Mark 10

Here's one of my short reflections for my final essays for Fr. Dunne's class. It's on the end of Mark 10, one of my favorites from the Bible...

On a week-long summer conference called Catholics on Call, I heard the words of Mark’s Gospel anew. For one of our masses, we had the Gospel reading that comes from the end of Mark 10. It tells the story of a blind man who calls out to Jesus for healing. At first, many around him rebuke him and tell him to pipe down, and the disciples appear to pay no attention to his calls. However, Jesus stops in his tracks and requests that the disciples go get the man. Mark 10:49 sums up the power of this Gospel reading for me: “Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’ So they called the blind man, saying to him, ‘Take courage; get up, he is calling you.’”

The reading continues with another great line from Jesus: He asks the man point blank, “what do you want me to do for you?” It is a powerful moment, especially considering the lowliness of the man and the reality that he was nearly ignored and passed over by the contingent. However, if we are to place ourselves in the story and consider such an encounter with Jesus, I do not even get to the point of answering Jesus’ question. I could certainly give Him a decent, truthful answer, but before I can face Jesus’ question, I first have to listen to the disciples, who very well might have been miffed that they had to stop their journey and retrieve this wretched man from the crowd. They take him and, in what I interpret as a rather forceful and stern exhortation, tell him to find courage, get on his feet, and answer the call of Jesus.

Whoa! This is a big step. Many of us believe we have firm, strong faith and actually try hard to answer Christ’s call. But there is always the lingering wonders about what we would actually do in such a situation. This passage invites us to such reflection. Rather than obsessing over what I would ask Jesus to grant me, I reflect on the strength asked of us if we are to face Jesus and present our wants and needs, which we should be doing in prayer anyway.

This man models the correct response. He jumps to his feet in joy, asks Jesus to cure his blindness, and Jesus heals him. The affirmation to his response is that Jesus tells him, “your faith has saved you” (Mark 10:52). This man has stood up on his faith and found salvation from blindness and the fullness of true salvation in Christ. What an example he is for us! I loved the disciples’ exhortation so much that I put it on a t-shirt. Take courage. Stand up. He is calling you.

Advent Reflection

Here is the reflection I gave at a prayer service earlier tonight. It's based on Matthew 11:2-11.

Matthew offers a lot to our advent prayer in this passage. To tap into the message of hope we hear in the Gospel, let’s work backwards through this narrative. Jesus’ words at the end of the passage praise John as a great prophet but place the least of the Kingdom of God above John. John was the last in a long line of prophets dating back through Moses and ancient Israel. The prophets brought God’s message to His Chosen People and are revered for the mediation that God entrusted to them. This all changed with Christ: He didn’t just bring God’s message and mediate on God’s behalf—Jesus brought God to humanity as a human. Through Himself, Jesus Christ brought the Kingdom into our midst, concluding the era of the Prophets and initiating the era of the Kingdom. John was the one to finish the prophets’ work, preparing the way for the Lord, and Christ came to renew His people and invite all of us into this Kingdom, where He offers the God who is Love to us in the most accessible way.

Earlier in the Gospel, the messengers from John the Baptist want to know if Jesus is this One who John is prophesying. Jesus points to the works he has wrought in His ministry: healing the blind, infirmed, leprous, and deaf; proclaiming the good news; and, raising the dead. Pretty impressive stuff. I’d say that’s a yes, Jesus is this guy John is talking about. Jesus also adds to his catalogue of credentials, “And blessed is the one who takes no offense at me.” Hmm…

Let’s backtrack to the start of the passage. John has to send messengers to check in on this other prophet because he himself is in jail—King Herod locks John away for his criticism of the king’s relations with his sister-in-law. John’s sentence is unjust, and he is eventually beheaded at the pleasure of the royal court. But let’s focus on the captivity in this passage. John cannot discern the identity of this Jesus character because he is behind bars. The struggles of life hold us back from taking no offense in Christ and our practiced faith.

What are the things that we do that prevent us from seeing Jesus first-hand? For most of us, a lot of it has to do with busy-ness. We don’t make our faith a high enough priority in the busy schedules of our lives. We might make time for Sunday mass or a weekly hour-long Emmaus meeting, but our hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute faith so often becomes virtually Christ-less. We are held captive by the hecticness of life.

What stops us from seeing Christ for ourselves? For me, I struggle to actively place Christ in the minute-by-minute. The place where I can see it most is in relationships and the way people interact. The love of Christ comes alive in the opportunities we have in our daily encounters with one another, and nothing invites another's love more than to take the initiative in loving. I think it’s interesting to consider John’s messengers here. They go seeking confirmation from Jesus but return with the Word as missionaries.

It is up to us to know when to lean on our friends and family and fellow Christians to be the messenger-missionaries that share their witness of Christ with us to nourish our spirits. Along with the liturgy and its Word and Eucharist, our fellow believers and us come together through prayer like this and faith-sharing groups like our Emmaus communities to continue deepening our faith as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Advent is the time of preparatory waiting when we re-recognize the Incarnation, the coming of Christ, God becoming one of us. In this beautiful narrative of birth of a son to a compassionate carpenter and his mysteriously virgin wife, our hope is born in Christ. Let us appreciate the hope Christ brings and continue to explore the depth of mystery in His Word through our work together. May we take apart the prison bars holding us captive from fuller faith and look to the healing, good news, and resurrection—the hope—in Christ.

We're all trying.

As this semester draws to a close, it's clear to me how reflective it has been for me. Unfortunately, I have gotten to far into my head where my thought falls away from reflection and even further from prayer to being just thought. It loses too much of its transcendence and perspective.

I'm too quick to dive into the deep ends of my head when taking in my life that my experiences can hardly even happen before I'm overanalyzing them. It's frustrating and definitely not something I like about my current self.

Some of it will be eased by unplugging from the rigors of college life, which really kicks up a notch each year with the depths of commitment one layers upon himself. Falling gently and trustingly back into the embrace of family and the home I grew up in, even if it isn't as much home as it used to be because of the ways I've grown in other settings, is renewing and nourishing.

But upon return, just like coming back from any retreat, it will require some conscious effort and the right levels of being loose and easy to walk the path towards firmer peace.

The constant amid it all that keeps me riding steady and high, even if that has been slightly lower this semester, is my faith: the underlying prevalence of prayer (that should be more in the foreground), the regularity of weekly Adoration to reground myself in/with Christ, the community of the Folk Choir, the nourishment of the mass.

It is really in the mass that I have found most solace in this kind of lull. The thing I wish most about my spirituality is for a better ability to place Christ in the people and actions that make up my life and this world. The Body of Christ enfleshed in all of us as we gather for the mass is a beautiful opportunity for this.

As I look around at the people, as my increasingly well-informed and -formed mind takes in the positives and negatives of the liturgy I participate in, I am keenly aware of my own imperfections as well as all those swirling around me. And amid the depth of mystery and magnitude of love present in it all, I can't help but settle on a simple reality: We're all trying.

We might be lapsed in so many aspects of life and lived faith and spirituality, but something brings us to the mass. And for better or worse, we participate--lacklusterly, exhaustedly, emptily, blindly, rotely, or any other seemingly negative word one could conjure. But we're there. We come. We are drawn to Christ, in whatever imperfect liturgy or congregation or practice we have.

The Church is our outlet for seeking the fullness of Christ amid the imperfections of human effort. No matter what we do in our limited capacities to muddle the fullness of God, God still offered Himself fully in the Incarnation and Cross as God-become-man, and that offer continues forever. We find it in the Eucharist, in each other, in the Church. Look around your classroom or chapel or church--we're all trying in some capacity.

No matter the imperfections we embody each time we come together for mass or even just in the encounters with each other every day: whether consciously or unconsciously, we offer our broken selves up for renewal in the Eucharist, and Christ comes, without our meriting it, and offers to make us whole again.

We might not know exactly what we are doing; we might know exactly what we are doing. But somehow, in living and practicing our faith, we are trying. And God loves me. God loves us.

A little library of thoughts...

This morning during class, I had another instance of a thought that comes into my head from time to time. Fr. Dunne was working through one of my favorites lectures of his so far on the vulnerable-izing of the heart that occurs when you let another in, and he was working through the reintegration of the heart after that vulnerability ends in the loss or death of the other.

He pointed to the story of Solomon, which he told us from memory is found is 1 Kings 3. God asks Solomon what Solomon wants from God, and Solomon asks for an "understanding heart". Because of his humility, God gives him the wisdom of heart he requests and also the other more superficial things he resisted the temptation to ask for. This story fit our day's lecture beautifully, and I enjoyed the simplicity and centeredness of Solomon's reply.

As I soaked in the relevance of the story to myself and what we were discussing, I thought, why don't we trace back to these OT stories more often? We already have a tendency as Catholics to leave the Scripture for the first half of mass, and even then, we tend to focus on the epistle and Gospel (at least in my experience).

I would like a greater biblical literacy, especially in the OT, and I had the recurring thought to start reading the Bible cover-to-cover. I've come across a few people who have tried it, and I admire their efforts.

It'd be long and arduous but could be super-rewarding. As usual when this thought comes in, I considered it but nixed it, knowing I'd get into routine, rote reading and drag my feet. I haven't abandoned the idea, but I feel like I'd underappreciate it. (still gonna think about it because maybe I just need to do it and let it be whatever it is...)

Either way, I wish I had better OT knowledge. I wish I had taken OT here at Notre Dame; I wish theology required both scripture courses instead of one or the other. I wish I knew more stories intimately than the few like Solomon's prayer, the call of Samuel, and the small voice of God to Elijah in the mountainside. These stories open up a different perspective of God from the ancient Israelite perspective that can be so illuminative and supplements the bloc of NT stories (which are probably too few in quantity and quality in my conscience as well).

An interesting point popped out at me from Commonweal magazine after I sat down to read after class. A review of a comic-book form of Genesis opened with a striking conversation on the Bible that tangented from my thoughts during class:

"Despite our increasing unfamiliarity with its content, the Bible is constantly being punted between righty and lefty ideologues, atheists and believers, creationists and those who understand Genesis (for starts) as didactic fiction. What we think the Bible says is not half as important to us as what we judge others to think it says."

As the place of the Bible in public education is argued and secular interpretations of the Bible or even de-faith-ed historical-critical methods rise, so often the commentary of the Bible is directed to others and to what it is not.

I hope to stem my shortcomings in contributing to that. I am working with some guys in my dorm to solidify a weekly Bible-study/faith-sharing "Emmaus" group. I am loving my work on the Gospel of Luke and the idea of the Kingdom of God in Jesus' preaching/Luke's account of it. I am digging into the Apocalypse of John next semester in a grad-school-level class.

However, I know I have to get beyond just classroom stuff and keep bringing the Bible with me in life. Stuff like Emmaus is a good start; grounding liturgy planning on the readings keeps it going. Catholics must work to stay close to the two legs of the Church's teaching: Tradition and Scripture.

PS: This is the 50th post in just over a year of keeping this blog. Thank you so much to all of you who read and share the posts others. I thank God and all of you for being with me as I post these reflections.

Blogging on Blogging

Here is a candid, personal, unfiltered portion of my essay for Fr. Dunne's class. It is the last part of an essay talking about how a "spiritual journey" is my way of making death a fulfillment of life. This part talks about my love of writing and the joys and dangers of writing regularly/keeping this blog. I want to thank you all for reading as much as you do and for sharing the thoughts here with others. God bless you! ...

The most personally nourishing thing I do is write. I find happiness and joy in the sacraments, liturgies, and tradition of the Church, in the outlets for personal piety to practice my spirituality and faith, and through my relationships with wonderful people that uphold my life as beacons of Christ’s love. However, when it comes to what I do myself, how I use my gifts and all that I am, I feel most engaged and sure when I am doing spiritual writing. I do not really keep a regular journal. However, occasionally, I will make a note to myself, wait for it to fester a bit in my head, and then find some time to flesh it out in a short essay and post it to my blog.

I love the opportunity to sit down with a thought or a reflection progression and put effort into pinning down the essence of what is brewing within me. The process of moving from more general, abstract reflection toward the ownership that comes with articulation is a welcome challenge for me. I differ from Lewis in that I target no segment or part of any audience (his was the general Christian public), but I am like him in that I will explore whatever comes into my being and present it publicly, to anyone who is interested, using whatever terms I can conjure up.

I realize that the things central to the faith are complex and literally are mysteries; ergo, I never seek or claim to give definitive, final answers to anything. I do not venture into polemics or apologetics too much, but I simply try to give unfiltered, first-hand thoughts of a conscientious Catholic Christian taking in the full scope of his life. The top of my blog is subtitled with a quote that I pulled from Origen in which he seeks to remind himself of the “John the Baptist” kind of idea but in a way re-crafted to speak to writers: “The spoken word, even if it is true in itself and very persuasive, is not sufficient to affect a human soul unless some power is also given by God to the speaker and grace is added to what is said. It is only by God's gift that this power is possessed by those whose preaching is successful” (Origen, Contra Celsum, 6.2).

I am blessed, humbled, and excited to have a pretty solid readership. Through some word of mouth, including a link in my e-mail signature, and posting links on my Facebook page, many friends, family, acquaintances, and even strangers read my blog and take in my thoughts. I see this as an opportunity and do not abuse my privilege: I strive for quality over quantity; I do not push an agenda or self-promote; I keep my writing centered on Christ, the Church, and Christianity. I thank God for the compliments and comments I receive, but I need to ground my actual work more concretely in prayer so that my writing pours forth from me in the most intentional way.

In addition to that, more profound dangers exist as possible traps. The quest for deeper understanding and for real articulation of belief is right and good. However, the danger grows when it becomes something insisted upon, when the centrality of mystery is jeopardized. Ultimately, I must remember that the Christian faith is founded on mysteries and miracles—the Incarnation and Resurrection are real, historical events that allow us amazing access to the God that is Love, but I must always remember the ultimate transcendence of these things that are the foundation of my faith. I am committed to that deep in my heart, but the trouble arises when I am treating the things that are less clearly mystery, the secondary and simpler things. The reality that human reason is limited and needs faith with it is what will keep me humble and grounded as I write about my ongoing spiritual journey.

The greatest danger that increasingly troubles me is the pervasiveness of my reflection. Taking time to be with oneself and with God, before God, is of utmost importance and is the crux of a life of prayer. The problem for me comes in naturally, instinctively, without prompting myself, reflecting on everything, almost instantaneously. It inhibits me from being fully present to moments as they happen and moves me into processing-reflecting mode before the moment has even passed. It troubles me when I can tell in a moment that I have already moved on from it as it is still happening. I have found greater peace and remedy in engaging myself with people and moments in order to not retreat so quickly into that place of reflection. When I am paying good attention to the people I am with and residing in a ministry of presence, I let the reflection wait until later on, when there is actual experience to reflect upon.

Christ's Inculturating

In my World Christianity class, we have talked a lot about the process of inculturation, which is basically the process by which Christianity engages a culture and seeks to incorporate some of its customs, rituals, etc.

This semester's class load has been a wonderful synthesis of learning between World Christianity, my Theology of Benedict XVI class (Benedict writes a lot on modernization, secularization, relativity, and much more), and my poli-sci class on Globalization. The crossovers have been wonderful, and I enjoy when each class doesn't have to be isolated to a corner of my brain.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and go after a crossover that might be a bit of a stretch but cool to consider nonetheless...

The Incarnation--God becoming man as Jesus Christ the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit and the motherhood of Mary and establishing for us the Church as an eschatological and social institution for His believers--is the first and ideal form of inculturation... eh? eh?

My basis: another crossover--my work on the Kingdom of God, especially in the Gospel of Luke, has made me really sensitive to any considerations of the Kingdom. Maybe I was just oblivious before, but the Kingdom is everywhere in theology, more so than I previously imagined.

My sensitivity to the Kingdom piqued my attention when reading Benedict's treatment of the Our Father. Scrutinizing each part of the prayer, Benedict's attention to "on earth as it is in heaven" opened up a new idea for me. Here's the bit that got me:

"[W]here God's will is done is heaven. The essence of heaven is oneness with God's will, the oneness of will and truth. Earth becomes 'heaven' when and insofar as God's will is done there; and it is merely 'earth', the opposite of heaven, when and insofar as it withdraws from the will of God. This is why we pray that it may be on earth as it is in heaven--that earth may become 'heaven'." (Jesus of Nazareth, p. 147-148)

The way that we most profoundly and effectively have access to God is through Jesus Christ, the Son, who became flesh, who walked where we walked, who did the same things God asks us to do, the reason why we sing, "Let us go, where he has gone, rest and reign with him in heaven." (Jesus Lives, a Folk Choir favorite).

Christ invites us into our earthly mission--love, in both suffering and triumph--and to our eternal salvation with Him in Heaven. The beauty of His love, of our Incarnational Christology, and of the Trinitarian God that reigns in Heaven, came to earth, dwells with us as Spirit--all of this has come to us in fullness through Christ.

Meanwhile, we endure, seeking to love and serve Him through the Church, the bride of Christ that is the fullest means to salvation. The Church was instituted by Christ and left in the hands of Peter and his successors under the guidance of God's Holy Spirit. The Church is not the Kingdom, but it is an eschatological reality that unites us with Christ in anticipation of the fullness of heaven. The Church is how we manifest our faith and our Tradition and "do this is memory" of Christ.

Christ came from heaven and engaged the culture of earth. It is by His Incarnation, ministry, Passion, and Resurrection that we have gained the fullness of Truth. The human, earthly culture has the fruits of Christ's presence. It is up to us to incorporate the elements of heavenly culture into what we practice on earth.

The basic way we can do that is through the mass, in which we praise God with the angels and celebrate the Paschal feast with the high priests and heavenly choirs that we hear in the Book of Revelation. Branching out from the Word and Sacrament, our Church seeks to make real and evident the power of Christ.

It is up to us to consider the heavenly elements of our faith and our Church. Only if we truly believe that the Church can prefigure heaven will this become more strongly realized, for it is only inasmuch as we do God's will on earth that we experience heaven in this life. So may we go where He has gone, both on earth and in heaven, and enter the cultural exchange between earth and Our Father in heaven.

Stand Up

I was paging through my Magnificat during Zahm-Cavanaugh Emmaus Monday night, and I came across a startlingly beautiful bit of text that jarred me a bit.

The prescribed Gospel Acclamation verse for Sunday, November 14th (33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time) is, "Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand."

The phrase "at hand" has kicked me around a bunch in life, especially as I dig into my thesis research on the Kingdom of God and the complexities of the idea of the kingdom being "at hand". On a simple level, it means happening and present but in progress, implying a lack of completion or fulfillment.

In this case, I understood it to be a case more so of incompleteness on my (our) part. The Word is there, being proclaimed in the mass, the words of everlasting life. However, we kind of casually or inattentively let it wash over us, grabbing a nugget of wisdom from the homily or maybe straight complaining about it.

This acclamation is a beautifully stark and plain reminder of the reality that kinda really jarred me from my daze. Unfortunately, our conversation had gotten away from the readings before us at Emmaus, but I am hanging on to this beck and call.

We stand at the time of the Gospel reading to elevate our focus and attention and sacramentally demonstrate the high truth proclaimed therein. I think it's a sweet way to refocus after 10 minutes of sitting and listening. As long as this idea stays fresh, I think I'll be much less likely to lean on the back row of the risers up in the loft on Sundays or hesitant to lean on the pew or shuffle my feet as I acclaim the Gospel.

The Gospel Acclamation can become such a mechanistic kind of thing, especially as the mass parts settle on using the Celtic Alleluia week-in, week-out--a beautiful setting but one that lends itself to absent-minded recitation after so many uses. This is a pretty dang sweet snap-out-of-all-that text for us to have.

Often times, we bow our heads and close our eyes to enter a space of quiet deeper within and seek prayer there. In the case of the Gospel and its acclamation, it is an opportunity to be communal and enter the public space of the Church and its celebration of the Word and Eucharist.

Stand erect.
Raise your head.
Your redemption is at hand.

Seeking Quiet for the Will

"The virtue of charity brings quiet to our will, so that we only want what we have, and thirst for nothing beyond that" (Dante's Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto III, 70-72).

There is so much in life that I don't have. I'm not rich. I don't have a 4.0 (or a degree from Oxford). I'm not best friends with every person in the world. My faith is incomplete at best. My life is not perfectly peaceful. But why should all that disrupt the peace that is there?

I've been far too sensitive to the things I don't have these days. It's not so much possessions as it is abstract things that are harder to quantify. Even worse, I create super-lofty criteria and unnecessarily high/tough standards that are realistically impossible to meet. The result: disappointment and disruption of peace. The delusion: that imperfect peace is ok and that it's the best I can do.

The reality: thinking everything is fine and ain't getting better is garbage, and to quote a friend of mine, "if you're not moving forward, you're going backwards". Wait, but what about contentment in what one has? It appears this boils down to another case of moderation, finding the balance point between two ends, which is basically the story of my spiritual journey.

Right now, my balance is way too tilted toward focusing on the not, the missing, and that is too dominant. The work against complacency is what keeps us/me moving forward. The source of imbalance in my case, and probably many others, is an error in the end sought. My focus had shifted too much off Christ.

My faith is not passing through any raised intensity of doubt or thinness, but the centrality of Christ was waning to make Christ too incidental to the daily's of life. Or, in the cases where He remained foremost, it had become too much of a company line--as with discernment, where I've reached such clarity amid the unsureness that I have it down too much to a pre-fabricated response.

The answer: reorienting. Having the ability to drag myself onto a self-made retreat is a gift I am blessed to have from being on so many wonderful retreat experiences, and I was able to have that time today before the Lord in Adoration. I love the variety of ways one can be before Christ, especially in physicalities: looking right into the monstrance, bowing/burying one's head, blocking out the rest of the room around your eyes to only see the Eucharist, kneeling down, prostration, etc.

I went with Christ on retreat, going into my prayer knowing that getting away from thought (more objective, personally/internally originated processes) and entering reflection and prayer (concretely including God by addressing Him, considering His will, considering Christ's response) would calm the choppy waters within. It would spread the peace wider and deeper.

I, like any other, struggle to let God speak, but after my half hour, I knew the answer was asking Christ to follow me out of the chapel and beat my self-constructed criteria to the punch. I need Christ to be within more than ever to remind me of what is and can be before I focus on what is not. It is in re-grounding it all in love and presence that the sometimes-interrupted peace becomes more pervasive again. The only thing I know I heard God say was in response to my concluding prayer of thanks: He said, "You're welcome."

I cannot get too low when I have Christ with me, but I had pushed Him to the sidelines too much. I am happy every day, but the blips on my radar were increasing in frequency and intensity to distract me from feeling the joy therein. Christ is at the helm much more now, and my prayer is that I can keep Him there bigger and better than before.

Ultimately, God's will is our peace (also Dante). So if we tap into His will, we reach our peace. And by virtue of His love, we find satisfaction in what we have and seek in right proportion and manner to maximize the love there, wanting nothing more than God, who is Love.

Note: I'll pick up the ministry discussion later on sometime, perhaps during a break when I can start reading The Godbearing Life again.

The Push-and-pulls of Ministry (Pt. 1)

To cap a summer of active, first-hand ministry, Vision peeps celebrate with a tasty Legends dinner, general laughs and stories, and a super-fab dance. Certain people are honored for coming back and/or doing an especially sweet job, and sometimes others get recognized too. Some, like Raquel, get epic slide shows comprised entirely of photos of herself. Others get a sweet gift kind of secretly.

I was super pumped when Shep asked me to give my witness talk to the CYMs. Writing my talk was an arduous, taxing, but ultimately positive process for reasons beyond outlines and word choices, and it was unexpectedly affirming to get this cool invitation to share my talk.

I wrote about my discernment history and how I understand it now. I knew when I wrote it that I could never give it to high schoolers in a big auditorium during any panel any time, but I wrote what was in me, coming off the scrap heap of trashing my first talk. Shep embraced what I was saying and created this opportunity for me, and I am real grateful.

As I waited for my date to arrive to Legends (I bungled the whole time-and-place-for-meeting-pre-arrangements), Shep pulled me aside and slipped me a card and book to thank me for taking her up on her offer. I was really touched by her guidance the whole way and that was just the icing on the top. Her card and notes were so sweet, and I have finally gotten down to reading the book, The Godbearing Life, during break. It's a fascinating work on (at least so far) shifting the ministerial focus from of tasks, programs, and doing and toward a more holistic missionary style of ministry. There's much to chew on and absorb, and I'm far from being able to write on it.

However, it is bringing back some of the questions pertaining to ministry that came up while I worked this summer as a mentor to the high schoolers. These aren't definitely-answered questions, but they are gestures at things that I foresee developing more personal philosophies on, and, taking the advice of the book, will consult other ministers about, using community among Christians and ministers to uphold ourselves...

How much of ministry is delegation/getting out of the way and how much is direct leadership?

An important element of ministry with youth is allowing them to be ministers to one another. However, not all of that can happen organically. Some will be brighter lights of Christ to the others. Some formation has to make those lights brighter and light the candles that haven't yet ignited.

On the foundational level, a certain amount of intentionality has to be put into developing leaders, both formally for retreats and small group facilitation and also for everyday life, for embodying the Gospel. On either level, there's some delicate balance to be struck in giving them the tools to realize their gifts and potential but also in staying out of the way of their forming and upholding one another.

My tendency is to prefer conversation to interview, to push flow of talking rather than prompts and responses. In formation situations involving leadership, I'd hope to just spur conversation around leadership that aims toward the things I'd like them to consider, reflect upon, and learn. But again, there must be care taken to know when the direction is something I have to define or to allow them to feel out some of the path themselves.

I would hope regardless of the style that I would discern well enough the personalities and capacities of the people in order to know what/when to delegate in terms of faith leadership. I would hate to be the leader that delegates only to breathe down the neck of the person and doom them to failure under pressure.

I'd aim to allow them to feel some autonomy in knowing that they share with me and the Church's leaders the sometimes-scary-but-ultimately-incredibly-beautiful opportunity that we have in holding "accountability for the souls" (from TGBL) of our brothers and sisters. If there was a way to communicate that to present the great opportunity therein without absolutely freaking out young people, I'd love to find it and use it.

Is ministry about bringing the faith to people or bringing people to the faith?

It's easy for me to just go with the flow of the mainline Catholic Church because it's what I've basically always believed and practiced. It helps that I've taken increased ownership of the things I've grown accustomed to, but it's much harder for kids who are either fighting it or struggling to take that step of personal agency.

This is one of the reasons I personally believe that confirmation should be moved to the latter half of high school--it allows for maximal personal reflection in that the confirmandi are in the last years before a huge increase in independence and have gleaned a great deal of knowledge and experience, getting increasingly solidified from 2-3 years of high school life. The dilemma of forcing the kid vs. choosing freely endures but differently than with a 12- or 14-year-old.

Anywho, I struggle with stuff life LifeTeen and praise-and-worship-heavy youth ministry. I think the differences faced when teens move into regular worship again are too drastic and jarring, and it segregates the worship that is meant to be universal in the Church. If kids, teens, and adults all celebrate differently, it becomes difficult to bring them all together and allow believers to develop within a united Church. A positive example of distinctive worship occurs across cultures--here, a people celebrate their mass slightly differently than another people might, but each people celebrates their worship across all ages, open to the exchange across cultures in sharing the distinct practices within the Church. The divide between LifeTeen-ish stuff and traditional mass gets too deep and turns into an either-or.

Tilts to celebrating the mass like Praise and Worship music are fine so long as they do not deeply alienate believers. On the other side of it, compromises to the mass that alienate the orthodoxy of the mass cannot be accepted. Some line must to be toed to allow believers to engage the Church and its Tradition in a way that is accessible to them without changing the nature of what it is.

I enjoy the way the Basilica allows for diversity within the Church at Notre Dame: our Liturgical Choir sings a more traditional, higher mass at 10am, using organ exclusively and repertoire that is more classical, with things like Latin texts; our Folk Choir sings a more contemporary mass at 11:45am with more diverse instrumentation and song styles. Both groups are deeply informed theologically and catechetically in their music selection and ministry. Both masses have a loyal, if distinct congregation. But most importantly, both masses rest on the Church's Tradition, and both are accessible to any Catholic.

The mass has been carefully constructed through 2000 years, based on local custom, close reading of Scripture, the directives of Christ, and the guidance of the bishops. We should trust strongly in the believers that came before us, and the Church under the Spirit's guidance. Extraliturgical services should be assembled with an eye to the already existing mass norms and sacraments so as to be a complement to them or perhaps be discussions that gesture toward the sacraments.

Dean & Foster put the overall dilemma plain and simple for ministers:

"If we were more sensible of conditions--if we had a clue--we would not hesitate to send youth out to carry God's salvation into the world, and to be unashamedly and unapologetically Christian about it. Instead, we are cautious evangelists. We respect pluralism. We recoil from cramming our faith down someone's throat. We believe in human freedom. We want to be liked. Because we hope youth will chart their own course, we allude to faith more than we proclaim it. Yet behind these honorable reasons for Christian reticence lurks a more dastardly one [and this is where they get ya]: Our reputations as reasonable people are on the line."

The trap that ecumenism is increasingly laying is for Christianity to get genericized and watered-down into something everyone can swallow easily and together. Catholicism is not about invalidating other traditions, but it is about upholding its own tradition strongly. We must educate each other across faiths. Within our own churches, we need to bring people to the faith. Not through stream-lined and flimsy-ized masses but through well-informed catechesis, sharing the existing faith, and finding people's access points to the standing Church rather than creating a new or fake one.

[Part 2 to follow...]

The First Church

This fall, I have been taking a 1-credit course on the Catholic teachings on Mary. Tonight is the fifth and final meeting of the class. Prof. Matovina, who's really great, asked us to write a 5-page paper on 5 statements we'd want Catholics to know about Mary. Rather than just rehash the four dogmas on Mary and throw another something in there, I lumped those into #1 and drew out four different ones.

Here's my five Mary statements, including the page I wrote on #5, which was my favorite:

1. Our four dogmatic teachings on Mary—The Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, Mary as Mother of God (Theotokos), and the Assumption—are each a part of Mary’s modeling of the Christian ideal to which all Christians should aspire.

2. The evolution of teachings on Mary has been gradual and deliberative; Catholic belief in various Marian devotions has never been unanimous, and the teaching of the Church is the product of much thought and disagreement.

3. The call of Mary, as described by St. Luke in his Gospel, is the only instance in the Bible of a direct mission call from God followed by a direct verbal assent.

4. Mary is the only human being to be present in all three eras of salvation history: the Law and the Prophets; the ministry of Jesus Christ; and the Church.

5. In the Gospel of John, just before Jesus utters, “It is finished”, on the cross, he entrusts his mother Mary and the beloved disciple, John, to one another; in this action, Jesus essentially begins the Church.

In the Gospel of John, we hear the narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion descriptively. After Jesus is put on the cross, he sees Mary and some women beneath Him and then also sees the disciple whom he loved. In a final act of merciful compassion, Jesus unites the two people who, in the human sense of the term, he loved most. Jesus says to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother” (John 19:26-27). Jesus commends these two people to one another, trusting that the love they showed show profoundly during Christ’s time on earth will endure past His death. John adds, “From that time on, this disciple took her into his home” (John 19:27). The two became a kind of family, founded on their union in Christ who, in His commending these two to one another, has created His Church.

Pentecost is the traditional “birth” of the Church—the time when the Spirit comes to the Apostles in glory to inspire and embolden them to proclaim the Gospel and bring people to Christ. That is not wrong, but it may not be the whole story. The early church is founded on the intimacy of the house church, the family, and small communities upholding their members in care. The Body of Christ is central to this all, as the early Christians discerned how to celebrate the Eucharist and observe the Lord’s feast in honor of His ultimate sacrifice and His command to do it in memory of Him. The centrality of the family, the home, and the Body of Christ in this beautiful exchange between Christ, John, and Mary prefigures these central elements of the Church. John and Mary effectively make the first ecclesia at the foot of the cross. Beneath the physical Body of Christ, they become the first manifestation of the Body of Christ to follow the death of Jesus.

Hate the Sin, Love the Zeal

I was walking home from my Vision "interview" with Lenny to potentially return for a second tour of duty as a mentor when my friend Maria beckoned from across the quad. I walked with her toward the door to Zahm and asked where she was headed. She was going to mass in the basilica and invited me come along. I had enough work to do to stay back. However, embracing the increasingly strong ethos of senior year, work was backburner-ed, and I continued on with her to the basilica.

Believe it or not, it was my first non-major-occasion 5:15 daily mass in the basilica. It's a different vibe than the 10pm dorm mass, but I enjoyed celebrating the mass like this. One of the biggest moments for me was the homily.

I had the usual in-and-out attention span during the readings, getting the jist--Paul's words and Mary & Martha in Luke's Gospel. I wanted to hone in on the homily, not just for the obvious reasons, but because I enjoy hearing different people preach, especially if I've never heard them before.

I don't remember the whole thing, but over 24 hours later, the message on Paul's selection from Galatians endures within me. Paul talks about his conversion from zealous enforcer of Rome's persecution to preacher of the word, and the presider for our mass honed in on zeal--how unusual for a Holy Cross to talk about zeal!

He talked about, in rather plain terms, Paul's zeal for his civil duties enduring through his conversion and continuing to underpin his mission for Christ. In answering the call from Christ, Paul left behind his political duties and his job but retained the passion that backed it up. The same zeal that drove Paul's malicious enforcement of Roman oppression also motivated his fervent missionary work.

It's not so simple as just changing the tasks that result from the passion. Somewhat of a transformation of attitude had to occur to refilter the zeal through a new heart, through Paul's new faith in the Risen Lord who revealed Himself to Paul. However, somehow, it remains the same zeal.

The analogy that immediately came to mind for me was Augustine's exhortation to us, often boiled down to "hate the sin, love the sinner" (for full text, check out an old post). In this case, it'd be something like "hate the acts, love the zeal"--not quite as catchy but a similar sentiment.

Augustine calls us to admonish the sinful acts of a person but continue loving that person; in this way, to quote myself, once they repent and grow in love, the sin vanishes and only the person, completely deserving of love having been made by God in His image, remains. I kind of thought in this way for zeal--we can hate the wrongful acts of a zealous person, but love the zeal?

Not quite, I guess. But we can more gently hope for the zeal to endure through conversion, in a way resembling the transformation of Paul. We can pray and hope that our own and others' convictions and passions in justifying things that may be questionable can permeate all our motivations to underpin our righteous actions as well.

We can hope for zealous passion to brew within us always, so that as we continue to form a Christian conscience and discern right action, our zeal can grow stronger as we do God's will, do right more frequently and more profoundly.

The Transfiguration

This is not a new thought but rather one that finds new realized meaning each time it comes back into play, which thank God is so frequent in my blessed life full of beautiful friends. Per usual, I gotta admit unoriginality and give props to my friend Jeremy who first introduced this thought to me back on Catholics on Call last August.

On Wednesday night of our week-long conference of Catholic awesomeness, we took a delightful little boat cruise out on Lake Michigan, eating some food, chatting on the decks, and hanging out at the tables. I had realized profoundly pretty early on that everyone there was similar on the basic level of feeling a genuine pull toward the Church and having a willingness to talk about it. I had uncharacteristically engaged a few great people and been rewarded with lush, fulfilling, beautiful conversations. So that night, the theme continued. As the cruise ended and we piled back into the cars to go back to CTU, we had a social time downstairs, but my buds Jeremy and Regina and I went and found a lounge and proceeded to just talk everything deep into the night.

The outline of what we covered is amazing, but the what is less important than the how. Building on that community that CoC enabled, there was a definite assent to vulnerability that happened tacitly. Without ice-breakers or assurances of confidentiality, we launched into sharing openly and comfortably. There wasn't fear beyond that which is natural and dismissed as petty; there wasn't concern over oversharing or undersharing but instead just free sharing.

The power of vulnerability to settle the heart, enable love to flow freely, and to build real relationship was so evident in the grace that night. This conversation in all its various beauty was the seminal part of a wonderful week that was legitimately a paradigm shift in my life and faith journey. I had been becoming more introspective and reflective and was seeking out these kind of conversations more, but not with the frequency or intensity that I do now and ever since then. It has become an internalized part of my spirituality and social life, that occasionally I push for too heavily but always find to be there just as I need it.

Jeremy put the best words to it at one point in the middle of it all. Describing in better words than I can recollect, Jeremy said that listening to us talk and hearing the kinds of stories of personal things we've shared, that we were transfigured before his eyes.

Honest, open, genuine sharing doesn't peel back the exterior of someone but informs others of the fuller person dwelling within. Knowing someone's stories, feelings, thought processes, spirituality, etc. causes you give them a fuller look when you see them--fuller than just moving past first-impression type reactions, fuller than judging their looks, fuller than remembering a time or two you had a fun time out with them, fuller than remembering a story they told you, fuller than having a nice chat over lunch.

Vulnerability is a gift we can give ourselves and others that transfigures the relationship--once you make yourself vulnerable to someone, you can never look at them the exact same, with your eyes or the eyes of your soul. There is a deeper appreciation that comes with the sight of someone after you have shared this kind of time or conversation with them.

Often when I make eye contact with a friend who I love dearly, I can only help but smile and laugh. Most friends will nervously ask, "What!?" [Many have learned to simply shake of my goofy love--right K-Jo?] And my only reply is nothing, because how do you describe the depth of the appreciation you can feel for someone with whom you've shared that vulnerability with?

It's a feeling that includes happiness but exceeds it to the depths of joy, which is the kind of deeper-set emotion that God calls us to, the type of feeling that indicates the profound goodness of what caused it. Joy denotes that what inspired it is good and right and probably linked to one's vocation. One of my favorite songs just came on iTunes (Only Living Boy in New York, Simon & Garfunkel, from Garden State) that sums up my goony habit: "I got nothing to do today but smile."

The Seldom Interrupted Peace

I have been reflecting on the idea of peace a lot the last few months. To work backwards from the more abstract version of what I've come to, it boils down to the central truth that "God's will is our peace" (pretty good huh? it's not my original. got it from Fr. Dunne class).

Along with that, at the heart of my faith, I have embraced the ideal of perfect freedom, an ideal that Christ embodied for us. Since Christ's will was exactly aligned with the Father's will, he maintained his freedom and perfected it in freely willing actions that were God's will. Now the thing about ideals is that we are not perfect and cannot really achieve perfection. However, we are called as Christians to emulate Jesus as best we can.

As with the relation between little discernments and big-picture discernment, the journey to peace--longer periods of sustained peace and feelings of more profound peace--involves the sum of smaller things as well. I would suggest three areas were the pieces of the peace puzzle can come into focus.

On the simplest level, some times in life are teeming with blessings whereas others seem comparatively sparse. First off, the key is that life is never without grace or blessings, but as humans, we fall into the trap of seeking to quantify these kinds of things.

One of my rules of thumb in reflection and introspection is to allow my honest feelings to surface and address them rather than deny my instinct entirely. So I allow myself to have this very human feeling but try to minimize the time that I dwell on the perceived dearth. I usually am not in this kind of valley--either my life is satisfactorily full of blessings or my disposition is such that I am usually contented with the blessings in my life. Perhaps these things are one in the same.

Regardless, the embrace of the already-present blessings and of a disposition to find at least contentment--hopefully happiness or joy--helps to build the peace. The second piece here is a comfortable disposition to appreciate and give thanks for the blessings God has already given.

The way that I have settled into that is with a special capstone to all my personal prayers. Regardless of the time of day or what I'm praying over, anytime I spend a significant amount of time in prayer, I conclude with my phrase, "Thank you for all that You've given me and all You will give me."

This Sunday's gospel on the rich man and Lazarus teaches us that we should not demand of God specific inspirations or proofs, especially when we are so unappreciative of the revelation and truth already given us. I don't have the quick fix way to transform one's outlook, but I found that making this sentiment integral to my prayer to be a big help.

The third thing is the hardest: having an eye to grace. I learned powerfully back in April the ways that we can fail to see the grace that is so active in daily life. The charism of stop-think-pray helps to slow life down a bit, but succeeding in having those moments is tough. This is another ideal where the hoped-for perfection is noticing every grace as it happens.

The realistic starting point is cultivating an awareness that identifies grace soon after its impact, hopefully beginning with nightly reflections back upon the day's blessings. Even if we cannot identify every grace and cannot find it until well after its help has come, we can let our prayer and reflection unpack the profundity of the grace in life. Rather than seeking systematic, timely awareness, we can simply hope to be formed strongly by the grace we do realize and give God thanks.

Going to mass, having quiet prayer, Adoring the Eucharist, enjoying the love of community, and talking with close friends are some of the ways that I maintain my outlook and experience blessings and grace. None of these things--and few things in my life--exclude God; at the very least, each thing allows the opportunity for God to impact it.

Peace is content and humble harmony between one's view of love at a certain moment and the truth that God is Love. Giving thanks for my blessings, maintaining a positive outlook, and keeping an eye to God's grace are parts of my life--things that flow naturally, not constructs that I've imposed on life--that make up my seldomly interrupted peace.

The Grace of not Knowing

I think I've covered this in some shape or form through the blogs, but here is a newly recapitulation of one my central reflective discernment things...

Discernment is a lengthy process, lifelong perhaps--if not for a specific vocation, for the way to live out vocation daily. In a society and culture that craves definition, description, and exactitude (that's a real word!?), the process of discovering one's gifts and determining how those gifts can serve God's world, its people, and its needs can be bungled.

A desire for the finite answer can make one rush into taking action that is based on incomplete reflection; that's not to say that you should only act when 100% sure, but sometimes the pressure is too hard to hone in on a lifepath without sufficient opportunity for reflection on where the junction is between one's gifts and the needs of the world.

Sometimes the quest for certainty can lead one to reduce the equation of reflection, conversation, prayer, etc. that allows for a holistic discernment. The reduction might produce a quicker answer, but will it be a better one?

My big question is why is there a pressure to know? Why do we push so hard to get that "answer"? Every bit counts toward the bigger discernment picture. Though I won't say "everything happens for a reason" (right, J-Po?), I will say that God's omnipotence has ordained a grace-filled existence for us based on His benevolent love for us in our journey through living our life in freedom.

Each step on the journey is revelatory if we let it be. I find a peace in my open-endedness. Part of that comes from having assembled a puzzle of options to leap into for the time after my looming graduation and knowing that there are plenty of seas left to be explored as I finish college and consider the prospects of graduate schools beyond Notre Dame (though I'd love to M-A here), service programs beyond Teach Bhride (which I'd love to serve), and hybrid programs beyond ECHO (which I think would fit me well).

However, the greatest part of the peace that keeps me grounded even when I start to go a bit "runaway" is the reality that my vocation right now is to have an open-ended vocation--not knowing my vocation is integral to my formation and discernment. There is a significance to my not having a strong certainty in what phase of life I'll ultimately end up in or exactly what job I can get and work in. There's a significance to not having an exact idea of where I'll be this summer or next year or beyond.

I can continue experiencing the graces of my life through the lens of this open-endedness in a way that forms me crucially for whatever phase of life or vocation I discover. The experience of life as I live it is different in this state, and it is truly a blessing. The reality that I lack a definite answer is not an anxiety-causing, stress-inducing, negative pressure; rather, it is a grace.

The Inner Becomes the Eternal

In class a few weeks ago, Father Dunne made the bold assertion that the inner life--the life of the spirit, the life of knowing and loving--is a life that can and does live on through death. He suggested to us that the inner life becomes the afterlife. Take a second and wrap your head around that one.

My gut reaction was one of awe but also one of skeptical doubt. I had always mostly viewed heaven or eternal life and something separate from this world, connected to my current life really only by the soul that animates my being, the soul that God created to be eternal. Now there are "heavenly" things about this life, but I mostly considered those things to be analogs to what will be part of the eternal heaven. Moments of strong love or peace are just snapshot moments of the eternal love and peace that exist in eternal life, perfect union with God.

I also seemed to think that this was kind of a spiritual extrapolation and that there wasn't much grounding for it in Christian spirituality or thought that I knew. I was willing to give some benefit of the doubt because upon further reflection, I really liked the idea that an intentional inner life can continue on into heaven.

In the beautiful synergy that is a Notre Dame liberal arts education/formation centered on theology, I had one of many annual instances of overlap between my courses. In my Theology of Benedict XVI class, we read an excerpt of Truth and Tolerance that included this quote that leaped off the page, "Heaven begins on earth. Salvation in the world to come presumes a righteous life in this world... We have to ask what heaven is and how it comes upon earth." (205)

Turns out my perception of limited heaven on earth was kind of right but far too narrow. Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) exhorts us to be aware of the heaven that is on earth. Creation started as a perfect result of God's hand, but humanity brought sin into the world; The Fall dragged the world away from this. However, we can still find glimmers of the perfection of heaven in Creation. Pope Benedict encourages us to seek those righteous and truly heavenly elements of our lives and our world and cultivate them. Eternal life isn't found on earth, but it surely begins here.

The inner life is something that God's gift of free will upholds beautifully. We have the power of freedom to choose love. In this way, we can cultivate a profound interior sense of love that permeates daily life and transcends to heaven each day and hopefully to the end of earthly life. I know I have recently been tending to concentrate on the negatives and the voids, allowing potent moments of woe to interrupt the love-filled stream of my life. However, with the gift of grace, God has shown me the love already present--just in one day: in the camaraderie of tenors sharing nicknames, some bros watching football, dinner with a friend, and studying/not studying with some knuckleheads.

Happiness is a luminous emotion that enlivens the spirit and brings smiles to faces, but joy is something deeper and more profound. Feeling this joy is being in the presence, in the moment of the will or love of God; the experience of joy happens as a result of being intimately and genuinely in the context of love and vocation being lived out. My (our) call is to align my will with the will of God, just as Jesus did in His perfect freedom. In this way, we can find joy in this life that will continue on into the next, as the next.

Trust...

Trust cannot be treated in one blog post, but here's one wretched human's attempt to scratch the surface. Let's start with the irony of where I'm at.

In discerning the shorter-term future (short of the dream job of working as a campus minister in a Catholic high school), my heart is set on getting a Masters in Theology. I love studying theology, and I'm really attracted to the way an MA/MPS/M.Div can intimately include pastoral-ministerial applications in the formation (not just education). The coolest option for all that seemed to be adding the super-appealing element of post-grad service into it. ECHO combines all this to allow people to serve the Church, gain real experience, and get a Notre Dame MA-Theology formation. The dark-horse that snuck in and revised the straight path of all this was the House of Brigid. Once I had embraced the idea of post-grad service and once the program got up off the ground, Teach Bhride was in the picture. Having come to terms with the degree/extent of my gifts in music throughout college and witnessing the early evolution of the program's mission to encompass youth ministry, liturgical stuff, and catechesis alongside the music ministry affirmed that this would be a great opportunity to consider. Experiencing the home (home not house) that our first three volunteers cultivated affirmed to me that the difficulty of spending nine months abroad could be mitigated by the support of that community.

So in early 2011, I'll apply to and interview with ECHO and Teach Bhride and see what shakes out. The process of figuring that out lasted most visibly from early sophomore year through spring of this year and continues semi-latently always. The whole process involved a definite element of trust that grew, matured, and solidified along the way. Taking the step in my head and heart of trusting that the community could lead the way in upholding me in volunteering abroad was a huge step in actively trusting. I mean, none of this is a done deal beyond the simple reality that I will apply, but the discernment--the journey--is so revelatory and powerful.

Neither of these options are a slam dunk, but I trust that what each opportunity requires can be met by the combination of who I am (my gifts, etc.) and faith in God and His love around me in all forms. I need to continue to investigate other options and remain open, but the trust permeates the balance of what I need to consider as I move to the next step beyond college (perhaps a bit to blindly, but that will adjust).

The irony for me is that in the first weeks of senior year, I had been struggling mightily with trusting in the day-by-day. I love my major, my friends, my life, but I would let little things bug me more than usual. I wasn't sullen or depressed nor was I mad at anyone because I am blessed with a demeanor that doesn't ever really go down those roads. I would even have really good times, like at the first things for Folk Choir, seeing and hugging people, and catching up with beloved friends. However, the college-long weight of never finding any one go-to friend was hanging a bit heavier on me.

I was spoiled in London for four months with my buddy Dan, who was a wonderfully loyal travel companion and really stellar friend overall. Also, having my most important, meaningful relationship to date fall apart during summer was rough. Back on campus, where there are 8,000+ of us, it was back to a wash of good friends. In typical woe-is-me fashion, I would let focus shift back to the lack of a best-best friend on campus, belittling the preponderance of terrific people who are my friends or failing to lean on my lifelong best friend (Tim is 2,000+ miles away but we're still as close as ever). It was something that I didn't and don't want to run from; I don't want to tell myself that it's not a big deal because it is: I am wired to rely on a small group of close friends, and I lacked that biggest go-to guy/gal at the front of it.

Now, I am relaxing into a peace that goes back to a great piece of advice I got from my friend Lauren years ago after a flimsily justified break-up by a silly girlfriend: just go with the flow. Don't press too hard, but don't mope around hopelessly either. Or when it comes to the real tough case, my friend Michele simply advised, "Be the best you that you can be for her." Let go of rankings or classifications and all that. Let the disappoint exist but not in a dominating, disproportionate way.

Trust boils down to finding a happy middle between passive faith that "The Lord will provide" and overly autonomous notions that one can impose their will on life. Trust is residing in a consciously reached place that brings peace. It combines faith in God's loving hand with the reality that God gave us free will to decide things ourselves, and that our call is to bring our will into congruence with the will of God.

I have cozied myself into this place of trust. It is not a place of lazy indifference; it is not a place of super-assertive action. Instead, it is a moderated complacency to go with the flow. I need to reground this trust in diligent prayer to thank God for the grace to reach this place. Grace can be a catalyst for opening our eyes, and it is up to God to endow us with grace as He pleases. So let us not only pray that we may be graced but also trust that God will grace us in the best ways. For ultimately, His will is our peace.

Rounding out on the eve of Vision 2010

This past ten days has been a whirlwind of intensive pastoral-theological training, socializing and relationship building, some concrete work, and team- and community-building. It also been a time of emotional and relationship change, growth, and upheaval. Without going into the specifics of either the formal stuff or the things life held, I can simply say that this has been a significant, crazy but solid period of final yet non-ultimate formation.

The powers of community have been so apparent all around. I learned with my friend how to embrace and appreciate the full reciprocity of community. Regardless of which is easier or harder for a person, often we can forget that community involves both being intentionally present for brothers and sisters as well as utilizing their support to be present for you in your problems. I learned how to help someone realize that reciprocity while taking advantage anew of the support of my brothers and sisters. The best example I have is mildly surprising.

Solid runs with my broha's Colin and Kurt have taken us down sidewalks and wooded trails but also to places of sharing, vulnerability, and trust that are so life-giving. The conversations occur alongside physical engagement and serve as a beautiful grace in such a way that we can honestly feel that we've prayed by sharing this experience. That's just a microcosm of the various threads and flavors of community that are brewing all around me. My heart is overflowing right now with all these streams of love to reflect upon, and I hope that God will continue gracing me with the love while also helping strengthen me to let myself be loved, to love back rightly, and to be appropriately aware of the love in thought, prayer, and life.

I also found a beautiful peace in the final Eucharist of this whirlwind. I had my first Reconciliation experience in six months the day before, and I followed the idea we will try to encourage of finding a negative pattern in my life rather than simply laundry-listing sins. By doing so, I was in a place of better self-perspective. Ironically, or maybe not, I did not feel an overwhelming deluge of grace or transformation. And somehow that was just right. I felt a peace that was a process, and the sacrament was just a cementing, a final step, in that process of healing that God shepherded me through.

In building the pastoral skills and learning the logistics of our role as mentors-in-faith for Vision, I have really felt at home as a counselor as opposed to a musician. Having been rejected last year in my audition for the band, I struggled with feeling that in principle I belonged in that group. It was a beautiful gift to not be rejected but rather redirected to positively realize my place. I am built, in my gifts and outlook, to be present to these participants as a counselor. I know that in my head AND heart now, and it's not a negative thing at all; I have positively embraced my call to serve here as a small group counselor. Jess is running the band this year and thanked the counselors for participating fully with the band in the prayer during the prep weekend, and she encouraged us to use our energy and confidence to lend the joy we feel to our singing and in that way give permission to the kids to join us. What an opportunity for me to serve rightly: singing is a gift and a passion for me, but it's not THE gift for me... so here I have a real chance to embrace my place somewhere between a clueless and timid singer and a Musician. May God guide me into a joy-filled happy middle.

As we wrapped on our intentional day of progressing toward dwelling in the promise of God in a away that would allow us to serve best, our small groups digested the day. I sat back and listened to many good insights before I was invited to break my silence. God inspired me with the insight that will guide my initial approach to this ministry: I must find a peace with all I have been, all I am, and all I am being and couple that with this process of formation to be in a place of wholeness and balance; in this way, no part of me will be imposed on the conference or the people, but rather, the participants can draw out of me what they need most. If I am in a peaceful balance and wholeness, with God's help, the right aspects of me and my formation will meet my new friends where they can most help. So my prayer is that God may make me whole, amid all the struggle and apparent hardship, amid all the ecstasy and joy.

My iTunes song-mantra-night prayer as Day One nears is White as Snow by Jon Foreman...
"Would You create in me a clean heart, oh God
Restore in me the joy of my salvation
Wash me white as snow
And I will be made whole"

Thoughts on Adoration...

In late May, a bunch of Folk and Lit Choir kids were back on campus for six days to sing for prayer services and liturgies for the Campus Ministry Symposium going down at Notre Dame. We were housed and treated as full participants, meaning not only were we put up in air-conditioned West Quad dorms but we could also attend talks and stuff. I welched out of a talk early in the week due to short attention span, but later in the week, I went to "Adoration to Action" with some friends to hear about connections between the solemn prayer and active service.

The room was full of maybe two dozen or so campus ministers and active religious who seemed to be in strong consensus that adorers were not concretely connecting their prayer to service work. The problem was more theoretical for me and my student-friends, but for these people, the situation was reality within their campuses. They were seeking ways to improve spirituality however you can improve spirituality. Their comments were insightful and eye-opening but reflected a sad reality that I'm sure sets in on many ministers as they face both the joys and frustrations--they mostly seemed to treat the situation as a "problem" that can have a "solution".

Some of the questions raised were thought provoking, so I'll re-offer some here for you and give my "answers" as well...

How should iconography around the Blessed Sacrament be? Should it be chosen to reflect active service to go with the prayer?

Our speaker, Mike Griffin from Holy Cross College, kicked around the idea with the group that perhaps the iconography and Church art surrounding Adoration could be chosen to more directly inspire thoughts and prayers on service. The thought is good, and we should embrace the diversity and variety of great patrons we have in Church Tradition. However, I draw the line at trying to effect more direct influence of people's prayer. I think that iconography is a rich opportunity to manifest the great stories and models of our faith, but we should not exploit it too much.

I feel that Adoration should occur in whatever places are available and willing to prepare the Exposition properly and piously. If the intention and organization exists, believers should be given the chance to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, which is not to say that we should just make every sacred space an arena for this kind of prayer. I don't think that chapels and churches should be altered or customized in any extraordinary way beyond doing that which increases the reverence and solemnity of the special prayer. On the other hand, if a chapel is being specially built new for a purpose, then the iconography should be selected in an intentional way to fit the community and/or patron. For instance, the new chapel in Geddes Hall, where the Center for Social Concerns is housed on campus, has stained glass window depicting the Corporal Works of Mercy and saints that epitomize the deeds. This is fitting and appropriate and utilizes the communion of saints in the right way, calling us to this action and emphasizing the luminous work of a Christian-influenced service organization. So having Exposition in there would carry those invocations but would not necessarily suggest manipulation. On the other hand, having Exposition in a different chapel but adding or changing iconography to be more in this vein suggests more of a manipulation to me. I think at most, all organizers of Adoration can do is supply a variety of inspiration to its participants...

Should prayer materials in Blessed Sacrament spaces intentionally encourage service and action?

I think that the key is variety so as not to infringe upon the freedom that one should carry with them into prayer. Prayer must be honest and heartfelt, so the participation in it by a believer can be an honest cultivation of their relationship with God. Adoration is an important opportunity for this because in enables a believer to bring this intention of being with God into stark reality, as they pray before the mysteriously present Christ.

I think an example of my view here can be seen in saints' feast days. Often when I go to daily mass in Zahm, Fr. Jim will invoke the saint whose feast day it is in the prayers of the mass and even in tidbits during the homily and/or the final blessing, whether through the actual book prayers or his own directive comments. Fr. Jim offers the saint, his or her story, and his or her patronage as an access point to prayer, an inspiration or spark to our spirits. However, he does not insist on our worship being focused solely on the saint. The mass remains an opportunity to hear the Word and celebrate the Eucharist. The inclusion of a saint and his or her feast simply adds to the diversity of access points we gain to worship of God, to prayer, and to growing closer to Him. The mass invites us to worship, but ultimately, Christ, in the Eucharist, remains the focus point. So it must be in Adoration.

Chapels for Adoration would do well to offer believers a variety of materials to help calm them down, inspire prayer, or provide words to one's prayer. However, the worship aids offered should not even implicitly limit or constrict the range of one's prayer. Regardless of one's motivation for coming before the Lord, one must come freely with his or her own thoughts and heart open to the Lord as Christ is profoundly before them. Prayer cards or inspirational readings on service would be helpful to inspiring Christian service and justice and action, but they can in no way be limiting or infringing upon the variety of ways that a believer can enter into this prayer. The line of prayer must be from the believer to God. Part of the Christian life is self-giving service, but it must come freely. Exposing a believer to the light and power of Christian service is important. However, it should not come through anything bordering coercion and definitely cannot come from anything resembling the manipulation of solemn prayer.

Why do we do Adoration? What is the purpose/function? (more an implied question from the discussion)

This is a tough question that, admittedly, I probably could not have answered until after Maria, Jason, and I started digesting the discussion after it ended. Thanks to hashing it out with them and thinking about it a bit, the best thing I can come up with is: Adoration is a unique, profound opportunity for solemn prayer literally before God. Our conversation hinted at how it should be something directly between the believer and Christ, but I think that realistically is has to be a bit wider than that ideal. The ideal is what we strive for, but as we grow, I think Adoration is an opportunity to contextualize one's life in a very unique, profound way.

When I go to adore, I bring it all with me. Sometimes I only just get through worrying about it all in the half hour; other times, I can't finish worrying in the half hour; more frequently, thanks to advice from my spiritual director, I would get the worrying out of the way right away (he advised me to just put it all out there forthrightly and honestly but quickly and at the start so as to not simply worry before God, because that's not entirely what prayer is). Regardless of the amount of time I spent "worrying", it was an honest part of taking the time to sit before Christ in prayer. So even though the line was sacramentally, really, and profoundly between my heart and Christ, the reality and weights of my world remained an honest part of the equation. Adoration provides a special opportunity beyond the Eucharist of the mass to pray with and before Christ. It is an additional venue in which we can grow with and for Christ. Ultimately, Christ remains the focus and the triumph of this prayer, but in it, we can face our lives, our weaknesses and strengths, and our triumphs and our downfalls in a special environment where Christ is profoundly present in the mystery of the Eucharist.