Open Wide the Doors for Christ!

As I start this post it is right before our retreat starts at St. Meinrad (so the no electronics policy hasn't started yet), and I wanted to write a short post about something I found in The Priest is Not His Own, by Venerable Fulton Sheen.  I've been reading the book for a while (I probably started it nearly a year ago), but it is somewhat long, very dense (in a good way), and I have had a pile of books which I am reading simultaneously (which slows down how fast one can read through one book).  

Anyway, on pages 200-213 he talks about the Eucharist (a topic that goes throughout the entire book, but this happened to be the place that I started today, so it's what I wanted to make a post on).  He begins by looking at the Old Testament, how Melchizedek, and his sacrifice of bread and wine, prefigure Our Lord, and His sacrifice of bread and wine (which, of course, is Himself).  This probably is an obvious type (where something in the Old Testament prefigures something in the New), but Bishop Sheen goes further: what does Abraham do when he gains victory (saving Lot)?  Instead of taking the spoils for himself, Melchizedek arrives and blessed Abraham, reminding him that the spoils, the victory, are truly God's.  

Next, Bishop Sheen looks at the bread of the presence in the Old Testament.  This is another obvious type of the Eucharistic bread that Christ will give in the New Testament.  I quote: 

Finally, he looks at the New Testament.  The first words Jesus speaks (in John's Gospel) are "What would you have of me?" [John 1:38]  It is a question that we should all ask ourselves.  Are we coming to Jesus Christ for worldly power or prestige, money, military power, or some other worldly good?  Are we coming to take some part of what Jesus says, but not quite everything?  John and Andrew, when they first came to Jesus, got it right.  They accepted everything, they didn't say, well, we like the healing the sick part, but not so much the picking up one's own cross.  They simply asked Jesus "where are you staying?".  As Fulton Sheen explains, we need to do the exact same thing - go to where Jesus is present - accepting everything from Him who gives us everything in the Eucharist.  

I am now back from my retreat, which was awesome by the way, and this theme, to be open to Christ coming into my life and transforming it, seems to keep reappearing everywhere.  On the drive back from Effingham on Thursday, I listened to a podcast by Fr. Michael Schmitz, which was his homily for Christmas Eve.  In that homily he reiterated that Jesus came into the world out of love, He wants to enter your life - your entire life, the good and the bad - and transform it.  He was born into a cold cave at Bethlehem, was laid in a slimy, nasty, manger, and visited by the not-so-spiritually-great shepherds.  But that is the entire message of Christmas, that God becomes man precisely to enter our broken, messed-up, hard world.  He comes as a man so that He can save all men from their sins and bring them to Himself.  It is up to us to accept that invitation.  To meditate on the beauty, tenderness, and love shown to us in the Incarnation, but also on the same beauty, tenderness, and love that Jesus shows to us everyday in the Holy Mass.  We must receive him into our lives just as Mary did.  We must have incredible reverence, devotion, and love for this incredible gift of Himself - something the Israelites forgot to their peril.  And finally, we must give absolutely everything to God, just like Abraham did.  (Side note: Abraham is often called the father of faith, but it's important to remember that faith is more than just believing/agreeing with doctrines, dogmas, etc.  Faith means we give our lives to God and let Him change us.  It means acting differently! - something I learned today in a talk by Bishop Paprocki to a men's prayer breakfast here in Quincy.)  Let Christ entering into your heart, especially in the Eucharist, totally transform your life!  There is so much more to say here, but I have run out of time, so I'll have to leave you with that for now...

Alright!  Well, that post ended completely differently than I had intended it too, but blogger.com stopped working so I lost the last half and had to retype it (and I went into a totally different topic).  Think of it this way, it means I have something else to write about later!  Anyway, I am now in the last days of my Christmas break, having been running around non-stop since it started, having still not completed the application to the N.A.C., and having not read all dozen, or so, books that I wanted too.  Good thing I'll have tons of free time this semester... (not!)  Ah well, business is a sign of abundant blessings I suppose.  

As you may have noticed, I haven't been particularly on top of the whole blogging thing for a few weeks.  Now, I had a good excuse last week, it was finals week - that's understandable - but why no posts this week (other than videos)?  Well, as always, I've been busy.  I really have wanted to get some posts written (I enjoy doing it), but life has just been non-stop lately.

I really was assuming that I would have a good bit of time to relax and get some good spiritual reading done over Christmas break.  I have large (and growing) stack of books that I want to read and I got through very few of them this past semester because I was kept busy by a hard course load, not to mention the other seminary obligations, and just spending time doing things with the other guys.  Anyway, I figured that once I got home I would have a week or two to really crack down on Advent, get some serious reading/prayer time in and adequately prepare myself for Christmas.  Well, that hasn't happened yet.  Anyway, here's a few of the things that happened to me this week...  (I'm also working on a more faith-oriented post, but that will have to come a bit later.)

Terrible at the beginning

Last Friday I filled my day helping out around Brute (they were about to have an open house), packing everything I wanted to take home (always takes longer than I expect), and doing a little bit of ice-skating with a few guys (which is fun, but a bit freaky considering I never figured out how to stop).  Early Saturday morning I went to Mass and pretty shortly afterwards threw my stuff in the car and started towards home.  As forecasted, about 6 inches of snow had fallen the night before, so the highways were absolutely horrible.  I was hoping that they would be cleared off by the time I got going, but they were anything but clean.  The snow had softened on the pavement, only to refreeze into a slippery, dangerous, frozen slush.  Along with that, I couldn't see half the time because snow was streaming down and whenever I got behind someone it was just a cloud of slush that even turbo mode on the wipers couldn't fix it was probably the worst road conditions I had ever driven in and there were way too many moments where I was legitimately doubting how much control I had over the car.

beautiful at the end!

Thankfully (and showing, once again, just how awesome of a guardian angel I have), I didn't get stuck in a ditch anywhere or slide into any other cars (but it was pretty close a few times)...   Anyway, it was only really bad for the just the first 100 miles or so.  Once I got past Springfield it was much better and I finally started appreciating the beauty of the snow covered landscape.  Actually, it was quite stunning - everything was covered in a fresh layer of snow and all the intricate branches of the trees were outlined with a thin layer of snow - it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I got home around 4 PM and found that Dad and my younger brother, Alex, were over at Church building a outdoor crèche so that we could have a nativity scene outside.  Mom said they had been working on it all day and apparently weren't going to finish it that evening.  I was a little incredulous that a simple stable would take hours and hours, but I decided to head over there and see what was going on.  Anyway, to finish off the rest of the story, this project was much, much bigger than I had imagined it and the skeleton that I found constructed in the basement of the hall was nearly 10 feet on each side and poking up into the ceiling (it's a dropped-ceiling, so they had removed some of the tiles so that it would fit.)  As it turned out, it was quite the project because it had to be fully able to be disassembled into several pieces so that it could be reused, so they had two platforms bolted together for the base, 4 different wall pieces (in varying states of completion), three of which would have glass once they were finished, and the back one which would be solid wood, 4 trusses to hook onto the walls and hold the roof panels.  

the semi-finished creche

Now complete, as it appears at night

Needless to say, it was a much bigger project than I had anticipated, so I lent a hand that evening, and several more evenings that week, to hash out how everything would go together, assemble it, and slowly figure out each section by repeating that process.  Finally, this morning we took the (now disassembled) stable-thing out of the basement, across the iced over parking lot, and assembled it in front of the Church/rectory.  I again underestimated the time it would take to get everything put together and the complications that we would run into (apparently, once you take something like that apart it is difficult to put everything back the way you had it, and then you get a piece almost in place only to be unable to fit that last bolt in place...)  It was drizzling and 30ish the entire time, so that was a bit miserable, but we did eventually get it together, so it was all worth it.  I'm glad I was able to help, I haven't been able to do projects like that in a while.  Good times!

In a funny twist of scheduling I have had an unprecedented number of appointments this week.  On Tuesday it was a physical (those are always enjoyable...), on Wednesday it was the dentist (one more appointment and hopefully I'll have the final implant to replace a tooth I knocked out on my bike almost a decade ago...), on Thursday it was the dentist (a different one, this time to just get a cleaning), on Friday it was for an EKG (the doctor on Tuesday thought he heard a heart murmur...), and an eye appointment (no glaucoma, retina in good shape, lens prescription hasn't changed - basically, my eyes haven't changed at all...)  I usually don't have that variety of different health-oriented checkups in a year, much less a week.  Oh well, I guess I'm just blessed, or something like that...

Gosh, there was so much else that went on this week.  So, in my usual style I think I will rattle them all off really quickly (only stopping to throw details within an absurdly long, but hopefully enlightening, set of parentheses).  I wrote Christmas cards to my family (the first time I have done that, to update them all on what's up in my life and wish them a particularly wonderful, peaceful, and blessed Christmas).  I went to the Monday-evening meeting of the Junior Legion of Mary (I was a member for years before becoming the president of the small group a few years back.  It was a fun time, I always love to drop in when I can to see how they are all doing and enjoy the beautiful mission of the legion - do the work of the Church with and through Our Blessed Mother)  On Monday evening I went with the family and both priests from St. Rose to The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug (It was a good movie, though I'll have to think about it a bit more before giving it my final review)  On Wednesday night I went over to Church where Father gave a short talk on Matthew 25-26 before watching the DVD lecture on that same topic by Jeff Cavins.  (It was about Jesus' apocalyptic words covering the end of the temple/world, hopefully I'll be able to work that into a post in a few days...)  On Thursday, I went to Exposition for an hour (which was peaceful and really, really "productive") and then a talk by some theology professors from Quincy University at St. Peter's on humility and love (both were fantastic talks, if I can remember enough details, those will also get wrapped into my post-of-the-future).  I finished polishing up some bits of my senior seminar paper (the professor asked me to get it a bit more finished over Christmas break, which was good because there was some spots that I just wasn't quite happy with).  I wrote a letter to my sister (wishing her a merry Christmas and updating her on what has happened since my last letter around Thanksgiving).  I worked out a time or two (the treadmill is as boring as ever, but I just couldn't force myself to go outside...)  Finally, to end this long monologue, we are just now driving back from some friends who just got their house built, having enjoyed a wonderful evening and delicious dinner, and were lucky/blessed to have relatively good roads despite the ice storm that went through today).  That, I think, is almost everything that has happened this week - I am sure I missed something, but I wanted to get some sort of update out about what happens once I go on break (hint: in this case "break" would be used in the equivocal sense, in other words, not really a break at all).  Nevertheless, I am enjoying myself, getting a little more sleep than I did last week, and otherwise having a great time.  We'll see if I can get any time to do some preparing for Christmas. 

I hope you all have a wonderful last few days before Christmas!