Birth, death, Black Friday, and the Faith

Click here, If you are having trouble viewing this email.         "The baby!" "The baby!" cries Eva, climbing over me to grab the clanging phone on my side of the bed.   I glance at the clock: 3:45 a.m. "Get up and get dressed," she says, hanging up the phone. “Theresa's contractions are ten minutes apart and it takes us an hour to get there." * Here in New Hampshire, roads less traveled are narrow and treacherous, especially in winter. As we rush down them, my age-dimmed eyes increase our danger in the pitch black night. Yet I won’t slow down. Labor waits for no man, and John and Theresa can’t leave for the hospital until we arrive to watch their kids. I press on the pedal . . . and then remember last week’s accident: on a dark road much like this one, a deer leaped into my path and smashed our van.        Where was that lovely creature going so nimbly in the dark? To find a doe? Or food and water? * I recall the lines that begin Psalm 42: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. I slow the van, wary of ice, recalling that I, too, once longed for God. . . . Back then, when I established Sophia Institute Press to publish solid Catholic books, John and Theresa were just five years old. In an hour or so, their fifth child will be born! Where have the years gone? And where, in a quarter century of serving God, has my longing for Him gone? After two decades and two million Catholic books, never knowing whether we'll have to close our doors tomorrow, I'm broken. Like that deer, I've been struck down, even as I went forth boldly, seeking the flowing streams I longed for. Hurrying down these treacherous roads in the night's blackest moments, Psalm 42 makes more sense to me than all four Gospels: Why hast thou forgotten me? Why go I in mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? My adversaries taunt me, they say to me continually, ”Where is your God?" Back then, whips and chains and scorn and slavery oppressed the Psalmist; today, oppression swells forth from a world without God, glutted with ads and sales and shoppers shoving at 4 a.m. Can our Catholic books compete with this? Should we even try? * I hit the brakes, unprepared for the sharp bend in the road, jarred back into the moment.  When we left home forty minutes ago, contractions were ten minutes apart. How close are they now? Five minutes? Two? Hold on little baby! Though life is rough right now, I tell you that God has not abandoned you. Do you find that hard to believe when the contractions squeeze you? Consider this: the instant God called you into being -- literally at the very instant of your conception -- He gave you the home that for nine months has fed you and warmed you and cradled you softly. In that first instant, God clothed you, not with the cotton worn by ordinary folks, nor with the purple and gold of kings, but with a garment richer and more precious: the living body of another human person, your mother! When later this morning you lay aside this privileged garment, He'll give you a whole world . . . a world filled with light and life and love and beauty! * Nor, I find, as I tell you this, has He abandoned me. As I hurry down these backroads, lamenting the glut and clutter of these days, God -- through you, little child -- has led my thoughts to Him again, granting my weary soul a glimpse of the hem of His garment . . . which I just touched. * Eva interrupts my thoughts to note that I just drove past John and Theresa’s house! We arrive in time, and, a couple hours later, Audrey Elizabeth is born: my eleventh grandchild. * Psalm 43 begins this way: Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people. Lord, I don’t ask vindication, but my colleagues and I live and work among people rendered ungodly by their addiction to stuff; and my cause (which is Your cause) is threatened by their indifference to it. That first Christmas, Joseph found room for You in a stable. Is there room for You today in the frenzy at Target or Best Buy?   Is there room in this Black Friday culture for our Catholic Press? * In truth, I'm not qualified to answer that question . . . nor is it my place to do so. No, I didn't storm Wal-Mart or Circuit City at 4 a.m., but at that precise hour just a few days earlier, I was almost as ungodly, rushing down country roads, wondering the while whether I believe in God, or care for Him anymore. As in those early morning hours God showed Himself to me through Audrey, So He can, if He chooses, show Himself to souls drowning in possessions and rushing to get more. In an instant, He can lead these souls, struggling under the weight of their purchases, to discover, with St. Augustine, that "our hearts are restless until they rest in You." He can prompt each of them to kneel down and pray: "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God." * To remind me of this fact and keep me humble, I keep here on my desk the antler that broke off when my van hit the deer. Like Jesus, he did not die in vain.   * So is there room in this Black Friday culture for our Catholic press? There's not only room, but an obligation on our part -- yours and mine -- to ensure that when these souls discover that it's God they long for, there will still be available faithful Catholic books to help them come to know Him as He is. And not only these souls, but Audrey and the little ones who will come after us: our children, our children's children, and their children, too, so that the light of Christ will find ever a new birth in human hearts. Hear me, now: Rather than causing us despair, our own doubts and these Black Friday scenes call us to redouble our efforts to make Christ known in our day, always remembering Mother Teresa's admonition: "God does not call us to be successful, but to be faithful." * Chastened now, I hereby resolve to do just that, but I need your help, and I need it now. Not only are we broke (with just enough money to pay salaries this week), our landlord has decided to refurbish our shabby building, forcing us in just a few weeks to leave the modest space we've leased for fifteen years now. There will be countless expenses, small and large, for which we have no money. We'll have to move desks, computers, dozens of file cabinets, many bookshelves, the phone system, all our warehouse and shipping equipment, and more than a hundred pallets of Catholic books, plus countless other pieces of equipment we use to publish our books (which now number over two million!). If this untimely move costs much at all or closes us for more than a few days, we'll be ruined. No more will souls be able to find the fine classics we publish by St. Francis de Sales, St. Thomas Aquinas, Bishop Fulton Sheen, St. Robert Bellarmine, Fr. Lawrence Lovasik, and many other solid Catholics. Yet from these holy works spring the flowing streams, the living waters, that souls long for. We must not let them perish! * Will you help? Will you help us, and help the thousands of good Catholics who already rely on the books we publish? And help even the rowdy crowds shoving their way into malls at midnight, some of whom, even now, are beginning their turn to God? * To catch up on our overdue bills and fund our move in January, we need to raise $50,000 immediately. With a need that large, no contribution is too small. So please give what you can now to our non-profit apostolate through our Paypal account. Or go to our website (www.sophiainstitute.com) and contribute there when you purchase some of our fine books as gifts for Christmas. Every dollar helps. Thank you, and please pray for us . . . and for Audrey. Sincerely yours, John L. Barger, Publisher Sophia Institute Press 1-800-888-9344 Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108 USA 1-603-641-9344       To unsubscribe please click here