Showing posts with label Trust. Show all posts

God Wants to Transform Every Evil with His Love

Recently in our Moral Theology class we have  been studying the problem of evil and how we can go about explaining how/why a good God could allow evil to exist in His creation.  In my Trinity Seminar we have been considering (guess what) the mystery of the Trinity.  In both these cases we have been able to make some headway into answering this mystery: for instance, when speaking about the problem of evil, logically, we can see how in our free-will we often choose the bad, we choose to hurt others, ourselves, or otherwise put something else as "god" in our lives, and thus, necessarily find ourselves incomplete.  In a similar way, we can come to some understanding of the Trinity: moving from the revealed truth of Jesus as the Son of the Father, who together promise to send the Spirit.  From here we are able to delve deeper into this mystery - God is one in substance and nature (this is what God is: perfect, eternal, infinite, etc.  The three persons are consubstantial in that they all have this same divine nature in its completeness), and, at the same time, God is three persons (this is, sort of, who God is: the three differentiated, not by differences in essence, but in relations of origin.  In other words, the persons are only differentiated by the relationships of love that they have with one another - the Father in giving Himself completely to the Son (perfect Father), the Son in totally loving and obeying the Father (perfect Son), and the Holy Spirit in being passively spirated by both of them (perfect Spirit)).  Obviously, both of these answers are unsatisfactory: "why doesn't God just eliminate evil?",  "but how are there 3 "parts" (so it seems) in one, perfect, unity?"
What I have realized this past week is that, though these mysteries remain because of our own weakness and limitations, it is into these very mysteries that God wants to enter and illuminate.  The trigger for this realization was a picture I saw on Facebook this past week.  The Sacristan at a church a couple hours north of my home-town found a host on the floor, and, as he should have, carefully preserved the host and notified the deacon, who placed it in a container of water.  This way, if the host was consecrated, it would dissolve, and could thereby be disposed of properly (and if it wasn't consecrated, no harm done).  However, when the Deacon came back a couple days later, assuming the host would have disintegrated completely, he found instead a mass of blood in the midst of the water. Eucharistic miracles aren't just medieval happenings, the result of over-active (or naive) imaginations of people "back then"!  

So, what do all these points have in common?  All these "things" - the presence of evil, God, and the Eucharist - are mysteries, they are beyond our limited understanding, but, in all of them, God wants to enter that mystery and drive away all that lacks His presence.  

Into evil God wishes to enter and transform with His love.  In the suffering of someone who has lost a loved one, God desires to fill their heart with the peace of His promise of eternal life to those who love Him.  To the person who has fallen into sin, God wishes to forgive that sin and "resuscitate" that soul, reinvigorating them with His joy and love once more.  To the hill of Calvary, where evil seemed to have its "greatest" victory, where the greatest physical pain, the greatest injustice, and the greatest abandonment came together: God is present, He became man just to enter that moment and prove once and for all the abundance, and omnipotence, of His love.  

What about the unknowns that we have about God?  He becomes man to bring us to that Truth, to Himself.  Why?  Because we are made in the image of God, we are meant  to become more like Him.  Our categories, our rational ways of explaining the Trinity, our analogies, aren't so much us getting closer to the truth regarding God - every analogy, falls hopefully short of the true grandure and awesomeness of God - but these thoughts aren't pointless.  Our drawing closer to God leads to our own fulfillment, our intellectual working towards the Trinity does get us to a closer idea of what we are supposed to be.  God shows Himself, as Father, Son, and Spirit, as perfect love in mutual, completely generous, relationships.  We are supposed to be that way too!  Augustine in his De Trinitate ("On the Trinity") looks inside of ourselves to catch of the glimpse of the Trinity, as it is in Itself.  He moves from (but retains) the "economic" idea of the Trinity that we find evident in the Scriptures (of the Father as creator, the Son as redeemer, and the Spirit as sanctifier), to a more metaphysical [read: essential] understanding of God.  He shows that just as our mind has memory, intellect, and will, and goes in that order: we remember something, think about it, and then decide to act in some way regarding it, so the Trinity has Father, Son, and Spirit.  Both sets of 3 work in an order (the Father eternally begets the Son, and from both of them the Holy Spirit proceeds), but the first "part" doesn't exist without the other; as soon as we remember something we think about it and act on it, as "soon" (eternally) as the Father exists, so does the Son and the Spirit.  So, this exercise does reveal something about God because He has revealed that we are images of Him, but our mental capacity is still limited, so we'll never understand the Trinity completely.  (We are always stuck, so to speak, looking at God from one "direction", either we see Him as one, perfect unity, or three, in the three persons, we can't quite wrap our head around the mystery completely).  End of story?  No!  Where God sees a lack of goodness (in this case, knowledge of Him), He wants to fill that lack with Himself, with His truth, with His love.  We are imperfect images of God, so, Christ comes as our savior and redeemer, to save and redeem us.  To reform us back into more perfect images of Him (and the entire Trinity).  Jesus not only directly reveals to us the truths of God, He also tells us to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34).  This isn't just a moral commandment, this is a map to our true end, God Himself.  In Jesus' loving death for us, He redeems us, and in His calling us to the same sacrificial-love, He pulls us closer to God.  Recap: In our weakness itself, in our lack of imaging God, God wants to forgive us and make us again in His image.  In our lack of knowledge, Jesus comes to reveal more about God!

Finally, in the third situation, that of the Eucharistic miracle, God aids our all-too-often weak faith with a miracle making His presence obvious.  This is the case with all Our Lord's miracles: He not only heals the sick, and forgives the sinner (mystery 1: destroying evil), but He also does them to make obvious to us His divinity (mystery 2: revealing God) and showing His true, complete, incredible, presence in His sacraments, priests, and Church (mystery 3: Eucharist).  God is so good!  In the Eucharist miracle at Orvietto (which is a couple-hour train ride from Rome, and I will see for the second time at Corpus Christi), the priest was suffering from doubts about Our Lord's presence in the Eucharist.  Sometimes we have the same doubts!  "Lord, are you really there?  I can't see you."  Yes He is!  In that miracle, as in the one that took place a couple days ago in Illinois, the host - for all appearances a piece of bread - began to bleed!  He is truly there!

 Jesus looks at us poor doubting sinners with the same eyes of love that gazed on His apostles "O ye of little faith".  He wants to fill every place of evil, sin, doubt, or fear with Himself!  Trust Him, love Him, let Him!  Let our words be those of the centurion: "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!"  Lord, we believe, but we fall, we doubt, we don't live up to your call - help us, transform us, have mercy on us! (And He does!)
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Serving for the Pope II - God's Generosity

This is a write-up I did for the Quincy Herald Whig about a month ago (they surprised me by requesting a reflection on my opportunity to serve for the Pope, so I wrote this up for them).  They published it back then in part, but here is the entire reflection (kind of a different angle than my previous post about the Mass).  In other news, I finished my oral final in Fundamental Theology, which went really well - as far as I could tell - even though I ended up taking it in Italian, as well as the one in Hebrew, which also went well (good to be done with a couple more!)  Christology is tomorrow, and is said to be one of the harder ones, so I'll be studying a good bit today and praying tomorrow!
 
“The patience of God” – God’s immense love and generosity towards us – was a point that Pope Francis returned to again and again during his homily for Christmas. It was also the idea that was running through my mind as I knelt there – in Rome, in St. Peter’s Basilica, in the first row of chairs behind Bernini’s immense baldacchino, serving Christmas Mass for the pope,– as the Holy Father pronounced the words of consecration, “This is my body… This is my blood…”, repeating the words that Our Lord pronounced so long ago, transforming, as Jesus promised, the host into Our Lord’s body, and the wine into His blood. It was an incredible moment!

Before my eyes flashed past the last several years of my life. My moving from being homeschooled, to attending community college in Quincy, to finally getting up the gumption to enter seminary and follow His “call”, discerning whether the desire in my heart to become a priest was also God’s will. I entered Bishop Bruté College Seminary in Indianapolis, studying for the diocese of Springfield, IL, in August of 2012, and Our Lord immediately made that patient, generous, love immensely evident to me. He graced me with tremendous growth in prayer, and my personal relationship with Him, with a sincere enjoyment of, and progress in, my philosophy studies, with the friendships, and fun, of being surrounded by dozens of other excellent, joyous, and eager seminarians, as well as so many other moments of excitement and happiness (sports, youth-rallies, skydiving, bar-b-quing, and so much more). God, though, has continued to amaze and astound me with His generosity because now I have been given the marvelous opportunity to study theology in Rome, here at the North American College. It’s as if Our Lord has “upped the ante”, drawing me into even deeper prayer through the magnificent churches, beautiful art, and proximity to the saints that one finds here, putting me in phenomenal, interesting, and edifying classes, surrounding me with another outstanding group of friends, classmates, and brothers, and – like this past evening – filling my days with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities of all sorts.


Washing the Pope's Hands!


At the end of the ceremony, as the choir triumphantly sang “Adeste Fidelis” during the procession out of the packed basilica, and the Pope carried the statue of the Baby Jesus to the crèche, my mind was distracted with the growing fatigue of my arms. Those processional candles were beautiful alright, but they were also heavy, and not being the tallest of the group, I had to hold mine at an uncomfortably high position, further hastening the buildup of lactic acid in my muscles... But then I glanced around and realized for the umpteenth time during that Mass that I was in St. Peter’s Basilica, mere feet from the Pope, Christ’s vicar, and celebrating the beautiful and awesome feast of Our Lord’s birth. It was a situation that reminded me, again, of everything that had happened over the last several years. It hasn’t always been easy – those philosophy classes were tough, and the theology ones in Italian are even more difficult, prayer hasn’t always felt fruitful, and so often I’m too tired to truly raise my mind to God, sometimes those other guys got on my nerves, and saying goodbye to come over to Rome certainly wasn’t easy – but in every moment, fun and stressful, easy and hard, exciting and exhausting, I can see God’s providence constantly guiding me down the way He wants me to take, making me the individual He wants me to be. Getting drawn closer to Jesus, and His joy, means being drawn closer to the cross, and further away from my own selfishness, laziness, fears, and desires. Those shepherds got to meet Christ their savior, but only after getting over there fears and trekking down into town, out of their way, to find Him. I got to serve Mass for the Pope, but only if I sweated a bit and carried around that heavy candle. As Pope Francis emphasized, God is immensely patient: this is what Christmas is all about! God humbly, innocently, without coercion, becomes one of us, to show us His love and draw us to Himself. All those incredible blessings, and difficult struggles, that I have experienced, have been His gifts – sometimes humble, sometimes frightening, sometimes small, sometimes big – and through them, God continues, ever so gently, to direct me towards his will. As it turns out, life as a seminarian here in Rome is very much like that Mass: an incredible, awesome, fun, and life-changing experience, but requiring a little soreness and trepidation as part of the process.

Not only was it incredible to be there – serving Mass for the Pope – but it was even more incredible to realize God’s love present constantly in my life. Every year, billions of people celebrate Christmas – the coming of Christ, as a man, into the world, 2000 years ago – but we forget that He wants to enter our lives at all times, not just on December 25th. So often I get distracted by the problems and struggles of life, and forget to step back and notice how much He gives me, not only in the overtly blessed, exciting and joyful moments, but also in those times of weariness, fear, and difficulty, when He desires that I return and trust in Him. So many times I forget to thank Him, or forget to have faith in Him. Yet He continues to give Himself to me, and to all of us, humbly lying there in the manger, in the Sacraments, in the Scriptures, in the encounters of daily life, patiently awaiting our approach and acceptance of Him.

“The patience of God” – it’s something God has generously shown me time and again in my own life, and it’s a gift that He gives all of us. The extraordinary, unlikely, and wonderful experience of serving Christmas Mass at St. Peter’s, for Pope Francis, has reminded me yet again of the profound truth in the saying “God will not be outdone in generosity”. You don’t, though, need to serve in a Papal Mass to see that: at Christmas we celebrate the even more extraordinary, unlikely, and wonderful event of God becoming man, of Jesus being born. That event, the coming of Christ into our world, also requires a bit of sacrifice on our part (to open ourselves up to Him), but it, even more than Mass with Pope Francis, or living in Rome, is totally worth it! 

I have ordered some "official" pictures of the Mass so hopefully in the coming weeks I can get those up here - they're a lot better than a screen-grab from the YouTube video...  Still, the experience is more important than the pictures, so I wanted to get this post up here.
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My Sister's First Profession

Every month or so we have what is called a travel weekend, which is pretty much what it sounds like - everybody is allowed to travel some place around Europe and experience a bit of culture, food, art, history, nature, or whatever, all while building friendships with other men here and having a chance to get away from the bustle and business of Rome.  So far, I have gone on three such trips - the first to San Giovanni Rotundo (we visited the shrine of Padre Pio, Monte San Angelo, and Lanciano), the Amalfi Coast (we saw some beautiful scenery, and also got to pray before the relics of St. Andrew, St. Matthew, St. Benedict, and St. Scholastica), and this last weekend - which is probably going to be the craziest travel weekend in the foreseeable future, when I got to fly back to Alabama and be there when my sister took simple/temporary vows at the Dominican Monastery of St. Jude.  Needless to say, it was an amazing blessing to be back there, but - as seems to usually be the case - it was a whole lot more amazing than even I thought it would be beforehand!

While I was in Assisi I found out the date that my sister would be taking vows - November 22nd, the feast of St. Cecilia - and, of course, I was excited for her, but I knew that it wasn't very likely that I'd be able to be back for it, not only was it a long trip, and in the middle of the semester, but it was also NAC policy that guys don't go home for their first two years here.  However, then I heard of one of the new men who had gotten permission to return home for one of his sibling's wedding.  I didn't know if the same exception would apply to me, but I was certainly not going to pass up at least trying!  So, at my first meeting with my formation advisor - the priest who, you know, advises me as regards my formation (I meet with him once a month, we talk about how things are going - academically, pastorally, humanly, practically, etc. - and he helps to make sure I'm balancing my time/effort well and gives tips/advise/direction as regards any of the problems that could crop up from studying over here) - I asked if there was any way that I could go home for my sister's profession.  He hadn't ever experienced that question, but promised to investigate it with the "powers that be" (the formation staff here at the NAC).  I hadn't heard anything for a couple of weeks, which I tried hard not to interpret as a sign one way or the other, when I had my meeting with Msgr. Checchio.  He met with all the new men during our first month or so here, and, at least in my case, most of the conversation was him asking how things were going, talking about the process of settling in, challenges that I might encounter, and things that I should focus on during this first bit of time here.  It was a great conversation, he is a wonderful rector, but near the end of the conversation I was surprised and excited when he casually mentioned that "I'm glad to hear you'll be able to go home for your sister's profession."  I'm pretty sure my mouth fell open for about a second while I tried to comprehend what he had just said, and then I rattled something out about how great it would be, and he responded with something about loving Dominican nuns and being happy to give me the go-ahead to return for that ceremony.  I, to say the least, was excited!  I got permission from my diocese as well and a couple of days later dropped the news on my family when we were skyping.  They too, were pretty happy (alright, maybe that's an underestimation...), and dad was also really helpful in tracking down a decent deal on the flights that I would need (and would fit around everything).

So, last Thursday (the week before Thanksgiving), I left class at the Gregorian (Christology is that morning) and power-walked over to the bus stop where I had a ticket to Fiumicino.  Of course, because of some uprising/protest/strike, the bus was going to be like 45 minutes late.  I already was pushing it close to get through the airport, so I was starting to get a bit worried when an Italian lady had the bright idea to hire a taxi.  Five of us (myself, the lady, and three other young ladies) found a cab - I got back middle, as always - and off we went.  30 minutes later, nobody having had the guts to start a conversation, we pooled our money, paid the driver, and entered the airport.  I found the desk I needed, they gave me my boarding passes (after a bit of difficulty), and I made my way through security.  Off to Amsterdam!

Pretty cool, no?
In Amsterdam, having not done much except whiling away the hours of waiting/flying with a couple different books and stuff, I eventually boarded my flight to Atlanta and then settled in for the long flight.  As it turned out, I was right next to a couple who were returning from a trip they were taking with their church to the Netherlands.  We had a really nice conversation about Christianity, the priesthood, theology, the church, celibacy, and several other such topics - it was great!  Not awkward, they were very open, and I really enjoyed it.  After a pretty tasty meal (the food was good and they served wine, which was surprising, and enjoyable), I watched Guardians of the Galaxy, which was not only funny and entertaining, but also relatively clean (always nice when you're not constantly wondering at what point you'll have to turn something off).  Then I spent a bit of time in prayer - not the easiest thing in the world in a plane, but being "up there" lent a different feeling to the experience, so that was cool.  I think I watched another movie at some point, and I spent some time reading some different books (Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth, a book on the Pentateuch, Fr. Gaitley's 33 Days to Morning Glory, and probably a couple of other ones).  The hours slid by and before I knew it we were being served dinner (again, pretty good) and only an hour out of Atlanta.  After an uneventful landing, and a bit of walking through the Atlanta airport (and customs...), I found my last gate with an hour or two to wait before boarding.  Being back in America, I decided to find some American cuisine and after debating about whether a certain burger place was going to be worth it, I just went with Chic-fil-A and got my fill of chicken nuggets and fries.  Again, most of the time was past with a bit of reading and some listening to podcasts and whatnot (mainly homilies and other Catholic stuff) - it's funny, I've only been on a plane several times now, but it was already getting pretty usual.  Soon enough we were boarding and then - only like 30 minutes later - I was in Birmingham.  And, 10 minutes later I was elated to see my family at the bottom of the escalators (that I was riding).  It was so good to see them again!  We stayed up late chatting together and then I dropped in bed - some 28 hours after getting up (it was a really long day). 

One month folks!
The next day, Friday, we checked out a couple of things in Birmingham - including the Cathedral (beautiful - it was a lot simpler than the churches over here, but it had stained glass windows, which aren't very often found here) and a museum of art (which had some beautiful pieces - religious and otherwise - though to some extent I have started to take that sort of thing for granted, so it wasn't quite mind-blowing).  Yeah, it was a fun day, just spent hanging out with the family, and that evening we drove over to the monastery and brought our things into the guest house.  After another short night of sleep (which is getting more and more typical) and another banana (which isn't typical over here; they provide plenty of apples, pears, peaches, oranges, plums, and kiwis, but not bananas), my brother and I met with the priest who was going to be saying Mass.  As I was expecting, it was in the Dominican Rite, which was the Roman/Papal Rite of the 1300s (very similar to the Extraordinary Form, with a couple variations), and as I wasn't expecting, one of the servers was expected to chant the Epistle.  My brother - being the generous, humble guy that he is - let me have fun with that, and after 30 minutes of reviewing what we were doing (how the profession ceremony would happen, what was different, who was doing incense, etc.) and a good bit of practicing on my part (actually, I wasn't that nervous, the tone wasn't difficult and the passage was short), we banged the set of chimes that they use to signal the beginning of Mass and processed out.  The chapel - as often in cloistered monasteries - was set up with the sisters/cloister lined up with the altar and the lay congregation off to the side (like an "L", with the sanctuary in the corner) - and because it was ad orientum, I only had a glance of my sister (in the cloister) and grandparents/uncle (who were in the congregation, obviously, but whom I hadn't seen yet).  Mass was like a Low EF Mass, but with incense, so everything went relatively normally until around the homily.  Right after the Gospel (about the foolish and wise virgins), but before the homily, my sister announced her desire to take temporary profession in the monastery.  It was simple phrase, but she was so excited! 

Before the trip I was excited to be back with the family for a bit, to visit my sister, and to enjoy a bit of American cuisine, but - looking back - this was the best moment!  There was my twin sister, much like those 50 men here who gave their lives totally over to Our Lord 2 months ago, giving her life to God - more officially/completely than before - and absolutely overjoyed to do it.  The homily was great - expounding on the beauty of the cloistered call to chastity, and the idea that kept running through my mind was that of joy.  I had been thinking about my sister's vocation in terms of difficulty.  Entering the cloister is tough, it means giving up a lot, and I thought that for that reason it was a great call.  I mean, we all have to give up something to follow God's will for us - that's the cross - but the cloister seemed a particularly difficult one regardless.  However, my sister wasn't filled with trepidation - at the difficulty - or bravado - at the challenges to come - or even excitement - for the life ahead; she was filled with joy, peace, happiness, and other such awesome gifts of God.  The thing was, where I see challenges to be pulverized (with God's help, of course), she wasn't even looking for the next challenge to be attacked, but instead simply looking at God, and trusting that He would help in whatever might come.  Where I focus on the incoming/upcoming thing to do, finish, learn, grow, or become, she simply focusses on the end goal of all that "doing", which is God, and His will.  I've wondered in the past how some of the sisters you see are always so joyful.  I mean, I'm trying to follow Christ too, but I'm not exactly constantly beaming with joy and excitement...  What's the difference?  They trust God better than I do.  Boom, now I know my next challenge, oh wait...


Receiving the black veil!
Yeah, so not only was it amazing to see my sister taking the next step in her vocation (after the homily she made a couple of promises - to the church, the bishop, the order, etc. - and also received the black veil), but it was amazing to realize that that supernatural joy is truly a gift from God.  Not in the sense that he only gives it to some people, but that only some people take Him up on that offer.  It was a beautiful moment, and one that I will cherish for a long time.  Mass continued as normal - at least as normal as Jesus transforming the host into Himself for our reception usually is - with no major hiccups at any point (oh, the Epistle went fine by the way).  After Mass, in another incredible blessing of the trip, we were allowed to come up to the grille in the chapel (where there is an opening for the sisters to receive Communion) and give my sister a hug.  She was still grinning, as you might imagine, and it was just a blessed moment (the first time my grandparents and uncle were able to visit her in there, so it was especially touching to see them meet her for the first time as a nun!)  After Mass, we got to converse for a bit - during which my sister spoke about her preparation for that big day, how the sisters had kept my coming to the ceremony a surprise till the last minute, and in general, everybody was able to fill each other on what had been happening and congratulate Sr. Mary Thomas (my sister's religious name) on her first profession.  We had a delicious - as usual - lunch provided by the sisters and then got to spend part of the afternoon continuing to speak with my sister. 

Who's the happiest?
I guess, I could prolong this post quite a bit further, droning on about the intricacies of what I was up to, but I won't, because the big things had already happened.  As usual, we struggled to come up with a poem to send back through the turn for the sisters...  Yep, I got to talk a lot with my sister (not another, but still) and we stayed up late catching up as a family (it felt like 5 AM to me)...  Yeah, I had another banana the next morning, and Mass was beautiful again (as was all the prayers that we were able to join the sisters for), and saying good-by to everybody was hard (though we did enjoy a 5-Guys burger before parting, which was about as American as it gets).  Of course, the flights were long (Spiderman 2 wasn't as good as I was hoping, but I got a tiny bit of sleep in and a bit of praying/reading in), and the airports somewhere between exciting and exasperating.  But the trip ended on a good note because the busses were running from the airport, and - annoyingly, but mostly amusingly - the wheel on my bag (with chocolate chips and BBQ sauce inside, among other things!) decided to self-destruct mid-way back to the NAC (approximately when I was passing St. Peter's), and, when I went over to St. Peter's for Mass (it was now Monday, because of the time-traveling that I had been doing..., so I hadn't been to Mass yet), I found that it was the funeral Mass for Cardinal Angelini.  I was pretty much a zombie standing there (I was going on 30 hours without much sleep - I would have never imagined they could make a seat as hard to fall asleep in than those on airplanes), but it was pretty obvious I was back in Rome.  Mass in St. Peter's, Swiss Guards, tourists, the mad rush for Communion, hearing Italian...  Va bene!

Super recap: Flying on planes can be fun, American food is still great, seeing the family after a couple months is even better, and God's grace in action, in my sister, is amazing!  The whole experience fit really well with Thanksgiving (which we are still celebrating here at the NAC - with tons of food, football, and the new/old-man shows); it truly reminded me what I am most thankful for.  Yep, being here in Rome is awesome, the food is great (here and back home), and I'm enjoying myself immensely, but life is about so much more than that!  It's about being thankful to God for His much more precious gifts: tremendous friends (here and in America), an amazing, loving, supportive family, and a call from God Himself, to follow Him, to love like Him, to give like Him, and thereby live with Him forever (starting now!)  Tremendous, right!  Thanksgiving indeed! 

Photos in the monastery from their website, otherwise from myself...  Please keep all the sisters in your prayers, especially as we begin the Year of Consecrated Life tomorrow (with the beginning of Advent!)
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The Diaconate Ordination - Beautiful in many ways, but God's love is more beautiful!

Well, I'm still alive and well here in Rome...  My sincere apologies for not getting anything up here for the longest time!  There has been so many things that I've wanted to blog about, and I've always started a post only to get it half-way done and then never getting it completed.  Here's hoping I can get this one done!  (I may end up doing shorter posts, hoping thereby to be able to actually get them done, rather than attempting some comprehensive, uber-detailed, bazillion-word long recounting of the past 5 weeks...)

I'm in there someplace...
So, today, at long last, was the Diaconate Ordination, during which 43 of the 4th-year men here at the NAC were ordained deacons in St. Peter's Basilica at the Altar of the Chair (far end of the Basilica, beyond the main baldicino).  Let's just put it this way; it was stupendous!  I was privileged enough to be in the choir, which meant that I was pretty close, just off to the left, of the altar.  Being a Tenor II (high-middle section of the male vocal range) meant I also had the coveted seats in the choir stalls (rather than lower and off to the side, where the view wasn't as direct).  Of course, being in that section also meant I was constantly stretching to reach the higher notes in some of the pieces, which wasn't always a problem during the many practices we had running up to the ordination (one of the reasons I've been busy), but after three hours of singing, with the only breaks being during the readings, my vocal cords were tired and my abs were sore (vocal cords because I was singing incorrectly, abs because I was constantly tensing them to give as much support as possible and I guess I haven't done enough crunches lately).  The music though, after my mistakes and cracking-voice was drowned out by the other 40-50 guys in the choir, was spectacular.  As I said, we'd been practicing a lot - and for good reason - we sang like 40 different pieces over the last week or so (there have been several different ceremonies leading up to the ordination).  However, the work, and tiredness, were completely worth it!  We got to sing Cantate Domino, the Festival Alleluia, Biebl's Ave Maria, countless chanted pieces, Dicit Mater Ejus, and many, many, other beautiful pieces! 
St. Peter's is splendid!
And, beyond the music, the ceremony itself was just amazing.  There we were, in St. Peter's Basilica, the largest Christian Church in the world, and the entire distance from the front of the main altar/baldicino, all the way around it, filling all the way to the back of the Basilica was packed with family and friends of the to-be-ordained and then, in the sanctuary, with countless priests, deacons, and bishops.  I don't know the exact numbers, but last year there were 500+ priests in attendance, and I think somebody said there were like 1800 others there as well.  Needless to say, just the location was impressive.  

But, even more amazing than that, was all these young men, on fire with God's love and putting everything on the line for Him.  I am proud to live with them!  Even in the very short time that I've gotten to meet them - most of them I don't even remember there name (yet) - I've seen over and over again that willingness to do His will, in everything, in so many instances.  Inviting us into their rooms to say hello, taking us out to breakfast (at the only American breakfast place in town - I had a bagel, with eggs and bacon, as well as a milk-shake and slice of apple pie, it was great), playing sports, leading prayer, doing Benediction, eating meals together, supporting us in Italian, recommending places to go on trips, being patient with our complete lack of knowledge of the place, just saying hello after Mass each day and totally making us feel welcome.  They are great men, and they are men working, and wanting, to be saints!  It's awesome to see!
The men prostrate after making their promises, before being ordained!

The laying on of hands!
But, even more amazing than that - yep, it's about to get even better - is the work that they are allowing God to do in them.  As I've come to realize over the past couple weeks, especially while on retreat last week, while we have to give life our best efforts - we have to grit our teeth and persevere when the going gets tough, we have to throw ourselves out there and try our hardest in sports, or studies, or friendships, or prayer - even more importantly we need to learn humility and rely on God.  Priesthood isn't about me becoming a great preacher, or an inspirational leader, or a kind pastor, or a smart theologian, it's about me becoming Christ.  And that folks, is something that is way, way beyond my capabilities.  There is no way in 4 years, or in 40 years, I can learn to teach, lead, or love like Christ.  He is the true, the ultimate, the Divine, prophet, king, and priest, and while he continues to call men to follow Him radically as priests, it is only through complete reliance, submission, and openness to Him that a man can be transformed and recreated in Christ's image.  And, in these 43 men, I see alive in front of me men who are willing to lay down their lives, not only in taking up their own crosses, their own weaknesses, their own struggles, but also willing to let Christ's cross guide, change, sanctify, and anchor them.  They are men who have learned to not rely on themselves, to not do it themselves, to not carve their own road, but to rely on Christ, to let Him work through Him, and to follow His call.  

"May God, Who has begun this work in you,
bring it to fulfilment"
Cardinal Wuerl, who ordained the men this morning, noted that the role of deacon is - as recounted in Acts - to have love and generosity of heart towards Christ and His Church.  But, this generosity isn't superficial, or dainty, it's a love that means they are willing to lay down their lives for their friends, for their greatest friend, Jesus Christ.  It is a love that means realizing that God, Who "before you were born, knew you", also knows the best plan for your life, and to have the courage to say a humble "yes" to that plan, even when you aren't quite sure what that yes means.  Those 43 men had the courage to say "yes" this morning.  They were willing to promise to be obedient, to remain celibate, to pray constantly, to, literally, conform their lives to Christ's - who is the model of obedience, celibacy, and prayerfulness - so as to serve Christ Church and His people.  This conformation (is that a word?) only happens, reminded the Cardinal, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  But, that is exactly what ordination is!  As with all the sacraments, they are God working through human actions and worldly stuff to enter the world, to pour out His grace.  Faith tells us that these men are changed forever, marked indelibly, eternally chosen - by God - to be deacons for Christ.  It's a supernatural calling, it's an amazing calling, it's a humbling calling!  

Yeah, so let's just say that this morning was great!  The music, the liturgy, the stupendous cathedral, the superb young men - they all were great (as were the snacks and socializing afterwards), but above and beyond all that (quite literally) was God's wonderful and powerful love.  Let us too, humbly, trustingly, completely, open ourselves up to God!

Yay, a post is complete!  In other news, tomorrow I'll be leaving on a trip to San Giovanni Rotundo (where St. Padre Pio was a friar, and where he is now buried), with a couple of other guys here from dioceses in Illinois.  It should be quite a lot of fun, and hopefully a prayerful trip as well.  And then - drum-roll please - on Monday classes begin at the Gregorian!  It's been a wild ride these last couple months but I think things will finally start to settle down once that all gets going (it will be a new challenge, but something that I think I will enjoy very much as well).  Please do keep me in your prayers - not only that the classes will start well, but also, and more importantly, that I'll learn to truly place myself in God's hands over these next years - and then, God willing, I'll be laying down on that floor in 3 short years giving myself to Him ever more completely!  God is good!
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Hope Springs Eternal (literally)

I have a summarized recap at the end, if this wall-of-text is too much for your little bit of free time (or limited attention span)...  :-D

Last week, on Tuesday, most of the guys at Brute (including myself), went over the St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Sunman, IN, to attend the funeral for a younger brother of one of the guys who had tragically died a few days before.  We had received word about a week before, right after the senior tribute night, and had all gone up to the chapel and prayed a divine mercy chaplet for the young man who had passed away, as well as for Joe and his family.  The funeral - like that somber night - was also a powerful moment, showing the fraternity and concern present among all of us at Brute.  It was the middle of finals week but just about every guy figured out a way to reschedule his finals for that day and cut time out of studying or sleeping in order to ride the hour and a half to be present for the funeral. 

But, that is not what this post will be about (though it could be).  What I want to talk about is what Fr. Shaun Widdington spoke on in his homily.  The Gospel was about the death of Lazarus and how Jesus waited 3 days before coming to Bethany and raising Lazarus from the dead.  Father spoke on how often-times in the midst of loss, or pain, or suffering (of all kinds, but especially the poignant suffering that accompanies the death of someone we love) we feel like Jesus isn't there, or we don't understand why such-and-such a loss has befallen us, or we think that there is no purpose for this suffering.  As Father explained it, often-times in this life we find ourselves on Holy Saturday.  We often live through excruciatingly painful moments, our own Good Friday's, but we are unable to find hope, or purpose, or God, in that moment.  And then Father said something profound (for me), he said that Jesus Christ is our hope, in His resurrection we find the promise of our own resurrection, in his coming back to life we find God's promise to those who love Him of eternal life.  This wasn't profound because I didn't know it, rather, it deeply impacted me because it reminded me that our hope must be in God, in eternity.  Often I want to figure out how suffering in this life can be transformed, and thus eliminated, and surely that is a possibility - the cross is our standard of victory precisely because through the cross Jesus conquered sin and death and ransomed us so that we can become sons/daughters of God - but sometimes suffering doesn't seem to have a point, oftentimes we can't see how God can bring good out of suffering.  Father, in his homily, reminded me that as humans we often can't find the good in a particular event - we can't see how the untimely, unexpected death of a young man can possibly fit into God's plan or how He could possibly bring good out of it.  Our sight is limited, even when we look at the cross and see how God brought good out of it, we glance back at our own lives and still feel lost, forgotten, even abandoned.  Father reminded me (and I needed that reminder) that our hope must - in the end - rest in heaven.  Sometimes we will never understand why some suffering, or some difficulty, or some loss has happened to us, at least not until heaven.

Why is this?  Why do we sometimes find ourselves in the darkness of suffering and can't feel the light of Christ?  Well, this morning in the office of readings I was confronted with precisely that question.  The first psalm (Psalm 44) talks of trusting in God:
It was you who saved us from our foes, it was you who put our foes to shame. All day long our boast was in God, and we praised your name without ceasing.
But then in the second psalm the psalmist finds himself lost, seemingly abandoned by God:
Yet now you have rejected us, disgraced us: you no longer go forth with our armies. You make us retreat from the foe and our enemies plunder us at will. You make us like sheep for the slaughter and scatter us among the nations. 
And in the 3rd psalm his confusion grows worse because he have been faithful, he hasn't forgotten God, yet he feels crushed beneath the oppression, suffering, and death experienced in this world:

This befell us though we had not forgotten you; though we had not been false to your covenant, though we had not withdrawn our hearts; though our feet had not strayed from your path. Yet you have crushed us in a place of sorrows and covered us with the shadow of death. Had we forgotten the name of our God or stretched out our hands to another god[.] Would not God have found this out, he who knows the secrets of the heart? It is for you that we face death all day long and are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Awake, O Lord, why do you sleep? Arise, do not reject us for ever! Why do you hide your face and forget our oppression and misery? For we are brought down low to the dust; our body lies prostrate on the earth. Stand up and come to our help! Redeem us because of your love!
Sometimes we feel the same way.  Life is going along smoothly, our relationship with God is alive and well, we are progressing in virtue, filled with His joy, and then something terrible, painful, or difficult happens and we feel like we've lost contact with God, we can no longer see His plan in the midst of the suffering that has afflicted us, or worse, we feel abandoned or forgotten by God.  

As I was reading these psalms, my mind went back to the homily that Father gave at the funeral, and how he ended with the difficult truth that true happiness is only found in the next life.  Sometimes we can't understand suffering.  Sometimes things do look hopeless, but Christ calls us to continue hoping in Him.  Sometimes we are stuck on Holy Saturday for a long time, sometimes the tomb looks sealed, and no matter what we do we just can't figure out where God's plan is at.  This is the problem of evil, the question that we have of how God - if He is good - can allow bad things to happen to us.  We can philosophically say that evil exists because of free will - we bring it upon ourselves.  We can theologically say that God loves us so much that He was willing to give us free will - knowing that we would sin, bringing that suffering upon ourselves - and suffer and die to bring us back to Himself.  We can spiritually say that suffering comes from our lack of love of God - of choosing something else over Him, which will never fill the need we have for God, and thus, we experience pain.  But sometimes those explanations don't seem to cut it.  Sometimes we can't figure out why a certain loss - maybe the death of a loved one, or an illness, or a spiritual emptiness - has befallen us and we certainly can't see how God can bring good out of it.  

In this difficulty the answer is again found in Christ's resurrection.  In this time after Easter, when we get to constantly celebrate the awesomeness of the resurrection, we are called to remember the entire paschal mystery, Christ's passion, death, and resurrection.  They all go together, and they all point us towards our hope that is in eternal life with Him.  We aren't promised earthly happiness, actually we are asked to pick up our cross, but - if we are faithful - we are promised eternal happiness in heaven.  The wonderful truth of Christianity is that we are made for a happiness which only is found beyond this world.  As Augustine says, our hearts are restless until they rest in God; no earthly pleasures, or stuff, or peace, will ever be enough for us.  Even if we could avoid earthly suffering (which we can't), we are made for something more, we are made in the image and likeness of God and He offers us eternal bliss with Him, not anywhere else.   But this promise of future happiness is precisely something in the future, and the road there may be twisted and rocky.  Sometimes following Christ seems easy, fun, and exciting,but sometimes it is not - the road is often narrow.  

In all of this it seems difficult to remain positive, but we must always remember that our hope is in God, not ourselves.  If we rely on ourselves to figure out why some suffering has struck us, at some point we won't be able to figure it out and then we are left in despair.  But this despair is exactly what happens when we lose hope in Christ.  Hoping in Him, in his promise of eternal life and eternal happiness, requires us to not rely only on ourselves and to trust in God.  God promises us an eternal, complete, beyond-this-world happiness, and that requires that we trust in God, who is beyond this world.  You can't have it both ways; you can't have eternal happiness in a temporal world; you can't accept the gift of Heaven if you think you can create it for yourself on earth.  Earthly suffering can be transformed when we view it with the eyes of faith, but it also can be accepted - even when we don't see how it can be transformed - through that same faith which shows us the beautiful promise of heaven.  

Look at Mary.  She is a humble, beautiful, and holy young lady, and then an angel appears to her and asks her to become the mother of God.  She doesn't understand, yet she accepts (trusting in God, not herself).  And despite this intense trust that she shows to God - beyond anything any of us have ever done - she experiences a life that is chock full of terrible sufferings.  She is told that sword will pierce her heart, she has to flee into Egypt to escape Herod, she loses her Son in the temple, she watchers her Son get beaten, condemned to die, carrying the cross, and then crucified, she is at the foot of the cross, watching the life drain from her divine Son, and then He dies.  Her grief is impossible to contemplate, her pain, difficult to think about.  Of course, her life wasn't all pain and suffering - surely there were moments of peace, love, happiness, fun, etc. - but what I realized was that Mary, the holiest human ever (besides Jesus), wasn't exempt from the sufferings that afflict us all, if anything, she experienced more of them.  What gives?  That doesn't make sense to us.  

But if we look at the entire picture, including eternity, we suddenly find hope, and joy, and happiness again.  Despite all that pain, what is Mary given? - the queen-ship of heaven and the most perfect joy - having both body and soul - in paradise forever!  For a long time I didn't really know why the last two glorious mysteries of the rosary - the assumption and coronation of Mary - were there.  Yeah, they were teachings of the church, but they didn't seem to fit into the scope of the other mysteries, which are all about Jesus' redemption of mankind.  But now I have realized that it is in the light of the assumption and coronation that we realize the scope and grandeur of heaven that is bought for us through Christ's incarnation, passion, and resurrection.  Mary, as always, brings us closer to Christ!  In her, we see - in its entirety - Christ's promise of eternal life.  We are called to the same trust and faith in God - even in the midst of intense sufferings - that Mary had.  We are promised the same intense joy - if we remain faithful - that Mary has.  

Now, looking back through this post, there is some sense that this is a bit of a downer.  There is something very enticing about the Gospel of prosperity that claims that Jesus came so that we might have earthly wealth and happiness.  But if we really think about it, salvation must be so much more than that.  If salvation was all about bringing us earthly joy then it isn't very valuable - we can try to get earthly joy on our own, without God becoming man.  No, salvation involves saving us from sin, and death, and hatred - not from earthly troubles.  Salvation is a promise of perfect happiness, not the imperfect kind that we try to find on earth.  Now, this isn't to say that suffering and pain are good things; certainly they aren't; they came with the fall.  But, the paschal mystery invites us to lift our gaze, to have hope in the eternal life prepared for us, to see that the "life in abundance" promised us by Christ is so much more than earthly abundance.

Alright, time for a recap and conclusion:  Sometimes we find ourselves on our own Holy Saturday.  We experience loss, pain, hatred, doubt, or death and we don't know why.  Of course, we can always offer it up, and try to grow to love God more though it, but sometimes even that doesn't make it any easier to bear.  Sometimes we feel empty, abandoned, forgotten by God - we feel despair - and we don't know what to do.  But in those moments, above all, we must remain steadfast in our hope of eternal life.  Sometimes we will experience earthly suffering, and often those struggles won't go away; we can't see how God could transform them into something good.  In those moments, we must lift our eyes to the promise of life to come, to the eternal happiness that awaits us if we keep the faith.  Yes, struggles will beset us - and sometimes they don't go away (at least, for a long time), but through it all we must struggle to be like Mary, trusting through everything, knowing that God promises those who love Him bliss in heaven, not on earth.  

Now, all that said, don't think I'm experiencing some terrible crisis or anguish or something - I am doing just great at the moment (having fun with the family, planning for vacation, getting stuff ready for the NAC, etc.), but over the last week or so I have continuously been struck with ideas regarding the fact that our hope must be in heaven, not in ourselves, or on earth.  But, God gives us this hope in an incredible way.   As the prayer for the end of the Office of Readings for today says: 
God our Father, life of the faithful, glory of the humble, happiness of the just, hear our prayer.  Fill our emptiness with the blessing of the Eucharist, the foretaste of eternal joy.  We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and  reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. 
Our hope, then, isn't even as far removed as Heaven.  Jesus gives us His divine hope, and love, and joy in giving us Himself in the Blessed Sacrament.  This is the promise of eternal life, and the gift of that divine life into our souls, and that which gives us strength for the journey...  Yeah, the Eucharist is everything, because it is Jesus Himself.  Struggling? - spend an hour gazing at our Lord in the Eucharist.  Empty? - receive the fount of all grace in Holy Communion.  Hurting? - accept the token of Jesus' immense love for you in His Body and Blood.  Happy? - thank the Lord of joy for that gift.  Does the Eucharist take away suffering? - nope, but it gives us the strength to carry our crosses, the joy of intimate union with Christ, and the hope of eternal life with Him forever.  

And that's all for now!  Thanks for reading!
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Faith - Part 2, After a little more experience

This semester, like all my previous ones here, is absolutely flying past.  The days are blurring into weeks and the weeks are quickly becoming months.  It's awesome, because the reason for this "warp-speed" semester is that I am constantly doing something, and, to be quite honest, I'm enjoying every bit of it.  But, it is also scary because this is my last semester in college (and college-seminary) and that means that next semester I'll be moving onto the next stage of seminary - theology - and it also means that I am quite possibly only 4 years away from ordination.  Is that exciting? - for sure!  But it is also scary.  I've come a long way since entering seminary (an incredibly long way), but I am nowhere near ready - humanly, spiritually, pastorally, or academically - to be a priest.  Yeah, I'm 4 years off - I still have time - but the more I'm in seminary the more I realize that this is not about me.  Everything I am experiencing is making me better, more balanced, more educated, more confident, more loving, and more self-knowledgeable.  I am having a blast with everything - every day brings new challenges, new adventures, and new knowledge - all things that aid me in the process of self-growth.  However, the more important thing that I am learning is total reliance on God - completely giving myself to Him.  The thing is that being a priest isn't about being a great version of myself, but conforming myself more and more to Christ.  Obviously, becoming more like Christ means becoming better myself (because He is the epitome and perfection of what it means to be a man), and being a priest doesn't mean losing one's specific, unique, personality, traits, talents, and what-not.  But it does mean directing oneself completely to Christ and for Christ.  It means trusting Him completely in everything, in having that childlike faith.

When I first entered seminary, I think I was under the impression that I was pretty good.  I mean, I knew that I had things to learn, places that I could grow, areas that I needed to work on, but I almost always thought about it as me working on these things - if I put in enough effort in all these areas I'd eventually make myself capable of being a priest.  Well, long story, that's something that seminary quickly made me rethink.  Philosophy is great, it allows you to explain things and understand things that I had no conception of before studying it.  It also makes you think about things more logically, more reasonably, more completely, but one thing it can't do is replace faith.  This is something that I have been especially struggling with over the last semester or two, but haven't been able to put into words really.  About a year ago I did a post about faith (part one) and skimming back through it I think I did a pretty good job of explaining the virtue.  But looking back, at the time I had never struggled with faith, it was just something that I had been blessed to have.  Now, for whatever reason, it isn't nearly as easy.  

In one of my philosophy classes, the professor has reiterated again and again that humans are unique in that we have intellect and will.  Some really basic definitions: intellect is our capacity for reason, will our capacity to choose.   He keeps teaching that becoming excellent (virtuous) means perfecting both of these powers of ourselves.  Intellect is perfected through learning and reasoning - in other words, everything I am learning in school plus the common sense and practical wisdom that I learn in everyday life.  Will, however, isn't nearly as easy to perfect.  It requires not only choosing to do good and avoid evil (hard enough, right), but also to choose to accept those things that are beyond our intellect.  We have to consciously choose to accept, for instance, the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Resurrection.  These kinds of things, what Aquinas calls the articles of faith, can't be proven by reason.  Certainly, they aren't irrational (contrary to our intelligence), but we can't rationally show that God became man, or that God is three persons.  We can think about them in such a way to know that they aren't impossible - as in, we can know that God is loving and all powerful, so He is certainly capable (and it makes some sense) that He would become a man to redeem us.  But, there is always some sense that these truths of faith are beyond our reason.  Without God revealing these truths we would never have known them.  

Alright, back to where I was going originally.  Rationally, I understand that there are certain things, Aquinas calls them the preambles of faith, that we can figure out about God using only our reason - thing like God being perfect, good, simple, eternal, etc. - and rationally, I know that the mysteries of faith aren't irrational, they make some sense.  However, it isn't easy to connect these rational arguments in my intellect to my will, to believe them out of faith, to hold them in my heart.  I have relied on myself - my ability to grow, my ability to know, my ability to overcome - so much that I have, to some extent, forgotten just how important it is to rely on God, to just accept some things on faith.  In class, when we're talking about the will, it seems so easy to choose to accept the truths of the faith.  To decide that I will believe.  But then I get to Mass and it's so hard to believe, so hard to just accept, so hard to not rely on my reason, my knowledge, my senses, and just accept, just trust, just abandon myself completely to God.

 Thankfully, there are a bunch of saints who have struggled with the same sort of thing.  Peter doesn't just waver in His commitment to Christ (like most of the other apostles) he denies Him.   Thomas the Apostle doesn't believe that Jesus rose from the dead until he saw it with his own eyes.  Blessed Mother Theresa, famously, struggled to feel God's presence throughout most of her "career", while living one of the greatest witnesses of Christianity that the modern world has seen (of course there are other great such witnesses, but her's always seems to stick out).  Now, by bringing up these examples, don't think I'm experiencing some huge crisis of faith but, I do think they are inspiring examples of how faith sometimes is tough, but sticking with it leads to even greater sanctity later on.  Our Lord offers St. Peter the chance at reconciliation - which he accepts - and keeps him as head of His church.  Jesus comes directly to St. Thomas, offering proof that He did rise from the dead and this apostle goes on to preach the Gospel as far as India.  Blessed Mother Theresa, as mentioned, despite her doubts, lived one of the saintliest lives of the last few centuries.

 One more Biblical example, then onto a conclusion for this post!  A few weeks back, and again recently, the ending of the Gospel of Matthew jumped out at me:
"Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.  And Jesus came and said to them, "all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." [Matthew 28:16-20]
Here are the apostles, all having already met Jesus after His resurrection, and yet in what would be their last meeting with Him (on earth), they still doubted.  And despite their doubt, despite their reservations about worshiping Jesus, He still gives them the mission to found His church, proclaim His message.  I heard a talk once in which it was mentioned that Jesus didn't have a plan B, He entrusted the gospel of salvation, and the grace that He had just won on the cross, to 11 bumbling, arguing, doubting, guys.  Doesn't look like it will work does it?  Yet it does, and the Church continues to this day.

 Back onto topic: I just got an email from Ignatius Press which had a quote from G.K. Chesterton: "A Catholic is a person who has plucked up courage to face the incredible and inconceivable idea that something else may be wiser than he is." [The Well and the Shallows]  That, precisely, is the idea that I have been trying to outline in this post.  It hit me at Mass a few days ago - I was serving (something that I usually get to do when I am home on break) and right at the Consecration I just prayed that I have the faith and trust in God to submit my intellect, my reason, to His.  Seriously, there is no way I will ever be able to prove the Eucharist.  There is no test - scientific, philosophical, whatever - through which I can prove that Our Lord is present - Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity - in the Blessed Sacrament.  Still, this lack of evidence isn't proof that He is present there, just that He is beyond me, and all my empirical abilities.  This realization isn't easy, and it isn't easy to carry it into the rest of my faith life, because - as humans - we really want to rely on ourselves, our rationality, our abilities, our technology, but the message of Christianity is precisely the call to go beyond that - to believe in God becoming man, to believe that God loves us so much that He is willing to die for us, to believe that He wants to give Himself to us so much that He becomes present in what looks, and tastes, and feels like bread.  That's tough!  That's faith!

 Now, of course I don't want to just end on this note saying that faith is hard, that just isn't very helpful...  This Sunday we hear of the Transfiguration, which in Mark's gospel is immediately followed by the story of Jesus healing the boy with the evil spirit (we'll hear the story from St. Matthew's Gospel, but it turned out to be a great segue into what I wanted to say):
"and someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.”  And he answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to me. And they brought the boy to him. And when the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth.  And Jesus asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood.  And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”  And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”  Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!”  And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”  And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.”  But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.  And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”  And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” [Mark 9:17-29]
Sorry, that is a pretty long passage, but it makes precisely the point that I wanted to conclude with.  Faith, as you know, is a theological virtue, it's something that we receive from God at Baptism; we can't acquire it on our own.  This is exactly the thing that I am finally realizing in seminary - that I can't do it all on my own, that I can't prove everything with my own reason - and this is exactly what the distraught father in this Gospel has realized in his prayer: "I believe, help my unbelief!"   This prayer is what I have been especially praying this Lent, that I can become more reliant on God and less on myself, that He might increase and I decrease.  As I began this post, this is exactly what being in seminary is all about, but now I have realized that the all-important bit here is prayer.  The increase of faith, the greater trust and reliance in God, all comes along with prayer.  The man in this story, by his very prayer - "I believe, help my unbelief!" - indicates his humility, his willingness, to completely abandon himself to Jesus.  Of course, prayer isn't magic, it doesn't just increase faith spontaneously, but it is precisely through prayer that we make ourselves open to receiving the grace of faith.   

 Of course, this grace is most profoundly received in the Eucharist.  Here, though appearing like bread, we receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  This is the fount of all grace, the greatest gift that Jesus died to give us, and this must be the source of our faith.  I guess I previously kind of forgot that the Eucharist, while, of course, being the Body of Christ, is also the food for our journey, the sustenance that supports us on throughout this life.  I was like, gosh Lord, I'm sorry that I am struggling to believe, help my unbelief...  But then I realized that thinking of the Eucharist only in terms of how difficult it was to believe at times was missing the point.  The Eucharist is not only the true presence of Our Lord, but it is also the source of that Faith for which I was longing.  The Faith is not only about the Eucharist, but is also supplied by the Eucharist.  With that realization, I have found myself making progress, my faith is strengthening, I am finding it easier to place my trust, and my future, in the Lord.  His call to "be not afraid!" continues to ring true despite the times when I doubt it.  Am I ready to finish this semester, to move onto major seminary, to become a priest? - of course not.  But with His strength, courage, grace, love, commitment, hope, and everything else, I am confident that all will be well. 

 Like the Apostles at the Transfiguration, it is good that we are here, it is good to have those moments when our Faith is strengthened so that we can remain strong when things aren't going as well, when the world distracts or discourages us.  

 Stay strong folks!  
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