“Routine” Faith?

“…Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him; but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him.” Matthew 21: 31b-32

These are the words of Jesus at the end of a parable about a father who had two sons. The father asked the first son to go work in the vineyard and he said no, but then changed his mind and went. The second son said yes right away, but then never went. Jesus then asked, “Which one did the will of his father?” Of course it was the first.

A couple years in September of 2011, Pope Benedict XVI was in his home country of Germany for a pastoral visit and during one of the large Masses he celebrated this was the Gospel reading for the day. His homily at that Mass was very powerful and challenging and I think one part of it is appropriate for an Ash Wednesday reflection. Speaking of this parable he said,

“Translated into the language of the present day, this statement (of Jesus about the tax collectors and prostitutes) might sound something like this: agnostics, who are constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart but suffer on account of their sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than believers whose life of faith is “routine” and who regard the Church merely as an institution, without letting it touch their hearts, or letting the faith touch their hearts.”

He went on to say, “These words should make all of us stop and reflect, in fact they should disturb us.”

So how is your faith life? Has it become routine? Is being Catholic just another part of your identity that skims the surface of your soul but rarely penetrates into the depths of your heart? Is Jesus someone you know? Is He your best friend, your confidant, your rock, your fortress, your passion, your all and all? Is your relationship with Him the motivating factor in all areas of your life?

Have you ever allowed God to move from being a concept in your brain to a Person dwelling in your heart?? Has the Church ever been a Mother to you, a safe place, a place of community, love, security and refuge or merely another corporate institution? Or perhaps at one point your faith life was passionate and real but has lost its luster?

Well welcome to Lent. Lent is about breaking out of the “routine”. It is about going back to the beginning. It is a “do over”. It is rediscovering that the Creator of the universe considers you His beloved and His greatest creation. It is about being immersed in His mercy. It is about emptying ourselves in order to be filled with all that is good, pure, holy and beautiful. It is about getting our priorities straight. It is about taking the time to develop a personal relationship with Jesus. It is about allowing Him to be the center of our hearts and the foundation we build our lives upon. May we use these next 40 days to break from the “routine” and allow the faith to touch our hearts; to change our hearts.

Dear Jesus, I know I am a sinner in need of Your mercy. Give me the grace I need to break from any “routines” that limit my relationship with You or keep You from fully entering into my heart this Lent. Amen.

Exulted Love

“…the man said, ‘This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’…that is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body. The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame.” Genesis 2: 23a, 24-25

So often in our culture today, the Church is accused of being prudish. Media outlets, journalists, and other “experts” opine that the Church is against sex, or hung-up about sex, or worst: that the Church hates sex or thinks sex is dirty. The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth. As we celebrate St. Valentine‘s Day this week, let us be clear about how the Church (and God) views sex.

 God created sex. It’s not like he looked down at Adam and Eve one day and was shocked at what they were doing. Sexual intercourse is God’s design and if you read the Creation Story in the book of Genesis it is very clear that God made everything GOOD. So sex is good. In fact, it is more than good, it is holy.

In sexual intercourse, we (humans) have the ability to join God in His creative powers to create something new that never existed before. Each life conceived in the womb is a miracle because at that moment of conception, something new becomes real that was not there an instant before: a totally unique, never-to-be-repeated, union of body and soul that we call a human person; created in the image and likeness of God. God could have brought new people into the world in any way He could imagine, and yet He chose to bring new life into the world through this means. What a wonder! And so it is obvious that sex is a powerful and beautiful gift that God has shared with us.

But God would not share such an amazing and wonderful gift with us without showing us the proper context in which to use that gift. In fact, something so precious and powerful would be held high with protections and parameters in order to ensure that it is not misused or abused.

Think about it this way: do you own anything you consider a prized possession? Perhaps it’s a piece of expensive jewelry given to you by your grandmother before she passed away or a baseball autographed by a famous player given to you by your father when you were young. How do you care for that item? Do you let that piece of jewelry sit around on the coffee table where it can be stolen, lost or broken by anyone? Do you let your boys go to the park with that baseball for batting practice? Of course not. The jewelry is kept locked in a safe or a special jewelry box and only worn for very special occasions. The baseball is kept locked away or encased in some kind of protective display on a high shelf where it will not be spoiled by curious little ones.

In the same way, God has given the Church parameters and boundaries to share with us about the proper use of the gift of sex: sexual intercourse is reserved for a marriage between one man and one woman. It’s that simple. Sex is so powerful, beautiful and holy that it is reserved for within this protective and fruitful bond. And used in any other way becomes a perversion of the gift with untold consequences. Not because the gift is evil, but because of misuse or abuse of the gift is evil.

Despite what your feelings might be telling you, sex in any form or fashion outside of the parameters God intended for it, is NOT love. Only in marriage can sex be as God intended it to be: total, free, faithful, and fruitful. This is why God created sex within the boundaries of chastity, both inside and outside of marriage. Because God loves us so much and only desires our happiness, the most valuable gifts are treated with the most care, especially sex.

So the next time you read Newsweek, over hear a co-worker at lunch or have a friend or family member tell you that the Catholic Church is against sex, or doesn’t know anything about it, correct them in charity and with the great joy of knowing the Truth.

Dear Jesus, help me to respect myself and others in a way that always treats sex with the value You have placed on it. May all marriages be tangible, concrete examples of the total, free, faithful and fruitful love embodied in the Holy Trinity. Amen.

King for a Day

“Jesus answered, ‘My kingdom does not belong to this world. If my kingdom belonged to this world, my attendants would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not here.’ So Pilate asked him, ‘Then you are a king?’ Jesus answered, ‘You say I am a king.’” John 18: 36-37a

A question: if you were made king of your country for one day, what would you do or change with your power? I suspect that many of us would make abortion illegal, or stop bullying, or give everyone a job. Perhaps we would make ourselves comfortable for a day or bask in our riches and opulence before we had to relinquish the throne. Maybe even some of us would seek to right as many wrongs and injustices before our opportunity left us.

As Catholics we just celebrated the last Sunday of the liturgical year and the Feast of Christ the King of the Universe. And it really got me thinking yesterday about being a king and all that implies; the power, the responsibility, the authority, the temptation to pride, selfishness and greed that certainly must accompany such wealth and opportunity. What would you or I do in this circumstance? And what would happen if we were not just king for a day, but for a lifetime? And what if we weren’t just figureheads like most current European monarchies, but we had the absolute power once granted to kings? Would we be as noble and charitable as the saintly kings of old, or would we be like the horrible kings of history that were little more than diabolical dictators?

What about Jesus? He is the King of kings and Lord of lords? He is God: all-knowing, all-powerful. He is not just king of the world, but king of the universe. He is the creator and ruler of all the living and the dead, of all the earth, in the heavens and under the earth. And what does He do with that power? He became one of us and died for us in our place so that we would know of His unconditional love and mercy and have the opportunity to get to heaven one day. He took His greatness and lowered Himself to become like us in all things but sin, so that He could raise us up to Himself through His death and resurrection. Amazing!

So Jesus is the king of the universe. I think most Christians are fine with this. I mean, we all know we need to be saved and we all know there are things in the universe bigger than us and our physical or intellectual powers. We do not stand much a of a chance against the forces of nature or the complexities of outer space. And so in some instances, it is quite easy to allow Christ to be the king of all that. But can we allow Christ to be the king of our hearts? To me, this is the bigger question because in our own hearts we like to have a sense of control. We like to hold the reins and chart the course of our own lives, don’t we? We don’t like anyone telling us what to do, or where to go. We like making our own decision, for good or for bad. It’s relatively easy to let God have control of things we don’t have control over, but when it comes to letting go of the things we are holding onto, that is another question.

What things are we holding onto? Perhaps it is our future: where we will go to college, where we will live, where we will work or what our vocation in life might be? Maybe it is a relationship that is bringing us down? We can all be tempted to hold onto our hurts, pains or sins.  Jesus wants control of our hearts. He wants to guide us, leads us and draw us into the greatness that He has created us for. But He will not force us. He will keep knocking, keep inviting, keep asking. But He has given us the power to refuse His love, refuse His leadership, refuse His greatness. Instead we can choose to stumble along in our blindness, pretending to be the king of our own heart, pretending we are in control, pretending we know what is best for us.  This day let us truthfully examine our hearts to the deepest parts and let go of anything that is not under the kingship of Jesus and place our lives completely under His lover, protection and mercy, trusting that He knows us better than ourselves. In this will we find true happiness and in this will our lives achieve greatness.

Dear Jesus, today I make You my King. Today I allow You complete control and reign over my entire heart and over all aspects of my life: past, present and future. May I live as Your faithful follower all the days of my life. Amen.

Up, Up and Away…

“Jesus summoned them and said to them, ‘You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant, whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” Mark 10: 42-45

We all desire to be great, don’t we? There is this constant, internal drive that compels us forward, that causes us to reach higher, that draws us to excellence. There is something burning in our hearts that does not want to settle for second best, for mediocrity. We want to win the gold and come in first place. We want to be rich and famous. We want to be successful and we want to be known. And we want power—the power to control our own lives, our destinies and perhaps even at times the lives of others.

We aspire to greatness and we try to emulate those who are successful in our eyes. We seek to compete in sports as do the greatest of the MVP’s and hall-of-famers. We try to sing and dance and play instruments like the rock-n-roll gods of past and present. We try to dress and act like the pop culture tells us so that we can be as cool and accepted as the famous among us. We believe that we can acquire wealth from imitating those who have acquired it before us.

But what happens after we acquire the wealth? What happens after we make the hall of fame, or reach #1 on the charts, or have our names on the clothes others wear so they can be as cool as us? What then? Will we look back with satisfaction at the journey? Will we be ready to settle down and just lazily enjoy the comforts success and fame has brought us? Or might there still be a nagging in our hearts do something more still?

The grand irony in life was taught to us by Jesus in His words and through His very life: if we want to be raised high, we need to lower ourselves. If we want to be the greatest, we must be the least. If we want to be first, we must be last. If we want to live, we must die. Bl. John Paul II echoed these words of Christ when he reminded us that the more we live selfishly for ourselves, the less human we become and the more we live lives of self-donation, the more fully human we become.

Jesus showed us His greatness by becoming lower than the angels to take on our form. He showed His greatness by obeying Mary and Joseph and learning at their feet. He showed His greatness by washing the disciples’ feet and giving us His Body and Blood on Holy Thursday night. And Jesus showed His greatness by lowering Himself completely in His passion and death so that we too, could share in the life of the Trinity. Somehow we think we can be great without doing the same?

Dear Jesus, help me to lower myself to where You are at, so that You can raise me up. I want to serve You and others Lord. I aspire to nothing but loving You and giving my life as a donation for others. Amen.

Mountain Movers

Jesus said to them, “Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17: 20

What “mountains” do you have in your life right now? By this I mean situations, people or circumstances in your life that you find impossible to change, heal, correct, rectify, deal with, get over or move beyond.

Perhaps you are paralyzed with fears or worries. Perhaps there is someone in your life that hurts you, belittles you or controls you. Perhaps there is an issue like self-esteem or self-respect that you cannot improve. Maybe you are ill or injured in some way and live in pain with little hope for recovery or relief. Maybe you work in a difficult situation, you live in a lifeless marriage or you are caught in some kind of impossible financial situation. Or maybe you are the greatest barrier to yourself for some reason.

I don’t know what or who your “mountain” is, but I believe we all have them. In some situations these may be crosses that we are asked to bear for a certain amount of time to merit grace for the world. But in other circumstances, these are simply things we need deliverance from. But we so often see no hope, no remedy, no way out and so we despair. In other words, we lose faith.

But in what or in whom are we losing faith? Sometimes we have faith in the wrong things or the wrong person. The bottom line is this: if we put our hope and faith in ANYTHING or ANYONE of this world, no matter how good, we will be let down. What Jesus is saying to us though, is have faith in HIM! If we truly had faith in Him, we would recognize the POWER to move mountains—whether they are literal or figurative. What we so often do, however, is to have faith in ourselves and our own power, or the power of others. And when we (or they) fail, we lose faith. What a trick the devil plays on us!

Faith is not magic. Faith is not a fairy tale. Faith is not voodoo or hoping in some thing to save us! Faith believes in the love and power of Jesus Christ. It’s pretty simple: either we believe in His power over all things, people and circumstances, or we don’t. We cannot have it both ways. Faith is trusting in the Word of God, trusting in His Church, trusting in His Providence. And all we need is a little bit—as the tiniest seed grows into the largest bush, so too does a small amount of faith in Christ grown into more fruit than we could ever imagine. We need to have this faith strengthened, we need this faith to grow and we need to share this faith with others. Then, watch out mountains!

Dear Jesus, as we begin this Year of Faith, may we come to grow more in our personal relationship with You, may we come to learn more about our Catholic Faith and may we become eager to share the Good News with all we meet. Amen.