Healing and Peace

11/04/2025

"I have often said that I am convinced that the true apologetics for the Christian message, the most persuasive proof of its truth, offsetting everything that may appear negative, are the saints, on the one hand, and the beauty that the faith has generated, on the other. For faith to grow today, we must lead ourselves and the persons we meet to encounter the saints and to come into contact with the beautiful. (Ratzinger, J.)"

I would think that going on a pilgrimage to someplace like Assisi or Monte Cassino combines an encounter of a type with a saint with contact with the beautiful. Of course, reading the lives of the saints is another way to encounter the saints. However, the best and most fruitful "encounter" with a saint is when we, ourselves, are living signs of the reality of the Resurrection in the world today in the way we love others.

May the grace of the sacraments along with our Christian faith and hope inspire us to love others with a living, warm, gentle heart, a heart so tender and outward-focused that others who encounter us loudly proclaim, "The faith must be true!"

Perhaps nothing else is as beautiful.

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10/28/2025

"For me an unforgettable experience was the Bach concert that Leonord Bernstein conducted in Munich after the sudden death of Karl Richter. I was sitting next to the Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann. After the last note of one of the great Thomas Kantor cantatas triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously and just as spontaneously said: 'Anyone who has heard this knows that the faith is true.' Such an extraordinary force of present reality had become audible in this music that the audience knew, no longer through deduction, but by the impact that it could not have come from nothing; it could only have been born through the power of the truth that makes itself present in the composer's inspiration" (Ratzinger, J.).

Sometimes we have to get our noses out of a spiritual or religious book or step away from the Hallow app in order to experience the power of God in the present moment through beauty. To become present to beauty in this way, sometimes we may need to focus on one sense at a time, for example, hearing. We may need to "un-busy" ourselves, removing all distractions or unnecessary movement. If you look at people's legs and feet at a symphony orchestra concert, they are still. All attention is on the music. This sets the internal environment for what Cardinal Ratzinger described above.

Compare this to the dancing, jumping, and euphoric fist-pumping of the rock concert and you will see perhaps why Ratzinger, on another occasion, said that the euphoria of a rock concert is the antithesis of Christian liturgical worship. May we all today seek the peace and serenity of becoming fully present to the Lord through beauty. Amen.

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10/21/2025

"The encounter with beauty can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the soul and thus makes it see clearly, so that henceforth it has criteria, based on what it has experienced, and can now weigh the arguments correctly" (Ratzinger, J.). The West has a strong tradition of emphasizing intellect and reason over experience or sensation. This tradition is good for many things including abstracting universals from concrete particulars.

However, we often also have not merely an emphasis on intellect over sense, but an over-emphasis. There are so many ways that beauty presents truth to our souls that can be easily missed when our intellect is overly active and when we are too busy doing this or that due to our hypertrophied drive to achieve, as is all too common in the West.

Beauty, through the fully present experiencing of it, moves us and "strikes our soul". This is the stuff of faith, not merely reason. When is the last time you were moved by beauty? Did your mind immediately go to God? If so, know that this is common; it is the common connection between our intuitive sense and faith.

Join me in the challenge of trying to become fully present to beauty at least once today. Change has to start somewhere. God bless!

10/15/2025

"Whoever believes in God, in the God who revealed himself precisely in the distorted figure of Christ crucified as Love ‘to the end’ (Jn 13:1), knows that beauty is truth and truth beauty; but in the suffering Christ he also learns that the beauty of truth also involves wounds, pain, and even the obscure mystery of death and that this can only be found in accepting pain, not in ignoring it" (Ratzinger, J.).

These profoundly insightful words point the way to not just truth, but also to psychological, emotional and relational healing and peace, for healing can only be founded on truth. Almost all psychological or behavioral maladies have to do with avoiding truth and its correlating emotional pain.

We defend against grief when we anxiously avoid, get stuck in depression, act on sexual identity confusion, and maintain addictions, etc. There is a beauty in healing through facing the painful truth that we previously avoided. There is a beauty in facing this pain with someone who cares about us.

It is my job to accompany and emotionally support those who have things to grieve so that they can better live out their vocations to love with ever greater peace, holiness and joy. I see a lot of beauty in my job. It is built into it, and I am blessed by it. Thank you to all of my clients who have given me the honor to grieve with them.

https://healingandpeace.com/

Catholic therapist Serving Oceanside, Camp Pendleton, Carlsbad, Encino, Vista, Fallbrook, Bonsall, Escondido, San Marcos, Poway, Rancho Santa Fe, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Rancho Bernardo, San Clemente, San Juan Capistrano, Capistrano Beach, Dana Point, Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, Laguna Hills, Rancho...

10/14/2025

Joy-eliciting news! Decline in transgender-identifying college students in the U.S.: https://x.com/i/trending/1978092729037963768 .

A 2025 survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression of over 55,000 U.S. undergraduates shows transgender and non-binary identification dropping from 6.8% in 2022-2023 to 3.6% in 2025, with incoming freshmen at half the prior rate. The decline is steeper at elite schools like Phillip...

10/10/2025

This video is chicken soup for the Catholic soul in the best way. It gives me hope for the future of the Church. That a network other than Fox ran this story also gives me hope.

The students from Chicago's Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy, who went viral for their mock conclave, met Pope Leo XIV in Vatican City Wednesday. For video l...

10/08/2025

This article provides a global perspective of how US pro-life political activists demand that the term "pro-life" is used exclusively to reference anti-abortion matters in the context of related comments made by the Pope last week.

https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2025/10/unless-youre-american-popes-comments-on-pro-life-were-just-common-sense?fbclid=IwZnRzaANQc8lleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHqjmfnjDOHz4p-fcctwIFVBY27lej-5NVX9BwRoY7w_lxPgWKnVX3HV1BPdd_aem_iZmLQtL-B1NgLRLLwtGy-g

The plain fact of the matter is that Catholic cultures in most other parts of the world simply aren’t as obsessed with abortion as in the United States.

09/29/2025

He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck,
will suddenly be broken beyond healing (Proverbs 29:1).

What does this mean?

From the point of view of the one who does the reproving, this is a message of caution: don't overdo it.

From the point of view of the one being reproved, this is a message to keep one's "neck" from getting "too stiff", that is: Stay humble in the face of correction, if you want to keep from being broken beyond healing.

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09/27/2025

Might want to watch this movie from John Paul the Great Catholic University. Even just this little clip is funny, witty, and attention-grabbing.

09/25/2025

This is a fascinating news piece on our Bishop here in San Diego. In it, he touches on very important topics, but being from the Midwest, I especially like the story of his first winter in Minnesota as an immigrant from Vietnam.

Bishop Michael Pham, appointed by Pope Leo as the first U.S. bishop under his papacy, has emerged as a new voice of the Catholic Church. Through his own stor...

09/19/2025

Every time we eat, God is saving us from physical death via starvation. This is one of the countless ways that God saves us every day, every moment.

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09/15/2025

Amen! Following the natural law about sexual matters is what protects us! Who wants to be subject to the mantra of "Love em', leave 'em, use 'em, lose 'em"?

We all want commitment. We all want to not be abandoned. We don't want to be abandoned by our spouses, and we don't want to be abandoned by our parents.

The sexual revolution in its drive to "rebel" against the natural law, was ultimately a rebellion against humanity. There is no freedom in such abandonment of responsibility, of obligations to persons.