Aurora Borealis

103 Q. What do you mean by grace?

A. By grace I mean a supernatural gift of God bestowed on us, through the merits of Jesus Christ, for our salvation.

“Supernatural,” that is, above nature. “A gift”; something, therefore, that God does not owe us. He owes us nothing, strictly speaking. Health, talents, and such things are natural gifts, and belong to our nature as men; but grace is something above our nature, given to our soul. God gives it to us on account of the love He has for His Son, Our Lord, who merited it for us by dying for us. “Merits.” A merit is some excellence or goodness which entitles one to honor or reward. Grace is a help we get to do something that will be pleasing to God. When there is anything in our daily works that we cannot do alone, we naturally look for help; for example, to lift some heavy weight is only a natural act, not a supernatural act, and the help we need for it is only natural help. But if we are going to do something above and beyond our nature, and cannot do it alone, we must not look for natural, but for supernatural help; that is, the help must always be like the work to be done. Therefore all spiritual works need spiritual help, and spiritual help is grace.

From An Explanation of the Baltimore Catechism.

We went to our church’s baptism preparation class a few weeks back on account of the child Mrs. Tldz is due to birth shortly. We wanted additional clarity after the class on some of the basic terms involved in the sacrament. When you’re looking for concise definitions of Catholic ideas, the Baltimore Catechism is often a great place to start. (When you’re looking for inspiring elaborations on those ideas using the long, varied and rich tradition of the church, then turn to the more recent Catechism, by way of contrast.)

Everything looked good at today’s appointment with the midwife - and the perky midwife intern.  Apparently, the Bean is currently curled up in a rather sideways position, feet on my left side, head on my right.  But I guess that’s a relatively small rotation to a head down position, so hopefully that will happen in the next couple of weeks.  Sideways helps explain why I’ve been feeling movement where I have.

I think Garbanzo may have been a little sleepy when we went in.  Heartbeat was initially only 140.  After she used the doppler for a while, it went back up to its more normal 150.  “Hey, it’s that noisy machine again!”  Poor baby.

In two weeks I have the group B strep test done (let’s hope for a negative!), and then I think I start going in every week.

Now that Mr. Tldz’s shoulder is feeling mostly better, the changing table assembly is in progress, hopefully to be finished tonight.  Then we tackle the crib.  (Poor Addy must be beside herself with the state of the nursery.)  And there’s lots of baby laundry to be washed to be ready.  So you hang out until at least the 18th of November, okay ‘Banzo?