Where Charity and Love Prevail

I've been getting progressively more ill since Thursday and last night I couldn't do anything with Jennie because it was obvious that I was too sick. She called me up last night to talk after she got off work. "Babe, I'm at Walmart. Do you need anything?"

"Wow," I thought to myself, "boy am I lucky...she really loves me...she wants to take care of me when I'm sick." I couldn't help but smile.

"My dad told me to get Zicam," I said, "in the pill form."

"Okay, I'll look for it."

She called back a few minutes later to tell me that they only had it in spray form, which my father told me to avoid, so I thanked her anyway and let her go on her way. About half an hour later, she called back to tell me that she went to the Kroger's Supermarket in town and had found some for me and was waiting in the lobby of my dorm to give it to me. Sure enough, when I went down the stairs, there she was, waiting and looking at me with those loving eyes, the car outside with the blinkers on.

I'm so blessed to have my Jennie. She went out of her way and spent a bit of time just to improve my conditions and make me a little happier. Thank you, God.

How God Works with Holy People

Sr. M. Iohanna Paruch was speaking to our catechetics class about Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein, OSB.

While a Benedictine monk, Fr. Buechlein, he was asked to become a bishop and humbly said that he would not take on such a duty. Some time later, while staying at a hotel while on a trip, he answered the phone, "Fr. Buechlein, how may I help you?"

"Hello Fr. Buechlein, this is the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States. I'm calling to inform you that your vow of obedience has been transferred to the Holy Father, your vow of poverty has been dissolved so that you may serve the poor, and your vow of chastity...well, you can keep that. You're the new Bishop of Memphis."

Undoubtedly the good bishop was stunned. God had just completely overrided his humble will. When we are humble, it is easier for God to override our wills and place our lives along His own path. When we are proud, we resist.

Just because a man is humble doesn't mean he won't have his will corrected; in fact, the humble man will find himself far more often vetoed than the arrogant man.

Happy Anniversary to Us

Today is my first anniversary!

A Dose of Humiliation is Good for the Soul

Last night and this morning, I've poored through half of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and rapidly discovered that a great many of these demonic bits of advice apply to my life and my actions. Traps and snares abound in my life, yet I tend not to be mindful of their abundance...reading a book like that convicts the soul and humiliates a man in his own eyes.

I am borrowing it from my roommate and turned to him to ask for a different book, not because I dislike this, but because I was looking for one more spiritual, "this one is making me feel guilty," I said, "and I'd rather read something more spiritually uplifting."

"If it's convicting your heart and humbling you, then I think that's the book you need to read." He said.

Can't beat that advice.

Metanoia

Metanoia is a fancy Greek word for "change of heart" or "conversion." Silly theologians and their Greek.

I've had a lot of moments in my metanoia, my own personal conversion story, and today I had another. Even though I was about to hit 20,000 posts on Phatmass (Yeah, I know, what a dork, right?), I just quit cold-turkey. Perhaps it was because I was about to hit 20,000 posts, actually. I'm not sure.

A friend of mine pointed out how Catholics on the internet tend to attack one another. We aren't often unified. While I hope this specific problem is one I have not recently shown (I was working on it a long time ago), I know of other problems I had. I've been addicted to the internet.

It's hard not to be. It's like entering our own little dream world. We can ignore people, tell other people what we think without any inhibitions, show off our knowledge (and occasionally reveal our idiocy), and whine, complain, and rant until we're blue in the...fingers.

Ah, internet addiction...what a disasterous thing! I'm reminded of the words of Psalm 115 (I had to look up which one it was):

"They have mouths, but they cannot speak;
They have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear;
They have nostrils, but they cannot smell.
With their hands they cannot feel;
With their feet they cannot walk.
No sound comes from their throats.
Their makers will come to be like them
and so will all who trust in them." (Breviary Translation)

We so often post what absolutely no one cares about...why? Because we want to say what's on our mind! We want to fashion a little virtual world in our image. I know very well that I myself have gone there and reloaded a page 20 or 30 times in a row. Why? Because I couldn't wait to see what someone else had to say! It was fascinating! Best of all, they were replying to me!

We get so caught up in ourselves on the internet and we rarely realize that there are others involved. We wait for replies with the time we should spend praying, we speak with sarcasm, we try to beat people in arguments...and for what? To impress a bunch of people we very likely will never meet.

Yet we hopefully will someday meet Christ...and what will He have to say about it all?

I don't know about you, but I need time to recollect myself, to pray, and to center my life once again around God and not about my talking about God. It's time for a little metanoia.

May God bless us and keep us and conform us evermore to Himself.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes. We all have them, especially young people. They're full of stereotypes.

I really hope someone caught that.

I was at the mall a while ago with my beloved Jennie and as we walked hand-in-hand, we were approached by a few young guys, high school seniors perhaps, who looked at me and said in a very frank voice, "dude, how did you get her?!"

I didn't know whether to be complimented or insulted. On the one hand, he had just told me in no uncertain terms that the woman who loves me is beautiful. On the other, he had just single-handedly judged me unworthy of her by our exterior looks.

Jen took it as an insult and a personal one at that. What the comment had meant to her was that she was too beautiful to be with someone like me and that beautiful girls like her are shallow and selfish. He had judged her soul by the appearance of her body.

I'm not a fan of political correctness. I think too many people whine about stereotypes. However, every once and a while, some very wrong judgment is made. How rude can you get? We must be careful not to make stereotypical judgments and insult people based on what we mistakenly think of them. Judgment is a double-edged sword...swordplay should only be undertaken by those who have training and experience.

For the record, if that boy had taken a moment to look past her body and into her soul, he would have seen something far more beautiful and precious. I'm blessed to have had the chance to see her soul before her body.

Where is Your Heart?

We are told that where our heart is, there our treasure lies. This is something which proves to be a more and more certain truism.

I have found that my heart is not in God. If it were, I would not sin, but would seek to guard my treasure.

Nor is my heart in heaven. If it were, I would strive first and foremost for the Kingdom of Heaven.

My heart is in the world. My heart is in myself. I am a selfish person with selfish interests. I snapped at someone close to me the other day, a sort of adopted little sister, because she stole a cookie from my plate. It wasn't really the loss of a cookie that bugged me; I'm gladly not that attached to food, although a good cookie is always a wonderful thing to have. What upset me was that she stole it. She was trying to be playful, of course, and I knew it. I'd often played around, but only because I knew it wasn't right to be upset. When she stole it this time, I snapped and said, "here, have them all!" And I tossed the plate in front of her. This is not what Jesus meant when He said, "if a man asks for your tunic, give him your cloak as well."

Within a few seconds, she was crying. She had no idea that she should have expected that and I don't know where it came from.

Why had it gotten on my nerves? Because people trample over me a lot. People take and take. I was the lonely kid who walked up and down the blacktop every recess as a child. I was the reject. I was the kid who got picked on. Some of that still haunts me. I insult myself a lot. I beat myself up when I'm not good enough. Why? Because I always assumed the best of others...I always just thought something was wrong with me. I never just told myself, "those kids are jerks" and left it at that...so I'd make excuses for them, "I really am a loser. I deserve this kind of treatment."

I don't like it when people don't ask and just take. I don't like it when people are rude to me. I don't like it when people do things to get on my nerves...but most of all, I don't like it when I do those things to others.

So I beat myself up...I tell myself I'm worthless and then I wonder why I am. The fact is, that's pride. It is pride because it's completely focused on myself and not at all on Christ.

Sure, I want to make God happy, but it's more about my being worthy of His happiness than His being pleased. My heart is in myself, not in God. The difference between these two dispositions seems entirely impossible to overcome. I must become humble. I must place my heart in God. Up to now, I have made very little progress, and perhaps only a few cells of heartflesh are conformed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. God help me, piece by piece, bit by bit, to become an honest, humble man...a man after His own heart.

Lord Jesus, I ask your most blessed and Immaculate Mother Mary to accept my heart and give it to you. May I become yours by her intercession. May my heart, my treasure, be in you, not for my own glory, but for love of the Triune Godhead who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Iconoclasm: Destroying the Incarnation

There are many in the Church today who would prefer to see simple architecture and minimalist art in even the cathedrals of Christendom. Preferring the spiritual to the corporeal, they would make short, squatty churches with plain walls and bare crosses. The important thing, they say, is that we are united to the love of Christ. Indeed they are right, but could that be all? God created man as a composite creature, body and soul. The body expresses the inward beauty of the soul and the soul brings life to the body. He made us body and soul; should we not expect Him to save our bodies and souls? Yet if the way of salvation is communion with Christ, and we expect and anticipate the salvation of body and soul, doesn't this mean that both must be in communion with Christ?

Christ came among men to save them and He, the Eternal Word of the Father, took on our flesh. The Lord Himself has taken on the body and soul of man to redeem the body and soul of man. Does it make sense then that we should ignore the fact that He took on our flesh?

Yet this is exactly what the iconoclasts do! The Lord, the God of all creation, gave us the sacraments and they testify to this very fact. Not a single sacrament is without the physical aspect. We need only look to the Eucharist. Jesus Christ gives us to eat His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. The word in the Greek means "to chew" and the word St. Thomas Aquinas uses, manducat, means the same. We chew our Lord who comes sacramentally and substantially to us in the humble form of bread. This is what George Weigel calls the "grittiness" of Catholicism.

The scandal lies in the fact that God became man. It is such a profound fact and so sublime that hardly anyone could think such a thing possible. Indeed, it seems completely impossible. The Incarnation is central to the faith. By it, our bodies and souls may be saved.

Those who deny that we come to know God in this way deny that in order to come to know God, we must be conformed to Him. To know God is not merely intellectual. The wording "to know" is used in Scripture to mean union, particularly the marital union. How can we know God without becoming one flesh with Him? It is an entirely Lutheran idea that salvation can come to us merely by our intellectual and volative assent. The gritty Catholic knows that to be justified, one must be sanctified, and to be sanctified, one must be conformed to Christ, and to be conformed to Christ, one must know Him, body and soul, and grow into deeper and deeper communion with Him.

Those who claim that we have no place for sacred art, music, or incense simply don't understand that we are embodied souls. We need to experience with our senses so that our minds can comprehend the data. Those who would have us live in their iconoclasm forget that Christ came to save our bodies and souls and meant, most surely, to conform them to Himself. The iconoclasts wish to do away with the scandal of the Incarnation.

As for me, I will revere the icons, the chant, and the incense of my faith. By these means is the Word of God Incarnate communicated to me. Let the iconoclasts have only their souls redeemed. At least we'll be able to beat them at football when we get to heaven.

Have You Ever Loved a Stranger?

Have you ever loved a stranger? I mean, have you ever walked by someone on the street, a total stranger, and just loved them?

The Gospels tell us that Jesus loved those who came to Him. In Mark 10:21, we are told of one occasion on which Jesus loved someone who came to him. Jesus loved him. It comes across as a complete action. Jesus love for him was complete and it was also active.

The Greek of the passage records that Jesus' love was agape love--the pure, Christian love of God. By Baptism, we become capable of sharing in this love, although our share may be imperfect in this life.

Sometimes I like to sit somewhere, on a parkbench, for instance, and just see those who walk by and love them. I may never know their names or their stories, but I know that they are images of God, His children, and that loving Christ in the stranger is part of what it means to be Christian.

Let us love our neighbors, whoever they are, be they known to us or not. Let us love our strangers.

On Liturgical Abuses

No one can doubt that liturgical abuses exist. The sons of Aaron show the earliest form of this by offering "unholy fire" (Leviticus 10) and are likewise consumed in holy fire for their disobedience. Consequently, the document Quo Primum sets a certain standard for the liturgy in the Roman Rite and this standard changed (not in a bad way) with Vatican II and the Novus Ordo Missae. Since then, the west has been struggling with priests (and the occasional nun or layperson) who try to celebrate Mass to the beat of their own drum (sometimes quite literally) and the Church seems split. It's not hard to enter a parish community and find factions on the liturgy.

Certainly, we should all be conscious and aware of liturgical abuse. It is something we must fight. However, we must also be aware that when the Mass is celebrated validly (there are times that it is not), Jesus is present there. If God is there, then we must quiet our hearts and accept Him humbly, praying that He will care for His Sacred Liturgy. Approaching the altar with anger in one's heart and one's eyes turned inward in the conceit of disapproval only further detracts from the Mass.

One of the advantages to living in Steubenville is that I get to see Dr. Scott Hahn fairly often. While giving a series of talks on the Mass and the Scriptures, he was asked what he thought of liturgical abuses. Always humble of heart, the good professor replied, "the only abuse I ever notice is that I am allowed to receive."

May God bless us all.

There's Always Tomorrow for Kisses

Jennie was sick today...just sinus problems and a sore throat, don't worry. She was very tired though, after a night of tossing and turning in her bed. Poor girl. She was a little cranky today, but that's okay.

I wanted to give her a kiss, but I knew I couldn't. I wanted to keep her close and hold her awhile, but I knew I shouldn't.

Instead of caring about myself, I only wanted to see her get better. I held her for a few moments and looked in her eyes, I rubbed her arm and told her to get some rest. Love must be a patient servant, even in the face of crankiness. There's always tomorrow for kisses.

Trying to Decide What to Write for My Senior Thesis

Any ideas, anyone?

St. Valentine's Day

Yesterday I went out to dinner with Jennie, my wonderful, smart, kind, beautiful, loving girlfriend. Then we went to the mall and I let her lead me by the hand while she looked at shoes and boots in a whole bunch of stores. She apologized and I told the silly girl that I like shopping. Then we went to see a movie and she leaned on me and held my arm through the whole thing. Finally, we got back and did some eye-gazing before I left her and she went back home. Her roommates told her that she was glowing when she got in the door!

I love her so much!

The Importance of Gratitude

"The good Lord has always been good to me."

My grandfather often said this pious little prayer of thanks in gratitude for all that God had done for him. He was a somewhat wealthy construction company owner, lace-curtain Irish, raised with servants, who eloped to marry the family nurse. Not a bad lifestyle. He had very much to be grateful for and he certainly was.

It's not uncommon that we despair when bad news comes to us. Not grandpa. When his father (and provider) died, he was on his way to study at the University of Notre Dame. He turned around and went back home. He had to help provide for the family. Many of us would have cursed the moment and grown angry and bitter with God. How could He do that to us? Yet grandpa knew that the Lord would provide.

Even though things looked gloomy, the Lord provided for my grandfather. He gave him the means to start a company with my great-uncle and the two helped finish the work they had started when working for their father's company. The old brick Lincoln Highway still stands as a testament in Nebraska to the determination of my grandfather to go about his work with joy and thanks, never allowing the storms to disturb him.

When grandpa grew old, he got Alzheimer's Disease. He could no longer remember how good the Lord had been to him. He couldn't remember his own children. Yet he displayed a simple faith. He found the time and the opportunity to smile in the nursing home. If there wasn't something happening to make people laugh, he'd do it himself. A good laugh is a prayer of gratitude for joy.

We need to be grateful for the good things God gives us, but also for the bad. He means only to test us, to strengthen us, and to help us to endure the consequences we bring on ourselves. Sometimes things go badly. Sometimes life hurts. But let's not get confused, it's we who cause the evil and God who provides the solution which leads to good.

Lastly, in gratitude, let us keep our eyes on Jesus, Our Light, and we will walk on water and not be shaken by the storm all around us.

Lumen De Lumine

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed confesses faith in Jesus Christ who is Lumen de Lumine (Light from Light). God is truly Light. With God as the light for our steps, we progress in faith on this life's pilgrimage. The purpose of this blog is to learn, know, teach, and live the faith so that the author and all his readers may grow into deeper communion with the God who is both teacher and taught.