Thought for the Day - October 6

Those who believe in God are blessed.

Being Christian is to be visionary, is to focus on goodness, holiness, kindness. Being Christian is to look at the world lovingly. Being Christian is to be hopeful, creative, humble in our approach to life. Being Christian is simply cherishing simplicity, extolling simplicity. The genius of being Christian is the ability to love, is the ability to share compassion, is the ability to share mercy. The world needs those radical Christians who love God first, and then those who love their neighbors. The world needs those radical Christians who are amazing in their patience, devotion, and obedience to God, to God’s will. The world needs those radical Christians who seek goodness, holiness, kindness in all human beings. The world needs those radical Christians who are fortunate to share ideas on social justice, stewardship, faith with others. We are fortunate to be friends, to be acquainted with the Gospels, to be acquainted with the Beatitudes and Jesus Christ’s other the teachings of fairness and social justice. We are asked to always remember Jesus Christ. We are asked to always aspire to be like Jesus Christ. We are asked to use our short time on this life to inspire others to be like Jesus Christ. We share one spirit, one body each and every time we allow ourselves to join the Eucharist.

We have thoughts, we have memories, we have God’s love waiting to be shared.

Aim of Each Christian

Let the aim of each Christian be easy to hear, easy to accept. Let each Christian accept the challenge to use his or her life to magnify the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Let each Christian have the virtue, the confidence, the courage to live and walk the path of fairness, love, obedience, mercy, and social justice that Jesus Christ did.

Let our goodness, holiness, kindness turn heads, touch hearts. Let our deeds be of loving service to others.

As Christians we can choose to live a life that encourages others to seek God, encourages others to filled their lives with humility, charity, compassion, obedience, mercy. Warm summer mornings, warm summer twilights are wonderful times to seek God, to remember the Beatitudes.

It is my aim to live my life quietly, to behave appropriately, to live according to and with reverence for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope that this is your goal too.

Choices and Prayer

There is so much antagonism and anxiety in modern life that it is difficult to decide who our enemies and persecutors are. Enemies and persecutors abound in our day to day lives. They whisper truths and half truths about us. They want to make us look silly, want to see us fall down. Sometime they even desire that we suffer bodily harm.

As Christians we must remember to always keep our faith in God, always to pray for those who are tormenting us. As Christians do not fear those who are plotting, simply forgive them and pray for them. This is in direct opposition to the Hollywood method of escalating conflict.

Prayer is always good. As Catholics we must always be prepared to pray, always be prepared for a moment of silence. We must always remember the Beatitudes, be ready to share kindness and compassion with everyone around us. We must always remember to ask God for mercy for us and for our tormentors. We must never fear the crowd, the whispering voices who are plotting against us. Simply allow your faith in and love for God be your shield.

In the United States there is an epidemic of school bullying. Children are being picked on for a variety of reasons and being called all types of names. Why do some some children bully other children? What type of homes do bullies come from?
We must always remember to pray, to pray often for this world.

What is In Your Heart

What is in your heart? How is your conversion progressing? Are you pleased with your spiritual life? Do you feel that God is pleased with your spiritual life? Each day I pray that we all are able to continue moving forward. Each day I pray for more holiness to find and guide us. I know there is not enough goodness in this world. Sometimes my heart is filled with hope and love.

We allow ourselves to be tortured by all types of sins and all types of temptations each day. We allow ourselves to swing on a pendulum between vice and virtue. One minute we’re filled with such virtue and hope, the next we are consumed by vice and debauchery. We often defend our vices with such elaborate erudition that the offense disappears; our minds might accept these rationalizations and justifications but our hearts don’t and God doesn’t. As Christians we must remember to make God the priority in our lives and in our hearts. We must accept our individual faults, failings, and weaknesses. We must continually offer them to God. With prayer and patience we will learn from them. As Catholics we go to Confession, receive God’s absolution, promise not to sin anymore, and yet there we go sinning again. Sinning is easy. The secular world has made it easy to sin; the secular world has made it acceptable to sin. We spend so much of our lives captured within an ever tightening pop culture filled with images and stories of decadence, debauchery, and devilishness. We are hypnotized by stories of marital deceit, sexual scandal. There is nothing new in these stories. They contain the same wreckage and pain; and yet, our pop culture uses these stories of heartache and betrayal to entertain us, to caution us about love.

We need someone to caution us about our pop culture. We need to be reminded about our journey on the path made by Christ. We need someone to remind us to check our progress each day to see where we are in living a life following the ten commandments and the Beatitudes. We need someone to ask us about loving our neighbors.

It is so easy to sin, to abandon God. We do it everyday. Sin is so attractive, seductive, sexy. We live in a society where everything is for sale. The true cost is not always monetary. As Christians we must always remember to guard and protect our souls. Pop culture gives sin the illusion of being powerful, desirable. We must always be willing to confront sin, to avoid it for ourselves and others. We must educate our minds and our hearts against the attacks and abuses of sin. We must not allow our hearts to be corrupted by sin. Each day we receive new models of sin, new examples of vice all pleasantly presented to us in the most fashionable and palatable terms. With prayer we must learn how to reject them.

God offers us mercy and love if we simply, loving obey him. We know what God’s expectations are.

We must avoid vice and sin; we must find goodness and holiness in our hearts and in our lives.

What A Reference

“If you want fresh air, don’t look for it in this town.” The Asphalt Jungle

Our lives are filled with so many movie quotes and literary references. Our lives overflow with metafiction, all types of trivia and stuff continually percolating within our hearts, minds, souls. We hear or see and then retain so much slang, jargon, catchphrases, cliches, bits of poetry, political speeches, movie and television dialogue, and prayers. All of this and more is constantly being churned, being turned into our thoughts, being churned into our conversation. We should look within ourselves, search for those secret words which describe us, those lines of dialogue which govern and influence our lives. Whether we like it or not, want to accept the reality that the media can and does have an impact on our lives, both directly and indirectly. We must look within ourselves and discover what words and ideas truly govern us, give us comfort, give us hope.

As Christians our minds need to be nourished with love and hope and freedom and justice. As Christians our minds need to be directed toward God and being humble, loving servants.

How wonderful our lives would be if all our conversations mentioned the Eternal Word. If our minds contained the majesty of the Psalms or the justice of the Beatitudes. Within the Holy Scriptures God reaches out to us; God speaks to each one of us when we take the time to read the Bible. Everything in this world, in our lives speak about God; our ears may not understand the language or accept the words. Saying our prayers is a start. With patience and hope and reverence allow God this Beginning, this conversation with our hearts and souls. Listen, contemplate, silence your tongue. Jesus wanted us to be governed by love, wanted us to share love. Our responsibility, our obligation as Christians is to learn how to incorporate this love into our lives. In time we will gain understanding; in time we will learn how to judge ourselves and each other with fairness and compassion. The Word is our guide, our protector, our teacher. As we learn how to better love ourselves and each other, we learn how to better love God. As we learn how steadfast of spirit Jesus was, we will try and fail with our own attempts at being steadfast of spirit. Look to your failures for inspiration, encouragement. Allow your failures to lead you closer to God. Please do not allow any failure to detour you or lead you away from your journey to God. Remember to follow the path that Jesus Christ made for us. Remember that God is the Truth, God is the Word. Ask God for mercy, love, forgiveness. Protect your soul, your heart, your mind; our world is often bothersome, worrisome. Desire only humility, charity, and obedience. They are the foundation of goodness. Remember to leave the chaos and confusion of this world. Create a private secret silent place for yourself and God. Allow for God to gently speak to you in private.

Insomnia 101

We live in an age of insomnia. Our computers have a sleep mode; we have multitasking. Temporal ideas constantly shift around us, causing angst, releasing anxiety. We want to believe that our daytime dreams, inspirations are individual, personal, specific only to us; we want to accept that our nighttime fears, apparitions are also specific to us. But neither are completely correct.

Our cultural insomnia leads us into a wasteland, into a desert, not for purification or to become closer to God but to gently, quietly, clandestinely break our relationship with God. It occurs easily, naturally. Society numbs us with all types of temptations which we try to resist. Science ever the handmaiden to sin and vice provides an objective truth which in popular culture can easily supersede moral and ethical concerns. Quickly reductionist ideas are introduced and spread throughout a culture in search of leisure, pleasure, relaxation, sleep. Anything that requires extra effort, extra thought is discarded. This can lead to both intellectual and spiritual confusion.

Popular culture exists only to entertain. If education occurs it is incidental. Pop culture wants to inspire laughter, tears, and gasps. Pop culture wants to be remembered. Pop culture understands that it is always temporary; it is cyclical creating and destroying. Ideologies and idealism bob in the currents of popular culture before sinking in the current of a new, fresh trend. Pop culture reminds us that nothing lasts forever. There are syndicated television shows from various eras, radio stations playing oldies songs. Pop culture exists to keep us awake. It presents aspirations to us in living color, high definition. And sadly many humans are nothing more than laboratory rats in brilliantly appointed cages, running on treadmills, chasing thinks we do not completely want, saying things we do not completely believe. Pop culture provides information, provides doubt. Pop culture becomes an amoeba, dividing itself again and again until it encompasses so much space in our lives filled with sinister trivia about celebrities deified and defiled in quick order, trivia about sporting contests which leads spectators to rowdy, violent behavior, trivia about political programs which misinform and confuse the electorate, trivia about interpersonal relationships which cause divorce, loneliness, anxiety. Pop culture never presents the truth, merely a representation of the truth.

Where can any human being find the truth? What one thing is based upon the truth?

Religion is based upon truth. As Christians always remember Saint Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “One God, one faith.”

Our baptism ordains each of us to God. It is our duty, our obligation to learn how to use our entire lives to show reverence to God. Our religion maintains faith in God and instructs us to maintain faith in God. By attending Mass regularly we experience the varied actions of religion; we learn how to suffer, to make sacrifices, to make vows, to worship, to serve, to pray, to love and how to think and contemplate about our lives, our actions, our world. Consequently we learn about God’s power and God mystery each and every day of our lives. The actions of religion deepen our relationship with God, allow us to hear his call, provide a guide to a virtuous life of goodness. We are asked to allow our lives to become permanent adoration vessels for God, projecting our love and reverence for the Eucharist, sharing our love and reverence for God.

We must never forget the significance of Jesus Christ in the role of the Church and in our lives. We must always strive to do the right thing, the fair thing, the just thing. Justice based upon the Beatitudes should always be our guide. We must allow our ears to listen for God’s call. “Hear my voice: I am the Lord your God.” We must allow our hearts and souls to respond to God’s call.

Christ instructs us to love God with our complete heart, complete mind, complete soul, complete strength. Christ instructs us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Christ provides a simple lesson of love which he knows will be difficult for us to do always but he wants us to try and fail and try again and again. Failure should not become an obstacle, our failure should encourage us to redouble our efforts.

A Streetlamp, The Snow, And A Window

“I want to work on my prayer,” he said, and went outside onto the porch. His little sister followed too, and stood by him watching while he stared into the darkness.

“The night is not dark enough,” she said, quietly, “and oh, dear brother, the snow is not gentle enough.”

“But listen to the hushed sounds," he answered. “Will I remember all the good things we have received?”

“Oh yes,” she said, wondering why he allowed himself to ask that question, “you will make everyone happy to glance back. They will feel all the love and happiness you felt.”

“I want to say it simply, will that help them understand and feel happy?”

“They will feel what you feel,” she answered; “for they will know how much love and hope you have in your heart. Look there,” she said pointing at the streetlamp across the street, “look there at the light and the falling snow at the corner,” and they stood together looking at the December snow, at the trees and the parked cars, at the lights from the other houses, at the street with faint tire tracks being covered by the snow, and at the footsteps on the snow.

“Please enjoy the silence,” his sister whispered. “It is a great honor to give thanks and praise.”

“It is a great honor to give thanks and praise,” the boy echoed quietly. “I must remember to be humble.”

“You will be humble, don’t worry.”
“I get so flustered,” he said, “and forget things I should remember. What happens when I forget the most important thing and mispronounce a name or completely forget someone,” he asked, suddenly.

“Just remember that you’re doing this with all of the love in your heart,” she replied. “Do not worry about remembering everybody or every event. Just remember all the love and hope that the family has shared.”

For a moment, he remained silent, continued watching the snow fall from the sky. “Then I shall begin my prayer with you,” he said; “I shall think of you the entire time I am praying.”

Again they looked at the snow; watching it fall from the darkness; watching it rise up from the trees, rooftops, and bushes; watching the snow be forced here and there by the wind; enjoying the hushed, steady sounds of the night, the wind and their breathing; enjoying the shadows from the lights in other windows across the street, and then together they went inside.

That snowy December night great anticipation came to the boy. While his little sister slept, she imagined herself another world, and journeyed on through all types of gardens and parks enjoying the darkness, enjoying the snow. The boy tried to remember all the prayers that he had ever heard, he tried to recite them all again, finally his eyes did close and his mind did rest. As he slept that night, he kept seeing the glowing streetlamp, the blowing snow, and a window—within his heart he felt a longing to find the beauty, the hope, and the love for all of the creatures on the world; within his heart was a longing to share his thoughts, his memories, his hopes.

At last, when his eyes opened the next morning he knew that his silence was true and his vision pure, he opened up the Bible and found the Beatitudes and read them over and over, again and again.

A few days later, seated around the large table in the dining room, surrounded by blood relatives and family friends he glanced at his dear sister, then bowed his head, closed his eyes and began to pray in a quiet, hushed humble voice.

December Snow Night

How we view ourselves and our spiritual lives are often different. We sometimes separate or categorize the various aspects of our lives. We accept the idea that modern life is complicated.

As Catholics we believe and profess different prayers and creeds. Our lives as Catholics should extend beyond the walls of our churches.

If our daily lives were built around prayer and the Beatitudes, would we still describe them as complicated. Just what makes our lives so complicated? Is it the number of choices we have, or how we make our decisions, or how we avoid making some of our decisions?

Our daily lives have a built in rhythm. We decide what we are going to do each day. We decide when we are going to pray, when we are going to Mass, when we are going to read the Bible.

Our daily lives are also filled with all types of questions and competing interests providing all types of thoughts, all types motivations, all types of moments of and reasons for indecision.

How we feel about ourselves and our relationship with God provides us with confidence and hope.

When our faith is strong we can do anything, even ride a bicycle during a snow storm.