Thank You for Being a Friend(?)

by Dan Masterton

Tomorrow morning, my wife and I are hopping on a plane and flying out to North Carolina. We’ll meet two of our best friends and their newborn son at Charlotte’s airport to drive over to Greensboro. There waiting for us will be four more of our best friends, two freshly arrived from Christmas time with family and two who will host those seven of us who are visiting. This follows a similar gathering in San Antonio at the turn of the last new year, and with our heavy Catholic and Notre Dame influence, we eagerly christen this a tradition upon its second installment, with the hope and intent that it will continue for many years to come. ¹

Picture from Best Friends Summit #1, NYE 2015-16.

I look forward to this occasion excitedly because my best friends are those people with whom I have a special little world. It’s a place where I can be myself - where I don’t second-guess my conversational contributions, where I can utilize my true sense of humor, where I can sit back and relax without worrying about “doing something.” I have my family and a few best friends nearby to home in Chicago, but this slightly extended time with my best friends that I found in college (and don't get to see as often) is extra special not just for enjoyment but for renewal and affirmation. These are the people who, building upon the excellence of my wife, draw out of me who God made me to be, and especially what and who God calls to me to be in relationship.

In my 5+ years of adulting, I have found just how hard it is to make friends, or if not to make friends, at least to develop friendships. I feel like the years we spend in school give us ample opportunity - even if not always with great success - to make friends and develop friendships.² Our classes, clubs, teams, etc. are full of different mixes of people who variously have things in common with us, and the quality and quantity time spent together creates thorough overlap in our lives that can be the foundation to strong friendships.

I think of high school and my Campus Ministry/Student Ministry Team crew, my comedy club friends, my theatre friends from plays and musicals, and my fellow singers and musicians in chorus and band. I think of college and the great guys in my dorm, Zahm, the wonderful people in my theology classes, my faith-filled peers from Notre Dame Vision, and more than any, the amazing music ministers and friends I found in the Notre Dame Folk Choir. Then I look to my adult life, and I think of… not much.

There aren’t many places or regular groups of people that are consistent for me these days. We belong to a parish we love, but my wife’s work schedule leads us to attend different Masses at different churches from weekend to weekend.³ We’re not acting in shows, singing in choirs, or going to classes, though some of that could be remedied if we committed leisure time to a regular activity. The reality is that we don’t have anything like the context we had during our many years as full-time students.

The thing we do have is our jobs: forty (or more) hours a week where we see many of the same people and variously collaborate, communicate, and spend time together working toward what is hopefully a common goal. Unlike school though, the relationship is meant to be first and foremost professional, so that co-workers can accomplish their work. From there, some people don’t want their social lives and work lives to touch at all while others openly and actively overlap these two worlds.

I’ve worked three different full-time jobs: at my first, I came into a group of co-workers who readily and enthusiastically spent time together socially and happily continued the working relationships into personal friendships; at my second, I commuted to a job where most co-workers lived locally and the only real social scene was among the middle-aged and elderly faculty members who socialized in a quite lively way; at my current job, our small faculty is very amiable and social, but sometimes it’s hard to figure out who’s interested in outside-of-work socializing or not.

I think a lot of the challenge comes down to one’s own outgoingness, one’s own social initiative, and definitely how awkward one makes these kinds of things. While I’m not a socially anxious person, I am an introvert who becomes extroverted only when I’m significantly comfortable and understand the social dynamics of the people and situation. So I find myself struggling mightily trying to connect to co-workers. I’m comfortable with the professional relationships; I’m solid with the day-to-day small-talk and pleasantries; I’m even decent at getting to know my co-workers and learning about their backgrounds, families, and interests. But figuring out with whom to make friends and how beyond the 7-to-4 workday? No clue.

I’m just beginning to understand the depth of intentionality that’s needed to make adult friends. Whereas I grew up with my friends from home and high school and came into my own as a mature and solidifying person with my friends in college, these co-workers and I encounter each other a bit more ready-made and static. Gone are the days of baseball practices, musical rehearsals, retreat meetings, and those oh-so-glorious two-hour dining hall chats; here are the days of faculty meetings, getting home to cook dinner for our families, and running out to the grocery store. I miss the days of routine regular interactions with my developing friendships getting to grow with each meeting; I struggle to socialize well and cultivate friendships in the jungle of adulthood.

I think the grace for me comes in my good old friendships, those people who simply get me and allow me to get them. The ease of those conversations, the simplicity of making plans together, and the natural, organic fun of our time together reminds me of how nourishing and important great friendships are. My old friends welcome me back into our happy world, whether we just spoke yesterday or have failed to catch up for months. My old friends remind me that I am interesting, important, worthwhile, and though my awkwardness may be grand, some people - these very people - had the time and patience to figure me out and welcome me into their lives. I need to carry this into the jungle of adulthood socializing.

So in the meantime, I am on the lifelong track of predictable questions. They began with my wedding after I proposed almost three years ago (How’s wedding planning going?!), continued following our honeymoon (How are you enjoying married life?!), evolved with people’s curiosity (when you gonna start having kids?!), have now transitioned to a new set of questions starting this fall (are you excited for the baby to come?! How’s your wife feeling?! ⁴), and will beget a new sequence of questions that will surely rotate as we grow and raise our family. It’s up to me to be ready with answers that celebrate the chance I have to talk about my life with another person and to be ready with similar questions so I can receive another person’s story back in turn.

I need to remind myself patience is a virtue. Friendships take time. And that there is nothing that invites another's love more than to take the initiative in loving.⁵

---

1 My colleagues have popularized footnotes on this blog, so it’s only fitting that I follow suit... A co-worker once told me that if you don’t like something at the school where you work, just stop it in its tracks one year. Then next year, when the inevitable question “how did we do this last year?” comes up, you cite precedent and effectively change “tradition.” Alternatively, adding something arms you with the goods to institute tradition with the same year-on-year change. In this case, my friends and I call it Best Friends Summit.^↩

---

2 A nice insight from Jenny K.: “This is something I've reflected on a great deal in my post-college years. It was amazing to me how many of my college friendships were ‘friendships of convenience,’ in that they existed because I automatically saw that person in class, clubs, choir, etc. but they faded away when effort was required to maintain them.”^↩

---

3 This means 9:30 Mass at our parish when she hasn’t had to work that weekend or any number of different Mass possibilities when she does work. However, sometimes when you are coming off holiday/weekend work and are forced to go together to 8:15am Mass at the downtown Chicago cathedral on Christmas Day, you turn to shake hands with the people around you for the Sign of Peace and discover you’ve been sitting in front of Patrick Kane and his girlfriend for Mass and just shook hands with the NHL MVP and 3-time Stanley Cup Champion.^↩

---

4 My wife, Katherine, is doing great. No news is good news; our appointments have been wonderfully straight-forward and simple. The little girl, only known currently as Beanface due to her legume-ish resemblance in her first ultrasound, is due on March 13.^↩

---

5 Jenny shared links to some relevant and interesting podcasts: click here or here to listen.^↩

The Reason for the Reason for the Season

by Jenny Klejeski

“In the service of the infant we are made whole. Every detail of our life is set by it into a single pattern and ordered by a single purpose. We are integrated by the singleness of one compelling love.” - Caryll Houselander (“Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross”)

Another December 25th has come and gone. The lethargy of yesterday’s sugar coma is still upon us. Despite my best Advent efforts, I often meet this day with a latent feeling of disappointment. The hype surrounding Christmas makes me long for some spiritual experience of the “It’s a Wonderful Life” variety that assures me of the reality we just celebrated. I want to literally feel my heart grow three sizes.¹  I am aware as well as anyone that—as the rather trite saying goes—Jesus is the reason for the season.™But what does that even mean? That phrase, while well-intentioned, has been packaged, sold, and politicized as much as the things it was trying to counteract.

Thankfully, the liturgical calendar, in its wisdom, is here to give some guidance. Standing in seemingly stark contrast to the joyous celebration of Christ’s birth, today is the feast of St. Stephen, best known as the protomartyr of Christianity. He was stoned to death by the Pharisees on the charge of blasphemy. In his final moments, he spoke love to his executioners and prayed that God would forgive them. In a sermon from today’s Office of Readings,²  St. Fulgentius of Ruspe highlights the juxtaposition of these two feast days:

Yesterday we celebrated the birth in time of our eternal King. Today we celebrate the triumphant suffering of his soldier. Yesterday our king, clothed in his robe of flesh, left his place in the virgin’s womb and graciously visited the world. Today his soldier leaves the tabernacle of his body and goes triumphantly to heaven.

A birth and a death. At first glance, it seems as though these feasts are quite opposite. Yesterday we joyfully celebrated the birth of our Prince of Peace, the one who comes to heal and save, and today we commemorate the cruel death of his follower. Yet upon closer examination, we find that these days are intimately connected. Yes, Christ came so that we might have life in abundance,³  which He ultimately gives to us by crushing Death with death. But as we also know, Christ’s saving sacrifice does not eliminate suffering and death on earth. One need only look around to observe the presence of sickness, loneliness, destruction, and death.

In the closing stanza of his poem “Journey of the Magi,” T.S. Eliot captures the mysterious interplay of life and death present at Christ’s birth. In the voice of one of the magi, he writes:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.⁴

Christ’s birth is not simply about His own death; it’s also about ours. The magi’s arduous journey and encounter with the Christ child lead to a transformation, death to a former way of life. This foreign visitor no longer feels at home in his earthly kingdom. His heart is restless. He longs for death.
The birth of Christ is a great paradox. He comes, clothed in flesh: small, vulnerable, approachable, anonymous. And yet, though He is not in the splendor of His Godhead, it remains true that one cannot look on the face of God and live.⁵  If we truly see Christ with eyes of faith, we too will die. And this death will not come in a loud or grandiose way. The Christ child’s very mode of existence dictates the way in which we are to die to ourselves every day: in small, vulnerable, anonymous ways.

I have no children of my own, but whenever my older sisters come to visit, bringing my little nieces and nephews, I’m always struck by how radically different life with children is. It takes a few days for me to adjust to having little ones in the house. I have to make sure that nothing dangerous is within reach, that I’m quiet when they’re sleeping. The schedule of our days is determined by their eating and sleeping needs. We can no longer go somewhere on a whim. Everything takes more time. Having children forces a person to alter every aspect of life in many small, often unseen ways. And yet, amidst the sacrifices of parenthood, I have witnessed in my sisters and in my friends with children a deeper joy as they live out their vocation. No amount of parenting books can prepare someone to have children (though it’s still good to prepare), just as no amount of Advent preparation can truly prepare me for the reality of the Christ child’s arrival.

Caryll Houselander rightly observes, “there is nothing more mysterious than infancy, nothing so small and yet so imperious. The infancy of Christ has opened a way to us by which we can surrender self to Him absolutely, without putting too much pressure on our weak human nature.”⁶

She continues by noting how in preparation for a child, everyone asks “what can I give him?” and yet when the child is born, “he rejects every gift that is not the gift of self, everything that is not disinterested love.” This is the gift of self that St. Stephen gave. In giving his very life for the sake of the Gospel, Stephen teaches us the very meaning of Christ’s birth.

The birth of Christ is a beginning. It is what enables us to alter our lives, to die to ourselves until we can, like Stephen, we can give our all. Fulgentius continues, “Our king, despite his exalted majesty, came in humility for our sake; yet he did not come empty-handed. He brought his soldiers a great gift that not only enriched them but also made them unconquerable in battle, for it was the gift of love, which was to bring men to share in his divinity.”

Christmas, rather than being an escape from suffering, as it is so often conceived of to be, is, in fact, the reality that enables us to suffer, and to suffer well—that is, with love. Just as the coming of a child can open the hearts of his parents to depths of sacrificial love that they never knew before, so, too, the coming of the Christ child invites us to open our hearts to Him, to make a gift of ourselves every day. What he offers in return is not fairytale ending or the Disney-esque spiritual experience we may be looking for, but rather a depth of joy and peace that the world cannot give.

---

1 Actually, I think that’s a medical condition, so maybe not. ^↩

---

2 Read the whole thing here.^↩

---

3 John 10:10^↩

---

4 Read the rest here.^↩

---

5 Exodus 33:20^↩

---

6 Read the whole thing here. Seriously. Do it.^↩

Mr. Moderate (Or, How I Need to Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Dialogue)

by Dan Masterton

I remember when I first came to realize that I was a moderate kind of person.

In high school, coming off of an engaging freshmen year in which many of my friends and I survived the rigors of Honors Western Civ. class with the (in)famous Mr. Tom Nall, we were discovering our intellectual prowesses, our ideological and political interests, and happening upon the causes and principles in which we believed.

As I sat at lunch at a round table of my friends, political debates would arise - inasmuch as they can among 15-year-olds. As we debated ecology and environment and role of government (probably with much less eloquence than I’d like to admit) it became clear as I looked around the table where people stood on the ideological spectrum: liberal - liberal - liberal - liberal - liberal - liberal - liberal - conservative. Fittingly to my right, one of my male friends held his conservative line while the rest of the table hammered him with the fervor of their bleeding hearts.

I didn’t immediately or readily identify with either side. I found myself concurring with elements of both sides’ points while I also found myself internally, and maybe even physically, rolling my eyes at parts of their arguments. To me, it felt like there was definite compromise available.



As I continued to learn and grow, my politics, my ideology, and my disposition only further identified with the middle. I am not a moderate because I am lukewarm or because I abstain from investigating issues and taking stances. I land in the middle because I find two-party approaches to be faulty dilemmas - they are a representation of the logical fallacy that problems have only two solutions of which we must choose one. Politically, I always sympathize with more conservative Democrats like Indiana’s Joe Donnelly and more liberal Republicans Illinois’ Mark Kirk (two dying breeds), not because they matched my opinions but because their seemingly incongruous identifiers correspond with what I think political and social issues need.

This reality fits how I approach politics and citizenship as a Catholic, too. As I wrote and spoke about Catholic Social Teaching and American politics, I mentioned many times how a faithful Catholic seeking to apply Catholic Social Teaching conscientiously cannot fully identify with either party.

However, recently, I’ve felt uneasiness and hesitancy in giving voice to what I believe to be right. For whatever reason, I’ve been more sensitive to the small-talk and conversation in everyday life. People I’ve been around have brought up same-sex marriage, drag queens and transgender/gender-fluid people, the Ohio abortion bills, using IVF in response to infertility, and treatment of immigrants and minorities.

As I listen, I know where I stand. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and acknowledgement of same-sex couples’ commitment must be careful, supporting their commitment and their service of others and the church, and not called marriage. I believe sexual reflection is important but must stop short of gender reassignment surgeries and biological transformations. I believe life begins at conception and abortion should be eradicated while support for mothers, families, and adoptions grow. I believe immigrants and minorities deserve full, equal dignity and must not be discriminated against.

Yet as I’ve listened, I have found myself in these most recent instances almost always holding my tongue. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know where to assert what I believe to invite a dialogue. I fail in asking a leading question or posing another point of view that makes new space in the conversation. And I couldn’t figure out why.

It took sitting here and not knowing what to write and not knowing where to start to pick this issue apart and get to its core: when I mentally react to these issues, I don’t feel moderate. As I hear others praise the protections and formalization of gender reassignment, I feel like criticizing it paints me as an extremist. As I hear about criticisms of Gov. Kasich vetoing a strict bill while signing a more moderate one, I feel like upholding the life of the unborn portrays me as an unfeeling hardliner.

It’s weird to realize this because, for most of life, and definitely since my teenage years, I have not really based my actions and decisions on what others think of them. I have long been a steadily and strongly self-confident person, a proactive initiative-taker, an earnest instigator, unafraid of difficult questions or unpleasant answers. I’m worrying more about people’s reactions than about exposing them to truth. So I am patently uncomfortable with this development in myself.

In my ministry, in my faith life, in my relationships, and across the board, I pride myself on being a consistent person. I want to be the same person to my family as I am to my students as I am to my co-workers as I am to my friends. I don’t want to have modes that make me a different person to different people.

I’m not sure what the way forward is, other than to find - to pray for - deeper resolve, restored confidence, willingness to take a risk and engage people with patience and compassion. An episode from one of my all-time favorite shows, The West Wing, comes to mind as possible inspiration.

In “The Supremes,” one of the US Supreme Court Justices dies, and the Democratic administration begins searching for a nominee for his place on the bench. As they formulate a shortlist and invite in candidates, a very liberal woman and prominent judge, Evelyn Lang, comes in to interview; however, she knows she’s just “window-dressing,” a bluff to the Republicans that the administration is considering a judge who is unpalatable to them, hoping to soften them up to more quickly confirm their moderate nominee.

As the administration settles on their moderate candidate, they cannot shake their love of Lang, who is excellent for the job despite her far-left reputation. In an unorthodox and probably unrealistic move, they devise a compromise strategy: they invite the aging, far-left Chief Justice to retire, vacating his seat for Lang, and leaving the seat of the late justice for a hand-picked, far-right candidate. The Republicans pick an equally extreme, far-right judge to counter the leanings of Lang, and President Bartlet presents these two polar opposites as his two nominees for the bench.

The real power of the episode comes when the senior staff stumbles upon the two potential nominees conversing in a holding room. While they think they’ve seen the candidates at their most extreme - debating from their perches at the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum - the candidates reveal that they’re simply baiting one another, practicing their legal arguments in extreme role play to sharpen their minds and study legal principles. It turns out that the two deeply respect each other, despite their polar opposite understandings of the same laws, and relish the opportunity to square off in showdowns of legal precedents, interpretations, and judicial opinions.

While the temptation is for the administration to nominate a vanilla moderate who all sides can stomach, the more fruitful debate emerges from putting forth two intelligent, principled, thoughtful people from diametrically opposed ideological points who will strive to engage in spirited dialogue.

Fearful as it can be to stick my neck out, I know that the significant gains come when people who disagree can take the time to listen to each other. I am a moderate. I am an independent. I am a Catholic. I believe in the consistent ethic of life. I need to believe I can share this.

Wait For It

by Rob Goodale

Not to be all Scrooge McDuck about it, but no matter how many lights go up and how many times I hear the Top Five Christmas Songs of All Time,¹ it still isn’t actually Christmas time yet. Look, I’m as guilty as anyone of rushing the Christmas season along far before it’s good and ready, but the fact remains that Christmas begins with the Feast of the Nativity on December 25th, and continues for sixteen days until the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord (or, depending on which Catholic tradition you belong to, possibly only until the Epiphany on January 8th, but also possibly until the Feast of the Presentation on February 2nd. #LiturgicalCalendarWonkiness).

Which means that those of us silly enough to pay attention to things like the liturgical calendar are left with the question: what the heck is Advent, other than the time before Christmas? And what are we supposed to do until the 25th?

As I pointed out before, I’m not good at this. I’ve worn my Christmas jumper² like six times already, and although I do have an Advent Spotify playlist, it hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as any of my five separate Christmas playlists³ this December. This is precisely why I am forcing myself to write about it.

I think we can learn a lot about Advent by contemplating Mary. She was, I think, probably the first person who was impatient for Christmas to arrive.⁴ Imagine what it must be like to be Mary. To be an unmarried, pregnant teenager, growing the Son of God inside of you for nine months.

Imagine saying “yes” to the angel Gabriel, and then being left alone inside your bedroom in the middle of the night, slowly realizing the scope of what it is that you’ve said yes to. In her fiat, Mary chooses God’s way, and configures her own will to God’s. She gives God a human nature; she lets the Word be incarnate in her; she brings Christ into the world. She freely chooses to do this, but she doesn’t necessarily choose where or when she is does this. Somehow, she seems okay with this. I, on the other hand, find it quite frustrating.

During Advent we are faced with the same question that Gabriel posed to Mary all those years ago: will you give God a human nature? Will you let the Word be incarnate in you? Will you bring Christ into the world?⁵ On most days, I want to say yes. But I usually have a caveat, and it often has to do with the where and when. I want to be like Mary, but I would prefer to do so only in places and times when it’s convenient for me.

Mary teaches us how to wait. Jesus’ prenatal existence illustrates the depth of his humanity: God becomes man, not in a sudden burst of fanfare befitting the arrival of a prince, but by gestating in the womb for the better part of a year. God, it would seem, is not interested in hasty shortcuts, which means Mary isn’t, either. And so the two of them wait together, the embryonic Christ and his mother. Mary joyfully anticipates the eventual birth of her son but also probably experiences discomfort and fatigue and random midnight cravings for avocados,⁶ and it is all, quite literally, worthwhile.

Still, I have a hunch that she, like us, may have had a restless heart.⁷ Just because she is happy to wait for God doesn’t mean she is perfectly at rest—she is, after all, a human being growing another human being inside of her. Augustine’s famous observation was that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. I think that true and total rest in God comes only with death, the moment at which there is truly nothing else but being with God.

Mary was intimately connected with God during her earthly life in a way that no other human being ever has or will be, but she still experienced restlessness. Restlessness is not sinfulness. Restlessness is good; restlessness tells us that something about our current state of being is not perfect, that all is not as it should be. This is one of the central claims Christianity makes about the world: it is not as it should be. We are eschatological beings, a pilgrim people on the way to something better.

The way that Our Lady deals with the restlessness from being on this journey is a major reason that she is, in the words of Wordsworth, “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” She is restless, and while her restlessness drives her to action, she understands her role in the narrative of salvation history, and doesn’t try to do too much. We do not know the inner workings of her own will, because she submits to the will of God.

The imperfect state of things which begets our restlessness is precisely why it is important for each of us to be like Mary and do the work of bearing Christ into the world. Mary responds to her restlessness with hope and trust; she doesn’t seek to hurry things along to accomplish God’s will in the most convenient or efficient way, but instead patiently sits in the tension of literally waiting for God to be ready to enter the (postnatal) world.

As we’ve discussed, I am bad at being patient, and so my desire in response to this restlessness is to try and resolve it, as quickly and painlessly as possible. I want it to go away, and go away now, thank you very much.

The irony is that while I, a mere human without any control over time, would prefer to speed things up, God is perfectly happy with the machinations of time as they are. God loves with urgency, to be sure. The Incarnation is a bold move, the very concept of which scandalized Jews and Greeks alike. However, as Mumford & Sons tell us, urgency is not haste. All will be set right, to be sure. Christ will come in glory and make all things new, but not when I say so—no matter how early I put up my Christmas tree.

I suppose God is, unsurprisingly, like Tolkien’s wizard: he is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to. And if I find that my time does not match up with His, then my only choice is to wait, to stand here in my restlessness and be restless and get used to it.

In this Advent season, I am called to be like Mary: to give God a human nature by allowing the Word to be incarnate in me and, in doing so, to bring Christ into the world. The challenge is that, like Mary, we must learn to be patient, as this labor bears fruit in His time and not our own. And so, we wait.

---

1 For the record, there are two divisions: Religious (1. O Holy Night, 2. While Shepherds Watched, 3. Joy to the World, 4. Angels We Have Heard On High, 5. O Come All Ye Faithful) and Non-Religious (1. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), 2. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, 3. All I Want For Christmas Is You, 4. Step Into Christmas, 5. Do They Know It’s Christmas); yes, I am willing to fight and/or write a separate blog post about it.^↩

---

2 Yes, fellow Americans, I know it’s a sweater, but jumper sounds nicer. #IrelandProblems. ^↩

---

3 “Christmas Music,” “More Christmas Music,” “Folksy Christmas,” “Classic Christmas,” and “Christmas Jazz.” I know, I have a problem.^↩

---

4 I wouldn’t exactly call myself an expert on what it’s like to be pregnant, but based on the intel I’ve gathered, it’s at least mildly uncomfortable.^↩

---

5 Full disclosure, I stole these questions from Cardinal Dolan’s excellent 2013 Notre Dame commencement address.^↩

---

6 According to official Catholic teaching, Mary gave birth without the normal pains of childbirth by virtue of her special state of grace. I hope I am not in error by suggesting that the rest of her pregnancy was marked by normal human experience, and if I am, then disregard the avocado joke.^↩

---

7 Editor’s Note: “Oooooohhhh he said the name of the blog!”^↩

Retail Ministry, or Some Better Title That Doesn't Sound So Skeezy

by Dan Masterton

Last Thursday, Catholics all over the world went to Mass. Even though it was a Thursday. A bunch also probably didn’t.

Last Thursday was December 8, the day each year when we celebrate the Immaculate Conception of Mary. As Catholics, we use intentional prayers, readings, preaching, and songs to celebrate a significant element of our faith as we attend Mass on a non-Sunday. While Sunday is our day to celebrate the Lord’s Passion and sacrifice and memorialize the Paschal Mystery, we also are obligated to go to Mass on certain days of the year to extend our spiritual focus to additional integral parts of our faith - Mary Mother of God (January 1), the Ascension of Jesus (a Thursday, 40 days after Easter), the Assumption of Mary (August 15), All Saints Day (November 1), the Immaculate Conception (December 8), and Christmas (December 25).

Yet, while we call these Holy Days of Obligation, many Catholics don’t feel obligated to turn out for Mass. At the school where I work, we moved our weekly Mass from Tuesday to Thursday to have our students celebrate the holy day together, and I wonder how many would have gone in the evening if they hadn’t gone at school? I think for many people, a lot of decisions come down to but is it required?

As I briefed my freshmen and sophomores about their upcoming overnight retreat, after instructing them on how to pack and prepare, the eventual question raised was, “Is this mandatory?” When our employers announce that dreaded special event after hours or on the weekend, many of us and our co-workers are often quick to wonder, “Is this contractually mandated?” When we get bills and legal notices from government offices, we look at the information and look for an answer to the question, “Do I legally have to do this?”

Sometimes, we won’t do things unless we have to do them. Sometimes, we’re lazy. Sometimes, we’re stubborn. Sometimes, we’re scared or nervous. Whatever the reason, there are times where we need to be pushed.

There are lots of ways to get that nudge - requirement by the law, stipulations in our contracts, penalties for disobedience. Those tactics are sometimes necessary for wide-scale participation, for teaching younger people what is necessary and important, or even for beginning to create a culture or attitude that supports something that is needed. These methods will prompt us to participate, but only do so in a obligatory way; it won’t draw our hearts into authentic interest.

The strongest way to foster a culture and attitude of participation is by social reinforcement. People want to participate in something when the relationships they value are integrally part of the same experience. Eventually, as we mature and grow up, as we learn our passions and gifts, we find the confidence to, at least some of the time, personally choose to do some things for their own sake; however, at our human hearts, we are social beings who are fueled by the love we give and receive in relationship. Many of these important things start as something that we are required to do, and as we mature and grow up, we need to grow to commit freely to important things and build relationships that sustain that commitment.

If I want my students to come on a service trip, I need to talk to them personally and recruit groups of friends to consider coming together. If I want my friends to meet me out at a bar or restaurant, I need to send them a personalized message (or better yet call them!). If I want people to join me for Advent Reconciliation or celebrate a Holy Day of Obligation Mass with me, I need to invite them myself.

I all too often see in my workplace, among my students, and in everyday life, that we are utterly reliant on social media, technology, and posted flyers to share information and get people involved. While big stuff like professional sports and clothing lines and food brands can rely on the quantity of passive advertisement, interpersonal things require a personal touch, invitation and interaction.

Look at political campaigns: despite their growth into a multi-billion dollar industry, good campaigns are still distinguished by their “ground game.” The strongest campaigns are those that have the deep ranks of volunteers who go to door-to-door to personally canvass, ask people and businesses for permission to plant signs, make phone calls, and wear the campaign on their sleeve, even literally. When it comes to Iowa and New Hampshire every four years, the lead campaigns are those that succeed at “retail politics,” a euphemism for “buying votes” that doesn’t involve money but rather personal capital. While ads run out of major markets and air and reach huge populations at once, campaign teams, and even the candidates themselves, in these small-population first states must go person by person to whip votes; they must put in the face-time in small crowds, in people’s homes, in community centers, and even in one-to-one chats to persuade voters to support particular candidates.

We as a Church are in need of a greater commitment to what you could call “retail ministry,” or some better title that doesn’t sound so skeezy. We have to embrace an evangelization that comfortably seeks to invite individuals with seemingly small, simple invitations. Rather than solely seeking the brilliant hashtag that grows to trending, the catchy video that goes viral, or the flashy event that draws a crowd, rather than just having a slick, lean website or a nicely formatted bulletin, our Church can more effectively gain strength if our local populations take great pride in their personal outreach.

I see this succeed at my parish where the Young Adult community builds itself organically by word of mouth. As 20- and 30-somethings move to the area, their friends who are already here and who belong to the parish are proud of it and talk up the vitality of our community, the offerings of the YA group, and the fun events that one can attend, from once-a-month Wine and Cheese Socials to the big Theology on Tap events in the summer. The key is that we don’t depend on the event itself to draw the crowd but on the people who value the gatherings to draw in their friends and animate the scene by their social presence.

I think back to a few Advents ago. I had not been to Reconciliation in too long, and I knew that my then-girlfriend was in the same boat. Our parish announced a seasonal service, and I personally invited both her and another friend, who was busy with grad school, to join me. The three of us met up, went to the service together, and waited in line together to each take our turn with the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It was affirming to have that experience of grace with my friends because I knew all three of us wanted to be there, if we only had the social reinforcement to go together, and now we were there together, supporting one another.

I think even further back to senior year of high school. Many of my friends and I had just attended our Kairos retreat, and we came back riding the “Kai-high,” that strong feeling of peace and grace from vulnerably and authentically experiencing God in that four-day retreat. I knew that sustenance would come from the relationships I found there and from praying regularly for those people. As my friends and I applied to lead, and a few of us were selected, I tried to help one friend in particular who had been chosen to lead. He wanted badly to ignite his faith, but his family didn’t really practice it. I invited him over to my house to help jump-start his witness talk, and I left my family a few Sundays to drive out to his parish and attend Mass with him. Then, on Christmas Eve, as my family prepared to attend Mass, my friend reached out and asked if he could come to my parish instead of going alone at his church. My family and I were delighted as he joined us.

So as holy days approach, as the weekend turns toward each Sunday morning, as you wonder how long it’s been since your last confession, I hope some of the relationships in your life can be the source of companionship and inspiration to draw you into those positive spiritual habits. And if you enjoyed two Masses in four days last week, if you already know when you’ll be doing your Advent Reconciliation, and if you have your Christmas Mass plan already sketched out, ask yourself: To whom can I reach out? Who can I invite to celebrate our faith? Help our Church by being the hands and feet of Christ to transform requirement with the depth of your relationships.

For further reading, Jenny passed along this great reflection on why it's ok to say "I have to go Mass," which Simcha Fisher published on December 8, 2015.

Re-Reading Adam and Eve as the Myth of Original Suffering and Original Freedom

by Dave Gregory

I’m going to begin by stating outright something that might get me into trouble: I firmly believe, wholeheartedly, that Adam and Eve is not a story about Original Sin. As Christians, we have co-opted a piece of profoundly insightful mythology, and forced into it some silliness about a demon-snake tricking naked overgrown-baby-people into eating a yum-yum from a forbidden bit of vegetation.

For too long, Christianity has imposed a foreign understanding of Original Sin, a theological notion that simply has not been present in most of the Jewish tradition, onto the text. Largely thanks to Saint Augustine (who really developed the theology of Original Sin), we have held this notion that sin is inherited, passed down from our progenitors. And that, friends, is pure, ridiculous, and infantile poppycock. I promised myself that I would restrain from using vulgarities in order to maintain some semblance of decency, so I posit this critique with the strongest wording I can machinate.

Original Sin, stated 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is the only doctrine of Christianity that is “empirically verifiable,” for we can look at the world around us and we can look into our own hearts, and understand that things are royally, terribly askew. To refuse that the cosmological and anthropological states of affairs are chaotically violent and broken would be an assertion of blindness, willful or otherwise. Despite my stance, I want to clarify that I do not deny the doctrine of Original Sin, but I also want to make known that I refuse to cynically embrace total depravity. I will not deny that for all the atrocities that humanity inflicts upon itself, we remain imperfectly capable of cooperating with grace, of enabling beauty to shape who and what we are. This being said, I don’t associate with Pelagianism.¹


Indeed, if we look at the Hebrew text, the word that we generally translate as “sin” (chattah) is not present whatsoever, nor is any word for “fall”; if you crack open your English translation to Genesis 2:4 and read through the end of the third chapter, you will in all likelihood come across a heading that declares Genesis 3 as being a narrative of “The Fall” ², or some variation thereof. This being said, the theologically inaccurate practice of isolated “eisegesis” -- reading something that is not there into the text -- has given rise to these headers. The original Hebrew manuscripts (hand-written copies before the printing press) did not possess such headers, and we Anglophiles have gradually inserted these section dividers over the years in order to make the text more readable. Eisegesis opposes the scholarly task of exegesis, which attempts to uncover what a particular text has to say for itself, what arises out of the text.

Apart from this basic textual criticism ³, allow me to explain -- through a more explicitly theological lens -- why reading Adam and Eve as the story of Original Sin is goofy.

First, the serpent is not evil. The serpent is described as arum, which is often translated as “crafty” or “subtle” or “shrewd,” and in certain contexts, arum is translated as “prudent,” serving as a laudation. Nowhere does this passage describe the creature as evil. Nowhere in Genesis does the serpent possess satanic qualities. Allow me to be very clear: the serpent is not demonic. It is an ancient Near Eastern symbol of wisdom, fertility, and longevity. If we read the text carefully, we find that its perfect ambiguity persists, as to whether the serpent is good or evil. Being the most “arum” creature in this garden, the serpent represents more a paradoxical element of chaos than anything else.

Moreover, the serpent introduces a truth to Adam and Eve that they could not have been previously aware of. Indeed, neither YHWH nor the serpent tells the complete truth, nor do these characters entirely lie; I believe that this is not due to some sadistic motivation on their parts, but rather to a difference of perspective. YHWH promises the fledgling humans that “in the day that you eat from [the tree of knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die,” whereas the serpent informs them, “You surely will not die! For YHWH knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like YHWH, knowing good and evil.”

Indeed, while Adam and Eve do die as YHWH promises, it is not “in the day,” and the serpent accurately informs them that they will know good and evil just as YHWH does. This is all a matter of perspective, truths inhere within both the warning and the encouragement. The serpent is not demonic, but rather a sort of truth-teller, albeit the teller of a truth that is paradoxically darker and enlightening. Eastern Christianity has long stressed the goal of theosis to be the eschaton of human existence, following the maxim of St. Athanasius, “God became human in order that humanity might become God,” and both the Catechism and Western patristic theologians make this apparent as well. While we are not to become deities (and here’s where Latter Day Saint theology has misconstrued things a bit), we are to become like God, both in our freedom and in our capacity to love. Real freedom entails knowing what good and evil are to begin with.

Second, Adam and Eve do not “sin” in full maturity, awareness, or freedom. Parents have the option of locking their growing children in their home’s basement, never allowing them to touch the outside world, or to experience suffering. And yet the greater act of love on a parent’s part is to grant their progeny freedom, to step out into the world. As parents grant their children greater independence with each passing year, their offspring come to an intensified understanding of the world, a deeper awareness of the dangers and beauties that await them.

Adam and Eve are essentially toddlers upon their creation. They know nothing of their existence, held in the paradisal basement of their creator, shielded from the dangers that might await them otherwise. Just as a toddler does not commit a grave atrocity by devouring the cookie that his or her parent tells them not to consume ⁴, neither do Adam and Eve rebel against YHWH with hearts that burn with complete knowledge and unadulterated cruelty. Perhaps YHWH is not entirely pissed off as he explains the curses once the fruit has been eaten. We have a tendency to read YHWH’s list of curses as if he screams these indictments with rage, with anger and disgust, but maybe YHWH’s voice resonates with a different timbre, with sorrow and sadness. Just as parents bid farewell to their children as they leave home for the last time, offering bittersweet words of warning and advice, I believe that in this text YHWH does nothing more than inform Adam and Eve of their decision’s consequences.

No doubt, these consequences are quite real and deeply profound. They essentially represent a fracturing of relationships on various levels: the human and animal worlds will forever be at odds (“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel” [Genesis 3:15]); humanity and the created order will forever be defined by hard labor and pain (“In toil you will eat of [the earth] all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” [Genesis 3:17-19]); and even the relationship between man and woman will be thrown out of whack, taking on misogynistic imbalance that did not inhere previously (“Yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” [Genesis 3:16]).

The Bottom Line: Original Suffering & Original Freedom

When a two year old child dies of a blood-borne cancer, believing that this results from a decision made by the first humans offers no consolation whatsoever. Not only is this an intellectual cop-out, but it twists our image of God into that of a distorted monster, one who imposes cruel deaths upon innocent creatures for some choice made long ago. If these two chapters of Genesis are not a story of Original Sin, what is this mythology about?

Ultimately, this tale presents the Judeo-Christian tradition with an existential drama of the highest order, in all its paradox and ambiguity. Like any good myth, it offers insight as to why things are the way they are. The story of salvation history begins with the resounding affirmation that the created, material cosmos is irrevocably good, and proceeds to offer insight into the most potent mysteries of our existence: suffering and freedom.

Consider this: what sort of an existence would we rather partake in? One in which we are infantile automatons, ignorant of all things, entirely unable to appreciate goodness and beauty and truth? Or one wherein we are able to partake in goodness and beauty and truth (knowledge of good) at the cost of experiencing suffering (knowledge of evil)?

The story of Adam and Eve is not a story of Original Sin, but a story of Original Suffering, and even Original Freedom, for the two cannot be extricated from one another. In a world filled with pain and atrocity, a world of fractured relationships and injustice, we must ask ourselves if we would prefer the alternative: an existence of ignorance, defined by an inability to fathom the grace and beauty imbued within every iota of the cosmos. Paradise without suffering would be nothing more than vapid meaninglessness, for meaning can only be discovered in the midst of suffering and loss and ambiguity, and how we use our freedom to transform that suffering.

Saint Paul writes eloquently that we have all partaken in Adam and Eve’s disobedience, and thus in Christ all might be redeemed ⁵, but maybe this disobedience results in a wonderful gift: death. ⁶ In turn, this suffering and death moves the triune Godhead to implant itself into creation with Jesus. ⁷⁸ Ultimately, Genesis 2-3 posits that humanity would rather choose the suffering that comes with real freedom. This choice does not cheapen or degrade our existence, but rather charges it with the possibility of meaning.

---

1 “Pelagianism” refers to the early heresy -- perhaps the mother of all heretical thought -- that human beings can do good works without grace, or can get to Heaven of their own accord.^↩

---

2 Some examples from various translations: the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSVCE), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), and the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) all have the headers “Another Account of the Creation” and “The First Sin and Its Punishment”; the English Standard Version (ESV) has “The Creation of Man and Woman” and “The Fall”; the New International Version (NIV) has “Adam and Eve” and “The Fall”.^↩

---

3 “Textual criticism” is the scholarly practice of examining biblical manuscripts, those original hand-written copies of the Bible that antecede the printing press. ^↩

---

4 For some reason, younger generations (and perhaps this is true of all generations) cannot simply acknowledge and follow a parental command. We feel the need to experiment with potentially harmful activities for ourselves, and this mythology thus wisely taps into a deeply-seeded/seated aspect of our shared human nature. ^↩

---

5 See Romans 5:12 and following. Keep in mind that Paul had his own religious worldview, that Luther really adored Romans, and this adoration gave rise to his doctrine of total depravity. Proof-texting (focusing on one verse out of context) is no bueno, friends.^↩

---

6 On another note, this is why I love vampire stories, because at heart not only does an inverse Catholic sacramentality (vampires consume the blood of humans, whereas Christians consume the blood of Christ) lie at their symbolic heart (pun [?] intended), but they philosophically explore what sort of creatures we would become if we could live forever without consequence or final judgment. ^↩

---

7 As someone who has spent 14 years in Jesuit circles, I’ll quote Saint Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises here as an example of this theology. The following is taken from George E. Ganss, S.J.’s translation of the First Day of the Second Week, the contemplation of the Incarnation, wherein God decides to enter the world: “I will see the various persons, some here, some there. First, those on the face of the earth, so diverse in dress and behavior: some white and others black, some in peace and others at war, some weeping and others laughing, some healthy and others sick, some being born and others dying, and so forth. Second, I will see and consider the Three Divine Persons, seated, so to speak, on the royal canopied throne of Their Divine Majesty. They are gazing on the whole face and circuit of the earth; and they see all the peoples in such great blindness, and how they are dying and going down to hell. [...] I will listen to what the persons on the face of the earth are saying; that is, how they speak with one another, swear and blaspheme, and so on. Likewise, I will hear what the Divine Persons are saying, that is, ‘Let us work the redemption of the human race,’ and so forth.” ^↩

---

8 I hate to insert two footnotes in a row, but I can’t help but quote the Exsultet hymn sung at the Easter Vigil Mass (which also has one of the loveliest lines in all of Christian hymnody, about bees) in order to provide another example: “O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”^↩

A Nice, Sacramental, Absolvent Chat

by Dan Masterton

As the Campus Minister at an archdiocesan school, I help set up Reconciliation services for the secondary school students during Advent, and again during Lent. Most of our middle school students - mostly from our parish’s families - go forward to the Sacrament with a level of familiarity and comfort, but our high school students - maybe 50% of which are Catholic, and maybe half of that 50% of which are going to church regularly - approach the opportunity with indifference, skepticism, or worse.

I watch high schoolers stay in their spot in the pew, avoid eye contact with us adults, ignore our gestures to invite them up, and generally blow off the opportunity. There are certainly a few students who maintain the comfort level they learned while growing up in the faith, and they readily go forward to take advantage of the opportunity. However, I can't help but recognize and identify with those who eschew the chance.

When I was in high school, our theology teachers would periodically take us to the chapel for a period-long prayer service that included the chance to go forward for Reconciliation. I don't really know what prompted me to refuse - I went to Mass each Sunday, enjoyed retreats, belonged to Student Ministry Team, etc. - but one time during sophomore year, I simply chose not to go. I was the only one in my class of about 25 students. I just stayed in my chair for the whole period. I wasn't interested.

Later that year, when our class went again, I decided to give it a shot. I don't know how I broached it, or if it even unfolded as a formal sacramental ritual, but I complained to the priest about Mass' being boring. He challenged me with the whole "you get out of it what you put into it" and prompted me to invest more when I was there. I took his challenge to heart, not so much because it was profound, mystical grace, but because I like to be challenged and criticized. I was more thoughtful about the individual words of prayers, about following along in the missal with the readings, about singing the songs, about going forward for communion. And it worked.

I don't know that I ever assembled the pieces until now, but that pastoral reception by that priest (I don't even remember who) brought me back. I never skipped another chance at the Sacrament; I have never since thought Mass to be boring; and my love for Reconciliation only strengthened and solidified on my high school Kairos retreats and beyond.

For me, the clincher was his pastoral response. It was someone who took the time to listen and meet me where I was and be a conduit to God's grace, not solely through rigid adherence to a ritual, but by using the context of the Sacrament to reach out to me. This is what the young people of our Church need.

The disconnect that I've seen is that they sit in the classroom or in the pews and observe the opportunity from afar without taking the risk of trying it, whether as a Catholic seeking absolution or as a person of good will who decides to seek an earnest conversation with a minister. I think they need credible and authentic assurance about what they're observing.

Reconciliation isn't telling your sins to a priest; it's a conversation with God in which a priest sits in on God's behalf to offer you God's grace and God's forgiveness.

Reconciliation isn't a requirement to make you tell your sins out loud; it's an opportunity to acknowledge the negative ways we’ve used our words and actions to damage relationships and seek to repair that damage by using our words and actions positively.

Reconciliation isn't about priests collecting bawdy, disclosive stories; it's a privilege they cherish to be a source of support of love to people of faith in a vulnerable moment.

Reconciliation isn't about our having to go to priests as our superiors; it's a chance for those who shepherd our lives of faith to be our companions as we journey toward God.

Reconciliation isn’t meant to evoke anxiety over confronting our sins and dwelling in the weight of our shortcomings; it’s about walking with God through to the grace of contrition, penance, and absolution that brings us great feelings of peace.

Reconciliation isn't a box that Catholics check to allay our guilt over hurting God; it's a spiritual desire we have to do justice by ourselves, by others, and by God through humility and action.

I think the struggle of young people with this Sacrament ties to two major symptoms that our New Evangelization can treat:

• Young people reject religion/Catholicism not because it's bad but because they see it practiced badly.
• Young people reject religion/Catholicism because they feel imposed upon by something that doesn't meet them where they are.

I know, personally, I could be a better example in my commitment to Reconciliation. I honor the call to attend Reconciliation at least once a year, and typically go during Advent and/or Lent. I have certainly had times where I feel I could use a visit to the confessional before I go next forward for communion, and instead of erring on the side of conscientiousness and grace, I give myself a pass and don’t make Reconciliation a part of my spiritual life. But as I grew up, I came to love this Sacrament by working through my misgivings and choosing it for myself.

When it comes to ministry, as much as I'd love some great speech or some grand action to convince all my high schoolers to participate this Advent, I know it won't work that way. My goal is to spend the days before their Reconciliation service sharing this bit of my story. I pride myself in being a relationship-based minister, so I hope I can embolden these students in that way. I'm hoping that my credibility as a person who lives his faith confidently, wears it on his sleeve, and shares and teaches it in an accessible, approachable, pastoral way translates to credibility and authenticity. I feel that my strongest evangelizing ability proceeds from my efforts to be consistent in character and faith and manifests that in everyday actions.

As I sit in the last pew behind my high school students, I'll say a prayer for all of us and our opportunity for repentance and forgiveness this Advent. Then I'll go up and have a nice, sacramental, absolvent chat with an ordained man in a stole.

Introducing The Restless Hearts

Welcome, Dave, Rob, and Jenny! (listed in order of writing rotation)
- and welcome, new Cover Photo swag for the Facebook Page

It brings me great pleasure to introduce to you the three new writers joining this blog: Jenny Klejeski,
Rob Goodale, and Dave Gregory. These three will take turns sharing original new posts each Monday. I invite you to Like us on Facebook, follow our Twitter pages (featured on the blog sidebar and linked here: Dan | Rob | Jenny), or sign up for email alerts on the sidebar that will link you to new posts.

The scope of the blog will continue to be broad and varying, as each of us seek to articulate the thoughts stirring at the fore of our hearts. The unifying thread between us is our shared faith and our common emphasis on strong theological roots, sustained ministerial practice, and pastoral sensibility, and I believe that will create a diverse, hearty, and engaging buffet of theological and spiritual nosh for you all to enjoy.

I interviewed each of our new folks with the same questions to give them a proper introduction, so without further adieu, let me share with you a brief introduction for each of them (my words in italics) followed by these three new writers in their own words, starting with Jenny:

Jenny Klejeski

I connected with Jenny through a mutual friend. He linked me to some of her previous work that she had published online. I found in her word choice and tone a definite kindred spirit. She wrote with the intelligence and eloquence of a thoughtful student, and delivered her content with the gentleness and lightness of a pastorally sound minister. I took it as an even greater sign that her work referred centrally to St. Maximilian Kolbe, my favorite saint and an amazing model of humility and loving ministry. In just getting to know Jenny a little bit, I already enjoy her enthusiasm and earnestness and know it will shine through as she continues writing here. Jenny will debut on Monday, December 26.

Tell the people a little about yourself.

I hail from the great state of 10,000 lakes, where I grew up with my parents, three older sisters, and one younger brother. With only five children, we were one of the smaller Catholic families at our parish, and all five of us were homeschooled. Being homeschooled allowed us to do some pretty cool stuff like declaring a school holiday when the Two Towers: Extended Edition came out on DVD. (In fairness, we never got snow days or federal holidays off.) In addition, I was able to attend community college full time for two years during high school, which was a great transition to 4-year college. In hopes of following in two of my older sisters’ footsteps, I applied to Notre Dame but was not accepted. I went to my second choice, St. Mary’s College, across the street from Notre Dame with a tentative plan to transfer to ND. In the fall of my sophomore year, I studied abroad with SMC in Rome, where I lived a stone’s throw from the Pantheon and stuffed myself to the gills every day with the best cornetti and pasta I've ever eaten.

The next semester I transferred to Notre Dame as an English major. Sometime during my junior year, I added a theology major (more on that below) and the summer after graduation I began Echo, a graduate program in theology through Notre Dame. Through Echo, I was placed in an intentional faith community and worked as a high school theology teacher in Utah. The first time I stepped into a high school classroom was as a teacher, and my two years teaching theology were perhaps the most formative years of my adult life so far. After completing Echo this past summer, I moved back to Minnesota to teach middle school English at a small Catholic school in the Twin Cities area.

Why did you choose to study theology?

Faith seeking understanding--what's not to love? I’m a cradle Catholic and have always enjoyed learning about and discussing my faith. I credit this to really excellent parish and family catechesis and a particularly influential Bible study that I attended in middle/high school. I hadn't planned to study theology in college (I think I was afraid of a “useless” major), but the Holy Spirit (working through some friends and a few professors) persuaded me in that direction. 

I believe that the decision to study theology was one of the most important decisions of my college career. When I was doing academic theology, I found a sense of fulfillment, as if what I was doing actually mattered. There was a satisfaction to it beyond getting a grade. It was forming me as a person and changing how I viewed the world. It became less of an academic exercise (though it was still that), and more of a way to be in relationship with God. I'm attracted to theology for many reasons, but not least of all because it is a boundless study. One can go continually deeper and with every discovery is some sign of God's love and desire for relationship with us.

How do you live out your ministry?

This is a question I am still seeking to answer myself! As a theology teacher, my ministry was much clearer because my entire curriculum presented opportunities for inviting young people to consider questions of God. As an English teacher, my ministry is not so cut and dried, but I still seek to live out my vocation by being a witness of Christ to my students, fellow teachers, and anyone else I encounter. My hope is to put students in touch with truth, beauty, and goodness, to help form them into people who are open to a relationship with Christ, and to create opportunities for virtue.

What kinds of things will you write about in your posts?

With my various experiences in education (student, teacher, homeschool, public school, Catholic school, etc.), I enjoy exploring different facets of education and what I believe Catholic education should be. I’m also fascinated by how our human experience can be illuminated by art, literature, and music. I’m sure the liturgy and saints will also feature prominently.

Is there anything else you'd like the readers to know about you?

I am chronically contrarian. 

Despite being a certified bartender, my drink of choice is Jameson neat. 

If I could have dinner with any 3 people, I would choose Flannery O’Connor, Caryll Houselander, and Simone Weil. 

I am a self-taught ukulele player, and I collect vintage typewriters. 

Rob Goodale

I first met Rob after I had already graduated from Notre Dame; I was a returning mentor to Notre Dame Vision, and Rob was a first-time mentor, fresh off of sophomore year. Rob was that magnetic, cool kid, the guy who you immediately knew you wanted to be friends with. Somehow, as the older, experienced student, Rob somehow gravitated toward my friends and me (see below). We had the privilege to discover a budding, blossoming man who understood the social magnetism he possessed and who wanted to utilize it to connect people ministerially and bring them closer to God and each other. Rob was like that little sibling who might have been a snot and pain-in-the-butt while growing up but hit the moment when it all came together just as I met him. Rob is a gift to those he ministers to because he uses his gifts to learn, teach, and serve. Rob will debut on Monday, December 19.

Tell the people a little about yourself.

I grew up in a Catholic family in the paradigmatic Heartland, a small town about ten miles outside of Des Moines, Iowa. From an early age, I was taught to operate under the assumption that there was always someone nearby who knew my parents and would tell them exactly how good or bad their young Robbie and his hood-rat friends were being, so we made sure to be as discreet as possible when we messed around at Wal-Mart. At the ripe age of eight, my family visited the University of Notre Dame on a whim as we drove from Iowa to Ohio. Shortly thereafter, I, in my patented endearing and precocious way, began telling everyone who asked (and loads of folks who didn’t) that I would be a student there someday. From that point on, my whole life became oriented to getting into Notre Dame.

When, ten years later, I moved on to the hallowed ground of Marylin M. Keough Hall, I suddenly discovered that I had achieved the only serious goal I’d ever set for myself, and I celebrated by immersing myself fully in the life of a stereotypical jackass college kid. When it came time to choose a major at the end of my freshman year, I... didn’t. That’s a true story. I had no major until the spring of my sophomore year, when I chose philosophy mostly out of boredom. I eventually stumbled into working for Notre Dame Vision (more on that in a bit), and found that I enjoyed talking with people about God. I started studying theology, got really involved in ND’s Campus Ministry, got hired to take a victory lap as a Campus Ministry Post-Grad Intern, and then began two years in Echo, a graduate program in theology through Notre Dame.

The program includes two years of employment at either a parish or a Catholic high school, and this is how I wound up living in Salt Lake City, Utah, and teaching high school theology for two years. This past summer I graduated with an MA in theology and became a Double Domer (puke in my mouth a little bit), and I’m now living, of all places, in southern Ireland, working as a visiting chaplain at University College Cork.

Why did you decide to study theology?

During that first summer of working at Notre Dame Vision, there were these two guys a year or two older than me who had both been mentors with the program before, and were both studying theology. I spent hours picking their brains about deep questions of faith—questions of vocation and discipleship, of suffering and grace. Amazingly, they seemed to have some insight about each topic that came up, and spoke in hushed reverence of ND theology professors like David Fagerberg and John Cavadini.

As the summer wore on, it became clear—I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to major in theology, but I knew I wanted to keep having conversations like those. Fall semester of my junior year (my first studying philosophy) didn’t go so well—philosophy professors kept asking me questions about goodness and truth, and they kept telling me God couldn’t be part of my answer. So I jumped on the theology bandwagon, and 72 credits later, I still like it.

(P.S. One of those dudes at Vision was Dan. #smallworld)

How do you live out your ministry?

It’s very different as a chaplain than it was as a teacher. It’s far less academic, obviously. I also went from working with 160 students every day to working with about six, and I no longer have the threat of grades to force the six I have now to pay attention. At the end of the day, though, they aren’t all that different from any other form of ministry when it’s done well. Being Christ to people, in a professional capacity or otherwise, means:

1. Being okay with failure, like actual failure in front of real life human beings, with no escape hatch.
2. Being unafraid to share your whole, raw self with a group of people who are desperate for that kind of human interaction, but are woefully incapable of reciprocating it.
3. Being willing to limp home at the end of each day bruised, hurting, and dirty (usually metaphorical, unless the Irish students make you play a God-forsaken game called hurling with them, in which case, it’s literal).
4. Praising God for having the opportunity to do all this with a smile on your face and grace pulsing through your veins.

This looks a bit different for each of us, but whether you’re a parent, a teacher, a social worker, or just some random person who sometimes takes enough time to notice the other persons around you, this is how we live out our ministry. This is what we do.

What kinds of things will you write about in your posts?

Rooted as I am in the convergence point of education and the Church, I’ll be writing about that some. I’m still fascinated, as I was in that first Vision summer, with questions of vocation, discipleship, suffering, and grace, so I’ll probably write about that stuff, too. I wish more Catholics were willing to be joyful and use their imagination, so that’ll probably pop up some. And I also wish more people knew how to treat other people like people, so… yeah, I’ll probably write about that, too. And of course, the World Champion Chicago Cubs. #FlyTheW #GoCubsGo

Is there anything else you’d like the readers to know about you?

Hmm, let’s see… I have a totally normal and healthy attachment to the writings of C.S. Lewis, and much of my own thought tends to be sifted through his, for better or for worse (it’s all for better - how dare you). 

I love to force other people to eat my cooking and listen to my music, both of which I find to be stellar. 

I’m living in Ireland right now, in case you missed that—it’s a strange place, but a pretty cool one. The whiskey tastes good, and the beer tastes better. 

I stay in the loop on what’s going on back in the States mostly through Twitter, which I know is a dangerous game, but I’m a sucker for brevity (and GIFs). Aaaaand have I mentioned the World Champion Chicago Cubs? Because I’m a big fan of the World Champion Chicago Cubs. #FlyTheW

Dave Gregory

Dave and I met at a literal oasis in the desert, a high school in a California desert valley that in the words of its current principal is a place that "specializes in discernment of all shapes and sizes" for students and faculty/staff alike. We had each sort of indirectly networked our way to jobs in theology and campus ministry, and we each brought a flavor of strong-willed boorishness that somehow jived well then and continues to work now. Dave is adept at turning a phrase, aloud or in writing, that is sure to provoke and entertain, especially when it comes to making people laugh; however, I have never witnessed a peer, someone my age and with my level of education and formation, who speaks with greater conviction and engagement about our faith than Dave. He can captivate a crowd of seasoned, jaded educators just as readily as a roomful of apathetic, lazy 15-year-olds. Dave will debut on Monday, December 12.

Tell the people a little about yourself.

Hello, "the people." I gotta explain that I'm a bit messed up, and generally spend my waking hours in a hazed confusion. My mom is a Jewish New Yorker, and my dad is a cradle Catholic from Dearborn, Michigan. He's a "cooperator" with Opus Dei, but also brought me to the original Catholic Worker houses on a frequent basis as I grew up. Consequently, definable Catholic boxes elude my grasp. I attended Jesuit schools throughout high school and college (Regis High School in Manhattan and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.), spent two years in a Jesuit novitiate, and wound up teaching and campus ministering for four years at Xavier College Preparatory in the desert of Southern California, the first Jesuit-less Jesuit high school. 

While at Xavier, I completed a master's degree in Biblical Studies (I realized toward the end of my program that I would be a master of B.S.) with a focus on the wisdom and prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible; I wrote my thesis under the direction of Marvin Sweeney and Jon Berquist, entitled "The Monotheistic Revolution of Deutero-Isaiah: A Theological Exploration of Its Causes and Implications". That 68-page monstrosity has since dissolved into the aether of forgotten master's theses. 

I refuse to move on toward doctoral work because I hate systemic politick, nor do I desire to spend my life researching and writing about things that only two or three other people in the world care about. Portland, OR is my current home, where I teach theology at De La Salle Catholic North High School, a Lasallian Christian Brothers institution and the second-oldest Cristo Rey Network school. In short, we are dedicated to serving urban students whose socio-economic demographics do not dispose them toward receiving quality educations in preparation for college matriculation.

Why did you choose to study theology?

As an undergraduate at Georgetown, I began my studies as a biochemistry major. However, I took a couple of required theology and philosophy courses my freshman year alongside the hard sciences, and studying Plato under Professor Frank Ambrosio changed my life. I arrived at the realization that I should blow money on an education that would help me explore life's deepest mysteries and questions, one that would help me to read, write, think, and speak well, all along the lines of the Jesuitical eloquentia perfecta. I wound up majoring in philosophy and theology, with particular attention paid to systematic theology, biblical theology, ancient philosophy, and philosophy of religion. Practicalities be damned. 

Come graduate school, I realized that I didn't know that much about Judaism or the Hebrew Bible and wound up at the Claremont School of Theology, which historically has very strong biblical studies. It's a kooky, amazing place, considered to be the most "liberal" (sweet baby Jesus, I hate these dichotomies) of the Methodist seminaries; I studied alongside Jews, atheists, non-Catholic Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and Wiccans. I loved every minute at Claremont, and got to study under really prominent scholars, especially in my field. 

While delving into Scripture, I realized that Christianity has by and large really effed up its understanding of Judaism, and popular Catholicism has mostly forgotten its Jewish origins, all to its own detriment. I studied the Hebrew Bible because I came to see that I could not understand Jesus of Nazareth unless I first understood the scriptures he read and taught alongside the social-religious culture to which he belonged. Apart from my biblically-focused coursework, I adored the general requirements in systematics, ethics, and interreligious studies, and I particularly became fond of ecofeminist, post-Christian, and death-of-God theologies.

How do you live out your ministry?

Broadly speaking, I became an educator because my own high school teachers and friends collectively loved me into existence, and I yearn to give my life to that same project. At heart, I consider myself an evangelist, and I submit this without hubris or pretension. I'm simply dedicated to communicating the beauty, truth, and goodness of Catholicism to young adults, helping them to encounter Jesus. My classroom is part retreat faith-sharing group, part stand-up comedy show, and part lecture hall; I hope to introduce to and engage my students with supremely important questions, in order that they might come to a deeper understanding of why they believe what they believe. 

Given that the school I serve is predominantly minority (we're the most diverse school in Portland and the fourth most diverse private school in the country), and given that I am a large, white male, tensions abound. Moreover, the solid majority of our students is not Catholic. My undergraduate and graduate educations took place in relatively bizarre religious institutions, and I feel that I'm well-suited for this sort of community, because I have experienced exploring philosophy and theology with folks who do not share my same beliefs. I'm never out to convert or proselytize, but I do pride myself (perhaps a bit too much) on the fact that as a result of our time together, Christians have become atheists and atheists have become Christians. 

Basically, the truly excellent courses I've taken have rattled and disturbed me, and have transformed my own theological worldview. If my classes don't make my students uncomfortable, then I've failed at my job.

What kinds of things will you write about in your posts?

Given aforementioned reasons, I'll be focusing on the Hebrew Bible. I'm barely beginning to understand it myself, and I hope that I can shed some light on its richness and contemporary relevance. The Bible is a total freakshow in the best of all possible senses, and I hope that my writing will provide intellectual depth while remaining within the grasp of the theologically uninitiated. I suppose I'll also be writing about its relationship to Jesus (especially with regard to the influence of prophetic literature on his life and ministry) and the relationship of Catholicism to ancient Judaism. Perhaps I'll throw in some bits about spirituality, ecofeminism, and post-Christian theology as well.

Is there anything else you'd like the readers to know about you?

Ummmm, I've got a couple of fun facts. 

As a teenager, I performed and competed in sleight-of-hand magic competitions. I won some awards, and my high school graduation present was attending the "world Olympics" of magic in Stockholm (F.I.S.M.), though not as a competitor, simply as a giant geek. In order to reach the pinnacle of geekdom, I even attended a sleep-away magic camp for a few summers, the same camp which David Blaine and Criss Angel went to as kiddos; when Criss's show "Mindfreak" debuted on Broadway, I got a poster from his merch table, and he signed it, "To David -- May all your magical dreams come true." This note was signed right over a picture wherein he was naked and bound in chains (it was a collage of images, this was not the only one, I should note), with his hands covering his genitalia… supposedly to show off his prowess at escapism, though I suspect it contained a plurality of undertones. I covered it up with a picture of Natalie Portman once my high school friends came over for the first time, as I realized the profound social ramifications of having such debauchery strewn upon my wall. 

On a slightly cooler note, when the Jesuits kicked me out a few months before I was supposed to profess perpetual vows (this isn't a scandalous story, but more on that in the future) and my novice master handed me $750 to send me on my way, I saved and spent it on bartending school when I lived in California. I have an interest in the history of the American cocktail and the history of alcohol consumption in general, and consequently make the meanest margarita and old-fashioned you'll ever have. 

My pipedream is to open a liturgically- and hagiographically-inspired bar named "The Damnable Papist". A defunct high altar will run along behind the bar as it lifts sweet nectar toward the heavens; glittering icons will hang all over the dimly-lit walls; and the lyrics from one of my all-time favorite songs ("Citrus") from my all-time favorite band (The Hold Steady) will adorn the ceiling in a spiral formation, culminating in some sort of theophanic revelation. These words pretty much sum up the philosophy and spirituality upon which I ground my being:

Hey citrus, hey liquor,

I love it when you touch each other.

Hey whiskey, hey ginger,

I come to you with rigid fingers.

I see Judas in the hard eyes

Of the boys who worked on the corners.

I feel Jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers.

Hey bar room, hey tavern,

I find hope in all the souls you gather.

Hey citrus, hey liquor,

I love it when we come together.

I feel Jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers...

I feel Judas in the long odds of the rackets on the corners...

I feel Jesus in the tenderness of honest, nervous lovers...

I feel Judas in the pistols and the pagers that come with all the powders...

Lost in fog and love and faith was fear,

And I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere.

Lost in fog and love and faith was fear,

I've had kisses that make Judas seem sincere.