Three Statements About the Catholic Church

It is very important to remember that the Roman Catholic Church does have a history and a tradition that extends over two thousand years. It is very important to acknowledge the Jewish roots of the Roman Catholic Church. It is very important to proclaim that the Roman Catholic Church is the original and first Christian church. These three statements help create a starting ground when looking at the church, when thinking about the church. These three sentences will hopefully inspire other thoughts about the majesty and beauty of being Catholic, of the Catholic experience.

Writing is difficult; being Catholic is difficult. Writing about the Catholic experience is often challenging. Thinking about being Catholic is easy. Talking about being Catholic is easy. Saying the right thing at the right time about Catholic life is difficult.

What is the strength of the Catholic Church? What does the Catholic Church do? The Catholic Church does one thing very well. It creates and maintains and encourages prayer. Prayer is the main currency of the church. There are prayers for all hours of the day, prepares before, during, and after Mass. All actions as Christians begin with prayer, simple prayer. All actions of Christians begin with simple attempts to praise God, to offer thanks to God, to request assistance from God. Learning to pray is learning to communicate with God.

Communicating with God is essential for each Christian. There is a need to listen for God’s call. There is a need to reach out to God with the good and bad, happiness and sorrow, love and indifference as it occurs in daily life. Being Catholic involves a continual invitation to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, to live a life based upon social justice that reflects the Beatitudes and the teachings of Jesus Christ. That continual invitation reminds the faithful to return to Mass each week, to serve on committees in their parishes. That continual invitation leads some of the faithful to a life of vocations. That continual invitation can lead each Catholic to a closer, deeper more personal relationship with God.

It is necessary to remember that each Christian is asked to be a loving servant of the Lord. This is often a difficult request. The Catholic Church provides many examples of how to become a loving servant of God both living and dead. It is very important that each Christian try to become a loving servant of God. The attempt is important for development as a Christian, for a richer understanding of God, of the individual’s relationship with God, of the individual’s relationship with their faith community. Learning how to love and how to forgive are two of the essential tenets of being Christian. To discover them require prayer and trial and error. Christian forgiveness and Christian love are difficult without God’s grace and guidance.

It is very important that each Christian develop a coherent starting point or point of reference for their Christian life. Prayer is essential. Christian forgiveness and Christian love are important.

The life of each Roman Catholic by nature of baptism allows and creates the opportunity for evangelization. Each word spoken, each action taken can be a vehicle for sharing the Good News, a vehicle for New Evangelization of family, friends, colleagues. Each day, each moment is the opportunity to present, to share the mercy, charity, and grace of God.

New Evangelization asks each Christian to remember the past, the love and sacrifices of God and to apply that to the present with our actions and thoughts. New Evangelization is alive and necessary for the faithful and the Church.

The Cathedral

The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle creates an aural and visual atmosphere which encourages and nurtures prayers, reflection, and compassion. The Cathedral remains a welcoming quiet space where all thoughts, all concerns, all emotions are not expected to be directly expressed to everyone. Here is a place of love and spiritual development. Here is a place of goodness, kindness, holiness. A bouquet of mercy, compassion, and hope the doors of the Cathedral are often open, help and assistance can be found. Prayer offers a patient intensity. Prayer can lead to more humility, charity, obedience. Prayer can lead to personal discernment about life, vocation. The Cathedral is a very handsome space which photographs well with Brides and Grooms but the space is equally handsome for soul searching about personal themes about religious identity and cross cultural identity and reference points.

The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle is often at the epicenter of Washington, DC life. Homilies often refer to current topics, world leaders. Prayers are said for all mankind. Although the Cathedral is Catholic, prayers for peace, prayers for all humans are said each and every day. Love is not simply spoken of in the abstract but it is a vital important part of the life of this parish which relies upon the prayers and humanpower of many volunteers to fulfill the mission of the church.

The Cathedral is a place for human beings, a place for sinners, a place for the damaged and the broken, for the abandoned and the forgotten. It is a place to celebrate birth, death, and everything in between. It is a wonderful monument of hope and love. The Cathedral remains stubbornly accepting, stubbornly compassionate, stubbornly merciful to all of those who need it, to all of those who walk through the doors.

Here is a sheltering place of beauty. A place where silence is encouraged. Here is a place to escape the hurly-burly of a fast-paced, frantic life where everybody is psychotic or neurotic , where everybody is talking.

Here is a place for honest, simple communication.

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.

A Long Afternoon Walk

Fresh and delicious thoughts and daydreams. A long afternoon walk. Thinking of dogwood and magnolia trees in the spring. A moment of reflection as I walk on the sidewalk away from my house. The sky is vague
preparing for night. My mind silently says little prayers; my mind is fringed with hope. There is something dazzling about Mass before dinner. Spiritual hunger can lead us to exquisite insights into love, charity, obedience; questions about virtue and goodness can lead to delicate revelations about how to be a humble servant of the Lord’s. Honest, simple prayer is necessary. Morality is necessary; decency is necessary. How wonderful some of the lawns with their hedges do appear. How wonderful it is to have the leisure to offer prayer to the Lord! How peaceful prayer can make us feel once we learn how to pray, how to meditate, how to be patient. Learn to avoid anxiety. Learn to pray with the simplicity and enthusiasm of faithful children. Contentment may follow such prayers when both the mind and soul are open and when both are clean and pure. God’s love for each one of us is boundless. Because of our own private individual sins we must simply confront our unworthiness and beg for forgiveness; no matter how good or holy we may believe we are, there is always some little stray thought or comment which keeps us human, keeps sin alive in all of us. We must pray for the wisdom to discover and understand this subtle obstacle to loving ourselves, our neighbors and our God. My mind remembers fields stretching for miles in each, fields on gently rolling hills, fields with wooden fences, fields alive and green. Sometimes our lives contain a hidden softness. And we can share delightful anecdotes about warm donuts, cold orange juice, missing buttons on wool coats. And we can always find time to pray to God. There is always work to be done; always volunteer work to be done. God’s love for us is boundless. In our hearts there is a desire to please God, to find our true vocation, to be a humble servant for God. All humans need a moment of silence, to reflect and to pray. How peaceful the moment is. The weather cold and crisp pleases me. And are you willing to proclaim your love for God. This January morning my mind allows me to see verdant meadows and blossoming orchards; to rest my eyes on the Gospels written on the clouds in the blue sky; to have Jesus Christ with me; to listen to his preaching, his parables; to be filled with a calm goodness. How wonderful the grass and trees are! How much gratitude and love I do feel, I do have. The days of trouble and uncertainty are too frequent but prayer teaches how to calmly accept each moment of chaos and difficulty. Prayer sometimes provides a second of blissful presentiment when we imagine the world to be peaceful, loving and fair. We must remember that it is our actions, our thoughts, our words which can create our happiness and peace. There is much goodness and innocence in the world to enchant and inspire our humility and charity. There is much grief in the world that needs our compassion, love, and prayers. We must not hide the miserable or ignoble things which life does present to us. We must accept them and offer them to God.

My Vocation: Being Christian

It is singularly touching to approach the spiritual with sense of humor; being Christian is a serious vocation which for many will include a lifelong discernment of how to serve God, how to be humble and how to love everyone; being Christian does not mean greeting the world with grave, dour and downcast eyes and stern reproving speeches about morality and charity and humility; being Christian is finding the religious temper and fervor of Jesus Christ and tirelessly praying and loving and serving everyone in the name of God; being Christian means finding your individual affinity to both goodness and holiness which is natural, organic, and true. It is not enough to simply go to Mass just on the Sabbath. Our entire lives must contain and reflect the spirit of God. Each decision we make and each word we speak has the ability to lead many others to God. We are not here to judge each other; remember how to love each other. It is no longer important being the first; desire only knowledge on how to serve well and love universally, impartially. Hope is written in every heart. During our lifetime, there will be times with endless months of winter with cold wind attacking our faces and mud or snow attacking our feet; we must remember to protect our hearts and souls from the frost despair; from the moment of our birth each day we have been in the daily sight of death; do not be afraid of death, do not run from death, do not run toward death, live each day of your life in humble service to the Lord; keep your heart filled with hope, love, and prayers of thanks and praise. Keep your thoughts directed toward goodness and holiness. Each day live each moment for Christ, follow in his footsteps.

Do not worry about death arriving with a random computer generated list of names of men, women, and children who will fall into their deep, long sleep. Allow only your prayers to seal their eyes as you pray for their souls and their salvation. Death is not the enemy. Our vision should always be set toward heaven, each breath and each step should move us closer to that goal and to God. We want to develop deeper insights into being good, faithful, and humble. We want to find keener feelings of forgiveness and love. We want to find the full strength of hope, mercy, and love in our lives.

It is wisdom that we seek; it is heaven that we seek. Our lives belong to God; our lives were planned by him. We have the duty and responsibility to listen and to obey.

Vocation - American Style

Once upon a time, there was one little country boy, walking on an urban sidewalk. And he allowed himself to see God in faces of passing strangers. It was an existential moment of questions and answers; a lyrical moment of wonderful belief, faith, and love; an exemplary moment of inspiring and living Catholicism.

He had a personality shaped by sitcoms, detective shows, and imported international miniseries. There was an understated curiosity about him. He was always ready with a question and a smile. In his being was a growing love of his religion, growing respect of his faith. Learning about God and how to please God, pleased and challenged him.

There was an ordinariness about him, detached and graceful as he searches for goodness and his path. His eyes looked around him, at the glass storefronts, the neon signs, the rushing pedestrians. Then he tried to remember something he heard at Mass.

beautiful, service, faith, love, sharing, direction, forgiveness, help, dedication, charity, peace, kindness, empathy, honor, privilege, ceremony, tradition, Bible, St. Paul, homily, God's work, community, family, prayer, reflection, examination of conscience,

Sometimes I too have a feeling leading me in a certain direction; interpreting past events and assigning symbolic significance, religious archetypes to the realities from my life. Sometimes I too must acknowledge my faults, my sins, even the smallest elements, the random thoughts, brash and wild. Sometimes I too realize the material world may be beautiful and yet there is an element of the intangible which creates obsession, greed, lust.

In quiet moments there is a very tangible sensation, the material that both hope and love are made of, that leads my brain through all the formative influences. There are examples supreme and sublime. There is a search for a lucid freshness and purity. There is an innocent insistence which challenges my being, my inactivity.

Here and there, I have made small discoveries about myself and there is a desire for a relationship with God which contains greater fidelity. Each new discovery could be complemented by an anecdote or a fragment. Nothing is isolated.

I have been on a journey for a long time, following the traces, the ancient footsteps everywhere. I have observed life and something beyond life, something beyond words. Now, my heart and soul yearn for God's grace, God's love, and to do God's work.

It is never too late to yearn.