Humility in Sacrifice

This post was originally published on February 19, 2013 on the website of Notre Dame magazine. The original article can be accessed at http://magazine.nd.edu/news/37687-humility-in-resignation/

Resignations immediately evoke a fiercely negative connotation these days. Coaches and executives often resign when they break rules or laws. President Nixon resigned his presidency in the wake of ugly scandal. And in the Church, bishops have resigned their posts over mishandlings of clerical abuse in their dioceses.

However, sudden endings to high-profile positions shouldn’t necessarily arouse suspicion and negativity. Coaches often retire after winning a championship. Many presidents, even before the term-limit amendment, stepped away after two successful terms. And in the Church, bishops perennially retire from ministry because of old age, continuing ministry to their brothers and sisters but handing the leadership position on to the next generation.

Pope Benedict XVI, or Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as he will soon be once again, has stepped away from the papacy game while still on top. Rather than max out his time at the helm, Benedict has embraced his limits and will give way to a worthy, fresh successor.

Benedict’s resignation is an incredible model of humility. Benedict wrote a simple letter to his brother cardinals that was released to the public — no cameras, no microphones, no reporters. The pope has accepted his advancing age and heeded advice from doctors to stop making transatlantic visits. He has recognized that the Church entrusted to him needs a leader who can more capably respond to the demands of Christ’s people.

He has confronted the reality of his lifetime appointment and freely chosen to admit his human frailty and not cling to power that he knew he could no longer fully exercise. Benedict has recognized that the grasping hand is never full, for it can never be open to receive, so he let go. He remains a leader, a pre-eminent theologian, scholar, author and a cardinal bishop to the Church, and Cardinal Ratzinger will serve Peter’s next successor in humility.

I don’t write to attempt to shape the legacy of Benedict XVI but to shed light on his consistent message: In his papacy, our outgoing pope explained the temptations of moral relativism and emboldened the faithful to stick with the absolute Truth of Christ. In public addresses, liturgical homilies, writings and interviews, he preached tirelessly against relativism, calling it “a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”

My own spiritual reflections often bring me to the fact that modern society chooses to accept and even enable sinful behaviors: We invent hangover pills to mitigate the effects of excessive drinking, divorce to give us an out from resolving marital problems, cosmetic surgeries as a faulty solution to self-image issues, birth control and abortions to enable our sexual promiscuity. Even as all of these social reactions illustrate the relativizing of morality, Benedict XVI called us to live in the light of the absolute Truth that is Jesus Christ.

On the eve of the conclave that elected him pope, Cardinal Ratzinger said, “Today, having a clear faith based on the creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is letting oneself be tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times.”

Benedict stuck with the unflinching Christian moral standard. While society attempts misguided moral compromise, Benedict encouraged us to stick to our standards, to call society to turn back evil rather than allow it to become the new status quo. What some may call stubbornness I see as righteousness. While some call the Church and its pope naïve or out-of-touch, I see a community and a Christian leader seeking the Kingdom of God by upholding absolute Truth rather than reducing morality into a buffet.

The articulator of this vision for the last eight years has recognized that Truth can be better furthered by a new leader. Benedict XVI has given himself to the people of Christ with the best effort that he had left to give, and now he offers his retirement as his last gesture of leadership. To the next pope, he gives the chair of St. Peter, the call to preach the Gospel at all times, and an incredible standard to follow of Christian humility.

Humility --> Greatness

Often in my life, I feel disappointment because I hold myself and those around me to high standards. I have high expectations of everything, as I seek the best out of it all. I want everyone and everything to live up to its/their potential. And I am affected, though usually just briefly, when it/they do not.

This morning at Mass, I had a moment. We had a visiting priest, a Jesuit, saying Mass. He did one of my liturgical no-no's by pre-homilizing the readings before the opening rites of the Mass. He added, too, that he was in for the Lenten retreat at the parish and promised a bigger plug in the homily - here we go, I thought... Not only do I prefer to let the readings stand for themselves then be reflected upon in the homily, I also am turned away from preachers who enter into self-promotion, especially during the Mass, longing to just reach the Eucharist and get past their jibber-jabber.

I enjoyed the readings - the offering to God in Deuteronomy, the consolation of Psalm 91, the temptations of Jesus in the desert. Then we reached the homily. Rather than unpack the connections between an offering to the Lord and the challenges by the devil in the desert, the priest launched into general story time. Granted this is a natural and suitable rhetorical strategy, but his canned narratives and jabs for humor distracted from the call to solidarity with Christ in the desert of Lent. So while three crosses stood behind the altar and our crucifix hung behind a purple sheet, Fr. What's-his-name went off wherever he wanted.

I could deal with that, and his eventual point was a good one, the best one maybe: God is Love. I happily digested it, but it became one of those homilies that could have ended five different times. So I receded into personal-prayer-land while he finished up. Eventually, he moved from the ambo to his presider's chair, and this is when I got steamed.

He told us, "Father wanted me to end Mass a few minutes early today to avoid a parking lot jam, so we'll just offer the Creed up to God and move right into the petitions. Trust me; He won't mind."

Ooooooooooooo no he didn't.

First of all, we simply don't skip the Creed on Sundays and feasts - at least give a brother the Apostles' Creed. Secondly, we have time for your rambling homily but not time to profess together the tenets of our faith!? Your stories outrank our shared prayer that reinforces our baptismal vows and grounds us in the center of our beliefs!?

With a little organization and a dose of humility, he could have easily tightened his homily, making just the same points, getting the same laughs, and creating a similar rapport with the parish yet still allow time for the rest of the Mass. I was internally fired up that one person could count his own speech as more important than the movements of the Mass.

This reality has been a growing frustration for me, and it deepens when I find myself being vain and the expense of humility, choosing improvisation or a bit of planning. Personally, I feel my attention to detail, my ability to plan ahead, and my foresight to be negatively affected by California/the Coachella Valley and working in a high school. The culture here is more laid back and last-minute, which does not translate to good planning or accountability. I'm not black-balling improvisation, but we improvise best when it comes from a decent basis of preparation.

This past week, my contribution to our all-school Ash Wednesday service - a short reflection on fasting - was formulated in the hour before and given extemporaneously, without notes, an outline, or anything typed out. My talk was fine; I received compliments on it. However, I was dissatisfied with my lack of preparation and am never content to be just good, to not strive for greatness.

This same vein of frustration bubbled up on the last retreat I directed, too. My student leaders were pretty solid in preparing their talks, deeply vulnerable in sharing tough stories, and incredibly poised yet real in their delivery. To a person, my faculty colleagues' talks were insightful, vulnerable, and honest. Yet, to a person, their talks were too long, disjointed at points, and put together in the last moments.

The reality is that the quality of their talks was totally there, but the talks were not as focused and directed as they could have been, which added unnecessary length. Unfortunately, the casualty of that extra length was small-group conversation time. A bit more time spent in preparations could have increased the quality, decreased the quantity, and allowed small groups the full allotted time they deserved to unpack what was shared well by these adults so that the small groups might reflect in community.

I've seen this also with musicians. I can't attest to this personally, as my guitar skills are rudimentary, but people I know who can sight-read are content to rely upon their spontaneous ability rather than practice. Instead of sitting down and spending quality time with a sheet of music, these somewhat accomplished musicians are content to plunk out some chords and throw in a passing note here and there rather than really play the song. Again, it comes out as good to the ears but falls way short of great. Such playing settles for decent rather than seeking to be awesome. Chalk it up to doing a lot decently rather a few things really well, to being spread a mile wide but only going an inch deep...

I had a colleague last week hit a wall in his teaching of Latin class - he usually sight-translates the texts of Latin stories to his classes but finally met something he couldn't convert on the fly. To his credit, he sat down, thought over it carefully, and took to the Internet, insistent upon finding an answer. A few minutes at a Google search and the scouring of message boards helped him unlock the mystery. The time he took nourished his intellectual side and inflamed his curiosity. He settled the grammar dispute and exuded a sense of gentle joy and accomplishment over taking some time to polish his craft.

I think we need to recommit to the greatness. Why are we so content to be just good? Why do basketball players settle for shooting 50% from the free-throw line and then just chuck 3's during shootarounds? Why do leave our cars crooked in the parking-lot, settling for being between the yellow lines rather than giving equal room to the cars on both sides of us? Why do we avoid desserts or pop for a week then binge on a dessert tray or refill our cup over and over with free refills? Why do we go to Mass three weeks in a row then take a few Sundays off?

What's stopping you from greatness in using your gifts from God? What stands in the way of your forming a closer relationship with Christ? Journey into the desert. Confront temptation. Take courage and stand up as Christ calls you to Him.

Ash Wednesday Reflection

This post was originally published on Ash Wednesday (February 13, 2013) on the website of Notre Dame magazine. The original article can be accessed at http://magazine.nd.edu/news/37516-diluted-lenten-sacrifices/

We often dilute our Lenten sacrifices, cheapening them from spiritually motivated self-denial to a retread of New Years’ resolutions, which usually fizzle by the time Lent rolls around. Domers are especially guilty of this, as we often wear our sacrifices on our sleeves. Bob Kessler ’09, author of ThingsNotreDameStudentsLike.com and a book of the same title, wrote, “While Notre Dame Students might give many reasons for making sacrifices during Lent, deep down they all know that the things they give up for Lent are meant as a way to show other people how Catholic they are and how much more religious they are than the typical student. All Notre Dame Students want to be the mostCatholic student, and Lenten sacrifice is just another way to accomplish this objective.”

I couldn’t help but feel a bit incriminated when I first read this. Not only had I seen this phenomenon but I also felt traces of it in myself. Do we make Lenten sacrifices to fulfill an empty religious obligation? To impress friends? To feel a vain sense of accomplishment? I questioned my own intentions and wondered, “Should our Lenten sacrifices be reduced to fodder for small-talk?”

We should be seeking deeper solidarity with Christ, and to help us do that, we must embrace Christian community and fellowship by humbly sharing our journey with God and with our brothers and sisters. Conversations with friends can help us better engage the challenges of sacrifice. Those exchanges should seek deeper understanding of the struggle, but as share, we have to resist temptations to boast or compare. We must share openly with others while also guarding against temptations to announce our righteousness from the rooftops.

Last year, while volunteering with the House of Brigid in Ireland, I attended the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin. The theme of this international gathering of Catholics was “The Eucharist: Communion with Christ and with One Another.” Ultimately, our baptism calls us to be part of Someone and Something bigger than ourselves — Jesus Christ and His Church. True communion is intimacy with both God and with each other.

When we say “Amen” to the Eucharist, we affirm two things at once: We believe that the Body of Christ is Jesus Christ before us in transformed bread and wine and we believe the Body of Christ is our brothers and sisters joined with us in celebrating the sacrifice of the Mass. So whether our sacrifice is something mundane, like giving up Starbucks, or a deeper life-change, like no longer using sarcasm, we should walk the journey in solidarity with both Christ and with one another.

At Ash Wednesday Mass in the Basilica my senior year, my girlfriend and I were enlisted to bring up the gifts. I love to be involved in the Mass and quickly agreed. I picked up the sturdy wooden tray of gold ciboria filled with hosts, and Katherine took the pitcher of wine. As we returned to our pew, the profundity of offering the bread and wine for the Eucharistic sacrifice on this specific occasion began to hit me. When we sat back down, I said to her, “I can’t explain to you how cool it was that we brought up the gifts on Ash Wednesday.”

In the Mass, after the presentation of gifts, the priest invites us to join with him in the Eucharistic prayer: He says, “Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.” Just as the priest invites the Holy Spirit to change ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, we must offer ourselves on the altar alongside those gifts. The lay people who serve as gift-bearers offer the bread and wine for the Eucharist as a visible sign of the invisible reality that we, as the people of Christ, are joining ourselves to Him in the sacrifice of the Mass. Gift-bearers sacramentally symbolize our offer of ourselves as a hopeful prayer that we may become what and Who we receive.

This Lent, let’s embrace the call to sacrifice in humility with Christ. May the temptations amid our sacrifices bring us to deeper intimacy with God’s ultimate sacrifice so that we may know forgiveness through intimacy with Christ. Let’s offer ourselves fully as we journey toward the glory of the Resurrection, in solidarity with one another and with Christ.

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I wrote the following reflection in the tail end of a 10-hour travel day, on my return from a quick weekend trip to surprise my girlfriend at Notre Dame for her birthday. I submit it to you unedited and unrevised, knowing it's a bit garbled and unrefined. I usually try to be attentive those edits and revisions, but for this post, I'll leave you the rough draft!

I am flying back from a wonderful weekend spent with my dear girlfriend. For the overwhelming majority of our relationship, we have been long-distance. While she is finishing college at Notre Dame, my post-grad path took me to Ireland for ten months before I moved to California to start my first job.

We've gone months without seeing each other many times. The distance seriously cramps our style in daily life, forcing us to contrive windows of time in which to talk on the phone or sit down to a video chat because we want to stay intimately involved in each other's lives. The distance also puts a lot of pressure on the rare time we do get to spend together, which causes her to miss me before I'm even gone and pushes me to want our time together to be as it would if we saw each other every day.

The low-light for me is the partings. I think my rock-bottom was walking 30 minutes in the dark, wheeling a suitcase in one hand while grasping her hand in the other, to leave her off at a 4am Dublin airport bus on Main Street in Wexford, Ireland. After a tearful goodbye and watching the bus take her away from me once again, I walked home in the cold under a drizzly rain, my eyes adding their own precipitation to the moment as I trudged back home in the night.

But today was different. Today involved no airport, no curb, no bus stop. We had just left Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus at Notre Dame, followed by the post-liturgy mingling that we Catholics love so much. We went to the Grotto, sat and talked for a few minutes, and knelt to say a prayer with hands joined. Then, we strolled under the rocky overhang. I grabbed our candle, and Katherine took a wooden stick. I placed it in a empty cylinder, and she lit the wick. Then we moved away from that sanctuary of hope, and God granted us the grace of a loving, trust-filled, calm, and collected goodbye.

Sometimes, tears intimidate me, and I shy away from people whose emotions are pouring forth in that way. Part of it is jealousy – I wish I could cry more easily, but for me, it takes a good surprise. The only time I'm perfectly content amid the tears is when they're joyful, and our partings are usually marked by those tears – hers as we part and mine after I've let her go.

Today, she didn't cry while I hugged and kissed her goodbye; I didn't cry after I left. A deeper peace has struck us in the grace of communion with each other and with Christ. We know the end of distance dating is near, and those frustrations and exhaustion will soon evaporate.

His will is our peace, and for the two of us, that is so true. As I settled into the peace on my drive to O'Hare, I realized the nature of my desire for our distance to dissolve. I have grown most tired of how, mostly by necessity, she has come to be compartmentalized in my life. Because of the 3-hour time difference and the varying demands of our days, we usually have to schedule our conversations. This often leads to a lack spontaneity and causes me to be more stale than I usually am.

I told Katherine that I'm tired of being “on” for those minutes or hours each day; I just want to be there for her pervasively, ubiquitously. I don't wanna perk up when the video chat rings and power down after I hang up. I'm excited – pumped up – for that gradually nearer time when I can see her anytime and any day and be there for her at the drop of a hat.

And in the context of how committed we are to our relationship including God – to treating our relationship like a triangle whose sides we are trying to shrink so as to bring the three of us closer together – it hit me. This is the nature of our faith. This is what Christ calls us to do. This is unceasing prayer. This is the constancy of the gaze and the intensity of the glimpse coinciding.

The weakness of relationships – whether romantic, friendly, or spiritual – often stems from inconsistency. We only give a crap when it benefits us, when it's convenient to us. The modern social trends and social media influence us to seek a maximum number of acquaintance relationships and to seek quantity in parties and “hang outs” rather than vulnerable conversations between two hearts. We aren't seeking to support each other with the supreme loyalty of unconditional love; we endorse a relativist live-and-let-live approach while responding to others with the “maybe” answer or saying “let me know and we'll see” or “depends who's going” because we shy away from vulnerability and self-gift. Instead, we seek the most “fun” and the highest profiles.

I don't want myself to be so prone to those traps. I need to be attentive to my well-being but vet my intentions, too – am I physically/mentally/emotionally drained and exhausted or just lazy? Am I legitimately skeptical of how expensive something is or hiding behind cheapness? I want to give an enthusiastic yes to friends who reach out to me. I want to respond their invitation with my presence and openness and discern how our relationship can grow from it.

We need to look at our social lives and vet our motivations, to be honest with ourselves and with others. And we owe the same to God. Why didn't you go to Church last Sunday? Were you actually too busy or do you just dislike Mass? Do you have no time to pray or go to Mass or do you simply not prioritize your spiritual life? Do you not volunteer because you can't find something that works or because you don't understand the importance of solidarity?

We need to be honest with God. In our reflections, we need to ask: am I giving God a chance to permeate my life? Can my faith really nourish me if it's collecting dust in the attic of my mind and heart? The classic retreat cliché applies here – you only get out of it what you put into it, whether it's Mass, prayer, Scripture study, faith-sharing conversation, or whatever. If you just go to a building for an hour a week out of obligation, you doing something, but it surely can't provide much.

An hour a week at the gym doing weights and cardio doesn't increase your endurance or sculpt your muscles much. An hour a week learning and practicing a musical instrument barely gets you playing the basics. An hour a week for a 15-year-old learning to drive might delay their getting a license until college. Heck, an hour a week of watching a TV series barely gets you hooked on the characters – how easily will we pass hours a week racing through a TV show start-to-finish!?

If we God permeate our lives the way the internet does, we'd be in better shape. We are so proficient at troubleshooting smartphones yet so inept at recognizing God in our lives. What will your entry point be? Can you download an app for Bible study or prayer? (Catholics check out Laudate) Can you pick a reset button, something in life that will move you to think of God? Can you choose a spiritual mantra to run through your head throughout the day?

I have to live with the reality of being 2,000 miles away from my girlfriend for at least a few more months. It will be a continued challenge, causing intermittent frustration and giving me countless opportunities to grow in love until the day when we can be near each other and drop the compartmental boundaries that limit the manner in which we can support and uphold each other.

What about you though? God is all around us. Christ is with you and in you. What are you waiting for? How will you welcome Him into your days, hours, minutes, and seconds? What will you do? When will you start?