Faith
Detailing
Our vacation plan for this year included a trip to the Great White North to enjoy a week of snow, play, and skiing. Driving north, the landscape turned from winter browns to gleaming white. Unfortunately, flurries and snowstorms met us along the way, as well as road salt and ice.
Upon arrival, the car was filthy. Two days of toys, food crumbs, and wrappers littered the floor, and the road dirt caked on the truck’s body panels. I took it in for a half-day detailing this morning, and at lunchtime, it was spotless.
It killed me to drive out of the detailing bay and know that it has to make it all through the week and back home. Again, the same ice, dirt, and trash will return, only this time I’ll have to clean it. I desired to keep it as clean as possible, but I knew it was a fool’s errand. As soon as I pulled out of the clean bay and on the dirty road, the cycle repeated.
Next week, Benedict will take the next step in his faith journey, making his First Reconciliation. He’s excitedly engaged in our many discussions and teachable moments and is wrapped in a great sense of anticipation to receive his next Sacrament.
Reconciliation is that detailing, a thorough cleaning that returns us to Baptismal purity. The white garment that we pledged to keep clean for the banquet of the lamb, restored to its original state. As soon as we walk out of the Church, temptation awaits. Try as we might, we will pick up dirt and trash as we go through life.
I can take the car in to get detailed whenever I want, just like the Sacrament of Reconciliation is ready for us on demand. We can get back to that brilliant shine at any time and move through our day with our heads held high and the pride of a well-maintained soul. But to do so, we must first choose to embrace the process of detailing.
Preparations
I love to drive. Each year, our family takes two or three major road trips. These are highlights of my year, even if occasionally the kids don’t travel as easily as I wish they would. Although our destinations are often places we’ve been before, it takes weeks of preparations to be ready to go.
For each trip, we typically need to add a few more items to our travel supplies. Winter clothes, a cargo box, or even just a few nicknacks find their way to our house in cardboard boxes on the backs of delivery vans. It’s always my assumption that each subsequent trip will require fewer new supplies, but I’m still waiting for that theory to prove itself out.
It doesn’t take us long to pack. In fact, we’re pretty good now at bringing the right mix of clothing, packed to perfection in our travel bags. What takes the most time is thinking through the trip and ensuring that we have the right supplies. Of course, there’s always the need to add appropriately sized kids clothing to the mix, and that can be a cycle of orders and returns, ensuring a good fit.
Weeks of preparation give way to a smooth trip on which we have everything that we need. I anticipate each passenger’s needs and do my best to meet them. It makes even long road trips enjoyable experiences.
Each of us are on a journey that requires equal, if not more, preparation. The path to sainthood is both a path and the work of a lifetime. But in January, I’m not spending much time planning our vacation in November. The allure of putting off our spiritual preparations is strong.
Our desire to procrastinate is itself a paradox. If we put off our spiritual preparations, we may be too late. At the same time, if we do the small work today of cultivating a rich spiritual life, our journey to sainthood would be much more enjoyable. A life well lived in accordance with God’s Law is much sweeter than a life mired in sin and darkness.
Advent is four weeks behind us and Lent is still six weeks ahead of us. These two seasons remind us to prepare, but the work happens every day. We have to overcome the resistance that tells us that we have time. If we’ve learned anything in our world of uncertainty, time is anything but assured.
Love So Deep
The bright Christmas lights that lit homes in my neighborhood since Thanksgiving have gone dark. For my neighbors, Christmas ended at bedtime on Saturday. Not so for my house. Our Christmas lights shine forth in the December darkness, and the Nativity in our yard continues to cast a massive shadow on our garage.
This Christmas season has just begun, a mystery so great that a single day cannot contain it. It’s not just that Christ became Emmanuel, God with us, but how and why He did it.
Our life is but a breath, we read in Scripture. 70, 80, or 90 years is a blink of an eye in the scope of history. Our impacts are small; reaching a few thousand people in our lifetime and perhaps building a family tree in the hundreds. Yet, despite our smallness, God gave up everything to come and save us. He descended from His throne, the place of total power and knowledge, to take on our humanity, our weakness. He chose this path and this time for a reason.
He chose to be born in ancient times. It was a time of great discomfort when compared to our modern comforts. It was a time when news travelled slowly, a far cry from our 24-hour news cycle. It was a time of harshness, of evil, and brutal governments.
But He chose. He chose it to come and to save you and me. He chose it out of a love so great and so deep that we have no reference for it. He chose it so that we could choose to accept it, and be together forever. His choice reached its fulfillment on Easter morning, but it was a process that started with Mary’s simple fiat.
The joy of the season is now here after weeks of preparation. Leave your lights on and your tree up. Don’t put away your Christmas dishes and decorations. Leave them up and relish the joy of a love that gave up everything just to be with you forever.
Now
In some ways, I think that we like the busyness of life. Sure, everyone complains and uses it as an excuse or justification. I deserve this break because I work so hard, I can’t come to the party because I’m too busy. There are plenty of things to fill our days, but I think we might be using these excuses to let the pitch pass us by.
Advent is quickly winding down. In just a few days, the Nativity of Our Lord will be here, a season of joy and celebration. How well did you use Advent? What new insights did you gain by reflecting on the true meaning of the season? What positive steps have you taken to make straight the paths of the Lord?
Answers to these questions can be an indictment against us. After all, each time we go to Confession, we’re likely able to confess not dedicating enough time each day to prayer. But here again is another trap. It’s a trap to not be reflective, to not pray. It’s also a trap to despair or let it be cause for our prayer life to continue on in neglect.
The point is that living a moral, holy, and saintly life is not easy. That’s why we have grace, the Church, and the Sacraments. Not only do we have access to them, but we desperately need them. The objective is not to live a perfect life, that’s an unattainable goal. The objective is to live a saintly life. Ordinary men and women of all backgrounds, overcoming their human nature and striving for holiness despite their failings. That is the life we’re meant to live.
The best time to live a saintly life was yesterday. The best time to reflect, amend, and convert your heart was yesterday. The second-best time is now.
Make Straight Paths
Advent is like happy Lent. Both seasons are penitential, and both invite us to prepare our hearts for the two seminal moments of the Church year. Yet, we’re always more excited about Advent. Christmas is the long-promised arrival of the Savior, but Easter is Christ’s victory over death and the opening of our salvation.
Despite the seasonal similarities, most of us treat Lent like Catholic New Year’s Resolutions and Advent as an afterthought. We race from Thanksgiving to Christmas with only four candles standing in our way. It’s a naturally busy time, with things winding down at the end of the year. It’s an opportunity to slow down, again, and prepare our hearts for our ultimate goal.
Ancient peoples often settled on the banks of rivers. The waters ensured that people, crops, and livestock could flourish. Water is life. Rivers seldom flow straight. Instead, they cut meandering paths through the countryside. As these peoples travelled from town to town, their journey on foot took time. Today, we’ve conquered these natural obstacles with roads, bridges, train tracks, and airplanes. We’ve mastered the geometric truth that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
In the journey of our lives, we aspire to walk a straight path. We want to travel from where we are, directly to the joy of Heaven. Daily, even hourly, we deviate. As we look in the rearview mirror, a long and winding road comes into view. There are the times when we dedicated ourselves to prayer and virtue, and times when we strayed. Looking forward, we see the path before us, but don’t always choose to follow it.
The prophets tell us to make straight the paths of the Lord, to focus on Him and move directly towards Him. God knows us and knows our hearts. He doesn’t expect perfection. He patiently anticipates failures and deviation. That’s why He gave us the Church and the Sacraments. These mile markers and road signs guide us back to where we want to go.
Advent is the second check-in of the year to get us back on the straight path. It’s another chance to confess our failures, seek the forgiveness of God, and to return to the path that is the shortest distance between where we are now and life forever with God in Heaven.
Scripture Before Phone
I just finished reading The Common Rule by Justin Earley. A former missionary and currently an attorney, Earley lived through the negative consequences of many of our modern daily habits. He pushed himself too hard to gain max productivity, and found himself addicted to his phone.
In the book, Earley develops a modern Rule in the model of the religious Rules of Catholic religious communities. He lays out eight habits, four of which are to be done daily, and four of which are to be done weekly. He isn’t Catholic, but his writing and his theology sure read like he is! It’s a fantastic book.
One of Earley’s daily habits is “Scripture Before Phone.” He relates how early in his career, he’d wake up, open his email on his phone, and start responding to requests from colleagues before he even got out of bed. In the book, he explores how our habits build the themes of our days. Starting his day with his phone lead to days of stress and anxiety.
Seeking to overcome this negative trend, Earley decided that he would spend time reading Scripture before unlocking his phone for the first time. The result? He started his day steeped in God’s love instead of the responsibilities of work. He was greeted with the peaceful joy of time in God’s presence instead of giving up the first quiet moments of the day to frenetic work.
I’ve implemented this habit, and the results are wonderful. There’s very little quiet time in a house with four small children. I get up two hours before they wake up, but I budget 90 of those minutes to my physical health. That leaves me a mere 30 minutes during my waking hours when I’m alone and the house is still. Spending those minutes in quiet prayer is relaxing and rejuvenating. With my prayer time complete, I’m more calm throughout the day.
With the clock change last week, my kids are now up during the tail end of my morning prayer. If I’m lucky, Lucy or Felicity will come downstairs in her footie pajamas and climb on the couch to snuggle with me.
Morning is a beautiful time, one that should be enjoyed slowly with good exercise, good coffee, and quiet time spent in reflection. Nothing spoils a morning like 30 minutes of swiping and scrolling. If you want to try something different, commit to spending time with Scripture before your first swipe.
Stony Hearts
Certain things stand out to me when I read the news. Lately, it’s been the callous words that journalists use when they write about abortion. It’s not their fault, they’re just putting to words the cultural mood. When I stop to consider the seriousness of the topic, it’s incredible that we’ve allowed our language to become so cold when discussing the dignity of the human person.
It reminds me of the prophet Ezekiel when he asks God to take away his stony heart and to give him one of flesh. This is a common trope in Christianity, a part of the process of lifelong conversion. We recognize that our selfish human desires lead us far from God and His plan. We turn in on ourselves instead of focusing our energies on serving those around us and picking up our crosses.
The hardness of our hearts doesn’t just reflect an indifference towards things that are wrong in the world. It represents a missed opportunity. God has prepared great plans for us. They’re not our plans, and they may not fit our idea of a good life, but they fit within a beautiful vision. When we reject God’s plan for us, we accept a lesser existence, a life with opportunities for joy and fulfillment left unrealized. We seek comfort, God seeks adventure.
The Christian life is one of paradox. The things that we think will make us happy never do. The things that cause us to think of and serve others, that make us uncomfortable, the things that God has laid out for us, leads to joy. Look at the lives of the saints and martyrs who gave up everything for Christ. Their stories are not of morose people, but are stories of joyful people.
We’ve let ourselves become numb to life, and to the little affronts to the dignity of the human person around us. We don’t speak out or take positive action because inertia and comfort are so much more convenient. We settle for stony hearts.
May God prepare my heart for the adventures that He has planned for me.
Month of the Rosary
It’s hard to believe that October is already here. The dog days of summer are over, kids are back in school, and more pleasant weather is in the forecast. October is my favorite month of the year, as the weather cools and I start to feel more relaxed.
The central role of Mary in our faith is confusing to many non-Catholics, but to us, it’s easy to understand. A mother is the anchor of her family, so Mary is the anchor of the Church. There are many feast days and holy days throughout the year to celebrate Mary and the important role that she plays as Jesus’s mother and the mediatrix of grace. October is another one of these opportunities, as we celebrate the Month of the Rosary.
The Rosary is a powerful prayer, but praying it regularly can be a challenge. The Rosary is simple and contemplative. It can be easy to mistake the repetition of the Rosary for boredom, but that’s its hidden gem. Life is busy, and we’re always trying to stuff our priorities into every waking moment. The Rosary is an invitation to set all of that aside, even just for 15 minutes. It’s permission to relax, rest, and experience the joy that is stillness.
Mindfulness and meditation are popular in light of the unsettled past 18 months. These medically validated practices, when done regularly, yield tangible health improvements. While their benefits are clear, developing a regular mindfulness practice takes work. There are many guides and apps to help, but at the end of the day, mindfulness requires that you set aside the busyness of life for 10 minutes of focus. Praying the Rosary takes the physical health benefits of mindfulness and supercharges them by refocusing that time off the movement of your breath onto the greatness of God.
During His public ministry, Jesus was constantly mobbed by people. He was on the move, performing miracles, and in every town was a new group of people eager to meet this mysterious prophet. Many times, we see Him trying to withdraw to a quiet place with the Apostles to pray. The Rosary is that quiet place for us, waiting to give us the rest that is good for our souls.
When we want to take on a new goal, we lay out grand expectations and plans. We plot, strategize, and optimize, trying to find the perfect way to get from where we are to where we want to be. This is the model of the New Year’s Resolution, and it’s a broken model. We build a plan that demands perfection when we know that we are imperfect. When we deviate from our perfect plan, we throw up our hands, give up, and forget about the whole thing.
Praying the Rosary every day doesn’t require any planning, strategizing, or optimization. It only requires 15 minutes and the willingness to accept the grace of stillness. Find those 15 minutes in your schedule, set them aside, and give yourself permission to connect with God through praying the Rosary.
Whether it’s been a few months or a few years since you’ve picked up your Rosary beads, make this October a turning point in your life. Rediscover the beauty of rest and commit yourself to praying the Rosary.
When A Child Prays
Franciscan University of Steubenville has a great culture of prayer. After each Mass, everyone kneels for a few moments of prayer. The sanctuary is completely silent as congregants exist as living tabernacles. It’s a practice that my family continues to practice.
Last week, when the Mass had ended, we knelt down together. Alison instructed Lucy, our 3-year-old, to pray the St. Michael prayer. Lucy stood right next to me as she said the words. It wasn’t perfect, but she hit the high notes. At that moment, I felt the power of her prayer. Here was a small child, praying one of the most powerful prayers in the Catholic lexicon, sending evil fleeing.
There was more to it than that. As she prayed, the focus of her mind was clear. She stood, hanging on to the pew, methodically pulling the words from her memory.
In His ministry, Jesus again and again highlighted the faith of children. When the adults discount their worth or tried to push them out of the picture, Christ pulled them in close. Why?
When a child prays, they do it simply. They don’t have an agenda, they surrender to the moment and to the weight of the words. They don’t try to come up with a better prayer or a fancier verse, they adhere to the simplicity that is given to them. They approach God openly and innocently, as they are.
Adults would do well to learn to pray as children do. We would experience the richness of faith that comes when we enter prayer with a simple trust.
Incremental Progress
Five months ago, Alison and I woke up on a Saturday morning and headed into our front yard. Over the course of the day, we cut down over two dozen bushes. In the weeks that followed, we dug out stumps, repaired water lines that we damaged, ripped down shutters, repainted our front door, and leveled dirt.
Summer heat set in and our progress slowed. From the street, our home looked quite plain. The dead and overgrown bushes cluttered every garden bed. The rotten shutters fell apart as they hung. Digging out those bushes and pulling down the shutters was an improvement, but just the beginning.
Our work began again this past weekend. We built, painted, and hung new shutters. A tree trimmer has been hired to prune the huge oak tree that anchors our front yard and cut down the dead pecan tree that now stands on the corner of our lot. In the coming weeks, more improvements will be made. Dead, decaying, and broken things will be lovingly replaced with new materials and fresh paint. It will take months, but by this time next year, our home will look entirely different.
We are moving slowly, as life and other priorities require our attention, but each weekend, our home will become more and more beautiful. Almost imperceptible to the passing neighbor, over time, beauty will be revealed. Our house isn’t in terrible shape, it’s just been neglected. A little of love and elbow grease will make it shine as it once did.
My preference would be to knock it out in one fell swoop. If I could, I’d line the contractors up to tackle all of our projects and, combined with our DIY weekend warrior projects, have the whole thing done in a month. But life isn’t Fixer Upper.
Life is incremental progress, the great work of perfecting ourselves in the model of Christ. Conversion happens slowly, incrementally, and imperceptibly. Life, especially the Christian Life, requires patience. In those times when we fail to live as we should, it requires grace. Not just grace from God, but grace with ourselves. My home may look plain and barren today, but in time, its beauty will be revealed as we remove the decay. So it is for the Christian. The decay of poor choices, past and present, is slowly removed by the Divine Carpenter, until all is new, whole, and beautiful.