Faith
The Benefits of Regular Confession
Every 3 months or 3,000 miles, you’re supposed to take your car in for routine maintenance. It’s a normal routine to keep your car in tip top shape. If you ignore it long enough, your car can experience bigger problems which end up costing you big money.
We regularly maintain our cars, yet we fail to regularly maintain our souls.
I was listening to “The Catholic Guy Show” on SiriusXM last year and Mark Hart (The Bible Geek) was on the show. The host, Lino, was asking Mark what his secret to an awesome marriage is. Mark replied that it was regular use of the Sacrament of Confession. For some reason, those words have stuck with me. The Church asks that the faithful go at least once a year, but that just isn’t often enough for me. I try to go every other week or at least once a month. I’m a failure and I need help. I gain the great graces that I need to get through the day from this Sacrament.
Making frequent use of the Sacrament of Confession has some real, tangible benefits.
• You can seed trends emerge. Confess the same sin enough times, you start to get the clue that you’ve got an issue. By regularly receiving the Sacrament, you take the time to reflect on your actions and determine what corrective measures are required.
• You bathe in graces. Reconciliation, like all Sacraments, is an atomic bomb of graces. These are graces not just to help you heal the hurt you’ve caused and ease the guilt you feel, they are so potent that they carry through beyond the Sacrament. They help you grow in love and help you to make better choices moving forward.
• It keeps your relationship with God in perspective. Comprehending God’s love is impossible this side of Heaven. By humbling yourself and presenting yourself in the Sacrament, you are reminded of your place in this relationship. You are the wayward son. You’re not without merit, but you’re not without faults. It’s comforting being the child in a relationship, because you know that the parent will always take care of your best interests. You’re not God, so let Him do what He does best.
If you haven’t been to confession in a while, pull out your bulletin, find out when your parish offers the Sacrament, and head on over.
Destroying Bad Habits
Over the course of our lives, we develop many habits. Some of these habits will take us further than we ever thought possible. Others will chip away at our core, little by little. The tricky thing about habits is that sometimes they sneak up on us. We slide into them until it’s too late. Then we’re stuck. Habits can be remarkably easy to form, and nearly impossible to break.
A few months ago, I developed a horrible habit. I ignored my alarm clock. Not just hitting snooze a couple of times and then begrudgingly getting out of bed. I’m talking about waking up (eventually) and not remembering hearing or turning off my alarm. It was dangerous for two reasons. First, because I was missing out on the morning, which for me is the most productive time for me personally. Second, because I ran the risk of being late for my first appointments. I knew I couldn’t wander out of this bad habit. I had to destroy it.
Bad habits hold you back. If your bad habit is overeating, you’ll gain weight. Gain enough weight and you’ll lose energy. Your health will decline. As your health declines, you’ll develop life-threatening illnesses. You’ll no longer be able to do some of the things that you love. All of it started with simply eating too much. That’s the power of a habit.
You’ll be better off when you destroy these bad habits. Don’t take them all on at the same time, you’ll surely fail. Focusing on the worst habit until it’s dead and then moving on to the next is your best bet. You may have been stuck in bad habits for years, but now is the time to plot a better path forward. Here’s how.
• Identify what leads you to the habit. Our behaviors and decisions are like a chain. Each link in the chain leads us to the outcome. If we break a link, we break the chain. Smaller actions and events are the links, and the chain is the decision. For example, you overeat because you’re sad because you saw an old friend is doing well on Facebook, which you were on because you were bored, which you were on because you decided to idly surf the internet instead of reading a book. If this occurs on a regular basis, then you can avoid overeating by avoiding idle surfing. You have to break a link before you get to the end of the chain. You know your triggers, and if you don’t, careful reflection can help you identify them.
• Find why you’re doing the habit. How did this habit start? At what point in your life did you start? What emotions drive you to them? This can be a painful step because you really have to face yourself in the mirror and call it like it is. This is where you face the cold hard truth. Maybe you’re looking to fill a void in all of the wrong places. Maybe this is where you find out that your wife isn’t meeting an emotional need of yours. Maybe this this where you find that you’re asking your wife to fill a void that isn’t her responsibility. Understanding your motivations will help you take steps in the right direction.
• Make a plan. Now that you know your triggers and motivations, it’s time to plan to avoid them. Put up barriers. Do something crazy. Bad habits must be destroyed! It’s going to be significantly harder to defeat them than it was to form them. So, for each trigger, find three ways to get around them. Then, when you’re in the trigger’s vicinity, choose an action plan and move around it.
• Expect failure. You’re not perfect. You didn’t form this habit in a day. So don’t expect to defeat it in a day. You’ll fail plenty of times. The trick is to not despair. Don’t give up. Go back to the drawing board, come up with a new plan, and attack again. Keep this strategy up long enough, and you’ll find success.
Changing your life is never easy. But changing your life is worth it.
Trusting God
You really can’t go wrong placing your trust in God. Still, it’s one of the hardest things we can do as people. Trusting in God means letting go of control and we really like control.
The times when I find my trust in God to be weakest tends to be around major life choices. There is almost an element of superstition. I will take steps that I think will get me to where I want to be, but then I’m superstitious about inaction. If I don’t do this thing, then I won’t get what I want. I trust God right up to the point where I don’t trust Him. I have to participate in His Will in order for things to happen, meaning that my actions are His instruments. It makes trust almost a mental exercise. It’s all about my attitude.
When I have the attitude that God is in control and will take care of things, I get peace. When I don’t, I get stress.
We have to find the balance between trusting and cooperating. God isn’t going to appear and give me a promotion at work, but my hard work in concert with prayer might. God isn’t going to show up and pay off my credit cards, but my planning and sacrifice with prayer might.
This is a path to holiness because it’s full of patience. We don’t always know what we need or we might ask for something that’s actually quite harmful to us. If the answer to our prayer is to “wait” or is “no,” God might be inviting us to grow in other virtues.
That also makes this path full of temptation. The Devil’s great sin was that of pride and boy can we be prideful when we’re asking God for favors. We lose the trust/cooperate balance when we stop praying. The moment that we think we can go it without Him is the moment we succumb to pride.
We must be humble in approaching the Throne of God and remember our place in the relationship. He is the parent, we are the child. We want to live in harmony with our parents and we want them to grant our wishes, but we also need to remember that they always have our best interests at heart.
Blessings at Mass
Sunday Mass is a beautiful thing. It neatly wraps up one week and begins the next, all in one giant prayer. It’s a time for us to be safe, away from the world, refocusing our life on the One who loves us most.
I always thought that having a child would end my ability to pay attention at Mass. You look around at the other families and the kids are so adorable that you can’t take your eyes off of them, or they’re little pistols moving constantly. Right now Benedict is the former. What I didn’t realize is how your children actually enhance your Mass experience.
Mass is not about what you “get out of it.” If the choir is bad, or the homily is lame, it doesn’t matter. Mass isn’t about the parts, it’s about the sum. It’s about celebrating the life that we have, the opportunity to live in Heaven, and to bring our needs and thanks to God’s altar. In our ultra busy world, it’s a chance for us to slow down and rest. It’s the right time to pause and acknowledge our faults and failings, and resolve to rise and sin no more.
Mass is also a great time to reflect on our blessings. Benedict is just plain cute right now. Alison and I have a rotating schedule to determine who gets to hold him each week during mass. It’s something we both look forward to! Of course, if I’m not holding him, I still get to look at him, so it’s really a win-win. Back to the point, Benedict is a blessing to both Alison and I. In the spiritual life, there are many abstracts. It’s nice to have a concrete blessing to look at. Other blessings could include a prayer answered, some good news at work, or even resolving a conflict in your life or marriage.
Many Catholics think that Mass is boring or unnecessary. That would make them wrong. What’s so sad about this opinion is that it causes people to miss the weekly (or daily!) joyful celebration of our life as God’s chosen people.
Next time you’re at Mass, contemplate the many blessings in your life and give thanks for them!
Finding Contentment
Contentment. It’s a rare beast in our world. Contentment represents something that we all want, but look for in the wrong places. We think if we could only get that promotion, buy that piece of technology, or have one thing change in our marriage, everything will be perfect. Then we reach that step, and it’s not what we thought. So we set our sights higher and keep pushing. We don’t take the time to realize that things don’t fulfill us.
I struggle with contentment. I wrote about this back in September, but it seems like I haven’t made much progress. Yes, I do look for fulfillment in the wrong places. But I’ve also found that my lack of contentment is grounded in chasing the wrong goals.
Alison and I’s #1 goal is to pay off our student loans. Things are going to get moving seriously in that direction come this summer. So when I buy something that I think I want, I know it takes away from the goal of being debt-free. Then I feel uneasy about that purchase. When I decide to put money aside for debt reduction, I never get buyers remorse. I’m content because I know I’m doing something that I really, truly want.
How can we get past our own selfish desires and recognize that the things that we have right now are enough? It’s a tough struggle and I’m not sure I have anything more to add to the struggle. I think it comes down to who you are as a person, where you’re trying to go, and what it’ll take to get you there.
We all have to answer for ourselves when it comes to contentment. What is causing it, what can we do to address that void, and how do we change ourselves to be more generous, loving people?
Keeping God’s Hands Full
2014-01-09
Our personal relationship with God can be difficult to manage. While God is always present, it can be easy for us to fall into “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome. Things almost get to be like a long distance relationship. You are full of love and fervor when you’re together (i.e. in the Sacraments), but when you’re “apart” (daily life) it can be hard to keep your tank on full.
Benedict has been teaching me a lot about my relationship with God. That’s because Benedict is quite needy. At two months, he needs either Alison or I to do everything for him. When he doesn’t get what he wants, he cries until he does. When he’s got what he wants, he mostly ignores me. That sounds a lot like what we do to God.
Our faith walk is a relationship. It’s a real relationship that we must constantly nurture and dedicate ourselves to. But how do we avoid becoming like a newborn child when it comes to how we treat God?
• Call home often. When I spent my first week away from home at camp, I called home often. Several times a day often. From a pay phone. I missed my family. I wanted to talk to them and share with them what’s going on. We need to be the same way with God. Yes, He knows everything already, but that doesn’t mean that He doesn’t want to hear about it from us. We can call home often by praying daily.
• Stop by for dinner. Leaving home is a big step in a man’s life. Being independent brings great pride and dignity. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t love a home cooked meal. Stopping by weekly, or even more frequently, to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass can help us catch up on what’s going on. There are lessons to be learned and graces to be gained. Nothing is better than that!
• Live sacrificially. Contentment is our goal. Consumption is the world’s. One of my biggest struggles is losing my focus. Instead of being thankful for what I have, I focus only on what I want. A great way for me to keep myself in check is to say no to myself. When I go without, my senses are heightened. I’m more grounded. By giving up a good thing for a short time for the purpose of growing closer to God, we can really make solid progress in moving towards living a content life.
Babies are allowed to cry and they’re allowed to demand attention. They aren’t mature and they don’t know any better. We’re men. So let’s get it together.
Why Hotels are Temples of Temptation
Hotels. As a kid, you were probably excited to stay in them. A new place to sleep, an adventure! As an adult, they can be incredibly oppressive. Perhaps the hotel means you’re on the road working, away from your wife and family. For some reason, hotels seem to be temples of temptation.
I’ve spent a small amount of time traveling for work. Sometimes I’d be with colleagues, other times I’d be one my own. Hotels are just a place for you to sleep. For too many people, however, they’re full of temptations to live a different life.
While hotels were intended to give travelers a safe place to stay the night, they’ve taken on a new twisted dimension. The first channels on the TV are the adult entertainment channels. They are often the locations for affairs or prostitution. Why? It’s just a room for sleeping in.
The reason is privacy. You don’t really have privacy at home. Sure, you can do what you need to do, but there is always going to be someone else around, eventually. Your wife may be at work, but she’ll be home eventually. Your kids are in school, but school gets out at 3pm. It’s not that your privacy is violated, it’s that your lack of privacy provides an environment that gives built-in accountability.
In a hotel, you’re anonymous. No one else is coming. If you’re on travel, there is a 0% chance of your wife walking in the door.
There’s the danger.
In the darkness of privacy, temptation gains a lot of strength. It’s the monster in the closet that you imagine is huge, but can’t tell because you’re afraid to open the door.
You also have an access issue. On your home TV, you probably don’t have adult entertainment channels. Your internet (hopefully) has a filter. In a hotel, those natural barriers are gone. You can really get a sense of what kind of man you are.
Am I saying that you shouldn’t stay in hotels? Of course not. But you wouldn’t run a marathon without training.
We have to be vigilant of our surroundings. We need to be self-aware of our own limits and weaknesses. The decisions you make today while you’re safe at home will build your decisions that you make when you’re on your own out there.
Be smart.
Dealing with Different Spiritualities
Being Catholic is spicy. It’s spicy because there isn’t only one way to be Catholic. In fact, there are countless ways to express and live your faith! We all have our own traditions and favorite methods of prayer. When you get married, you might find that your variety of Catholicism is different from your wife’s.
I consider myself a moderate Catholic. I’m serious about my faith, but I’m not super pro-Vatican II. I’m also not very charismatic. That puts me, as I see it, right in the middle of the road. My first experience with the charismatic movement was when I set foot on the campus of Franciscan University. It was a big shock, to say the least. To this day, I still have some difficulty understanding some parts of the movement. What I did come to figure out, in a practical way, was how each expression and devotion in our faith adds to the overall flavor of the Church.
I’m not sure where you’d put yourself, or where your wife may be. But I am sure that there is a chance that your wife will have been raised differently from you. I’ve figured out a thing or two about how to deal with differences in spiritualities.
• Realize that there is no “right way.” As long as an expression of faith is in union with the Magisterium, it’s usually good to go. The Church herself recognizes that the depth of faith is unimaginable. That’s part of the reason why She is so lenient on private revelation.
• Recognize that spirituality is a component of her. I’m a pretty regimented guy, so I like for prayer to be structured, at certain points during the day. Alison is a bit more free-spirited. It’s unfair of me to expect her to change who she is to fit into a certain prayer regimen. If she is more free-flowing in her daily life, I should’t expect her to be highly structured in her prayer life.
• Be open to new experiences. Faith, like relationships, go through seasons. There will be great springtimes when you have an almost retreat-like high. There will be dark and cold winters when you wonder what you’re doing. Finding a fresh new avenue can bring the spark back into your relationship with God.
We have a lot to learn from each other, and the Spirit moves people in different ways. You never know, you might just like moving in a new direction!
The Holy Family Reflection
Merry Christmas!
As we celebrate and reflect on the birth of our Lord, I had a unique thought. I’d like to share it with you on this great feast!
Jesus was born into a family. Mary and Joseph, living in the marriage covenant, provided the stability He needed as He grew, developed, and learned. Jesus was like us in all things except sin. As I hold my own son, that thought blows my mind.
There was a time when baby Jesus couldn’t hold up His neck. Then came the day that He started smiling and cooing. It is extraordinary that He was just like my son is today.
In that way, I’m living the experience of St. Joseph. A new dad, experiencing the miracle of life. A new dad, shepherding a child’s heart.
The beautiful truth that comes out of this is that we, as married men, reflect the Holy Family. We go through the same difficulties, challenges, and struggles. We, like Mary and Joseph, have access to the same graces to help us live out our vocation.
So as you celebrate this Christmas with your family, remember, your family is a reflection of the Holy Family. Bound in love, united in truth, and together for the greater glory of God!
From myself, Alison and our son Benedict, Merry Christmas!
Family Prayer Time
Prayer is the bond that keeps the family together.
If you think about some of the strongest families you know, there is at least one common characteristic that they all share in common. They are a family that makes time to pray together.
Prayer in community dates back to the earliest days of the Church. The faithful would gather in each other’s homes and pray. It is a ritual that is both spiritually rejuvenating and essential in the Christian life.
Yet, we struggle to find the time. Part of the reason for me was that I was nervous about praying out loud. When I pray privately, in my head, the words flow so smoothly. It’s a different story when I pray out loud.
At the same time, Alison and I recognize how important this practice is. A family gathering together to offer prayers of adoration, petition, penance and thanksgiving is a powerful event. The gathering of the domestic Church to recenter itself in God is essential to the health and growth of the family.
As Benedict was going through the Sacrament of Baptism, Alison and I promised to raise him in the faith. We promised to make it our “constant care to bring him up in the practice of the faith.” At the conclusion of the Rite, the Priest prayed over his ears and mouth saying, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. May He soon touch your ears to receive His word, and your mouth to proclaim His faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.”
While listening to those words, it became clear in my mind again how important weekly, if not daily, family prayer time is.
When setting up a prayer routine, it’s important to frequently change the type of prayer that you engage in. For example, you may pray the rosary together, the Liturgy of the Hours, or maybe even have a Scriptural Reflection. Prayer is a conversation, so make it lively!
I hope that you’ll consider incorporating family prayer time into your family life. In the words of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “The family that prays together, stays together."