraud who refuses the see the value of every human being. After all, Jesus directs the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector “to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.”

We are sinners and sinners we shall remain until we are redeemed or condemned by God. The knowledge that He is the Father of Mercy should give us comfort or make us tremble. During our days on Earth, we can live in a manner that will make either one inevitable.

Easter lilies

In many regions of the US, winter-weary folks will be welcoming March 20, the first day of spring.

When we lived in New York and Rhode Island, spring meant the birth of the most wondrous time of the year. The mittens’ days were numbered, the ski cap was on its last breath and all the parka needed was a proper burial. Sales on spring coats and Easter bonnets, the prospect of wearing pastels again and white shoes were all ahead. Easter and spring break were the two most marvelous feasts within reach.

In Florida, we only have two seasons: summer and bearable. The early days of spring and fall are the best times of the year because the heat and humidity back off and leave us with sparkling, sunlit days tempered by a pleasant breeze. The rest of the year is brutally hot, with sticky days and nights that hang around for most of the year. I once ran a 10K road race that began at midnight and left me as slick and overheated as if I’d been running at noon. At one of those midnight races, our daughter had heat exhaustion and had to be taken to the emergency room for fluids.

But spring, ah! It’s soft, bright and just warm enough not to be perspiring as you take in the azaleas and geraniums coloring our gardens. My favorite hibiscuses are showing green growth. The Easter lilies will bloom again to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord. Everywhere, God’s majesty is evident in His handiwork on Earth.

March 21 is sometimes the first day of spring. That day is always special to me because it’s my firstborn’s birthday. (Happy Birthday, Dylan!) Becoming a mother for the first time was a miracle that left me in awe. I remember holding our son–an alert little redhead from his first peek outside the womb–and feeling so blessed at the life that my husband and I had created through God’s intercession. Spring will always be tied to the joy of being a mother for me.

A friend in Rhode Island asked me not to rub in the fact that Florida is perfect this time of year. It’s 36 degrees F. in Providence today, after all. She offered the fact that they have a wealth of places selling zeppole, the Italian pastries for St. Joseph’s feast day that are rare down here. We each had something to gloat over today!

I will take the glorious sunny day of 70-degree paradise that marks the first day of spring in the Tampa Bay area of Florida today. The Creator made a perfect day for us to enjoy. Deo Gratias!

Icon of St. Patrick with words from the Breastplate

A few days ago, our 13-year-old daughter asked us about St. Patrick’s Day and why it was a day to drink beer. We explained the secularization of the saint’s feast day as best we could, but it drove me to seek out the powerful St. Patrick’s Breastplate from the 9th century Book of Armagh.

According to the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the patron saint of Ireland composed the prayer to prepare himself to meet Loegaire, the pagan king of Ireland. It’s a good prayer for those times when we, too, have to speak truth to power:

I bind to myself today
The strong virtue of the Invocation of the Trinity:
I believe the Trinity in the Unity
The Creator of the Universe.

I bind to myself today
The virtue of the Incarnation of Christ with His Baptism,
The virtue of His crucifixion with His burial,
The virtue of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
The virtue of His coming on the Judgement Day.

I bind to myself today
The virtue of the love of seraphim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the hope of resurrection unto reward,
In prayers of Patriarchs,
In predictions of Prophets,
In preaching of Apostles,
In faith of Confessors,
In purity of holy Virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.

I bind to myself today
The power of Heaven,
The light of the sun,
The brightness of the moon,
The splendour of fire,
The flashing of lightning,
The swiftness of wind,
The depth of sea,
The stability of earth,
The compactness of rocks.

I bind to myself today
God’s Power to guide me,
God’s Might to uphold me,
God’s Wisdom to teach me,
God’s Eye to watch over me,
God’s Ear to hear me,
God’s Word to give me speech,
God’s Hand to guide me,
God’s Way to lie before me,
God’s Shield to shelter me,
God’s Host to secure me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the seductions of vices,
Against the lusts of nature,
Against everyone who meditates injury to me,

Whether far or near,
Whether few or with many.

I invoke today all these virtues
Against every hostile merciless power
Which may assail my body and my soul,
Against the incantations of false prophets,
Against the black laws of heathenism,
Against the false laws of heresy,
Against the deceits of idolatry,
Against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids,
Against every knowledge that binds the soul of man.

Christ, protect me today

Against every poison, against burning,

Against drowning, against death-wound,

That I may receive abundant reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me,

Christ behind me, Christ within me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ at my right, Christ at my left,

Christ in the fort, [i.e., at home]

Christ in the chariot seat, [i.e., travelling by land]

Christ in the poop. [i.e., travelling by water]

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

I bind to myself today

The strong virtue of an invocation of the Trinity,

I believe the Trinity in the Unity

The Creator of the Universe.