Call to Worship: Lie in the Grass

From time to time, the delights of my job as campus minister give me the platform to speak to the school or groups of students. Here is the my Call to Worship to open our start of the year Mass, adapted from thoughts originally found in a previous blog on a homily I heard:

Good morning! Welcome to our Opening of the Year Mass, the first of many times when we will gather around this table to realize our unity in Christ. Right now we're on the brink of another school year. Looking ahead to nine months of classes, homework, tests, essays, and projects can seem daunting – and not just to you students, but also to the staff, administrators, and your teachers, too.

Let me tell you three simple facts.

1. Grass grows.
2. No one has ever seen grass grow.
3. If you laid down in a field for a long time, the growth would envelop you.
--Repeat--

Students, you might not want to go to class at all. You might not want to jump back into the deep end of schoolwork. You might already be getting tired of getting up early, working the whole day, and then going to after-school practices. You might feel like all these rules and prayers are cramping your style. You might feel like you don't have time to worry about God or what you believe in right now.

Teachers, you might already be dragging in lesson-planning or grading. You might be dreading that next test you have to write, then give, then grade, and then record to the gradebook. Staff and administration, you may already be drowning in a crowded inbox of emails or feeling overwhelmed by a filled-up voicemail box.

Let me tell you three simple facts.

1. Grass grows.
2. No one has ever seen grass grow.
3. If you laid down in a field for a long time, the growth would envelop you.

We may get tired, stressed, or frustrated as we dig into the new year. But we need to embrace patience. Patience that our routines will become comfortable and familiar. Patience that we can meet our deadlines and get our work done. Patience that we will learn each other's names, get to know each other, and make new friends. Patience that our GPA's can improve with hard work and focus. Patience that our God who made us and loves us is in fact with us always, already at work in our lives before we even wake up in the morning.

Our patience and dedication grows when we support each other. Bishop Noll is known as a family. The family that prays together, stays together. We come together to pray many times a day, and none is more important than our prayer around the Eucharist. Jesus comes to be with us and offers Himself to us. Let's come together to receive Him. And today when your Eucharistic Minister looks you in the eye and says, “The Body of Christ,” know that your Amen isn't just in response to a mysteriously bless-ed piece of bread. For we too are the Body of Christ, walking, breathing, living, and loving one another.

We can help each other's patience by our love and community. Let's start now, with this Mass, and commit to this family.

Grass grows. Great things have happened, are happening, and will continue to happen here. It's hard to see each bit of growth, but if you stick with it, the grass will envelop you.

A Submission on Submission

This post is my attempt to join in the discussion catalyzed by Rachel Held Evans' Let's Talk about Submission week. Visit http://rachelheldevans.com/ to join in the conversation and consider perspectives on mutual submission to another in response to the messages from the Epistles.

Here's my thoughts...

Submission conjures up some interesting images.

I think of writers busting their keyboards up with last minute copy as they scramble to sharpen a story ahead of a deadline.

I think of ultimate-fighters and wrestlers contorting their opponents' bodies into excruciating shapes until they tap out.

I think of Loki - in The Avengers - telling humanity that it only wants freedom from freedom, that absolute obedience to a higher source of authority is the true realization of freedom.

And the punster in me thinks of a submarine boat sent out on campaign in war - get it? sub mission?

The principle at play is some kind of yielding. Whether to a deadline or physical force, submission involves some level of deference, of letting go.

The idea of submission being mutual, then, is counter-intuitive. A writer couldn't submit their article mutually; a mixed martial-arts fighter couldn't get an opponent to tap out mutually; a villain couldn't demand mutual submission.

Mutual is not a natural modifier for the word submission, so how can the two be considered together? St. Paul's teachings come in the light of the Gospel of Christ, so submission gains a significant context.

Love.

In Christ, love is care for oneself and others that both gives and receives.

Sometimes, love can be exaggerated as love that must totally abandon all self-concern. However, we must love ourselves in order to truly share ourselves, following the example of Christ who allowed his hosts to treat him with hospitality, who allowed a woman to anoint his feet.

As usual, Christ manifests mysterious paradoxes to us and for us. We must let go of life in order to gain it. We must let go of ourselves in order to find ourselves. We must be served as well as serve.

In Christ, submission embodies the mutuality of true love. Christ, who is God, is love.

The greatest way to find love is to take the initiative in loving. When we give of ourselves selflessly and without condition, we open our hearts to mutuality. Others respond by filling us up with their love in kind. Such generosity and self-gift points the way to true relationship, to a two-way street of giving and receiving in which we can reflect our God, the Trinity who is Lover (Father), Beloved (Son), and the love shared between (Holy Spirit).

Mutual submission becomes possible when we meet one another on the common ground of unconditionality - care, attention, help, support, and compassion that is oriented toward emptying of self and filling up of another. In this way, the bonds we know through the mystical Body of Christ, like conduits running between each person and all their brothers and sisters, run feverishly with love.

Love enables us to give of ourselves while being filled up in kind. Sometimes, we can give more than others; other times, we may run close to empty and be in need of a big fill-up.

The Lord provides through our relationships, for His Holy Spirit - the love shared between us - dwells with us always.

Put it Down and Look Around

In the past few days, the links that appear in my feeds and inboxes all lead me to commentary on the saturation of technology and internet in daily life.

The Samsung Galaxy has been carpet-bombing us with propaganda to get us off our propaganda-driven Apple loyalties.

Rachel Held Evans tries to explain how we are in danger of becoming little more than the sum of our social media posts.

Then, my brother turns me on to an America article that argues pretty well that Apple is dangerously similar to religion, and even more damning than that, a dead-on commentary about the crooked angle Apple's newest commercials have taken.

That last article suggests that we're gonna look back on these Apple ads in particular as an example of how distracted we've gotten from what's important: "Apple’s consecrating the behavior [of staring on a screen], and even going on to say that their products, not the lives they serve, are 'what matters.'"

Let me back up a step or two. I am an Apple user, since buying my MacBook and iPod before starting college. And when my phone came up for upgrade earlier this year, dissatisfied with the messaging phone options from AT&T, I took the iPhone plunge, too, selling my iTouch so as not to limits the device depths into which I would wade.

The key to smart phones and mobile devices is moderation. Just like with sexual urges, drugs and alcohol, eating, and so many other things, the object, the action, at stake isn't bad, but our excessive (or sometimes overly minimal) use of it can lead us down a bad road.

Maps apps help us navigate and learn our way. Uber gets us a cab on the double. Yelp helps us find a good bite to eat. Laudate even gives Catholics all the goods on readings, prayers, and much more. The instant gratification is seriously dangerous, but moderate use gives us accessibility and the chance to do things we couldn't do before, or at least with greater ease and frequency.

The point of that last article I linked is that our usage of these devices - for example in these Apple commercials, for listening to music or taking photos and videos - can distract us from the presence of the moment. The mobile devices put great power into our hands, and it's not wrong for us to want to use it. It is troubling when our desire becomes fixation or addiction or compulsion. We're not so much choosing to do things on the device as we are simply just doing it.

The new Windows Phone commercials advertise its "reinvented zoom", a great new feature for those of us who have increasingly left our digital cameras in the drawer and opted to use our smart phone cameras more. But again, the challenge is to pick the times and places to bust it out rather than going on autopilot.

Anyone who's been to a concert or sporting event can attest to the proliferation of phones. I feel like people weren't this compulsory about photos and video before smart phones. We see spectacular photos and videos in the news, online, or in magazines, and we think there's no reason we can't join in. Even if we aren't as accomplished or artistically refined, we can become photographers and cameramen, but to what end?

Sometimes, we have a compulsion to take a photo or shoot a video, or sometimes we feel that we need a photo or video. Rather than experience that quintessential song live and absorb every ounce of the one-time moment, we watch through a screen of inches, trying to steady our hands and focus on our framing. Sure, we have a copy of the real deal to keep forever, but how does this impact the quality and longevity of that memory?

I worry about compulsion more than anything. At Mumford & Sons in the summer, I limited myself to two 30-second videos. On my email-linked apps, I turned off the little red numbers so that my compulsive phone-checking couldn't be entrenched by the satisfaction of having new e-mail. In notification center, I turned off alerts for everything except calls, texts, and calendar. I'm still wrestling with the phone-checking habit, a habit that's been around way before smart-phones, and even unlimited texts.

My hope is that my smart-phone habits can gravitate toward necessity and leisure and away from compulsion. I hope I just pull out my phone to check my maps app when I want to compare travel times and see when the next brown line train rolls in. I hope I check my email when I'm awaiting a particular reply from someone. I hope I check for calls and texts when I'm expecting a call or hoping to hear from someone.

The power we hold in our hands gives us great responsibility. It's up to us what to do with it. St. Paul says when he became a man he gave up childish things. We don't need to lose our childlike awe and wonder - take a picture of a pretty sky or sunset, shoot a fun selfie or two on location - but we do need to discover some degree of maturity in not only owning our freedom but choosing good, choosing presence to what's going on around us as the default rather than falling into tunnel-visioned stupor.

Use your connectivity to bolster relationships, organize yourself, maximize your time, and communicate better. Utilize the technology to make the good stuff happen then let's put our phones down and be with the world and be with others.

I Shall Oblige

What is a holy day of obligation? USCCB can give you an answer, and let me pitch in, too.

Holy days of obligations are special feasts that do not fall on Sundays that we are called to celebrate together. Sometimes it can be frustrating to have to get back to Mass a second time during the week, especially when it can be hard to get there on Sundays in the first place. Some of these special feasts have been translated to Sundays - Ascension and Epiphany sometimes - but this is less than ideal.

We go to these "extra" Masses to celebrate and reflect upon mysteries of our faith directly. Holy days of obligation allow the cycle of Sunday readings to continue uninterrupted and let us make a steady journey through the Scripture laid out for us by the carefully planned lectionary. It also gives specific space to these mysteries - All Saints, Immaculate Conception, etc. - to be considered and prayed over on their own.

Some of these causes for celebration do not come specifically from particular Scriptural narratives but from the understanding of faith that our Tradition affords us, so due reflection on them calls for a greater space than simply readings. Priests' homilies, the prayers of the Mass, and the petitions and personal prayers that follow help us focus on these great mysteries and reflect on the way they can especially illuminate our faith.

Another neat layer here is that the dating of many feasts in the Church come from Tradition that is based on careful considerations and deliberations, and, frankly, fascinating. The dating of Christmas and Easter in the early Church was a long, winding road (forgive the Wikipedia link); the 40 days of Easter before Ascension and 50 days before Pentecost draw milestones from Resurrection narratives, though Pentecost is also based in part on a pre-existing Jewish tradition; the dating of John the Baptist's and Jesus' feasts derive in part from reckoning the perfection of Jesus' life as a "perfect" 9-month pregnancy and John's gestation as one day askew - his birth is celebrated as being June 24, not June 25, though his mother is described as being in her sixth month when Mary visits with Jesus in her womb (one author's more thorough history here).

All are called to celebrate the Eucharist each Sunday, to do this in memory of Christ, as he asked - "this" meaning not just to receive Eucharist, but come together as a community, to be taken, blessed, broken, and shared, to become what we receive, to be sent forth to glorify God by our lives. However, not everyone is called to do this on a daily basis, to be a daily-Mass-goer.

The way to pray and worship for most rests, as usual, in the middle ground. You don't need to go every day, but you can't just go when you feel like it. Sundays are our memorialization of Christ's resurrection, in which we as baptized Christians celebrate the life, death, and rising of Jesus, in whose life, death, and rising we share. So we should all be doing that together and reveling communally in the awesomeness of all that.

While Sunday Eucharist fuels the heartbeat of our sacramental lives of faith, holy days add special depth. Sundays are like visits to your general physician who will give you the comprehensive check-up and can capably tend to any of your maladies; holy days are like specialists who can tend to specific ailings and parts of you.

Holy days call us to reflection upon more specific people and events - Mary, Mother of God, the Ascension of Christ, the communion of saints, the Immaculate Conception... Holy days give us the occasion, and with the help of the Mass, its prayers and readings, its priest and homily, and the community we share, the means by which we can reflect on the mysteries of faith.

Hold the Relish

In periodic news perusings, I found the headline on CNN's website - which is increasingly appearing in giant-fonted all caps - "VICTIM TO CASTRO: 'YOUR HELL IS JUST BEGINNING'".

I'm not even going to begin to imagine the "hell" that this man put these captive women through. He was ruled guilty of seriously heinous crimes (and immoral activities) and sentenced to a whopping term in jail. And rightfully so.

But our attitude toward these people is seriously skewed. These women have every right to vent their anger, frustration, and serious emotional damage in the wake of being liberated. But then what? What happens after our righteous indignation fizzles? These women must live their lives, and this dude will rot in prison.

All of them continue being people. All of them continue to be worthy of being dignified as humans and children of God through mercy and compassion, whether as free women attempting to recover as much as possible or as an indefinitely incarcerated criminal. What attitude do we have toward criminals, especially after our initial outrage fades?

It brings me back to 2011 when news broke that the US had gotten Osama bin Laden. President Obama strode out to a podium to proudly proclaim to the world that the infamous terrorist had been captured and killed, marking a serious milestone in America's war against terror.

How did so many people react? By swarming to huge crowds and cheering the death of another person. It's too nuanced to expect from a mob scene, but I would hope we could celebrate the righteous actions of America (though the morality is arguable) and the advance of freedom at the expense of terrorism. The Church rightfully came out to proclaim that Christians do not rejoice at the death of another - well said by our bishops.

It's an interesting double standard in our increasingly relativist world. People don't want to be held to an absolute, universal moral standard, or to hold others to it, yet there are certain things they can and will get riled up about to the point of mobbing and rioting to proclaim it.

We shouldn't delight in the harm done to another person. We might find peace in justice being done, but we have to withhold our desires to enjoy the trials of others too much. Schadenfreude is a dangerous thing. It is highly tempting to delight in the problems of others. I know I love to see USC and Michigan football struggle, to see players I don't like miss shots or strike out, but I have to try to fence off my delight so it supports the triumph of my team and doesn't relish the fall of others.

I'll always root by butt off for the Cubs, Bears, Bulls, Hawks, and Irish, but I'll be darned if I'll root actively against the White Sox and Cardinals, Packers and Vikings, Pacers and Heat, Red Wings and Blues, or USC and Michigan. It's not worth my energy to begin with. But additionally, true fandom (and love for that matter!) is cheering for your side and not against the other. Victory comes in the success of one side moreso than the failure of another (most of the time).

Such a distinction may be nitpicky; it may even be practically impossible. However, we follow the model of the one dude who did achieve perfection. And in Christ, we have the example of perfect freedom, perfect love, and perfect justice. Perfection may be beyond our grasp, but let's keep seeking it. And let's not delight in the shortcomings of others along the way!

Catholic Absolutism as the Middle Ground

I love to identify extremes and discover morally, virtuously rich middle grounds. This can be a hard exercise today when so many voices, personalities, bloggers, and op-ed'ers are yelling so loud that you start to block it out or else mistake moderation for extremism because of the exhaustion.

In attempting to teach ethics and morality to teenagers, and in conversing regularly with friends and family in the same realm, I find the trends of relativism that Benedict XVI sought so fiercely to articulate and discredit are strong and real.

Here's an attempt to describe the apparent extremes I've seen, even if they're not the technical, philosophical endpoints. On the one hand, there are rigid absolutists, seeking to describe universal moral principles and militaristically hold all people to certain behavioral expectations. Conversely, there are relativists who believe that every one can make their own morality to govern behavior, which ought to be subject to little or no accountability from any one or any thing.

What's the middle ground? I would posit that true Catholic morality - absolutism coupled with Christian compassion - sets the standard.

Using a bit of extremism myself, I walked students through the example of honor killings in SE Asia. If a woman commits adultery with a man and thus brings dishonor to her family and the only way the family believes honor can be restored is by killing her, shouldn't they be allowed to do it? Obviously not. The students rightly identified that regardless of their culture, they can't murder someone, except maybe for a capital crime. They can have some unique cultural practices, but they can't murder.

I tried to show them that relativism doesn't hold because even relativists usually admit some basic universal moral standards; in this case, murder is always wrong. I think they tend to want moral requirements to be minimal and for us to be patient, slow to act upon holding others to the standard, or even stand aside altogether. They also don't want to be judged when in reality, the best teachers, parents, and even friends are the ones who hold you, me, and them accountable.

Ultimately, they know deep within that there are behavioral rules that everyone should follow; that certain things are just plain wrong; for example, most people would acknowledge the truth of the 10 Commandments.

Where's the disconnect then? They don't like how expansive the rules apparently are, and they don't like the idea of having to tell someone they're wrong or to be told by another that they themselves are wrong. Amid ESPN's coverage of Ryan Braun, Rick Sutcliffe said Braun lied to his face in an interview, adding, "If he was guilty, he could just say so, and I'd look the other way."

As our yearlong course unfolded, I aimed to show them that, yes, the Church can and often will respond to just about any ethical, moral, social issue, but that the Church doesn't necessarily have explicit, flowerly-languaged teachings printed on gilded parchment for each of the issues. We are simply responding to the example of Christ as we understand it through our Scripture and Tradition. Our faith provides us a thorough, consistent, and coherent message that can and does respond readily to our moral dilemmas.

And most importantly, the example of Christ - loaded as it is with serious moral demands and a strong call to choose good - is one of compassion. The best morality is one that is both absolute and compassionate. We must follow Augustine's call to love the sinner and hate their sin. This requires us to identify selfish, hurtful, loveless actions when others do them, yet to do so in a way that is caring and oriented toward love, toward, Heaven, toward the Kingdom.

The temptation many of us face in an attempt to be loving is to let sin and evil occur unchecked. That is easier but wrong. We have to engage a person for their goodness and dignity as a created child of God and call out how they've ignored or damaged this quality about them. At the same time, we must scrutinize ourselves in the same way, including allowing others to point us toward God and good.

The way forward may be to acknowledge the pairing of right and righter within our behavior, to recognize the vestiges of goodness within our intentions and actions that is coopted by evil and darkness.

Maybe my temptations toward pornography vaguely represent my recognition of the beauty of people and my sexual desire to marry and procreate, but it is being perverted by self-serving tendencies and my propensity to objectify people.

Maybe our temptations toward heavy drinking and drugs indicate our desire to enjoy our lives and world and creation and build community with others, but those pursuits are clouded and diluted by self-mutilation and failure to treat our bodies as the temples-of-the-spirit that they are.

Maybe our temptations toward lying express our desire to reach our full potential and be the best versions of ourselves but get wrongly detoured into deception, fueled by hidden insecurities, or encouraged by laziness.

The best morality corrects relativism's contradictions with recognition of universal morality and tempers the rigidity of absolutism with loving compassion. We cannot lapse into an anarchic live-and-let-live attitude or become robotically itinerant and detach from humanity by obsessing over a certain code.

We must enflesh the call to goodness and God by holding ourselves and one another to a standard of choosing right through the love modeled by Christ.

Summer Buffet (Love, SBNR, DOMA, and the Kingdom)

Chalk it up to summer vacation, but I have plenty of time to write and not enough to write about. Or maybe I have plenty to write about and too little focus to synthesize it. Let me try to offer a few nuggets from the summer sandbox of life...
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As indicated in my last post, I love to see authentic examples of people helping each other, giving love in seemingly ordinary ways and affirming the full dignity of people. Though I don't go for the cheesy background music and corny staging, I think Liberty Mutual got it right - these little actions give us small reminders that people are good at heart, that we do have generosity and good will within us. And seeing it in action can reenergize us to choose good and God over evil.

As my flight from Ontario, CA, began its descent into Seattle, WA, it was confirmed that our delayed takeoff had made our arrival late as well. This posed a problem for people on connecting flights, as we were to land around 8:30pm and they were connecting to the last flights for the day. Our flight attendants announced the connecting flights' info, told us the flight to Portland would be held for those 13 passengers, and that a bus would be waiting to zip them over to their gate.

She asked those passengers to hit their call buttons so we could see where they were sitting and boldly asked that we all allow these folks to disembark first. Whoa, I thought. Yeah, right. Maybe she's new. Maybe she hasn't seen people getting off a plane before - everyone for themselves, all-out rush to the plane door. But she made the request and hoped people would acquiesce.

Sure enough, as the "fasten seat belts" light was turned off, most everyone remained seated, and a dozen or so hastily began to move out. I was in delighted disbelief as some anxious Portland-bound travelers hustled out, around rows of still-seated passengers. It was awesome to see the apparent foolhardiness of our flight attendant get redeemed by a crowd of understanding (even if reluctantly) travelers.

Go humanity.
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This Sunday at Mass in Seattle, the priest included in his homily that around half of Washington residents claimed no religion in their census reporting. I reflected on this phenomenon - "the rise of the nones" and the proliferation of being "spiritual but not religious" - at the beginning of my first year in campus ministry in a brief apologetic for religion and Catholicism and what might be missed by those who avoid it.

And now as I correspond with the chaplain who will be my partner in crime as I begin year two at a new school, I wonder how this new spiritual terrain in America can be an advantage for us as we attempt to create a school environment that is fertile for Christian-Catholic faith.

My gut reaction is to view it as a negative, evidence of an entrenching secularism, of people practicing religion poorly and alienating others by their ways. Surely, there are downfalls to the growth of these trends. However, I imagine there must be a way to engage this growing social norm in a way that is compassionate, constructive, and responsive to the Gospel and the Church.

How can the individualism, curiosity, and seeking of SBNR's lead them back to faith? What about organized religion and the Catholic Church can be emphasized to appeal to nones? What experience of faith and spirituality will speak most effectively to SBNR's and nones?

As my brain recombobulates, I hope I can put some of the pieces of that puzzle together.
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The hysteria over the DOMA ruling was quite the firestorm. I almost couldn't go on Facebook for the day in the midst of all the extremism flying both ways, the loudness of voices and capitalization of letters overshadowing the tempered middle.

I find myself in the middle. I believe marriage is the sacrament that unites a man and woman for the procreation and union of a family. I also believe that two homosexuals can have romantic love for each other and can and should commit to one another for the whole of their lives, but I don't think that is a marriage.

I am all for same-sex unions getting legal recognition by governing bodies, access to joint tax filings, reformed inheritance/estate laws, revised hospital visitation rules, and other practical things that allow their union to achieve legal/social equality. However, their commitment, while just as potentially strong as heterosexual marriage (which I think is a redundant phrase), is not a marriage - it cannot procreate or produce intimate union the way that marriage does.

My greatest concern as religion comes under greater and greater siege - abortion laws proliferating or holding steady, new anti-abortion laws coming under fanatical attack in Texas, the ACA and HHS mandating birth-control access for free and Obama's breaking his promise to Notre Dame from commencement - is that the approval of same-sex unions will require churches to host these ceremonies. I don't think this trend is far from insisting that churches allow gay couples to use churches as the venue for their ceremony.

I think there may be a way for my Church to outline the liturgical blessing of a covenant, something more akin to a Holy Orders-esque commitment to a person/partner, but not before we spend serious thought and attention discerning how something like that can be explained and understood. And that needs to be preceded by a serious recommitment to practicing what we preach - compassionate embrace of our homosexual brothers and sisters and a call for chastity from all unmarried people. For now, the state of things scares me because the discourse and discussion is being overcome by a borderline-bandwagon stream of populism that wants change quick and dirty.
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2+ years removed from writing my senior theology thesis, heading into the "junior year of life", I continue to feel grateful for the time I was able to spend researching and synthesizing understandings of the Kingdom of God.

I continue to be most grateful that my primary goal - articulating a practical, spiritually useful, relevant-to-daily-life explanation of the Kingdom - was realized, largely through the wisdom of Pope Benedict XVI. Quick recap:

The Kingdom of God is best understood through some balance of a trinity of senses, which Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, describes well. First, the Kingdom has a “Christological” dimension. Reaching back to Origen, Ratzinger explains that Jesus is the “autobasileia, that is, the Kingdom is person.” This dimension makes the Kingdom into a kind of Christology itself. Next, the Kingdom has an “idealistic or mystical” dimension, which sees “man’s interiority as the essential location of the Kingdom of God.” Finally, the “ecclesiastical” dimension shows the Kingdom of God and the Church as related in some ways and brings them into “more or less close proximity.” -Based on (with quotes from) Jesus of Nazareth (Part I), p. 49-50

The idea is that we should understand the Kingdom as being within us, within our Church, and within Christ.

We can experience the Kingdom when we do the will of God, follow the Gospel call from Christ; as in the Lord's Prayer's sentiment "thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven", we experience Heaven when our will aligns with God's will.

We can experience the Kingdom when we celebrate in prayer and worship with our Christian community, which memorializes what Christ has done for us, thanks Him for what He does, and looks forward to what He will do. When our communal work (liturgy!) happens this way, we glimpse the Kingdom.

We can experience the Kingdom through the person of Christ. Our experiences of Him in our giving and receiving love, in the Word, and in the Sacrament manifest the Kingdom.

All of these moments of clarity are both previews or foreshadows as well as brief temporal experiences of the Kingdom of Heaven. This guiding hand of Benedict toward a real understanding of where the Kingdom is seen and felt led me to a deeper understanding of what Jesus talked so much about.

Keep seeking the Kingdom in yourself, in service with the Church, and in Christ!