5mm: On gratitude

My mother in law left yesterday after staying with us for a week. She is a delightful human being, and I always enjoy having her at our house. After school yesterday, Isaac and I were sitting at the table having snack. He wanted to write a letter to Grandma, so he dictated, and I wrote. It went something like this:

“Dear Grandma, I wish I was so fast. Faster than nothing! So that I could just speed away if another Nascar was coming toward me.” (At this point I suggested that perhaps he could thank Grandma for coming and for the much stuff she bought him.) “Thank you for my Bumblebee and Grimlock toys. Maybe next time you can get me that big Optimus Prime toy and…” Um, excuse me??

I explained to my dear one that in a thank you note is not appropriate to bring up the things the giver did NOT give. He didn’t really get it, but luckily, I was the one writing.

We struggle to teach authentic gratitude to our son. He’s American, growing up in a country that even in this difficult economic time, does not compare to many places in the world. Plus, for all practical applications, he’s been an only child for all but 6 months of his life. He’s one of only 3 grandkids on Brad’s side and is an only on mine. The kids gets a lot of stuff. By Dr. Ray’s standards, we definitely don’t filter enough of it out.

Ingratitude is ugly, isn’t it? Nobody likes a brat. That’s why we are striving to at least give Isaac the right words to seem grateful. So then I read this from I Believe in Love today: “The most cruel ingratitude is distrust”. Ouch.

How easy it is to get caught up in myself, and my busy schedule, or my weaknesses or fears or whatever and fail to trust Jesus. He does nothing but pour himself out for me, willingly becomming a victim to repair all the things I am tempted to despair over, and I reward him with mistrust. Doubt of his goodness. I am my son, at Target, holding the toy in my hand and whining for the one I didn’t get.

So, this day, I will try to remember, when I am tempted to try and chart my own course or go it alone, that Jesus really does love me. He really does have a plan… I just have to let him work it out in my life. I have to not be a brat.

Jesus, I trust in you.

5mm: Hope is an anchor… and some apple streudel

I was at a beautiful benefit banquet the other night. I could spend pages telling you how inspiring it was and how wonderful the company was at my table. But I would like to tell you about the dessert. It was apple streudel, with a strawberry sitting in a dollop of whipped cream, with some yummy looking rum sauce on the side. And it was sitting on the elegantly set table when we first sat down.

I think the dessert set out on a formal place setting is like the virtue of hope. Hope, St. Paul says, is an anchor. It roots us in the reality that heaven is waiting for us once we get through this valley of tears. It reminds us that there is something greater than what we can see before us.

One other reason I think dessert is a good analogy is because the dinner we had wasn’t something I had to suffer through. I like salad, the bread was warm and yummy, and dinner was a delicious chicken, potatoes and veggies. Sometimes Christians get a bad wrap for looking toward heaven all the time, as if it indicates that we hate this life. No way! Sometimes in our own sorrows we can forget that this life is beautiful and think that it is something we have to suck up before we get to die. While we do have pain in this life, sometimes overwhelming pain, this life IS good. And it is full of joys in their due time.

Having dessert on the table reminds us not to get too full of the good things in front of us and save room for what is to come. (For instance, I didn’t finish all my potatoes just for that reason). We need to enjoy what we have here on earth, but without becomming so attached to these things that we no longer want heaven. I think this is what it means to be “in the world” but not “of the world”.

And the streudel WAS tasty!

5MM: The leaf that toppled my tomato plant

This year I attempted something that I never imagined I could accomplish: I grew tomatoes from seeds. Partially due to my neighbors’ magic potion they fed them while I was on vacation earlier in the summer, (I’m pretty sure), they have grown taller than me. I have even gotten some tomatoes off of them, though they are slow to make the transition from green to red. After a good harvest in mid August, there is now a new class on the vine, all green, playing beat the clock with the impending frost. I have my heart set on eating those remaining 15 or so tomatoes!

So, imagine my dismay when I went out on the deck yesterday to find one of my plants completely toppled over! Apparently, my makeshift method of propping up the 5-ft-tall plant finally gave out. That last leaf grew which was too much for my dear plant and it fell over, caging and all.

I have been working on my moral theology homework this week, where we have been studying virtue. Virtue is a habitual inclination to do the good. And, like a tomato plant, is built over time. Yes, we get supernatural grace for supernatural virtue, but grace still builds on nature. The ordinary way we gain virtue is through practice. We need to get used to doing a good act over and over, in all kinds of different circumstances.

The same is true for vice. We slowly build such a habit by practicing the bad act, over and over. Which is why we should not be surprised when a dysfunctional relationship suddenly boils over, or a situation which seemed under control yesterday now seems out of control. Like my tomato plant, it was just one leaf away the whole time we were adding vice to vice and it finally fell over.

Once we build up a habit of vice, we need to back peddle through all the acts we’ve built up, and that is hard! Grace aids greatly, but the acts still need to be committed rightly, over and over.

Well, after cutting off every branch that wasn’t already nurturing a tomato, I got my plant back up yesterday. Today, though, I have a more real-world situation to deal with before it bubbles over. Can you say a quick prayer for me for courage to practice virtue? Thanks!

5MM: Beware of Millstones

Having been inspired by a friend of mine’s new family blog where she sets a timer every day to sit at the keyboard and make some notes about her life, I have decided that would also be a good idea for me. I have a ton of ideas for posts sitting in my draft folder because I am “too busy” to put aside time to develop them well. Though I believe it is important to put time into my writing, I simply don’t have much of it right now, so I will attempt to not let the good be the enemy of the perfect. I may not be able to write every day, but I will try to at least get to it a few times a week. The clock is ticking… so here goes!

As someone who gets paid to teach the faith to young people, yesterday’s Gospel sent chills down my spine: Anyone who leads a little one to sin would be better off sleeping with the fishes. It’s one of those moments that doesn’t dovetail nicely with the idea of a hippie Jesus who just goes around telling people to be nice. And to add to this Bizarro Jesus thing, he starts talking about cutting off our feet and plucking out our eyes? What the heck?

I think it’s pretty simple. Jesus takes sin really seriously. After all, that’s the whole reason he came down from heaven to suffer continuously for 33 years, culminating in the most humiliating, agonizing death in human history: he wanted to save us from sin!

The fact that this is lost on us as 21st Century Catholics is due to the fact that we have lost a sense of sin. This is a great tragedy in the modern world. We shook off guilt decades ago thinking it would liberate us, but it has done the opposite. Sin always enslaves. Reconciliation always liberates. Jesus came to be our Savior, and when we deny that we are sinners, we exclude ourselves from his services.

See, when Jesus talks harshly about sin, it’s not to condemn us, but to free us. He’s like a family having an intervention with an alcoholic: listen, bud. You have a big problem. I love you too much to let you drink yourself to death. If he needs to be candid and blunt, it’s because we need it told to us like it is. Not so we can sit around wallowing in shame, but so we can move from shame, to forgiveness, to joy, to mission.

The Scholarship

Imagine a young orphan, living in destitute poverty.  This infant is taken in, loved with great tenderness and when old enough, is enrolled into an elite  boarding school.  This school is home to the brightest minds in the known world, most of whom are also extremely kind and wise.  Every opportunity is provided this child, completely free of charge. 

At first the child loves the school, reveling in learning the ABC’s and soon fascinated by his own ability to read words, and then sentences.  He loves the lessons on nature and science, math and music.  As he grows older, however, the child becomes a teenager, then a young adult.  In this process of high school and college, the young man develops some boredom with the school which soon develops into complete apathy.  Perhaps there were some difficulties with lessons for which he did not seek adequate help.  Perhaps he resented having to sit in the classroom on a nice day.  Maybe he grew weary of the effort good education exacted from him.  Whatever the reason, he begins to routinely skip class. When he does occupy the chair, has not done his homework, and therefore cannot participate or contribute to the discussion.  This feeds his indifference and contempt. 

Slowly he has convinced himself that the school is not all he thought it was as a naive child, and part of the way through college, he drops out completely.  Since he has rejected the education offered him, he returns to the kind of depraved existence he was rescued from as a baby.  He still considers himself an alumni of the school, but often refers to it with sarcasm.  The school which offered him every opportunity has become the butt of his most vicious jokes.

A sad story to be sure.  Not only for the young man, but for the benefactor who paid his tuition all those years.  Even if you figure on the low side of $10,000 per year for 12 years, you are looking at a $120,000 pricetag.  That is a lot of money spend gratuititously by a stranger, rejected and scorned.

In this parable, the young man is all of us, in varying degrees.  And the school is the Church.  Let me explain.

The Church is the means by which Jesus desires to save all men.  It is not an add-on, a place to come “do” Christianity or a set of artificial beaurocracy set in place by white-bearded old celebates.  She is a living, growing organism.  So much so that we call her the Body of Christ.  This is a metaphor in a certain sense, but is more literal than we give it credit for.  We are all part of Jesus himself when we are in the Church.  That whole thing Jesus told Peter about the gates of Hell not prevailing against the Church and sin being bound and loosed? As Catholics, we believe it.  The Church is a gratuititously free gift from Jesus to us, an ark which brings us aboard out of our sin and depravity through our Baptism. 

So, like the young man, we are saved through Baptism, snatched from poverty and nurtured with Sanctifying grace.  But she does not stop there.  The Church is the meeting place, over two millenia, of the best and brightest minds of civilization.  The saints nurture us in our understanding of Truth, and through their holiness invite us to delve deeper into the mysteries of God.  It must not be forgotten that all these brilliant folk are not moved on their own power, but by the Holy Spirit who guides and  inspires their thought and virtue.  Perhaps most importantly, what they teach us is not primarily academic.  They teach us about what it means to be human, how to live in right relationships and most importantly, what is our final end.  They lived the drama of human existence with heroic virtue and offer to tangibly help us along our own path.

These same saints paid for this education of ours with their suffering.  “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”.  This is not exactly the same reality as would be seen by a country’s military, however.  We owe our existence as a free nation Washington’s men, and our continued unity to Lincoln’s, and our freedom from Nazi’s to the brave men of World War II.  Christian martyrs, on the other hand conquered only themselves.  They do not seem to be doing anything, really.  The Romans were not immediately overthrown from the grace released by the Christians they burned as torches to light the outskirts of the city.  Evil appeared to have triumphed.  And so it is in every day and age that the workings of Christian martyrdom, bloody and unbloody, costs so much but pays out invisibly.  This is precisely because it is offered in communion with the hidden sacrifice on Calvary. 

This is the saddest part of our analogy.  It could perhaps be conceivable to reject gifts and treasures of many faceless thousands of people (how easy is it to take advantage of the “government” or a “big corporation”?).  But the primary donor that we reject when we treat the Church with contempt or indifference is Jesus Christ.  A totally free gift, of tremendous magnitude, for our own salvation rejected, scorned, or perhaps just taken for granted.

So, how are we like the young man? Often as children we are open and excited about our faith.  Perhaps that is what Jesus is getting at when he tells us we should all be like children!  Often, though, when things get harder to understand we do not seek the answers to our doubts and questions as we should.  Or perhaps we get “grass is always greener” syndrome, preferring to be more like our secularized peers who get to sleep in on Sunday mornings.  Maybe we look as what is asked of us as Christians and find it too hard.  Whatever the reason, our indifference begins to feed itself.  If we are not continuing our religious education after Confirmation classes, we will not understand what is going on at Mass or why the Church teaches what she does on tough topics.  Armed with misunderstandings and diminshed actual graces, it gets easier to “tune out” the faith.  Some of us stay in this place, knowing there is good yet in the Church, but frozen against growing in virtue and love for God.  Others will, like the young man, completely check out.

So what to do?  First, we need to take stock, looking at ourselves in light of this story.  What is it that gets you “stuck”?  Sin? Confusion? Boredom? Those are fairly easily remedied through Confession, Eucharist and study.  I can’t speak for everyone in parish ministry, but I know that I would much rather spend all day in dialogue with someone having difficulty with Church teaching than one minute handling registration forms!  Seek out help in your parish if it is your questions that are keeping you away!  Some of us are in the ark, in good standing with the Church, but just need an extra dose of gratitude for the great gift she is.  In my theological study, I have found that every time I delve deeper into the mysteries of our faith, I marvel at it more deeply. 

As we enter the back-to-school season, preparing our new clothes and supply lists and writing seemingly endless numbers of checks, let us step back and remember the great School we were enrolled in from our Baptism, and give thanks for that great gift.

The Scholarship: A Parable

Imagine a young orphan, living in destitute poverty.  This infant is taken in, loved with great tenderness and when old enough, is enrolled into an elite  boarding school.  This school is home to the brightest minds in the known world, most of whom are also extremely kind and wise.  Every opportunity is provided this child, completely free of charge. 

At first the child loves the school, reveling in learning the ABC’s and soon fascinated by his own ability to read words, and then sentences.  He loves the lessons on nature and science, math and music.  As he grows older, however, the child becomes a teenager, then a young adult.  In this process of high school and college, the young man develops some boredom with the school which soon develops into complete apathy.  Perhaps there were some difficulties with lessons for which he did not seek adequate help.  Perhaps he resented having to sit in the classroom on a nice day.  Maybe he grew weary of the effort good education exacted from him.  Whatever the reason, he begins to routinely skip class. When he does occupy the chair, has not done his homework, and therefore cannot participate or contribute to the discussion.  This feeds his indifference and contempt. 

Slowly he has convinced himself that the school is not all he thought it was as a naive child, and part of the way through college, he drops out completely.  Since he has rejected the education offered him, he returns to the kind of depraved existence he was rescued from as a baby.  He still considers himself an alumni of the school, but often refers to it with sarcasm.  The school which offered him every opportunity has become the butt of his most vicious jokes.

A sad story to be sure.  Not only for the young man, but for the benefactor who paid his tuition all those years.  Even if you figure on the low side of $10,000 per year for 12 years, you are looking at a $120,000 pricetag.  That is a lot of money spend gratuititously by a stranger, rejected and scorned.

In this parable, the young man is all of us, in varying degrees.  And the school is the Church.  Let me explain.

The Church is the means by which Jesus desires to save all men.  It is not an add-on, a place to come “do” Christianity or a set of artificial beaurocracy set in place by white-bearded old celebates.  She is a living, growing organism.  So much so that we call her the Body of Christ.  This is a metaphor in a certain sense, but is more literal than we give it credit for.  We are all part of Jesus himself when we are in the Church.  That whole thing Jesus told Peter about the gates of Hell not prevailing against the Church and sin being bound and loosed? As Catholics, we believe it.  The Church is a gratuititously free gift from Jesus to us, an ark which brings us aboard out of our sin and depravity through our Baptism. 

So, like the young man, we are saved through Baptism, snatched from poverty and nurtured with Sanctifying grace.  But she does not stop there.  The Church is the meeting place, over two millenia, of the best and brightest minds of civilization.  The saints nurture us in our understanding of Truth, and through their holiness invite us to delve deeper into the mysteries of God.  It must not be forgotten that all these brilliant folk are not moved on their own power, but by the Holy Spirit who guides and  inspires their thought and virtue.  Perhaps most importantly, what they teach us is not primarily academic.  They teach us about what it means to be human, how to live in right relationships and most importantly, what is our final end.  They lived the drama of human existence with heroic virtue and offer to tangibly help us along our own path.

These same saints paid for this education of ours with their suffering.  “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”.  This is not exactly the same reality as would be seen by a country’s military, however.  We owe our existence as a free nation Washington’s men, and our continued unity to Lincoln’s, and our freedom from Nazi’s to the brave men of World War II.  Christian martyrs, on the other hand conquered only themselves.  They do not seem to be doing anything, really.  The Romans were not immediately overthrown from the grace released by the Christians they burned as torches to light the outskirts of the city.  Evil appeared to have triumphed.  And so it is in every day and age that the workings of Christian martyrdom, bloody and unbloody, costs so much but pays out invisibly.  This is precisely because it is offered in communion with the hidden sacrifice on Calvary. 

This is the saddest part of our analogy.  It could perhaps be conceivable to reject gifts and treasures of many faceless thousands of people (how easy is it to take advantage of the “government” or a “big corporation”?).  But the primary donor that we reject when we treat the Church with contempt or indifference is Jesus Christ.  A totally free gift, of tremendous magnitude, for our own salvation rejected, scorned, or perhaps just taken for granted.

So, how are we like the young man? Often as children we are open and excited about our faith.  Perhaps that is what Jesus is getting at when he tells us we should all be like children!  Often, though, when things get harder to understand we do not seek the answers to our doubts and questions as we should.  Or perhaps we get “grass is always greener” syndrome, preferring to be more like our secularized peers who get to sleep in on Sunday mornings.  Maybe we look as what is asked of us as Christians and find it too hard.  Whatever the reason, our indifference begins to feed itself.  If we are not continuing our religious education after Confirmation classes, we will not understand what is going on at Mass or why the Church teaches what she does on tough topics.  Armed with misunderstandings and diminshed actual graces, it gets easier to “tune out” the faith.  Some of us stay in this place, knowing there is good yet in the Church, but frozen against growing in virtue and love for God.  Others will, like the young man, completely check out.

So what to do?  First, we need to take stock, looking at ourselves in light of this story.  What is it that gets you “stuck”?  Sin? Confusion? Boredom? Those are fairly easily remedied through Confession, Eucharist and study.  I can’t speak for everyone in parish ministry, but I know that I would much rather spend all day in dialogue with someone having difficulty with Church teaching than one minute handling registration forms!  Seek out help in your parish if it is your questions that are keeping you away!  Some of us are in the ark, in good standing with the Church, but just need an extra dose of gratitude for the great gift she is.  In my theological study, I have found that every time I delve deeper into the mysteries of our faith, I marvel at it more deeply. 

As we enter the back-to-school season, preparing our new clothes and supply lists and writing seemingly endless numbers of checks, let us step back and remember the great School we were enrolled in from our Baptism, and give thanks for that great gift.

What a Waste

I am pretty sure I will spend a good deal of time in Purgatory for the amount of food I have wasted.  I don’t mind throwing away the dregs of an Easter basket or cheese doodles and processed cupcakes left over from the grandparents’ visit.  These can hardly be considered food in the first place.  What strikes at my conscience is the times I am forced to throw away a quarter pound of expired lunch meat that I forgot about or a half of a bag of browning broccoli from the warehouse club that I neglected to prepare in time.  Then there are the hotdog or hamburger buns left from some event that mold before we have hotdogs again, or the worst- the dumping of the tupperware from the back of the fridge that is full of, now what was that?.  During the gag-inducing fridge purge I always pray for mercy.  I ask Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, who would have gladly served my forgotten food in its better days, to intercede for those who go hungry around the world and in my own town.  And to win me the grace of better meal planning and discipline so that next time I clean the fridge I don’t fill the trash can to overflowing.

No one buys food at the grocery store with the intention of tossing it, or prepares a meal with the intention of putting it in the back of the fridge for three months and then flushing it.  But many of us do just that.  I read a women’s magazine article that stated Americans typically toss 10% of the food they buy.  The stat sickened me.  Not only for the fact that someone went through the trouble of growing or raising that food, or the fact that someone  is hungry right now for lack of food, but for the irony of the fact that I often stand in front of two products trying to compare cost per ounce to save a few bucks.  What good is it to double my 25 cent coupon when I am throwing away 10 dollars worth of food in one cleaning spree?  To waste food is just that: an all around waste.

If we are good at wasting valuable food, we are even better at wasting something more valuable yet: suffering.  At this point you may be thinking, “Suffering? I thought she was going to say ‘time’, or ‘talent’ or even ‘last month’s rollerover minutes’.  What good is suffering at all and how does one waste it?”  I’m glad you asked!

If you’ve read my blog before you may have heard this before, but it bears repeating.  Suffering is a deprivation of a good that one ought to have.  It doesn’t have existence unto itself, much the same as cold is the absence of heat or darkeness the absence of light.  We suffer when we do not have health or companionship or physical necessities.  Note also that we only suffer the lack of things that are proper to us.  I do not suffer for lack of wings, for example, since I ought not have them.  Lop off my leg, however, and suffering will follow. 

 Bear with me for a moment, and let’s follow this line of thinking to the end.  Think about the best good there is.  That would be God, the source of Goodness itself.  The worst suffering then, would be to be deprived of this, and for eternity.  That is called hell.  The means by which we go about bringing this worst suffering upon ourselves is called “dying in unrepentant grave sin”. 

So if it wasn’t before, it’s clear what suffering is.  And we all know that it touches every one of us in various ways at various times in our lives.  But, how could it possibly be valuable?  The answer is that on it’s own, it is not.  There is nothing inherently wonderful about loneliness, hunger or pain.  We detest and attempt to avoid it.  This is part of our defense mechanism.  But think about the minor, or even grave, sufferings you are willing to endure for a greater good.  This is evident in everything from cleaning out a child’s cut to undergoing chemotherapy.  If it’s necessary for the life or well being of those we love most, we will put up with just about anything.

This is what Jesus was thinking when He left heaven to live in suffering and poverty for 33 years only to have it all end by being subjected to the most humiliating and barbaric death on the books.  It was necessary for those He loved most.  You and me.  He understood that the worst of all sufferings for you and for me (hell, remember), could only be prevented by His life, death and resurrection.  By His death, Jesus offers the just penalty for sin, in its perfection.  He also loves the Father, in His flesh, with perfect love that we in our fallen state could not attain.  Jesus’ suffering had great worth, as it attained for us the best good– heaven!

This is where our suffering gets its merit.  Jesus’ sacrifice is perfect, but in His mercy, He leaves it open for us to participate in “what is lacking” in His own suffering.  There is room on that Cross for my deep losses and my daily irritations.  These, offered in union with the Passion of Christ, can help bring about the mission that He came to accomplish: our sanctification.  Wow.

Have you ever thought about why Mary was told at the Presentation that a sword would pierce her heart? Lucky for me my Mariology professor had.  For 33 years, she was holding that phrase of Simeon’s in her heart.  For 33 years pondering the untold suffering her son would endure.  Why would God do that to her? To prepare her, for one.  But for another, I think, because God knew she wouldn’t waste a moment of that suffering and He knew how much we would need the graces that she would merit for us. 

But how much more like me and my fridge are we usually than like our Blessed Mother? How many conversions are still waiting to be won because we responded to a difficulty with despair or anger instead of offering it as a gift back to Jesus?  Fr. Elbee in his book, I Believe in Love says, “In the apostolate, the price of souls is suffering, offered in love.” And sometimes it is the daily trials that we waste the most.  I know in my own life, my deepest sorrows have been easier to offer up than the trial of finding that my husband and son have just eaten popcorn over my freshly vacuumed carpet, again. 

 So, in this most busy time of year, let’s try to see our sufferings as a treasure chest of grace waiting to be released into the world.  And, for heaven’s sake, eat that meatloaf before it goes bad!

God is bigger

“Look, mom! A cowboy is a that place.”

“Why is that lady wearing a scarf?”

My son has begun a great human passtime: people watching.  And at the best of all peoplewatching places: the airport.  As we sat in the terminal on an unexpected Standby adventure, I marvelled with him at the huge array of people trying to get from our airport to their final destination.  There was a nervous mom with her emergency passport in hand trying to get to France to visit her study abroad son in the hospital.  This was her second time flying.  There was a young, smart-looking business man who had recently relocated and had his first child.  There was a group of giddy college girls on their way to Rome.  A British couple who had been trying to get home for three days after visiting family and having gone fishing for the first time in their lives.  (Their grandson also likes Spiderman.)

And then there are the people who leave it to your imagination their backstory.  People who don’t engage in small talk or speak loudly enough on their cell phones for you to learn their struggles.  Is that well dressed woman depressed because she’s been delayed from getting home to her family, or is something in her family causing the deep frown on her face?  Where has that tatooed man been? What is behind each of those fading pictures on his limbs?

Each of us has a lifetime of experiences and habits and decisions we bring with us.  What struck me as I looked at the masses of in-transit folks yesterday was the fact that there is a God who knew each of these people (and every one at every other airport in the world, AND even those who have never seen an airport!) before they were even born.  This God understands each better than they understand themselves, in all their compexities.  He knows each moment they were actually doing great good when they thought they blew it, and each time they thought they had it all together and were actually injuring others.  He sees beyond each action to its eternal consequences.  And He has enough love to fill each individual heart to overflowing.

I don’t know how we got on the subject, but one day Isaac and I got on the subject of God, most likely following the Veggie Tales in which Bob and Larry sing about God being bigger than the Boogeyman.  He would ask, “Is God bigger than that building?”  Yes, he is bigger.  “Than an elephant?” Yep, he’s much bigger.  And so on.  But God is also small enough to fit into a piece of bread and into our hearts.  “How can God be bigger AND smaller?”  A beautiful mystery indeed.

How often we make God so small when we consider him only in relation to our own problems, which keeps us from remembering the importance of our neighbor in God’s eyes.  At the same time we make him too big to ever care about us or to believe he has enough time to fit into lives, and therefore we shut him out of the work he wants to do our in our lives.  Next time we are people watching, let’s take a minute to remember God’s bigness, his smallness and what that means for our spiritual lives.

What do you desire?

There have been times when I have stayed away from the computer in order to take time to deal with deep, spiritual “issues” before commenting on them.  This time, I was redecorating.  So, no worries.

It occurred to me one night when tucking Isaac into bed that he is four and a half and is still sleeping in a toddler bed.  We have my old (but still in great shape) twin mattress in the basement, and it only makes sense to move it upstairs before our son’s lack of nocturnal mobility stunts his growth.  The idea of making a change to his room, however, made me take a different look at it: it was decorated with baby animals.  The ones we picked out when he was in utero.  Kind of inappropriate for a superhero.  This is what started my “Trading Spaces” week. 

With school starting soon, I knew I didn’t have any time to lose, so I planned to pick out all the stuff I needed in one day.  After an unsuccessful trip to the fabric store and a desperate prayer to St. Gianna, I did accomplish my goal.  I found (and haggled for) a bedspread at the red store, picked out green paint and painting supplies at the orange store and rounded out the day with curtains from the blue store.  That was Saturday.  On Sunday I painted, Monday I removed the tape, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I worked out the fun decorating details.  The room turned out really cute.  Perhaps I’ll break from the spiritual stuff in an upcoming post to give you my Martha Stewart project ideas. 

Anyway, the point is I was super motivated to do the room.  I love being creative and I love my son, so it was a labor of love.  It was with this in mind that I read the following passage from I Believe in Love.  “In order to give Jesus love for love, we must be souls of  desire.” I thought about the zeal with which I spray painted things and searched thrift stores and even carefully cut down the painter’s tape to finish Isaac’s room and suddenly felt like crap.  Why do I not work as enthusiastically for Jesus as I did on this project? So many saints were men and women of such burning desire for the Lord, and I can barely get my butt out of bed in time for prayer or Mass.

Yet there are different kinds of desires, I realized as I thought and prayed more on the topic.  Clearly, there are deeper desires in me than that of wanting to author a reality-TV-worthy decorating project.  I desire a great marriage, for example.  Further, just because something is not done with excitement does not mean it is not an act toward reaching a desired goal.  Actually, I think it indicates a greater desire to act despite our feelings.  Whose marriage could survive (much less be life-giving) if they only acted on happy feelings?  Is it not a great expression of deep desire for a great relationship when spouses  forgive one another, or to do chores they hate for the good of the family?  So when we are talking real desires, the fact that we don’t always feel like doing our duty does not mean that we don’t desire the end.  If we do what we should do anyway, it actually indicates that our desires are very strong.

Which brings me back to my desire for Jesus.  The fact that I don’t always feel like praying doesn’t necessarily indicate that I don’t desire Jesus.  It means I’m a human.  At times it is perfectly acceptable to do our religious duties out of, well, duty.  Just like we do with diapers or carpools or meal preparation.  These tasks speak love when done faithfully.  And frankly, they cannot be done faithfully if they are avoided when we don’t “feel like it”!  But Fr. d’Elbee also warns, “Routine, terrible routine, is the daughter of apathy.  In order to rise out of mediocrity and lukewarmness, renew your desires.”  If our duties to God become only empty duties, then we need to take a step back and remember the desire God has placed deep in our hearts: holiness.  Perfection.  Two things we will fall short on every time. 

So why even try? Because acknowledgement of our weakness is the very pathway to greater desire and ultimately, greater holiness.  It’s called humility.  Humility was the path that the Creator of the Universe chose to take at every turn during his earthly life, and it is the narrow path he sets before those who would follow him.  Humility is not a debasement of ourselves.  It is seeing things rightly.  A truly humble soul realizes that he is a sinner deserving death who instead has received the fullness of the life of God.  The humble man  sees God for who he is, in all his majesty, spending himself foolishly for those who detest, mock and beat him with their sins.  And not for an abstract “everyone”, but for me.  I am Barabbas, convicted justly and allowed to go free.  When we see thing like that, how can our desire for Jesus not grow?

All’s Well That Ends Well

We celebrate two things this week. The first, as you saw from the last post, is Brad’s new job.  He will be working at Sacred Heart Parish in Robbinsdale, as a youth and young adult minister. It’s perfect for him in many respects, and he follows a good friend of ours in that position, which makes the transition even smoother.  We are excited to see what’s in store.

Looking at the other places we both applied, it is easy now to see that God was holding out for this.  Whether we thought so at the time or not, each rejection letter or email we got was a door that needed to close in order for this one to open.  From this side of the trial it is also easy to see how God took a great fear of mine (financial instability) and used it to prove Himself my provider.  Further, through this new job of Brad’s, God has given us a blessing we would not have sought out if we had not been laid off.  And, in these times when many are still searching for work, He has given us authentic compassion and a heart of prayer for the un- and under-employed.

These things were not always visible to us while in the trial, but part of the joy of this gift is being able to see that what we suffered in the past 6 months was for our good.  All’s well that ends well.  That brings us to the other thing we celebrate this week: Gianna’s first anniversary in Heaven.  There are many parallels.

We celebrate not the fact that she suffered and died, of course.  For, in many respects all is not ended yet for us.  We are still in the midst of the trial of life without her.  In celebrating her anniversary, we are recognizing that she has reached her reward.  Just as we look back on 6 months of uncertainty with relief and joy because our employment trial is now over, so does she look now at her own short life and see the meaning behind every needle poke and every tear.  And I think that she sees us all still in this Valley of Tears and with her prayers is seeking to remind us that if we persevere until the end, our outcome too will be glorious.  She and Peter remind us that in comparison with eternity, our lives here on earth are as short as theirs were.  And the result of living it well is worth the cost, even a thousand times over.

One final thought. Many, in hearing our good news this week, have commented on the goodness of God.  Amen!! He is! But the saying reminded me that I should react the same way when I receive bad news, too.  Is God any better today than He was when we got the news that our job had been cut? Was He any better the day Gianna was born than the day she died? No.  God is the same yesterday, today and forever.  He does all things well, and we will come to see even the hardest things this light if we give Him a chance to show us.  Even if we have to wait until Heaven.