Catholic Husband

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.