Jesus and the Forklift

One of the most wonderful notions about Cursillo and the teachings of our church is to look for Jesus in every person.  You know that biblical verse where Jesus said "Whatever you do for the least of these"? As a Catholic we take that literally, that we can 'entertain angels unaware' and that Jesus presence can come in front of us as in anyone.

Well, today I met Jesus. I was at the church this morning, attending daily mass, doing the divine office, then watching as the new carpet was being put down for the music area and talking to Butch about other maintenance issues we need to get to, and upcoming school etc.  While I was wandering around doing some 'busy work' (small chores here and there) a latino gentleman approached asking to see Father.  After being told that Father was at lunch and would be back in a while, this man sat down and said I'll wait.

I walked past him a few times, saying hi and being kind but not really paying attention to who he was or giving him the real dignity he deserved.   Then when I finished my chores I walked down the Hall and introduced myself and started up a conversation.  He told me about his family, about his wife, and about the company he worked for; how they had just let him go from his job as a forklift operator because work was too 'slow'.  He talked excitedly about his fork lift certification and in broken English told me about his fears.  He told me he was scared that on his wife's minimum wage he'd never be able to make it, she works at a fast food place and like so many others that do so, is only 'part time.'

I told him I'd pray for him, not even realizing that I had never even asked his name.  I started to shake his hand to leave and he stopped me.  His eyes met mine and there was that twinkle, that 'there is more going on here than you think' look, and there he was.   Jesus was in front of me.

"You will pray for me?"

"Yes, I will pray for you."

I meant it, I never say that unless I truly mean it.  But everyone reading this knows that when someone says that they will 'pray for you' they often mean, I'm gonna say a prayer as I walk away for whatever your needs are, but then I may not think of you for a while.

He stood up and Jesus looked at me and said, "Ok".  Then he bowed his head.   I knew right then that Jesus was taking me up on my offer to pray for this child of his, my brother.  I placed my hand on his shoulder, and I bowed my head.  I prayed for him out loud.  I prayed for his family. I prayed for his children. I prayed for his job situation. I prayed for his soul.  I prayed for God's guidance.  I called him my friend, I called him my brother. I made the sign of the cross and said Amen.

Jesus was still there in the room with us, but he was no longer in the man in front of me.  The man with trembling voice thanked me, and sat back down I think almost shaken.  I was a bit shaken too.  Thank you Jesus for helping both of us.  The man looked up and he held out his hand one more time.  He said "My name's Fancisco." I shook his hand and told him, "I am Brian."

In Christ,
Brian

Will you let me be your servant?

This morning I had the wonderful privilege of leading a communion service for our parish.  About 6:30 as the kids were getting ready for school, I was in the living room preparing for my role.   Between helping find hair brushes and signing papers for school I read vocally and re-read the readings for the day.   I prayed that God would provide me with a lector for the day (since our normal lector for Friday's was on a mission of mercy, and of course God provided.)   Around 6:45 I began to pick out the hymn we would sing (which is also normally done by the same gentleman and brother who is the lector on Fridays.)

So much to the joy of my children just before 7:00 they were serenaded (notice how that word reminds you of a grenade?) with my wondrous rendition of "will you let me be your servant."    Now I'm one of those guys  that gets music lyrics completely wrong. From Like a Cheestick (like a g6) to Rock the Catbox (casbah), I've gotten them wrong for years.   So I wasn't surprised at all this morning when I sang the wrong lyrics to this song, to which my eldest of course corrected me.


"Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you, pray that I may have the strength to..."

From behind a closed door in the back of the house a disembodied voice bellowed "It's grace!"  "What?"  "I said it's grace!"   "What!?"  The door opens and she says "I said it's grace, not strength.. the lyrics are 'pray that I may have the grace'.  The door closes.

Isn't it funny how sometimes God corrects us through others?  How that something so simple as her just being herself was a moment of 'ah ha' to me?   There is such a huge difference in me having the strength, and me asking for the grace to let you be my servant too.  It reminded me immediately of the scene where Jesus says he's going to wash Peters feet and impetuous Peter declares Lord no!  You will never wash MY feet. Jesus then tells him If I do not wash your feet, you will have no part of me.   Then here I was this morning crying out with Peter, Lord then wash not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!

All too often we forget to humble ourselves enough to accept God's grace.  He offers to do something for us and we turn our back on it, lifting ourselves up and saying I don't need that!   Our pride gets in the way.  It's when we try to do things on our own strength that we find ourselves falling back into those same old sins.  You know when you say "I've got this beat, I haven't done XXXXX in weeks, I have finally mastered myself."  that we fall.   When we rather turn to God and say "I'm not strong enough to do this on my own.   I need you.  Please heavenly Father, send me strength, send me grace, send me help;"  that is when we find ourselves able to resist and live a Christ like life.

We often hear that saying that God will not give us more than we can handle.  I'm not sure I agree with that.  Sometimes I think God allows us just a bit more so that we can break, so that we can say "God I'm not strong enough for this.. help me carry my Cross.."  So today I ask, and pray;  will you let me be your servant?

An Encounter with Christ

As many of you know, I've taken some time away from the computer for Lent; only recently returning to Facebook and blogging.  During that time I've tried to add some other pursuits that would help me grow closer to God.   One of the things I decided to do was get back to 'pleasure reading.'  With classes for ministry formation, bible studies, prayer groups, etc... a great deal of my reading has been 'assignments' or things I needed to research to plan a prayer retreat, or even the Facebook posts.  So I picked out a few books to read, to help me grow closer, but also books that are just for me.  Books I wanted to read.

One of those books is The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything by Reverend James Martin, SJ.  This book interested me because of our new Holy Father, Pope Francis, and his Jesuit background.  I don't know a lot about Jesuits so trying to understand their spirituality is very interesting and enlightening to me.   I've also been reading the wonderful book, Pope Francis: Why He Leads the Way He Leads given to me as a gift by my dear friend Laci.   One of the interesting things I have found about Father Martin, is that he consistently looks for Gods presence in everything.  In every person. In every action. In every thought. In every 'desire'.   He looks to find God, if not in the moment, at least in retrospect to the end of his day when he does his daily Examen.  There is such a wonderful anecdote in the book by Father Martin about a man working in an administrative position who, when the door bell rings, would say "I am coming Lord!" in preparation for trying to see God in whoever had come to visit or to do business.

Such a simple concept, to look at your day and try to find God in each person you talk to.  In each task you are doing. In every blessing and even in every problem.  Father Tim Seigel  used to say much the same thing, when he would talk about the beauty of our round church.   He would tell us that in each person in the room, there is Jesus waiting.  I even remember a story about a grumpy old man that someone was trying to serve or at least talk with in a shelter, and the story ended with "Jesus wasn't in a very good mood that day."

It all boils down to "whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done for me" and in the same token "whatever you have not done for the least of these, you have not done for me."  This long introduction leads me to such a simple moment, but one that really opened my eyes and blessed me this morning.   On Thursdays we say a chaplet of Divine Mercy in our Sanctuary after Mass.  Today as we were praying for Mercy for the world and all of us in it, I was drawn to contemplating Mary Magdalene and the gospel from a few days previous.  In that Gospel Mary arrives at the tomb and finds it empty.  She is devastated.  Jesus walks up but she doesn't recognize him in his glorified state, and I'm sure her grief stricken heart and tears helped make it even more difficult to recognize anyone at all.  She, thinking he was the caretaker, begged him to just tell her where Jesus body was and she'd come get it.  She turned back to the tomb, turning her back on God... and a moment later, Jesus said her name.   Something so simple, but immediately she recognized him.  As we were praying for Divine Mercy, I was thinking of the beauty and mercy of that tender moment... being called by God, by name.

There I sat thinking looking around at the faces of the beautiful people praying with me, and asking myself do I see Jesus in this room? In Richard and Gene I always find love, in Mary I find patience and fortitude, in Paul I find the kindness to go out of his way to help everyone.  Yes, in these people I see Jesus every day.  My heart was content for I thought, "Yes, I have seen Jesus today in his body!"

Then as we were leaving, I was talking to Rita about the prayer basket we had set up in the entrance and she, as always, was kind and generous.  Then as she was leaving she gave me a hug and a kiss on the check, and she said "You tell your children and wife," then she paused for a moment as if taking time to get every word just right and said, "Haley.  Hannah. Sarah.  Moira. and Julie."  Pausing between each name as if they were precious and beautiful, and then "that I love them."   Then she walked away.  There He was.   When I was least expecting him, when I thought I had already seen through my own effort what he had to offer me for today, the God of Surprises blessed me with a beautiful moment in which he reminded me "I have called you by name.  You are mine." (Isaiah 43:1) Thank you Lord for reminding me that you love and watch over my family, and that they belong to you.  May I try to live up to that honor of having them in my life; and thank you Lord for Rita, for being your instrument today to bring me such a beautiful present.

How can church Doctrine help me grow closer to God?

How Can Accepting the Doctrine of the Church help you come closer to God?

As a convert to the Catholic faith, the organic nature of the development of doctrine is something that I have experienced first hand.  During my formative years I began to do what is most common in the Protestant denominations; that is I began to church shop.  Many protestants are taught that the bible is the sole authority of their faith, and that they should continue looking for a church until they find one that teaches the bible and only the bible.  The problem then becomes whose version of interpretation is the correct one? Who is the authority who has the final say in interpretation? The Holy Spirit of course is the answer, but in the physical world we also have to have someone speaking via the Holy Spirit to make decisions in matters of  faith.

One of my first memorable experiences of this sort of process in action was in a church in rural southwest Virginia.  As the preacher began his sermon for the day, he began talking about another preacher from a different church and condemned him for smoking tobacco.  He talked about how it was bad for the body and that scripture had clearly shown that our body was a temple, and that smoking was desecrating that temple.  He kept preaching into a fevered pitch and paused just long enough to spit his ambeer into the cup.  This man of God had just been preaching about the sinful use of smoking tobacco while clearly chewing tobacco himself. I began to look for another church.

My next experience of this sort of doctrinal formation was in a Pentecostal style church where they were very animated and vibrant. They began to argue though shortly after I arrived about the necessity of one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, glossolalia. One of the more prominent ministers argued that one must indeed speak tongues in order to be saved.  The pastor began to refute that argument with scripture and indicated that while it was indeed a sign of being saved, there were other gifts of the spirit and that speaking in tongues was not required of every single person. A few weeks of arguing back and forth, during church service mind you, and they decided to go their separate ways. So one minister who disagreed with the preacher, along with all those who agreed with him, formed his own church just a few miles away.   Now we had two separate churches just a few miles apart that agreed in every issue but one, but both would point to the other and say that they were going to hell. I again began to look for another church.

After a while I settled down in a small church of the non-denominational variety, where they preached 'the bible' and studied it quite often together. The Pastor seemed to be a very nice fellow who gave a very good sermon, and they often had visiting singers and preachers who would get the congregation 'stirred'.  Everything here seemed to be right on the mark, they talked about hell, gave altar calls, shared scripture in snippets just like always.  In Sunday school they had us memorize the 23rd Psalm and various bible verses that we should be able to speak at a moments notice. Then one day before Christmas, the pastor began to preach against Santa, and instead of sharing the Christmas story and God's love for us.. it became a tirade about how Santa was truly from Satan.  Each holiday became just the same, the Easter Bunny next, then Halloween. Eventually it was that time again, I began to look for another church.

One day, shortly after I began to really research the Catholic church at the insistence of my wife, I stumbled upon a verse that I had read many, many times in the past. “Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples, 'The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;  practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.'”  Here in Jesus own words was a verse telling me not to simply walk away and search for another church every time they did not agree with me. So I began to ask myself, which church is it that Jesus established? How can I know? What do they teach?

After many years of study and fighting the call of the Holy Spirit to become Catholic, I knew that it was here that I needed to be. It was only here that we had the seat of St. Peter, from whose authority the bishops and priests receive their anointing. It was here that we have the church with the power to bind and loosen.  It was here that we have the sacraments as Jesus himself initiated them. It was only in the Catholic church that I would find the fullness of faith, the teachings of the Apostles and of the Holy Spirit himself.

So how do those teachings help me to grow closer to God? For the last two thousands years men much smarter than myself have been studying, philosophizing, agreeing and disagreeing about various questions that I myself have seen others speaking about and arguing about.   Many of these have been put into documents, encyclicals, and into the Catechism of the church. By the guidance of the Holy Spirit many of those very questions that I have seen protestant churches splitting over, have already been answered and cemented as Dogma. Not only can I find the answers when there is a disagreement, but I can find the documents and biblical verses that back up those teachings as well. By following Catholic doctrine I have freed myself from a world where two men can split an entire congregation into two separate bodies; and joined myself to a church, that guided by the Holy Spirit, instead tries to keep the body of Christ as One Body.

The doctrines, teachings, and dogmas of the church also help me to find aspects of God that help me to further understand the mystery of his incarnation, of the trinity, and of the Sacraments. Through each of these wonderful teachings and writings on those teachings, I can further understand who God is, what God did for me, and how I can live to better please God.  I also have access to the treasure of the doctors of the church who have expounded in words much more eloquent than my own matters that sometimes seem very difficult to understand. As St. Peter said, “There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.”  By finding the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, lead by the seat of Peter himself, I have found the key to understanding those scriptures.  I have found the source which will allow me to further understand and further grow closer to God, to find answers to those questions and find hope and grace in the Sacraments. That hope and grace draws me closer and closer to God himself.

The Sermon on the Mount

I will attempt to write a theological reflection on the Beatitudes from Matthews portrayal of the Sermon on the mount(Matthew 5:1-12).  I have chosen this particular passage from the list of options as I find it to be the one that is most unfamiliar to me.  As a convert, I rarely if ever heard anyone discuss the beatitudes and if they did it was in a passing quote here or there.  After converting to the Roman Catholic faith I found myself fascinated with this entire discourse, more especially since I had found some of them to be very difficult to comprehend from a human stand point.

First I always find it important for my own understanding to address the particular situation in which the author portrays this event. At the beginning of this section of scripture Mathew indicates that “he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down his disciples came to him.”  The first major thing that I notice of this passage is that Jesus began by sitting down, assuming a position of authority, the position of the teacher. Then we see that the disciples climbed the mountain to receive his teaching. This leads also an interesting correspondence to the event that occurs when Moses receives the commandments directly from God.   As God spoke from the top of the mountain, Moses climbed up to meet him. Our Pope Emeritus in one of his writings indicated that we should also look at scripture through a Christological lens, a hermeneutic of faith. When we examine this event from that understanding, we begin to see a very similar pattern in that the disciples climbed the mountain to receive a litany of commandments dealing with life with God and with mankind.

The beatitudes themselves almost seem to have an intricate dichotomy of meanings. On the one hand we have these positives, and with the others we seem to have almost a negative promise.  It puts me in mind of the ten commandments themselves in which we find 'thou shalts' and 'thou shalt nots.'  We find that we get a condition “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9)  These seem almost to make a direct correlation, an understanding that easily presents itself.   When we take the word blessed and examine it's root of makarios we find the word means in a sense happy.  Happy are the peacemakers, for they shall be called Sons of God.   That we are truly only happy when we are like God.  This I think gives me the key to my personal understanding of the Sermon, that to be happy we must be like God, to be more like Christ himself.

The second affirmation seems to me to be “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy.” Another aspect that we clearly see, as maybe the most important aspect of our relationship with God, is that of His mercy. Scripture affirms consistently that God is a just and merciful God, “for the Lord your God is a merciful God” (Deuteronomy 4) reminds us that this all important attribute of God is also one that we must remember.  Jesus himself reaffirms it again in another saying where he says “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.” (Matthew 7:2)  That true happiness comes from being merciful in our lives. In our relationships with others and with God; when we extend mercy to others they too will extend it back to us.

The third affirmative beatitude I'd like to address is “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”    Jesus reminds us that nothing impure can enter into the kingdom of heaven, that our heart must free of any attachment to sin. The gospel of Matthew repeats this theme again when he tells us that our “righteousness must exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees” or we will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  This sort of thought prompts me to exclaim with the disciples, “who then can be saved”? Jesus seems to be saying we must be as righteous as He (as God himself) in order to be happy.

The fourth thou shalt of the favorable proclamation from the mount is “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6)  Again we see the pattern of those who seek earnestly the will of God, righteousness, will be given happiness.  That true happiness comes from being more like God and seeking to be morally upright in all of our actions.  This  will provide us with a filling satisfaction of not only achieving that justification, but also a supernatural happiness.

That brings us to the other end of the scale, where we seem to have a more perturbing nature of promises or proclamations.  Where as Jesus has been promising happiness for things that seemingly make sense to be happy about, now we find a different nature to the secondary half of the formulation.  Jesus speaks of suffering and pain being the happiness. Things that we might perceive as negative, yet then follows with a reward for them. From my protestant background this almost seemed at odds with the God of the ATM, the God who gave you what you asked for and if you suffered it was simply because you did not have enough faith or had in some way sinned.

I had a great deal of difficulty understanding these four pronouncements for many years, until I heard Father Robert Baron speak of them in his Catholicism series.  I cannot pretend to do justice to what he gave in that series but I'd like to attempt my own understanding of it and hopefully in a clear enough manner to convey my thoughts. He speaks of Thomas Aquinas and the spheres of influence that typically get in the way of our trust in God. Those spheres are wealth, power, pleasure, and honor.  Father Barron compares these to the four remaining beatitudes.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5:3)  This beatitude seems to suggest that we must be detached from worldly possessions.  That having or owning something is not as important as not being attached to wealth.  Here we have a simple reminder that  indeed for a 'rich' man to enter into the kingdom of heaven is nearly impossible, but with God all things are possible.  It also reminds us that a poor man can have negative attachments to his wealth just as a rich man can be completely unattached to it.  The widow who placed her two pennies in the offering was generous, but she also could have been stingy hanging on to everything she had left.  That it is our spirit, our heart that determines where our hearts are.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  (Matt 5:4)  In the same scheme of things it's important not to be attached or addicted to feeling good.  In our society we often look for good feelings at all times.  Our children shows flood us with the concept that love is feeling good and sex is relegated not to procreation but to what feels right. Feeling good is of course a good thing, and when ordered to God's will is indeed beautiful, but we also know that addictions can occur when we put this first into our lives. Only when we are unattached to those feelings can we truly follow the will of God and do even that which seems difficult or painful at the time to do that which is right.  It also reaffirms that our hearts call out to God, and that the only place we find rest is in Him. We often try to cram anything we can into that God shaped hole in our heart, but the only thing that will fit permanently and comfortably is God himself.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matt 5:5) I can only imagine how this must have seemed to those who believed Jesus to be the political and kingly Messiah that would overthrow the Roman government.  Here he clearly sets a course that would not lead to any sort of world domination or overthrowing of any political regime. “Happy are those” who are not attached to political (worldly) power and fame.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”(Matt 5:10)   Again we see a call to detachment from another sphere, that of honor. Jesus seems to indicate that by freeing yourself from the need to be seen in a position of honor that we can inherit the kingdom of Heaven and be the children of God.

I think that those four amazing statements can only be understood rightly when looked at while also gazing at the cross of Calvary. As Jesus hung on the cross he embodied all of these, more especially the four negative, in a fullness and a fulfillment of the words themselves. How much more poor in spirit can one get than to have nothing left, worldly at all? As he hung there with no clothing, no possessions, just a crown of shame and his own flesh ripped and torn in the wind.  How much less honor can one have than to be the King of the Universe, but to be crucified alone. Matthew portrays Jesus as having no friends, no family, no disciples at his feet. Even the 'good thief' isn't present, only those who deride and mock him. How far from feeling pleasure can one be than to be suffocating under their own weight, their skin flailed to the point of falling off, their hands and feet pierced by nails and driven to a cross?  The driving winds of the dry desert air parching and cracking your tongue and lips and the heat of the day blistering.  How meek and humble did he appear when he allowed himself to be crucified for our sake? The master of legions of angels and king of the entire universe, placing himself into the hand of men to go to his own death.  Yet, here is truly a happy man who lived for God, and did God's will in all things.

As I examine those thoughts and I image Jesus hanging on the cross in my place, I am struck by how the very sermon on the mount cried out to those disciples on the mount in a way that almost says “Blessed are they who are like Me.” I find that each of this statements directly corresponds to behaving in the way that Jesus behaved.  His life itself lived out the beatitudes to a fullness that I am not sure any other human can or has lived them. A holiness so much more difficult to follow, but so much more practical and easy to understand.  A call for each of us as disciples of Christ to emulate Jesus, who is our Sabbath and our rest.

I feel that this amazing understanding of the need for detachment calls me as a Christian in my own personal walk to begin to further analyze my life.  I also find it particularly pertinent on this the feast of Christ our King, to again approach every aspect of my existence and ask myself, Who is my king? The old cliché “WWJD (What would Jesus Do)” seems even more relevant as we ask ourselves: Are we detached from those spheres of influence? Does the need for honor rule my life? Political, social,  or economic power? Is it a need for things and money? Or a need for things that 'feel' good regardless of their spiritual significance? Should not my needs and wants be centered around Christ himself? To live this way, means reorganizing and restructuring every second and every breath, until I too can look down from own cross and say “It is not about me.”  It reminds us that the things that are unpleasant in life are in a way, our cross.. and we are to look down from our cross and say "Its' not about me, it's about you." Jesus died on his cross for us, so we too must die on our cross for others. We often make it all about ourselves.  The beatitudes, yes Christ himself, reminds us that the goal in life is to live for God first, and our neighbor as well.  That we must be completely detached from everything, including our own ego, and say fully thy will be done.

My dear friend, I will miss you

Betty had been sick for a very long time. I was prepared for her death, and had spent time with her talking about it and sharing our faith together. I never knew how hard it was going to be. Today at the funeral the church where it was held had a special time for those who were there to share stories about her and her life. At first I had no intention of getting up and saying anything, but as I began to see that not many where moving to do so.. I began to arm myself with stories. I'm not shy about speaking even if introverted, so I began to pull stories out of my arsenal of time we had spent with her.

My mind began to remember the pinochle games till late in the evening, where we would sit together laughing and telling stories. Betty would have a beer or two and Julie and I some wine or what have you, and we'd just share our lives. Or we'd sit on the back porch as the sun went down and she would tell us stories of her family and friends, of her boys and their antics growing up. Or the time that I went out of town for two weeks after my back surgery unable to mow my yard, and someone called the police on us to report tall weeds in the back. They police came and Betty not only took time to tell the police the situation, but then she and my other neighbors proceeded to take care of my yard so there would be no fine. Or the many times she gave us food to make sure my kids had plenty to eat, or just to make sure that we knew we were loved. It was her way. Or when we stood together in the driveway as she told me she was ready to die, that the pain was getting to be too much and she just didn't know how much longer she could go... as we held on to each other and just cried.

Yes I went to that podium armed with stories to regale the finest of kings, and greatly overestimating my ability to speak to a crowd. I looked up and looked into the eyes of my friends. The eyes of her children and their children, their spouses and families, their friends and relatives. A lump formed in my throat that could not be moved. Tears formed in my eyes and threatened an ocean of misery. I do not know how I got out the few words I did, but I can only say that the Holy Spirit in that moment spoke for me, though I had not the words to say, with groaning that cannot be uttered.. this time the groaning was my own and in my heart.. words that could not be expressed.. feelings that were deeper than I had ever imagined.

In that moment I realized that all the stories I could fathom could not encompass the beauty of who Betty Ann Walker was. So I simply stated that Betty was more than my neighbor, she was my friend. She was like a mother to us, always caring for us and watching over us and our children. We can never thank her enough or repay her for that.

Yes, I will miss my friend. Till we meet again in Heaven, dear one, pray for me.

Oh Happy Day?

This morning was absolutely horrible. Do you know the kind of day I'm talking about? Where everything seems like it's out to get you and even the furniture is on the attack? It all began with a nice alarm blaring in my ear... apparently for over 30 minutes. As I groggily hit the snooze button I happened to glance up and see that it was closer to 7 than it was to 6. Oh no, the kids aren't up! So I quickly rush down the hallway knocking on doors as I go, and move in to wake up Moira who still needs help getting ready. No one seems to be moving. Another round of knocking 3 minutes later as I look for breakfast, snacks, getting together my clothes, planning my shower etc.

Finally after 3 tries I hear movement in the rooms and Moira is stirring enough to start getting dressed. I run downstairs to find the clean clothes I had washed the night before, pull out my outfit and a shirt for Mo and back up the stairs I go. (by run I mean a fast hectic walk that reminds the stair well that if it moves up an inch, it can stub my toe with the best of them.) So here I am stumbling with a toe that's sure to be broken, trying not to drop the clothes, when a magical lego appears out of no where and embeds itself into my flesh. Score 2 for the inanimate invaders and nothing for the dad who is running late.

My head begins to overwhelm me as I remember all things I'm supposed to do today. I need to get Moira ready, I need to get her to the bus stop, I need a shower, the dog needs to be walked before I leave, the clothes need to be put into the washer, the dishes need to be started, I need to help Butch at the church rewire some lights, it's almost time for Mass, then the prayer group, then I need to work on some homework for class, a meeting tonight for the building and grounds... we gotta get moving I remind them in a voice that's entirely too loud, entirely too angry.

Sarah and Hannah run out the door, their bus is running in less than a minute. Moira points to the basket and says "uh oh, Sarah forgot her project." Another thing in my head, a new object crams it's way into things to do... How am I going to get that to her at school? Someone is blowing their horn in the driveway, and I call back (by call I mean yell irritatingly that someone has invaded my introverted space again) 'Your ride is here!' This is followed by a slowly shuffling teenager who takes her time and calls out as if they can hear through the closed door 'I'm coming.' I begin to get irritated and mention that she should hurry, which is followed by a 'I am' as the shuffling sloth like creature begins to put on her shoes.

It all begins to bubble over as she has left and I look to see where Moira is.. and she's in the bathroom. So I knock and remind, we gotta go your bus is going to run. Followed by another 3 knocks in what seems like 10 minutes of time.. when actually it was probably about 10 seconds apart. Finally she opens the door and I notice in horror she doesn't even have her shoes on, her hairs not brushed, and I have less than a minute for the bus to run. I tell her "MOVE!" and she does, she runs into the living room, dancing around in all four cardinal directions as if she was a compass out of control, trying to find her shoes. Dear God help me, she doesn't even know where they are! So we frantically look, and my phone rings. My wife is on the other end reminding me that 'Sarah needs her project for school she left it.' I snap at her, she doesn't deserve that. I hear the air break release on the bus.. we missed it.

Ah, how wonderful a day eh? You may think I'm complaining, and maybe in a way I am. Actually, this morning was beautiful. I didn't realize that when I woke up. When my toe was throbbing I was angry. When my kids weren't moving fast enough, I was irritated to no end.   When my phone rang and sang 'Oh Happy Day' to me, I was angry that it interrupted my space. When the horn beeped in the driveway I was irritated for the occupants in the vehicle who kept beeping every few seconds to remind someone they were here. How do we miss all the things in there that are from God? As I was 'stomping' my way on foot to take Moira to school, a small wind blew through my mind and God reminded me in that still small voice "It's not about YOU."

Dumbfounded. That's the word I would describe me as I stopped mid track.   As I stood there on the sidewalk and Moira caught up to me and I realized I had made my day all about me. I apologized to her for being frazzled and we walked together and she began to talk to me. She began to point out this house or that, this flower or that, this bus and where it was going, etc. I realized she hadn't been talking.. how could she? We were walking at the fastest pace my broken body can handle, and I wasn't really giving her a chance to see anything.

I took her to school, and we got there before the bell rang and I began to walk on towards the other school to drop off the project. At this point I'm not in a hurry anymore. A friend stops and asks if I need a ride, my mind for a second says 'you can still make it to mass, you can make it to work on the lights, forget the project, get in and go!'  I realize quickly that in doing that my friend who is lector for daily mass today would miss it if she gave me a ride. Thanks, but I'm gonna be a while I say, and tell her to go on. It's not about me.  It's now about God.  I need to spend more time listening. So I walk on.

So I open my eyes around me. The barking dogs yapping at me, the squirrels and their nuts, the trees and their blossoms and fading flowers, the elderly gentleman walking his pup, the birds in the trees, and the wind in the leaves. I walk on and back home, all the while thinking what a blessing I had this morning. The bible warns us in sacred scripture that our tongue has the power to curse and bless, and it should only be blessing. Jesus also reminds us that what comes out of our heart is what makes a man unclean. With that in mind, our thoughts can be a blessing and a curse too, they can take a moment in which we can see the finger prints of God... and instead we see only the dust. (Think of a CSI show, how they dust the surfaces to find finger prints.. our lives are dust... but if we look at where the ashes fall, we can find the finger prints of God on the surface.)

Curse: I woke up this morning to a blaring alarm clock.
Blessing: I woke up.

Curse: No one is up yet.
Blessing: Everyone was soundly asleep and resting.

Curse: having to get clean clothes from downstairs
Blessing: we have clothes.

Curse: Moira doesn't have her shoes on.
Blessing: We get to walk together and chat this morning.

Curse: Sarah forgot her project.
Blessing: I get to serve my family by living my vocation, I can take it to her.

Curse: the phone rings interrupting me
Blessing: the phone serenades me with 'Oh Happy Day' followed by the melodic beauty of my wife's voice.


We forget that everyday life sanctifies us. Living our vocation, our calling, can be the most holy thing we can do.. if we allow it to be such. We parents are called to serve. We often think of service as only when we go to church to wire a light, clean a floor, or lector at the Ambo. But service includes those at home as well. We often treat them worse than we would a complete stranger. We are hypocrites. Everyone of us. But we can do better. We can do it one day at a time. One blessing at a time. One walk at a time.

In Christ,
Brian

Where am I now?

During the process of my conversion, I was uninterested in the Catholic faith. Coming from the particular protestant background that I was raised in, the Catholic faith was not only foreign, but looked down upon if not looked at with outright contempt. My wife and I had married with the understanding that we were of different faiths, but after a while I began to seek to convert her to my own protestant stance. I was convinced that the Catholic faith was wrong and I set out to prove that to her.  As time went by I would approach her with more and more questions, I guess more accurately described as confrontations. “Why do you believe this?” “Why do you Catholics do that!?” To which she would always reply, “find out.”  She refused to argue with me, which of course infuriated me!

At this point I was really fooling myself, because my heart was not really into finding answers. I would do some reading of course online, mostly from protestant and Anti-Catholic websites to try and find answers.  Then a major event happened in our lives: the baptism of our biological daughter, Moira.  As the time drew closer, my wife informed me that we were baptizing our daughter Catholic. We really didn't discuss it further other than when, where, which priest would baptize her, etc.  As a protestant I didn't really care what religion she was baptized into, as long as she was baptized.

As the day finally arrived I stood with every person in the congregation of the church at St. Mary's in Sycamore Illinois.  The priest walked us through the process, renewing our baptismal promises and then asked us if we would raise our daughter according to the Catholic faith. I responded in the affirmative and as I did, it dawned on me that in order to teach her what the Catholics believed I would have to know myself!   I could no longer simply dance around the issue, I had to actually delve into this so that I could teach her as I had just given my word before God and man that I would do so.

I began to search earnestly for answers, not just reading the protestant side of things but going to Catholic sites, speaking to Catholic apologists online, and even spending a great deal of time talking to the priest at our home Parish in Genoa.  I had many questions and someone eventually suggested that I join the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults program at our parish.  I was ensured there would be no commitment required and I could go there and find answers to all of these questions that I had.  I signed up and began to attend, but I must admit that this first trip through RCIA was one filled with a bad attitude and hostility.   I wanted answers, but not for the right reason. I came to class to argue, or to find ways to prove to my wife and eventually my daughter that the Catholic faith was wrong.

The sweet lady who taught the class would look at me sometimes and simply say, “It's part of the mystery.” Then she'd move on to another topic or further into the topic we were discussing.  This made me so angry at the time. I had been taught my entire life that there is no mystery! Every answer you want or need was supposed to be right there in the Bible.  I eventually quit going to RCIA and simply studied on my own, convinced that the teacher simply didn't know enough about scripture to be able to answer me.  I was so convinced that I had already known God and his Word that I knew there was no mystery to him.

As time went on I found answers to many of my questions. An astonishing thing happened along the way, I began to find that every single time I found the answer I was looking for, I found a new question. Another astonishing thing happened as well, I began to find answers that weren't in scripture, but were in writings from the early church fathers, documents from the Church itself, even in just talking to other members of the Catholic faith. My beliefs about God were not really changing, but my understanding of God was growing in a way that began to show me that not only did my beliefs fit in with the Catholic faith, but that the faith was so deep that it really was a mystery, because God himself was beyond our understanding. The word that had so exasperated me in the beginning, became a word that I embraced and clung to as I again enrolled in the RCIA program.  This time not to argue or look for ways to convince others of how wrong the Catholic faith was, but to help me understand just how right it was.  Not just for them, not just for my daughter, but for me.

The amazing thing that I am finding is that despite all of this journey that I have been on for many years, from the days when I sat beside my grandfather in the pews of a Baptist church, to the day when I went forward and confessed my love for God at an altar call, through the days of my baptism, prayer services, and eventually my confirmation in the Catholic faith; I never noticed the pattern of repeating that was going on in my life. Even when I began to read this wonderful document about the six stages of development my mind wanted to compartmentalize it into single stages, as if we could graduate from one into another.

Throughout life we have been taught that each event is a stage to move to another, and that eventually we will get where we are going. Working a job leads to a promotion, after which you no longer have to do the things before.  My approach to this document was very similar in that in attempting to analyze where I am in those stages, I quickly began to quantify if I had moved through one stage to the next.  I checked off my list through imagination, quickly moving past literal, to group faith, into personal, and hoping that I might actually be able to write myself down as someone who had gotten to the mystical stage.

As we discussed this in our small groups, many of the others did the same with their analysis of themselves.  We each found ourselves hovering between stage 4, Personal Faith, and stage 5, Mystical faith. In fact, I felt a little ashamed as if I was failing because I could see that I didn't stay in the Mystical area.  I saw parts of my life where I felt I had achieved that for a time, where I had acted in those ways, even from time to time I could honestly say I had achieved the Sacrificial faith that I so desire to have at all times.  Yet, when I was honest with myself; I wasn't there all the time. I felt as if I was failing God and even was concerned about coming to class, that maybe I was the only one who wasn't able to stay in 'the zone'.

Then we began to discuss it at length and the light began to dawn on each of us, more especially when our teacher began to talk about the cyclical nature of faith, that we were walking along that normal path. My eyes began to open to a new understanding of the imaginative faith. Where as before I saw it as something that only children do, even having clever anecdotes prepared in my head of how my nephew talked about God's mom, aka Mrs. God,  or how that my daughter had once thought that God put on a costume so he could look like a ghost; to where I now see that we each have to reach the stage of imagination in order to move forward and learn. That once we grasp on to a concept, some part of the mystery, we must begin to delve it in our mind before we can begin to ask questions. We must imagine what God is like, because he is beyond us. That once we reach a point where we have begun to even glimpse the mystical aspect of the truth that is being revealed to us, another question appears.  We then begin to use our imagination again to try to fathom this new truth, and the cycle begins anew.

How relieving it was to find that simple eye opening truth, that all of this time that I had been seeking answers and only finding more questions, that I had been truly following the nature of revelation and faith. God was calling, and I was responding. I wasn't failing, but I was growing in faith. I still hope that some day, I can be in the stage of sacrificial faith at all times; until then I will be content in knowing that I can glimpse those moments without trepidation but simply realizing that when I do have a moment of pure sacrificial giving, a moment in which I am no longer concerned with my self at all but only with 'other', that in that moment, I will have opened another stage of the mystery.  That in opening another stage of the mystery I will have drawn that much closer to God.

Listening...

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger

The book of James is quick to remind us that part of our Christian duty is to listen to another.  It's strange though to think that the average thought of what it means to listen, is not to hear what they have to say.. but to quickly find out their problem, and fix it.

We so often sit hearing another person without actually listening to them. Our mind is often filled with our own preoccupation of what it is that they are speaking about and we wait with some sort of anticipation to interject what we agree with or what we disagree with, or even to say 'here is the answer' to their dilemma.  I was reading a very interesting book and in it there was this astounding thought to me, when my listening becomes a point where I am going to interject something of my own experience, to tell them here is what I agree with of what you said.. or here is what I disagree with.. we have made it no longer about them, but about me.

How much more powerful and resulting would a conversation be if we spent that time actually listening, putting ourselves in their shoes, and attempting to understand fully what they are conveying?  Not simply looking for where they are wrong, or where we are right, or trying to scientifically categorize an answer to their problem;  but simply listening and making sure they know we are listening.  Not systematically dissecting the situation with questions, but simply commenting on their feelings "You were feeling quite betrayed by their actions.  That makes it very hard to trust them again."   Is much more about them than "I'd never talk to them again!" which as become about you.

So do we have it in us? To listen? Not just to hear, but to listen.. unconditionally?  Or are we stuck as a society that is about the I, and not the you?

Where are you? More importantly.. where am I?

So what stage or degree of faith should you or I have? Should we seek the "highest" stage? Should we all hope to reach the point of a totally sacrificial faith? No doubt, we all tend to see that as an ideal. But dare anyone tell you where you should be at a given stage of your faith journey? To insist that you reach complete maturity now is like grabbing a budding flower by the stem and trying to yank it upward into full bloom. Such an effort would be violent and destructive. And it ignores the truth that there is a season for everything.

I've been reading some of my home work tonight as we relax and get ready for bed for an upcoming class in Ministry Formation. The article, How God Invites us to Grow, talks about 6 different stages of faith. I'll attempt to paraphrase those below here.

Stage 1: Imaginative Faith

This is where faith starts, as a young child we often have fancy notions of God being the old grandfather up in the cloud. Flying around the world like Santa Clause. Showering down gifts from on high, bowling in the clouds to make thunder, etc.

Stage 2: Literal Faith

This is where many of us get to and get stuck, or even consider to be all there is to faith. It's where we take all the stories as literal history stories and we never get to the moral foundation of them.. the story of love behind them. It is where we stick to what we know, literal stories, and almost avoid any other truth that can come from them. We see the story of Adam and Eve not as a story that teaches us moral value, but of a God who punishes evil and good, who doles out good and evil, almost a karmic God.

Stage 3: Group faith

This is where we do what we do, not because of any reason other than that's how we've always done it. My grandfather used to grab our heads and push them down during prayer, because that's how we prayed. To this day, I still bow my head during prayer... because that's how we did it. Many of those who start in one faith and live it their entire life, often never find out why they do something.. they just continue to do it. I remember a story about an a family where the daughter always cut the end off the ham... she had no idea why, so one day at Christmas she called home and said Mom why do you cut the end off the ham? Expecting an answer that it kept it moister, or did something with juices, her mother said I dunno, mom always did. So they get together and go see the grandmother.. who opens the oven and says, cause I have a little oven and if I don't cut the end off it won't fit in there.

Stage 4: Personal faith

Responsibility. At this stage we look up what we do.. we find out why.. we live our faith not because someone else told us too but because we understand why we bow, why we kneel, why we genuflect.. not only understand, but agree and do it out of our own choice.. our own faith. Owning your faith. Not being Catholic because your family was and you just always have been.. but realizing what being Catholic is.. and living it because it's right.

Stage 5: Mystical faith

Lots of people give this one a bad name. Mystical faith just means you've gone into communion with God. You're beyond just realizing that God lives in you.. but KNOWING he does. It's having an intimate relationship where you not only realize that, but that he lives in others. You then being to see them as brothers and sisters, regardless of faith, regardless of if they agree with you. It's going above just self and God.. and being beyond yourself.. which of course leads to

Stage 6: Sacrificial faith.

We know this is the ideal.. the faith where we give ourselves away. Where we no longer are concerned with status, personal gain, or even our own safety.. all we are worried about is doing the will of God. He has become our all in all, and as such serving his family has become greater than ourselves. Giving up our selves to serve Him and by it everyone else. As the Article says “One's commitment to the values of truth, justice, and love become all consuming.”

I spent about an hour talking with my wife after reading this article. We were discussing.. where are we? I know where I want to be.. I want to be there at that Sacrificial level... but I don't know that I am. I'd like to say that I'm on some levels getting towards a mystical faith.... some of the lines really spoke to me. “For most people this awareness of God's inner presence begins with a longing or a compelling desire to be one's whole self or to live one's life as meaningfully as possible.” That resonates with me on so many levels. As does the statement: "Recognition of the sisterhood and brotherhood of all people also intensifies one's commitment to the well-being of all humankind.” Am I there? I am not sure. Is my ego wanting me to be more than I am? Possibly.

I do know I am beyond group faith. I no longer follow any faith, without understanding why. I do not tell my kids you will do this because that's what we do! We do this because of this reason, this is what it means, and here is where we can find that information. They also will choose for themselves, to be Catholic or not when the time comes. For now I will teach them as much as I can about our faith.. not just what we do, but why we do it, and where those traditions come from.

So here I am. Discerning. Woefully inadequate, praying that God will lead me on down this path and turn me into the man he wants me to be, and not the man that I am. Hoping to be on the highest level, feeling I'm really on the lowest rung. With that I will leave you with the words quoted in the article of Thomas Merton, “When I have found my truest self, I will have found God.”

Lord help me to find my truest self, to become the self that you created me to be, that I may be in full and perfect communion with you.. praying at all times, walking in Your will and not my own.

In Christ,

Brian

Division? Fire? Who is leading your life?

Jesus said to his disciples:

“I have come to set the earth on fire,

and how I wish it were already blazing! 

There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,

and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! 

Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? 

No, I tell you, but rather division. 

From now on a household of five will be divided,

three against two and two against three;

a father will be divided against his son

and a son against his father,

a mother against her daughter

and a daughter against her mother,

a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law

and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” 

This reading is the reading for today's mass for Catholics all over the world. It's a reminder to us that Jesus message is not an easy one. It divides friends, families, even nations. We see it in our own Christian walks as we meet other Christians, who are divided from us in our beliefs... all of them believing in Jesus, but finding different interpretations from those that their other brothers and sisters hold. As Jesus quoted Micah to his followers, it makes me wonder if they had any inkling of how true this statement was? How the Word expressed himself to mankind, knowing that they would divide because of their own hardness and stubbornness of heart. Something to meditate on today: Is the division I see in my life caused by a rejection of the truth that Jesus is the Messiah, God's only begotten son? Or is the hardness of my own heart the cause of some of those divisions?

It is Finished

These words still echo throughout the world, as Jesus hung on the cross giving his life in love for each one of us, he uttered the words that would change history. "It is finished."  We have so many who take this to mean that they are finished too, that what Jesus did on the cross completed it all for them.. and in a way they are right. There is nothing you or I can do to complete what Jesus did, it's already done. Yet, the work you and I must do is just beginning. When we take up our own cross we are running a race towards the end of our lives, a race that ends with our own death and resurrection.

What did Jesus mean when he said It is finished? So many things can be taken from it. One he meant that mans redemption, the sacrificial liturgy of the Eucharist, the Mass at Calvary, was finished. Two he meant that his work, his life, was complete. He meant that propitiation was complete, that Jesus had died for our sins, and that it was over. He did not mean that you and I had no work left to do. No far from it.

I think one way we can look at it is to examine popular movies in our culture. How often do we see in the movies someone passing away suddenly and unexpectedly, and as the result they become stuck as a ghost who needs to do something to fix their life, or to finish it. I remember a movie with Robert Downey Junior in it, where four ghosts attach to him and each of them must 'finish' their lives.  They run around and of course hilarity ensues, as they begin to right the wrongs that they should have done during their lives. Then we have the ever popular Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze (God rest his soul) in the movie Ghost, where he holds on to her and keeps trying to protect her from the evil that managed to kill him. Only after she is safe and the evil is vanquished is he able to move on to eternal life.

This is the kind of completion that you and I should be looking for. Our faith results in works, that is faith without works is dead.  We are not done.   We have work to do.  You show me your faith without works? and I'll show you my faith BY my works. (St. James paraphrased.) When we die one of two things can be said about us "Look how much he left behind."  or "Look how much he took with him."  If we die without completing our lives, then there is so much left behind we should have said.. should have done.. should have completed..  But if we live every day working for God, every day teaching love, hope and faith... then when we die people will say, look at that man.. he took part of me with him, I will remember him forever.

Have you met someone in your life who had this impact on you? Whose life was so complete at death that you knew they were done? Who lived in such a way that on their death bed their life itself said, "It is finished." in glorious imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ? That is my challenge, to live each day for God in such a way that when I am gone.... I leave behind nothing, but take all of you with me.

Personal Relationship?

There are three camps in Christianity right now that seem to be the most prevalent, and two of them I find to be fatally flawed and separate from the Gospel according to Jesus Christ. Both have their merits, but both are lacking something to be complete.

The first is the camp that our relationship with Jesus is a personal relationship. You often see people say don't judge me, I only answer to God! In a way that's correct, just as David said, I sinned against you and you alone, our concern should be first and foremost with God. That's what Jesus said the most important commandment was right? So in a way our relationship with God is personal, it's primary.. but it's not just. Just said that was the first and greatest commandment, but then he went on to say there was a second, like it. (Another translation says "A second, equally as important" (see Mark 12:28-33). That makes a big difference doesn't it?

Then the second camp, one less common but one the Pharisees themselves seem to have been guilty of, is that it's a community relationship and only a community relationship. These are the people who put the commandments before the people. Their relationship is ONLY religion, only about the community. The Pharisees were very guilty of this, and if you watch the recent 'Bible' television series, you see some of that attitude. The "I need to protect my religion, my people" at all costs mentality.  The man who follows his religion to a T but neglects the needs of his fellow brothers and sisters, this man puts community before person, there is no personal relationship, even among the community.. only the community structure. The white washed tomb that Jesus called them greatly expresses this ideal. They appear clean on the outside, because they do everything right, but on the inside.. it's still dirty, still hate filled. We all seem to fall into that trap from time to time.. but notice that Jesus didn't say for people to ignore the tradition? No.. Then said Jesus to the crowds and to his disciples,  “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat;  so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice.  They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger. (Matthew 23:1-4)

So then what are we to do? We see here clearly that Tradition is not bad.. no the Tradition of the Pharisees was beautiful and had many beautiful teachings in it.. but they weren't practicing what they preach. We also see that God is important, the first and foremost.. but so are our brothers and sisters.. So neither of these approaches work. Why? Because they try to separate the body from the head. You see with the first, you take you and try only have communion with the head, Jesus.  With the second, you only have communion with the body as a whole, and not the head at all. Both ignore the other parts of the body and Sacred Scripture clearly tells us that we cannot separate the parts of the body. The eye cannot tell the hand I have no need of you (1 Corinthians 12:21), etc.

So we need all of it. We need the head, the body, and the parts! In order to be in communion with God who is a trinity.. we must also worship in a trinity (you'll find this pattern all through scripture!) We have to be in communion with God, with the body, AND with each other! So that is the simple answer. Tradition is beautiful, but so is love. God is important, but so is your brother and sister. You love God BY loving each other. It's really that simple.

That was one of the first things that drew me to Catholicism, and it's the thing that keeps reminding me that this is home for me. That there is a huge emphasis on God, worshiping him and him alone.  Yet, there is an emphasis on still talking among the body (both here and those already gone to Heaven), in the communion of saints. And yet there is still the personal relationship, how much more personal can it be than to go forward every Sunday and touch Jesus in such a unique way in the Eucharist? It's all there.

And remember, the only person scripture records as saying "Am I my brothers keeper?" was the one who had just killed his brother.

Peace be with you,
Brian