Do you still not understand? Um, not really.

Do you sometimes picture yourself in the Gospel stories? You’re standing horrified at the foot of the cross with Mary and John; or sitting in awe on the floor next to Mary as Jesus speaks (and her sister Martha frets). Placing yourself in the story is a useful form of prayer.

For some reason, one scene where I easily see myself is in the boat with Jesus and the disciples right after Jesus fed 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread and a few fish (see Chapter 8 of Mark’s Gospel, verses 14-21). I’m not at the feast; I’m in the boat later, as we’re sailing from one place to another. The disciples just realized they forgot to pack food for the trip (that was probably my job…oops, sorry guys), and we’re trying to figure out how to get along with just one loaf of bread.

Jesus uses this as a teaching moment, first warning the disciples to watch out for the bread offered by the Pharisees and by King Herod. But then he asks us how many people he fed with just seven loaves, or the other time when Jesus fed 5,000 with just 5 loaves. He completes his lesson with a question, “Do you not yet understand?”

At that point, I’ll be honest; I’d be the one in the back of the crowd nodding blankly, but not having a clue. Later, I’d say to Peter, “Um…did you understand what Jesus just said?” Hopefully, Peter, who is more on my intellectual wavelength, could unravel Jesus’ comments for me. Because I don’t always “get it” the first time. But that’s okay.

One of the greatest joys of my faith is that it has been a never-ending series of “Wow!” moments; moments when something becomes clear to me that was never clear before. I often feel like I have some sort of recurring chronic blindness when it comes to our Lord’s message; Jesus has to open my eyes again and again and again. Jesus looks at me and says, “Don’t you see?” And my answer is, “Umm…” In desperation, I go digging around through the Bible, the Catechism, Catholic web sites, or I’ll sit Father Randy down and ask him to explain it to me. Then comes the “WOW!”  

For a long time, this recurring confusion was a stumbling block to my faith. Parts of the message just didn’t make any sense to me and that kept me from building a relationship with Jesus. How can someone be your friend when you don’t have ANY idea what he’s talking about half the time? I felt like the message wasn’t for me. How wrong I was.

Jesus did not build a church on intellectual brilliance. He did not seek out the wise or well-educated. Yes, His message is complete, true and perfect. Yes, it has meanings that are so deep they go to the core of creation itself. And yes, even the most brilliant theological scholars can spend lifetimes studying the Bible and still not fully-comprehend its subtleties.

But Jesus’ ministry is meant to reach into the hearts of children and childlike adults. “Love God and love your neighbor,” is a world-altering commandment that can be understood by a kindergartner. Jesus even warns us that the Faith requires a certain degree of childlike acceptance. His love was meant for all of us, no matter where we fit on the intellectual scale.

So, whether you see yourself at the table with Jesus and Simeon, discussing the law and the prophets, or at the back of the boat with me, sometimes clueless, thrilled to simply be present, know that you are exactly where Jesus wants you. He wants you close to him, part of his company. When you put yourself in that story, picture him looking at you and smiling because he knows you missed the point of the story, but He is glad you’re with him. Perhaps he rolls his eyes and smiles at you, or messes up your hair.

And then, be prepared for the “Wow!”

We’re going to die. It’s okay.

NOTE: This post was written on All Soul’s Day. Apparently, my computer and WordPress (which hosts my blog) were having a tiff, so they wouldn’t talk to one another. All has been forgiven now. Apologies for the delay.

Today is the Christian holiday in which we remember everyone who has ever died, from Adam and Eve to Aunt Francine. Christians have always prayed for the dead. About a thousand years ago, a French abbot named Odilo started the tradition of remembering all of the deceased faithful specifically on this date. But not simply to remember them; Abbot Odilo urges us to remember our dearly-departed with JOY. If they died believing in Jesus, they are living a very good life.

We Christians are a pretty big family. Since one of the centerpieces of our faith is that those who believe will never die, the Christian family has been growing for generations. The house built by the carpenter from Nazareth has many rooms. There’s one waiting for each of us.

A lot of us get squeamish when we talk about death. The modern culture of the world persists in treating it as “the end,” It’s not. It is the beginning of the best part of our lives. We enter into the part of our life where there are no worries, no illnesses, no tragedies. The race that Jesus ran for us is over and we’re in the winner’s circle.

Death is an inevitable part of our Earthly creation. Our created being, like all of creation, has a natural shelf life. The satiric newspaper The Onion put it perfectly when it proclaimed, “Despite years of medical research, the mortality rate for human beings remains 100%.” This human shell of ours will eventually wear out and we will move on.

All Soul’s Day is a reminder that, while yes, we will in fact die, that should be a day of joy, not a day of grief. The loved ones you “lost” will be reunited with you. That is a promise made by The One who always keeps His promises.

So, remember Mom and Dad, that brother who died too young and the friend who was lost to tragedy. Visit their graves, talk to their old pictures. And smile. Because they’re smiling at you right now.

Crazy Love

Jesus’ idea of love is crazy. In Chapter 6 of Luke, up around verses 27-38 we are told that loving our family and friends is not enough. It’s not enough even to love your fellow church-goers and the occasional homeless person. No, Jesus expects us to love the people in the world we don’t like. Yuck!

People are mean. People are thoughtless. People take our parking spots. People commit crimes, they invade countries, they have the wrong political points of view. They have obnoxious opinions on social media. There are some people that I just don’t want to be around.

But Jesus is relentless. Loving our families and friends is fine, but so what? Even mean people do that. No, Jesus demands more.

“Love your enemies and do good to them. Then your reward in Heaven will be great and you will be children of The Most High, for He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.”

Why?

God is the Father of all of us; the good and the bad, the thoughtful and the thoughtless. There isn’t a single one of us that God does not want to come back to him; God loves all of his children. He is constantly calling us to come home. He uses every tool at His disposal, including His other children. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and we are the Deputy Good Shepherds. We are put here to find our lost brothers and sisters, to let them know that the Father misses them, and to show them the way home. And the way is love, crazy love. Love that is so undeserved and unexpected that it knocks them off their feet.

Be that kind of love today.

The greatest commandment

Yesterday was a combo feast. It was Mother’s Day, but it was also the feast of the Ascension of the Lord; the day we remember and celebrate Jesus being taken up into heaven. The combination evoked bittersweet memories for me. Years ago, my mother passed away suddenly from a heart attack. I never had an opportunity for a proper goodbye and the sadness of that has lingered. Even though her passing was more than 20 years ago, there’s still an incompleteness to it; an empty space.

Did Jesus take the time to say goodbye to his mother? The Bible doesn’t talk about it, but I can’t imagine him leaving without spending time with her. God is love, and Jesus was all about spreading that love. There’s no way he would have ascended to heaven without taking one last walk through the garden with the woman who bore him, literally, in birth and in death.

Before Jesus left, he assured his Apostles, and by extension all of us, that he would not be far away. He said that he would return one day and we eagerly await that day. But he also promised to remain within us, as long as we kept his commandment…and his commandment was that we love one another. 

On Mother’s Day, my wife likes to wear her mother’s charm necklace. The necklace has a child-shaped charm for each of the 22 babies that she cared for when we were foster parents. It’s quite a conversation-starter. Most people do a bit of a double-take when they realize what the charms represent. Twenty-two babies (twenty-seven, if you count our five birth children) is a lot of…a lot of life. And it’s a lot of love.

My wife and my mom have a lot in common. They share a unique passion for children. Between my wife’s 27 and my mom’s 13 (plus a horde of grandchildren), they have given years of their lives to nurture future generations. They have lived Christ’s commandment.

Happy Ascension Day, Jesus. Your commandment is alive and well.

Don’t be “goin’ it alone”

One of the ways the world pulls us down the wrong path is by telling us that we have to “stand on our own two feet,” “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps,” and do things “my way.” My way is not God’s way. Living the eternal life is a team sport; there are no solos.

I keep a copy of Saint Faustina’s Diary on my night stand. Saint Faustina was a Polish nun who lived in the 1920’s-30’s. Jesus spoke to her on a regular basis and she was the one who brought The Divine Mercy to the Church. She kept a diary for most of her religious life, and I find it to be a great source of wisdom.

A few nights ago I was paging through it and came across this insightful paragraph.

“When one day I resolved to practice a certain virtue, I lapsed into the vice opposed to that virtue ten times more frequently than on other days. In the evening, I was reflecting on why, today, I had lapsed so extraordinarily, and I heard the words: You were counting too much on yourself and too little on me. And I understood the cause of my lapses.” Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, Paragraph 1087.

This is a common trap for me. I will often realize that I’m overeating, underpraying, cursing or falling prey to one of dozens of worldly shortcomings and I’ll resolve to stop doing that. I take the very manly route of determining that I will be stronger, I will be a better person, I will force myself to build the habits that I need; I will, I will, I will. And then I fail.

There’s nothing wrong with self-discipline and gradually building ourselves into the person that God created us to be. Living the “if it feels good, do it,” lifestyle is destructive to both our bodies and souls, and we need to resist those constant temptations. But we are designed to do that in cooperation with our Creator. He wants us to call on him constantly throughout the day, not just at bedtime.

So the next time I’m faced with temptation in its many forms, I pray that I will have the common sense to resist…and to pray.

A mother’s pain

This weekend my sister-in-law shared a very painful experience she’s going through. As part of a campaign to make high school students aware of the dangers of alcohol and driving, their high school is conducting a dramatization. Her son is one of the students chosen to “die” in a simulated drunk driving incident. My sister-in-law was assigned the task of writing her son’s obituary. She and her husband are in agony, even though they know it’s not real. As she related the story to us, even at this distance, I found myself reflexively slamming the door of my imagination, unwilling to even consider the possibility of losing one of my five children. It’s just too painful.

And then this weekend’s Gospel shows us Mary at the foot of the cross. She stands there helplessly as her one and only son, a young man of incredible goodness, intelligence and promise hangs in front of her. Beaten bloody. Gasping with each breath for six agonizing hours as he hangs from harsh iron nails. When it’s finally over, the dead body of her son is taken down and laid in her lap.

We Christians too often sanitize this pivotal moment in our history. We celebrate the fact that Jesus conquered death, but we jump right over recalling that first he had to endure it. It is understandable that our instinct leads us to gloss over Good Friday and get right to the joy of the empty tomb, and the Easter Eggs, bunnies and baked hams of the resurrection on Easter Sunday. Contemplating death is never enjoyable, and contemplating a parent’s agony is just as painful. The parent in me weeps for Mary.

The disciples didn’t understand until the very end what Jesus meant when he talked about his death and resurrection. We don’t know whether it was denial, obtuseness or something else clouding their vision. We do know that his arrest came as a horrible shock to them. But was Mary shocked? Most of the moms I know have an extra group of senses that are uniquely-tuned to their children. They can tell from another room the difference between the silence of a child sleeping and the silence of a child in distress. Within seconds, a mom can differentiate between a cry of pain and a cry of sibling irritation. Mothers know their children. Would Christ’s fate have been a surprise to her? I doubt it. Did that make it easier? I can’t imagine that it did.

Jesus is God’s gift to us. Our Creator knew that we would need a living, breathing, human guide to help us find the Way to The Kingdom. He gave us His son; Mary’s son; as a gift we did not and could not deserve, but that He in His love wanted us to have. Jesus lived the life He calls all of us to live; a life of generosity, self-giving, humility and love. In reparation for our sins, He suffered a death that he wants none of us to suffer; a death of humiliation, agony and horror.

But Mary is also a gift to us. She is the exemplar of parenthood, the patient, loving woman who watched and endured each step of her child’s growth, and each blow that led to his death. The Mother of God never looked away; never ran away. She was always there for Jesus.

In your prayers of thanksgiving this Holy Week, might I suggest that you also thank the Virgin Mary? From one parent to another, thank her for her own pain and sacrifice. Thank her for the part of her that she gave so that we might have her son’s guidance.

Hail, Mary.

First comes love, then comes humility

If loving our neighbor is difficult, how much more difficult is it to be humble? Humility is the virtue that I love to ignore. I mean, we all say we’d like to be humble, and we include the words in our prayers, but is that what we really want? Do we really want to open the doors of the shiny, fast sports car that we call our lives only to turn around and hand the keys over to Jesus? Wouldn’t we rather take the wheel, and take ownership of the speed, twists, turns and destination of our lives? “I did it my way!” is our anthem, isn’t it?

Jesus rocked the world when he told us of the “more excellent way” that involved turning the other cheek, loving God with all our souls, hearts, minds and strength, and loving our neighbor as ourselves. But then he knocked us out of our comfy worldly chairs by adding a call for complete humility. Our true purpose in life can only be achieved when we acknowledge that our lives are not our own at all. They belong to the one who created us. Our work on Earth is to do the work of Him who sent us. Not our work. Not Mom’s and Dad’s dream for us; not our own “career path.” Not fame and fortune. His work.

Do you want proof? Look no further than the cross. Jesus was begotten of the same stuff as God. He could part seas, he could raise the dead, he could summon armies of angels; but he did not live the life of a god. He saw his mission as one of complete service. He gave away the best seats at dinner tables. He gave away his private time when the crowds came looking for him, and he gave away his very life because that’s what God asked him to do.

There’s no question about it; we were put here to do the same thing. We probably won’t be called upon to sacrifice ourselves on a cross. In all likelihood, God will be perfectly happy with you living a perfectly “normal” life. But ask Him. In your morning prayers, ask what he needs to have done today. Then listen, really listen, because he will give you the answer.

And then prepare to serve…and to be amazed. Because the servant’s life is not a life of misery. It’s a life of joy. No matter how happy we are to be making our own way in the world, that happiness will be multiplied a hundredfold when we start living for the one who put us here.

Live humble. Live joyous.

Stumbling into that love thing

I stumbled across 1 Cor 13:4-8 again today. You know the one I mean; it’s that “more excellent way” of living that Saint Paul gave us, saying, “Love is patient, love is kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

I think we should all be required to stare at that paragraph for a few minutes every day. I know it would do me some good. Like Jesus himself, that Bible verse sets the perfect standard for love. Selfless, outward-focused, always giving. Saint Paul gives us a measuring stick that we can use to evaluate our day. Were we self-centered, or other-centered? To what degree?

As you know, I’m a work in progress (and that’s being charitable). The only perfect part of me is my perfect record of imperfection. If there’s one stone in the middle of the path to Heaven, I’ll find it, trip on it, fall over it, and probably cuss when I stub my toe against it. After I get back up I’ll kick the stone down the road in anger…and then trip over it again.

I’m still stumbling, but gradually also learning that Jesus doesn’t hate me for the stumbles. He doesn’t curse me or laugh at me or get fed up with my slow progress. He winces each time I fall, sharing in my pain. His hand is there every time to help me up. He politely pretends to ignore my intemperate rock-focused-language and He waits patiently until I come to Him to talk about the rock before offering advice (like, “Pick your feet up a bit next time; there are rocks in the road”). He doesn’t get mad when I ignore his advice.

As a husband, father, brother, and boss, I really do want to live up to Saint Paul’s rubric of love. And I really can see how my particular corner of the universe would be a much better place if I did. Fifty-seven years of experience tells me that I probably won’t hit perfect marks on the Saint Paul Scale anytime soon. But those same years also tell me that’s okay. As long as I don’t stop trying, and as long as I don’t stop asking Him for help.

Because Jesus will be there. Because He is Love.

Building up virtues or tearing down sins?

It occurred to me recently that we spend too much time focusing on our sins and not nearly enough time focusing on our virtues. Perhaps focusing on how to be more virtuous would be more profitable than dwelling on how to be less of a sinner. What do you think?

Let’s use this morning as an example. I’m not a morning person by nature. I like to sleep until the very last minute, getting up with just enough time to do the morning minimums and get out the door. But I know from long experience that I should get up an hour before that time to do some spiritual readings, meditate, read the morning news and clean the kitchen before heading off on my day. Experience has shown me without fail that the extra hour more than pays off throughout that day. I’m calmer, more serene and my heart is in the right place. In contrast, when I sleep in, I’m more tense and edgy, and the added energy left at the end of the day is wasted on late-night television.

But focusing on the negative impacts has never been an adequate motivator for me to change my behavior. Meditating on my slothly (I hope that’s a word) habits makes me cranky and pushes me away from the loving spirit that I know God wants me to be. In contrast, focusing on the positive outcomes of the right start time gives me a spiritual boost every day.

So this has me wondering; would God prefer me to concentrate my energy on all of the weeds in my spiritual garden, or to nurture the flowers and vegetables? Which seed bears more fruit?

I’d love to hear what you think.

There’s no time for that

This weekend, God reminded me once again that time is one of those things that we humans fuss about far more than He does. I was grumpy going into the weekend because I had volunteered to do a few things at church and it looked like I wasn’t going to have any free time (or, to put it more accurately, no “me” time). But as I sit here on Monday morning looking back on the weekend, I realize that the volunteer duties were all tremendously rewarding, I got done about three times the amount of things that I thought I possibly could get done in a weekend, and lastly, there was plenty of “me” time.

We hold ourselves back so often, thinking we don’t have the time or the talents to do all that God wants us to do. Or we approach giving of ourselves as if it were a prison sentence. Sometimes, time seems so limited. But the Kingdom of Heaven has no limits. In God’s kingdom, time is not measured in seconds, minutes, hours or even days. Love is all that’s measured.

God will let us live according to our own schedule. We can be miserly with time. If we insist that we just don’t have time for this or that, we won’t. Funny thing, though. I have found that when I hold onto my time as if it were my own little sack of gold, giving away small pieces grudgingly, it runs through my hands like water. But when I forget about time and instead give love, I discover that I’m swimming in an ocean of time. What needs to be done gets done. And there’s time for even more.

Because God measures love, not time, He lives in eternity. And we are free to live there with Him. Anytime.