This Sunday we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost. Our Mass readings include, of course, the account from Acts of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, and their subsequent proclamation of the Gospel in the languages of all those listening. In this passage, and likewise in our second reading, from 1 Corinthians, with its explanation that "in one Spirit" we are "one body," we hear that the Spirit brings what other texts in this letter and elsewhere in the New Testament refer to as koinōnia - in Latin, communio; in English, therefore, "communion," or, alternatively, "fellowship." The Spirit, as the Catechism tells us, is the Soul of the Church - uniting us with Christ, the Head, and thus with one another as well. The Spirit brings fellowship with and in Christ. And the fullness of this fellowship is found only in the Catholic Church.

We find in our Pentecost readings reference to two other works of the Spirit as well - works which are, I want to suggest, inseparable from the work of fellowship. The first is faith, the Christian faith, the faith that begins with the profession that "Jesus is Lord." The Spirit works within us to bring about our recognition of Jesus as God the Son (and as Christ - as Anointed - with the Spirit) - and so also our whole faith in the Triune God and his saving plan. The second is forgiveness of sins. It is Christ's gift of the Spirit to the Church that empowers priests to forgive our sins in Christ's name, in the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.

A very thoughtful and vulnerable blog reader shared the following personal experiences very worthy of reading.  With permission, here it is ...

"Another perspective ---It is fortunate that readers of this blog have access to good information about alternatives to medication for kids & adults. But the mainstream opinion is much different. Six years ago, when our son was 12, based on recommendations from his teachers, we had him go through extensive testing to try and determine what was causing his difficulty in school. He was diagnosed with ADD - inattentive. His pediatrician, the psychologist, his teachers, our friends, and even some family strongly recommended medication for him. When my husband & I resisted, we were definitely judged and looked down upon as bad parents.

Make sure you read the last line!

Study: Stay-at-Home Mom Worth Nearly $117,000 a Year

BOSTON —  If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars rather than personal satisfaction and unconditional love, she'd rake in a nifty sum of nearly $117,000 a year.

That's according to a pre-Mother's Day study released Thursday by Salary.com, a Waltham, Mass.-based firm that studies workplace compensation.

The eighth annual survey calculated a mom's market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer.

This year, the annual salary for a stay-at-home mom would be $116,805, while a working mom who also juggles an outside job would get $68,405 for her motherly duties.

One stay-at-home mom said the six-figure salary sounds a little low.

"I think a lot of people think we sit and home and have a lot of fun and don't do a lot of work," said Samantha Russell, a Fremont, N.H., mother who left her job as pastry chef to raise two boys, ages 2 and 4. "But they should try cleaning their house with little kids running around and messing it up right after them."

Working moms reported an average 54.6 hour "mom work week" besides the hours they spent at paying jobs.

Best for baby, best for mom!

...Scientists reviewed almost 100 studies and found “convincing evidence” that breastfeeding lowers the risk of breast cancer, although four out of five women are unaware of the link. About three out of four women were unaware that breastfeeding lowered their child’s risk of being overweight.

“The evidence on this is convincing and this is why we recommend that – if they are able to – mothers should aim to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months and then continue with complementary feeding after that,” said Lucie Galice of the World Cancer Research Fund. ...

Marriage has been shown, through research, to be an unending source of joy, a Harvard professor said at an Australian conference this week.

But introduce children into the relationship and that joy may plummet, according to a report from the Australian Associated Press. 

Check out www.catholicexchange.com for the link to www.foxnews.com.  I really dislike headlines like this but I realize it sells the paper - so to speak. 

And, honestly, there is a ring of truth to it.  My joy certainly dropped when children arrived.  My selfish idea of what joy was, my preconceived notions of what made me happy!!!  It is all a matter of perception.

We would be stupid not to readily admit that your life changes when children arrive.  It should.  Those couples who insist and demand that children can't and won't change their lives are doing both themselves and assuredly their children a grave disservice.  They keep the same hours, spending habits, activities that they had before the baby came and guess what?  Their B4-baby joy will plummet because baby is crying, fussy and can't understand why these folks who seem to love them won't let them sleep, nurse, and just be a baby w/ baby needs. 

Joy is a flexible, adjustable, and fickly emotion but it remains a constant virtue.  Joy comes from doing God's will and God's will for you will definately change when He blesses you with a new soul to take care, nurture and return to Him in as perfect condition as possible. 

Today's Gospel -

John 17: 20-26
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying: "I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me. I wish that where I am they also may be with me, that they may see my glory that you gave me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world also does not know you, but I know you, and they know that you sent me. I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them."

As I read this today, I couldn't help but feel some sadness realizing that we are so far from being one -  "so that they may be one, as we are one".

Now, admittedly, I had nothing to do w/ the Reformation, have never willingly committed heresy and have not started my own church but I still wonder what I may have done to splinter God's desire for one faith, one belief, one church.

Have I ever said anything, done anything that might have made someone think, "Well, I'm never going to be a Catholic if that is how Catholics act/think/speak!"  I sincerely hope not.

I'll be praying today that I haven't and ask forgiveness if I have.  It is bothersome to my heart to think of Jesus' sadness because of what we have done to create the puzzle pieces of a Christian faith that exists today.

Spreading rumors and gossiping may not cause bruises or black eyes, but the psychological consequences of this social type of bullying could linger into early adulthood, a new University of Florida study shows.

In a study of 210 college students, UF researchers discovered a link between what psychologists call relational victimization in adolescence and depression and anxiety in early adulthood, according to findings published online in April in the journal Psychology in the Schools. Rather than threatening a child with physical violence, these bullies target a child's social status and relationships by shunning them, excluding them from social activities or spreading rumors, said Allison Dempsey, a doctoral student in the UF College of Education and the study's lead author.

"Even though people are outside of high school, the memories of these experiences continue to be associated with depression and social anxiety," said Dempsey, who graduated from Columbine High School in Colorado one year before the 1999 school shooting there and now studies school prevention programs. "It was interesting to see these relationships still continue to exist even though they are in early adulthood now and in a completely different setting. MORE

Almost one-third of U.S. parents have a surprisingly low-level knowledge of typical infant development and unrealistic expectations for their child's physical, social and emotional growth, according research from the University of Rochester. The new findings, which suggest that such false parenting assumptions can not only impair parent-child interactions, but also rob kids of much-needed cognitive stimulation, will be presented May 4, at the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.  MORE

"Same-sex marriage ban likely dead in Pa. Senate"

And you'll never guess which party likely killed it.

A reader responds to my post:

I've never been able to understand why on earth the angel told Hagar to go back to Sarah. Hagar and her son were going to be thrown out later anyway - why not just leave her alone this first time she left? Why send her back to abuse?

Is it blasphemous to think somebody should have told the Angel of the Lord to buzz off?

Good question. I'll have to think about this. Meanwhile, I'm going to make sure that I don't stand next to any trees or flagpoles (and that my computer's surge protector is working).

has been posted!

Here's the latest evidence that there are other - moral - ways to do that.

Just an interesting way to remind readers that exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for newborns. 

No donkey milk please - high risk of infection.  I don't mean at all to be culturally insensitive here, but the last line of the piece really struck me as, well something I would never have imagined going on anywhere.  Interesting.

Beginning Monday, May 19th, Lisa and I will be hosting a new show for The Catholic Channel Sirius 159.  The new show, Fully Alive! with Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak, will air weeknights from 10p-Midnight Eastern (7-9pm Pacific).

We'll have the opporunity to interview the best and brightest secular and Christian authors on marriage, family and general psychology topics and relate their work to the Catholic vision of the human person.   Plus, we'll take your calls to help you find faithful solutions to the problems that stand in the way of your coming fully alive in Christ. 

Finally, I hope we'll find some ways to laugh together and learn more about the greatest adventure in the world; loving Christ and living out the Gospel of Life in our hearts and in our homes.

We're thrilled to have this opportunity to spread the word of the Catholic vision of love, marriage, and family to all of North America and I hope you'll join us.

Please keep this new venture in your prayers!

-------

PS.  We'll also continue our terrestrial radio program, Heart Mind and Strength which airs weekdays from Noon-1pm Eastern on the Ave Maria Radio Network.

More evidence - though it is not clear from the study whether it is a property of the milk itself or the mothering that it encourages. 

More evidence is being put forward that breastfed babies eventually become more intelligent than those who are fed with formula milk.

Canada's McGill University found breastfed babies ended up performing better in IQ tests by the age of six.

But the researchers were unsure whether it was related to the breast milk itself or the bond from breastfeeding.

The study of nearly 14,000 children is the latest in a series of reports to have found such a positive link.  

 LLL has always spoken of the benefits of "mothering through breastfeeding" and that still really seems right to me.  Of course, human milk fed in a bottle is much better than any alternative supplement, but the truth is that, when it is possible, nursing the baby at the mother's breast, exclusively for six months and then at least 2 years, or until the child outgrows the need, has advantages, physical, psychological, emotional, and yes, even intellectual, that we are just beginning to understand from a scientific perspective.  It's worth the trouble and the sacrifice for moms to breastfeed their babies - and moms who are trying to do this deserve lots of support from everyone.

of Natural Family Planning?

It ran the other day.

I don't doubt that many babies born to surrogates end up happy.

But the end doesn't justify the means. Surrogacy (and reproductive technologies like artificial insemination and IVF) treats the adults involved as tools for procreation - as objects instead of subjects - and the resulting babies as products of manufacture - as objects instead of subjects.

It's perhaps ironic that the article mentions Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. That was the result of Sarah's lack of full faith in God's promise, after all. And it didn't go entirely smoothly or end entirely happily.

Ian, so true!  It is unfortunate that in our fast-paced instant gratification society that parents look more toward popping pills into their children rather than at some of their own behaviors that may be causing, or at least significantly influencing, some of the problematic behaviors that they want to see eliminated so quickly in their children. 

Parental bonding ... the natural drug.

Study: American Kids Take Anti-Psychotic Medicines at Six Times the Rate of U.K. Children

Indeed they are.  The real shame is that many disorders in children (e.g., addictions, depression, conduct disorders and even ADD) can be linked to or exacerbated by a lack of good relationship/attachment with parents (and instead to peers or media).  Click title above for more info.