Twilight's Beloved

“This my Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.”

I did it. I went to see the movie, Twilight, five times.

There really isn’t anything else to see at the theater, so my husband and I checked the list and just kept going back to see Edward Cullen and Bella Swan fall in love again. Normally, I will never watch a movie more than once, but both of us enjoyed it.

My husband liked it because of the acting and the music, and because he loves me. And I liked it – well, because of the acting, the music and the well-done romance.

As time progressed, the audience became increasingly female. They hooted when Robert Pattinson made his entrance as the handsome, but conflicted vampire hopelessly in love with the very human Bella. “I just don’t think I have the strength to stay away from you anymore,” Edward tells Bella in a husky voice. “Then don’t,” she responds with tears in her eyes. My husband loved Edward’s line when he tells Bella she is his particular brand of heroin. If I hadn’t laughed, I think he would have said, I was his brand of heroin. We’ve been married 25 years and I am 55 years old, so that’s good news.

The last time I saw it, I overheard a woman say it was the eighth time she had seen the movie. Another time, I was in the ladies room after the movie and I overheard a teenager longingly say, “I have got to find myself a vampire.”

I am reminded of the time, my husband, son and I went to see, “Wall-E,” the little robot who was in love with the robot Eva. She would say, “Wall-E,” with a cute and longing inflection and he would say, “Eva,” the same way. I went into the ladies room (as usual) after the movie, and there were a ton of seven-year-old girls imagining themselves to be Eva, all saying “Wall-E” with the same inflection.

The hearts of those young girls were stirred by Wall-E’s incredible fidelity to Eva through space, time and difficult circumstances.

The character Edward Cullen shows the same fidelity to Bella. If you read the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer on which the movie was based, you will find that Bella has two lovers, Edward and Jacob Black. The second movie – yet to be released -- will be about the Jacob affair. I found the key to the Twilight phenomenon in Meyer’s books.

The author created three races of men. Human men and women are unfaithful and get divorced. Vampires fall in love once, marry and then are incapable of changing, and werewolves “imprint” on their beloved, and are incapable of cheating. Bella is lucky as she is loved, truly loved by two men incapable of being unfaithful.

Clearly the author is trying to set up relationships for Bella that won’t fail.

Isn’t that what every woman longs for in her heart – a love that will last into eternity?

Yes, but . . . It’s true the whole Twilight Phenomenon is a sad commentary on the state of our culture in which marriages so easily dissolve into divorce.

But those seven-year-olds crying “Wall-E” and those 18-year-olds hungering for their vampire lover also reveal the deepest heart of man. Men and women all desire a Love that really lasts into eternity.

I have a love that will last until death. I don’t walk into the ladies room and wish I had my own vampire. I have him. He’s 52, bald, funny, good-looking and good. I’ve been happily married 25 years to my best friend. My husband is romantic and sexy. There is nothing missing in our relationship.

But I do have an emptiness in my heart that won’t be filled until I am in a permanent and eternal relationship with God Who is Love. That is what the poets and theologians call the state of heaven. All the saints experienced this emptiness profoundly. “On the very heights of the spiritual life, indeed, we feel that our desires are not satisfied – not because God is not enough, but because we do not yet possess him fully,” wrote Archbishop Luis M. Martinez in the spiritual classic, The Sanctifier, “because we have not yet captured him in a final and perfect way.”

“For this reason those most intimately united with God, the saints, have suffered the unspeakable torment of desire. That martyrdom, according to St. Teresa (of Avila) who endured so much of it, is the greatest anguish that can be felt on earth.”

Most of us try not to suffer that anguish. We avoid the cross. And we do that is by reaching for our other little “loves” – brownies, romance novels, television, work, computer games, pornography, shopping, even our own spouse can become an idol. Sex – made by God and good in itself – can become the escape from our suffering. We are all dying of love for God, but most of us cannot recognize it. We color our hair, tattoo our body, redecorate our house, but never recognize the One we really want. Not understanding this, many people marry, find the relationship does not completely satisfy them, and so then go looking for another relationship that does not completely satisfy them. No human relationship will satisfy them.

Our hearts are restless until they rest in You, O God. (St. Augustine).

Or as the Donut Man says on EWTN, only God can fill the donut-sized hole in my heart.

Martha discovered this secret when she complained to Jesus that she had to do all the cooking, while her sister, Mary, sat at Christ’s feet. Jesus told her, “Martha, Martha, you are busy about many things. Mary has chosen the better part.” Martha was busy in her mind as well as with her hands.

We have to work, but we can work and “sit” at the same time. There’s a little room in our heart where we can sit, “Be still and know that I am God.”

“The better part” makes this vale of tears a little easier to bear until we abandon that “dusty little threshing ground that makes us mad for our sins.” (Dante’s Paradiso)

And the good news? We are beloved of God. He loves us with a more perfect and divine love than any werewolf, vampire, man, woman, child, cat or goldfish.

He revealed His infinite passion for us by sending his Son, to die on a cross for us. "For God so loved the world that He sent His Son." "And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

Man, woman, child come to know your Bridegroom, Jesus Christ.

Open the door. He is knocking.

Here's to God laughing

“To Err is Human; To Forgive Divine”
By Susan Fox
Love your enemies -- who would believe that such a basic tenet of Christianity would convert the son of a founding member of Hamas, the ruling party of Palestine recognized for its brutal suicide bombs and other attacks against Israel.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, age 30, came to the United States two years ago, but only recently made the decision to go public with his conversion to Christianity. His famous Muslim family back in the Middle East is really suffering because of what he has done, but he came to my attention at Christmas because all my Catholic friends are talking about him.
“Hamas, they are using civilians’ lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate,” Mr. Yousef said in an interview last summer. After a chance encounter with a British missionary nine years ago, Mr. Yousef began secretly reading the Bible, stuck by the central tenet “love your enemies.”
Now as a Christian living in San Diego, Calif., Mr. Yousef hopes to found an international organization to educate young people about Islam and preach a message of “forgiveness,” the only way – he says -- the endless cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians can be broken.
A relationship with Jesus Christ changed Mr. Yousef’s heart and gave him the courage to publicly declare his belief that faith in Jesus is our only hope for an end to the violence that plagues the Middle East.
It is a great theme for the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, which was celebrated by the Church this past Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI explained that this feast points to the “everydayness” of a personal relationship with the Lord. For Baptism – by desire or by formal sacrament – marks the beginning of this transforming relationship.
“Through the immersion in the waters of the Jordan, Jesus united Himself to us,” the pope said. Baptism is like the "bridge that [God] has built between him and us, the road by which he is accessible to us [...] the gateway to hope and, at the same time, the sign that indicates the road we must take in an active and joyous way to meet him and feel loved by him."
Mr Yousef is on the same track: "I have met politicians. I have met presidents and prime ministers. I have met all the leaders of that (Middle East) region," Mr. Yousef said. "None of them have a magical solution for this issue. They are leading people but they don't know where they are going.”
"Jesus is not going to give them a political solution, but He has changed me and He can change those people to a better people. He can teach them how to forgive, how to love," he said. "Everybody on both sides is hurt -- not only Israelis, not only Palestinians. Now, as it is, there is no hope for them but Jesus. It's that simple."
Now we see the power of the Word of God. For in reading Holy Scripture, Mr.Yousef has been digging deep into the mind of God. And the conclusions he has drawn show that he has been imbibing deeply in the Rivers of Living Water.
I am amazed to see the Holy Spirit speaking so loudly all over the world. His voice is showing up in the lives of ordinary people in every nation, religion and culture. When things look really grim in the government and economy, we have to remember that all God has to do is laugh and the evil plans of men will be brought to naught.
Mr Yousef and his Muslim family is suffering persecution for his public revelation of his Christian conversion. His father – now in an Israeli prison -- has so far refused to disown him as that would give jihadists permission to kill his son. It’s interesting that his plight has been indirectly championed by Pope Benedict, who in negotiating a meeting with leaders of Islam is demanding that the topic be religious freedom. The Imams want to discuss "love of God and love of neighbor," but the pope is holding out for religious freedom. I asked my husband, why that was because it seemed to me that the topic, "love of God and love of neighbor," would lead to a discussion of religious freedom. But my husband said that the Muslim faith does not really understand those concepts, and they definitely would not conclude that love of neighbor means religious freedom. In fact, the opposite. We are lucky to have such a smart pope. Here’s to God laughing.

Rivers of Living Water

by Susan Fox

On Monday, Dec. 8, 2008, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Dong Yun Yoon, age 37, lost his wife, his mother-in-law and two young daughters, ages 2 months and 15 months, when a military jet crashed into his house in San Diego, killing all four people.

Instead of railing again God or blaming the pilot who safely ejected, the Korean immigrant encouraged everyone to pray for the pilot so he would not “suffer from this accident.”

The man lost his entire family, but his only question to reporters was how should he go on with life after this terrible loss? “Tell me how to do it,” he said. May God give him the strength. He certainly showed us how to live as a Christian. Mr. Yoon is a Methodist – very familiar with the “Our Father.” He not only knows the words, but he also lives them. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And in his great moment of forgiveness and grief, Mr. Yoon saved his own soul, and probably many others.

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, known as God’s Secretary of Divine Mercy, was told by Our Lord that God’s greatest attribute is His Mercy. Perhaps it is this attribute that is the hardest for many of us to understand and imitate, but Mr. Yoon undoubtedly showed us the way.

So if you were waiting for a big hammer to drop on your head for your faults and failings, don’t hold your breath because God also said that the greatest sinner had more right to his mercy than the just man. We have only to reach out for God to receive this gift of mercy.

This reaching is done with our heart. This week, I was privileged to meet a soul who had served God her whole life. She is dying of cancer, but suffers terribly because she can no longer actively go out and do works of service for God. Plus she can’t remember the words of the prayers she has recited her whole life, the Our Father and the Hail Mary. God doesn’t look at it the way she does. He sees her desire, her thirst for Him. She wants to pray. She thinks she can’t, but in the very act of wanting, she prays. Desire for God is the highest form of prayer. Jesus taught us this prayer on the cross, when He said, “I thirst.” But perhaps because He is God, His thirst was the mirror image of ours. He thirsts for us. We thirst for Him.

After He met the Samaritan woman at the well, who confessed she had no husband because she had in fact had had many, his apostles came and tried to make Him eat food. “Rabbi eat,” they said. But Jesus had just pulled in a big fish, the Samaritan woman herself and all the people from her town who came to see Him because she said, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have done.” So Jesus told the disciples, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” They wondered if someone had brought Him food while they were gone. But Jesus explained: “My food is to do the will of the One Who sent Me and to finish His work.” Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in Jesus because of the word of the woman who testified: “He told me my sins.”

And in fact, while we were still in our sins, God so loved the world that He sent His Only Son. That is what we are waiting for this Christmas -- the tiny infant Word, Who was made flesh and dwelt among us.

The first to receive God’s Word was the Blessed Virgin Mary on whose feast day, Mr. Yoon’s family was killed. “Be it done to me according to your word,” she told the angel when he announced that she would become the mother of the “Son of the Most High God.” The Catholic Liturgy of the Hours during this time of waiting for the Birth of Jesus talks about the conception of Jesus in His mother’s womb, making a reference to the fruitfulness of a gentle rain.

“May the Holy One from heaven come down like gentle rain; may the earth burst into blossom and bear the tender Savior.”

I grew up in Washington State where we have very gentle and constant rain. I remember my mother used to look out the window at the rain, and say, “Isn’t God good?”

Isn’t He good? Look what He has given us this Christmas – Himself, coming like gentle rain into the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Himself available anytime anywhere at any moment you ask. Just ask. Be thirsty. “Let anyone who thirsts come to Me and drink.” (John 7:37)

May God bless you during this Christmas Season.

Susan Fox