The World Needs Fathers
We’re living in a very confusing time. For whatever reason, we’ve stopped seeing people as uniquely beautiful, each with something to offer. Domestic violence is alarmingly high, pornography and human trafficking is arguably more prevalent than ever, rates of absentee fathers are through the roof, and marriage is no longer permanent, but stable for as long as each spouse is sufficiently benefited.
I read a terrible story last summer. A 12 year-old boy invited a neighbor boy to the local park and stabbed him to death. The boy committed the heinous crime thinking that he himself was a “bad kid” and deserved to be punished. He’s being tried as an adult, the youngest murder suspect in the county’s history, and has little hope of ever being able to reintegrate into society. What is the real reason that causes as 12 year old to commit murder? The answer lies in the felony child abuse charges filed against his parents. All cases are still pending.
As we’ve adopted rugged individualism as our credo, we’ve forced to the margins not only centuries of traditions that are found in every culture around the world, but also the best social science. The unfortunate discussion about the possibility of an abortion is placed squarely on the shoulders of a desperate mother, the opinion of the father is both legally and socially irrelevant. Even worse, far too often the father is nowhere to be found. Individualism tells us that we can do everything on our own, but the fact remains that as social beings, we do much better in community.
Social science tells us that fatherlessness is a catastrophe. Single parent homes are the greatest indicator of poverty. Men who are married before having children have extremely low instances of poverty. According to every large scale study, children who grow up with both of their biological parents are generally happier and better adjusted than their peers who did not have their father in their life.
So while we’ve been on the march to marginalize fathers and reduce them to nothing more than an aid to begin the cycle of human reproduction, we’ve made two grave errors. First, we’ve softened societal pressures for fathers to stay with mothers. Second, we dismissed the intrinsic value that fathers have to offer to their wives and to their children.
At the root of the problem of growing fatherlessness is our separation of sex from marriage and kids. Sex’s objective is two-fold: it creates an organic bodily union that unites the minds and bodies of a married couple and second, it provides the means to complete the reproductive cycle that neither male nor female can accomplish on their own. As we’ve removed sex from marriage, and consequently, kids from sex, we’ve created a hook-up culture. Teens and young adults are engaging in pre-marital sex at high rates and the prevalence of contraceptives has only fed the machine. Sex is all about what one can gain personally and not have to “worry” about potentially conceiving a child. Of course, this is a lie and we see that reflected both in teen pregnancy and abortion rates.
The hook-up culture has done more than promote sex. It has promoted an idea that sex is about self-gratification and power. One partner is supposed to dominate the other, disregarding their personhood and dignity in the pursuit of satisfaction and pleasure. As a result, we see increased rates of sexual assaults. In the criminal justice system, sexual crimes are the 2nd most heinous crime that can be committed, the most heinous being murder. Yet, the culture has created an atmosphere that intimidates victims into silence, allowing some of the most violent people among us to walk free, able to strike again.
As our conjugal view of marriage erodes and is replaced by the revisionist view, there’s less societal pressure to keep a man around when a child is conceived. We celebrate the sexual man and his many conquests, and we tolerate it when he refuses to provide material support to the child he helped create. This is why marriage is so important. It’s a societal construct that grants permanence and stability to a family, ensuring that all members are cared for materially and emotionally. Sex creates kids, so if a couple isn’t prepared for the lifelong responsibility and commitment that comes with raising a child, they should abstain.
When it comes to raising a child, fathers do make a difference. Both mothers and fathers have unique traits, talents, and abilities. They complement each other nicely allowing for a holistic approach to child rearing. While some single parent homes are tragically unavoidable, in homes where the mother and father live together, the father absolutely plays an important role. Fathers bring stability and security to the family. With the commitment to be around and help with the raising of the children, a mother’s stress level can be significantly reduced. Fathers, by their presence and by their active involvement, can contribute to a happier life for the mother.
Even more importantly, fathers model fatherhood to children. Children must learn everything, and what they learn is passed on to future generations. So if a young boy has a disengaged father, he’s likely to be a disengaged father. If a young boy has an alcoholic father, he’s likely to be an alcoholic. It’s possible for one bad father to have an effect felt generations down the line.
As fathers, we have something to offer. We have a right, and a duty, to be actively involved in supporting and rearing our children. We have gifts and talents that our wives don’t have and that our children deserve to benefit from. Dads make a difference, so be a great one!
An Undivided Heart
When I was in college, I loved dating. I went on dates with many women, was in a relationship with a few, and married one of them. It’s a difficult transition to shift your mindset from one of dating to one of a committed relationship. A marriage, being the lifelong commitment that it is, requires your full, undivided heart.
Dating is fun, as it should be. Getting to meet a multitude of people, learning what traits you desire in your spouse, and making rookie mistakes are all good and healthy things. There’s nothing wrong with a young man or young woman dating many people. Not only is each date a quasi-interview for a potential future spouse, it’s a safe and fun environment to get to know people on a deeper level. Your children should be encouraged to engage in an active dating life that’s both age and relationally appropriate. By encouraging healthy dating at home, you can give them the tools they need to continue healthy dating when they move out.
Once you’ve chosen your spouse, and they’ve chosen you, it’s imperative to have an undivided heart. Your spouse deserves and needs your full love, as do your children. 99% of spouses expect exclusivity in their marriage and the practical implications are clear when one considers the survivability of a marriage when one spouse cheats. An undivided heart is the best tool for maintaining and growing a vibrant, healthy marriage.
Marriage isn’t about just avoiding evil. It’s also about doing good. It’s not enough to shut out distractions. Rather, in addition to avoiding distractions and temptations, a spouse must actively pour themselves and their love into the relationship. It’s precisely the exclusivity and permanence of marriage that gives it its stability. Give your love only to your wife.
The benefits of exclusivity are self-evident. Men don’t want to materially support the rearing of another man’s children. Women don’t want to compete with other women or unrealistic fantasies. On a deeper level, both husband and wife want to be respected. On your wedding day, you promised your love exclusively to one another. Based on those promises, we each simply expect our spouse to follow through.
The problem is that we live in a world of distractions. Pornography, careerism, excesses, fantasy media, and other distractions divert precious energy, time, and resources away from marriage. When one spouse struggles, the whole family suffers. When distractions start to plant unrealistic expectations in the mind of a spouse, the marriage starts to crack. These are not harmless distractions and they’re anything but “normal.” It’s vitally important that we cut through the lies and the posturing and recognize distractions for what they really are. These distractions are the single greatest threat to your marriage and are the gateway drug to infidelity.
Again, life, especially marriage, is not simply about avoiding evil. Instead, we should be actively choosing to live the good. There’s a great strength in an undivided heart. One is not a prisoner of his own passions has a clear mind and an open heart. They are able to navigate around temptation, recognize truth, and love fully. When you’re able to give fully of your self, your marriage will benefit immensely. Like a carefully tended garden, the flowers will blossom and the fruit will be rich.
As Jesus said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” In the same way, a heart divided cannot support a marriage. Let go of the things that are holding you back from fully and freely loving your wife.
Daily Prayer List
We all have many things in our lives that we like to pray for. A list of intentions floats around in each of our minds and it changes constantly. New intentions are added, fulfilled intentions are subtracted, and all along the way, we’re hopefully putting our trust in God and not in ourselves. This is very much a living list and it reflects our most closely held relationships and needs.
Each morning, when I’m disciplined enough to rise at 5am, I start my day with prayer. I roll out of bed, go downstairs and get the coffee brewing. While it brews, I check in with Twitter and Instagram to see what I missed overnight. When the coffee is hot and ready, I meander into our family room where I take a seat at our breakfast nook. I open my prayer with the sign of the cross and then I form my list of intentions for the day. The first cogent thoughts of mine each day are the intentions that are on my heart.
Our daily intentions should be ever on our mind and being constantly lifted up in prayer. Having a list can be helpful in that it keeps you very aware of those for whom you need to pray and for those things that you need help with. By having a list that you revisit daily, you can remain centered and ensure that those for whom you promised to pray get prayed for!
Pray for your intentions at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. Prayer should be conversational and it should be honest. You don’t have to put on a front with God, you can simply express how you truly feel. Along with bookending your day with prayer, offer up small sacrifices during the day. When challenges arise or difficult situations, you don’t have to pause to consider for whom or for what to offer your sacrifice. Your list is ready to go and ready to be prayed for.
Don’t forget to be thankful. Most of us screw this up. Like a young child on Christmas morning, we open the present that we really wanted and get completely consumed in the celebration, forgetting to express thanks to the person who gave it to us. Prayers will be answered, many in a very big and impactful way. Remember to be thankful, even if an intention isn’t answered, before you remove it from your list. Sometimes we ask for things that, unbeknownst to us, would be quite harmful in our lives. That means that when a prayer isn’t answered, it too is cause for giving thanks. You may not have gotten the job that you wanted, but you couldn’t see how it would consume you and push your marriage to the brink of collapse.
By maintaining a daily prayer list, even if only in your mind, you can more consistently pray for the intentions in your life. Adding and subtracting as needed will ensure that what needs to be prayed for gets prayed for. Above all else, you’ll have a starting point for a habit of regular prayer, an essential element in the life of any saint!
Don’t Press Snooze
I have three layers of alarms each morning. My Fitbit has 3 silent alarms scheduled each morning for 4:55am, 4:57am, and 4:59am. At those times, it vibrates on my arm until I press a button to dismiss it. At 5:00am the lights in my bedroom slowly come on. Finally, as a fail-safe, at 5:05am, a very loud, and very annoying, alarm on my phone goes off. Most days, all I need is the Fitbit. Some days, I need the lights to help. On a rare occasion, my phone is there to save the day from getting away from me.
Three layers may seem excessive, but no matter how many sounds, utilities, or devices seek to disrupt a very peaceful sleep in a warm bed, it’s up to me what I do with their alarms. I might spring out of bed and get straight to work, or I might silence them all until around 7:30am when Benedict’s cries for food and attention stir me. There’s no silencing a Benedict alarm.
About 90% of the time, I’m up at 5:00am each day. My entire daily routine is based on a 9:00pm-5:00am sleep schedule. That’s adequate sleep for me, keeps me healthy, productive, and can usually preserve my energy levels so I don’t feel the need to nap later in the day. When I sleep past 5:00am, I waste opportunity.
Sleep is a wonderful thing and based on the numerous posts that I’ve written about sleep, no one can accuse me of discounting its value. Sleep is intrinsically valuable and has a lot to say about how successful any given day will be for you. At the same time, it’s easily abused. We can get lazy and stay in bed most of the day. It’s tempting to oversleep or “catch up” on lost sleep, but oversleeping often ends up just being a waste of time. Get what you need and no more. There’s so much you could be doing!
Morning is a fabulous opportunity. Whether you’re a morning person or not, when you first get out of bed, your brain is full of creative power and your batteries are fully charged. As time progresses, you lose creative power and energy. Logically, that means that your biggest chance to make a splash, your biggest opportunity for productivity is at the beginning of your day, not the end. Lost minutes, whether to sleep or frittered away doing meaningless tasks, add up. Think of all of the great things you could accomplish if you were awake and energized in the morning, instead of snoozing.
Let’s face facts; one tap of the snooze button is never just one tap. It’s never just five more minutes. The snooze button is your biggest enemy in the morning. When you surrender once, it becomes that much easier to surrender again. And again. And again. When you hear your alarm go off in the morning, assuming you’ve planned your day around your wakeup time and have given yourself ample time to sleep, get up, get out there, and seize the day!
Sleep is a wonderful thing, and like other wonderful things, it’s healthy in moderation. Don’t surrender to the tyranny of sleep, keeping you in bed during your most productive hours. The best way to take advantage of each day is to go to sleep at the right time and wake up at the right time. Don’t believe the lie that the snooze button is telling you.
Forget About Being Right
There are many commonly held beliefs about marriage that I refuse to subscribe to. Over the past two years, they’ve been weaved into many of the posts that have appeared on this blog. I don’t believe that marriage is about someone being in control. I don’t believe marriage is about someone being nothing more than a rubber stamp. I believe that marriage is more than a partnership or a co-venture. Marriage is about a husband and a wife, both pouring themselves completely into relationship and reaping the rewards together.
I’m so tried of people telling me the way to have a happy marriage is for the husband to only say, “Yes ma’am.” You might think people are being hyperbolic, but I don’t. If I were a wife, and my husband was an empty suit like that, I’d be furious. Who wants to be committed for life to a person who’s completely spineless? Just as egregious, I don’t think that your wife is always right and you’re always wrong. I’m so resolute in my belief that I first addressed this topic in my 4th blog post to appear on this site, way back in March of 2013.
Yet, despite my protests, it’s true that being obsessed with who’s right only prolongs conflict. Fights don’t have to last long. In fact, they can end very shortly after they begin. All you have to do is stop being emotional and forget about being right. It’s a hard concept to execute in the heat of the moment, but it’s still very possible.
In the final analysis, who was right in any given conflict is not nearly as important as the relationship itself. Conflict is never resolved by assigning blame. Conflict is resolved when core problems are identified and remedied. Once the core issue is taken care of, everything else resolves itself. Assigning blame is treating a symptom- remedying the underling issue is treating the disease. Beware of pride in fights. When we let our pride take over and continue to posture, we only prolong a conflict and let it do further damage to our marriage.
It’s important to be more concerned with mending the broken fences. No one likes an unpleasant conflict in their relationship. The situation is even worse when the impediment is in your marital relationship and you have to see your spouse every day! When you forget about who’s right, you can start asking yourself what you can do to heal the relationship. If you have any role in the conflict, make immediate adjustments to remove the road block to peace. Then, be sure to ask yourself the perennial question, how can you prevent a repeat fight over this same issue?
When you’re able to set aside your emotions in a conflict with your wife, you’re able to get a better understanding of the situation that you find yourselves in. Remember to be kind. Kindness, humility, and servant leadership aren’t concerned with winning. Instead, they’re concerned with loving. Make the resolution a win-win. By acting with kindness, you ease the pain of conflict with your wife and you also replace negativity in your own mind with gentleness.
If you want to drive your relationship off a cliff, by all means, full speed ahead with the blame game. If you want to strengthen your marriage and reduce suffering just forget about who’s right.
Three Ways to Improve Date Night
Now that Alison’s internship is starting to wind down and she’s finished with her examinations and their associated preparations, we’re finding more and more time to spend as a family. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still crazy busy and working long hours, usually far from home, but now that she has less on her plate, her home time really is our own.
When we first got married, I read a study by the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project. In the study, researchers found that there was a real, tangible benefit in having regularly scheduled date nights. Couples were not only happier, they had higher quality sex lives, a significantly lower rate of divorce, and well above average marital satisfaction. Upon reading that study, I decided to do my best to implement the practice.
Life happens and the opportunity for date night ebbs and flows, but there isn’t a week that’s gone by that I haven’t thought about the importance of a weekly date night and a desire to have one. The other week, Alison and I finally were able to have a date night after many months without any. We played “The Office” board game, had a drink, and enjoyed the time to just be silly and have fun.
Our choice to play a board game is just one of the infinite possibilities for your date night. Although date night should be regularly scheduled, it should be anything but routine.
Having new experiences with your wife is a key component to happiness. The unknown and the excitement of surprises play right into our curious nature. Although you and your wife may be expert mountain climbers, there’s always something exciting about a new trail. Although you may be professional bowlers, there’s something new about going to a different bowling alley. Each week, try to change some aspect of the date night and make it something that you’ll both look forward to.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You must have sex on date night. Our society has gotten way out of control with expectations about sex. Sex and dates have become so intertwined in our minds that we stop trying to separate them. The fact remains that while they can pair nicely and appropriately in a marriage, they shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion. You and your wife should be able to be intimate without having sex. Even more important, intimacy, fun, and together time shouldn’t be exclusive to sex. You and your wife should be able to have fun, be intimate, and be together for an enjoyable evening without having to have sex. This is especially true when you’re spacing pregnancy with valid cause. In the times when you abstain, you still need to be connecting. Sex is important, but don’t make it the foundation upon which you build date nights.
We spend way too much time being serious. Let date night be your hall pass to let loose. Put the kids to bed or hire a babysitter and just enjoy being the people you are. Don’t bring emotional baggage, stress, or technology. Give yourself permission to have the night off and not worry about life. Be free to be silly like you were when you were dating.
As we travel through life, into marriage and onto the journey of parenting, we change. We rise to the occasion and live our lives responsibly. Date nights are a weekly opportunity for you and your wife to focus on what is the center of your family’s life, your relationship. Your family’s happiness, wellbeing, and ultimately the success of your children rests largely on the quality of your marriage. We spend most of our days looking out from our marriage and caring for the needs of our family. It’s critical that you regularly take time to look in on your marriage and care for your relationship’s needs.
By doing something different, avoiding the trap of making it all about sex, and giving yourself permission to let loose, you can dramatically improve your weekly date night, and, by extension, your marriage.
Don’t let another week pass you by.
Your Role As Husband
The role of husband is perhaps the most challenging role that any man faces. As a single man, the world was your domain. You chose your coming and your going. You chose what you ate, when you ate. You did all of your own social planning, shopping, and travel. As we stepped into the role of husband, and subsequently the role of father, all of that changed.
Some may decry the lost freedom that a married man experiences. Some men long for days of old when they needed no one’s permission, when they had their entire living quarters to themselves, and all was at their direction. What is perceived as a loss is actually a gain.
Man is fulfilled in the married life, whether that be through a permanent marriage to a woman or to the Church. There’s something about the social constructs of both marriage and Holy Orders that not only spurs a rapid maturation in men, but also remarkable stability. Vocation brings us into the fullness of what it means to be men.
The role of husband is so challenging because it requires all of our energy and effort; others depend on us. Our wives depend on us to provide for their emotional needs. They depend on us for stability and strength of character. They depend on us to help guard them from threats against the family. As fathers, our children are wholly dependent on us from their first moments in the world and continue to be through the long and arduous process of growing up.
While we are the head of our household and the leader of our family, these roles are not honorary ones. A husband doesn’t sit on his throne regulating the lives of his household. Rather, he must engage in the activities that real husbands engage in, namely, leading by example. He initiates family prayers, he proactively plays with his children, he finds ways to ease his wife’s pressures and burdens, and he promotes domestic tranquility by ensuring that his own emotions foster a low-conflict marriage.
What so many of us are tempted to do, especially in times of strife, is to shift the blame onto someone else. Husbands can be quick to blame their wives for whatever ill the family is facing, but that’s a recipe for disaster. We should recognize that injecting blame into any situation only exacerbates the problem. Everyone makes big mistakes and everyone makes little mistakes. So instead of focusing on who did what, focus on what we can do to fix it.
To this point, we haven’t considered the duties and responsibilities of the wife. In fact, reading with a certain bias, one might find these concepts to be completely sexist, painting wives as helpless without a husband. Not so. We’ve focused exclusively on the role of husbands because, frankly, we don’t seem to have a good grasp on what that role really is.
Not only are we facing record levels of absentee fathers, some fathers who live with their families are mentally or emotionally absentee. They come home from work, exchange pleasantries, and then engage in their own pursuits, wanting to be waited on hand and foot. If we don’t have a job description, if we don’t understand what being a husband truly means, how can we expect men to step into the role?
We’re innately coded to protect, defend, and provide for our families. When we have no direction or clear communication about what’s expected of us, that’s when our marriages start to crack.
As husbands, we must be proactive. We have to communicate with our wives about how she sees our role. We must understand what things we do that drive her crazy and how we can better meet her needs. This is an evolving conversation, not a one and done. On a daily or weekly basis we need to be checking in to make sure that we’re not only meeting her expectations, but exceeding them.
We need to be active in our children’s lives. We need to make diligent use of our time so we do the things we want to do while not stealing time away from our family. We need to turn off the TV and just roll around on the floor with our kids. We need to reintroduce family activities that reinforce family identity, values, and mutual growth.
Your marriage is not based on emotions or intensity. Your marriage is based on a mutual consent between you and your wife to love each other so fully and completely that it flows forth into your children and your children’s children. You can only meet that standard if you’re all in.
Support Our Priests
Growing up, priests were a constant presence in my house. My parents were very diligent in cultivating relationships with the priests at our parish, even as we moved across the country and around the world. Perhaps more notably, they made sure to continue these relationships, even when a particular priest was reassigned or we moved. I think that having the opportunity to get to know our priests on a more personal level, besides just seeing them at Mass, was instrumental in me discerning a possible vocation to the priestly life. Knowing them, I was able to better see myself being one of them.
Our parish priests are the leaders of our communities and we should be taking care of them by opening our hearts and homes to them. It’s our duty, as the faithful, to welcome them into our family and to share the joys of life with them.
The life of a priest, like the life of any person, can be difficult and lonely at times. While they may have joined the diocese that they grew up in, they may still not have as much time as they’d like to spend with their own families. Priests should be considered members of our families. They are to care for our spiritual health and we are to tend to their material needs. One of the ways to integrate your parish priests into the life of your family is to do as my parents did, and invite them to participate in your family’s life. Certainly they won’t be able to all the time, but when they do, it can be a very refreshing experience for them. They’ll be able to get out of the rectory and do something relaxing. They won’t have to run a meeting, manage conflict, or hear a litany of complaints. Instead, they’ll get to share in the beauty of family life. Have them over to dinner often and invite them to your family’s celebrations.
Another great way to support our priests is to observe their special days. Find out when his birthday is and give him a thoughtful present. Celebrate his ordination anniversary in some special way. Find out the other days that are important to him, perhaps a nice note or card on the anniversary of his parent’s death.
Most importantly, continue to build the relationship beyond assignments. From time to time, the Bishop will reassign priests for various reasons, based on the needs of the community. When you build a relationship, especially in modern times, it’s natural to just let it fizzle when someone moves away. Certainly he’ll have new responsibilities and new families to mingle with. I’d encourage you to stay in touch. Be a constant friend and support network for him. He may face an issue that he doesn’t feel comfortable discussing with his parish, or he may be sent to a parish that isn’t able to support their own basic needs and you may be able to help. Preserve the familial bond that has been formed between him and your family.
I think the most important part of this whole idea of supporting our priests comes back to my own experience. You’re teaching your children something important. First, you’re fostering in their minds that they might be called to the priestly or religious life. Second, you’re modeling for your children how the faithful is called to care for those among us who have laid down their lives in sacrifice for us as priests.
Sublime Forgivness
The struggle with the Sacrament of Confession is a lifelong one for Catholics. Our struggle is a deeply human one in that the Sacrament requires us to look at our lives and voice our failings. We’re not perfect people, and Confession is a stark reminder of that. We love the feeling of cleanliness after Confession, but we struggle with comprehending God’s great mercy.
Recently I’ve been reading books about World War II. I love history and learning about so many of the characters that helped shape world events. Some of the stories are so sensational that it’s hard to believe that they can be real. One of those characters is Rudolf Hoss. Rudolf was the commandant of Auschwitz for many years during World War II. Under his direction, somewhere between 1.5 and 3 million people lost their lives, whether by outright murder, death by starvation, torture, disease, or cruel medical experimentation.
I fail to come up with words strong enough to express how reprehensible Rudolf’s actions were. He’s considered by many to be the greatest criminal to have ever lived. The compete disregard for human life is shocking, even today, 70 years later. The magnitude is unimaginable. 3 million lives, snuffed out on his orders.
By all accounts, most people would consider him to be eternally damned. Of course, that’s not our place to judge and we’ll never know. You’d think that after the end World War II, his story would be over. It’s precisely then that it starts to get interesting. After some time on the run, Rudolf was caught and convicted of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to execution by hanging. The authorities built a gallows on the spot in Auschwitz where the camp Gestapo interrogated and tortured inmates. He was executed in 1947. The part of the story that we don’t often hear about was that Rudolf was Catholic. Certainly his actions as commandant were in direct opposition to everything that the Church stands for and teaches. Indeed, there’s a great body of documentation showing the great lengths that the Church went to in order to save Jews and other persecuted people during the war. Yet, a few days before his execution, Rudolf received the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
We’ll never know the disposition of his heart, how contrite he was, or what he even said. What we do know, based on Church teaching, is that God will forgive any sin for which we are truly sorry, if we bring it to Him in the Sacrament with a contrite heart. What that means is that Rudolf, the greatest criminal of all time, a man who ruthlessly and actively allowed 3 million souls to perish who were under his authority, if he asked God for forgiveness, was granted it.
Amazing.
The lesson here is this: God’s mercy, through the Sacrament, can forgive any sin.
Fear plays a role in how we approach, or don’t approach, Confession. We feel a great sense of shame as we commit the same sins day after day, week after week. That shame drives us to fear naming our sins to a priest who may know us or recognize our voice. This is, of course, unfounded. The priest may never reveal what he hears under the seal of the Sacrament, and further, he’s undoubtedly heard much worse. Yet, even with this knowledge, shame still creeps in. This is, no doubt, the work of Satan. The fact remains that a faithful Catholic is devastating to his plans of destruction. That means that the more faithful and fervent you are, the greater the threat you become. It also means that if you’re tempted more frequently, you just may be living the Christian life right.
We’re all repeat offenders, even the priest. While he may not struggle with the same sin that you are, he knows all too well that the struggle is real. We all resolve to do better and we all relapse. Repeated relapses led us to believe that we’re unworthy of forgiveness or that there’s no point of going to Confession because we’re just going to sin again. This logic is completely backwards. It’s when the swimmer gives up that he’s overwhelmed by the water and not a moment before. Confession is our chance to persevere and overcome.
In the Sacrament of Confession, we’re confronted with more than just our past failings; we come face to face with the overwhelming majesty of God. Who is this that can forgive our numerous and repeated offenses against Him? Who can have an inexhaustible supply of mercy, love, and forgiveness? With the right intent, we’re able to receive true forgiveness. Aside from being able to physically receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus, as He promised, through the Eucharist that He established, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is the greatest benefit of being a Catholic.
We all face fear and shame when we reflect upon our lives and see how far we’ve fallen short of the bar we set for ourselves. Through grace and the Sacramental life of the Church, we’re able to be healed, reconciled, and dusted off, prepared to rise again tomorrow, refreshed and joyful, ready to praise Him throughout another day.
How to Grow this Lent
Unbelievably, today is Ash Wednesday. In just a few hours, the hunger pangs will start to set in as we observe the first of two fasting days this year. Masses today will undoubtedly be crowed by the faithful looking to mark the beginning of this penitential and fruitful season.
Over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that many fast food chains have started to market heavily their fish options. I think it’s pretty funny that they cater to us every time this year. It also shows the remarkable market strength Christians have when we band together.
The question on everyone’s mind, including mine, is how can we grow this Lent? Over the past two weeks, I’ve been promoting my most recent book, Grant Us Peace, as one possible aid in your Lenten journey. Although it is a 21 day retreat, as opposed to the full 40 days of Lent, I wrote it specifically for times like these. It seems that around Ash Wednesday each year, many Catholics recognize how far they are from the spiritual life that they wish they had and are eager to hit the restart button. If that sounds like you, “Grant Us Peace” is the right book for you now.
What’s perhaps even better than the newness that Lent brings is how excited the clergy gets. It’s wonderful when priests dramatically increase the frequency and prevalence of liturgies and devotionals. Stations of the Cross are offered weekly, a few extra daily Masses are added to the schedule, some very early in the morning and others at night. This is really great because it caters to members of the parish who wish they could participate more actively in the daily life of the Church, but their work schedule precludes them from doing so. Your parish might even have a speaker series or a mission happen during Lent and, of course, there will be a penance service. The penance service is awesome because you really feel comfortable confessing your worst sins to a priest that you’ll likely never see again.
As we start this 40 day journey, I want you to take a good look at the full schedule at your parish and find some ways to more actively participate with you and your family, especially in the Easter Triduum. These liturgies are sublime and, when you really get into them, are not at all boring or old fashioned. They are beautiful expressions of faith that allow us to better understand how sin effects the entire Church.
This Lent, find ways at home to enrich your family’s spiritual life. Be reflective, be resolute, and immerse yourself in this season. Read the Sunday readings together on Saturday, pray a rosary together, or even just start praying together in the evening. Do something and make it a priority.
Lent is a beautiful opportunity for a grand spiritual restart. Don’t wait until Holy Week to start yours.