To cap a summer of active, first-hand ministry, Vision peeps celebrate with a tasty Legends dinner, general laughs and stories, and a super-fab dance. Certain people are honored for coming back and/or doing an especially sweet job, and sometimes others get recognized too. Some, like Raquel, get epic slide shows comprised entirely of photos of herself. Others get a sweet gift kind of secretly.
I was super pumped when Shep asked me to give my witness talk to the CYMs. Writing my talk was an arduous, taxing, but ultimately positive process for reasons beyond outlines and word choices, and it was unexpectedly affirming to get this cool invitation to share my talk.
I wrote about my discernment history and how I understand it now. I knew when I wrote it that I could never give it to high schoolers in a big auditorium during any panel any time, but I wrote what was in me, coming off the scrap heap of trashing my first talk. Shep embraced what I was saying and created this opportunity for me, and I am real grateful.
As I waited for my date to arrive to Legends (I bungled the whole time-and-place-for-meeting-pre-arrangements), Shep pulled me aside and slipped me a card and book to thank me for taking her up on her offer. I was really touched by her guidance the whole way and that was just the icing on the top. Her card and notes were so sweet, and I have finally gotten down to reading the book, The Godbearing Life, during break. It's a fascinating work on (at least so far) shifting the ministerial focus from of tasks, programs, and doing and toward a more holistic missionary style of ministry. There's much to chew on and absorb, and I'm far from being able to write on it.
However, it is bringing back some of the questions pertaining to ministry that came up while I worked this summer as a mentor to the high schoolers. These aren't definitely-answered questions, but they are gestures at things that I foresee developing more personal philosophies on, and, taking the advice of the book, will consult other ministers about, using community among Christians and ministers to uphold ourselves...
How much of ministry is delegation/getting out of the way and how much is direct leadership?
An important element of ministry with youth is allowing them to be ministers to one another. However, not all of that can happen organically. Some will be brighter lights of Christ to the others. Some formation has to make those lights brighter and light the candles that haven't yet ignited.
On the foundational level, a certain amount of intentionality has to be put into developing leaders, both formally for retreats and small group facilitation and also for everyday life, for embodying the Gospel. On either level, there's some delicate balance to be struck in giving them the tools to realize their gifts and potential but also in staying out of the way of their forming and upholding one another.
My tendency is to prefer conversation to interview, to push flow of talking rather than prompts and responses. In formation situations involving leadership, I'd hope to just spur conversation around leadership that aims toward the things I'd like them to consider, reflect upon, and learn. But again, there must be care taken to know when the direction is something I have to define or to allow them to feel out some of the path themselves.
I would hope regardless of the style that I would discern well enough the personalities and capacities of the people in order to know what/when to delegate in terms of faith leadership. I would hate to be the leader that delegates only to breathe down the neck of the person and doom them to failure under pressure.
I'd aim to allow them to feel some autonomy in knowing that they share with me and the Church's leaders the sometimes-scary-but-ultimately-incredibly-beautiful opportunity that we have in holding "accountability for the souls" (from TGBL) of our brothers and sisters. If there was a way to communicate that to present the great opportunity therein without absolutely freaking out young people, I'd love to find it and use it.
Is ministry about bringing the faith to people or bringing people to the faith?
It's easy for me to just go with the flow of the mainline Catholic Church because it's what I've basically always believed and practiced. It helps that I've taken increased ownership of the things I've grown accustomed to, but it's much harder for kids who are either fighting it or struggling to take that step of personal agency.
This is one of the reasons I personally believe that confirmation should be moved to the latter half of high school--it allows for maximal personal reflection in that the confirmandi are in the last years before a huge increase in independence and have gleaned a great deal of knowledge and experience, getting increasingly solidified from 2-3 years of high school life. The dilemma of forcing the kid vs. choosing freely endures but differently than with a 12- or 14-year-old.
Anywho, I struggle with stuff life LifeTeen and praise-and-worship-heavy youth ministry. I think the differences faced when teens move into regular worship again are too drastic and jarring, and it segregates the worship that is meant to be universal in the Church. If kids, teens, and adults all celebrate differently, it becomes difficult to bring them all together and allow believers to develop within a united Church. A positive example of distinctive worship occurs across cultures--here, a people celebrate their mass slightly differently than another people might, but each people celebrates their worship across all ages, open to the exchange across cultures in sharing the distinct practices within the Church. The divide between LifeTeen-ish stuff and traditional mass gets too deep and turns into an either-or.
Tilts to celebrating the mass like Praise and Worship music are fine so long as they do not deeply alienate believers. On the other side of it, compromises to the mass that alienate the orthodoxy of the mass cannot be accepted. Some line must to be toed to allow believers to engage the Church and its Tradition in a way that is accessible to them without changing the nature of what it is.
I enjoy the way the Basilica allows for diversity within the Church at Notre Dame: our Liturgical Choir sings a more traditional, higher mass at 10am, using organ exclusively and repertoire that is more classical, with things like Latin texts; our Folk Choir sings a more contemporary mass at 11:45am with more diverse instrumentation and song styles. Both groups are deeply informed theologically and catechetically in their music selection and ministry. Both masses have a loyal, if distinct congregation. But most importantly, both masses rest on the Church's Tradition, and both are accessible to any Catholic.
The mass has been carefully constructed through 2000 years, based on local custom, close reading of Scripture, the directives of Christ, and the guidance of the bishops. We should trust strongly in the believers that came before us, and the Church under the Spirit's guidance. Extraliturgical services should be assembled with an eye to the already existing mass norms and sacraments so as to be a complement to them or perhaps be discussions that gesture toward the sacraments.
Dean & Foster put the overall dilemma plain and simple for ministers:
"If we were more sensible of conditions--if we had a clue--we would not hesitate to send youth out to carry God's salvation into the world, and to be unashamedly and unapologetically Christian about it. Instead, we are cautious evangelists. We respect pluralism. We recoil from cramming our faith down someone's throat. We believe in human freedom. We want to be liked. Because we hope youth will chart their own course, we allude to faith more than we proclaim it. Yet behind these honorable reasons for Christian reticence lurks a more dastardly one [and this is where they get ya]: Our reputations as reasonable people are on the line."
The trap that ecumenism is increasingly laying is for Christianity to get genericized and watered-down into something everyone can swallow easily and together. Catholicism is not about invalidating other traditions, but it is about upholding its own tradition strongly. We must educate each other across faiths. Within our own churches, we need to bring people to the faith. Not through stream-lined and flimsy-ized masses but through well-informed catechesis, sharing the existing faith, and finding people's access points to the standing Church rather than creating a new or fake one.
[Part 2 to follow...]
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
The First Church
This fall, I have been taking a 1-credit course on the Catholic teachings on Mary. Tonight is the fifth and final meeting of the class. Prof. Matovina, who's really great, asked us to write a 5-page paper on 5 statements we'd want Catholics to know about Mary. Rather than just rehash the four dogmas on Mary and throw another something in there, I lumped those into #1 and drew out four different ones.
Here's my five Mary statements, including the page I wrote on #5, which was my favorite:
3. The call of Mary, as described by St. Luke in his Gospel, is the only instance in the Bible of a direct mission call from God followed by a direct verbal assent.
4. Mary is the only human being to be present in all three eras of salvation history: the Law and the Prophets; the ministry of Jesus Christ; and the Church.
Here's my five Mary statements, including the page I wrote on #5, which was my favorite:
1. Our four dogmatic teachings on Mary—The Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, Mary as Mother of God (Theotokos), and the Assumption—are each a part of Mary’s modeling of the Christian ideal to which all Christians should aspire.
2. The evolution of teachings on Mary has been gradual and deliberative; Catholic belief in various Marian devotions has never been unanimous, and the teaching of the Church is the product of much thought and disagreement.
3. The call of Mary, as described by St. Luke in his Gospel, is the only instance in the Bible of a direct mission call from God followed by a direct verbal assent.
4. Mary is the only human being to be present in all three eras of salvation history: the Law and the Prophets; the ministry of Jesus Christ; and the Church.
5. In the Gospel of John, just before Jesus utters, “It is finished”, on the cross, he entrusts his mother Mary and the beloved disciple, John, to one another; in this action, Jesus essentially begins the Church.
In the Gospel of John, we hear the narrative of Jesus’ crucifixion descriptively. After Jesus is put on the cross, he sees Mary and some women beneath Him and then also sees the disciple whom he loved. In a final act of merciful compassion, Jesus unites the two people who, in the human sense of the term, he loved most. Jesus says to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother” (John 19:26-27). Jesus commends these two people to one another, trusting that the love they showed show profoundly during Christ’s time on earth will endure past His death. John adds, “From that time on, this disciple took her into his home” (John 19:27). The two became a kind of family, founded on their union in Christ who, in His commending these two to one another, has created His Church.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Hate the Sin, Love the Zeal
I was walking home from my Vision "interview" with Lenny to potentially return for a second tour of duty as a mentor when my friend Maria beckoned from across the quad. I walked with her toward the door to Zahm and asked where she was headed. She was going to mass in the basilica and invited me come along. I had enough work to do to stay back. However, embracing the increasingly strong ethos of senior year, work was backburner-ed, and I continued on with her to the basilica.
Believe it or not, it was my first non-major-occasion 5:15 daily mass in the basilica. It's a different vibe than the 10pm dorm mass, but I enjoyed celebrating the mass like this. One of the biggest moments for me was the homily.
I had the usual in-and-out attention span during the readings, getting the jist--Paul's words and Mary & Martha in Luke's Gospel. I wanted to hone in on the homily, not just for the obvious reasons, but because I enjoy hearing different people preach, especially if I've never heard them before.
I don't remember the whole thing, but over 24 hours later, the message on Paul's selection from Galatians endures within me. Paul talks about his conversion from zealous enforcer of Rome's persecution to preacher of the word, and the presider for our mass honed in on zeal--how unusual for a Holy Cross to talk about zeal!
He talked about, in rather plain terms, Paul's zeal for his civil duties enduring through his conversion and continuing to underpin his mission for Christ. In answering the call from Christ, Paul left behind his political duties and his job but retained the passion that backed it up. The same zeal that drove Paul's malicious enforcement of Roman oppression also motivated his fervent missionary work.
It's not so simple as just changing the tasks that result from the passion. Somewhat of a transformation of attitude had to occur to refilter the zeal through a new heart, through Paul's new faith in the Risen Lord who revealed Himself to Paul. However, somehow, it remains the same zeal.
The analogy that immediately came to mind for me was Augustine's exhortation to us, often boiled down to "hate the sin, love the sinner" (for full text, check out an old post). In this case, it'd be something like "hate the acts, love the zeal"--not quite as catchy but a similar sentiment.
Augustine calls us to admonish the sinful acts of a person but continue loving that person; in this way, to quote myself, once they repent and grow in love, the sin vanishes and only the person, completely deserving of love having been made by God in His image, remains. I kind of thought in this way for zeal--we can hate the wrongful acts of a zealous person, but love the zeal?
Not quite, I guess. But we can more gently hope for the zeal to endure through conversion, in a way resembling the transformation of Paul. We can pray and hope that our own and others' convictions and passions in justifying things that may be questionable can permeate all our motivations to underpin our righteous actions as well.
We can hope for zealous passion to brew within us always, so that as we continue to form a Christian conscience and discern right action, our zeal can grow stronger as we do God's will, do right more frequently and more profoundly.
Believe it or not, it was my first non-major-occasion 5:15 daily mass in the basilica. It's a different vibe than the 10pm dorm mass, but I enjoyed celebrating the mass like this. One of the biggest moments for me was the homily.
I had the usual in-and-out attention span during the readings, getting the jist--Paul's words and Mary & Martha in Luke's Gospel. I wanted to hone in on the homily, not just for the obvious reasons, but because I enjoy hearing different people preach, especially if I've never heard them before.
I don't remember the whole thing, but over 24 hours later, the message on Paul's selection from Galatians endures within me. Paul talks about his conversion from zealous enforcer of Rome's persecution to preacher of the word, and the presider for our mass honed in on zeal--how unusual for a Holy Cross to talk about zeal!
He talked about, in rather plain terms, Paul's zeal for his civil duties enduring through his conversion and continuing to underpin his mission for Christ. In answering the call from Christ, Paul left behind his political duties and his job but retained the passion that backed it up. The same zeal that drove Paul's malicious enforcement of Roman oppression also motivated his fervent missionary work.
It's not so simple as just changing the tasks that result from the passion. Somewhat of a transformation of attitude had to occur to refilter the zeal through a new heart, through Paul's new faith in the Risen Lord who revealed Himself to Paul. However, somehow, it remains the same zeal.
The analogy that immediately came to mind for me was Augustine's exhortation to us, often boiled down to "hate the sin, love the sinner" (for full text, check out an old post). In this case, it'd be something like "hate the acts, love the zeal"--not quite as catchy but a similar sentiment.
Augustine calls us to admonish the sinful acts of a person but continue loving that person; in this way, to quote myself, once they repent and grow in love, the sin vanishes and only the person, completely deserving of love having been made by God in His image, remains. I kind of thought in this way for zeal--we can hate the wrongful acts of a zealous person, but love the zeal?
Not quite, I guess. But we can more gently hope for the zeal to endure through conversion, in a way resembling the transformation of Paul. We can pray and hope that our own and others' convictions and passions in justifying things that may be questionable can permeate all our motivations to underpin our righteous actions as well.
We can hope for zealous passion to brew within us always, so that as we continue to form a Christian conscience and discern right action, our zeal can grow stronger as we do God's will, do right more frequently and more profoundly.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Transfiguration
This is not a new thought but rather one that finds new realized meaning each time it comes back into play, which thank God is so frequent in my blessed life full of beautiful friends. Per usual, I gotta admit unoriginality and give props to my friend Jeremy who first introduced this thought to me back on Catholics on Call last August.
On Wednesday night of our week-long conference of Catholic awesomeness, we took a delightful little boat cruise out on Lake Michigan, eating some food, chatting on the decks, and hanging out at the tables. I had realized profoundly pretty early on that everyone there was similar on the basic level of feeling a genuine pull toward the Church and having a willingness to talk about it. I had uncharacteristically engaged a few great people and been rewarded with lush, fulfilling, beautiful conversations. So that night, the theme continued. As the cruise ended and we piled back into the cars to go back to CTU, we had a social time downstairs, but my buds Jeremy and Regina and I went and found a lounge and proceeded to just talk everything deep into the night.
The outline of what we covered is amazing, but the what is less important than the how. Building on that community that CoC enabled, there was a definite assent to vulnerability that happened tacitly. Without ice-breakers or assurances of confidentiality, we launched into sharing openly and comfortably. There wasn't fear beyond that which is natural and dismissed as petty; there wasn't concern over oversharing or undersharing but instead just free sharing.
The power of vulnerability to settle the heart, enable love to flow freely, and to build real relationship was so evident in the grace that night. This conversation in all its various beauty was the seminal part of a wonderful week that was legitimately a paradigm shift in my life and faith journey. I had been becoming more introspective and reflective and was seeking out these kind of conversations more, but not with the frequency or intensity that I do now and ever since then. It has become an internalized part of my spirituality and social life, that occasionally I push for too heavily but always find to be there just as I need it.
Jeremy put the best words to it at one point in the middle of it all. Describing in better words than I can recollect, Jeremy said that listening to us talk and hearing the kinds of stories of personal things we've shared, that we were transfigured before his eyes.
Honest, open, genuine sharing doesn't peel back the exterior of someone but informs others of the fuller person dwelling within. Knowing someone's stories, feelings, thought processes, spirituality, etc. causes you give them a fuller look when you see them--fuller than just moving past first-impression type reactions, fuller than judging their looks, fuller than remembering a time or two you had a fun time out with them, fuller than remembering a story they told you, fuller than having a nice chat over lunch.
Vulnerability is a gift we can give ourselves and others that transfigures the relationship--once you make yourself vulnerable to someone, you can never look at them the exact same, with your eyes or the eyes of your soul. There is a deeper appreciation that comes with the sight of someone after you have shared this kind of time or conversation with them.
Often when I make eye contact with a friend who I love dearly, I can only help but smile and laugh. Most friends will nervously ask, "What!?" [Many have learned to simply shake of my goofy love--right K-Jo?] And my only reply is nothing, because how do you describe the depth of the appreciation you can feel for someone with whom you've shared that vulnerability with?
It's a feeling that includes happiness but exceeds it to the depths of joy, which is the kind of deeper-set emotion that God calls us to, the type of feeling that indicates the profound goodness of what caused it. Joy denotes that what inspired it is good and right and probably linked to one's vocation. One of my favorite songs just came on iTunes (Only Living Boy in New York, Simon & Garfunkel, from Garden State) that sums up my goony habit: "I got nothing to do today but smile."
On Wednesday night of our week-long conference of Catholic awesomeness, we took a delightful little boat cruise out on Lake Michigan, eating some food, chatting on the decks, and hanging out at the tables. I had realized profoundly pretty early on that everyone there was similar on the basic level of feeling a genuine pull toward the Church and having a willingness to talk about it. I had uncharacteristically engaged a few great people and been rewarded with lush, fulfilling, beautiful conversations. So that night, the theme continued. As the cruise ended and we piled back into the cars to go back to CTU, we had a social time downstairs, but my buds Jeremy and Regina and I went and found a lounge and proceeded to just talk everything deep into the night.
The outline of what we covered is amazing, but the what is less important than the how. Building on that community that CoC enabled, there was a definite assent to vulnerability that happened tacitly. Without ice-breakers or assurances of confidentiality, we launched into sharing openly and comfortably. There wasn't fear beyond that which is natural and dismissed as petty; there wasn't concern over oversharing or undersharing but instead just free sharing.
The power of vulnerability to settle the heart, enable love to flow freely, and to build real relationship was so evident in the grace that night. This conversation in all its various beauty was the seminal part of a wonderful week that was legitimately a paradigm shift in my life and faith journey. I had been becoming more introspective and reflective and was seeking out these kind of conversations more, but not with the frequency or intensity that I do now and ever since then. It has become an internalized part of my spirituality and social life, that occasionally I push for too heavily but always find to be there just as I need it.
Jeremy put the best words to it at one point in the middle of it all. Describing in better words than I can recollect, Jeremy said that listening to us talk and hearing the kinds of stories of personal things we've shared, that we were transfigured before his eyes.
Honest, open, genuine sharing doesn't peel back the exterior of someone but informs others of the fuller person dwelling within. Knowing someone's stories, feelings, thought processes, spirituality, etc. causes you give them a fuller look when you see them--fuller than just moving past first-impression type reactions, fuller than judging their looks, fuller than remembering a time or two you had a fun time out with them, fuller than remembering a story they told you, fuller than having a nice chat over lunch.
Vulnerability is a gift we can give ourselves and others that transfigures the relationship--once you make yourself vulnerable to someone, you can never look at them the exact same, with your eyes or the eyes of your soul. There is a deeper appreciation that comes with the sight of someone after you have shared this kind of time or conversation with them.
Often when I make eye contact with a friend who I love dearly, I can only help but smile and laugh. Most friends will nervously ask, "What!?" [Many have learned to simply shake of my goofy love--right K-Jo?] And my only reply is nothing, because how do you describe the depth of the appreciation you can feel for someone with whom you've shared that vulnerability with?
It's a feeling that includes happiness but exceeds it to the depths of joy, which is the kind of deeper-set emotion that God calls us to, the type of feeling that indicates the profound goodness of what caused it. Joy denotes that what inspired it is good and right and probably linked to one's vocation. One of my favorite songs just came on iTunes (Only Living Boy in New York, Simon & Garfunkel, from Garden State) that sums up my goony habit: "I got nothing to do today but smile."
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Seldom Interrupted Peace
I have been reflecting on the idea of peace a lot the last few months. To work backwards from the more abstract version of what I've come to, it boils down to the central truth that "God's will is our peace" (pretty good huh? it's not my original. got it from Fr. Dunne class).
Along with that, at the heart of my faith, I have embraced the ideal of perfect freedom, an ideal that Christ embodied for us. Since Christ's will was exactly aligned with the Father's will, he maintained his freedom and perfected it in freely willing actions that were God's will. Now the thing about ideals is that we are not perfect and cannot really achieve perfection. However, we are called as Christians to emulate Jesus as best we can.
As with the relation between little discernments and big-picture discernment, the journey to peace--longer periods of sustained peace and feelings of more profound peace--involves the sum of smaller things as well. I would suggest three areas were the pieces of the peace puzzle can come into focus.
On the simplest level, some times in life are teeming with blessings whereas others seem comparatively sparse. First off, the key is that life is never without grace or blessings, but as humans, we fall into the trap of seeking to quantify these kinds of things.
One of my rules of thumb in reflection and introspection is to allow my honest feelings to surface and address them rather than deny my instinct entirely. So I allow myself to have this very human feeling but try to minimize the time that I dwell on the perceived dearth. I usually am not in this kind of valley--either my life is satisfactorily full of blessings or my disposition is such that I am usually contented with the blessings in my life. Perhaps these things are one in the same.
Regardless, the embrace of the already-present blessings and of a disposition to find at least contentment--hopefully happiness or joy--helps to build the peace. The second piece here is a comfortable disposition to appreciate and give thanks for the blessings God has already given.
The way that I have settled into that is with a special capstone to all my personal prayers. Regardless of the time of day or what I'm praying over, anytime I spend a significant amount of time in prayer, I conclude with my phrase, "Thank you for all that You've given me and all You will give me."
This Sunday's gospel on the rich man and Lazarus teaches us that we should not demand of God specific inspirations or proofs, especially when we are so unappreciative of the revelation and truth already given us. I don't have the quick fix way to transform one's outlook, but I found that making this sentiment integral to my prayer to be a big help.
The third thing is the hardest: having an eye to grace. I learned powerfully back in April the ways that we can fail to see the grace that is so active in daily life. The charism of stop-think-pray helps to slow life down a bit, but succeeding in having those moments is tough. This is another ideal where the hoped-for perfection is noticing every grace as it happens.
The realistic starting point is cultivating an awareness that identifies grace soon after its impact, hopefully beginning with nightly reflections back upon the day's blessings. Even if we cannot identify every grace and cannot find it until well after its help has come, we can let our prayer and reflection unpack the profundity of the grace in life. Rather than seeking systematic, timely awareness, we can simply hope to be formed strongly by the grace we do realize and give God thanks.
Going to mass, having quiet prayer, Adoring the Eucharist, enjoying the love of community, and talking with close friends are some of the ways that I maintain my outlook and experience blessings and grace. None of these things--and few things in my life--exclude God; at the very least, each thing allows the opportunity for God to impact it.
Peace is content and humble harmony between one's view of love at a certain moment and the truth that God is Love. Giving thanks for my blessings, maintaining a positive outlook, and keeping an eye to God's grace are parts of my life--things that flow naturally, not constructs that I've imposed on life--that make up my seldomly interrupted peace.
Along with that, at the heart of my faith, I have embraced the ideal of perfect freedom, an ideal that Christ embodied for us. Since Christ's will was exactly aligned with the Father's will, he maintained his freedom and perfected it in freely willing actions that were God's will. Now the thing about ideals is that we are not perfect and cannot really achieve perfection. However, we are called as Christians to emulate Jesus as best we can.
As with the relation between little discernments and big-picture discernment, the journey to peace--longer periods of sustained peace and feelings of more profound peace--involves the sum of smaller things as well. I would suggest three areas were the pieces of the peace puzzle can come into focus.
On the simplest level, some times in life are teeming with blessings whereas others seem comparatively sparse. First off, the key is that life is never without grace or blessings, but as humans, we fall into the trap of seeking to quantify these kinds of things.
One of my rules of thumb in reflection and introspection is to allow my honest feelings to surface and address them rather than deny my instinct entirely. So I allow myself to have this very human feeling but try to minimize the time that I dwell on the perceived dearth. I usually am not in this kind of valley--either my life is satisfactorily full of blessings or my disposition is such that I am usually contented with the blessings in my life. Perhaps these things are one in the same.
Regardless, the embrace of the already-present blessings and of a disposition to find at least contentment--hopefully happiness or joy--helps to build the peace. The second piece here is a comfortable disposition to appreciate and give thanks for the blessings God has already given.
The way that I have settled into that is with a special capstone to all my personal prayers. Regardless of the time of day or what I'm praying over, anytime I spend a significant amount of time in prayer, I conclude with my phrase, "Thank you for all that You've given me and all You will give me."
This Sunday's gospel on the rich man and Lazarus teaches us that we should not demand of God specific inspirations or proofs, especially when we are so unappreciative of the revelation and truth already given us. I don't have the quick fix way to transform one's outlook, but I found that making this sentiment integral to my prayer to be a big help.
The third thing is the hardest: having an eye to grace. I learned powerfully back in April the ways that we can fail to see the grace that is so active in daily life. The charism of stop-think-pray helps to slow life down a bit, but succeeding in having those moments is tough. This is another ideal where the hoped-for perfection is noticing every grace as it happens.
The realistic starting point is cultivating an awareness that identifies grace soon after its impact, hopefully beginning with nightly reflections back upon the day's blessings. Even if we cannot identify every grace and cannot find it until well after its help has come, we can let our prayer and reflection unpack the profundity of the grace in life. Rather than seeking systematic, timely awareness, we can simply hope to be formed strongly by the grace we do realize and give God thanks.
Going to mass, having quiet prayer, Adoring the Eucharist, enjoying the love of community, and talking with close friends are some of the ways that I maintain my outlook and experience blessings and grace. None of these things--and few things in my life--exclude God; at the very least, each thing allows the opportunity for God to impact it.
Peace is content and humble harmony between one's view of love at a certain moment and the truth that God is Love. Giving thanks for my blessings, maintaining a positive outlook, and keeping an eye to God's grace are parts of my life--things that flow naturally, not constructs that I've imposed on life--that make up my seldomly interrupted peace.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
The Grace of not Knowing
I think I've covered this in some shape or form through the blogs, but here is a newly recapitulation of one my central reflective discernment things...
Discernment is a lengthy process, lifelong perhaps--if not for a specific vocation, for the way to live out vocation daily. In a society and culture that craves definition, description, and exactitude (that's a real word!?), the process of discovering one's gifts and determining how those gifts can serve God's world, its people, and its needs can be bungled.
A desire for the finite answer can make one rush into taking action that is based on incomplete reflection; that's not to say that you should only act when 100% sure, but sometimes the pressure is too hard to hone in on a lifepath without sufficient opportunity for reflection on where the junction is between one's gifts and the needs of the world.
Sometimes the quest for certainty can lead one to reduce the equation of reflection, conversation, prayer, etc. that allows for a holistic discernment. The reduction might produce a quicker answer, but will it be a better one?
My big question is why is there a pressure to know? Why do we push so hard to get that "answer"? Every bit counts toward the bigger discernment picture. Though I won't say "everything happens for a reason" (right, J-Po?), I will say that God's omnipotence has ordained a grace-filled existence for us based on His benevolent love for us in our journey through living our life in freedom.
Each step on the journey is revelatory if we let it be. I find a peace in my open-endedness. Part of that comes from having assembled a puzzle of options to leap into for the time after my looming graduation and knowing that there are plenty of seas left to be explored as I finish college and consider the prospects of graduate schools beyond Notre Dame (though I'd love to M-A here), service programs beyond Teach Bhride (which I'd love to serve), and hybrid programs beyond ECHO (which I think would fit me well).
However, the greatest part of the peace that keeps me grounded even when I start to go a bit "runaway" is the reality that my vocation right now is to have an open-ended vocation--not knowing my vocation is integral to my formation and discernment. There is a significance to my not having a strong certainty in what phase of life I'll ultimately end up in or exactly what job I can get and work in. There's a significance to not having an exact idea of where I'll be this summer or next year or beyond.
I can continue experiencing the graces of my life through the lens of this open-endedness in a way that forms me crucially for whatever phase of life or vocation I discover. The experience of life as I live it is different in this state, and it is truly a blessing. The reality that I lack a definite answer is not an anxiety-causing, stress-inducing, negative pressure; rather, it is a grace.
Discernment is a lengthy process, lifelong perhaps--if not for a specific vocation, for the way to live out vocation daily. In a society and culture that craves definition, description, and exactitude (that's a real word!?), the process of discovering one's gifts and determining how those gifts can serve God's world, its people, and its needs can be bungled.
A desire for the finite answer can make one rush into taking action that is based on incomplete reflection; that's not to say that you should only act when 100% sure, but sometimes the pressure is too hard to hone in on a lifepath without sufficient opportunity for reflection on where the junction is between one's gifts and the needs of the world.
Sometimes the quest for certainty can lead one to reduce the equation of reflection, conversation, prayer, etc. that allows for a holistic discernment. The reduction might produce a quicker answer, but will it be a better one?
My big question is why is there a pressure to know? Why do we push so hard to get that "answer"? Every bit counts toward the bigger discernment picture. Though I won't say "everything happens for a reason" (right, J-Po?), I will say that God's omnipotence has ordained a grace-filled existence for us based on His benevolent love for us in our journey through living our life in freedom.
Each step on the journey is revelatory if we let it be. I find a peace in my open-endedness. Part of that comes from having assembled a puzzle of options to leap into for the time after my looming graduation and knowing that there are plenty of seas left to be explored as I finish college and consider the prospects of graduate schools beyond Notre Dame (though I'd love to M-A here), service programs beyond Teach Bhride (which I'd love to serve), and hybrid programs beyond ECHO (which I think would fit me well).
However, the greatest part of the peace that keeps me grounded even when I start to go a bit "runaway" is the reality that my vocation right now is to have an open-ended vocation--not knowing my vocation is integral to my formation and discernment. There is a significance to my not having a strong certainty in what phase of life I'll ultimately end up in or exactly what job I can get and work in. There's a significance to not having an exact idea of where I'll be this summer or next year or beyond.
I can continue experiencing the graces of my life through the lens of this open-endedness in a way that forms me crucially for whatever phase of life or vocation I discover. The experience of life as I live it is different in this state, and it is truly a blessing. The reality that I lack a definite answer is not an anxiety-causing, stress-inducing, negative pressure; rather, it is a grace.
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Inner Becomes the Eternal
In class a few weeks ago, Father Dunne made the bold assertion that the inner life--the life of the spirit, the life of knowing and loving--is a life that can and does live on through death. He suggested to us that the inner life becomes the afterlife. Take a second and wrap your head around that one.
My gut reaction was one of awe but also one of skeptical doubt. I had always mostly viewed heaven or eternal life and something separate from this world, connected to my current life really only by the soul that animates my being, the soul that God created to be eternal. Now there are "heavenly" things about this life, but I mostly considered those things to be analogs to what will be part of the eternal heaven. Moments of strong love or peace are just snapshot moments of the eternal love and peace that exist in eternal life, perfect union with God.
I also seemed to think that this was kind of a spiritual extrapolation and that there wasn't much grounding for it in Christian spirituality or thought that I knew. I was willing to give some benefit of the doubt because upon further reflection, I really liked the idea that an intentional inner life can continue on into heaven.
In the beautiful synergy that is a Notre Dame liberal arts education/formation centered on theology, I had one of many annual instances of overlap between my courses. In my Theology of Benedict XVI class, we read an excerpt of Truth and Tolerance that included this quote that leaped off the page, "Heaven begins on earth. Salvation in the world to come presumes a righteous life in this world... We have to ask what heaven is and how it comes upon earth." (205)
Turns out my perception of limited heaven on earth was kind of right but far too narrow. Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) exhorts us to be aware of the heaven that is on earth. Creation started as a perfect result of God's hand, but humanity brought sin into the world; The Fall dragged the world away from this. However, we can still find glimmers of the perfection of heaven in Creation. Pope Benedict encourages us to seek those righteous and truly heavenly elements of our lives and our world and cultivate them. Eternal life isn't found on earth, but it surely begins here.
The inner life is something that God's gift of free will upholds beautifully. We have the power of freedom to choose love. In this way, we can cultivate a profound interior sense of love that permeates daily life and transcends to heaven each day and hopefully to the end of earthly life. I know I have recently been tending to concentrate on the negatives and the voids, allowing potent moments of woe to interrupt the love-filled stream of my life. However, with the gift of grace, God has shown me the love already present--just in one day: in the camaraderie of tenors sharing nicknames, some bros watching football, dinner with a friend, and studying/not studying with some knuckleheads.
Happiness is a luminous emotion that enlivens the spirit and brings smiles to faces, but joy is something deeper and more profound. Feeling this joy is being in the presence, in the moment of the will or love of God; the experience of joy happens as a result of being intimately and genuinely in the context of love and vocation being lived out. My (our) call is to align my will with the will of God, just as Jesus did in His perfect freedom. In this way, we can find joy in this life that will continue on into the next, as the next.
My gut reaction was one of awe but also one of skeptical doubt. I had always mostly viewed heaven or eternal life and something separate from this world, connected to my current life really only by the soul that animates my being, the soul that God created to be eternal. Now there are "heavenly" things about this life, but I mostly considered those things to be analogs to what will be part of the eternal heaven. Moments of strong love or peace are just snapshot moments of the eternal love and peace that exist in eternal life, perfect union with God.
I also seemed to think that this was kind of a spiritual extrapolation and that there wasn't much grounding for it in Christian spirituality or thought that I knew. I was willing to give some benefit of the doubt because upon further reflection, I really liked the idea that an intentional inner life can continue on into heaven.
In the beautiful synergy that is a Notre Dame liberal arts education/formation centered on theology, I had one of many annual instances of overlap between my courses. In my Theology of Benedict XVI class, we read an excerpt of Truth and Tolerance that included this quote that leaped off the page, "Heaven begins on earth. Salvation in the world to come presumes a righteous life in this world... We have to ask what heaven is and how it comes upon earth." (205)
Turns out my perception of limited heaven on earth was kind of right but far too narrow. Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Ratzinger) exhorts us to be aware of the heaven that is on earth. Creation started as a perfect result of God's hand, but humanity brought sin into the world; The Fall dragged the world away from this. However, we can still find glimmers of the perfection of heaven in Creation. Pope Benedict encourages us to seek those righteous and truly heavenly elements of our lives and our world and cultivate them. Eternal life isn't found on earth, but it surely begins here.
The inner life is something that God's gift of free will upholds beautifully. We have the power of freedom to choose love. In this way, we can cultivate a profound interior sense of love that permeates daily life and transcends to heaven each day and hopefully to the end of earthly life. I know I have recently been tending to concentrate on the negatives and the voids, allowing potent moments of woe to interrupt the love-filled stream of my life. However, with the gift of grace, God has shown me the love already present--just in one day: in the camaraderie of tenors sharing nicknames, some bros watching football, dinner with a friend, and studying/not studying with some knuckleheads.
Happiness is a luminous emotion that enlivens the spirit and brings smiles to faces, but joy is something deeper and more profound. Feeling this joy is being in the presence, in the moment of the will or love of God; the experience of joy happens as a result of being intimately and genuinely in the context of love and vocation being lived out. My (our) call is to align my will with the will of God, just as Jesus did in His perfect freedom. In this way, we can find joy in this life that will continue on into the next, as the next.
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