Thoughts for a Rainy Week

This city is often filled with tourists behaving like tourists with cameras and maps and questions for hurried, harried residents slightly amused, slightly frightened by these strangers with accents. The summer is filled with all colors and fabrics and voices talking, laughing, asking for directions to the Zoo, to MacDonalds, to the Cathedral.



July contains an emotional shift of opportunity, playfulness as weekend trips away dominate many conversations. There are always sights, sounds, sales. Pedestrians often have pouting defiant lips. Everyone wears flip-flops. Everyone has bare ankles. Everyone yells into their cell phone from time to time. There is a subtle anxiousness, a nervous stammer. For everyone looks at the faux leather skirts, faux leather purses, everyone notices something which will not be mentioned now but will be shared with friends during dinner and happy hour. There are thigh high black leather go-go boots. There are kittens in well ventilated black mesh bags. There are people pointing, people waiting to cross the street.



I walk to the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle each day aware of the waves of hope, waves of hopelessness. There is anxiety. There are questions about the tidal basin. There is motion, lots of movement. There are faces, there are helmets. Moving through the city is a highwire act requiring balance, confidence, looking forward, looking upward. There is noise, groans, grunts, gasps, laughter, accents. There is motion. At times I feel as if I am on a bridge not walking by a crowded coffee shop.





And I walk to the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle, hearing conversations in Spanish, Japanese, Greek, Russian; seeing people smile, laugh, pout, gesture. Sometimes I forget the city streets. Sometimes I imagine the outdoors, trees, the countryside. How great solitude and silence looks from the distance! How grand it would be to rest in the shade of a tree or wander around a pasture. 


Living in this city creates many bucolic diversions while trying to decide whether to have broccoli and goat cheese added to my salad. Living in this city presents many opportunities for goodness, kindness, holiness. Living in this city presents many opportunities for prayer.


There are trees and parks. There is despair. There is silence, hidden suffering. Prayer for everything is needed. 





And I walk to the Cathedral of Saint Matthew hundreds of tourists with cameras and cell phones and plastic bottles and cardboard cups pass by me. There is anticipation, anxiety. The faces are enjoying this moment. Enjoying the humidity. Enjoying the restlessness. Speed is important. Pedestrians race and dodge around each other. Some people bump and nudge on their separate journeys. But, it is important to remember that all those who believe in Christ are never alone, God is always with us.





There is much to see in the city. Each day there are lessons in goodness, lessons in kindness. The city is filled with all types of signs. Summer presents temptations and diversions. Summer reminds us to take time to be pray, to take time to praise and give thanks to God. There are so many signs in the city. Which do we read, which do we obey, which do we remember?





There are so many signposts directing us to God. Which do we read? Which do we obey? Which do we remember?





The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle is often filled with tourists behaving like tourists with cameras and maps and questions and pointing fingers and waving hands and posing bodies. The Cathedral welcomes all, encourages all to enjoy the silence, to take a moment to offer thanks and praise to God. Here is a place to pray.

The September Rain Made Me Do It

I am sitting in a Starbucks in North West Washington, DC. It is Wednesday. This has been a rainy day. I am alone. I glance out the window and watch the pedestrians, watch the traffic. Every now and then I hear the voice of one of the employees announcing a completed order. There are women in skirts, women in pants, women with their hair neatly, tightly pulled back, women with their hair loosely brushed back.There are men in suits, men in khakis, men in denim jeans. Men lean against the counter, men stand with their arms crossed, men stand glancing at their smart phones. There are people sitting in front of computers, a woman writes long hand into a small journal. There are black umbrellas, white umbrellas, blue umbrellas, blue and white umbrellas. People are talking, people are laughing.

In the background music can be heard, music with a slightly reggae melody, reggae hesitation. And there is a comment on people needing help and some mention of a phone call from a month ago...

Sitting here seeing the expressions on the faces, seeing the lack of expression on the faces reinforces my commitment to seek a life above, to seek a life with Christ, being obedient to God. With all of the noise of conversations and machinery echoing as drinks are mixed and served, as anecdotes and concerns are shared, this afternoon feels gloomy, contains a cinematic goriness tinted with sadness, betrayal, fear. These are things which are heard, which are seen in the faces, in the silences.

The sky is colorless. Nearby there are some trees with leaves green and damp. A man drinks an orange colored soda and discusses how a woman in his office hijacked a conversation. There is a new song playing, there are clapping hands. A man in a pale lavender shirt and a purple striped tie gets his coffee and adds sugar to it. He neither smiles nor frowns. His is a look of terror, of exasperation, or is it exhaustion. There is a sense of a soldier walking into the final battle, into a battle which will be lost.

Sitting here I try to think of what waits above for all believers, for all followers. I am aware of what is on earth. I try to keep all of this in my prayers for these people are my neighbors. Sitting hear I think of my baptism, I remember that I have died, remember that my life is with Christ serving God.

The sky remains colorless but becomes brighter. With Christ life will leads me to goodness, kindness, holiness. With Christ there is glory.

Prayer, Reflection, Activity

Being Catholic is very important to me. Learning how to be a better Catholic is very important to me. Learning leads to being. Each day there is something new to learn. There are memorials, feast days, solemnities. There are saints. There are prayers. Catholicism provides its believers with a beautiful detailed tapestry of prayers, writings, and scripture to help form a God loving and God serving person. Discernment is at the center of the lives of many Catholics.

Each day I am happier than I was the previous day because I pray a little bit more, because I have compassion for more neighbor a little bit more. Each time I attend Mass I am open to learning, to experiencing a little bit more of the liturgy, to see what moves me, what makes me want to act. I am not perfect. I still sin. I have not completely embraced the idea of the confessional but I do encourage others to go and I plan to go.

I am in a state of discernment. My route involves prayer, reflection, activity. I am involved in my local parish. It is through helping others, listening to others that I am able to see a need, want to answer a call for a need.

Discernment is an ongoing process. It is not for those who want instant gratification. There are different levels of discernment. God loves us. Discernment asks us to seek a way to reflect God’s love for us in our daily lives. There are different ways to do this.

The best way begins with allowing and encouraging yourself to love God completely with your head, heart, and soul. I understand that this is harder to do than it is for me to type. It takes time. Once you allow yourself to give God priority treatment, hearing God’d voice might become a little easier. There will still be distractions and temptations. Discernment is a human activity of searching for the divine, incorporating divinity and spirituality within our lives. Hopefully discernment keeps your heart, mind, and soul active seeking fairness and social justice as taught by Christ. Hopefully discernment provides a moment for reflection of the shepherd searching for the lost sheep.

This a time of discussion. A time of reflection. In a very private way it is a time of evangelization, a time of learning and sharing the Good News. Discernment is a time of establishing a relationship with God. It is a time of prayer for each individual and their community.

There is nothing new or original in this piece. Others have written about prayer more eloquently than I have. The need for discernment, for prayer still exists. All Catholics hopefully will embrace it to form more loving, more lasting, more loyal relationships with God. Discernment is not just for vocations. I would suggest that all Catholics employ it as they plan their lives.

Humility and charity are good discernment companions. On the darkest days, in the lowest moments remember that someone is always praying for you; you will not be alone. In someone’s heart there is love and hope for your wellbeing.

A Weekend of Sacraments

On Saturday there were two baptisms, one wedding at the Cathedral. On Sunday there was one confirmation and one baptism in addition to the usual scheduled Masses. Each one of these events reminds all those in attendance of God’s grace and love and provides time for reflection and prayer.

Weddings and baptisms are linked in my mind. They both usually involve white garments. There is participation by the parents in each ceremony. There are questions asked by the priest and answered by the bride and groom.

I had numerous instances to review my view of my life as a Christian this weekend as I went about my daily activities at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle.

There was a revelation that there is more work that needs to be done, volunteering more at the Church, praying more. Finding a way to use my life for goodness, holiness, kindness is becoming more important.

Raising a child, having a loving marriage require a lifetime of prayer, support, hope, and love. Fidelity to God, fidelity between husband and wife, fidelity between parent and child are necessary. Friends and family need to practice fairness and compassion always in their thoughts, words, and actions. Remember the local parish community and the universal parish community. Gain strength from them.

It is very important to remember Christ’s love, to remember that we are all adopted children of God, to remember we are all part of a loving prayerful community. We are never alone. There are always fresh footsteps on the ground in front of us. As a community we hopefully remember to pray for all the newly baptized children, newly married couples, newly confirmed individuals.

Christian life begins and ends with prayer. Weddings and baptisms provide a great opportunity for prayer, for the community to come together and welcome the new couple, the new Catholic into the community. Baptisms and weddings provide a moment to look back at the history of the Church, back at the history of our behavior as Christians. We can see our strengths, our weaknesses. We can renew our commitment to God, pray for the strength to change, the strength to become a better Christian.

Everything begins with prayer, everything needs prayer.

What is Discernment

WHAT is discernment? What is vocation? There is often both subtle support and jesting when discernment and vocation are mentioned into contemporary conversations between sporting news, political extremism, and celebrity scandal. This is a time where we are competing to play the role of Pilate, competing to find one solution, one answer which will alter our course, direct us on the road to salvation, the road to truth, loyalty, and service to God. Certainly there will be, that delight which creating questions and sharing these questions with unsuspecting friends and family members with the a dollop of giddiness and a dollop of hope before stepping into the beautiful yet still pool of despair where each unanswered question leads to suffering and pain, where each unasked question leads to rejection and ridicule. Such is the bondage of the imagination as it weighs this and that, imagines mathematical, emotional, grammatical, and typographical errors. There is only our belief in God to provide strength. Discernment and free will complement each other, affect each other. Discernment is not just thinking, not just reading a book, not just talking to a member of clergy, it is actions, it is movement, steps toward holiness, steps toward love universal, love unconditional. Discernment is a process of learning to be Christ-like, a process of wanting to be more Christ-like. The world is filled with philosophers and pundits of every kind presenting certain discourses on religion, on God, on economics; the world is filled with all types of diversions and wits. Discernment is a time to avoid much conversation and activity and to focus thoughts and hopes on God. Discernment is a time to deepen your faith, deepen your relationship with God. It is a time to allow yourself to relate to the ancient forerunners, both the saints and the sinners, and to learn from both of them. Remember goodness does not exist in a vacuum alone. Goodness is where ever you can uncover it. Discernment is a process of uncovering a personal truth, a personal desire to serve God obediently, lovingly, loyally. There might be difficulty, there might be uncertainty, there might be anxiety. Accept them all graciously, calmly. Avoid imposing deadlines. Discernment can be a time of beauty and grace and humility and mercy. Open your heart, open your soul, open your mind. Listen for God’s voice. Wait for God’s touch. Pray to God for guidance. The secular world will create distractions, things to worry about, things to corrupt your thoughts. Do yourself a favor, remember to put yourself into God’s hands, live on God’s Standard Time. Do not worry or obsess about your discernment. You may meditate on it. Allow your discernment to be a time of spiritual enlightenment and pleasure. Pray for prayer’s sake. Love for love’s sake. Believe in God. But each discernment is different, some are stately, some are playful. They all are often called journeys. And a journey discernment is; a journey of hope, of faith. Here is a time to examine private thoughts and desires, to make a private stand on morality which will lead to a public stand. Be like the ancient painters and poets ever prepared to capture and preserve the moment, the mood. Examine all of your loves, all of your dislikes, examine your Fridays and your Sundays. Examine your truth and your deceptions. But remember to always pray. And then pray some more. This is a time of ebb and flowing difficulty and labor. Do not despair. Remember that there will always be more questions than answers.

Discernment is a time of love; it is a time for communication and for a relationship with God to deepen, to flourish.

How to Explain

When I originally conceived this essay, I wanted to explain how I spent my Sunday. What I thought about, what I prayed about, what I thought about praying about, where I went. It was arranged in a completely accessible linear fashion. But, how would my story translate to non Catholics, to non Christians. Is there something universal in my activities?


My activities are amusing to me sometime. I am always making deals with myself. I am always filled with all types of crazy yet conventional thoughts created by great literature and big budget Hollywood films.


Sunday began with thoughts of the night before at the Dominican House of Study Spring Gala and Silent Auction. I briefly reconstructed the evening into interesting little bits and ordered it in a more literary way. My morning began with brief prayer and then I began writing.


I stopped writing and then planned my day. I planned to attend Mass at 11:30 AM and then return to the Cathedral around 2:30 to photograph the Spanish Stations of the Cross.


How completely cautious and conventional this is. Where is the passion, where is the energy? Is it possible to share my exuberance, my excitement without sounding too zealous, too fervent? Is it possible to create a document which makes going to Mass appear like a great way to spend an afternoon?



As a Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle Altar Server my spirituality has deepened; my love and enjoyment of the Mass has grown exponentially; my sense of goodness, kindness, and holiness has increased. I look for signs of goodness, kindness, and holiness in my actions and the actions of others.



I was asked to carry the Cross in the procession during the 11:30 Mass. Although I frequently have fears of dropping the Cross because of my own personal lack of strength, carrying the Cross helps me focus on the Mass more completely.



How can such a beautiful ceremony be described in such a way to personalize the experience, bring it alive with hope and yet, encourage curiosity with appearing to encourage curiosity.


What is it that makes attending Mass unique for me? Why do I attend Mass? There is a wonderful feeling which I experience sometime while being an Altar Server. There is a moment when I am able to forget myself for a moment, forget my own silly pettiness and hope and pray for someone else’s happiness and security. Attending Mass is more than prayers, attending Mass is more than receiving Communion. Here is a chance to hear God’s voice, here is a chance to answer the call. Here is a chance to love your neighbor as you love yourself. Is there a way to say that simply, gently in a manner which could help someone want to walk into the Cathedral and ask about being Catholic, about being an adopted child of God.



After the 11:30 AM Mass I remembered that there was a special Mass in honor of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador who was assassinated thirty-one years ago while saying Mass. I quickly left the Cathedral, returned home, picked up my camera.


I returned shortly after the 1:00 PM Spanish Mass had started. How great it was to see all of the faces in the Cathedral. How great it was to hear the choir singing, to hear the guitar playing, the congregation singing.


Remembering Archbishop Oscar Romero is important for all Christians who want to follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus. His life was both cautious and bold, his words were erudite, brash, and inspiring. Archbishop Romero’s life presented the beauty of and the danger of Christ Jesus’s social justice teaching captured in the Beatitudes.


There is much to learn from his life. His approach was slow, filled with reflection and prayer. He provided a valuable lesson about involvement in dealing with the marginalized people and their oppressors. He started out with hope, with love. He studied the issue and prayed about the conditions of the poor, and those who were in opposition to the government. His decisions were not always the most popular decisions, the most popular statements but they were the correct ones for the situations, for his country. There is nothing worse than ignoring social injustice.



Archbishop Romero reminds us about the living water, about being shocking, about doing the right thing and not being afraid of making the greatest sacrifice.


How can all of this be shared with others in a conversational, non threatening way.

Urban 2011 March

There is something drab in the hurly-burly of Connecticut Avenue, something missing in the anxious faces on M Street, something lost in the marching feet on Rhode Island Avenue. Urban life often leaves us peevish and anxious and ready for brief childish temper tantrums because someone is driving or walking to slowly, or talking too loudly, or not paying attention while walking and almost collides with you.
Urban life often leaves us feeling insignificant and drab. How we long for a verdant pasture with soft grass and towering oak trees, for solitude, for silence. But when we have schedules to keep and meals to miss to complete this deadline, there is nowhere to go but back to our offices, back to our cubicles. Our souls are under attack each and every day, we are subjected to rudeness, hatred every day. Often we are able to overlook it, to protect ourselves from the corrosive, corrupting experience.

Urban living can overtime leave our souls dull and lifeless, our minds darkened and depressed, our hearts cold and locked. Our being, our spiritual being needs to be nurtured each and every day, our spiritual life needs to be sharpened with love and hope and mercy. We must learn how to love, how to follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus, how to be obedient to God.

Each day we hear about man’s inhumanity. Each day we make typographical and grammatical errors. Hopefully, in our hearts we ask God for forgiveness when we sin. Each day we dream of a better tomorrow for ourselves and our loved ones.

Being Christian is the most beautiful gift; being Christian is the best prize; being Christian is alive with undiscovered prayers which slowly awaken within us each time we go to Mass or unexpectedly share goodness and kindness with others. Being Christian allows us to join the story of the life and resurrection of Christ.

The city is often described as a jungle or a forest. It is neither. The wilderness in the city is dangerous, meant to tempt us, lead us away from God, away from goodness, away from holiness, away from kindness. The pulse of the city is always a little elevated. City living demands that we ignore much of what we see, hear, and feel. Neither the street lamps nor the neon lights can hide the darkness which envelopes the city.

Attending Mass can be a moment of hope, a moment of love in our lives when we are able to relax and allow the Lord into our lives.

The pulse of his being moves around us each day; the pulse of his being encourages us to stop before making some questionable decisions; the pulse of his being asks us to be compassionate to our neighbors; the pulse of his being reminds us to love, to share mercy and kindness with each other.


This is called the Holy Place

Eternal redemption is the reward, our goal for creating and living with kindness and truth in our hearts. As Christians we must remember to give thanks and praise to God. We must always thank him for the many blessings he have given to us. We must always thank him for the many sacrifices he has made for us. The Passion of Christ should always be in the mind, heart, and soul of every Christian. We must remember that we are asked to avoid sin and to worship the living God. The conscience of each Christian must avoid the evil, fear, hate, envy; anything which would inhibit or block a relationship with God must be avoided. Prayer must be used in this time. The unblemished, loving offering of his life gives Christ an importance for all Christian; an importance and a model. We as Christians are asked to make sacrifices, to learn forgiveness, to cleanses our consciences of all vice, all evil and wicked thoughts. Satan waits to tempt everyone. No one is immune to temptation. With the help of the Holy Spirit and God we can learn how to avoid and to overcome temptation. We can learn how to nurture love, hope, kindness, goodness, holiness and truth in our entire being so that our soul may become filled with charity, humility, obedience, compassion, and mercy. Christians continually seek redemption; we continually pray for it for ourselves and for others.

When I Opened My Eyes

And so as my eyes opened this morning, my mind drifted between thoughts of goodness, holiness, and vocation. The wonderful thing about being Catholic is the sense of continual discernment. Our minds should always be directed toward finding ways to serve the Lord, finding new ways to follow the footsteps of Christ, finding new ways to challenge ourselves to love each other.

We each have the opportunity to do good, to live righteous lives if we allow ourselves to make the right choices, to move on the correct paths. Goodness often contains many difficult choices. Goodness involves evaluating each action that we make and asking simple questions like “Would God approve this?” or “Would Christ do this?” or “What would Jesus do?” Goodness puts us on the hot seat; goodness asks us to be accountable for our actions and our thoughts.

Learning about how to apply or to add more goodness to our daily lives naturally leads us to thoughts of holiness. Being holy is being a living part of the mystery of God, striving to please God, striving to inspire and encourage others to believe in and follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Holiness is the search for the divine, the search for the beautiful, the search for God. Holiness is not easy; it requires an active mind constantly on guard to protect our minds, our hearts, and our souls from the secular world.

Holiness is difficult to describe; harder to achieve. There is a vagueness in the definition. Christians have an idea of what holiness is. We accept God’s mystery. Each Sunday during Mass we listen to Holy Scripture. We are encouraged to read the Bible. We are encouraged to make time for prayer in our lives. We are encouraged to allow our minds to be silent, to listen to the will of God. We are encouraged to create and to maintain our own individual private relationship with God. Each step in our lives should be governed by Holiness, filled with an earnestness and love for God. Our goal should always be serving God, pleasing God.

As Catholics each day of our lives should include prayer and discernment. Each day we should evaluate our progress and ask ourselves what more can I do in service of the Lord. Our lives provide us with the opportunity, with the responsibility to discover our own individual vocation, our own individual way to serve God, our own individual way to share the Good News with others.

There is a simplicity and serenity in life when it is centered on God, when it is centered on the life, teachings, and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Peace Be With You

In modern times there has been a lamentable acceleration in self-consciousness on the part of being Christian publicly, a fearful progress of acceptable doubt and hypocrisy, and a notable development of the estimation and valuation of the status quo which mutes the true meanings and lessons of Holy Scriptures. Christians continually face all types of criticisms which aim to narrow the scope of our belief in God and his importance to all people. That Christ lived is accepted as historical fact; that Christ is the son sparks all types of debates and conflicts.

As individuals, we, the faithful followers of Jesus Christ, must do more than attend church routinely, scheduled between a manicure and your car’s wheel realignment. Our lives must be filled with and display our passionate love for the Church universal; for Christ who lived among men and preached love and fairness; for God who only asks for our sincere love and respect and who offers love, mercy, and forgiveness; and for the Holy Spirit who is there guiding us toward goodness, holiness. Our devotion must be true. Our devotion must be filled with humility, charity, reverence, and mercy. Our devotion must be natural, reflecting all that we believe, encouraging us to increase our good works and to share our love with all who are in need of it.

The “lamentable acceleration in self-consciousness” concerns each Christian. The one truth that all Christians should accept is that God loved us so much that he sent his son to save us from sin. This act of love should never be forgotten. As Christian’s our lives should be dedicated to the application of love extended beyond ourselves, extended to our neighbors. Our secular world encourages us to limit this love and creates barriers to easily, gently expressing it. We are encouraged to remember ourselves and our comfort first, encouraged to utilize resources first for personal gain and enjoyment and then for public good, encouraged to be sceptical and suspicious of our neighbors and all that which is unseen by us. This self-conscious leads to selfishness, greed, envy, lust. This self-consciousness leads us away from the Church, away from God, away from salvation.

How easy it is for us to forget or discount the goodness and holiness that we encounter in our daily lives. How easy it is for us to forget “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” We must take time to consider these words individually both in context and out of context. We must find a way to breathe hope, a way to breathe life, and a way to breathe love into these words, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

We live in a time dependent upon expert testimony, eyewitness testimony, and all types raw data both explained and unexplained, computer generated models, scientific tests, scientific models. We are constantly searching for signs, reading signs, avoiding signs. As Christians we are asked to believe in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As humans we sometimes doubt this. Pop culture and the secular world prey on our insecurities, looking for ways to cast doubt and suspension on the religion. This is not new, it has been occurring for the last two thousand years. It will continue into the future. We must open our hearts, souls, and minds to God. Demanding signs from God is not the answer. Living all life of love, hope, and peace is the answer. Our goodness needs to start within us simply because we love God and want to please him. Our goodness needs to start within us simply because we know that the things that Christ said will make us better human beings filled with empathy and compassion. Our goodness needs to start within us simply because the Holy Trinity leads us toward salvation.

Being Christian presents each of us with the obligation to love our neighbor. Jesus did not say be fearful of your neighbor, be sceptical of your neighbor, be suspicious of your neighbor. Jesus said love your neighbor.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”

Being Christian presents each of us with the obligation to love our neighbor. Jesus did not say be fearful of your neighbor, be sceptical of your neighbor, be suspicious of your neighbor. Jesus said love your neighbor. Human beings are by nature inquisitive, filled with all types of questions, filled with doubt. In the right context doubt is good; but there are some events, some parts of our lives of Christians where we must blindly, lovingly proceed based upon faith, hope, and love; proceed with no visible signs or evidence beyond the goodness and holiness within our hearts and the lessons from the Holy Scripture. We must always remember that Christ said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”

It is our obligation, our responsibility to find and develop our own way to apply this to our lives. We first must take the time to understand and acknowledge the request. Then, we must allow ourselves time to create our own application of the request as individuals and as members of the universal Church. Is God asking for a warm, loving, hopeful passion or a cool passivity? We must always remember that we live and exist within multiple communities in need of our empathy, compassion, and prayers. Please do not limit your kindness, your goodness, your hopefulness to simply one community. Never fear love, never fear the pain of love. Remember the pain and suffering and sacrifice of Christ.

Being Christian will always be risky, will always be radical. But remember to meet doubt with love, confront doubt with love.

Today's Gospel MK 16:9-15 - A Couple of Thoughts About Unbelief and Belief

How do we approach God? How do we live the Faith? How do our choices reflect our belief in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ? We live in time of media hype. Everything is promoted. Everything is commercial. Each day we have choices to make. Do we eat a hamburger or a salad for lunch? Do we buy Italian leather shoes or made in China shoes? There is so much advertisement trying to influence our decision with so much information, so many statistics, so many testimonials that it is often difficult believing any of it. We want to see the results with our own eyes. We want to see the data and make sure that it is correct. We are encouraged to believe so many claims based upon nothing. In many ways our lives are governed as much by a grudging unbelief in so many claims as it is by a humble, natural belief. Trust is often desired but takes it time arriving. We allow ourselves to be suspicious of new ideas, new people, new claims. If our eyes can not examine the data, it might be unacceptable.

When God makes his appearance in our lives how do we greet him? When God makes his appearance in our lives, how do we react to him? Are our Christian lives filled with examples of hope and belief or filled with examples of despair and unbelief? Existing with unbelief is easier than living with belief for some Christians. There is always something to challenge, to doubt. Belief requires a certain amount of trust, a certain amount of hope, and a certain type of faith and acceptance.

We often pray for God’s mercy, God forgiveness. It is not easy for us to show mercy to each other, to show forgiveness for wrongs and slights done by our neighbors. We often talk about loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. It is great to talk about loving our neighbors as ourselves but more difficult to do it. We can talk of living our lives to please God. But, actually doing it is difficult.

We are like the Apostles who after hearing of Christ’s resurrection did not believe it. We have so many ideas, so much evidence, so much information, so much proof that it is easy for unbelief in goodness, unbelief in love, universal and unconditional, unbelief in fairness, unbelief in social justice to fester into a coldness, a hardness of heart and soul.

Do we need to have seven demons driven from our bodies to accept and to follow Jesus? Do we have the confidence and hope to bear witness for God. With prayer and patience we will learn how to follow this request, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

We live in a time of such great intelligence and innovation in technology and shocking ignorance of the necessity and power of goodness, holiness, and love. We live in a time where so much of our energy is concerned with acquisition and consumption. The focus of our intellectual energies is often so narrow, excluding everything that is not essential to the present moment. We miss so many opportunities to be good, to observe goodness in others. How we live as Christians should not be influenced by the whims and caprices of pop culture or the secular world.

As Christians we must simply remember to live each day with the desire to please God. Our words and actions must always echo, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.”

Leading Us to Heaven

We must always remember that each step we make each day that we live is leading us to heaven. Our hearts and minds must always be directed toward this goal. God must always be our priority, the guiding power of our lives. Allow serving God to give your life meaning and direction. We must remember to attend Mass on Sundays and Days of Obligation; but that is not enough. We must do more. Our lives must be filled with hope and love. We must be concerned with fairness, social justice, human dignity of all people especially the poor.

Love can be transcendental. Hope can be transcendental.

Selfishness can lead to dissipation and despair. Jealousy can lead to stupefaction and moral lethargy.

Our theological development begins each time we go to Mass and continues when we return to the secular world. There might be quiet moments of self revelation and prayer once we leave the church. The circumstances and problems of our lives wait for our return; sometimes they are joined by all types of temptations. Sometimes we hesitate in sharing our love and our forgiveness.

Do not let this trouble you. Simply accept it and offer it to God. With patience and prayer your troubles will leave you. The road to goodness is difficult, requires diligence and sacrifice. Following Christ can be lonely at times. We may get lost within the solitude if our hearts and souls are not properly prepared for the pain and suffering of being a faithful, loving, humble servant of God.

Remember to always praise God, offer thanks to him. Call upon God for guidance and help. Pray to God often, sincerely, lovingly. Allow yourself only one luxury in this life: silence.

Words

dilettante
distraught
perseverance
preserve
soapbox derby
didactic
kinetic energy
religion
palatable
palate
palletize
pall
erudite

The list are some of the words that I have included in my entries. Some I had trouble spelling correctly, others I just like how the word looks and sounds. Some have vivid memories. There are other words not included but important also. Everything in life builds toward a new moment, new experience. As I am thinking about my vocation I am seeking out words, new and ancient, from different civilizations, with a freshness, a boldness of hope, love, and human dignity.

I must continue learning about fairness, social justice, freedom, human dignity. I must remember to apply the Beatitudes to my daily life.

How do I fit into this parish? into the Universal Church? What can I offer? I must always be reminded of the sacrifice, suffering, and love of other Catholics who found the courage to do the right thing, who found the courage to follow in the footsteps of Christ.

“THE CHURCH, LIKE JESUS, HAS TO GO on denouncing sin in our own day. It has to denounce the selfishness that is hidden in everyone's heart, the sin that dehumanizes persons, destroys families, and turns money, possessions, profit, and power into the ultimate ends for which persons strive.” (Archbishop Oscar Romero, August 6, 1977)

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.

Goodness

Once upon I knew how to make people feel comfortable, wanted. With a certain type of cinematic inspired charm, I could with diligence and patience disarm anyone.

Goodness does not begin with a smile. Goodness does not worry about comfort. Goodness asks for effort and perseverance. We may not immediately recognize goodness when it arrives for there will be much activity, much change, much resistance.

As Christians we must always be conscious where we are currently, where we are going. Our lives present us with many opportunities to bear witness to God’s love, God’s forgiveness. We must learn how to proclaim this. We must learn how to praise God without fear or shame.

Our lives gain meaning when we live them according to God’s commandments, when we offer each moment of our daily existence to the glory and for the praise of God. When we are able to keep our minds focused on God, being God’s humble loving servants, we are freed from many temptations.

Our lives gain purpose when we are able to show others compassion, empathy, and love without any desire or expectation for any reciprocation.

Being Christian is at times exhausting work. The triumph of Christian Life is both the enthusiasm of our love and devotion to God and the teachings of Christ and the strong mature emotions which direct us toward fairness, social justice as taught by Jesus, and a continual examination of conscience. Being Christian is accepting our limitations, accepting our sins, repenting for our sins, resisting temptation.

There are many metaphysical and philosophical conceits regarding being Christian, being Catholic.

Let our lives and our good deeds provide evidence of our reverence and fidelity to God. Do not worry about the assumptions or conjecture of others. Live each day only to serve and to love God. Live each day only to praise and give God thanks.

God is not abstract; God is not hypothetical. God is concrete. God is relevant.

Allow yourself time to study the Holy Scriptures. Allow yourself time to pray.

Christians are always active, always in motion, always serving God, always moving toward God. Christians will suffer, will sacrifice, will feel pain. We must always remember that God is always with us, we must always remember to offer the entirety of our lives good and bad, dark and light to God.

Secular Life

How wonderful secular life is! We forever are alternating between being seduced and seducing, being deceived and deceiving. All types of anxiety and lusts lead us into darkness and uneasiness. Science reduces and falsely renames most evil as natural, acceptable, even human. Religion, any faith or belief in God is attacked, seen as a weakness, a lack of intelligence, a lack of independence. And this is a time of vain, proud men proclaiming their strength, their authority, inviting others to praise and follow them on the road to riches and fame. It is all illusion, all false. Leisure does not always mean pleasure; happiness does not always bring peace; love is not always nourishing. Secular life is filled with an ever ending abundance of ideas, so many words. There is always the search for something new, something fresh. Ideas are often in conflict. The secular world is concerned with the immediate, is fickle; trends and fashions change frequently. The secular world treats life as a commodity; we are all disposable, easily replaceable. We are all unimportant, nameless consumers of various products. The secular world conceals our sins from us, encourages us to sin, to make mistakes especially when someone or some company can somehow benefit from our mistakes.

The desire for spiritual cleanliness is a direct threat to the secular world and all its many temptations and carefully and cleverly concealed vices. The desire for a pure heart is a battle cry to the secular world of lust, revealed, respected, and encouraged. The desire for love unconditional, unrestricted is guerilla warfare to the selfishness, possessiveness, jealous secular world.

Lucky are those who are able to think about and follow in the footsteps of Christ.

Our secular world has produced a technological desert for us to live within; each day we are encouraged to sin against God, encouraged to test God, encouraged to seek all types of wealth and celebrity. As Christians we must accept that there is another way, that there is goodness, that there is holiness. We must only remember to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is not always an easy task; but when we are able to do it we are closer to God.

Message of Love

We live in a time of institutionalized sin. We accept all types of deceptions, falsifications, and temptations. Our secular cultures abuses us with all types of scandals and rumors which encourage and nourish all types of vices and sins to fester and grow within our hearts with greed, selfishness, and other undesirable, unloving traits promoted as beneficial and natural.

As Christians we accept that we are sinners and try to avoid sinning. The Church reminds us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to worship only God.

Still the sinning and temptation continue, but we have the lessons from the Gospels leading us to the power and glory of God.

Sinfulness causes our hearts and souls to feel fatigued, confuses us. The glamor of evil is a serpentine road which crosses itself several times; it is a harsh course full of discontent, anxiety, selfishness of heartlessness, of fear, of destructive inquisitiveness to the poor decaying clamor of indecision and deception. Our secular culture deliberately challenges and ridicules all that was good, decent, and noble within our lives, and now we constantly have to assert what is sacred, what is essential.

How beautiful is the kingdom of God, which encourages goodness in the world, where all that which is divine waits, all love, all mercy, all forgiveness, all hope—a kingdom of charity, humility, obedience. How wonderful to live in peace, to live with God’s love for eternity!

We all have been tempted by the secular culture; we all have learned ways to resist it.

Our secular culture does not want our sincerity or our respect; it provides enough stimulation to make each of us a conversational diletante, with only trivial information and its derivatives to guide us away from seeking God’s forgiveness and mercy.

We must learn to pray to God in humble, honest, loving words. We must praise God for each breath we take, each mountain we see. We must thank God for the entirety of our lives, the good, the bad, the misspelled, the ungrammatical, the typographical errors, the beauty, his goodness and kindness to us. We must always thank God for all the priests, the clergy. For it is in our Church that Christ’s lessons of love continue to be shared, to be taught, to be lived every day.

The mission of the Church remains one of love, education, and preparation. The message of the Church is love.

“The church would betray its own love for God and its fidelity to the gospel if it stopped being . . . a defender of the rights of the poor . . . a humanizer of every legitimate struggle to achieve a more just society . . . that prepares the way for the true reign of God in history.” Archbishop Oscar Romero

Challenge Ourselves

We must always challenge ourselves and our views of our world. Being Christian is difficult. There is a tension between what Christ taught and how our secular society encourages us to live. The greatest danger that a Christian can face is complacency, accepting everything, questioning nothing. This in essence can render your faith moot, meaningless. If we allow ourselves to love our neighbors, we must hope and pray for fairness in their lives; we must also act to achieve this fairness in their lives. It will not occur without our effort, our support, our patience. Prayer is essential. When we allow ourselves to love our neighbors, we become involved in their lives and struggles, we allow ourselves to suffer with them, we allow ourselves to share compassion with them. As Christians we can never accept the status quo. We must look at our society, at our world and see how the poor and marginalized are treated. We must work for true equality which will foster freedom, peace, human dignity for all mankind.

“The Church is obliged by its evangelical mission to demand structural changes that favor the reign of God and a more just and comradely way of life. Unjust social structures are the roots of all violence and disturbances.” Archbishop Oscar Romero

Reflection - Logical Parishioners

The logical parishioner, modern, involved, busy has infinitely more to do with Love and Prayer than the Young and the inexperienced, whether student or observer, ever imagines. Social Justice promotes a special type of love and hope unencumbered with any desire for reciprocal behavior or any desire for possession.How lucky for us that sin creates an ancient form of amnesia (inability to love God and neighbor) and a modern form of jealousy (inability to remember and to share all the goodness that I have received); you might expect that I would have enough common sense to remain quiet and to mind my own business. What makes the “new” love based upon fairness and the Social Justice teachings of Christ so appealing is its insistence to recognize that love requires a foundation of both spiritual and intellectual, prose and poetry, sound and silence, motion and stillness, ignorance and intelligence. Within all love reside many unasked questions. Love itself is often an ethereal mystery which appears and disappears within our hearts when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to be open, to look upon the world with an universal hope and concern for our neighbors which matches or exceeds our hope and concern for ourselves at a specific moment.The modern thought and acceptance of sin within some secular thinking reduces the evil within sin, reduces our responsibility for our actions. We must accept that sin is often unavoidable. We must believe that prayer and penance are always necessary.

We can allow ourselves to be part of God’s procession, surrounded by all the Saints, surrounded by angels, resplendent in love and hope, glittering with humility, charity, and obedience the most precious jewels of faith and love.

Let us reverse things. Instead of asking how we can teach social justice, suppose we ask how social justice can teach us. What might we learn from Christ’s lessons on fairness, for example, about service to the poor to which he was devoted? Some of Christ's lessons are so advanced that only the youngest and poorest will recognize them. But his ideas of love, fairness, and social justice can also teach us something personal yet perhaps revelatory: that thinking and doing matter crucially as we follow him, increase goodness and love in our lives. Again and again, he emphasizes prayer, and the need to serve others; through prayer we can find both the confidence and patience to become God’s humble, loving servants.

True, the desire to pray and to find goodness becomes an insatiable desire and you must pray. Nevertheless, you must also think . . . Contemplation, when it it true, honest, selfless leads us to Christ, opens up the beauty and majesty of his Passion which will grow stronger within each of us as our knowledge and understanding of the humiliation, suffering, and sacrifice grows. For each of us there is something of particular interest, particular meaning within Christ’s Passion which binds it to our hearts, links us to the universal Church. Allow yourself to spend fifteen minutes or more every day thinking about what the Passion means to you; allow your thoughts to be childishly chaotic, undisciplined, unfocused when you begin. This is natural; our lives are often simply a collection of episodic confusion and desperation. Contemplation and prayer can lead us to God, when we allow ourselves to be believe, when we allow ourselves to live as Jesus instructed us to live, when we allow ourselves to love.

The logical parishioner understands and accepts the illogical; love is rarely logical. The logical parishioner understands and accepts Prayer; petitioning God is a natural part of the existence of all men.We are all young and inexperienced. Each day we grow in goodness, hope, and love. And true love often remains something more beautiful, more bountiful, more mysterious than that which we allow ourselves to imagine.

Contemplation and silence.

We, you and I, with contemplation, silence, prayer, more thinking, some action can become the logical parishioners.

Search Within The Silence

Outside there are raindrops again. It is Friday. Sitting here in silence and hope, voices talking, voice laughing can be heard. Horns from automobiles can be heard; the hiss of quick moving tires also disturbs this silence.

As Christians we are encouraged to create and protect a “willing expansion of belief” in ourselves and our world. We live with the premise of communicating with God. We praise God. We offer thanks to God. We petition God. We are confident that he will show us mercy. We learn patience as we wait for his response. We do not expect his correspondence to be instantaneous like a text message. We can not rush God.

Sometimes our honesty, our enthusiasm in our prayers or good deeds creates a kinetic energy, an intensity which can inspire others and move us, unlocking emotions, diminishing fears, restoring hope. As Christians we are always looking for ways to become closer to God, always trying to move toward God. We talk of goodness, we talk of holiness. The true orientation of a man is often not found in his oration but within his silence, within something imperceptible to the naked eye. Our true orientation toward God is hidden somewhere between or hearts and our souls; it is at once powerful and vulnerable; it sees and feels both good and evil.

How wonderful it would be if we all would take time, become a didacticist for a day, focusing all of our energy on sharing what we have learned from the Bible, from the life, death, and resurrection of Christ!

We do not talk about God enough! We do not apply the teachings of Christ enough. We have too many distractions, soccer games, celebrity philandering, political corruption. How completely sad our world is! Everything has a price! Dying soldiers help sell auto insurance and detergent. Murdered children help sell frozen pizza and deodorant. Tearful families help sell birth control pills and diapers. This critique is not new. It is only mentioned because we must always remember God, always add God to both our thoughts and conversations. Christ is that unknown soldier, Christ is that murdered child. We must acknowledge our role in the violence which occurs in our society and within this world. As we grow in our faith, as our goodness blossoms within us, hopefully we will transform us, give us the courage to say enough killing, enough violence, enough war!

We do not talk about God enough! Why do we come to Church each week? What do we get out of it? Do we get anything out of it? Do we listen to the readings, to the homily? Do we really listen or are we thinking about work, the stock market, player statistics, happy hour drink specials?

Each Mass presents a lesson in love, a simple type of love without attachment, a love of purity and hope, a love which inspires love and goodness, a love filled with compassion and empathy, and a love of sacrifice and suffering.

This is not the love of your New York Times bestseller or your Hollywood blockbuster. This is a love created with charity, humility, and obedience; a love filled with hope, filled with praise for God; this love encourages each of us to willingly expand our belief in the goodness and hope with ourselves and our neighbors and the belief in our ability to share our goodness, our hope with our neighbors. We are not asked to tolerate our neighbors but to understand and love our neighbors. We are not asked to say yes to social justice but to protect it for everyone.

“God is found on the way of justice, conversion and truth.” Archbishop Oscar Romero