Faith
Allure
Mass attendance is up. At my parish, the men under 30 demographic is quickly outpacing the women in the same age bracket and is getting to the point where they seem to outnumber the retired. I see them everywhere: every event, every group, Daily Mass, special liturgies, and Adoration. The majority of catechumens this year were young men. Recent commentary from some bishops in interviews with national journalists has attributed this resurgence to a “bully culture.” This analysis misses the mark.
Bully culture, whatever that means, is neither new nor is it emerging. Was society kinder in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Napoleon’s France, Henry’s England, Khan’s Mongolia, the Japanese shogunate, or Caligula’s Rome? Political leadership across time and cultures has always tended towards the mean spirit suggested in these interviews. In comparison, we appear to be living in the kindest civilization ever organized. Mean people on the internet are not the cause for this transformation.
I think this is something much deeper, and much more simple. People have an awareness of how adrift everyone in their social group seems. Wake up, scroll on phone, work, travel, sleep, and repeat. What is the point of that? For more than six decades, young adults been told that relationship is bondage, children are consequence, and adventure is truly living. We can tell ourselves anything for a very long time, but eventually, we’re mugged by reality.
No matter how far we run or where we try to hide, truth is inescapable. We are who we are, no matter how we act or what we choose to believe. Just as there is nothing we can do to reduce our human dignity, there is nothing we can do to change who we were made to be.
In their lives, physical and digital, they watch the lives of their friends who decide to try to separate themselves from their purpose. Purpose is not one’s career or passport stamps, but the cause for which they were made. We are made for others, not for ourselves. They see the pain of people living the lifestyle equivalent of a sovereign citizen: a mistaken belief that they can extract themselves from who they really are and what they actually need.
In response to this, these brave souls who now join us in the pews do the difficult thing: they acknowledge the tug they’ve always felt. They choose to engage in the quest to find that meaning, purpose, and the center of the universe. They find their life when they lay it down; they find their everything at the altar in the Eucharist.
This is an act of incredible moral courage. The courage to reject a counterfeit life, to accept that their life is a gift for others and not built for our amusement. Pope Leo said at the canonization of Carols Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, the greatest risk in life is to live it outside of God’s plan. The more we participate in that plan, the closer we get to our truest, best version of ourselves.
In the Footsteps of Saints
Travel to Italy, France, or Spain and you’ll be inundated with churches, relics, and burial places. These holy sites and treasures are the results of the lives of holy men and women across Europe tradition developing over the centuries. For those of us in the New World, or in the emerging regions of Catholicism, we do not have the luxury of passing countless holy sites along our commute to work or the grocery store. But we are not without treasures of our own.
This week, our family will travel to upstate New York to visit the St. Kateri Tekakwitha shrine. We will visit the ruins of her village, the physical place where she grew up and lived. It is just one site here in the United States where saints have walked. There is the village of Blessed Fr. Stanley Rother in Okarche, Oklahoma. There’s Bishop Fulton Sheen’s Peoria, Buffalo, and New York. Holy sites dot our land as the stories of these heroic men and women become more widely known and the canonizations of North American saints continue.
We visit these places not for thrills or tourism, but as moments of philosophical pause. We walk where they walked, and see what they saw. It is some small reminder that sainthood isn’t reserved for the clergy, the perfect, or the Italian. Sainthood is a wide boulevard for us and our story. It is who we were made to be, and it should be the rule, not the exception, for us in our lives.
Every saint experiences adversity on their path to sainthood. For some, it’s plainly seen through gruesome persecution or public martyrdom. For most, it’s the quiet struggle in the mind and heart to choose to say yes to God’s plan. The point is, they made it, and we can join them.
Our trip will be one of many memories and experiences, and the ruins may look like an ordinary grassy field in midsummer bloom. But the ordinary appearance hides the true treasure. That on this soil walked a girl who had the moral courage to walk away from tribe, friends, and family and give everything she had to acquire the One who loved her first. May we each choose to follow in her footsteps.
Childlike
Jesus’ love for children is shared in story after story. This is not really a mystery; while a cynic may think of them as gullible or easily led, Jesus can see their heart. Children are not jaded or hardened by the world, and in that way make themselves more receptive to God’s work in their life.
At some point, we all learn that we have to pretend. Whether to fit in or be accepted, we change who we are exteriorly and ensconce our true selves deep inside. Though we are seeking comfort, we tell ourselves a lie. Through this play theater, we tell ourselves that who we truly are is not good enough. The danger of this lie is that it runs counter to God’s truth: we are wonderfully and fearfully made.
Whenever I want to challenge my thinking, I think about space. Earth is a massive place; even America is of size. It can take me two full days of driving at 70 miles per hour and I still can’t go from one end to the other. Zooming out, Earth is floating in a vast expanse of emptiness so large that I cannot comprehend it. This expansiveness is akin to the things of God. His goodness, His love, His wisdom, His everything is so wide, so complete, so whole that my brain just cannot process it.
It’s like St. Peter walking on water. When he believed that he could, through the power of God, walk across the flowing waters, he did. Then he did what we all do; he doubted. Suddenly, he collapsed into the waves and had to be saved. When St. Peter accepted what Jesus said in an act of childlike surrender, he experienced God’s power. When he doubted, placing his trust in himself, he failed.
Childlike does not mean unthinking. God created the animals, but He didn’t enter into relationship with them. He gave them instinct, not intellect. He doesn’t force Himself on anyone, nor impose His love on those who reject it. Children run to adults and embrace them, or cry the second someone they would rather not be near picks them up. Childlike means accepting the Word of God and embracing it wholly because of the trust we have in its Source.
Trusting in God rather than ourselves is a great act of moral courage, and even when we do have a powerful experience of God, maintaining that trust is difficult. Our brains, and occasionally, our hearts, tug us in the wrong direction out of an instinctual attempt to protect us. But we don’t need protection from God or His Will in our lives. We need to find ourselves at rest in Him when we lay everything down. When He promises us the great things He has prepared, we only need to accept and participate in His plan, which is far and away better than anything we could’ve dreamed up for ourselves.
Church Family
Spend a few months attending the same Mass at your parish, and you’ll grow accustomed to the faces and families. The elderly couple that sits two pews ahead of you, the family with five small children, the college students who impressively show up every week. The faces and familiarity builds a degree of comfort and a sense of belonging. Though you may not know their names or their story, their regular presence subtly contributes to a sense of normalcy.
Our weekly attendance at Mass is a requirement of our faith, but like all other requirements imposed on our lives by the Church, they are done so for our benefit and edification. Prayer is meant to be intensely personal and regularly communal. Jesus spent very specific times in prayer alone, withdrawing from everyone to catch His breath and connect directly with His Father. He also spent lots of time in His public ministry praying and worshiping in groups large and small. He reiterates the importance of communal prayer when He shares wherever two or more are gathered in His name.
Sadly, many regard this sacred obligation unnecessary or burdensome. What they perceive as one more thing to do, one more appointment on their busy calendars, is the sustainment we need to endure the challenges of life. Not only is it good for us to gather and pray the highest prayer we have, the Mass, it’s good for us to know that we are not alone. That there are other retirees, young families, and students who value their faith as much as we do. Others who recognize that no matter the stage in life, the Church stands ready to support us.
The best thing about these fellow parishioners whose names we don’t yet know is when we finally do meet. Whether at a Knights of Columbus meeting, a volunteer rummage sale, a parish picnic, or in the basement sheltering from a passing storm, when we finally exchange names and talk for the first time, it feels like connecting with a friend we’ve known for years. There’s an instant depth, a mutual respect, on which to build this new friendship. And a few days later, when you show up to a particularly packed Mass, they greet you with a smile from afar and invite you to sit next to them in their pew.
The bonds of Catholicism and rich and deep. Through the Communion of Saints, we are connected to the living and deceased members of our Church and, though we do not know their names right now, we share in the most precious bond known to man. We belong to God’s family and are always and forever united in the Eucharist.
Scent of Sanctity
There is a moment in our lives, sometime around middle or high school, in which we learned how to pretend. Not the kind of imaginary play that fills the days and hours of a child’s life, but the facade we erect around ourselves. We want to be liked, to be wanted, and so we observe what our friends and peers seem to like, and we make ourselves imitate those things. The treasure of children is their innocence, when the idea of pretend does not even exist in their minds.
In the treasure of this innocence is an openness about the importance of their faith. It could be cynically assumed that children merely parrot what their parents tell them. It’s true, and good, for children to follow the example of parents who labor in every way to instill virtue in their children. But dismissing a child’s words as empty or meaningless is to discount what that innocence unlocks.
Children do say memorized prayers or repeat answers from the Catechism, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the scent of sanctity that wafts off them as they share expressions of faith. A child who dashes to the Marian altar after every Sunday liturgy, who proudly announces as they emerged from their room that they have just prayed the rosary, who begs to go to Eucharistic Adoration on a Friday night, or whose drawings are filled with angels and the saints. This is not a child who is copying their parents; this is a child who has accepted the love of God in the simplest and purest way.
It is admirable when these behaviors present themselves; it might even leave parents wondering how best to respond to cultivate this continued love. Perhaps, though, it is more than just the expression of a child. Perhaps it is a gift from child to parent, a reminder that accepting God’s love is the work of a lifetime, but that we are to approach God with the trust, innocence, and acceptance of children.
Life brings many great pressures, burdens, and challenges. We are not made to carry them alone. The less we trust in ourselves and our abilities, and the more we place that trust in God, the closer we move to Him in our spiritual journey. Every so often all we need to remind us of this important work, in the midst of so many tasks, is a brief waft of the scent of sanctity.
Reconciled
Over the decade plus that I’ve written on this blog, I’ve built a solid habit of receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation. So much of my knowledge today is attributable to the golden age of podcasting and blogging in the 2012-2014 era, and this particular habit finds its roots in Mark Hart. He was on The Catholic Guy Show with Lino Rulli as I was driving across my huge sales territory, and he made a comment that has stuck. He said nothing was more consequential in his life as a husband and father than embracing this sacrament.
In all those years, I’ve gone from a guy who’s just trying to make it through the line as efficiently as possible, to now bringing along three of my four children. Kids make it through Reconciliation quickly, but it’s a different experience. It’s no more just seeing and experiencing reform in my own life; it’s seeing my children lined up in the pew, doing their penance, experiencing the same newness.
Most people yearn for youth and lament their age, but the philosophy in me pulls me in the opposite direction. The wisdom of age is a comfort and gift unto itself, grey hairs starting to show through reflecting that I am now beyond the phase of gathering knowledge and now and pouring it into those who are following behind me.
In youth, I loathed the season of Lent; now I harvest its fruits. In youth, I guiltily avoided Reconciliation; now I embrace the process of refinement. This is the life of the Christian. I do the hard things to make myself a more prefect reflection of Love.
For the time they are home with me, I will bring the children along when I got to Reconciliation. When they are grown and on their own, I hope they, too, will find the sweetness of this special Sacrament, and spend their lives embracing its refining fire.
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.