Faith
Be Merciful
We all love mercy when we’re the recipient. When we’re the giver, however, it’s much more difficult.
I’m both intrigued and terrified by Benedict. I’m intrigued that he is constantly learning, even though he can’t verbalize his experiences in English. I’m terrified that he’s already learning from my example. As I continually consider what things I want to highlight for him, the subject of mercy comes up.
I’m a frequent sinner and consequently I’m frequently in line for Confession. Each time I go to the Sacrament, I receive a ridiculous amount of mercy that I in no way merit and, for good measure, within a week or two, I’m back in line. Yet, because I am a child of God and because He desires a relationship with me, He continues to forgive and I get another chance to get it right.
There’s an amazing lesson in that mystery. God desires a relationship with me so deeply that He’s willing to forgive my numerous offenses. We all need a little more of that.
It’s terribly sad when parents and children aren’t talking because of something that happened years ago. It’s terribly sad when marriages break up because of a serious breach of trust. It’s terribly sad when someone leaves the Church because they can’t reconcile with some teaching.
We all experience serious breaches of trust. We all experience betrayal. We all experience disappointment in relationships. Yet, we’re supposed to be merciful. We’re supposed to extend the olive branch. We desire to be in relationship with the person who hurt us. Do we want it deeply enough to overlook offenses?
Are you merciful with your wife?
Are you merciful with your kids?
Are you merciful with your friends?
Are you merciful with your coworkers?
Are you merciful with yourself?
The great thing about mercy is its intrinsic healing properties. Mercy fosters trust. A broken trust starts to heal, even if slowly, when mercy is given. Mercy fosters love. When you receive mercy or extend it, you get a glimpse into the heart of God. Mercy fosters peace. Mercy ends conflict and brings harmony.
The next time you’re in a position where someone hurts you, extend mercy so that you both might experience its beauty.
Be A Saint, Now
I think that we have a pretty unhealthy view of Heaven. I’d venture to guess that most Catholics, myself included, take the St. Augustine view… “Lord make me holy, but not yet.” How different would our lives be, how different would our marriages be, if we instead took the approach, “Lord, make me holy now."
Alison and I have found a rich little Catholic community here in Northern Virginia. It’s really pretty incredible. Our parish is vibrant and the homilies are choice. One of the running themes over the past several weeks, thanks mainly to this year’s Gospel cycle, is the universal call to holiness. In combination with the recent canonizations and persecutions, the message is loud and clear, “You don’t have to wait until you’re old to be a saint!"
We like to think of sainthood as something lofty, as we should. Yet, we take it a step further and think it’s reserved for a select few. It’s true that out of all of human history, a very small percentage of people are canonized. At the same time, the Church’s teachings are clear: there are untold numbers of people who are in Heaven (saints) that the Church hasn’t canonized. The purpose of canonization is not to separate the wheat from the chaff, it’s to hold up examples to the Church here on earth. The purpose of canonization is to celebrate our participation in Salvation History. Canonized saints are just a few examples of regular people who lived their lives right.
We all have difficulties and struggles in the spiritual life. Those challenges tend to spill over into other areas of our lives. This is normal, as we are integrated people. You can’t separate the spirituality from the intellect from the sexuality of a human person. So when we’re living our lives in a way that will lead us to sainthood, other aspects of our lives get better. We have better days, richer relationships, and more peace and joy. When we stray, everything gets a bit worse.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
The decision to be a saint is made today.
Sainthood is a culmination of a life of service and sacrifice. Our modern saints are an excellent example of this. Saint John Paul II’s entire life embodied these two principles. He subverted the Nazis, destroyed Communism, taught us about the beauty of human sexuality and showed us a witness of love through terminal illness. He showed us that no life is unimportant, no life is expendable, no one is replaceable.
He didn’t wake up one morning and have the fortitude and tenacity to challenge power. His daily decision to follow Christ from a young age prepared him for the mission he was called to live.
It’s never too late. It’s never too late to start following Christ. Today’s the day you start. Today’s the day you start living the life you were supposed to live. Today’s the day you start your journey towards sainthood.
True joy comes from living in the Law. It’s like following the owners manual for your car. The closer you follow the manual, the better your ride drives.
Man up. Start today. Start small. Start at home. And let your children “catch you.”
Pray and Don’t Worry
Prayer and worry are incompatible. If you pray and then worry, your prayer is cancelled out. Prayer is the first step of faith.
One of my favorite parts about being Catholic is how deep and wide the Church is. Whether it be expressions of faith or even theology, there’s always something new to discover. Over the past few months as Alison and I have made the move to Washington, DC and started new jobs, I’ve done a lot of worrying. It’s not just that things are different or that they’re new, it’s that we’ve never lived through a transition like this together and we just don’t know what’s going to happen next or if our plans are realistic.
Since God, like any good parent, doesn’t like to waste any opportunities for teaching moments, I’ve noticed that my faith has gotten pretty weak. I believe, but I don’t completely trust.
What is faith? Faith is trust. It’s trust in God that His Word is true. The popular phrase is “Let go and let God.” I agree that we need to let go, but it’s easier said than done.
We’re active participants in Salvation History. If by “letting go and letting God” I sit on my couch all day, nothing will get done. I’m God’s hands, His feet, His mouth. We’re an active part of the plan. We can truly only be a part of the plan if we have a relationship with Him.
I once heard a priest say that we put more faith in Tylenol than we do in the Eucharist. He reasoned that when we take Tylenol, we expect something to happen. Yet, when we receive the Eucharist, in all of it’s miraculous mystery and bundle of graces, we expect nothing. That’s a crisis of faith.
When you pray, something happens. When you pray the rosary, something happens. When you go spend a few minutes in quiet Adoration, something happens.
We don’t want to be presumptuous and we don’t want to put God to the test. But faith isn’t doing either of those things. Faith is trusting in God’s Word. God told us that the Eucharist has untold graces available to those who are open to them. The Rosary has literally changed the course of history. The exposed Blessed Sacrament has brought about untold miracles. So by reverently receiving the Eucharist or praying with our whole hearts, we need to trust Him and expect something to happen, because it will.
Knowing all of this, knowing the amazing events in human history that have been drastically affected by prayer, pray with confidence. If prayer can close an abortion clinic, it can help you. If prayer can bring down Communism, it can help you. If prayer can stop the Ottoman Empire from turning the Basilica of St. Peter into a mosque, it can help you.
Worry is wasted energy and time. Spend that time in prayer and then trust that God will give you the help and the graces that you need to finally make it home.
Meet A Saint
We’re card carrying members of the Communion of Saints. While we spend quite a bit of time rubbing elbows with fellow members on this planet, how much time do we spend kicking it with members who’ve made it across the finish line?
Earlier this year, I came across a suggestion for my spiritual life: make friends with a new saint. I have my usual suspects, the saints I know and ask for their intercession. What about the tons of other saints, who have more in common with me than I may think? As a good friend jokingly used to say, “Popular saints have people bugging them all of the time. Pick an obscure saint, they’ve got all the time in the world for you."
Making new friends can be fun. We should take the time to make some new saint friends. Saints are approachable. Remember, the difference between us and them is that they’ve successfully finished the race, while we’re still running it. They had the same temptations, the same miserable failures, the same glorious triumphs. They had the same crazy Aunt Susan and intolerable classmates.
You can find a new saint using any number of criteria. Look for the patron of your occupation or your native land. Maybe it’s a hobby, a challenge you’re facing, or even a nice vacation spot. If you can think it up, the Church probably has a guy (or gal) for you.
Plan on meeting with your new saints monthly. Chat, explore, learn. Much more than monthly and you’ll probably give up… monthly feels just right, for now.
Saints can be powerful advocates for us here in the Church militant. Pick up the phone.
Schedule A Fast Day
We fast twice per year, both days during Lent. Out of the 365 days of the year, 363 are essentially a food fest. So why does the Church ask us to spend the other two days limiting our food intake?
There’s something cathartic about denying yourself. There’s something truly unique about fasting. You notice just how much you take food for granted. You realize that there are people in the world who experience those hunger pains every single day. You focus less on you. That’s the true power of fasting.
Fasting is about more than just food. During Lent, we fast from other pleasures. We forgo the enjoyment for a greater good. We can better feel our part in the universal Church. We can cut through the materialism of our own self and recognize that we don’t need that “thing.”
Fasting was meant for more than just a few days in one particular Liturgical Season. Fasting is appropriate any day. Anytime we’re stuck in a spiritual rut, or we notice ourselves losing our way, fasting can be a great way to right the ship. That’s because fasting is an incredibly powerful prayer. Your sacrifice can directly translate into grace for someone in your life who’s hurt or suffering. It can also translate into grace that will help you overcome your own struggles.
We all have things in our lives that we’ve let take too big of a role. We’re always on our phones, we plop down on the couch for hours a week, we surf mindlessly on the Internet. I do it, too.
We can change all of that. We can integrate prayer more into our lives. We can use our own voluntary sacrifice to help make someone else’s life easier. We can use our sacrifice to prune our own lives.
Fasting isn’t just for Lent. It’s a tool for us to free ourselves or to lift someone else up.
Managing Your Daily Prayer Time
Do you ever go entire days without talking to your wife? Of course, not! Yet, we often find ourselves going days without spending quality time in prayer.
Certainly we pray before meals, but is that enough? Imagine you and your wife only spoke three times a day and you didn’t really share what’s going on in your life. Imagine you simply thanked her for making the food and then you ate in complete silence.
Sometimes we forget that our relationship with God is just that, a relationship. His expectations are reasonable. He wants us to follow His Will, He wants us to phone home daily, and He wants to feed us weekly at Mass.
If you really seek to improve in the spiritual life, you need to implement a daily prayer routine. It’s something that is fairly straightforward and can literally be started today. At the beginning of your day, block out 15 minutes for prayerful activities. You could spend time reading the Bible, reading a spiritual book, praying a rosary or even just talking with God.
When it comes to prayer, it’s easier than texting. You literally just start talking and you and God are linked up.
As with anything in relationships, too much repetition can lead to boredom and fatigue. Change your prayer routine frequently. You know yourself best, but monthly or quarterly is about right. We both know that when you get bored with something, you move on. Your relationship with God is too important to simply “move on” from.
The great thing about changing up your prayer routine is that it will broaden your spiritual horizons. You’ll learn about some new saint or explore a new facet of the Church.
Establish a daily routine and change it often.
Examine Your Conscience Nightly
The other weekend at Mass, the priest gave a fabulous homily. It was one of those homilies that you want to stand up and applaud. It was one of those homilies that really calls people out. It took a spiritual theory and brought it into our lives.
The Gospel was of the parable of the sower of seeds. Some seeds fell on rocky soil, some fell on good soil… you know the story. The priest talked about our souls as being gardens and the Christian life was us constantly gardening. First we removed the boulders (mortal sins), then we removed the rocks (venial sins), then finally we can start to plant the flowers (good works). Throughout this time, we pull weeds (faults). He talked about the seriousness of sins of omission and failing to do good works, but before we can be in a position to do good works, we have to get rid of the venial and mortal sins in our own lives.
It was incredible to hear. It felt like he was speaking just the right words for everyone at Mass.
The main takeaway from Father’s homily was that we must be constant gardeners. We’re meant to deny ourselves and yield to the Will of God in this life so that we can be happy forever with Him in the next. In order to be a constant gardener, in order to constantly improve, we have to be self-aware. We have to understand where we’re messing up.
The key tool in this sin barometer is to examine your conscience daily.
We do a really thorough examination before receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but a daily one might be able to help us find ourselves in need of the Sacrament less and less. Your daily examination can be really simple, and I’ll bet that certain things during the day will naturally rise to the top. Your rightly-formed conscience can help you with this examination.
In the evening, before bed, examine your conscience using this simple framework:
• How did I sin against God?
• How did I sin against my wife?
• How did I sin against others?
All of our sins, as married men, will fall into one of those three categories. I list sins against my wife as second because that is our most important human relationship. It’s more important than your relationship with your parents, friends, and even your children. If you and your wife’s relationship is healthy and thriving, all of your other relationships will see growth.
This simple examination only takes a few minutes, but it can make a world of difference in the choices you make tomorrow.
We make mistakes. The truly successful Christian recognizes those mistakes, plans to avoid them in the future, and grows deeper in humility daily.
Building Our Own Prisons
Temptation is difficult to endure. You’re actually not doing anything wrong by being tempted. It’s only when you indulge that you get into trouble. The real problem comes when you start actively seeking temptation.
During this month, I spend upwards of 13 hours each day alone at home while Alison is at work. 13 hours is a lot of time for me to get into trouble. They say that idle hands are the Devil’s tools, so I pack my schedule in tight. Between cleaning, cooking, baking, chasing Benedict, and running a business, I limit the amount of idle time that I have. This is critical in my proactive plan to avoid temptation.
Sin traps us. When we choose to sin, we create our own prison. Just like people who fall victim to substance abuse, we get caught in a cycle that can be hard to break. Sin is oppressive and binding. It can take away our hope and lead to despair.
So when temptation comes along and we flirt with it, we start building our prison until we’re finally trapped in a sin that we don’t want to be committing. The only way out is through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It’s our get out of jail card, though it’s far from free. Some has already paid the price for our freedom.
Stop building your own prison!
Change One Fault Per Month
Two weeks ago, I wrote about conversion in our lives. In the post, I talked about how conversion doesn’t happen overnight, but through thousands of small decisions.
If you’re like me, you have faults that you wish you didn’t have. Changing those faults can be difficult. You may have tried in the past, but failed. We can all be more successful with focus.
Through the simple action of committing to focusing on changing one fault per month, in a year you can be a whole new man!
Make a list of things about you that you consider to be faults. Be open and be honest with yourself. Pick one and attack it with vengeance.
Don’t do this alone… seek your wife’s help. I bet she’ll want to help you in this process.
Throughout the process, you’ll fail. You’ll be working on one habit for three weeks and on day 23, you’ll fall back into your old ways. The key to success is your ability to shake it off, get back up, and move past your failures. We all fail, but only the strong persevere.
The time for change isn’t tomorrow, it’s right now.
Holy Baby Steps
When we’re ready to change our lives, we want it to happen fast. We want to lose the weight, today. We want an answer to our dispute, now. We want to be the best father to our children, instantly. The problem with the demand for the instant is that it doesn’t last.
By now you know that I’m a productivity nut. I love to schedule my day out, I love to find more efficient ways of doing things, and I love finding and implementing new tools.
It used to be that I would find a new strategy, implement it the next day, and a week or so later, I’d be back in my old ways. I would like the feeling of trying something new and getting a productivity bump, but I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t sustain it.
The problem was my perspective. I was expecting to solve a long-term problem in the short-term. Addicts don’t transform their lives in one instant after years of addiction. We shouldn’t expect any better results.
The person you are today, for better or for worse, is the culmination of years of decisions. If you’re living life right, that didn’t happen because you made one right choice. You made a series of smaller decisions and used discipline over time.
In the spiritual life, the same axiom is true. Conversion doesn’t happen over night, it happens over time.
Conversion doesn’t happen in one major decision, it happens in dozens of smaller, seemingly insignificant, daily choices. The trick is to take advantage of these daily opportunities. Hundreds of small steps equals one giant leap.
The most important trick to taking holy baby steps is to avoid getting discouraged. Discouragement means having a lack of hope, and hope is trust placed in God’s promise of salvation. So when we get discouraged, we doubt God’s Word. Ouch. You’ll make great strides forward and you’ll have magnificent failures. The trick is to immediately push forward.
So, if you want to pray daily, start small. If you want to cut out one of the deadly sins in your life, start attacking the roots.
By staying dedicated and intentional, you can accomplish any goal you set out to achieve in the spiritual life.