Faith
On Retreat
I made my first private retreat in twelve years last weekend. I left all of my electronics at home, and after dinner on Friday night, drove off into the darkness to the retreat center. I had no responsibilities, no commitments on my time, and for the most part, no clock. Even better, I was the only person on retreat on the grounds for the weekend. The peace and rejuvenation that solitude brought me is exactly what I needed.
I, like you, spend most of my days plugged in. I have dozens of commitments to attend to, responsibilities to fulfill, and appointments on my calendar. Even the demands of maintaining basic order in my household take a lot out of me. Taking time to focus on myself, and building up my interior life, is essential to my wellbeing. It’s also a recipe for a more successful fatherhood.
There were several times over the weekend when I felt an impulse to reach for my devices. Feeling that physical reaction, I came to better understand my relationship with them. It gave me the opportunity to pause and understand why I was feeling that way. The freedom to be alone with my thoughts was the best part of my weekend.
It was a wonderful weekend, and I got out of it exactly what I had hoped. I feel rested, relaxed, and ready to take on the daily challenges I have as a stay-at-home dad. I’ll just be sure to not wait another twelve years before making my next retreat.
Spiritual Health
Spirituality is an integral part of what it means to be a human person. Ignore your physical health, and your emotional wellbeing suffers. Ignore your intellectual health, and your relationships will suffer. Your spirituality is no different. Each component of your personhood needs individualized attention. They all work in concert with one another to form the human person.
It should be emphasized that faith is indeed a gift. Our human hearts, like a radio receiver, are attuned to the voice of God in our lives. Our hearts yearn to follow the law that He inscribed on them. At the same time, our hearts can be turned off, or turned to a different station. Understanding and accepting faith is a challenge for each one of us. It’s a lifetime struggle with seasons of abundance and desolation. It’s a gift worth giving, and one that must be willingly accepted.
The first order of business in your personal faith journey is an evaluation of your interior life. The prolific author Matthew Kelly writes that where your mind goes, your actions will follow. Digital devices drown out our personal thoughts. We reach for them to fill every down moment of the day. Tremendous virtue, growth, and self-reflection can come from limiting their presence in your life.
When you have time for your mind to work and think, it’s best to let it roam where it wishes. This stream of consciousness will inevitably lead you to ponder life’s big questions. The true nature and concerns of your heart will bubble to the surface. These insights will inform your prayer life.
Prayer is another area where I would encourage you to discount any preconceived notions. In my own experience, a solid and reliable prayer life requires variety. If you were to set out to exercise every day, but only allowed yourself to run on a treadmill for an hour with no media, how long would it take before you quit? If you were given a diet that had you eating the same breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday, how long would you last? If you were assigned a particular devotional as your primary form of prayer, how long would it be before you gave up your faith altogether?
Variety is the spice of life, and so it should be with your spiritual life. Experiment by going to different parishes and Masses, try new devotionals, join a Bible study, or do your own with the Catholic Study Bible. Take an hour to go to Eucharistic Adoration or pray the Rosary while you go for a walk in your neighborhood. By changing your prayer routine often, you’ll experience the breadth of the Church and the serenity that a close relationship with God brings.
Little Kids Praying
Praying with little kids is often a difficult experience. While I try to set a good example, my kids often fiddle, wander, or play. As it turns out, they’re not being disrespectful. When little kids fiddle, they’re really engaged in the activity. It’s how they listen, process, and understand things. They may not say the words, but they hear and know them. It can be frustrating when they refuse to pray, but giving them their space has its benefits. One day, the switch will flip, and it’s a beautiful thing.
That’s exactly what happened to us. My son is in kindergarten and should be learning his basic prayers. He’s heard them hundreds of times and I was more than ready for him to be a leader for his sisters. I took him aside one evening and told him that I now had the expectation that he prays aloud with us. He took our talk to heart. The next day, I could hear him quite clearly. His little sister soon joined in.
There’s something wonderful about the sound of a child praying. Their voice is so sweet to adult ears. Their intentions and prayers are so innocent and pure. When I hear my children praying, I understand clearly why God treasures these little ones so much.
It’s been several months now, and both of my “big kids” pray out loud at meals, at bedtime, and on occasion, at Mass. Benedict will even take the lead at mealtime, which is a treat. What’s really struck me, though, is how many of the more complex prayers they know. We’ll be at Mass or praying Night Prayer, and they’ll both join in without skipping a beat. Like a choir singing in harmony, we pray together as a family. It’s a delightful experience.
I don’t know what my children’s faith life will be like when they enter adulthood. What I do know is that I’m going to expose them to as much of our faith as possible. I hope that one day they have the experience of having their own children join them in prayer. It’s an experience that I’ll treasure forever.
Lent Lost
We’ve moved beyond the season of Lent and into the joy of Easter. About this time each year, I reflect on how successful Lent was, comparing my plans on Ash Wednesday to how I crossed the finish line on Holy Thursday. I realize now that this exercise is pointless.
Like the change oil light on my dashboard, Lent is an annual reminder for me to reflect on how well I’m living my life versus the life that I want to live. I find it incredibly easy to lay out the perfect plan for my life and the goals that I want to achieve, but if I don’t get out of bed when my alarm goes off, I’m never going to achieve that vision.
I used to think of Lent as my one chance a year to make those changes, but just like New Years, that’s a false assumption. The Christian life is supposed to be one of constant renewal, daily challenging ourselves to do better and be better.
I pretty much missed the boat on Lent this year. Between kids, new schedules, and travel, I can’t tell what I accomplished, or even attempted, during Lent. But the opportunity to start fresh is open to me even today. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, through the multitude of devotionals for daily prayer, or even by starting to see the service of raising my children and maintaining our household as a distinctly holy and noble task.
Goal setting is tough, and discouragement is a lot easier to find than encouragement. So if you have that feeling that Lent wasn’t all that impactful, perhaps you can turn that around by starting today on improving your life. Lent was just the reminder light coming on your dashboard.
The Gift of Faith
A few weeks ago, I attended a men’s prayer breakfast at my parish. The speaker gave a short talk on the importance of praying as a family. One of the most challenging roles as a parent is not preparing your children to go out into the world on their own, but rather giving them the gift of faith.
Our core societal sickness is based on a lack of spirituality. Faith, increasingly treated with suspicion, meets a core need of the human person. Thinking that one can be truly healthy without a vibrant faith life is like thinking one can have their nutritional needs met through a diet void of protein. It’s a part of the bigger picture.
Economists and sociologists are starting to study this dimension of our society and the very real impact that it is having on people and families in our country. Known as “deaths of despair,” these academics are finding links between a lack of faith and a disconnection form what it means to be human. This disconnect is resulting in a despair that leads to a rising suicide rate in the most prosperous country in the world.
How is it that faith can be the antidote? For one, it brings together people with shared values. It puts the ups and downs of life into perspective. Great joys are gifts, blessings. Great disappointments and heartaches are periods of refining, moments that can be jumping off points to a deeper, more vibrant faith life. Beyond that, faith gives meaning to all of the moments in life, large and small.
Denying a core part of the human person is a dangerous proposition. To live a rich and meaningful life, we must tend to every aspect of our personhood: our physical health, our emotional health, our relationships, our intellectual development, our sexuality, and our spirituality. Ignoring any one of those areas leaves us feeling emptier than we should. Abusing any of these areas causes real damage to our lives.
Passing on the Catholic faith is about more than just checking a box. It’s about giving my children a solid framework through which they can process every decision and event in their life. It’s about giving them the support that they need to go out and serve their communities. It’s about showing them that despite the turmoil or chaos around them, there’s a steady, constant set of truths that will not bend. It’s a gift as important and providing a stable home and one that I must work on passing on every day.
21 Years
I just celebrated the 21st anniversary of my First Reconciliation.
Confession is the gym of Catholic Sacraments. We rarely go, too sheepish to confront the reality of who we are. It’s difficult, embarrassing, and humbling. Of course, there’s the problem of a lack of confession times. When we do muster up the courage to go, we wait for 45 minutes at the back of an endless line of little old ladies who apparently just finished up a serious crime spree.
It’s easy to get lost in the mechanics surrounding Confession. The inconvenience, poor scheduling, and the natural resistance to verbally admit our own shortcomings all adds up to many of us going years between the Sacrament.
There is, however, something very human about the process of the sacrament. Summoning the courage to name your sins is cathartic. We can go into the Confessional without any pretense. The absolute seal of privacy gives us the ability to speak freely. You can expose your weaknesses in the hope of overcoming them. The priest, hopefully, will share not just a word of encouragement, but a thought that will propel you into your new, sinless future. When you consider all of those factors, it becomes clear that Confession is one of our most powerful tools in the spiritual life.
As I reflect on my personal growth over the past 21 years, I realize that there is no way that I would be part of the Catholic community without this vital Sacrament. The Eucharist is central to the Catholic experience. Reconciliation is critical to helping us prepare to receive Jesus in that awesome sacrament.
We’re required to go to Reconciliation once a year, usually during Lent. Do more than the minimum this year.
Integrating the Bible in Your Life
I want to share something with you that made an outsized impact on my life last year. For me, 2017 was full of change and new circumstances. In the midst of all of that instability, I noticed that I placing my hope for happiness in the wrong places.
Self-awareness is a beautiful thing, but at first blush, it’s a challenging reality to encounter. I didn’t believe that I was looking for happiness in the wrong places, but alas, I was.
Sometime in late Summer, Alison and I had reached the point that we had been planning for our entire marriage. The table was set just how we had planned, but I still felt something was missing.
As I shaped my new daily routine, I downloaded the YouVersion app, everything changed.
YouVersion is a free Bible app. It has hundreds of translations, including a Catholic translation, the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE).
Naturally, YouVersion has the entire Bible, right there in the app, but the way in which it makes Scripture accessible is a game changer.
There is a verse of the day. A short passage that I read in the morning, and carry with me throughout the day. I like that feature. In fact, you can even set up a notification so that YouVersion can push you the verse of the day.
But there’s another aspect of the app that truly revolutionized both my prayer life and my personal life.
YouVersion has thousands of reading plans. These plans are crafted around a theme, which could be a holiday, emotion, circumstance, or even just a word. Each day, and the plans can last from a few days to a few weeks, has a devotional. The devotional is then paired with passages from the Bible that relate to the day’s theme in the reading plan.
The combination of the daily verse and the reading plans exposed me to the personal power and impact of Scripture. The Bible was no longer a book or passages that I hear at Mass on Sunday. Now, it’s specifically applicable to my life. I can complete a reading plan about finding happiness, for example, and hear what God wants to tell me about that topic.
I took this opening up of Scripture to another level by better preparing for Mass on Sunday. I’m using Mark Hart’s Ascend book to study the Readings on Saturday afternoons. Mark does a great job of providing context to the Readings in the form of historical background and other fun facts. I now find myself joyfully getting ready for Mass on Sunday morning.
The most impactful thing that happened to me in 2017 was opening the Bible and letting God speak directly to me through it. Let it have the same impact on you this year.
The Impact of a Great Confession
Each time I move to a new place, there are two people that I need to find. The first is a great barber and the second is a great confessor. Finding these two critical people in my life is never easy.
There’s something particularly terrifying about my first encounter with a new confessor. Maybe you feel the same way. We’re both getting to know each other and I don’t know the style of the priest who’s sitting on the other side of the screen. Regardless of who he is, he stands in the place of Christ. My anxiety is almost always wrong. In fact, I’ve only had one “bad” confession in my 20 years of receiving the Sacrament. I’m treated with kindness, gentleness, and a profound sense of understanding.
That’s what happened a few weeks ago. I queued up after Mass and saw the priest enter the confessional. I thought that it was going to be a really tough sacrament, but something profound happened. It was a confession unlike any other I’ve experienced, and one that I won’t soon forget.
After confessing my sins, he asked me two questions. Are you repentant? Are you willing to do better with God’s help?
Those simple questions knocked me down and not because they’re the basic requirements for absolution. I’ve never had a priest ask me those two questions so directly. Without thinking, and without rehearsal, I gave an enthusiastic yes.
I go to Confession often, and I’m haunted by the idea that I might just be looking for a car wash, that I go just to get clean without the intention of conversion. I don’t think that any of us can have such an intimate, personal, confidential encounter with God and walk away unchanged.
Confession is the ultimate do over. It isn’t supposed to be easy and it certainly isn’t supposed to be a caning. Jesus went through an incomprehensible period of torture and humiliation: a process designed to not just break a man, but to annihilate him. How does He ask that I make it up to Him? A small act of penance and a commitment to do better.
How unfathomable is His love and mercy. How inscrutable is the mind of God that He would endure all of that and, in the face of my rejection of His love, He’d welcome me back with such a low bar: a prayer and a promise.
I shrink when I think about the power of that kind of love. How loved would Alison feel if I loved her with a single pure drop of that love? How secure would my children feel if every interaction I had with them started from that spirit of love?
There lies the true beauty of Confession. I meet Jesus in the Sacrament and come back to life. Pure love touches me personally, ready to completely transform my life, if only I let it.
Offense & Defense
Watch any sporting event, and you’ll quickly learn that having a strong offense or defense is seldom enough to ensure a victory. If you run up the score on offense, but let the opponent do the same thanks to your weak defense, you’ll likely lose. In the same way, you can only win by scoring points, so having a strong defense isn’t enough. I’m learning that having a balanced approach to any problem is the key to success. This is a timely resolution with new year in the air.
Sin, even venial sin, is a terrible thing. Mary was greeted by the archangel Gabriel as “fullness of grace.” Her being was so full, so complete, that sin couldn’t take root in her. This was thanks to the grace of her Immaculate Conception, which we just celebrated, when God permitted her to be His perfect vessel, free from the stain of original sin. We have been stained, and through our weakness, tend towards sin.
Advent and Lent are both penitential seasons, calling us back to grace. We just completed the Jubilee Year of Mercy. The Church offers us the Sacrament of Reconciliation. These are just three of the innumerable opportunities that we’re offered to leave our sin behind and return to the life we were made to live. When you take advantage of any of these avenues of mercy, they are just the first step. We will always be recovering sinners. The question becomes, how do we best make use of this new beginning?
I’ve found that it’s important to let the scoreboard read zero. In any game, no matter how well or how poorly a team previously performed, the score is always reset to zero. We sabotage our recovery, and even our joy, by continuing to beat ourselves up for past mistakes. Reconciliation is that great reset, and to dwell on our previous failings, or worse, use them as justification to sin again, is to be ungrateful. If God, through the ministry of the Church, has absolved you of your sins, have the courage to absolve yourself. You’re at zero, move on.
Once you’ve resolved to start fresh, you’ll need a plan that involves both offense and defense. I’d guess that we’re weaker on defense, so let’s start there. I see our daily prayer life as our defense. Properly executed, it’s a constant rhythm that builds our immunity to sin, strengthens our love, and fills our selves with grace. The fuller we are, the less room there is for sin. What does a solid prayer life look like? To me, it’s not so much the components as it is the integration into your schedule. A good prayer life has you praying in a formal setting in the morning, during the daytime, and in the evening. Along with these formal settings, in which you may pray the rosary, a series of devotionals, or even listen to praise music (Benedict’s favorite), there should be trigger events. These triggers are mental reminders that you set for yourself to offer a brief prayer in your own words. It may be offering your day up in the first moments of your morning, praying for some intention while cleaning or doing something particularly unpleasant. By combining the scheduled prayer along with prayer during certain events, the day now has a rhythm that’s set by you raising your mind to God. Good defense isn’t built in a day or a season. Instead, it’s developed and refined over time.
While defense may be the most challenging to develop, offense requires the most courage. If defense is your prayer life, offense is your decision making. It requires that your conscience be properly formed and prepared to make correct decisions. Offense is also having the courage to do as we promise in the Act of Contrition, to sin no more and to avoid whatever leads us to sin. It’s a tall order, but one that is very possible if we put in the work. In order to be truly successful in the spiritual life, and to conquer sin, you have to have the courage to cut out anything in your life that’s leading you to sin. You may even find that which is tempting you is completely benign, but is at the same time threatening your joy. After all, we were made to live a life of true happiness, and sin disrupts that intention.
A good offense and defense are necessary to make lasting change in your spiritual life. It can be sobering to reflect on just how long (often years) you’ve struggled with a particular sin. Instead of giving into despair or complacency, use it as the motivation behind your campaign of change. Work to cultivate your prayer life and watch it bear fruit. Excise those things in your life that inevitably lead you to sin. Persevere long enough, and you’ll find that sense of peace and joy that’s eluded you this entire time.
If you’re feeling stuck when it comes to your prayer life, perhaps I can help. Grant Us Peace is a blueprint for spiritual fitness, and it’ll get you going in the right direction. It’s 21 days of reflections and a short action step designed to get your prayer life moving. With the New Year around the corner, now’s the perfect time to pick up your copy. As a bonus, you get the sense of pride in knowing that you’re supporting the Catholic Husband blog!
Perfect is the Enemy of Good
As 2016 comes to a close, we’re on the cusp of the New Year Resolutions bonanza. Each year I share my thoughts on the idea of resolutions, and my goals for the upcoming year, and now as I write this article, I get that same pensive feeling. The year never turns out how I expect, and each December hope blossoms eternal. This has been a year of great change for me with the arrival of Felicity. Reflecting on my challenges and successes this year, and contemplating the adventures that are to come next year, this idea of “perfect is the enemy of good” weighs on my thoughts.
We are integrated people, with many domains in our lives. We have the domains of faith, family, health, finances, and career, among others, that come together to make up who we are as people. These domains are connected in an intricate way so that if one area suffers, many areas suffer. I’ve struggled, in particular, with my time management over the past six months, and I’ve felt how it impacted my entire day. I want to do things well, and I want them to go according to schedule, but that’s just not a realistic expectation.
Perfect is the enemy of good applies to more than just our work or our fitness program. I’m aware of how it applies to my faith life and sin. A routine of prayer is essential in the Christian life for those who truly want to imitate Christ. Just like exercise routines, it’s so easy to set out on a grand adventure of contemplation and sacrifice only to fail before the day has even begun. If we miss that first scheduled prayer time of the day, we agree that it’s best to wait for tomorrow to do it perfectly, and a month later, we still haven’t started. Tomorrow seems to be the perfect day to start anything.
I was once told that it’s never too late to do the right thing. It’s better to do something rather than nothing at all. Tomorrow may seem like the perfect day to start something, but right now actually is the perfect time to start something. What we need is momentum, and as soon as the ball gets rolling, it’s easier for it to keep rolling than to stop. There’s no perfect schedule, perfect ingredient, or magic solution to living the life that you want to live. There is only doing.
I’m working on setting my goals for the upcoming year and gathering the tools that I need in order to be successful. Instead of making resolutions for 2017, I’m going to spend more time doing and less time figuring out the perfect way. Perfection is a lie. True beauty is overcoming all obstacles and continuing to press forward.