Go Read the Documents
If you have a question about what the Church teaches, just go read the documents. Start with the Catechism and then go and read supporting documents. There’s no need to be confused or lost in ambiguity. There’s no need to hem and haw about what She says or teaches. The Church is an open book for anyone, Catholic or otherwise, to understand why She teaches what She does.
Incredible Martyrs
I’m encouraged by the stories of martyrs. Their fortitude in the face of unimaginable pain and sufferings is beyond inspiring. Truly their martyrdoms were events full of grace, and yet, their pain was very real. It’s doubtful that there’s really ever been a time in the Church’s history when Her members weren’t being killed in hatred of the faith somewhere in the World.
While we hear the stories of the end of a martyr’s life, we often don’t know much about the rest of their life. We meet them, so to speak, as they receive the crown of martyrdom, but we don’t see their struggle in their faith life. We see how their story ends, but not how it begins. This is a tragedy because their stories are not unlike our own. We should readily identify with them in their human experience and see that it is possible to achieve a deep and pure faith as they did.
Martyrdom is rarely a “humane” death. Even today, Christians are being crucified. Martyrs often suffer the most barbaric, unconscionable, and markedly demented cruelties. Most are so extreme, it’s unbelievable that the torturers were able to endure the sight, let alone conduct the tortures themselves. Yet, despite the depravity, despite their desire to crush faith and root out the Church, martyrdom does just the opposite.
It’s said that the Church is built on the blood of the martyrs. The martyred are remembered, their attackers are not. Martyrdom feeds the Church’s growth because it’s hard not to be inspired when many are willing to die instead of give up the treasure of their faith.
While you and I may not be called to a physical martyrdom, we are called to give witness to our faith. The consequences may be less severe, but the impact is still the same. When we live the Christian life well and others can see it, they are inspired. Your actions may even inspire some to join the Church.
The martyrs were willing to give their lives for love of Christ and the Church. May we be willing to do the same, in whatever way we’re called to.
Finding Wholesome Programming
Lately I’ve been really into movies, books, and TV shows based on real life Cold War era spies. History fascinates me. Some of the stories are so crazy and unbelievable that they’re more entertaining than any story that a writer could make up. I think that’s why I’m so drawn to spy storylines.
I personally think that sex scenes are lazy writing. It’s easy to get people interested and talking about shows that are rich in salacious content, but it’s really just a cheap ploy. The same can be said about vulgarity comedy. Most mainstream stand-up acts today can’t be enjoyed by families because the content is for adults. Again, lazy writing.
The reason why we’re having trouble finding wholesome programming is because, as consumers, we’ve demanded the other content. We’ve demanded more sex, more skin, more drugs, more fantasy. We’ve demanded that writers, actors, and directors create content that could never happen in the real world. We’ve become an audience of voyeurs, enjoying the destruction of people. We got what we asked for.
I wish that there was more wholesome programming available. I don’t define wholesome as something that you’d only find on PBS or the History Channel. I’d say wholesome programming would be shows and movies that focus on the story and the message. Take HBO, for example. Almost all of their original programming is complete garbage. That’s a real waste considering they’re the same people who put together the amazing Band of Brothers series. They’re capable of doing good, they just make more money on the junk.
What you feed your mind has an impact on your overall health and well being. Don’t fill up on junk content.
Fear of Prison
I wasn’t planning on revealing my biggest fear in life before an international radio audience, but I did. Earlier this summer, I was part of an in-studio audience on SiriusXM’s The Catholic Guy Show with Lino Rulli and was invited up to the microphone. One thing led to another, and I confessed my fear of going to prison.
I’m becoming more acutely aware of God’s work in my life. Part of this has come from a habit of daily prayer and the other has come from the types of books that I’ve been reading. In the past, I’ve been reluctant to acknowledge God’s intimate work in my life, but it’s difficult to deny. This summer alone I’ve experienced great victories against all odds that can only be credited to His being at work in my life.
God does have a plan for each of us. He needs us to be doing something specific in our lives to better the lives of others. Like the “butterfly effect,” my mission affects the mission and lives of others. Though we cannot see it now, when we hopefully one day get to see all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together, it will all make sense. For me, right now, I believe a big part of my mission is to share and grow Catholic Husband.
My fear of going to prison is an irrational fear, that’s for sure. I have no criminal intent nor do I wish to commit the types of crimes that land people in prison. I don’t wish to bring hurt and destruction to other people’s lives and my personality is wholly incompatible with prison. Yet, for years I’ve been terrified of going to jail. Two weeks ago, I had an epiphany. I’m terrified of what prison means: separation from family, marginalization, and a lack of freedom.
My fear of prison wasn’t meant to be about prison in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense. Sin is a prison. It separates me from the love of my family, it marginalizes the person that I’ve called to be, and it deprives me of my freedom. When I choose sin over the love of God, I deprive my family of the gift of my whole self. It prevents me from being truly free, from being truly joyful, and from accepting reality.
Now I know what I need to do. Focus more on God’s ways than my own and refuse to be a slave to sin.
Where Do You Send Your Thoughts?
In a widely circulated Matthew Kelley talk, Matthew made the point that where you send your thoughts, your actions will follow. His point was that if you spend your time contemplating the things of God, your life will improve; if you spend your time contemplating sinful things, you will stay trapped in sin.
We have plenty of mentally idle time during our days: making coffee, doing the dishes, in the shower, mowing the lawn, and even watching TV. In these moments, what are you thinking about?
Higher level thinking about virtue, philosophy, and theology can be mentally exhausting. When you’re mentally idle and not thinking of these higher things, you can still be directing your thoughts in the way that you’d like to move. You could think of ways to bring comfort to your wife, how you can better serve your family, and dream about reaching your goals and achieving a better quality of life. Perhaps you could even pray.
Your mind is incredibly powerful. Harnessing that power for good and positivity will lead you to a better place in your life, for both you and your family.
Be Courageous
When we think about courage, we often think about people overcoming all odds to accomplish something great. It may be an athlete reaching a new human speed record, a member of the Armed Services using their body as a shield against a grenade, or even someone who was told that they’d never walk again getting up and taking independent steps. We play up courage to a heroic level, one that’s divorced from daily life, and certainly from our own life. We’ve got this all wrong.
There’s no doubt that any of the above acts require great courage, but courage isn’t just about amazing feats, it’s about overcoming our own resistance, limitations, and doubts to achieve something. It takes courage for artists to share their work with the world, for salespeople to make a cold call, and for Catholics to live their faith during their daily lives. The truth is, we all have courage within us, we just have to be bold enough to use it.
In order to let loose the power of our courage, we have to be humble. Pride inhibits courage. Take, for example, our interior life. It takes courage to root out our principal sin. It takes humility to first acknowledge that we’ve let a particular sin exist in our lives and that we may have to give up something in order to get rid of it. The humility of recognizing our situation leads to the courage to make changes in our lives that will eventually get rid of that sin.
In the workplace, we’re faced with the need to have the courage to maintain our integrity. St. Thomas More was willing to give Henry VIII everything, except for his integrity. In the face of certain death, Thomas had the courage to maintain his integrity and lost his life for it. While we likely won’t be faced with a situation of the same gravity, at one time or another we’re pressured to violate our integrity at work. It takes courage to stand up and do the right thing. We all have it within us, but the question is, will we act on it.
In our marriage, courage is an absolute necessity. The temptation to turn marriage into a transactional relationship is a daily confrontation. We’re tempted to balance each gain that our wife makes with a gain for ourselves. We’re tempted to demand that our wife meet all of our emotional needs regardless of the state of her health or energy levels. We need to have the courage to put ourselves all on the line. We need to have the courage to serve selflessly all day, every day. We need to have the courage to look to our wife first, our family second, and to ourselves last. We need to have the courage to be emotionally present. It’s not easy, and many who have tried have failed. Therein lies the beauty of marriage. It’s a difficult vocation, but in the trials, much fruit is borne.
I challenge you today to live courageously. It’ll take work, and we won’t always be successful, but we do have it within us. We are programmed to live courageously, let’s not let ourselves stand in the way.
Break Your Phone Addiction
Alison and I are both up for phone upgrades this month. It was with great glee that I watched the Apple September media event, knowing that I’d soon integrate this new technology into my workflow. Technology drives my work here at Catholic Husband and my work designing websites; its purpose is to make my life easier, better. There are apps to measure fitness, track chronic conditions, share news, connect with the world, check the weather, manage my business, and more. Yet, lately I’ve been feeling that my phone is starting to be more of a hinderance than a help.
How we interact with technology is largely in our control. Our technology submits to our commands. My phone won’t ring an alarm at 5am unless I tell it to. My phone won’t send me text notifications unless I tell it to. With the unpredictability of Benedict doing something cute or amusing, I feel compelled to keep my phone on me at all times so that I can be ready to capture the moment and preserve it for later in life. The question then becomes, despite this urge to capture all of these moments, do I really need my phone on me at all times?
The answer, of course, is no. In order to break this addiction, I’m going to intentionally change some habits. I’m not going to look at my phone right when I get up (except to turn off my alarm) or right before I go to bed. When Benedict is awake, I’m also not going to look at it, unless we’re FaceTiming or I need to quickly text someone or capture an idea. I’ll accomplish this by leaving my phone on a table in the family room instead of keeping it in my pocket. Lastly, I’m going to evaluate my apps and keep only those that bring value to my life.
I’m going to get back to a proper balance with technology in my life. It’s not going to be the center of my digital life, but rather a tool to help me go further, faster, when I decide the timing is appropriate.
The Sign of the Cross
“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Several times a day, we open and close our prayers with the Sign of the Cross. As one of the shortest and most frequently prayed prayers in Christendom, this humble prayer gets little attention. Yet, few combinations of words can pack such a powerful kick in such a small package.
We read in the Bible about how people used to so revere God’s name so much so that they would not dare to speak it. Instead, they used titles or abbreviation. Remember, it was in using God’s name that the first Christians were enabled to heal and cast out demons. Today the Church cares for our spiritual needs by using God’s name to forgive sins and transform bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. There’s power in the Name.
So when we sit down to pray, whether it be before a meal, a test, a job interview, or at any other time when we pray, don’t hurry through the sign of the Cross. It’s in His name that we pray that, through His good graces, we might have all that we need.
The Forgiving and Perfecting Eucharist
It’s easy to fatigue on Catholic cliches. We use them ad nauseam until something beautiful and profound becomes trite. The thing is, while I’m tired of them, I recognize that we need these platitudes. Our faith has truths that surpass our understanding and these turns of phrase bring the mysteries of our faith within our grasp. Although they may be common to us now, they carry within them the beauty of our Catholic faith.
Perhaps no aspect of our faith is more surrounded by maxims than the Eucharist. It’s the “source and summit” of our faith and certainly the most challenging for us. Yet, if we believe that the Bible is true, and we listen to the words of Jesus, we can have justified true belief that the Eucharist is truly Him: body, blood, soul, and divinity. The Eucharist is something else in our lives that has become dangerously too common.
We go to Mass on Sunday and a few other Holy Days of Obligation throughout the year, but we let the richness of the sacrifice brush right over us. We tune out, read the bulletin, or think about a million other things that are going on in our lives. When the time comes to receive Communion, we get in line, walk up, and then go back to our pews. The truth is, it’s impossible to have a physical interaction with a living God and not be transformed and perfected.
While we may regard Mass as an obligation and nothing more, we need to recognize and understand the raw power that the Eucharist innately contains. If the woman with a hemorrhage was healed simply by touching a small piece of Jesus' cloak, how much more transformed will we be when we receive Jesus' true and full presence within us?
There are two categories of sin: mortal and venial. Mortal sins remove us from the community of the Church, requiring that we gain readmission through a penitent heart and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Hopefully we rarely find ourselves in mortal sin. Venial sins are all of those lesser sins that we commit throughout the day. Like tiny stab wounds, they hurt us, but they won’t kill us. The Church teaches that while Reconciliation forgives all sin, the Eucharist forgives venial sins. That’s right, the sheer power of physically having the presence of God within you is enough to heal the wounds caused by venial sin. I like to think of it as Jesus in the temple driving out the moneychangers. He enters into us and drives evil out because evil cannot cohabitate with His physical presence. We truly become living tabernacles, God dwelling within the temple of our bodies. Perfection envelopes imperfection. Broken is made whole. We’re given a fresh start literally every time we go to Mass and receive the Eucharist.
Beyond just what we receive from the Eucharist, it’s also a true union. No one would dispute that in our relationship with God, we’re often the beneficiary. We can be, at times, Jesus' hands, feet, and voice to those around us. When we receive the Eucharist, Jesus enters into us, giving us the grace to go out and help those in our world. Truly when we do anything for the “least of these,” we do it for Him. We unite bodily with Christ in the Eucharist and, in that way, we also unite our minds and hearts. If we’re disposed to it, we can gain a glimpse into His mind and act charitably.
The Eucharist is life changing. We simply cannot walk away unchanged. The degree of the transformation rests solely on our shoulders. If we’re open to change, then He will take that opportunity and grace will take root. If we’re not, we may not even notice the change because it will be so small. I invite you to think deeper on this reality and to regain your love of the Mass and especially the meaning of the Eucharist. When we’re attuned to God’s love and plan of salvation through the Church, we’ll better understand the paramount importance of the Eucharist. Mass will not be an obligation on a Sunday morning, rather, you just might find yourself getting excited as you get dressed. No one walks away unchanged after receiving the Eucharist. The only question is, how much will you let it change you?
The Value of Sharing
The world is an incredibly noisy place, even more so now that the Internet gives a bullhorn to anyone who wants one. There’s a great richness in this open flow of communication. We now get to hear the stories, voices, and viewpoints of a whole range of people that we wouldn’t get to hear otherwise. A quick glance at your Facebook news feed and you’ll find a plethora of stories liked or commented on by your friends. In this noisy world, we’re foragers for each other.
We all experience a bit of content overload. The sheer number of news sites, web sites, blogs, and social networks far exceeds any one person’s ability to experience it all. So when we see or experience something great, silly, or refreshing, we share it. By sharing the best of what we find, we elevate the web experience of those with whom we’re connected.
Sharing builds people. The more readers there are of a blog, the more people are helped. The more positive reinforcement the content creator receives, the better the content becomes. This universal principle of positive reinforcement is as effective in online relationships as it is in real world relationships. The more we build one another up, the better we all become.
We’re a global community of people, all connected digitally. That digital connection does more than just bind us together, it encourages us to share those things which can bring joy and help to our network’s life. You’re a digital forager; never be afraid to share something great.