Faith
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.
Lent. Oops.
If you can recall, I started Lent with a lot of confidence. Well, I planned for it with a lot of confidence. My plans relied on a faulty expectation that I would live this Lent perfectly. As it happens, my titling the post “IRL,” or “in real life,” made it as real as it gets.
Holy Week is upon us and the joy of Easter is bubbling up in my heart. Now is a good time to evaluate how Lent went and, well, it went as well as it began.
Ash Wednesday was in the middle of the brutal Winter storms and Polar Vortex that enveloped the entire country. My plan to not eat out crumbled immediately. In fact, it took almost three weeks for my grocery store to get back to regular levels of food stock. Ditto for the kids watching TV. Our habit in that regard is still much the same.
So, what of this failure? Was it even a failure at all? No. This was not my one shot-at-the-moon chance to completely remake my life into a perfect disciple. In fact, Lent is a reminder of the need for constant renewal. Not singular, not one-and-done, but constant. This idea, which inspired the life and work of St. Francis, always inspires me to get up and try again. I do a lot of falling.
While I ate out just as much as I usually do, and while my kids continued to watch TV more than I prefer, the fact is, this was a very fruitful Lent. I completed the renewal of my consecration to St. Joseph and have enjoyed the closeness that the process brings. I find myself praying more throughout the day, and have made meaningful strives to seek God’s Will in my day-to-day life.
We think too little of Lent, aim to do small sacrifices when, in reality, the true calling is to sacrifice everything. Our pride, our ambition, and our goals get in the way of God’s perfect plan for us. If anything, this Lent is a reminder that my plans are not worth pursuing, only His are.
Lent IRL
We’re two days away from the start of Lent. Over the past decade, my views on the Lenten season have evolved to the point where I’m excited to get started. The redemptive and purifying nature of the season, the call to universal holiness and constant renewal, really appeal to me. I’ve pondered my game plan for weeks. This Lent, I’m swinging for the fences.
I quit social media three years ago and deleted my Google account two years ago. Part of my motivation was to relieve myself of the negative emotions that those companies drive. The true evil that they not only cultivate, but prop up in furtherance of their business interests is clear to all. These advertising companies, pretending to be technology companies, must continue their program of social engineering and customer manipulation to increase page views and revenue. The sad truth is that the Internet, set up to be a beacon of freedom and a marketplace of ideas, is now locked down and intellectually impoverished.
It’s not enough for me to get off social media. I want to experience more headspace and put more distance between me and the negativity that abounds online. I’ve decided that the best route is to stop consuming the Internet. I need to go to websites with intentionality and, when I’m done, put down my device and move on.
So, the first part of my Lenten journey is to stop surfing. I have subscribed via RSS to a few sites and that’ll be it. Oof, that’s an adjustment. I anticipate having more time to pray, work, and play.
The second part of my sacrifice is also geared towards a better me: no eating out. Eating out is fast, convenient, and easy. During this Lent, a brand new Chick-fil-a will open up 7 minutes from my house. By not eating out, I will have to daily engage three times a day in the act of love that is preparing meals for my family.
The last part will be to limit TV time to 30 minutes per day for my kids, guarded by a timer. When the timer goes off, so does the TV.
Throughout all of this sacrifice, I expect to gain something tangible each day: time. I’ll seek to invest that time increasing spiritual opportunities for my kids, and doing more of the things that I’d like to do with them each day.
Lent is meant to be purifying, but its spirit of constant renewal also calls us to permanent life change. If I set about these three objectives, and carry them on past Easter, I’ll be a better man.
Building Your Domestic Church
What’s the difference between a priest and a husband? In a word: scale. What the priest does for his community, a husband must do for his family. We tend to think of the Church in the macro: a global movement with hierarchy, structure, customs, and laws. In reality, the Church is both macro and micro: what happens on the large scale is closely mirrored in the daily lives of its families. In fact, when you consider just how closely the life of the family imitates the life of the Church, it becomes evident just how inseparable the two are.
The priest offers sacrifices, feeds his flock, counsels those in trouble, and tends to the needs of the community. In the same way, I am called to do the same for my family.
The Church consists of the Universal and the Domestic. The Universal Church is that macrostructure that we know. It’s the Pope, the Bishops, the ordained, the professed religious, the laity, and the collective good works that we do. Binding us together is the Eucharist and our shared, global liturgy. We’re encouraged and strengthened by the graces transmitted through the sacraments. Within that Universal Church is the myriad of domestic churches, that is to say, families. The life of the family flows from and gives life to the Universal Church. The life and grace of the Universal Church flows to and strengthens the family. In this harmonious union, the churches work together for the salvation of souls and the good of mankind.
In the Acts of the Apostles, we read about how the early Christians lived in community. They sold all that they had, put the proceeds at the feet of the apostles, and it was doled out according to need. This plays out so beautifully in the family. The parents deposit their paycheck into a shared account, and the proceeds are divided out according to the need of each member of the family.
We rely too much on those in the clerical state and the universal Church to provide for the spiritual needs and education of our family. In reality, they’re there to support husbands and fathers. It’s up to us to shepherd our families and catechize our children. Hopefully, your children have many wonderful priests, nuns, and brothers as examples in their lives. But their primary example of what it means to be a Catholic, what it means to live a holy and virtuous life, is you.
The Domestic Church may sound quaint, but it’s vitally important. It’s the training ground for saints, and the classroom of Catholicism. It may feel like an overwhelming task, but it’s the vocation that you were called to. Along with that calling comes the grace necessary to fulfill your calling.
Scripture Under the Stars
Many times on this blog, I’ve shared my love of walking. It’s the exercise that I most enjoy, and I’m now eight years into this routine. The habit comes and goes, but there are two truths that I’ve gained from my experience. After two weeks of walking every day, I notice a real difference in how I feel and my momentum is hard to stop.
It was in the latest iteration of my walking habit that I came across a new podcast. As it usually goes, I was rearranging apps on my phone to put my physical health front and center on my home screen. I needed to download the _Magnificat_ app, when I saw my old friend, _Hallow_. In the description, they noted that you could now listen to Fr. Mike Schmitz’s _Bible in a Year_ podcast.
I fired up my podcast player, and sure enough, there it was. Fr. Mike is posting podcasts every day throughout 2021. Episodes, around 20 minutes each, start with him reading chapters from the Bible, followed by prayer, and a short lesson on the stories that he read.
That evening, I went for my walk. I usually listen to podcasts as I quietly move through my neighborhood, and I set the _Bible in a Year_ podcast to go first. Naturally, Day One covered chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis. I walked in the cold winter evening, beneath a clear sky with the stars on full display, as I listened to and prayed the Creation story.
One of the greatest fruits of this pandemic is the new horizons of ministry that are now open. No longer is the default reaching people at Mass on Sunday. Many courageous digital missionaries have seized the media tools of our modern era and employed them in the spreading of the Gospel. We all benefit from this wide availability of spiritual resources.
In my busy day, I’m hard-pressed for time. I’ve carved out as much as I can for myself and, unfortunately, I don’t regularly find quiet time to sit down and open the Bible. Now, thanks to Fr. Mike and Ascension Press, the first fruits of my day can be given over to prayer. I can start my morning quietly hearing the Word and carry it with me throughout the day.
There’s something romantic and very human about walking under the stars at night. Even more meaningful is the spiritual element of taking that sacred time to walk with God and listen to His Word for my life.
Taste
Our senses guide us as we move through the world and animate our path as we go. We see colors, objects, and people. The background noise of our home and neighborhood plays on as if a soundtrack to our lives. We experience the tactile nature of things around us, and even smell the delicious aroma of our kitchens. We’re driven by our senses, and can sometimes be led into sin by them.
All sin is not sensual, but it’s these kinds of sins that are easiest to understand. The allure of the temptation draws us into a false reality, and we act on it. In those final moments before we commit, we become lost and confused.
If only in those moments before we err, we could so vividly remember what it’s like to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. It’s a phrase we’ve heard many times, perhaps so many that it’s become trite. But if we pull back the words and contemplate the meaning, it’s plain to see that there’s something very relatable.
We know what it means to taste something really delicious. We’ve all shared the experience of eating a freshly baked Christmas cookie or that first bite of steak hot off the grill. But what does it mean to taste and see the goodness of the Lord?
In the first place, we experience it physically. When we receive the Eucharist, we literally taste God. Although the flavor profile is flat, the essence of that meal is anything but. We’re not only touching our Creator, we’re receiving Him physically within us, to dwell in a material and physical way.
In a more figurative way, to taste is to experience. A taste would be a small part, or even the first part, of an experience. Sitting on a roller coaster, as you ascend to the first drop, hearing the clack-clack-clack of the chain along the way, you get your first experience of that ride. You feel the seat in motion, the ambient temperature, and the wind starting to blow through your hair. You get that first taste of what this ride is going to be like.
So, too, with God. The goodness and glory of God is so full and so complete, that if we were to merely get a taste, we’d be fulfilled all the days of our life. God’s invitation to experience His love, perfections, and goodness doesn’t require our full commitment. It’s not necessary for us to go the full distance, the first mile, or even to take the first step. If we were to make the tiniest forward motion towards God, and taste just a portion of HIs goodness, that taste would satisfy us.
It’s easy for to fall into the trap of “tomorrow,” especially when we’re young. The truth is, we don’t know if tomorrow will come. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Are we brave enough to take that first taste?
A Prepared Heart
Advent is here, that most joyous of seasons. In my neighborhood, everyone put up their Christmas lights on Thanksgiving afternoon, at least those who hadn’t done so by November 1st. There’s plenty to love about December and the festivities that mark the end of our year.
The Church offers us two seasons of preparation each year. While Lent in particular may feel glum, I see the wisdom. Advent and Lent prepare the way for the two biggest celebration of the year. Indeed, they prepare our hearts to celebrate the two seminal events in human history: God made man, and God surrendering Himself for our salvation.
We live in a hurried culture that praises busyness and productivity. December is the month on the calendar that really encourages hyperactivity. In the midst of the parties, end of year sales, and trying to close out big projects at work, the Church invites us to slow down.
Advent, like Lent, is a season of reflection. It’s an earthly purgatory. We wait outside the gates of the Heavenly banquet, purifying and preparing ourselves for the awesome reality that exists on the other side. It’s an opportunity to go deeper into your prayer life, to endeavor again to overcome the biggest sin-habit in your life. It’s a time of preparation for the moment on Christmas morning when you approach the manger to see the Christ-child incarnate.
A prepared heart is attuned to the moment. It listens to the message of the Liturgy of the Word. It follows the breadcrumbs, so carefully laid out, leading it deeper into the joy of Christmas. It takes the time to step back from daily life, to focus on its spiritual health, and to recognize the mystery that we are about to celebrate. Give yourself and Jesus the gift of a prepared heart this Christmas.
Thankful for What
It’s been a year. 2020 ushered in a new decade and along with it so much hope. As we’ve slugged out the past eleven months, it may be hard to find things for which we can be grateful. Our Churches are closed or mostly empty. We’ve been subject to virtual house arrest, fearing a virus and locked down by our governments. In the midst of it all, a national election brought into key positions of power people who have an ideology that’s hostile to our faith.
A grateful heart is a beautiful thing. A grateful heart acknowledges the hardships of our days, but has the vision to see that for which we can give praise. While our parishes may be mostly empty, we have access to the sacraments. We have no fear of being thrown into the lion’s den. Isn’t that great? Our entrepreneurs in the pharmaceutical sector pioneered vaccines for a novel virus with an impressive efficacy. Our time stuck at home has brought families closer together.
Many of us are trying to quickly turn the corner on 2020 and leave it behind. While that’s an understandable sentiment, 2021 may not be much better. Who’s to say whether it will be another year of drudgery or a year more like 2019?
In misery and joy, in dread and happiness, we should always seek to have a grateful heart. No matter how trying this year has been, no matter the sadness we’ve endured, we can be thankful for the many gifts and graces God has given to us.