Faith
Long Lens
It’s cliché to write about how short-fused we’ve become. In the golden age of comfort, where snacks are delivered to us by strangers or drones at the press of a glass rectangle in our pockets, how can we be anything but insulated? Every pain point, every hint of friction, is sanded and refined away until our entire existence is a glassy, smooth slide from one thing to the next.
There’s nothing wrong with comfort. Many of the things that contribute to our high standard of living is a gift from God. How thankful we should be for the scientific breakthroughs that have alleviated pointless suffering, the electricity that powers our economy, and soft skills that enable us to put food on the table. The age of comfort is not something to be despised, but to be accepted with gratitude. It was built on the hardships of those that came before us.
A struggle that anyone who has focused on their health will eventually encounter is moving from the period of transition to a period of maintenance. If you wake up significantly overweight, with just a few months of intense focus and lifestyle adjustment, you will meaningfully improve your health. But that time of transition is intense, and requires dedication that no one can sustain over a lifetime. Thankfully, once you attain your health goals, maintaining them does not require the same intensity, but it does require commitment. There is no body composition that will tolerate inactivity and ice cream every night. But making that switch, from intensity to intentionality, is where many of us fall off the track.
Our bodies are resilient and adaptable, and they will adjust in rapid succession if you change the parameters quickly enough. But rapid weight loss can result in rapid weight gain if things revert to the mean. The problem is not that we aren’t serious or committed, it’s that we’re using the wrong lens.
Health is a lifetime commitment, and requires long perspective over decades to achieving lasting positive outcomes. We can’t just avoid regular drinking for three or four months, but we have to change our relationship to alcohol. We can’t skip donuts after Mass for a season, but make them the exception, not the rule. When we take a long view, the urgency and hurry dissipate. I’m not skipping donuts just for today, I’m a person who eats foods based on their overall nutrition for my body. I’m not a person who walks when it’s nice outside, I’m a person who walks every day no matter what.
This correlates directly to the spiritual life. We can clean up our act in Lent, and maybe even kick an attachment to sin that we’ve fought for decades. But Lent is a season; holiness is the work of a lifetime. We need to be intense in Lent, we need to shift our focus and get intense, but it should be in service of a larger arc in our story. It should be the season that propels us to the next level, to a deeper love, to a more authentic vocation. The risk this Lent is not that you drink a soda or snack between meals; the risk is that you let the season pass without any real effort.
A long lens is required to achieve the results we want in our physical health and our spiritual health. Every day is an opportunity, but missing any one day won’t break us. We are the Easter people, and that means no matter what, we do the work.
Mother
The theological dynamism of the Holy Family is challenging to comprehend, but easier to grasp is the human dynamic. Jesus was raised by two saints, but Joseph and Mary were not saints while they put in the work. Mary was freed from the inclination to sin, but Joseph was not, and neither were exempted from the challenges of human existence. Relationships, economics, health, all of these factors weighed on them. They had to choose to overcome this crucible.
Mary’s place of reverence is well deserved, and meets the historical context. In ancient Israel, the queen was not the King’s wife, but rather his mother. After all, she was the woman who gifted the kingdom the King and thereby contributed significantly to its stability. That context aside, it would be odd for us to so properly venerate Christ the King and forget all about the people who raised and cared for Him.
Participation in the mystical body of Christ means that we accept Jesus’ parents as our own spiritual parents. Joseph was silent in Scripture and has made few apparitions since his death, while Mary has taken on a much more active role in Church history. In countries around the world, she has appeared, always careful to match the cultural conditions in which her presence is revealed. In local dialect and fashion, she brings messages of great importance. This is the act of a mother gently watching over her children.
Mary sees herself as mother to each of us, in a real and concrete way. This is not a room mom or a house mom, a relationship in a communal form; this is direct and personal connection to each of us. It is the desire of her heart to help us in any way she can, ensuring our safe return to Heaven to be with her Son. This is why the Memorare highlights the reliability of her intercession; a mother would never ignore the heartfelt wishes of her children.
She desires a deep, personal, and warm relationship grounded in real human love, that always points to God. It’s a relationship we should cultivate constantly.
Limitless
The days and years roll by, and now my third child, Lucy, is preparing to receive her First Reconciliation. She is excited and eager for the day, but what is most beautiful in the entire backdrop is how important this moment is for her. She is unlocking a deeply cathartic experience that will support and encourage her for the rest of her life.
The problem with faith is that it requires belief; but the truths that we hold are so deep, so complex, and so awesome that our minds resist. It very well may be that were we to fully comprehend and understand the fullness of even just this Sacrament, it would overcome us.
What is great about this is that God’s design does not require us to understand the full dynamism of the Sacraments; our knowledge has zero impact on the metaphysical reality.
This isn’t to say that we know nothing about it, or that it is performative because we’re clueless. It is to say that the limitations of our human intellect, for this moment, prevents us from gaining the total knowledge of what takes place. After all, we find it so difficult to forgive our neighbor for their sins against the HOA rule. But, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we experience an outpouring of God’s love and mercy so complete that it is able to overcome any sin that is brought to it. Whether it’s been a day, a week, or a lifetime wasted outside of God’s plan, it has the power to pardon.
After receiving this Sacrament, this week and at every other time in her life, Lucy will emerge as we all do, fully restored to relationship to God and in a similar state to the one she held at the moment of her Baptism. How powerful that would be if we fully surrendered to God’s love and fully internalized this truth. We all love a good comeback story; this is a fresh start in its fullest expression.
God’s truth is limitless, and we are drawn deeper into it the more we live in relationship with Him. The confessional is the wide open gate, always open to us, through which we pass from failure to victory. I hope Lucy will run through it every chance she gets.
Prayer as Ritual
Prayer is the most important thing we can do, and the thing we struggle with the most. Perhaps it’s related to just how open ended it is. Prayer is spontaneous thoughts from your heart, prayer is the Mass, and everything in between. If finding a good place for prayer in your life is a challenge, lean into ritual.
For me, coffee has a special place in my day. I have one cup after breakfast, and one early in the afternoon. I don’t think I need the caffeine, I am naturally a morning person. It certainly helps, but for me, coffee is not a thing or a moment; it’s an experience. My coffee in the morning is a special recipe that must be carefully constructed. It makes travel hard, so much so that I will now bring along the immersion blender that plays a central role. The afternoon is usually cold brew, slowly steeped over a day to pull out a specific flavor.
Drinking coffee, in my day, are two very specific points of time. In the morning, between my workout and starting the workday, and an afternoon pause. The ritual of stopping, following the recipe, and then savoring align perfectly with moments for prayer. This is when my brain slows down, when I am temporarily relieved from my duties and responsibilities, even just for a few minutes. It’s within the context of my coffee ritual that prayer dovetails.
Prayer is a ritual unto itself, and it shares many of the same characteristics of my daily coffee intake. They are moments, relational encounters with the God who made me. They are times for pause, where the weights of daily life can be set aside for calm. By connecting my daily coffee with my daily prayer, I make it easier to fit prayer into my life and enhance the moment.
Now I am no longer simply savoring layers of flavor, I’m connecting in relationship. I’m not just recharging my body, but refreshing my spirit. I I am not sitting on the couch in silence, but grounding myself in my core identity. Time well spent.
Finding time to pray or building a routine of prayer is always a challenge. Make it simpler by finding natural points in your day to connect to prayer. Ritual is a healthy and powerful thing; use it to your advantage.
Immaculate Conception
The Church holds that there is no further revelation after Christ. Christ is the fulfillment of revelation, closing the loop on everything, and tying together the myriad threads of theology woven in the history of Israel. While there is nothing new to be revealed, what has occurred over the centuries of Church history is a more in-depth understanding of what has already been shared. A reaffirming principle of theology is that simple ideas and words have a depth to them that unpacking them can take centuries.
No place is the more true than Mariology. Mary’s place of honor in the Church is a natural and logical outflow of her place in Jesus’ life. What man doesn’t love his mother? If Christ bears this love for His mother, shouldn’t the Church, His body, do the same? But understanding her uniqueness in human history, and the philosophical properties attributable to this status requires deep thought and clarification.
When you look at the list of Vatican-approved Marian apparitions, the circumstances of them is astounding. These approved apparitions were studied and scrutinized, and their effects observed before receiving the seal of approval. These sixteen or so apparitions have similar threads. From France and Belgium, to Japan, Ireland, Venezuela, Rwanda, and Mexico, Mary appears dressed in a culturally appropriate attire and speaks the language of the people. This is the style of a mother looking to connect with her child, not a regent arriving to condescend. Our understanding of her role as mother not just to Jesus, but to His Body, is furthered by this subtle communication.
The same is true for the theological dogma that is not just proclaimed, but solemnly celebrated today: the Immaculate Conception. Although Mary lived in the first century, it wasn’t until the 1854 that the Church proclaimed the dogma that Mary was conceived without original sin. That’s a long time to contemplate the idea, but it’s a conclusion that is not only logical, but imperative.
Original sin is the stain passed from parent to child that is at the root of our fallen nature, but its remedy is often obtained by those same parents: Baptism. Each time we receive the Eucharist, we bring the completeness of Christ within our physical selves. Though it lasts only a moment, that interaction changes us. How can we not be changed when imperfection comes into concrete contact with perfection? But when we receive the Eucharist, He only physically dwells in us for a few minutes before the digestive process is complete.
Christ’s human gestation was entirely normal, nine months in utero of growth and development. How could it be that perfection would physically dwell in imperfection for that long of a time? Further, how could Mary be prepared for the weight of her vocation if there was even the smallest idea of disobedience somewhere in her conscience? That is why the Immaculate Conception is so theologically significant, and necessary. At the moment Mary was created, she was spared the stain of sin. This was not to pigeonhole her into fiat, but so that if she chose to entrust herself fully to God, that when the magnificent and imposing presence of an archangel appeared to her, she would be totally free to respond.
The layers of Mariology are still being explored and unpacked, but today is a little reminder of just how incredible she is, and how lucky we are to call her Mom.
Prepare
Be Prepared is the motto that many of us memorized growing up, later turning into a marketing tagline of “Prepare. For Life.” Preparation is the prudent act of an adult, foreseeing some future event and taking positive steps to be ready for when they arrive. That is Advent, the changing of our physical environments and interior selves to be ready for the arrival of the foretold Savior.
Jesus’ arrival was not a surprise. For hundreds of years, the place of His arrival was told and retold in Israel. This promised Savior would be the fulfillment of all of God’s promises in the story, reaching back to Abraham in the desert of the Nineveh plains. Long waiting, long-suffering, Israel pined for this arrival and the new era that it would begin.
We enter the Christmas season each year with a sense of time compression and busyness. The Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year sequence in rapid succession seems to speed us up. All the things we hoped to accomplish in 2025 take on new urgency and, while most of those things will be pushed into 2026, we still try to get it all done.
This compression is the opposite of the intent of Thanksgiving and Christmas. These two holidays ask us, instead, to pause. In Thanksgiving, we partake in the national pastime of practicing gratitude. This is a uniquely American trait in our national DNA that acknowledges that our successes and blessings find their source in others and in God. It’s a day to reflect on how good our lives are, and though life is never easy, there is much to be grateful for.
Christmas marks the arrival of Christ, and the dawn of an era. Reaching its fulfillment at Easter when we are truly set free, His birth is a concrete event that tells us that it was all real. Every story, every poem, every song, it all pointed to this moment, to this event, and now it is happening.
There are many preparations ahead in the short four weeks before Christmas. We need to decorate our homes; a change in the physical space that we inhabit gives us frequent reminders of the importance of these days. We need to clean our conscience by going to Reconciliation so that we are ready to participate in the celebrations to the fullest without being attached to our failings. Finally, we should contemplate the depth and beauty of this mystery. The great I AM arrives in the form that we ourselves entered into this world, and with Him comes everything we’ve hoped for and everything that was promised.
It all was true, it is all real, and we are a part of it.
Yes, Kings
Human government has always been a tricky balance. Incentives are powerful forces in politics, religion, and markets; misalignment leads to wild instability. The kings we tend to remember were ruthless, self-indulgent, selfish individuals who wielded power for their benefit. They were the living embodiment of Lord Acton’s commentary, “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
It would be wrong, historically and otherwise, to paint with such a broad brush. A centralized political leader who holds the vast majority of political and military power in a jurisdiction is inherently dangerous. A few good men in history performed admirably in the role, most failed miserably. Still, it’s easy to see that the Greek notion of the philosopher king would be an excellent fit, even in the modern world, were the role to be fulfilled faithfully.
The king is not meant to be a tyrant; just the opposite. The king is to have compassion for the health, safety, and welfare of his people. He is somewhat of a father figure, tending to the domestic and foreign affairs of the state so that his people can do the same for their families and communities. He should be thoughtful, deliberative, and, in the truest sense, humble. This great responsibility for so many placed on his shoulders will dictate the lives of many.
This is why it is so easy to ascribe kingship to Christ. Jesus is King of Kings, the leader of all dominions and principalities, and the true embodiment of kingly responsibility. He is focused and attentive to the needs of His people, provides what they need, and took upon Himself the sacrifice that they could never perform. This is a King.
Power dynamics and cultural pressures can distort in our minds our perception of relationships. Who wants to be a citizen when they can be a king? The truth is, kingship’s responsibility is a burden of strength and responsibility that few can manage. After all, who else but Christ could take upon Himself every sin of every person in every age? Being the beloved is a gift unto itself, and to belong to the King is a great blessing.
Kingship is not a problem, corruption is. How good is it to belong to the King whom corruption cannot touch.
End of Days
As the liturgical year winds down, the readings at the Sunday Mass focus on the end times, something called eschatology. The early Catholic Church believed that Jesus was coming back relatively immediately. All these years later, we’re still waiting. There are many times throughout the year that the liturgical flow reminds us of our pilgrimage on earth and its conclusion. It focuses our minds, and then we drift.
Imagination is one of our most powerful human creative functions. The ability to conjure and construct things in our mind, without seeing it in the physical world, is deeply beneficial. But with all of our distractions, once we are no longer children, it doesn’t get used as much.
The end times are not meant to be a scary event, but a hopeful fulfillment of all that God has promised. If we truly accept His love, and live within the bounds of the law, we should start each day with a sense of hope that today will finally be the day that all promises will be kept. After all, we were not made for earth, but for heaven.
We fear the end of our life, rightfully for the people we’ll leave behind and the things left undone. At that moment, we will have to truly let go of those we hold closest. Will our estates be a burden to our family? But we also fear it because we are not prepared. Death comes for us all, but catches most unaware.
Fulton Sheen, in his book Remade for Happiness, flips the script and reorients our attention. It is not just that we are hopeful for the return of Christ or our reunion with Him, but that in being prepared, we sneak up on death and catch it by surprise. He likened it to the homeowner who knew the thief was coming, laid in wait, and pounced.
It is challenging to choose the things of God rather than the things of man, and these weeks are a helpful cue for us of the importance of doing so. More than that, it’s a nudge to use our imagination to think about the depth, intricacy, and beauty of God’s promises, and live our life in alignment with those promises. What is more appealing: a sharp quip to take your coworker down a few notches, or a perpetual existence in a place of true peace where there are no tears?
The Church doesn’t exist as a stick to force into submission the unwilling, but the tender shepherds crook guiding us to the safety of our true home.
Faithful Departed
With All Saints Day, and All Souls Day behind us, we are entering into the end of the liturgical year. Soon the Sunday Gospel readings will focus on eschatology, the end times. It’s our annual confirmation, more specific than Lent and Advent, that this world is passing away.
There is a view that the Church uses evil as a stick, a means of scaring people into belief. This contradictory argument ignores many truths, all of which dovetail with our focus at the end of the year. We know that God is goodness and love itself, having no lack within Him. Does it not make sense, then, with our own knowledge of evil in the world, that there should be some single-point source that contains all evil? It would have to be so, because our understanding of Satan is that he exists with no connection to God; his existence is the complete absence of goodness and love. If there were any presence in the universe worthy of dread and fear, that sounds like a good candidate. But this is just one dimension where the stick argument falls down. What kind of love can be foisted upon an unwilling recipient? Love cannot impose itself; it’s a gift freely given that must meet an equally free acceptance. Evil is real, as we have all experienced, and though we have cause to fear it, it is not enough to run from evil. We must run to love.
With the celebration of All Saints Day, we raise our minds to the stories of those whom the Church has declared their holiness. These are men and women, children and the elderly, who have risen above their human frailties to embrace and live heroic virtue. They were cut down by the sword, died of every disease, or simply expired at the end of their lives; the common thread is that in life and in their death, they perfectly mirrored Christ’s love to the world.
All Souls Day is for the Faithful Departed. This is a special day of prayer for those who died knowing God, but the state of their souls is not known to us. It’s an opportunity for us to pray for them in hope that if they have not yet merited heaven, the grace of our prayer will bring them closer to their final goal.
Life has a way of quickly getting busy, and these regular check-ins are the Chruch’s gentle way of helping us stay focused. Prayer for the deceased should be a regular part of our prayer routine, and we should ever be mindful that Jesus is coming back. Are we prepared?
Genealogy
The Old Testament, in particular, contains several long and confusing lineages. Whether conducting a census of the nation of Israel, or establishing connections between figures, these long lists of difficult-to-pronounce names glaze over our eyes, but carry an important message.
Family genealogy tends to be the purview of one or two people in each family, but the difficult work of mapping out family connections is significant. It not only connects us with our past, but shows the long and winding road that brings us to where we stand. In the Bible, these genealogies are designed to establish authority. By showing that Abram comes from Noah’s ancient family, we can be confident in other details of his story. By tracing Jesus’ roots back to David, we see this kingly line finally fulfilled.
Reading these long lists of names, both known and unknown, may take a lot of time, but it’s not just about connecting Jesus and Abram to their forefathers. These genealogies are our genealogies; they’re how we are connected into the largest, most famous family in human history.
Though the work has not been done, it is possible, as with the apostolic succession of our bishops, to trace our family back to the earliest Christian communities. Making that connection is likely impossible, but were we able to do have historical records to complete the work, it would unlock a much deeper truth. With that connection established, we are truly plugged into God’s family, and our authority as priest, prophet, and king is very real.
The Bible is not just a collection of stories, and the Church is not just a written chapter in history. These are our stories and our history, how our family came to be, and how we can carry its mission forward.