Set Your Heart on Advent

Advent is the time when we as Christians prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ. Our chronological destination in Advent is Christmas, the feast of Christ's birth to the Virgin Mary, which comes at the end of Advent and kicks off the brief Christmas season. However, our approach to Advent and to reflection on the coming of Christ can broaden beyond just that one grand moment centered on a simple manger.

In Advent, we can consider the comings - plural - of Jesus Christ.

We obviously are celebrating the birth of Christ. In Christmas, we faithfully confront the awesomeness of the Great Miracle, as CS Lewis calls it. God became man, taking on the flesh and life of a human being in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Nothing greater has happened in the history of man, and in fact, this is the pinnacle of salvation history. This is the decisive moment in the span of God's interaction with humanity in order to gather His people to Himself.

Additionally, we reflect upon the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our faith is full of beautiful pairings in which two wonderful gifts from God work together to nourish us. The most obvious and regularly realized one is the Mass, in which we feast on the Word of God as well as the Sacrament, the Eucharist, or Word Made Flesh. Here, too, our Advent reflection can call upon an awesome partnership in the apparent bookends of the Incarnation and Resurrection. Not only did God become man, live and preach, undertake His Passion, and die on the cross for all of our sins; God then rose from the dead, having torn the veil of the sanctuary to offer conclusive forgiveness of sins and eternal life to anyone who comes to God through Him.

However, these are not bookends. The story of salvation history does not end or gear down after Jesus' Resurrection. Jesus walks the earth in a glorified state, ascends to heaven, and commissions his friends-followers to be the leaders of the Church behind Peter, to forgive sins, to baptize in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and to go make of all disciples. Our Church is the Body of Christ on earth; Christ ascended to heaven, yet we endure as His hands and feet, sharing His love in the world. And in the Lord's Prayer, "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" tells us that we glimpse heaven when we do God's will. Our Church and its members as One Body anticipate, enflesh, and prefigure the eternal Kingdom of Heaven when by doing Jesus' will. We are an eschatological Church, looking forward to our fulfillment in Christ's return, when He comes at the end of time to gather His people to Himself forever and ever. Then, our longings become reality; our glimpses become vision.

A dear friend of mine, with near epiphanic enthusiasm, once gave me a great reflection on the theological virtues. St. Paul writes to us, "When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:11-13)."

Faith is the belief in things unseen or unproven; hope is the longing for something yet to come, namely, Heaven; and love is manifesting the care of God in our actions. My friend explained to me that St. Paul was prophesying the afterlife to us. These three virtues are the highest callings for Christians, and they are perfected in our salvation:

• Faith is realized when we meet God; we no longer believe in something unseen but rather know it with intimacy and experience it eternally in stark reality.
• Hope is fulfilled; the Heaven we desired through our belief in Jesus and our efforts to live in Him is now our home forever.
• What remains? Love. Faith and hope are actualized, leaving only the greatest gift: Love. God is Love. And that is Heaven. Eternal union with God.

So, what does this have to do with Advent? I believe we can unite our reflection on Jesus' comings with Paul's insights on virtue.

Our faith as Christians ultimately rests on the person of Christ. Everything we believe relies on the real historicity of Jesus Christ and the mystery that He was God-become-man, taking on the flesh through birth of the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation, the Christmas celebration, this first coming of Christ, is the genesis of our faith.

Our hope is ultimately and primarily for Heaven, eternal life with God. From where can we dare to have such hope? Resurrection. Christ took all of our sins onto His innocent self so that we might be viewed worthy by God, redeemed by the One who was sinless in the sinners' stead. Christians can practice such hope because Christ justified us to be worthy of salvation and union with His Father.

Our love should be the greatest practice of our Christianity. It should shine through in our lives of faith. When we love as God would have us to love, we glimpse heaven, and the decisive coming of Christ, the time when Jesus will perfect our Church to be the Kingdom of Heaven that it has always longed to become.

As we draw our hearts into the depths of mystery surrounding Christ's coming, let us take consolation this Advent in the grace of Paul's words that point the way toward our salvation in God through Christ: So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

He Meets Us Where We Are

Sometimes, when it comes to the historicity of Christ or the challenges of keeping the faith in modern times, some interesting questions or issues are raised and discussed. Some of my favorites...

• If I were alive in the time of Jesus, and I got to hear him and see him in person, then maybe I'd believe.
• How do we know he actually rose from the dead?
• What about all those people who lived and died before Jesus came or never knew about Him at all? Are they just damned to hell?
• I'd believe in God if He came to me in a burning bush or parted the sea in front of me or led me by a pillar of fire or talked to me directly...

I love stuff like that. I think those are good questions and are often asked by genuine seekers who simply can't or don't want to leap those hurdles in faith.

My answer to them usually revolves around the reality of our faith today, which becomes sort of distilled version of the definition of the Kingdom of God that I came up with in my thesis.

The Kingdom of God is mystical (felt and known within us), ecclesial (experienced through the Church that Christ established for us), and Christological (found in Christ Himself). And when it comes to the salvation-history, to our consideration of how God has intervened throughout time to interact with humanity to bring us to our salvation, we are living in the era of the Church: there was the time of The Law and the Prophets (up to and including John the Baptist), the time of Jesus' life, Passion, and Resurrection, and the era of the Church, beginning with Jesus' Ascension to Heaven and His commissioning of the Apostles ("[Y]ou will receive power when the holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.)

We live in the era of the Church, united together as the New Israel, as the chosen people of God through our life in Jesus Christ, His Son. We realize the Kingdom of God through our communion with Christ and with one another inasmuch as we look forward to Christ's return to fulfill our Church's faith and hope and make perfect our love through eternal life in Him. Jesus taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven." We glimpse Heaven and the everlasting joy of union with God when we do God's will on earth.

The "source and summit" of our faith in the Church is the Eucharist. Jesus told us, "This is my body; this is my blood. Do this in memory of me." And so we do.

And by the power of the Holy Spirit - the same Spirit that came to the Virgin Mary so that God might become man in the Incarnation - Jesus comes among us in the Mass to change the inner elements of simple bread and wine into His Body and Blood. Through the Eucharist, we join in the Lord's Supper with every Christian in every place and throughout all time to experience communion with Christ and one another. By consuming the Body and Blood, we strive to become what we receive: Christ.

And this my friends is the reality: that we do get to see and hear Him in person - in the Word, in the Eucharist, at Mass and in Adoration. We do know that He rose from the dead because He dwells among us still. We experience communion with Christians around the world, and with Christians in the early Church and in the Church-yet-to-come, because the saving power of Christ and our communion with Him through Baptism reach beyond time and space as the loving power of our God.

He may not come today in a burning bush or a pillar of fire or an immaculate ark or write rules on stone by fire. But I think He meets us where we are.

The Israelites toiled through life in a different context. They were a primitive civilization that struggled to find its own land, that weathered the oppression of slavery and captivity, that existed in an era without so much of the technology that even the later Greco-Roman culture of Jesus' time enjoyed. They had less knowledge, cognition, and sophistication. God knew the nature of His people and their hearts, and His actions in that era of salvation-history (The Law and the Prophets) reflected that.

These people needed a God of grand gestures. They had limited intelligence, less awareness, and a more shallow level of understanding, so God interacted with them in incredible ways. He purified desert water with wood; He gave them commands on stone tablets; He parted a sea for their miraculous escape; He rained bread from heaven, and so on. God spared no expense in showing His love and care for Israel, yet people still doubted!

God never intervenes so much as to inhibit our total freedom, to tread upon our capacity to make an active choice to choose love, goodness, and God. He reveals Himself in a way that still requires some faith and some hope.

The same goes for the people of Jesus' time, who needed God to become a man and speak words and make physical actions and walk human steps with them. We need this God-man, too, and we inherit this God-man through our Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church that He began. He comes to us in Word and Sacrament because God has revealed Himself in this way and will continue to do so, until Christ returns at the end of time to gather His people to Himself in the New Jerusalem.

God's interaction with humanity throughout time is a manifestation of His omniscience and omnipotence. He knows everything of His Creation and can do anything He wants for the sake of our salvation. And our God is omnibenevolent. He only acts in ways that will draw us to life and love in Him.

So, let's muster up some new trust in God! He is looking to meet us where we are, to come to us in a way fitting to where He finds us. He is always looking for us, seeking to share His love so that we might receive it and give it away to others.

He fired up a bush to speak to Moses; He parted a sea for the Israelites; He came to Elijah in a small voice after the fire and storms passed; He became man and lived, died, and rose for the first-century people and all of us; and He comes to us in Word and Sacrament so that we might build His Kingdom through the Church.

Take a look around for Him. He's already searching for you.

An Ordinary Sharing in the Mass

The Mass is the core of our lived faith as Catholics. We believe that the Eucharist is the "source and summit" of our lives. We are called to live Eucharistically, meaning we become what we receive. We are called to come to Jesus in communal prayer and go forth in peace glorifying the Lord by our lives.

Liturgy has been a sticky subject for me these past few years. As a four-year member of the Notre Dame Folk Choir in college, I eventually reached the cynical/jaded stage that seniors do, finding some piece of disillusionment with the process even among so much light, good, and joy that our community and ministry produce.

My main problem came during mass when, in the tight quarters of a choir loft packed with risers, instruments, microphones, and 60 people, very carefully orchestrated movements had to occur - psalmists had to make their way from the loft to the ambo; percussionists had to navigate the back-way to switch sides; soloists had to meander to their place in front of the solo microphone; a sacristan had to retrieve a ciborium to give communion. I loathed the dramatic eye contact, the emphatic gestures, the hustle-bustle, and the shifting and sliding that had to happen during mass in order for us to execute our ministry.

I just wanted an uninterrupted opportunity to fixate on the Body of Christ before me, in the Sacrament and the Word and the community. I had enough internal distractions to battle with when attempting to keep focus. I didn't need all this extra stuff.

Fast forward to last year: I am a lay volunteer minister in a Catholic parish in Ireland. What is perhaps our main duty? Liturgy. And I love lectoring and EM-ing, which I got to do from time to time, but we were tasked more with the mechanics of liturgy and primarily the music ministry. I was flustered immensely by our border-line mercenary position as a sort of "hired guns" brought in to be the backbone of a nascent vigil Mass choir and the supporting cast to a sturdily enduring Sunday choir. We took our position in the corner pews by the organ, behind microphones, or in front of a slideshow laptop, projecting lyrics onto the wall. All I wanted was to be among the people, shaking their hands at peace and walking in and out of the church amid the humdrum noise of that weekly exchange of pleasantries that normal parishioners got to enjoy.

I didn't ask to be a liturgist, and that time helped me to more conclusively discern a positive call, a vocational longing, to be in the pews, another face, though an enthusiastic one, just in the crowd. When it comes to listening, participating in the responses and music, and linking everyone with one another by passing the basket or reaching out for hands in the Our Father, I wanted to be a leader in that sense - not necessarily someone with a book or bowl in hand but someone who carried confidence to his place in the pews.

Following Ireland, I came into a position as a theology teacher and campus minister at a Catholic high school. And what was one of the first things I was asked to do in my less-than-specifically defined job? Become the new liturgy guy. I happily agreed, knowing from anecdotal evidence that help was badly needed. Good people had been making good efforts, but more and more help was wanted. So I began to lend the hand that I could.

Meanwhile, I wanted to settle into a new parish in my new town. I was formed profoundly by my Catholic high school experience, but I think parish life is significant in faith formation as well. Parish life is a different access point to community and to faith that is uniquely valuable. My family benefited deeply from our parish growing up thanks to loving pastors and associate pastors, the desire to contribute beyond the bounds of our school, and the chance to have fun with people from the parish through picnics, bowling leagues, confirmation prep, and much more. I wanted to establish a parish presence in my life now, so I can carry it on into my family.

I registered with Sacred Heart, a parish with a K-8 school in my new town. I wanted to have those envelopes in my drawer; I wanted the pressures of being a parishioner when the pastor or the bulletin made pleas for help or offered invitations to join the community in various outreaches or fellowships. Sure enough, the call came. There was a call for additional volunteers to be Eucharistic Ministers, including for the Mass I had made a habit of attending. I pulled it together and made the call to offer myself, thinking it'd be a mild way to begin contributing my time and talents.

I joined the team and was comfortable right away, though I felt a bit on display a couple times when I was stationed next to the pastor, front and center, the only non-grey-haired EM, to distribute Eucharist. The tough part of this has been that there aren't enough people to meet the need, so there is no rotation or schedule. People just show up or don't show up. And rarely do we have as many as we'd like to have (though it's really just a matter of efficiency). I was hoping for a few on/few off thing, or maybe an every-other-week commitment. Now, I'm part of a group that is scratching to get by. I want to establish a committed presence before I breach the idea of not serving every week, because I want to answer my call to congregational membership, too! For now, I continue to show, don the robe and cross, and do my part. I'll work my way up to a part-time role.

Back to school, though, ... we have the bishop coming on Thursday to celebrate All Saints Day with us. We're not the type of community to freak out, do tons of cleaning, and put on a mask just in order to impress. We're secure with our limited resources, with our middle sized staff, with our modest facilities. But the scrambling endures, albeit under-the-radar style and to a much more reasonable proportion. We have special offerings from our six "houses" to the invocation of their houses' saints, but we still don't know the format of them, who's bringing the stuff up, the order in which it will happen. We are banking on our "God Squad" (spirituality committee) to show up with Prayers of the Faithful in the morning at our weekly meeting. We have just now selected our Psalm for the choir and soloist to sing. We have 17 Eucharistic Ministers who know they need to report for duty, but will not get great direction on exactly where... and so on!

I feel no pressure to wow the Bishop, but the desire to do well anything I put my fingerprints on endures. It applies readily to liturgy.

So what's the point!? Sometimes I just want to be a faceless, anonymous member of the crowd, to be at Mass in the thick of it without inside knowledge of the movements and ministers of the Mass. But my context has not really afforded me that possibility. And I accept all this opportunity as vocationally relevant and meaningful. So what can I make of it?

I have never lost resolve with respect to liturgy, though I do need a solid vent now and then as well as the opportunity to dialogue with other ministers who have similarly had great demand placed on their faithfulness. I found a solid piece of advice from my consistent consumption of the blogosphere.

Enter Oblation, perhaps the best spirituality/Catholicism blog whose title isn't inspired by a famous Augustine quote. A recent post discussed the nature of liturgy, and how we ought not to alter the Mass that has been set forth in order for us to share in the Divine Liturgy: "Because every Catholic participates in the liturgy, every Catholic is a liturgist."

Just what I needed to hear. Kinda.

It's one of those "it's true, but you didn't have to say it" moments. It's something we all need to hear, realize, confront. We are all called to awareness and knowledge and sensitivity to the movements, the joy, and the truths of the Mass. It just so happens that my role in that right now is one of leadership and orchestration. I took great heart in the second part of this author's insight, which gestures at the point of liturgy and being a good liturgist:

"A deeper understanding of the liturgy ought to be not only the purview of scholars, but an ordinary sharing in the patrimony of the Church."

We are all called to be active and informed. Mass ought to be something we all take an involved and inquisitive interest in. Good liturgists will create good liturgists by their liturgy.

I need to work in such a way that those who experience the liturgies I contribute to will follow in my footsteps and increase their awareness of the God who loves them, the God who comes believably close to them.

A Brief Word on Prayer

This is a reflection I prepared on prayer to share with some students on retreat. It's my combination of Scripture and theological-spiritual advice for prayer. Hope it's simple and enlightening...

Prayer is our opportunity to share ourselves with God. God cares for each one of us and loves each one of us immensely, and He wants us to share ourselves with Him. God made us and knows us. Listen to David from the Psalms:

O God, you search me and you know me.

All my thoughts lie open to your gaze.

When I walk or lie down,

you are before me,

ever the Maker and Keeper of my days.

God knows us completely, so why must we share with Him? Can't He just read our minds? God is aware of all we are but think of it like a friendship. If you care about a close friend, but you only learn about them by overhearing things they say, is that the type of friendship you want? If they don't talk directly to you and you can only learn about them second-hand from what others are saying, how would you feel? God wants us to come to Him directly. It will mean more for us to go to Him personally rather than rely on Him to do all the work. Listen to the prophet Isaiah's words from God:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name: you are mine.

You are precious in my eyes and glorious, and I love you.

Everyone who is named as mine.

Our friendship with God is like any friendship; we must both talk and listen. How do you feel when a friend comes to you and does all the talking? Maybe it's necessary sometimes, but mostly, you want to share in conversation. God wants to hear all you have to say. But He wants you to listen, too. It may be hard to quiet yourself. You might be tempted to get frustrated or just start talking again. You might get quiet but then struggle to know what God's voice is or where it will come from. The key is to leave yourself space for the quiet, so that God can use the silence to speak to you. Listen to God coming to Elijah in the First Book of Kings:

Then the LORD said,

"Go outside and stand on the mountain before the LORD;

the LORD will be passing by."

A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains

and crushing rocks before the LORD--

but the LORD was not in the wind.

After the wind there was an earthquake--

but the LORD was not in the earthquake.

After the earthquake there was fire--

but the LORD was not in the fire.

After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound.

When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak

and went and stood at the entrance of the cave.

A voice said to him, "Elijah, why are you here?"

Finally, have faith that God answers every prayer. Sometimes what you ask for will come to you just as you hoped. Sometimes God will ask you to wait a bit for what you've asked for. Sometimes God will answer your prayer in a different way than you expected him to. But never, ever, will God say to your prayers, “No.” Trust that God hears you and grants you grace and strength in His infinite Wisdom.

Welcome to Retreats, Kiddos.

Earlier today, I got back from the sophomore retreat for the students from our high school. Five other teachers, five student leaders, and 40 sophomores converged on a ranch retreat center in the mountains of Southern California for an overnight retreat.

One of my first major tasks in working with our campus ministry was to do some intentional work on the format and content on this retreat. I didn't want to mess too profoundly with the structure without having seen it in action, so I kept most things in place and just rearranged the furniture a bit. We talked about (in order) identifying admirable qualities in others, being our authentic selves, rivalry in relationships, vulnerability, and companionship. But I wanted this retreat to open in a different way than it had previously.

These sophomores are a year into discerning and experience the community at our school, including their overnight freshmen retreat, an initial experience of what a retreat can be and how it goes down in our community. But I wanted them to have a better primer, a substantial invitation to what they had boldly decided to dive into. I wanted them to have a sense of what retreat can and should be - not in a proscriptive way but to explain to them the basic spiritual movement of retreat.

So, I offer you my reflections on retreat, which I shared with these kiddos yesterday...

Welcome, again, to the Sophomore Retreat. We're very happy to have you here, and God is ready, as always, to do amazing things with you and for you. So, let me begin by asking... why have you come...?

1) To relax, get away from daily pressure and have some fun.
2) To take some time out to think about myself and my life.
3) To get to know friends better and make new friends.
4) To think about my faith and get to know God a little better.

Usually for retreats, we step away from the familiarity of our routine schedule and the well-known surroundings of our campus. Our school is blessed with incredible friendliness and tight bonds of family, blessings that help us to be more aware of Christ's presence among us, within us, and between us. But for retreats, we try to go off campus to a new place because we want our community to grow beyond the boundaries of any one place or building or piece of land. We want to grow ourselves and our community beyond what we already know. What do you think of when you hear the word retreat?

1) regrouping
2) re-strategizing
3) backing up from hard stuff
4) stepping away

We come on retreat in order to advance; we step back in order to move forward. Retreat is an opportunity to spend intentional time reflecting on our lives so we can make positive changes going forward. Our friend St. Ignatius Loyola loved retreats as a way to renew his community. He believed that God works directly with and for people who make time to go on retreat and approach it as a serious opportunity. Gaining new insight from a retreat is called “receiving the graces,” as Ignatius put it. Our way of proceeding on retreat is to receive graces in deepening our understanding of three big areas of our lives: our self-awareness, our relationship to others, and our friendship with God.

In many ways, it all starts with how well we know ourselves. Our understanding of who we really are is crucial. We come on retreat to increase our self-awareness so that we can build stronger relationships with others and to create a deeper friendship with God. Retreats provide us space, time, and context to reflect on who we are and who God wills us to be. We are given a place where we can find quiet comfort to enter into reflection; our retreat schedule makes significant time for us to dedicate to this reflection; and, if we all commit together, we can create an environment that is quiet yet talkative, serious yet fun, and solemn yet informal. This chance to look within ourselves helps us to recognize God in our relationships and to more fully see Him at work in our lives and in the world.

One of my greatest moments of insight into myself came on retreat. We did an activity that asked us to look at our lives so far, to consider the high points and the low points and reflect on all that has happened to us. As I looked over my life, I noticed that I hadn't really had low points—very few bad things had happened to me, and I had handled those rare lows really well. I was hesitant to share, as my fellow group members were telling stories of difficult lows in their lives. I didn't want to feel left out, so I told them what I had discovered. They were very supportive and affirming. My leaders processed what I had said and suggested that maybe God has made my life relatively easy because he wants me to worry about other people... Hmmmm! This was a pretty sweet revelation. My life has made much more sense in this context, as I have been much more proactive about dedicating myself to helping others who regularly face more serious lows or have more trouble handling them than I might. The space, time, and context of retreat helps us to look within ourselves and see how God can be at work more clearly in our lives and our relationships.

We come on retreat to increase our self-awareness so that we can better relate to others and build stronger relationships. When we take time to tend to ourselves – to confront our inner struggles, to discern our inner desires – we can then offer ourselves to others more substantially in relationship. This is not to say that we can only enter into relationships when we have perfectly sorted ourselves out. It's just the opposite! We don't need perfect insights; rather, we ought to spend time looking at ourselves so that we can share our searching with one another. The more we talk with others, the more we can realize how much we have in common in our thoughts, feelings, and experiences. If you are willing to embrace some vulnerability and put yourself out there to each other, you'll quickly find that a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved while a joy shared is a joy doubled.

When I was on retreat once in high school, we had a reconciliation service. Going to speak with the priest and seek forgiveness for sins was an awesome opportunity, yet the strongest memory I have is the conversation I had with my friends after we had gone to Confession. We were sharing how we were so delighted to have shared the retreat together – the new inside jokes and fun times as well as the chance to share ourselves with each other. And through this, my friend Tommy (name changed for the blog) discovered a new level of trust with us. We had all been friends since freshman year, but Tommy had kept something significant to himself. Building on the community we built together on retreat, he had reached a point of comfort where he felt he could finally tell us what he had been trying to carry on his own: his parents had been separated for a few years, and his dad had moved out. We had spent countless nights watching movies, shooting pool, and hanging out at Tommy's house, but he and his mom had kept this hardship to themselves for years. It took the time, space, and context of that retreat for Tommy to look inside himself and feel ready to share. His sorrow was shared and thus decreased; the joy of our friendship doubled in the new bond we forged.

Finally, we come on retreat to more deeply find our God who is and has always been seeking us. Let me suggest to you a simple metaphor for how you can find Christ in your life, starting with this retreat. Consider the Sign of the Cross (demonstrate): we make a vertical gesture to begin, followed by a horizontal gesture as we finish. We need to open our eyes to Christ in both of those ways. Look for Him by dedicating yourself to a relationship with the God who hears our prayers in Heaven and who watches over us in love. And look for Him also by being attentive to His presence in one another, in all of us gathered here, in everyone at Xavier, and in everyone you encounter in the world.

In college, I went on a week-long retreat for 20-somethings who wanted to better understand how to serve the Church – anything from training to be a priest to just helping out in small ways during free time from business careers. I struck up wonderful conversations with people doing similar searching to me and, in particular, bonded powerfully with two people in particular. Though I plead with you guys not to do this here, the three of us then stayed up until 4am, carrying on a 6+ hour conversation, that started as chit-chat then turned into commiseration over the ups and downs of college social life and romantic problems, and deepened into the ways we doubted our faith and felt strong in our faith. Our life stories unfolded to one another over the course of these late hours. Days earlier we were strangers, but we had now turned into dear friends. Near the end, my friend ended a brief silence with a staggering observation: “You guys, this is gonna sound weird, but you have literally been transfigured before my eyes.” He told us that after all we had shared, there was no way he could look at us the same way as before. We had shared our hearts, our souls, our faith. The presence of Christ had become so apparent that, like the way Peter, James, and John saw Christ in a new, dazzling, immaculate way in His Transfiguration on the mountaintop, Jeremy now had a new visualized appreciation for the Christ he saw in us.

Retreating gives us the time, space, and context to look within, share our struggles with each other, and invite God into it with us. We discover His presence among us through the fellowship of sharing in small and large groups, and the Holy Spirit forges bonds of community between us through the Christ we share. We realize the amazing potential and the inevitable joy of being part of Someone (Jesus!) and Something (our Church) bigger than any one of us.

God says to us through the prophet Isaiah, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine.” Coming here is a small effort we make toward answering our call from God to know Him better. He calls us by name—He calls you (names of retreatants) and you ( ) and you ( ) —to experience our Him through Christ and through one another.
We're here together with an amazing opportunity before us, so here's your chance: bring it all on – your worry that you're the only one experiencing what you're going through, the only one doubting faith, the only one wondering if there is a God, the only one struggling with the challenges of growing up through high school – bring it all on! Bring all of your struggles with you through this experience. The challenges of life can be hard, but they are no match for our God. He is the Light that no darkness can overcome. Let's summon the courage and dedication to share in community, and as we tell God just how big our problems can be, let's also start to tell our problems just how big our God is.

Let me close with a favorite prayer that gives gratitude to God for all He has given us and expresses our excitement for that's yet to come. It can be our commissioning for this retreat : For all that has been, thanks! For all that will be, yes!

Running to be God's Love

God can and will bring good out of anything.

My closest friends have heard me spout this time and time again. The kiddos in my eight weeks of Vision groups have gotten it from me during small-group time. My students will inevitably hear it at some point. I'll assuredly work it into my talks as I get the opportunity to go on retreat with the different ages of students here at the high school where I work.

This is basically the core of my daily faith. It may not be the topic sentence in The Catechism, but it's the precept I return to time and time again. It comes from my belief in a God who is thoroughly and completely of God of love and the God who is Love, a God who is so good and is Good, a God who is the Light that no darkness can overcome. He is the One who can overpower, overwhelm, overcome, and defeat any evil that rears its head in this world of freedom that he gave us. Though the Devil chose to disobey God and leads us to temptation, no evil in the world is greater than the Good that trumps everything.

This piece of my faith sustains my hope and consoles me in times of need. It tells me what kind of God I believe in, what kind of God is here among us and watching over us.

When my girlfriend is hunkering down against the stresses of a rough exam week and pausing her search for the next step in living out her vocation, I know that the Love I mediate to her from God through our relationship will highlight the good, mitigate the bad, and shine Light across our world.

When my parents have been unemployed amid a crappy job market and a steady stream of bills that carry no sympathy for financial difficulty, including tuition payments to amazing schools, I know that God is gracing my parents with renewed faith, that He is finding them even before they search for Him anew, and that I can find peace and comfort in the stronger bonds that emerge between God and my family.

When I see Facebook links to articles from Irish newspapers reporting that a friend of mine and my community in Wexford has gone missing, when I begin to fear the worst, and when his death and suicide become reality, I retain hope that an outpouring of love and support will flow onto the parish and his family, that God will be ever present among them to console their loss and increase their hope in his rest with Christ.

I believe this piece of my faith will come in handy endlessly, an insight that can illuminate any dark situation that may come to me. I am lucky to be predisposed with a strong will power and sturdy self-control so that I can handle tough things with more ease than others might. But I appreciate that healing and consolation requires action on our part, too; we must seek God out to discover His abiding presence with us and for us.

Another way I think of this element of my faith is by imagining a metaphor: I think of it as being almost like a race. When something bad or evil happens in my world, I know God can and will find good in it or bring good from it. So, why not race Him? What if I, allowing a proper moment for grief or emotional hardship, race God to the good? What if I try to discover the good that will come from an apparently evil situation as fast as God does?

It is kind of a silly metaphor, and when I pitch it to friends, I do so knowing that it's a strange concept. Until one day at school here, I saw it happen, before my eyes, in literal reality.

It was our first Monday Mass of the year, a new weekly institution at our school, and we were trying it out for the first time. It's tradition at our school that the school community recites the Prayer for Generosity by St. Ignatius Loyola together near the end of mass. So, we thought, after receiving communion, why not have the students remain on the gym floor rather than going back to the bleachers? We could have them encircle the altar, put their arms around each other, and recite the prayer together in a a more visual, physical manifestation of community. Pretty sweet, right!?

The problem was partly practical, partly teenagical.

First off, the prayer is written on the wall, so the circle of arms-around-each-other breaks down when they're all facing in the same direction. Dang. Well they'll figure it out and include each other well enough, right? Students at our school have a strong reputation for taking care of each other most of the time.

Unfortunately, the way the formation broke, a few teenage boys aced a girl out of their love chain. As we were about to start the prayer, she was standing inside the ring of students and teachers, on her own, about to pray for generosity in the context of having been selfishly excluded.

Enter Miss D.

Dear Miss D. doesn't go a moment in these halls and rooms without being mega sensitive to the challenges of being 14-18 and female. This moment at Mass was no exception. Before the thoughts of exclusion could rush in and sour this poor student, Miss D ran -- ran -- across the circle and threw her arm around this girl as we began to pray.

God can and will find good from evil situations. When we step up and choose to answer the call to holiness, we embrace our capacity to be mediators of God's love and grace. We realize our awesome ability present in our free will to choose love.

I watched the decision get made. I watched the action get taken. I saw love and grace mediated in front of my face. Be the love of Christ for another person. Shine Light into your world, and be God's love.

Circum(in)ventions

People these days increasingly don't want organized religion, institutionalized church, or fixed ideas about much of anything. There is an increasing hostility toward the "imposition" of anything really. Millennials et al don't want to know what you've found to be true. They want to figure it out for themselves, and then they might agree with you, maybe.

The idea of transmitted truth and tradition is too constrictive; it boxes you in to something you didn't come up with yourself and that you might not have chosen freely. There is some beautiful idealism tucked away in there somewhere, but it continues to run amok.

There is value to the idea of challenging fixed ideas and conventional wisdom. We ought to be asking "Why?" to sharpen our answers to the oft-asked questions. However, we all too quickly throw away the transmitted wisdom of our ancestors and forefathers, and I am speaking most prevalently of our faith, our Tradition of a moral code discerned from the Revelation of our Provident God.

Morality, as Benedict XVI has been teaching us, is no longer being considered and practiced as strongly in absolutes. Relativism is sexier and more appealing to the individual-focused spiritual-but-not-religious seeker who embraces the modern religiosity of "Moral Therapeutic Deism," a basic God who made us in love but isn't too actively involved in our world except for mild delight in our triumphs, disappointment shortcomings, and a mild hotline of prayer which we sometimes utilize.

It feels like far too many people have no desire to hold themselves, everyone around them, and society to a high moral standard. The expectation is almost solely that liberality and tolerance be practiced in excess, so anyone who finds a partner or circle of people that freely consents in action can do as they please.

Majority isn't truth, friends.

American law may be made by popular referendum, but we worship a God who is immutable, the source of unchanging truth and an illuminating deposit of faith.

My problem with this evolving attitude of modernity was exacerbated by a story I heard earlier this week on NPR and reported originally by the New York Post (story from NYT). New York City public schools are not only distributing condoms and birth control to teenagers; now they are distributing morning-after pills and doing so without parental consent/informing (the story mentions that families can opt out of the system, which does not even come close to making it ok).

I almost had to pull over for the level of guffaw that this story evoked from me. I could not believe how far the reach of birth control has gone. It exists; it's widely available; it can be gotten without prescription; it can be gotten in public school; it can be gotten from school in morning-after form; it can be gotten without parental consent. The vomit is coming up my throat.

Setting aside for the moment (slash for this blog post) the debated (im)morality of contraception and other birth control methods, it just illustrates a manifestation of this troubling trend of lapsing morality that is diffuse throughout our modern culture.

When we want to do something, even if it has negative consequences for ourselves or others, we do it.

We shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to major stuff. We opt to act how we want to act and figure out how to remedy it later, regardless of immorality or its effects on ourselves and others. Let's go down some parallel roads, and you decide if there's similarity enough across these topics to back up what I see to be the problem.

We love to drink, to have some shots and some beers and get hammered. And I'm not talking about people chemically/bodily predisposed toward alcoholism. So, we invent chaser pills and chug tons of water while we drink ourselves silly to ease the hangover that's coming the next morning. But you bet we won't be drinking any less.

We love to eat, to go pound some monster burgers, huge portions of fries, enormous steaks. And I'm not talking about people with medical conditions that cause severe weight gain or obesity or emotional disorders that cause people to overeat. So, we invent liposuction and gastric bypass surgeries to give us an out when we eat our way to unhealthiness.

We are increasingly in love with some abstract idea of justice, in which our society has become more bloodthirsty for the death penalty, to execute our criminals on death row. And I'm not just talking about gun-nut conservatives in the boonies of the South. We don't want them getting out and wreaking more havoc, and we want vengeance for ourselves and the victims and their families. But we don't want the blood on our hands, and we want them to go quick and peacefully; so, we invent the lethal injection to minimize outward signs of struggle and avoid the visuals of the electric chair and the gallows.

We love to have flexibility and autonomy; we are increasingly wary of committing ourselves to marriages. And I'm not talking about those people who were thoughtful and careful as they moved into marriage but could not make it work. So, we cohabitate - live together before marriage to "try it out" rather than grow a relationship and discern the marriage over time. And when we do marry, we do so knowing that we can resort to a divorce if and when it doesn't work.

And we love sex. This itself isn't wrong, but the social sin comes in our attitude toward sex. We are pleasure-seekers wanting the ecstasy of sexual acts with none of the repercussions of pregnancy. So rather than training ourselves in self-denial or learning the depths of our awesome sexuality that is a gift from God, we give in to our desires with eager abandon, treating sex as a commodity of pleasure, turning other people into, at the most, faintly loved partners and, at the least, into objects for self-gratification. We choose not to look at ourselves in the mirror or adjust our behavior because our pursuit of pleasure blinds us to the errors of our ways.

So we invent condoms to prevent the man's seed from making it to an egg. We invent female condoms or IUD's to insulate the woman from fertilization. We come up with medical procedures to disable our bodies from offering their chemical contributions toward procreation. We invent pills that control a woman's cycle so that she might avoid pregnancy. We create another pill that can terminate a pregnancy before the child develops into (God forbid) a fetus and a newborn baby. And we meticulously perfect "medical" procedures that murder humans developing within their mothers, even as late as their potential moment of birth.

The scene in the NYC school system is a scary one to me, because it is an admission that teenagers can and will have sex, so we should just let them. And we should give them an out when their actions lead them to undesired, unplanned pregnancies. I don't want girls getting pregnant, dropping out of high school, and never returning because of one bad decision; but I also don't want tiny humans dying to give these teens their second chance.

I want a society in which we overcome apparent evils with the incredible love we receive from God. Why can't we pay forward our love of one another toward these challenges and overwhelm them with good? How come we put our energy into institutionalizing a system in which teenagers can get a morning-after pill without parental consent rather than formulating a system of support that helps to pay a teen's medical bills, provide her counseling throughout her pregnancy and after, and create a structure in which she can keep the baby and begin motherhood or offer it for adoption to a family that is waiting for their miracle?

I admit naivety, idealism, and stubbornness. But I refuse to admit defeat in accepting sexual promiscuity, especially among youth. We can restore a vision of love that recenters sexuality on a true exchange of procreative, unitive love. We can overcome the evils of abortifacients, abortions, and under-the-table recourse.

Accepting negative behaviors are not the way to fight them. Education is the way forward. Every time we move further into these shadowlands, it will be more difficult to come back. Let's stem the tide of liberalizing these backwards methods and shine the light of love and life on these situations in which evil tries to rear its head and win the battle.

Practice self-control. Try to do the right thing rather than expecting technology and human innovation to come up with a way that endorses your behavior. Have a morality that's bigger than social relativism. Love the Love that is God, and be a conduit through which His Love and grace can flow to help overcome these darknesses.

Why I fret no more

The long story begins early sophomore year.

I hadn't started singing till sophomore year musical in high school, and I never sang in a choir until senior year. But I learned enough on the fly to become serviceable, and my combo of personality and ability landed me a spot in this superb choir at college. As a member of the Notre Dame Folk Choir, status quo at the time dictated that I could effortlessly apply for and be accepted to Notre Dame Vision as a musician/mentor.

This summer program brings 1000+ kids to Notre Dame in four one-week sessions to explore their faith in small groups and as a big group, by living on campus and eating in the dining halls. It needs 60 students to work as mentors, 15 or so serving as music mentors, carrying the load in providing music all day and night.

Naturally, since most-every Folkhead that had offered themselves to the program thus far had found a summer job serving the kiddies, I figured it was my time to climb aboard and join the team. I put the usual solid work into my application and essays and waited for my audition to come, the last Friday before fall break. It was a loud Thursday night, one of the biggest party nights of each year, that included our music director telling us Folkheads at choir rehearsal that she anticipated not getting to take all of us to her band, and Friday morning brought the stress and frustration of The Gr8-Man Flood (lest we forget). I dragged my rear end to the audition and vocally did pretty "meh." The concurrence of circumstances left me on the outside looking in, given the "wait-list" spot that would never turn into an offer.

Bitterness was the primary reaction. It lasted for a good few weeks. I looked at the tenors who were accepted, and I wondered how they leapfrogged me to snag those spots in the group. They were Folkheads, too, but newbies. I wondered what they did better than me, knowing full well that their musical abilities likely exceeded mine by a solid margin. Delightfully, two of these guys are now in the handful of best friends I still carry with me from Notre Dame. Good one, God.

Eventually my bitterness was processed. It didn't evaporate; rather, it transitioned into peaceful perspective. I was really coming into my own vocationally, taking more and more strongly to my theology classes and knowing that I had chosen the right academic path, one that was forming me in faith, in reason, in understanding, and also in my potential ability to minister in my Church. I was discovering the specificities of my call, and it was becoming sharply clear.

Music was certainly a gift, but it wasn't one of my primary gifts. It was meant to be part of the equation but not the thing I do.

It was humbling and slightly frustrating. I had cruised pretty comfortably to this point. I started the musical journey as the sophomore who showed up to high school musical auditions because his girlfriend tried out, getting a part just for my maleness and ability to carry a tune. I made it from a 5-line-character to a featured part the next year and then a supporting lead as a senior. In my one year in chorus, I became the section leader and the go-to guy for my director to consult on tricky rhythms. Then at college, I got accepted to a competitive choir in my first week on campus. Now in this crossroadsy moment, I had finally hit a wall, a limit, a point at which my gifts might have been maxed out.

It's not that I couldn't continue improving my voice, my ear, my blend, my ability to read music, my capacities as a music minister; it was that my progress had to be halted to give me the opportunity to refocus myself.

At Vision, the final speaker encourages everyone gathered to reflect on non-physical compliments they have received and to compare those with the times they feel most alive in order to gain clarity on vocation. The aftermath of my Vision rejection did just this for me. Friends offered the usual consolation, affirming my singing voice and wondering why I wasn't selected. This was nice, though probably some pity rather than truth (I was simply was not one of the best tenors to audition!). The key was when they asked me about my application:

Assuming I would be a slam-dunk for music mentor, I applied only in that capacity rather than doing the double app for small-group mentoring. My friends were shocked that I didn't apply to be a small-group mentor, a mentor who works entirely with the participants rather than splitting time between musicals/liturgical music and small groups. They assured me I'd be a slam-dunk for that, and it really made me feel solid again (though stupid for not applying as such the first time). The conclusion to that piece is that I worked as a small group mentor-in-faith in Summer 2010 and again as a veteran mentor in Summer 2011. And it was the perfect fit for me.

But so continued the ongoing struggle to find the context for whatever gifts I did have in music. I struggled through the usual ebbs and flows of wanting solos in choir, then scorning solos, and then delighting in getting a few toward the end of my four years in the group. I struggled with being friends with brilliant musicians who could play by ear, jam out on guitar, and harmonize ad lib, oscillating between serious jealousy of their gifts and contentment that I had never genuinely desired those kinds of things. I found peace with the vocals because I hadn't been a singer for long.

But I had been playing instruments since 3rd grade. I knew most of musical inclination came from that. I knew I could do that well. At least, I used to...

By early senior year, I was at the brink. I knew I had to pick something up and get back to playing music. I had the capability and the potential, and given my strong grasp on college academics and life balancings, I had the time. I knew I had to pick up piano or guitar because I wanted something that was practical, able to be used and played in commonplace, not just in formal situations and not just when you bring the instrument with you. I remember going to see a friend play an acoustic set, slightly reluctantly, going just to be in solidarity with another friend who wanted to get out. That rendition of Mumford and Sons put me over the edge. I needed a guitar.

I approached my best buddy Kurt, who proudly loaned me his six-string baby for a few weeks while I waited until Thanksgiving break to acquire a guitar of my very own, from a high school friend who never got around to learning to play. I struggled my way through the basic chords, studying my CAGED diagram until I could do it by memory, and laboriously practicing a few simple songs over and over - a lot of Wolves by Josh Ritter (D Em G) and then Please Come Home by Dustin Kensrue, which continues to be my go-to song as it's the one I've played the most and for the longest.

I made my way through the first obstacles, learning that much like learning to ride a bike, you just fall a bunch of times during your many attempts and then eventually you can just ride. Within a few months, I could sight read four-chord songs and a lot of stuff in basic keys. I was just looking to be able to play the songs I liked and to be able to pitch in during sing-song jam sessions with songs that people would enjoy hearing and singing along with.

I was settling into learning a gift that had been initiated off of my own desires and my own drive. I was doing it how I wanted to do it, without responding to any pressures in any way. I continued playing and practicing and improving over the next year, getting much better during my extended practice sessions while living in Ireland and playing on a guitar worth more than my bank accounts.

The social pressures set in when we'd end up in an Irish sing-song. Everyone there - regardless of what they let on in their Irish bashful sheepishness - can sing pretty solidly, knows tons of songs, has a pretty good ear, and can probably play at least one instrument, if not more. I felt regularly inadequate and often anxious, knowing I'd be called on to play my "party piece" as a guitar was hastily moved into my hands. I'd do my thing, often missing on some chord changes, not landing my fingers cleanly, or screwing up the order of the song somehow. And I never played them a song they knew because my repertoire was stuff I liked. I was always affirmed solidly enough, but I could never shake the feeling that I had been an interruption to the steady momentum of the evening to that point, momentum that had to start fresh after I took the night off course a bit.

We were often called on as a community - the four of us Americans - to sing a song together. I struggle a cappella and can't settle in well without the support of at least a solid starting note. We'd muddle through Down to the River to Pray and be applauded all the same, but anxiety accompanied that inevitability as well. I'd always just want it to be over.

Once, we had good advance notice - we were invited (expected) to contribute a song to the St. Patrick's concert at the Notre Dame Dublin party, so my only request to the group was that we pick a song well ahead of time and practice it to mitigate my anxiety with sight-reading and slapped-together performance. This is a tough sell to two music majors who are proficient on piano and vocals and a fellow who's been playing guitar since early puberty. We dragged our feet on picking a song and slapped together Falling Slowly in time to provide a decent rendition. However, I was unsettled the whole night, as was abundantly clear with my aggravated and repeated requests for us to slow down during our brief rehearsal, struggling to move my left hand at the proper pace to pluck out the notes.

The peace began to come in a stronger, fuller dose when we made concrete plans to establish Clonard Parish's youth group - a bunch of 12-18 year-olds who'd come sing a Saturday night mass once a month and stay after to hang out and talk about faith by discussing a movie or TV show we'd screen. We'd have 3 rehearsals ahead of time, so I knew this could be the chance to make my first public contribution to liturgical music on guitar. I'd have sufficient chance to practice and get comfortable. It was a great decision. I even got to play 2nd guitar and just strum simply behind the piano and lead, a comfortable place for me to plug in and offer what I could.

I had found an appropriate balance, a way to offer my gifts in a complementary way. I was giving what I had without being counted on to be the best or to be the lead. I was finding happiness in my own playing, learning songs I'd always loved and gaining more and more skills to expand my abilities and repertoire. And here I had found a proper entry point for what I can ably do to give glory to God, to make a return to Him for all He had given me.

And last weekend, I finally found the zone, the happy place where I could offer myself and my gifts in proportion to my ability.

I was invited to lead the evening prayer time by a set of our freshmen retreat leaders at the high school where I work. Faculty members are tasked with offering a reflection on prayer, a Scripture passage and/or song, and the guidance for a meditation. I decided to pull the Parable of the Lost Son from Luke and then play Please Come Home. It went wonderfully, and I kept my guitar out to fill in the space around their spoken, shared prayers. I plucked out a quiet and sparse rendition of Fred Jones, Part 2 by Ben Folds followed by a bit of Rainslicker (keyed down) by Josh Ritter as the background to their spoken prayer.

It was smooth, easy, and appropriate. It was my contribution made on my offer. I was doing something that was fitting, glorifying God, and firmly within my abilities.

It's hard to describe the rightness of this simple contribution. Tracing the trajectory of my wrestlings with music, I hope it shows where I came from and where I am. I went from an overly presumptive amateur to a self-taught, humble instrumentalist. I went from someone struggling to understand how his gifts could minister to others to someone who put them into right action.

I found a place where, for others, I could peaceably and joyfully give musical voice to the love and presence of God.

Whatshouldwecallme?

As you may have noticed from earlier posts, I'm a big fan of our names. There's a significance to our first names. Not to belittle our family names, but our first names are given to us at baptism as our Christian Names - these are the names by which God knows us and calls us (see Isaiah 43!).

One my favorite things about our names is how effectively they can become adjectives. So often, I find that my friends are possessors of such unique behaviors, senses of humor, and characteristics that simple adjectives no longer work really well for them. "Funny," "quirky," "awkward"... they just don't quite capture the essence as well.

I've found that when you have friends like the ones I tend to gather to myself, the only word that works to describe them is their own name. I'd be honored if someone reacted to my tendency to burb excessively loudly or wax theologically or dress in an unusually high quantity of orange or Chicago-sports-related clothes with "wow, what a Dan thing to do."

Why, thank you!

I love that my friends are strange and unique. And I don't think I'm special in having that kind of friend. I think most, if not all, of us possess this kind of one-of-a-kind-ness. However, not every friendship takes vulnerability and honesty to heart in a way that allows both people to see each other for their true selves. That's where I believe I'm spoiled - I have friends who bare their souls and hearts to me in a way that let's me see them pretty close to the way God sees them (with heaven's eyes!). I see their personalities in the context of the gifts God gave them and how their gifts are meeting the needs of the world around them. It gives me the chance to say, "That's so Jason!" or "What a Steph thing to do!" or "How Kurt of you!"

I love the way in which someone's name comes to be so intimately identified with my love for them, invoking good times, memories, laughter, and love. Their name carries a weight to it that isn't heavy but joyful. And the fun of using someone's name as an adjective to describe themselves invokes all of these good things.

I really find my friendships to function as a kind of organic, peer-led spiritual direction. My conversations and shared experiences with them add up to a beautifully positive influence in forming my faith. Jesus has a place in what we share, and the Holy Spirit operates through our interactions and carries our prayers back and forth between each other and God.

How can we describe this life we live? What word can we assign to a life of faith, of companionship, of breaking bread with one another, whether in person, over a Skype call, or in the Eucharist?

We follow the example of the God-who-became-man, of the Word-made-flesh. We live our lives in the penultimate chapter of salvation history: God gathered a people to Himself and led them by pillar of fire and by the Law and the Prophets; then, God became man and walked among us, living, serving, suffering, dying, and RISING from the dead; and now, God established a Church, a social community in which we live, love, and serve with one another and with Christ. We are led by the Holy Spirit, having been founded by Christ and on Christ.

We are Christians.

Jesus shares Himself with us fully. By dying on the cross, He opened salvation to any who come to Him. He comes to us by changing bread and wine into His Body and Blood. He provides us such a unique example and inspiration. How do we describe this beauty and joy!? We use the very name of the One who is all of it.

Christ.

We can only define ourselves as being Christians. We can only become fully aware of the great potential and love of this God, the God who became man and who inspires us with His Spirit, by calling ourselves after Him.

And our hope endures as Christians. We hope that by becoming what we receive - Christ really with us in the Eucharist - that we can be as "other" Christs. Taking on his name not just in baptism or religious affiliation but completely onto our persons. And in the end, Christ will gather His people to Himself: The New Israel, not just ethnic Jews but any and all whose freedom has led them to follow the Christian example.

All in the name of Jesus Christ.

Our Inseparable Communion

Late last week, I was asked a simple but profound question by one of my students: "What's the biblical basis for saints?" I had just taken the class on a local tangent to the process of sainthood, pairing the complex and formalized process of canonization alongside the simple understanding of a saint, which I explain as "someone we believe is bound for Heaven or already in Heaven." I wanted to get to the bottom of this, both for my student and for me (and all of you readers!).

My cursory searching pointed me first to the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus, told by Luke in 16:19-31. The spark-notes version is that the Rich Man ignores Lazarus, a poor man who lives at his door. When they die, Lazarus goes to Heaven while the Rich Man goes to hell, where he can see the beggar in Heaven. He begs Lazarus to intervene with his living relatives and warn them against selfishness. The indication here is that those in Heaven do have some capacity through which they can communicate with the still-living.

This link between the living and the dead-in-Christ is reinforced by the beauty of Romans 8, imagery wonderfully enshrined in the amazing hymn Jesus Lives (arranged by Fr. Chrysogonous Waddell, o.c.s.o and performed by the Notre Dame Folk Choir). Romans 8:38-39 tells us, "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

We believe that Christ connects all those in heaven with the souls of purgatory and the living on earth; this is the communion of saints, the amazing body bound by Jesus the Lord. The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes this beautiful mystery: "[I]t is that the union of the wayfarers with the brethren who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted, but on the contrary, according to the constant faith of the Church, this union is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods." This exchange is manifested in our prayers, which rise from our hearts to our saintly brothers and sisters gathered to the Lord.

Furthermore, Jesus tells us that He will be seated at the right hand of the Father, an image in Revelation that is foreshadowed earlier in the Bible; e.g. Romans 8:34, where we learn Christ is at God's right hand interceding for us. Similarly, those who die in Christ realize eternal life in Him through His Resurrection, which redeemed us, and we believe that they share this place with Jesus in some similar capacity. Revelation 5:8 speaks of "elders" bowed down before the Lamb (Christ) with bowls of incense that hold "the prayers of the holy ones," so they certainly offer prayers though they are already in heaven. On faith, we say they can offer our prayers with/as their own. Revelation 8:3-4 describes similar imagery.

James 5:16 adds, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful." Here, we are encouraged to be praying for each other, inspired by the efficacy of the righteous persons' prayers. This doesn't explicitly indicate heavenly intercession, but the previous Scripture passages suggest a continued capacity for interaction and intercession by the holy dead. Finally, Job 5:1 reads, "Call now! Will anyone respond to you? To which of the holy ones will you turn?" Perhaps, this is an exhortation for people to invoke the help of the saints in heaven?

The communion of saints is certainly grounded in Scripture, and the references to this mystery have been unpacked and reflected upon by our great Tradition. I am not accomplished enough in constructing doctrinal argument from Scripture, but there are some nice passages out there to uphold our belief in the communion of saints and intercessory prayer. I find great consolation in Romans 8 as the inspiration to remember that nothing separates those who are united in Christ. Whether dead, living, or being purified, Christ has bound us inseparably, and we who live in Him live in Him and with each other forever.

Main sources:

New Advent

Wikipedia (for bible passages' chapter-verse)

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Veil Is Gone

"Jesus cried out again in a loud voice, and gave up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom." -Matthew 27:50-51

I've been in Palm Desert for a month now, and to use a worn-out expression from my first months in Ireland, I'm "all settled in." I've found my new stomping grounds for Sunday mornings, too. I go to Sacred Heart Parish every week, enter through the parking lot doors, veer to the left, and grab a spot for myself in the pews nearish the pianist and cantor, turning my head a little to the right, looking toward the sanctuary at a slight angle.

The masses I've gone to at various times of day are delightfully packed, with families of varying ages and the usual dosage of gray-haired faithfuls. The mass is well-executed, most often by our dear pastor, Fr. Lincoln, a man who often cites his switching from Protestantism to Catholicism earlier in his life (I say switching because you can't really convert religions unless you change religions, according to sociologists). He makes an explicit welcome to non-Catholics each week before he begins the Opening Rites of the mass, and his zeal for the Catholic faith poured through his Bread of Life homilies the past few weeks, when he emphatically upheld the Real Presence of Christ in our Eucharist as something evident in Jesus' words in John's Gospel.

One of Fr. Lincoln's diligently practiced conventions comes after the end of the Eucharistic Prayer. Before inviting the gathered faithful to pray the Lord's Prayer together, he issues another invitation. Fr. Lincoln invites all the children in the congregation to join him in the sanctuary to pray this cherished prayer together. For those who have the patience to wait a minute while the children make their way up there, this is just awesome.

At the 9:30am mass, a loyal mother takes her special needs son by the hand and slowly escorts him to the altar, taking her time, even if they don't make it before the prayer starts. This morning, another special needs boy was helping serve the mass and hastily made his way to Father's side, praying the words loudly and proudly. There are big sisters toting little brothers; moms nudging kids toward the altar; kids waiting until halfway through the prayer, not wanting to be the first ones; or this morning, a boy from the family next to me making his way toward me down the pew and gently saying, "Excuse me, sir."

It's just awesome.

I was reflecting on the visual of this beautiful manifestation of Jesus' words in the Gospel:

Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked them, but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” -Matthew 19:13-14

Here is a consecrated man, our priest, acting in persona Christi to bring the Word-Made-Flesh among us through the power of the Holy Spirit, and he is literally physically emulating the action of Jesus in the Mass. This is the tearing of the veil of the sanctuary.

When Jesus died on the cross, St. Matthew tells us that grand events took place: Creation even knew its Savior had died - the earth quaked; darkness fell. The Centurion professes the true identity of Christ, the Son of God. Also, the veil is torn that separates the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Temple, that space reserved for sacrifice by high priests. No longer is the awesome, profoundest presence of God confined to one special space or meant only for the select few. Christ brought the Love and Salvation of God to everyone. Anyone who confessed the faith, as the Centurion at the foot of the cross did, could know God and be with Him forever.

Some people may prefer that the Mass just continue from the Great Amen straight into the Our Father, and maybe it would be smoother and more apt to the order of the Mass. For me, I'll enjoy this gesture as an extension of the Mass that exists within its order. I'll relish the lack of the veil, the fact that no barrier exists between us and God beside our own stubborn wills. As long as we practice reverence and seek Christ in our hearts, He is there for us, out in the open, without a curtain to give us pause in our return to Him. These children come to Him, giving us a beautiful example as they walk unabated toward the God who calls.

Hoping for the Decrease of Nones

Over the past few years, I have attempted to become a more informed and well-read person. I like to check out the news sites, load up my Google Reader with stuff to check out regularly (CNN Belief Blog is a must-follow for faithfuls out there), and be talking with people and scouring my news-feed to be discovering intelligent and thought-provoking reading material.

I'm not sure where I first came across it in its best articulated form, but a pattern of things I read a few years ago discussed in detail the decline in religious affiliation around the world. People aren't necessarily becoming atheists across the board, but there is a global tendency (with pockets of higher and lower movement) towards unaffiliated spirituality - "spiritual but not religious" or SBNR. This has been best described, with respect to the demographics and surveys, as the "rise of the nones." I have to be careful using this term in conversation - much less so in print - because the first thought people have is "nuns." Unfortunately, the increase is in those with no affiliation and not in the population of our religious orders (though, blessings to my dear friends in religious life and one friend who is about to embark on that journey!).

Personally, I find this troubling because my life is full of the blessings of a strongly organized religion/church. The Catholic Church is riddled with inconsistency and flaw, just as any human organization is, but we are guided and inspired by a God who created us, became one of us, and dwells with us still. I find incredible grace through my Church, and I wish that grace were present in more people's lives.

I've seen two serious roots to this trend in our generation that I find seriously troubling, so I want to reflect on each of them for a while here.

First, there is a serious identity crisis within religion that is not especially helpful to those who are searching. Many Christian denominations - and trust me, there's a heckuva lot of them - have forsaken any kind of uniformity, or shared practice, worship, and belief, across their members and communities. In our present day, the conventional wisdom is that watering down identity is more attractive than defining it. Groups feel that if they drop exclusivity or strict demands, they will attract more people. And this has turned a lot of the scene into a numbers game, with pastors of any denomination just seeking to put butts in the seats and get dollars into those baskets.

To a degree, I don't want to blame them - I can't imagine the desperate emotion that rushes in when attendance falls and your community's vitality is threatened. I don't want to deride leaders who are making faithful efforts to strengthen bonds in their communities. They sit in the midst of the storm, and only those in the middle of it know the whole picture and how to confront it.

On the flip side, I worry that those who still want to embrace affiliation to a community are joining groups with nothing specific in common. Maybe this is wrong, but I envision megachurches and some other denominations as inflated LifeTeen services for people of all ages - lots of good feelings and energy but little of substance to form you and inform you so that your faith can uphold you in times of joy and despair.

I find great strength in knowing my faith rests upon not Jesus Christ and the Scriptures as well as a 2000-year tradition of transmitting the faith through generations, under the guidance of apostolic bishops (those commissioned by Christ) and their successors plus the Holy Spirit. Our Church has produced incredible theology, philosophy, and wisdom, and I can't help but utilize it to inform my mind and form my heart. It's awesome.

Secondly, our generation seriously undervalues the significance of community. Teens and young adults strive to have a maximum number of friends, to hook up with a maximum number of people sexually, to sit back and wait for lots of invitations from others to pour in and choose what to go out and do tonight, to know everyone and everything. Apologies if this doesn't apply to you or summarize what you see - there's just tendencies toward these things that cloud relationship building.

Just as we seem less likely to seek careers that will stretch seamlessly from college to retirement, it seems we're less likely to seek lasting friendships. I studied abroad in London for a semester in college -   at the University of Notre Dame in London, a classroom building and university-leased flats that amounted to a boarding school for 125+ college students. Many of my fellow students ended bringing the dorm parties and campus social lifestyle with them because, finally, they found a community. Unfortunately, it was founded shakily on loud, fast, hard partying, but it was the result of their social worlds being limited to a finite number of people. They actually went out repeatedly with the same people, building relationships over time rather than social-butterflying from circle to circle. I could not believe how strongly they took to community. It was simply something they had never attempted until their social parameters were bracketed.

People are desiring, or perhaps content with having, short-lived friendships that work short-term because those friends like to go to the same places or want to have the same kind of nights out. Props to those who have looked for and found people with common values and principles, who've built ties with friends on foundations of both fun and seriousness. Real, strong friendship comes not in the dark, crowded loudness of the bar - it can start and exist and grow there - but really grows and cements when you can laugh and cry together in the light and the solitude.

So, too, there is an analog with faith. People prefer the shallow, the independent, the low-commitment, low-pressure route. The appeal now rests with autonomy; many who are searching for something see organized religion as inhibiting their individualism.

I don't need someone to tell me what to think.
I don't need to sit in church for an hour every weekend.

Well, aside from overlooking the logic of learning from past generations, and the ways we mis-prioritize our time, these resistances neglect the value of community: coming together with people who share your values and principles, being held to a standard of living and acting and commitment, giving yourself to something bigger than you and receiving back in turn, building friendships based on a common rhythm (just like the friends you made in school, Scouts, sports, work, etc.), and on and on and on!

Trying to articulate the value of community in Christ screams of the age-old problem of "if I have to tell you, you don't know." It's painful trying in futility to wriggle my way to clarity in explanation. Let me use this analogy, then, to push to the finish line...

Sports fans. You don't go to an empty stadium and root on your own; you join with thousands of others as something bigger than yourself. It's more fun to invite friends over and have some beers than watch a game on TV alone. You wear the colors and logos to symbolize your passion and commitment to your team or city. You read articles online to learn more about the important people and the strategy. You talk to other fans to compare insights and emotions. You mourn the inactivity of the offseason, medicating yourself with preview stories and following the transactions wires...

Religion gives us all this: fellowship, socializing, outward expression, intellectual stimulation, solidarity, emotion, substance. Community.

To bring it home, I hand you over to the great Fr. James Martin, SJ, whose wisdom came to me via a passage from one of his books that a friend gave to me:

Overall, being spiritual and being religious are both part of being in relationship with God. Neither can be fully realized without the other. Religion without spirituality can become a dry list of dogmatic statements divorced from the life of the spirit. This is what Jesus warned against. Spirituality without religion can become a self-centered complacency divorced from the wisdom of a community. That's what I'm warning against. 

-from The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything