Catholic Husband

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!

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.

The faith of the martyrs has always been an inspiration to me. Throughout history, men and women of all ages and states in life have laid down their lives in defense of the Church and Truth. Their executions have seldom been merciful. Rather, their deaths were calculated to inflict the greatest pain, humiliation, and terror. Miraculously, the opposite has happened. These gruesome executions occur even to this day around the World.

My love of 20th century spy craft led me to pick up the book Church of Spies this summer. It’s a historical account of the subversion of the Third Reich by Pope Pius XII and the German underground. There were several groups operating in German territory seeking the overthrow of Adolf Hitler. The most audacious of them all was actually led by faithful Catholics. The July 20th plot, among others, was organized by this Catholic underground. Pope Pius XII lend his support to their effort. He pledged to help the post-Hitler German government negotiate a just peace treaty. The Catholic Resistance wanted so much more than a government sans-Hitler. They wanted to create a just society and pan-European peace. Many of their ideas, and survivors, helped to forge the European Union. Their hope was that by tying the economies of Europe closely together, they could prevent war.

The resistance had an impressive roster. Their members included the senior leadership of army intelligence and religious houses within Germany.  These brave souls risked their lives, and those of their families, to show the world that a “Decent Germany” existed. Many paid the ultimate price in the closing days of the war. Their executioners faced justice at Nuremberg for their war crimes. I found that even reading the descriptions of their deaths was revolting.

One of those plotters who was executed in 1945 was a Jesuit priest named Fr. Alfred Delp. Fr. Delp lent considerable aid to the resistance. He mentored the members as they sought to forge a new government. I came across one of his letters in the October edition of Magnificat. I thought it was so apt for the time that we are living in.

Fr. Delp wrote that we are “incapable of living fully because we have not found divine freedom.” He Catholics to put their faith and the Gospel into action, and only then could they be free.

Pope Francis reminds us of this calling, but I think it’s important to go a step further. We’ve started to place more faith in politicans and government than in God’s Providence. Presidential candidates serve as our new saviors. Despite this grave error, God wants us back. As Fr. Delp wrote, He is always waiting for us, knocking on the door, and finding creative ways to call us back to true freedom.

There is Truth, God exists, and evil is all too real. Push back the darkness with the light of Christ that you carry within you, stand up for what is right, and answer that knock on the door.

“Where divine freedom is concerned, there is no question of bargaining, of exchanging one set of chains for another as in the case in human affairs. With God the only way to complete freemen is complete surrender.”