Heb11:33 'It was through his faith that Noah, when he had been warned by God of something that had never been seen before, felt a holy fear and built an Ark to save his family.'
An Ark was a vessel or perhaps a more accurate definition would be a vehicle by which God protected his people . Noah acted out of faith and built the first Ark according to God's instructions and his household were preserved during the deluge that destroyed wicked mankind . The second Ark saved Moses from pharo's instruction to drown all the hebrew male infants, it was the basket that floated amid the bullrushes.
The third Ark, was that of the covenant. It was a wooden chest surmounted by two winged angels . Inside it were the the law in the Torah , the rod of Aaron the high priest and a vessel containing the heavenly manna that sustained the tribe of Israel in the wilderness.
The fourth Ark and the last Ark mentioned in the bible appeared alongside our Lady in the book of the Apocalypse .Our Lady herself contained next to her heart for nine months the trinitarian essences found in the ark of the covenant, Jesus the word made flesh, the fullfillment of the Law, High Priest and Bread of Heaven.
THE RAIN
This time the flood is invisible to the naked eye, it is invisible because it is spiritual . The casualties are not corpses foating on the surface of the water but souls sinking into the depths of hell.
Fleeing from occassion of sin has never been as difficult, and the opportunities to excercise our sinfull capacity have never been as great as they are today . A generation ago if you wanted to be seriously corrupted you had to put in effort and take risks . You would physically have to go to the seedy part of town to access any form of extracurricular material to fuel the fires of your fallen nature . Also you might be seen, your cover blown and your reputation left in tatters . To be corrupted today, to experience a diabolical banquet that Nero himself could only have dreamed of is as today as easy as turning on a switch .Twenty four hours a day Sodom and Gommorah are available via satellite, the world wide web and mobile phone technology .10 minutes of unrestricted internet use can permanently imprint onto your memory banks a series of images so dark and so powerful that they will haunt you to the grave . We live in an age were the contents of the minds of the child asleep upstairs and the stranger we meet on the street are unguessable.
Many of us when faced with a growing awareness of issues that are so disturbing as to seriously awaken the conscience, place those issues into a box and shove them far to the rear of our phyche maked 'do not open', and there they remain, unopened and unquestioned . How few Mums or Dads bother to enquire what their own child might have seen, heard or done in their waking day. Parents are too scared and embarassed to pry into the hearts of the very ones that God had chosen them to shepherd . There is a sign hanging on Johnny's bedroom door and seen in Johnny's defiant eyes , it reads 'Parent's Keep Out ' . This is the new relationship that fits the modern individualist family model . Home has become a fast food youth hostel , the parents mere vending machines.
Chances are if you are reading this magazine that you are growing in your awareness of just bad things have become and at the same time increasing in frustration as to what to do about it. The answer is to do as Noah did and build for your family an Ark .
The most efficacious step you can make immediately, before you can even consider building your family an Ark is to stop watching terrestial or cable TV. Use videos or dvd's if you have to but only ones that you have watched yourself . Dont ever trust or assume the contents are acceptable even if the classification says so!
TV addiction could be one of the hardest chains for you to break, but it is at the same time the one that promises the most freedom. This step will force you to fill the time vacuum with family interaction . The difficulty in maintaining any kind of positive interaction will show you just how much of a virtual life you had been living .You will feel like a shipwrecked captain sitting on the beach with his crew lamenting 'what do we do now?' Answer, get building!
First Plank
HOMESCHOOL
Institutional schooling is just that , it institutionalises , no major issues with that especially if that school fullfills the third pillar of formation behind Home and Church . The problem today is that most children spend all their formational time either in the classroom , the playground or on the streets .True home time is not time merely spent in the house, upstairs alone with the PC and playstation, but time spent with the real family of mum, dad, sisters and brothers . Quality time is slowtime and plenty of it . Not neglect followed by bucket loads of material indulgence, that can only double the disorientation . Leading the child to seek 'things' to fill the gap that serial desertion leaves in their hearts . Some well meaning and also some not so well meaning commentators when faced with the issue of homeschooling cry 'What about socialisation.' Socialiastion for most homeschoolers is precisely the reason they homeschool, they dont want their child to be socialy processed by the prevailing mores of today . Socialisation can be both positive and negative, it is negative when it contradicts both traditional family values and christian morality . The truth today is that the formational climate within the school enviroment and indeed outside it in popular culture, is so toxic to the christian faith that parents have to attempt to construct a counter culture and alternative enviroment themselves . Indeed socialising is so important that a good deal of homeschool time must include visiting families that reflect , accept or at the very least not reject the parents values. A childs need to feel normal and experience peer interaction is vital and indeed a natural requisite of any childhood .Give your child what you know is good , give them their childhood.
Education means preparation for life, for a christian, life is a preparation for the life here after. Put Christ first . Homeschooling allows you to do just that.
Second plank
HOMESTEAD
A mortgage is a usurous ball and chain, you are it's slave. Free yourself !
The modern mentality of the immedite rather than the long term, the ME and NOW philosophy, has blinded so many to scramble after a mirage of 'quality life'. So much so that most people would rather live a life of debt , just to give others the impression that they have made it in the game of life. A mortgage is a bit like wearing make up , it gives the false impression on the outside of what the truth is on the inside .The truth is that such is the state of borrowing in the West that even a modest down turn in the fortunes of the economy will result in mass home repossession , displaced people and homelessness . A couple of wheelbarrow loads of Argos trinkets being the reflection of your true value in life.
A pearl of great price in todays temporal world could be a caravan on a quater of an acre in the countryide that you own, rather than a five bedroom detatched on a housing estate that you squat in. The mind conversion that you must go through to understand is this .Give the long term future, both for yourself and your family, your immediate attention . You stand today as one link in your family chain . What you do or not do today you pass on to your children for good or bad . Not so very long ago people understood this, they knew that judgement would follow the works of their life, and a greater part of that judgement would fall on their stewardship of the children that God had entrusted to their keeping.
Today's Godlessness has produced a mindset that cannot fathom that anything that happens after death can be of any consideration in the here and now, and that includes what happens to the next generation, the present is all.
Time for them is their feast, they keep it for themselves . Their children like so many little Lazarus's, living on the scraps of the few minutes they can get from the table of the day.
Abandoned homesteads are still plentiful in Ireland . A run down cottage and an acre or two can still be bought for below 100.000 euro and some can still be found below 50.000 euro. A mobile home costing below 3.000 could be found to live in while the cottage is made habitable again . Most of these old cottages have one or two outbuildings and some even have the old crane still in the fire place!
Owning and living in one of these humble cottages used to be counted a blessing, for the generation where every new luxury becomes overnight a necessity this blessing would feel like a scourge.
If you have had a mortgage even for just a few short years then chances are you have some precious equity stored up .This equity could buy you your freedom, not just yours but your children's as well . A bonded servant works for a master, a serf gives half his crop to the lord of the land . By becoming poor in the eyes of the world , by being a fool for Christ, you can become a free man . Free from debt , free from the worry of loosing your 'home', free from the yoke that says you must continue to do work that you hate just to pay the bills, free to spend more time with your family. If you live in the town or city, free from the fear of crime, the threat of drugs, gangs, and a climate of immodesty, free to spend time walking in the garden and listening to God. . Make life your work , rather than work your life.
Third plank
HOMEWORKING
So you have your children under your wing again, as it was meant to be, you have your half acre, ruined cottage and 2 berth second hand caravan. First give thanks to God, you have squeezed through the eye of the needle!
Now how to I feed and clothe my family?
Attempt to be as self sufficient as you can , start a vegetable garden and compost heap! Try to live frugaly and economically, try stretching and saving a pound rather than earning a pound .Get some hens and buy your clothes from charity shops. You could half the cost of your shopping trolley simply by buying the stores own in house brands instead of the usual ones . Assuming the property that you are now standing on is in a fairly remote part of Ireland you will not be able to replicate the job situation you had previously . However the job you held previously is a redundant position, you no longer need that size paycheck and with it that sized working week. You need a supplementary income . Part time salaried work carries with it very generous low paid worker benefits, if you work a mere 19 hrs a week these benefits, especially if you have a large family add up to more than you imagine, check them out!
For those who want to break the ties of working for another person altogether, think small business. The devil is in the internet big time, however the technology that assists him in taking so many captive could be at the same time the conduit for keeping your new found freedom.
With ebay and paypal you could start a little craft business, or antiquarian book shop, religious sacramental purveyors etc .Or maybe invest some of your dwindling cash resevoirs into a website or for your ideas to reach a larger public . Another suggestion could be to use your land, specialising in certain organic produce after doing a bit of market research into the gaps in the market place. Alternatvely start a small herd of cattle, many still do it! or rent some acreage if you have it to the forestry . The options are as limited as your imagination . Remember that even if for a while the period of work you do may not be completely to your taste, it is only a supplement and small medicine for the benefits it brings, to both you, your wife and your children, because that medicine buys you each other!
Maybe as the future unravells all the gains of the past , the patterns of the past itself will become ever more relevant .The future for faithfull Catholicism here in Ireland could very easily find itself following the same route as remnant faith groups have done over the centuries particularly in the USA.
The establishment of clusters of homeschooling homesteading families in distinct geographical areas up and down the country, usually within the close proximity of a good orthodox priest who still values the faith in it's entirety or near a parish whose ministry still includes the shepherding of souls. These groups of homesteaders could then attempt to replicate in this communitarian micro climate the set of values that greater society has chosen to abandon.
The Catholic family is itself the original community , it seeks alliance in place of union . These alliances would produce neighbourhoods, not legalistic communities . Indeed these neighbourhoods could very well be the fertile ground whose seed goes on to produce vocations both to holy orders and to holy matrimony.
Let each family build it's own Ark . Let these Arks float together in the tempestuous seas of this spiritual deluge.
Within each of these Arks may we preserve the faith, live the faith and pass on the faith.
'When the son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?', whether alive or dead please God we will have played our part in answering yes.
