THE BON VIVANT: How to Live the Good Life in a Bad Economy

Or Grace Under Fire: The Role of the Handmaid of the Lord

by Susan Fox

I recently moved to Colorado, and everyone here is concerned that you are working.

“What do you do for a living?” they ask me. I am only 59. Certainly I couldn’t have already retired. But I did retire from a 12-year career as a newspaper reporter in 1991 so I could become a full-time mother, then a home-schooling mother, then a volunteer at Church, and now back to writing.

But it is very tedious to tell people I am a homemaker especially as things work in my home, I rarely do the cleaning. My husband does (and he has the job and is enrolled part time in graduate school.) And the child is grown, and sometimes helps me with the cooking.

So I decided to tell people that I am a “Bon Vivant.” It is French for living “the good life.” Technically, a person who enjoys superb food and drink. That describes me, too, except the drink I drink is Pellegrino and Iced Tea. 

I have degrees in French and Journalism plus two masters in Economics and International Trade and Finance, so I can use my education to describe myself as a “Bon Vivant.” Many people in Colorado struggle to pronounce it like I do. So there must be some advantage to being a “Bon Vivant.” Right?

Well, I thought to myself what really does a Bon Vivant do?

We are in the process of buying a house, and my realtor asked me to go into the back yard and see if the sprinklers were running. Glory be to God. Yes! I’ll run into the back yard to do that -- for that is exactly what a Bon Vivant does!

And the other day I was waiting in line to buy snow tires. Waiting in line for tires is very boring. I said,  “Lord, I’d much rather talk to people.”  So I saw a young man also waiting in line, looking bored. He wore a T-shirt that said, “Beer Security.” I said, “I like your T-shirt, what does it mean?” His eyes lighted up.  He turned into this absolutely gorgeous soul. He was so pleased I noticed him.  That must have been the purpose of my question as the young man didn’t know what “beer security” meant. But that I asked the question produced joy in his heart. It reminded me of the occasion when I yelled a question at President Ronald Reagan in the early years of his Administration when he was surrounded by cheering crowds, and he joyously yelled back, “I can’t hear you!” I did get to interview President Reagan, right? Never mind the question wasn’t exactly answered.

But as to the young man in the tire store, his joy convinced me we’ll be best buddies in heaven, I have added him to my prayer list. That is something a Bon Vivant does. She prays for other people.

So what else does a Bon Vivant do? Well, a Bon Vivant goes to the doctor a lot and fills out a lot of forms describing her numerous illnesses and lists her job as … you guessed it, “Bon Vivant.”

So there is an element of suffering in Bon Vivant’s life as it is very tedious to go to the doctor, arrive on time, find a parking space, sit in the waiting room, and again explain my ailments. But my doctors do not want me to see a psychiatrist because I always tell them I am not depressed. I don’t mind chronic minor pain, and that is all God has given me. I spend my life laughing at my son and husband’s jokes.

A Bon Vivant also spends time enjoying nature. As a full time mother, I raised kittens, baby hamsters and gold fish. I had a medicine cabinet full of fish antibiotics, some of which I ended up taking myself in later years when doctors prescribed it. I really knew how to raise happy hamsters, cats and gold fish. I used to sing, “Bubble Nose, Frisky and Christmas!” And three fat gold fish would come to the top of the tank to touch their nose to the Bon Vivant’s finger.

They were 25-cent gold fish, but they cost me a $1,000 in new tanks and medicine until we sold them some years later for $25 each. It was a big profit, n’est-ce pas? Last summer I took over 500 photographs of baby swallows nesting on our patio ledge. I grew quite attached to the three little buggers, and made a movie from the photos (see it at www.youtube.com, Channel TestisFidelis). But this was really living the good life, as they were wild birds. All I had to do was photograph them. I didn’t clean their cages, didn’t give them $1,000 worth of medicine, and my son cleaned up their doo doo. Plus the movie I made became a living image of Psalm 84. So the Bon Vivant also praises God, and admires his handiwork in nature.

The Bon Vivant also spends money. That is her job. Grocery shopping, taxes, home buying, getting the yard work done, cars maintained and writing the check every Sunday to put in the basket, these are my jobs. But my husband is assigned the task to actually putting the check in the Sunday basket. It is his money after all. He earned it.

Now as a Bon Vivant, I have many weaknesses. I do occasionally complain. I have tried, but never succeeded in becoming the perfect wife or mother. Sometimes I hesitate on the amount when I sign the checks for the Church. I really need a model I can imitate to become a better Bon Vivant. I need someone who didn’t hesitate to love the Lord her God with her whole heart, mind and soul, even with her whole body.

So let me see, whom could I find as the true Bon Vivant in God’s Kingdom? What great saint lived the life of a Bon Vivant?  It has to be somebody who suffered and didn’t complain about it. I want a joyous homemaker, someone who tried to lovingly raise a son. She has to be a person who praises God, gives Him all the credit for what He does in her life. She prays for people, intercedes when they need something, like oh say … wine at a wedding. I want someone who will get excited and do God’s will immediately it is asked of her. She wouldn’t hesitate to run into the backyard and see if the sprinkler is running. Heck, she’d even agree to become the Mother of God if it was His will.

Ah, you guessed it. Mary, Mother of Jesus, was the perfect Bon Vivant.

How does Mary define herself? She didn’t use the words “Bon Vivant.” She said, “I am the handmaid of the Lord.” It means, “I am his serving girl.” She sees herself as God’s servant ready to do His will at a moment’s notice.

It isn’t the realtor who walks up to Mary and asks her to see if the sprinkler is running in the backyard. It is in fact an angel, who addresses her, “Hail, Full of Grace, the Lord is with you!”

Instead of preening at the praise leveled at her by an angelic being, she is troubled, and wonders what sort of greeting this is. Now I don’t know about you, but most people in the Bible greeted by angels or visited by God (like Moses and the burning bush) are afraid. Mary is not. She is a true Bon Vivant. Bon Vivants are courageous. But unlike me, the reason she is not afraid is because she is sinless. Most of us don’t qualify, so we get to be scared when an angelic being approaches us for any reason whatsoever.

The angel doesn’t ask her anything simple like, oh I don’t know, “check the sprinklers in the back yard.” He tells her she will conceive a son in her womb and call Him Jesus. You have to remember this request is coming from God the Father because we learn in the Bible, “God so loved the world, He sent His only Son.” So Mary is being approached by a Divine Person, God the Father, First Person of the Blessed Trinity. This is very important moment, because if she says, “No,” we don’t get Jesus. We don’t get saved. Bad stuff happens.

The angel explains who Jesus is – He is Son of the Most High (code word for Son of God the Father). I’m whispering now.

And her only question is, “How can this be, I have no husband.” So he explains the Holy Spirit will come upon her, and the power of the Most High will overshadow her. Voila!  The child will be called holy, the Son of God. Then he gives her a little bit of gossip to help her understand, nothing is impossible with God. In fact, he says, her cousin Elizabeth, who was thought barren, has also conceived a son in her old age.

God so loved the world He gave His only Son. And Mary’s response is astounding! “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word!” That girl knows who she is. She is a servant, a Bon Vivant ready to do anything God asks of her. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us!”

So we see Jesus is conceived from a relationship of love between a Divine Person, the Father, and a human person, Mary. The fruit of Mary’s relationship with God is so perfect that it begets by the power of the Holy Spirit the Son of God, Jesus Christ (Hint: the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.)

Well that doesn’t often happen in my garden, but I can see this is the perfect relationship for every person to have with God, a relationship of love that begets a willingness to say, “Yes,” even if that only means running into the back yard and checking the sprinklers.

Mary is my model for the Bon Vivant because she praises God and gives him all the credit. Again, Mary is full of charity. She doesn’t lie around and worry because she is pregnant with no human father in a culture where women are stoned to death for that exact circumstance. Instead, she rises and leaves in haste for the hill country to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Now Elizabeth was not hoity toity (pretentious, comes from the French haut toit, or high roof from which the pretentious look down on the “lower” classes). Filled with the Holy Spirit, she greets Mary, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb! Why is it granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Hmmm, I am going to have to consider St. Elizabeth, as another model for the Bon Vivant because that is how any self-respecting Bon Vivant should feel when visited by the Mother of God.  

But now Mary gives praise to God for what He has done for her: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior  … for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” She admits that all generations will call her blessed, but it is all God’s doing. She is just his lowly Bon Vivant. She doesn’t have a degree, work 40 hours a week, earn a wage, support her husband, invent new technology, practice medicine, make gourmet meals every night … she simply lives in God’s love and does what He asks.

Now when it comes time to buy the tires in the tire store, whoops I mean attend a wedding in Cana, Mary is very concerned about the needs of the newly wedded couple. She goes in trust to her Son Jesus, and she says, “They have no wine.”  Those are the actions of a great Bon Vivant. Bon

Vivants notice when people need things and always refer the need to Jesus. They intercede for others.

And then they take Mary's advice, "Do whatever He tells you."

Mary follows her own advice right up to the cross where in suffering she remains steadfast, loving her dying Son.

Letter to a Seeker

By Susan Fox

(I was recently identified online as a superstitious fool for putting blessed salt over my doors, and the practice was compared to that of a Navajo Shaman. I don't mind the attack, but I thought you would enjoy my response.) 

To Jesuitical graduate of Boston College

It seems from your comments you really don't accept the validity of the four Gospels. So let's play science fiction. I ask you to imagine a world in which there is one true living God, who is pure love. And he creates a world out of love. He creates spiritual beings, some fall, some remain faithful to him, and he creates a human race. The first parents of the human race sin and lose their status as friends of this God. 

Now this God forms a people -- let's call them Israelites or Jews  -- they are just a little tribe wandering in the desert, but he decides he wants to work with this tribe exclusively because this God delights to work with nothing. We call them the chosen people. Throughout hundreds of years of history he works with this tribe, performs incredible miracles, sends them prophets, teaches them right from wrong, gives them a huge land to settle against incredible odds. He promises their ancestor -- let's call him Abraham -- that he will make his descendants as numerous as the stars! While all the other peoples of the time disappear from the face of the earth the Jews are still a cohesive race thousands of years later. In fact, this God made the Jews as numerous as the stars in the sky -- just like he promised. The other peoples of the time had their own gods, but we do not remember the names of those gods, nothing about them or their peoples unless they show up in a movie or a comic book. 

But the God of the Jews is still worshipped several thousand years after His first self-revelation to Abraham wandering in the desert. This is a clue that this God actually exists and affects events in this world. I mean what are the odds that some nobody in the desert thousands of years ago would predict his God would make his descendants as numerous as the stars and then have it come true! 

Dropping out of the fictional script for a minute, I get chills when I see the Jews in my neighborhood walking to Synagogue on Saturday. Same people, same beliefs, a living witness that The God who spoke to the man Abraham exists. He’s not a figment of Abraham’s imagination, nor a figment of my imagination. But  I haven’t seen any ancient Macedonians going to Church. Nope. No Babylonians building towers either. Never met a guy from Media, Parthia. The Hittites as a cohesive group disappeared from the face of the earth in 8^th Century BC. Haven’t met any of them. Wouldn’t recall them at all except they are mentioned in the Bible. But Jews, another ancient people, I have met in the dentist’s office.

And the Jews kept a record of their dealings with God. Now if you thought God was talking to you, wouldn’t you keep good records, faithful records, records that so often are confirmed by archaeological evidence?

The Jews watched God work with them and they concluded nothing happens accidentally, everything is gifted providentially. So the events of their lives told them what their God was like, what He liked to do. And God’s viewpoint was so different than man’s. We really have a hard time grasping it. “Love your enemies?” (hinted at the in Old Testament and made manifest in the New.) Come on who could invent that stuff. They must have been smoking something.  The Jews' record of history told them their God cared for them, and if they trusted in Him, they would prosper. When they forgot him and worshipped other gods, they did not prosper. It is a factual historical record that they were carried off by the barbarians numerous times because they failed to be faithful to the One True God.

Finally, God showed why he picked the Jews in the first place. It wasn’t because they were better than the rest of the human race. No, he planned to send His only Son to become one of them, to be born a Jew. The Jews were prepared over thousands of years by God Himself to receive Jesus as their Messiah, to recognize him when he arrived. That little Jewish virgin in Nazareth would not have known what to say or do when an angel appeared to her. When he told her she would be the mother of God, she would have had no context in which to respond -- if her own people had not kept a faithful record of God’s dealings with them. And that record included a prophecy – one that was completely fulfilled: “The Virgin shall be with Child.”

It was foretold again that God’s Son would suffer and die so that mankind might be reconciled to God. Scripture is God’s self-revelation. It is a record of how God slowly revealed himself to man and then sent his only Son to speak for Him.

Well the rest of the story is the Son dies for all mankind, not just Jews, and as a result we can share a restored friendship with this God, who truthfully told Abraham his descendants would be as numerous as the stars. This Son, who had all the power of God Himself because as He explained, He and the Father are One, this Son took a group of fishermen and tax collectors --- very low on the totem pole at the time of Christ – and made them his disciples. He taught them right from wrong. He worked miracles. He forgave sins. (Some Jews crucified him for it because they knew only God can forgive sins.) But this Son was God, so he did not act wrongly. Jesus chose these low-caste men as his disciples because like his Father in heaven, He delighted to work with nothing.  This is a historical record. Nothing contradicts this happened.

Now Mohammed never healed anybody. Buddha wasn’t resurrected from the dead because we have his teeth. Hindus don’t respect low-caste people. They regard them as lower than cattle. The evil gods of the Aztecs who killed hundreds of thousands of people in one week  -- they never performed one true miracle. Maybe parlor tricks like the magicians of the ancient Pharaoh whom Moses confronted.   But there is no record of even that!

Jesus went on to make his apostles into priests. “Whoever’s sins you forgive shall be forgiven.” This is a real divine power. Only God can forgive sins!

“You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.” Christ was so literal that Peter’s bones are under the altar where the Pope says Mass in Rome. But Christ also gave Peter the keys to the kingdom.

 And as revealed in the Book of Acts, all this power given to the apostles was handed down to the next generation and the next because Jesus, who was God, said He would be with the Church until the end of time. So every Catholic priest today was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by a bishop who was ordained by one of the 12 apostles. Christ’s power is handed down to the priests in each succeeding generation. Now when Jesus Christ, true God and true man, took mud and rubbed it on the blind man’s eyes, he wasn’t superstitious. He had the power to heal and He chose to do it through humble things like dirt, spit and water. We need physical signs. Jesus could have made lightening come out of his hands and healed the blind man that way, but he chose to work with dirt, spit and water. 

He is no way to be compared to an Indian shaman and Kachina dolls! The Catholic priest is another Christ. He has the power to expel demons. He can heal with God’s own power in the Sacrament of the Sick; he can forgive sins, a power given to him by Jesus Christ Himself. He can explain God’s Word, God’s own self revelation to mankind. He can change lowly bread and lowly wine into the Body Blood Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. When this ordinary man with supernatural powers, blesses salt, Christ Himself blesses the salt. The power in the lowly salt is not my superstitious belief. The power in the lowly blessed salt is God’s power. God didn’t give this power to the Church because he thought we were all so special. He gave it to us because He delights to work with nothing. Now if I didn’t understand this, and I thought the salt itself had power, I would be a superstitious fool.

Navajo healing ceremonies have no self-revelation by God that is clearly and historically recognized by a large portion of humanity. There are no Navajo prophesies going back thousands of years that any fool could see came true.  In fact if you examine every other major religion in the world, you do not find any recognizable signs of the religion’s validity. You find man’s fertile imagination at work or worse a demon’s involvement.

Since you were Jesuit educated you probably know that a Gnostic rejects God’s revealed truth in the Scripture and the oral Tradition of the Church. The Gnostic instead looks for secret knowledge. They do hunger for Truth, but truth on their terms. And the punishment God has given to the Gnostic is they never find the Truth -- unless they stop searching and turn to God Himself.

 Jesus said, “I AM THE TRUTH.” There is no substitute.

THE PRINCE IS (not) NAKED

by Susan Fox 

Hans Christian Andersen must be rolling in his grave.

If you have had to go through the tabloid gauntlet at a grocery checkout line recently, you’re probably aware that a certain British prince enjoyed a naked romp in Las Vegas in August.

This is  an opposite tale to one Andersen wrote in which an emperor is tricked by two weavers into parading naked in front of his subjects, thinking he is wearing fine clothes invisible only to the incompetent.

For Prince Harry was parading naked, but he wasn’t … naked, that is.

Now it may have appeared to his companions that he was naked, but in fact in a spiritual sense he was choosing … not to be naked. We all do it. We try to avoid being naked before God.  There are many different ways. My favorite is eating brownies (I’m diabetic). Some people escape by playing computer games, gambling, drinking alcohol, and adultery. Oh, and don’t forget the great anesthetizer -- shopping!

But the prince was able to beat being naked before God by actually being naked!

The state of being naked in the Presence of God is a great suffering – not willingly undertaken for fun. Look at poor Adam and Eve after they ate of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.

“Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew they were naked.” (Gen. 3:7) Ouch.

So the first thing they did was sew fig leaves together and make themselves an apron. Then they hid.

Now these were the people who walked with God every afternoon – naked. They were a happy pair. They loved being with God -- naked. But they ate that bad fruit, and then when they heard God coming, they hid.

God was the big Sugar Daddy who created their entire world and brought them into existence. If you read the book of Genesis up to this point, you see all the love and preparation that went into those seven “days” of creation: how He made earth and seas, stars and sun, all sorts of living things, fruit-bearing plants and animals, and God saw it was good. It is good. We can see it’s good.

How tenderly God brought the animals to Adam to name. Then He gave him a lovely woman to be his companion. Adam had all he could eat. He lacked nothing. But whoops! God forgot to tell him he was naked! The snake was quite happy to provide misinformation: “You will be like gods!” (But he forgot the disclaimer: You will feel naked before God)

It must have really hurt God when He came looking for the man and woman He loved and found them hiding from Him.   “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen 3:11) Ouch.

Yes, being naked before God hurts -- even today.

I think that’s why so many people avoid it.

But God has given us the power to clothe ourselves in the Holy Spirit -- in the waters of Baptism and Repentance.

God so loved the world – the whole world -- that He gave His only Son. In the Prologue of the Gospel of John, it recounts how Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, came into the world, “yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not.” (John 1:10-11) (Hint: they didn’t want him to notice they were naked!)

“But to all who received him, who believed in His name, he gave power to become children of God.” (Gen 1:12 God gave us the POWER to become His family, to walk naked with God as a child without shame and in all joyfulness. This birth into God’s family takes place, not by blood, not by the will of the flesh nor by the will of man, but by God Himself. We Christians celebrate it in the Sacrament of Baptism. And Catholics are able to receive forgiveness after Baptism in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Childlike joy and humility is the fruit of both sacraments.

I was blessed to be able to baptize a dying man last December. He was a Vietnam War veteran, who had suffered much, and besides being physically sick, he had a lot of emotional pain, and he said this was the hardest to endure. We used to have contests over who had the most doctors. But he couldn’t understand why I was so happy when I was sick too. I thought about it, and decided it must be my relationship with Jesus Christ and the fact that I regularly receive His life in the Sacraments of the Catholic Church. So we baptized John. Goodness, what a shock. His whole demeanor changed. You could see it on his face – joy. He died three months later.

But even if you are a baptized Christian or go to confession regularly, you  still dive for the bushes when sin happens. One minute you manage to do something God wants and then next minute you are losing your temper with the store clerk.

I had a good Catholic friend, and she would turn the statues of Jesus and Mary to the wall so they couldn’t look at her. “Sorry Jesus and Mary, I wasn’t good today,” she’d say. Another friend has nightmares about publicly “being naked” in the Church during Sunday services.  Ha, ha, I wonder what that is about?

I do often suffer from the “dive in the bushes” syndrome when God comes around. So a priest reminded me of John’s Gospel where Jesus announces, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6:51)

Of course, people were thinking like the natural man:  “Is He going to give us his dead flesh to eat? Eew.” Many people stopped following him after that, and Jesus asked the 12 apostles, “Will you also go away?” (John 6:67)

Dear human St. Peter, who will deny Jesus three times, weep bitterly afterwards, and then after the Resurrection remind the Lord, “You know I love you!” (Three times no less.), is the one who answered Our Lord.

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!” (John  6:68) Peter said.

With that advice, I found that there is no other place to go. There is no true happiness in that brownie, none in shopping, nor in computer games, and least of all at a drunken party in Las Vegas.  Jesus is the Lover who covers our nakedness and misery. Only Jesus.

I found that at my Baptism, He gave me the Power to be a Child of God. I found that when I show him in prayer my naked thoughts, my naked actions, the naked feelings of my heart, no matter how bad they are --- He makes up for what is lacking in me. He closes the gap.

So put on your holy garments.  

And abide in Him. 

Don't Miss Lawrence Fox's poignant reflection on the West's Response to the Beheading of American Catholic Journalist James Foley  LAMENT FOR WESTERN HUMANITY