What's the REAL threat?

Many years ago Archbishop Fulton Sheen pointed out that sometimes God lets us struggle with carrying certain crosses in life in order to protect us from larger, more dangerous ones. For instance, Sheen explained, God may allow someone to struggle very desperately with lust in order to avoid the greater sin of pride. A person so aware of his or her own weakness in this area may be more able to discover humility and thus avoid be drawn into the devastation that awaits when we are caught up in pride and vanity.

It has been suggested that Mother Teresa was allowed by the Lord to struggle with very long and painful periods of doubt and feelings of separation from God in order to protect her from growing fond of fame and the spotlight. In the public eye for decades, she could perhaps have fallen quite easily in love with all of the attention if it were not abundantly clear to her that she needed to exhaust herself in her search for the God she was frequently tempted to doubt even existed.

Even Saint Paul, legendary convert and champion of Christ to the ends of the earth described a "thorn" that he begged God to remove time and time again. But the God who always sees our lives in their entirety had different plans:

And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor. 12:7-10). 

And that, I would say, is the point here. Our spiritual lives are not ultimately reliant upon our own strength. God is our strength. It is all too often the case that we lose sight of this reality. If not unchecked, pride can be like a magnet pulling on us from all directions at all times. It has a way of distracting us so that we aren't even aware that it's pride we're facing, and it's pride that seems to be the first and the last gap between us and God.

When Lucifer, the "light bearer", saw his magnificent beauty, he made a deadly choice. Giving way to pride, he tragically lost sight of the infinitely greater beauty of the One who had fashioned him. Every time we sin, we do the same thing. But God is merciful, and He loves me so much that He will spare no effort to save me.

Prayer is the key, I think. If we think of prayer as spending time with God, especially listening to Him in a quiet environment, we can begin to hear Him more clearly and more consistently. We can begin to hear what He is calling us to do and who to be in life, and we acknowledge His primacy in all things. We can then see the obstacles that stand in our way more clearly. Only then does it become possible for us to plan how to confront these struggles appropriately. In order to fight the right fight, I need to know who my enemy is. I need to resist distraction and diversion in order to know what the real threat is. May we all devote a little more time to God each day so that He can draw our attention to the areas in which we need the most healing and growth.

Big Bang & Evolution... Did Pope Francis Break with Tradition?

No. He didn't. The reporting on the Holy Father's recent remarks to the Pontifical Academy for the Sciences in Rome is truly astonishing to me. Headlines started exploding all over news outlets and social media sites: Pope breaks with tradition... Francis opposes Benedict XVI on Big Bang and Evolution... New light scatters the darkness in the Catholic Church when it comes to science.

It's truly frustrating to see things like this out there and, what's more disappointing, to see how many people immediately take hold of such misleading notions without doing their homework. There are so many things in play here I just wanted to point out a few for anyone who's interested in a more accurate understanding of the Catholic Church's view on these issues:

1. Popes are not American presidents. They are not senators. They are not governors, representatives, school board members, non-profit organizers, or social club leaders. The more we talk about them as if they are, the less we will be able to understand anything they say and do. Do a little research some time on how often Pope Francis directly quotes his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI - you might be surprised. They are dear friends who do not disagree one iota on Church teaching. Pope Pius XII released an encyclical document in August of 1950 called Humani Generis. In it, he laid out an explanation of how evolution (at least in certain forms) is not intrinsically opposed to the teachings of the Catholic Church in the slightest. Popes since Pius have reiterated this and expanded upon it. It is staggering to me that so many news outlets can so boldly publish articles that have such a disappointing lack of knowledge about their subject, and I wonder if it would be tolerated in their coverage of any other subject (like the newest viral video phenomenon or a baseball game). 

2. "Evolution" can be a tricky term as there are multiple facets and theories surrounding the broader issue. The simplest, most basic Catholic understanding, emphasized by many Church leaders and popes since at least 1950, is that we believe God created everything in the universe and that he sustains all being. We don't know exactly how he does that, especially how he did it in the formative eons of time. What we believe for certain is that even if God used some kind of "evolution" to develop the human body, at some precise moment in history he breathed into man a trans-physical, immaterial, spiritual animating principle or "soul." This was the instant in which we would have become true and full "human beings." Spiritual souls do not evolve with biological processes. Each soul is a gift directly from God.

3. The Big Bang theory was first proposed by Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest. It's unbelievable how hidden this fascinating fact is these days. Father Lemaître's original proposal was introduced in 1927 and faced a great deal of criticism from many scientists at first (including Einstein). 
 
Elise Harris over at Catholic News Agency has done a great job highlighting some of these realities in an article in which she speaks with Brother Guy Consolmagno, a Jesuit planetary scientist and research astronomer at the Vatican Observatory. I encourage you to check out the article: (click here)

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, please do yourself a favor when you see headlines and reports like these - go to the source of the original comments. Go to the Vatican's website and look for official English translations. Check out the U.S. Bishops' website for any comments they might have. Go to any number of good, solid sites that report news about the Catholic Church with an eye to primary documents and actual, full transcripts (not mere soundbites taken out of context). The temptation is to believe the headline I see flash across my Twitter feed without ever making the effort to investigate the full story.

I sincerely believe that our modern cultural obsession with instant information (even if it's grossly inaccurate and misleading) should deeply concern all of us. What ever happened to undertaking thoughtful, responsible research before we make any conclusions? Ironically enough, isn't that the heart of the scientific method?


Other Resources to check out:

- Full Transcript of Pope's comments: zenit.org/en/articles/pope-francis-address-at-inauguration-of-bronze-bust-of-benedict-xv

- Catholics United for the Faith fact sheet about the Church on evolution: cuf.org/FileDownloads/evolution.pdf

- Bio of Monsignor Georges Lemaître: catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=8847

If YOUR Jesus demands nothing from you...

... FLEE! He's not the real Jesus - he's a fake, a fraud, a counterfeit Christ whom the Devil and the sinful world seek to prop up in order to lead us astray.

It's a very commonplace trend these days to follow the voice of this popular Jesus who, curiously enough, never demands anything from anyone. He's very nice, pleasant, and completely tolerant of anything and everything I think, say, and do. He accepts not just me, but also whatever I decide is true, good, and beautiful. Little white lies? He knows I don't mean any harm. Rejecting whichever teachings of his Church that I just don't get or that I'm uncomfortable with? No biggie - he knows I believe all of the "important" stuff. Hell? Angels and demons? Sin? Judgment? The need to repent and change? The existence of absolute truth that isn't relative? Surely he's not so old fashioned that he'd really expect me to literally believe in those! He's far more understanding than that. Sure, he talked about those, but that was just for those other people (back then)... not me. After all, Jesus was bound by the unsophisticated, backwards, harshly judgmental culture of his time. He would never talk about those things today, I mean come on!

There's a little problem with all of this: NONE of it's true. We have to remember that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Christ does not change. HE said that he was the Son of the Father, sent into the world to proclaim the truth. Indeed he claimed that not only does absolute truth in fact exist, he claimed to BE Truth itself. In perfectly revealing God to mankind, in showing us the love that God Himself is, Jesus modeled for us with every moment of his earthly life that we simply cannot have it both ways. Love is someone, not just something. God is one - He does not have a split personality. Love, therefore, can never be "not love", and therefore we cannot just assign any label or personality trait or conviction (or lack thereof, for that matter) to Jesus.

Treasury Department employees and other U.S. Government workers who combat the counterfeiting of money spend a great deal of time studying every last detail of American currency. They don't waste their time studying counterfeit bills or coins - this would be far too time consuming. Instead they focus on getting to know precisely what the real thing looks like. That way, if even the slightest detail is off, they can immediately identify the fake.

My prayer is that we can all be a little bit more humble and spend our time getting to know the REAL Jesus - the Jesus who makes demands of us, the Jesus who most definitely comes to us and accepts us as we are, but who loves us far too much to let us stay there!

Distraction is when I SQUIRREL!

Distraction's all over the place today, isn't it? When's the last time you were able to consistently focus on anything (or any ONE, for that matter?)

The ironic thing is that we have absolutely flooded our lives and our society with an endless array of cutting edge tools that are supposed to save us time, to enhance productivity, to enable each one of us to live a more fulfilling and easygoing life.

But do these things do that? Why is it that the more time-saving stuff I acquire, the less time I actually seem to have? Why do the lauded stress and difficulty reducing toys only seem to make my life more stressful and more complicated? Why is it that the more apps I download to help me keep track of everything, the more forgetful I seem to be?

I think the short answer is that life isn't about productivity. Life isn't about having no stress. Live is about love. I'm here to love, plain and simple. I'm here to live in community with fellow sojourners on the journey to eternity, and God expects me to be truly present to the people I encounter along the way. He expects me to show some interest in them, who they are, where they're from, what their dreams, hopes, struggles and fears are.

I can't do any of that if I'm distracted all of the time. I am incapable - not just bad at, but truly incapable - of genuine love when I choose patterns of thought and behavior that result in routine ignorance of what's going on around me. Let's try and start small! How about one less show today? One less e-mail check at night? Maybe one less Facebook wall browsing session. We didn't get so disconnected through all of our connectivity overnight, and we won't truly reconnect so quickly either! But perhaps we can all move toward a more authentic human experience of full and love-filled life if we learn how to take one step at a time.

St. Thomas Aquinas, patron of those whose minds and memories and attention need a little work, pray for us!

 

Love & Vulnerability

 
 “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
                   
                                       ― C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

The Parable of the Uncooperative Cupboard

A couple moved into their new home and everything seemed perfect. They were excited to make the place truly their own, and within a matter of weeks, it felt like home. Their pictures hung on the walls, favorite books lined the shelves, and as the old saying goes, there was "a place for everything, and everything in its place."

But there was a little problem. One of the cupboard doors in the kitchen refused to stay shut and flush like all of the others. The husband tried all sorts of remedies to fix it but nothing he did seemed to work. Every time he would walk in the kitchen, all he could think about was the door that just wouldn't quite shut. It began to drive him crazy and he found himself thinking about the cupboard door even when he wasn't home!

But one day, in the midst of obsessing over the singular flaw in their new home, his wife put a calming hand on his shoulder and got his attention.

"Sweetie, look at all of the other ones," she said.

When he took a step back and looked around the kitchen in its entirety, he saw that it was filled with cupboards that were beautiful, just right, perfect in every way. He smiled, and thought to himself, "What a wonderful new home. Why waste my time worrying over one little cupboard door that won't shut perfectly? Better to keep in mind what a blessing the whole place is."

Fortitude

"Enduring courage; strength of character in bearing pain with patience or in meeting danger undauntedly."

Strength. Not only of body, but of will and spirit and mind. Guts, gusto, what have you. I feel as though fortitude appears in my own life in brief, momentary flashes and then it too often seems to vanish into thin air. How to hold on to it is still a mystery to me.

"Enduring courage." It's not uncommon to wonder how one's courage can endure in such a frightening and brutal world. How can one persistently stand up for good in a world filled with poverty, hatred, violence and despair? Wars never cease so long as man is filled with pride and greed. Each new conflict, each death, each dashed dream can seem like another nail in courage's coffin.

We can only hope to live the virtue of fortitude if it is nourished by faith. Faith complements and indeed fuels fortitude. Such a virtue of strength amidst pain and suffering must be held in the highest esteem. Standing firm for our Lord and his Gospel of life, rooted in the truth of his resurrection and his promise to prepare a place for us, we can live in fortitude. As Scripture says, "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it" (1 Corinthians 10:13). We can be filled with fortitude - enduring courage and meeting danger undauntedly - for that fortitude is the very presence of God himself in our hearts, filling us with his own courage and strength!

O Heavenly Father, grant unto me your steadfast endurance - the patient fortitude you displayed at Gethsemane. Amen.