Radical, Ridiculous, Risky

Be radical. Be risky. Be ridiculous. Remember to take time to listen to the word of God. Remember to take time to reflect upon the life and sacrifice of Jesus. Remember to search the Gospel for applications to your daily life.

Allow yourself to be open to new thoughts. Allow yourself to be open to old words. Allow yourself to listen and then contemplate the word of God. Learning occurs with a little time and contemplation. Allow yourself time to sit down and listen and accept the teachings of the Lord.

Wisdom arrives at different intervals. Friendship arrives at different intervals. God is always present in our lives. Sometimes too much reliance on logic and reason hides God and his love from our sight. The caprice of sin seeks to be habitual, continual escalating between events. That sin occurs in each of us does not make it either inevitable or natural. Sin shows a lack of discipline, a lack of respect, a lack of obedience. Our sins sets the price for our redemption, for our salvation.

I like nothing more than to be in a roomful of people talking all types of polite amusing nonsense. How wonderful soft laughter is! How wonderful gentle whispers are! How wonderful is the strength of comfy secrets and gossip shared between knowing glances and polite sips of wine!

How often is my life filled with repeated entreaties of the adventures of my life? I can only respond that I have experienced the strength of sin and the weakness of common sense. The great tragedy of life remains that our misfortunes and disasters are more interesting to others. I sometimes felt that my acquaintances liked the idea of me being in perpetual danger again and again. There is a predictability, a sameness with sin and sinning. Our society allows sin to be comfortable, acceptable. Sin no longer leads to societal rejection.

But sin remains dreadful, remains an obstacle to a loving relationship with God. Sin makes us obstinate. Being obstinate leads away from God, leads to darkness.

We are invited to be part of the crowd of believers pressing in on Jesus. We are are invited to be part of the crowd asking to be healed by Jesus. We are invited to be part of the crowd trying to touch Jesus. We are invited to be part of the crowd asking to be fed by Jesus. Each time we attend Mass we are part of the crowd, part of the community listening to the word of God.

Listening to the word is an invitation for active participation. Listening to the word of God is not for the passive. Listening to the word of God, is a call to a action, a battle cry, a glorious, heavenly reveille inviting us to renounce sin, to accept God; inviting us to walk toward the light, walk toward salvation.

Remembering Those In Need - Simple Lenten Meal

“A PREACHING THAT DOES NOT POINT OUT SIN is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good, so that they are secured in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call. A preaching that does not discomfit sinners but lulls them in their sin leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death”—(Jan. 22, 1978). Archbishop Oscar Romero.


As Christians we must never allow ourselves to become complacent, to accept the status quo. We must always be trying to learn more about how to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, how to be more loyal servants for God. Each day we should give thanks for all of our blessings. Each day we should pray for equality and social justice for everyone. As Christians we must be prepared to make sacrifices in the name of God, for the glory of God.

The Social Justice and Community Services Ministry at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle sponsored the Simple Lenten Meal. The Spanish Prayer Group prepared and served the meal. Parishioners spoke about an orphanage in Peru that needs to purchase a van to transport patients from the orphanage to the hospital. After that discussion there was a little discussion about Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador.

Each moment of our lives presents a chance for us to proclaim God’s works, to praise him, to offer him thanks. Each moment of our lives presents an opportunity for us to seek fairness for everyone, to seek social justice for everyone. As Christians it is not enough to have definitions for words; we must also have understanding. We hear so many words every day, with so many being lost, misunderstood.

How often do we hear freedom, liberty, dignity, peace, liberation? How often do we really truly understand the context. It is not enough to have dictionary definitions; these words must ignite something within our souls and hearts; these words must provoke some universal thoughts for all mankind; these words ask us to look beyond our neighborhood, beyond our town, beyond our state, beyond our country; all human beings deserve the same basic things, freedom, peace, liberty, dignity.

Each day of our lives we should strive to help our neighbors, strive to become closer to God, strive to increase the goodness, kindness, and holiness which emanates from within us.

Technology does not change man’s basic instincts; human beings have always been sinners controlled and influenced by all types of desires and impulses. Jealousy, greed, selfishness can lead individuals and entire nations in the wrong direction. Archbishop spoke out against the injustice and the abuse of the poor people in El Salvador. By doing so he became a role model for us, reminding us to have compassion and empathy for our neighbors, reminding us to seek the Truth, share the Truth.

Thirty-one years ago today, Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated while saying Mass.

Turn to me and be safe - December 15, 2010

In the LORD shall be the vindication and the glory of all the descendants of Israel. Isaiah 45:25

There are remarkable stories of virtue. There are remarkable stories of all types of journeys. Saying the Rosary is encouraged. Prayer presents images picturesque, inspiring. Silence can provide comfort. The great problem is sinning and thinking about sinning, and the solution is not easy when popular culture asks us to deny the existence of sin and to allow psychology and sociology to explain everything, to revise and reduce the idea of Original Sin.

The Mass attempts to give us new spiritual ideas and lessons which reinforce the simple theme of love. We are all refugees. We are all wounded.

There is compassion, mercy, hope.

We no longer know everything, having too much information, too much opinion and not enough facts. Trust is desired, but difficult to obtain.

Loving our neighbors as we love ourselves is desirable yet very difficult.

There is so much to think about.

Splendid discernment topics wait to be uncovered



And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me. Luke 7:23

The Individual

It might be good to begin with a belief in the innate goodness of the individual. Also, we must accept the idea that all individuals possess insecurities and vulnerabilities. At in minute an individual is capable of kindness and meanness. We live in a thoughtless age, a careless age. It is a time when it is acceptable, sometimes necessarily encouraged to immediately blame an external force instead of examining the internal force. It is easier to accept the secular world misconceptions about sin, than to accept God’s. The secular world creates an illusion of life brimming with unsatisfying pursuits and labels. The secular world presents every vice as a delicacy, to be tasted and enjoyed. The occupation of pleasure often conquers and imprisons common sense, humility, mercy, patience, prudence and love. All that is special and beautiful in life is glossed over, distorted. The secular world binds us to sin when do not take the time to contemplate our actions and reactions properly. Each day we must find new ways to avoid sin. The hazards of life lead us away from God, away from peaceful living, away from goodness, kindness, hope, and love. The secular world provides no distinctions between pleasure and sin. We are encouraged to enjoy all, forget everything other than the pursuit of fun. Saying no to pleasure is not always easy. Recognizing sin is more complicated when society accepts or pretends to tolerate all behavior. Many questions and private conundrums do appear. This is an age of carelessness, an age of thoughtlessness, an age of paradoxes. According to an individual’s disposition and character, ability and inclination, education and training, motivation and mobility, each individual is allowed to choose any course of action within their reach, opportunity, desire. This freedom of choice sometimes leads to mistakes, misconduct, melancholy. Despair sometimes is the handmaiden to bad choices and sin. Throughout our lives we must always remember prayer. Perhaps the greatest gift we can have is the ability to pray to God. Praying with the proper temperament and sincerity, praying with patience and sympathy, praising and thanking God, these can be a foundation which will help each one of us diagnose each sinner whether venial or mortal, tolerated or sanctioned by the secular world. Praying helps us understand the good and bad in life, in the world around us. We are surrounded by noise, surrounded by quacks. We must learn to pray, then to trust our prayers, and finally to trust ourselves. The more we pray the more we pray for things which may surprise as we open our hearts, minds, and souls to the plight of all mankind. Aspire only to be an obedient servant of God, seek goodness and kindness. Allow your prayers to guide you to a peaceful, independent, free life of humility, charity, and mercy.

Remembrance

A second chance to think of how to improve my life, to look for ways to create a regiment of goodness and holiness within my heart. Each time I attend Mass I have the joy of seeing the faithful pass in front of me. In their faces varied emotions are visible. In my heart prayers are offered for both familiar and unfamiliar faces. Prayers find my mind. Each time I attend Mass I find new reasons to pray, remember to pray for different people. There are valid reasons to guard my heart, mind, and soul from the secular world. Each day in private ways we are accompanied by charity, mercy, love. We should always be open to giving and receiving them. Our anxiety sometimes prevents the exchange. Sometimes we create a hundred excuses why we can’t be good, why we refuse to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. We often search for shortcuts, not wanting to walk a hundred yards. We are in such a hurry, that we forget to say hello, good-bye, or peace. Our secular world promotes uncertain feelings, uneasiness. The secular world cajoles and harasses and overwhelms the flesh, our fleeting momentary whims, ideas about happiness and comfort which can be achieved with a small fee. Our lives as Christians provide us with a second chance to meet Jesus, a second chance to be humble and obedient before God, a second chance to love as Christ Jesus taught us.

This is the gravest of hours; consumerism offers many wonderful things, but it often does not live up to its promises and often produces frightful results. Materialism will not die.

How beautiful the altar looks each day when the candles are lighted and there are bowed heads praying. Sometimes their are floral bouquets in front of the altar. Mass offers compassion and consolation to those faithful who are there together. Mass offers hope, love, mercy and remembrance.

Each time we attend Mass we are asked to remember and to respect one beautiful sacrifice above all sacrifices.

It is great that we have priests who live to rescue drowning souls. It is easy to overlook the reserve of heroism there is in being a priest. It is easy to overlook the fact that we all are called to live priestly lives.

In regard to our lives, I suggest that we all search for goodness and holiness within our lives and then share it. Sin will always be there to tempt each one of us but with practice and patience we can overcome and avoid sin.

As for our state of mind, my suggestion will perhaps remind you of the responsibility that active Christianity presents to each faithful follower. Our continuing conversion is our duty. Realize that it is shameful to avoid goodness and holiness. Prepare your entire being for sacrifice. Train your feet to lead you on a path of compassion, obedience, love. Learn how to keep your conscience clean and pure. Pray earnestly, pray often.

Spiritual Deterioration

We must always be concerned with our own spiritual deterioration. If we are not careful, it can happen to each of us. Our secular world prefers soft lighting, dimness; sin and vice flourish and spread with the favor and assistance of secular obnubilation. Although we have electricity and neon lights, we live in dark times, the darkness is ever increasing, ever coarsening our hearts and imaginations. We must always beware of this. Our baptism provided each one of us with enlightenment. We must not forget that. We must find the courage and hope to continue and expand our spiritual activity. Our actions as Christians should always encourage the diminution of evil, vice, and sin. We must work to remove the glamor, the power of sin each moment of our lives. We must always promote living based upon the Beatitudes and the commandments. Our secular world offers a wickedly relaxing decadent slumber which we must always resist loudly, proudly with a sanctimonious fury. We have theology, we have devotion, we have God. With prayer learn how to avoid the formulaic traps of sin and temptation. With silence observe the formalistic strategies of evil and vice as they attack our hearts, our minds, our souls, and our God. Pop culture often behaves like a cruel dictator lavishing praise and attention only on the favored subjects. Remember and be prepared for sudden attacks on God, your personal faith, our religion. Not every laugh and joke is innocent and acceptable. Simply be prepared. Simply do not condescend to the unpleasantness, the impertinence. Remain at peace, with your mind fixed on God. Think of Jesus Christ. Trust in the Holy Scriptures. Your spiritual, intellectual, and moral existence is based upon “radical” teachings of universal unconditional love. Display that love reverently.

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.

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.

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.

Penance

Lent allows each Christian to reflect upon their lives and all of the secular influences and then make decisions on how to be more Christ-like. Lent is a time of penance; reconciliation is a prominent component of Lent; each Christian asks God for forgiveness for their individual sins; and hopefully each Christian will be able to forgive others.

Lent is a time of preparation for Easter. These forty days allow time for purification of each Christian soul that obeys the Lord’s commandments. We simply have to believe and allow ourselves to be obedient, humble servants of the Lord.

How we approach each Lenten season can effect how much good we can take from each Lenten season.

Every day of our lives we sin; every day of our lives we face temptation; every day of our lives we move away from God. Each sin can become an obstacles to our relationship with God.

When we take time to consider our choices and the consequences of our actions, we are able to analyze and examine our behavior. If we allow ourselves to be silent, to be contemplative repentance will present itself if our hearts truly love God and want to be faithful to him.

The secular world inundates us with a dissociation of both responsibility and sensibility. Our society promotes the idea that purchasing some product will instantly make us feel better. Our society downplays religion and challenges the authority of God. In a consumerist society all sin is innocuous, can be washed away, swept away with a pill, a broom, or earphones. Christians know that sin does not depart so easily and the ramifications and the consequences of sin can damage our relationships with our family, our friends and with God. We must acknowledge our sins and ask for forgiveness.

As Christians we must remember that each of our individual acts has an impact on our Christian community. Our sins are not simply isolated to ourselves. Our sins are communal, shared with all members of the community, with everyone we encounter. Lent is a time of communal penance.

Each prayer, each fast, each almsgiving is a chance for each of us to move closer to God.

Lent is a somber season which can be filled with joy and hope if our hearts remember why repentance is necessary, if our hearts are ready and willing to be purified by the grace of God, if our hearts desire to be closer to God.

Lent, Lent, Lent

I must not forget this Lenten season. I must remember the necessity of repentance.

Lent is not just about giving something up. It also is about the changes which are made to our lives, the changes which help us pray more, the changes which help us move closer to God. Repentance, true repentance is both the regret and remorse we feel about our sins and real attempt to get sin out of our lives. In away repentance is about the departure of sin. The conflict between good and evil will remain in our lives. Sin patiently does wait to tempt us. But, sin can be defeated when we believe in God, put our trust and faith in God. As Christians our duty is to serve God; he asks us to be humble, obedient, charitable; as we grow in our faith our ability to love each other should also grow. Being Christian means that the struggle will continue. The more goodness we have in our lives, the more we are able to be just in accordance with Christ’s teachings the more we will be tempted. But, remember that we always have hope and God for protection.

Nothing is hopeless when we remember to pray, and, above all, nothing can change God’s love for each one of us. We must remember that God simply asks us to believe in him, to follow in the footsteps of Christ. Our lives should always reflect this love in all our interactions.

Lent is about penance. Penance is not to be viewed as a bad thing. Penance can be good. When our minds and our hearts are open good lessons about life and love can be learned through penance. Our lives with God can be greatly improved by the spirit in which we approach our penance and our desire for change and growth in our relationship with the Lord.

Lent is a time to remember and pray for everyone who loves you, for everyone who does not love you, for everyone you have forgotten. Lent is a time for unconditional prayer. Prayer leads us to God. We might experience a little upheaval but hopefully our former life will end, will die. Hopefully we will find the courage to adapt our lives as Christians to an existence of humility, charity, obedience; hopefully we will obtain the grace to be different than we previously were. Our love, faith, and trust in God can provide us with strength.

As Christians goodness and holiness are not achieved without struggle.

Be very careful and prayerful in your entire life, learn how to avoid the temptations which will endanger your Christian life, avoid pride and envy; strive to keep a pure and clean mind and a clear conscience. God does not exist in a gray area.

Live with hope; prosper with love.

Earthly Desires

Be mindful of the fact that the world is filled with earthly things. What is visible to the eyes, audible to the ears is not always satisfying. The senses provide both information and stimulation. Wisdom teaches mankind to live in harmony with their environment and to learn how to use the environment efficiently and intelligently to provide a renewable resource for food, clothing, shelter. Beware of the temptation to love any possession. Purity of heart and soul is the ultimate goal of all Christians who are striving for holiness. This generation is encouraged to pursue their lusts; society and the government allow adults the freedom to do all types of behaviors which God asks all Christians to avoid. Fleshly lusts when followed lead men away from God. Each Christian must live a life which protects and strengthens the relationship with God; all those things which bond a Christian to God—prayer, penance, fairness, faith, hope, love—must be employed to avoid temptation; the conscience must be developed to seek love, purity and cleanliness of spirit, goodness, and holiness. All Christians know that sin exists; each day there is a possibility that each living person will sin; Christians must allow both themselves and their consciences to learn from each sinful impulse in order to avoid sinning in the future. Each sin is a disgrace; each sin moves us away from God and God’s grace. All Christians must live lives moving toward God, being of service to God.

Both immediacy and anxiety present this current generation with endless earthly choices and fleshly possibilities. Neither the immediacy nor the anxiety are natural; both are artificial and designed by men to provoke both responses and desires. Technology provides a sense of immediacy, instant contact, instantaneous relaying of information which bombards the mind and conscience with a steady repetition of information without providing or encouraging time for contemplation. Technology provides noise; this noise can sometimes drown out God’s messages to us. Information creates anxiety. People often want to know more than they know; people often make assumptions; people often worry. In the context of daily life with cellular phones, computers, television there is so much immediacy, so much anxiety that it might be difficult to discern God’s will. Christians must allow themselves a moment of silence. Christians must avoid getting lost within the current technology, current need for instant connection, instant solutions which are suggested by immediacy.

A Christian’s conscience does not desire instant gratification, instant solutions; a Christian desires to be a humble serving of God. Goodness and holiness involve patience, silence, respect.

A Glimpse of Eden

It was the intention of a modern artist, poet, photographer, essayist, with timid and sometimes turbulent reserves of youth lived within a prelapsarian world of natural forests, irregular hillsides, shallow yet swift brooks and streams leading to the deep and wide river. These were days of Bible verses and blue skies and fluffy white clouds and climbing trees and getting lost in the woods, and wishing that the sun would never go down and running around lost in some beautiful game of make-believe, running around laughing, laughing and hoping. How wonderful those moments were! Surrounding this time was a beautiful envelop of admonishments to be Christ-like, to be good. This instruction was delicate, gentle served with warm freshly baked cookies and glasses of milk. Here were examples of both Christ’s goodness and holiness to observe and to learn. This time was never lost, the power and the grace of those days continue to burn, to keep the darkness, emptiness, and loneliness of sin away. And life pulls us away and then pushes us into God. Those lessons from our youth will return to us as we try to translate current thoughts and concerns. Here lives and grows both the tenderness and gentleness of the heart and soul. Here is a fervent love for social justice and mercy! Here is a mystical sense of trust beyond the immediate and concrete. Here whispers the eternal language of love and salvation!

Each day I encounter hope and sadness, witness despair and kindness; urban living presents the human condition completely unvarnished without sentimentality or generosity. The pain and suffering of our neighbors is often displayed as if for the amusement and entertainment of others. My heart rejects this view but is sometimes overwhelmed by all that is seen and heard, but the fatigue I actually feel directs me to prayer.

search

Whenever I think of a great theatrical or cinematic confession, I think of the song Don’t Cry for Me Argentina from Evita. The title and the opening words are quite confessional.

It is another moment in our lives, our imperfections, our fears when something within us cries, when something within us whines that we learn about our weaknesses and vanities as we search for convenient psychobabble explanations or abstract ideas to blame for our mistakes, our sins. We must remember that our sins exist, we have temptation and capitulation. Sins often arrive with hollow promises; time does not stop; our lives are measured by our actions and deeds. We must not allow our lives to be lived as if each day was a commodity, to be bought or sold. We must resist the coolness of sin. How comforting sin appears from a distance; how dangerous it really is. Sin wants only to become accepted and habitual in our lives. This should not, must not occur. We must not allow it into our lives, we can not give sin an inch, we can not give sin a second. It is insistent, insidious.

I must remember to protect the simplicities within my heart and soul. My mind must remain open to the truth. My tongue must have the courage to be honest. However esoteric a thought might be, the fact that all of our speeches and actions can be interpreted as symbols with all types of meanings which can be defined in dictionaries or on the internet. Each speech, each gesture has its own existence, creates its own experience. There is nothing purely private in our lives. A human is, before he is anything else, a person who will fail, who will fall down and get back up; we learn when fail; we are often strengthened when we get back up.

Sin is failure; sin is bad. When we sin, it is best to discover the causes of why we sin and then develop strategies to avoid sin. Going to confession can help reduce sin; but do not be too anxious.

We must remember that our society is very permissive; many behaviors are acceptable and viewed as natural by doctors, psychiatrists. As Christians we must remember to obey the Commandments in our daily lives. Our behavior should not be based upon trendy ideas, fashionable opinions. Our behavior must be based upon God’s laws.

The art of confession in a nutshell: to constructively analyze your mistakes without sinking into despair with the assistance of an objective priest offering hope.

encourage

We must do whatever we can do to encourage ourselves to live lives filled with pure and clean love.

It is the heroic type of love, universal and unconditional. It is the love which expects and deserves only the most unreasonable responses; both kindness and goodness are truly immortal, occurring despite the intentions of the worst of mankind. It is the love from the churches, the cathedrals, the parishes. It is the universal Christian love. It is the golden desire for peace and social justice taught by Christ. There must be prayer. There must be hope. For faith to grow it must be allowed to grow freely in each person; free will must direct each of us toward God and a life of service and sacrifice.

Our lives should always direct us toward God’s glory. We must consider each day, each choice that we make as a ticket for our eternity. Our lives must always inspire others to want to do God’s work, to bear witness for the Lord, to work to have lives filled with goodness and love.

Make all sin and things which might lead us to sin in our lives diminish in importance to us with each new day; let it vanish from our lives.

Modernity allows us to interpret our lives based upon archetypes. psychological traits, and stereotypical character traits. Modernity allows us to witlessly accept sin in our lives and in our hearts. We must encourage our souls to combat this. Our souls must always remember and inspire goodness in us.

We must build lives filled with humility, charity, mercy, and forgiveness which will help us inherit God’s love. Our humanity requires love. We must always have God as the focal point of our lives, as the central point of certainty of our lives. We must always remember the consequences of both our good and bad choices. Our lives should not cause the reduction of either our hope or humanity. We must confront all uncertainty and unfulfillment with faith and love. It behooves us to minimize the importance of God in our lives; we must analyze all the material of our lives as we try to move closer to God and build lives based upon Christ’s life and teaching.

We must always project love and hope in our daily lives.

Inspiration

This will not be a description of how or when I became a Christian; it will be sufficient to say that I accept and understand that I was born with original sin, but that I came to convert a good while ago now. The several prayers and hymns in which, in my time, I have said and heard during my lifetime did not always please me but did inspire me, for one reason or another; our lives need purpose, direction, and hope; but when, on a summer evening about seven o’clock, I first tried to read Seven Storey Mountain, with its spiritual call and response, this autobiography has been compared to St. Augustine’s conversion, encouraging an education in the Christ’s mercy, the story of the restless and vagabond travels, observing or living; the great power of the ruined life rising high into the melancholy sky, with a whole platoon of memories--blurry figures, soft voices--skimming about with questions and revelations and facts and figures and fissures;--when I first tried reading this book, I felt instinctively that my burdens might be removed from my shoulders, that my tired fingers might write no more, that at last, within my imagination, I had found inspiration in a book to read. Initially I tried to read the book, this autobiography explains one person’s private journey; Christian spirituality needs to be nurtured and developed; this is the power of vocation, purpose of discernment, so far at least as spiritual growth is concerned, to encourage movement closer toward God in all areas of our lives. After reading a couple of chapters, I put the book down, convinced myself that I would pick it up later on, and several days, then weeks, then months passed. The book remained untouched and unread. There, with the former inspiration of the book, I tried to read this book again and again; I thought about reading the book several times and I even told several friends that I was about to read the book.

And so now as Advent begins, I am about to read the book again.