by Sr. Adelheid Langmann

Many years ago, I was gifted with the poem/prayer, Remind Me. At the time it was given to me it did
not resonate with me. Years later I was at a point in my life where things were becoming challenging
and spiraling out of my control. My life was changing drastically. My marriage was coming to an end,
my son was grown and living on his own and my great grandmother and great aunt had passed away. I
found myself all alone and lost; I did not know what to do. This was tragic; because all my life I took
care of others and had little time for myself. Now I have to learn to live a different lifestyle; (alone/
independent); something I had no idea about and I was ill prepared for.

As I moved through this phase more and more challenges arose and things seemed to get really dark
for me and I could not see a way through my situation. My oldest sister tried to encourage me, but she
had no idea of the depth of my situation because I did not share it with anyone. I continued living life
and struggling privately. I would search the Bible and read scriptures relating to my pain and emotions
seeking comfort and understanding.

One day I was looking on my bookshelf for something and came across the poem/prayer, Remind Me. I noticed it because the frame was cracked. I read the poem/ prayer and cried. I realized I was not alone and that I did not want to experience or be in despair. I believed there was hope for me as long as I had faith in God. I realized I needed to see and view my situation clearly with eyes wide open and not feel sorry for myself. I knew I had to find the strength to go on and not let fear of the unknown get in my way. I prayed for peace at night as I went to bed and the courage to wake every morning and move forward. I read Remind Me every day before I went to work and every evening when I came home. Soon things began to change for me; like a weight had been lifted; I was finding peace in the midst of my storm.

This period in my life changed my view and faith in God forever. Whatever doubt I had was wiped
away. When I looked at my situation, understanding where I was, the darkness, the pain, the debt, the
inability to see my way through what was happening and be okay was miraculous. It was amazing and
at the same time unbelievable, that my soul was bubbling over with joy, and I was happy, thanks to
God’s Grace and Mercy.

Remind Me

Dear God, when I am lonely, and perhaps I feel despair,
Let not my ailing heart forget That you hear every prayer.
Remind me that no matter what I do or fail to do,
There still is hope for me as long as I have faith in You.
Let not my eyes be blinded by some folly I commit,
but help me regret my wrong and to make up for it.
Inspire me to put my fears upon a hidden shelf,
and in the future never to be sorry for myself.
Give me the restful sleep I need before another dawn,
and bless me in the morning with the courage to go on.
                                                        -author unknown

By Knowledge & By Love         
Michael S Sherwin OP, CUA Press, 2005

(Part 1 of 2)
In 1948 Richard Weaver, then a professor at the University of Chicago,
published a little book titled "Ideas Have Consequences." (2) In it, he argued that
ideas that are dreamed up by lonely, intrepid thinkers in small rooms and ivory
towers somehow seem to find their way into people's consciousness. Some ideas
are good, some are bad. Weaver warned that embracing bad ideas leads to, well,
bad consequences.


The ideas that people embrace are often mediated,
changed, vulgarized versions of these notions conceived by some great and not so great
minds. They spread through the media. In the olden days, papers and magazines, then radio
and tv, and these days through the battlefield of social media. They become part of the
cultural atmosphere we live in. If we want to intellectually confront our time, it is
necessary to understand what these ideas - floating around us in the intellectual air
we breathe- are, where they come from, and how to judge them.

The phenomenon that modern ideas seep in and shape debates happens, of
course, also in Church circles. For example, it seems that an idea born in the fever
of existentialist philosophy of the '60s has influenced much of our thinking since
then. This new understanding - maybe better rethinking - of freedom became a
major theme in the discourse of the ‘60s and ‘70s of the previous century. One of
the most famous names connected with this effort was Karl Rahner. He did not see
freedom as part of our created nature, but rather as a transcendental inner space, a
deep self, that needs to be authentically realized. We have to realize and actualize
that self. (3)  Later, this thought was radicalized especially by German thinkers like
Bernard Häring and especially Josef Fuchs. They historicized the self and argued
that because our human life is one of self-realization through an individual
expression of love, no universalizable norms regulate the right practical reasoning
of man. (4)

In a certain sense, this understanding was developed as a reaction against an
approach based on a legalistic view of the moral life that had developed in the
Church based on the casuistry of popular moral manuals (see my post about Pinckaers ).
Trying to live a moral life seemed to boil down to an effort to
determine "the moral status of an act and its degree of merit and sinfulness" built
on a set of rules. (5) Morality was merely a law that restricted freedom. Our job as
humans was to obey that law. The impulse to think that this is too restrictive a view
of morality seems right to me. This type of interpretation of religious life can lead
to "a preoccupation with sin; an almost obsessive concern for law; and myopic
focus on the individual and his or her specific acts. […] But the [C]hristian life is
more than legal observance." (6) However, the move away from a legalistic approach
to one of freedom, authenticity, and conscience was not without consequence. One
does not need to be a Ph.D. in the sociology of the modern Catholic Church to see
that the focus on the individual conscience and the authentic self, in practice, has
meant that almost anything can be considered "good" by any person. And that, at
the same time, caused the notion of sin and the need for forgiveness to disappear.
There is a reason confessionals are empty. The therapeutic mindset of self-
realization took over the idea of sin and forgiveness. After all, the only thing that
matters is that you claim your fundamental orientation toward love and you work
on self -realization. It is hard to escape the impression that we have embraced the
idea that the fundamental Christian command is to love and do what you will, but
then it is emptied of the Augustinian content.  (end Part 1)

(1) G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Ignatius Press, 1995, P.19. Also available on
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130.html
(2) Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, Chicago, 1984

Blog Joy of the Just 2 of Kees Heesters, 
https://www.joyofthejust.com/home/servais-pinckaers-op-the-sources-of-christian-ethics-cua-press1995

(3) Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., By Knowledge & by Love, CUA Press, 2005. P. 8
(4) Matthew levering, The Abuse of Conscience:A Century of Catholic Moral Theology, Eerdmans,
2021. See Review by Jennifer Frey, Get Real, In First Things, Jan. 2023
(5) Sherwin, P. 3
(6) Idem