A Song of Late October

A Song of Late October.

Upon the sun’s descending leave,
A hoot rings in October eve.
And out, against a lively breeze,
I venture through the fired trees.

Howls building from the south,
Issued from a hungry mouth,
Kindle daring mixed with fear:
The season of mystery is here.

Day by day, the rising tide
of color, cold, and fancy hide
anticipation for the night
of costume, candy, pumpkin light.

*    *    *

Howls fading from the north,
Old Man Winter plodding forth,
Trading chills for milder winds—
The season of thanks begins!

Loneliness: The Millennial's Plague

Loneliness is the virus that is killing our generation.

The online connections we can make, while they help us stay in touch, have also hyper-exposed us to one another.

We can have a 2-minute conversation with a stranger and gain access to a library of their likes and dislikes merely by friending them on Facebook.

After setting up a date, we can go ahead and find out everything we would've learned on that date. Rather than hearing it from the person, studying their face and looking into their eyes--connecting like real human beings, in other words--we can find out everything we think we need to know online. And then we wonder why we're so awkward with each other.

This is not another anti-Facebook rant. FB is not the enemy, but merely a piece of technology, a tool. It can be used for good or bad.

The enemy is much deeper and more sophisticated. The enemy wants us to feel disconnected, inadequate, lonely.

The enemy wants to make us forget that we are loved.

I have felt the signature emotion of our generation. It is a deep longing, buried so as to be almost invisible to us, in the back of our hearts. Its calls echo up to our minds and manifest themselves through our desperate measures in search of connection.

The longing burns like an inferno within us, and we long for connection, communion. But we aren't looking for it in the right places.

Consider the picture above. Yes, it's funny, but think about what it implies: that guy is miserable unless he can turn someone on. If we think that way, then we truly will be "forever alone," whether we find someone or not. The egotistical joys of pleasure are fleeting, and leave us feeling worse in the long run.

We think that romance will quench the fire. We look for a date. Sometimes we get absolutely desperate. We try. Sometimes we fail.

And we might find someone, even the right person, but we soon wake up and realize that, despite the ring on our finger, we are still the same. Life goes on. Turns out Marriage, wonderful as it is, doesn't complete our happiness like we thought it would. And that fire still burns.

We turn to friendships, sometimes. They help. They give us a true connection like Marriage, and they are an essential part of life, but they still do not complete us.

And so that feeling remains. You know it well. It's the one that somehow, time and again, gets you to scroll down that Newsfeed, looking...for what? The moment you stop, you realize that the Newsfeed is an infinite void that promises something, but never really delivers.

There is a deep emptiness within every individual. We are tricked into thinking it's our job to fill this emptiness, but we are running against a brick wall if we try. This space can only be filled. We cannot fulfill ourselves.

I believe in a personal God. God is personal because He is a person, He knows you as a person, and is open to relating to you that way. And there is nothing and no one in the universe powerful enough and big enough to fill that emptiness that burns inside you except for Him.

He made the space infinitely large so that He could fill it, complete our personalities with supernatural Love. Nothing else is going to cure our loneliness.

So how do we start to cultivate this relationship, if the loneliness we face has been weighing us down lately?

The answer is the opposite of what you would expect: go off alone for a while. Take a walk every day for a week or month, visiting public places and secluded natural hideaways. Eat a meal alone without reading or playing with a smartphone. And then, when your distractions and self-consciousness have melted away, you will start reaching for Him. You see, God is always there, but sometimes we shut Him out and the only way to get ourselves seeing Him again is to go back to the basics.

"You will seek me and you will find me," says The LORD, "when you seek me with all of your heart."

~ Jeremiah 29:13

Hail, Holy Queen

Hail, Holy Queen

Hail, Holy Queen, of mercy’s longed-for sweetness mother,
Hail to the living hope that soothes us like no other.

To thee we bring our anguish, as our fallen temple sighs,
To thee we open careworn hearts and focus bloodshot eyes.

Turn then, Blessed Mother, through your graceful intercession,
The eyes of mercy toward us as we offer this confession

To the One Who knew our fall and rise before the world was new,
The living God of Abraham Who came to life in you.

O clemens, O pia,
O dulcis Virgo Maria.

Amen

On the Feast of Saint John

On the Feast of Saint John

If ever kindly voice or act
Hath helped a stinging pain subtract,
And love to flower in its place,
Then know, I pray, its Source was grace.

The gnarled, hardened roots of pride
Have halted men of hopeful stride
Who dared to labor and to love,
But gazed inside and not above.

Oh! What suffering may cease
The day I say "I must decrease."
Oh! What springs erupt of peace
The day I say, "He must increase."

Why are you a Christian?

Today we echo Michael Scott's question to Toby on The Office, "Why are you the way that you are?"

If someone were to ask you why you are a Christian, what would you say?

If you are a Christian, you might be rather paradoxically dumbstruck in your attempt to answer. Do not feel bad; like me, you just haven't approached the question in a while. But now that you have been reminded of it, you have a duty to furnish an adequate and genuine response: "Always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you," as 1 Peter 3:15 says.

What follows is my reason.

God is present; His presence is as real to me as my own personality. My personality cannot be seen directly, touched or physically sensed in any way. But its effects are obvious to all who spend any measure of time with me.

God is the same way; the Father is not physically present (with the exception of Sacraments, which are a more complicated issue and require a deeper discussion). However, to say that God cannot exist because He cannot be physically accounted for is absurd. Surely we do not hold all things to such a careful standard as some seem to hold God.

The average atheist will discard God as a fairy tale because He is not an empirically verifiable reality. But the same atheist will then appeal to the ideal of Human Rights (quite rightly) in order to decry genocide in Africa. Where are human rights? What energy or matter comprises them? Can we find them if we search really, really hard?

Of course not. Neither can we find God. Like a pen pal on the other side of the world, God is there, communicating with us, even though we don't see His face. The cool part is that once we commit to a relationship with Him, God's presence invades our life more clearly than before, infusing our moments of sorrow with power and strength, and our moments of joy with perspective. That is precisely what happened to me when, in high school, I traded in my outmoded model of passive faith for a dynamic, searching love of Jesus Christ.

I am a Christian because I can feel God's presence, and believing in Jesus has only made God clearer to me. I am honored to say that Jesus is the Lord and Savior of the human race. I thank Him for the life he gives me, and the opportunity to praise him.

Jesus loves you! Reach out to him, and you will realize that, all your life, he has been reaching out to you.

Sincerely,
Joezilla

From Idolatry to Adoration

Today the Lord led me to an important moment of conversion which restored a peace of mind, heart, and body that I haven't known in a very long time. The funny thing is that I had been seeking such peace quite assiduously. Searching in all the wrong places, though, I had come up empty-handed--not to mention rather high-strung and stressed. Now I do not lead a very trying existence. So when I find myself in such a state of mind, it means something must be done. But the wrong antidote will not cure a poison, no matter how much you take. Thankfully, the Divine Pharmacist provided me with the perfect tonic.

I am a Minister of Care at a local hospital, which means I visit the patients and give them Holy Communion. Lately I have fallen short in meeting my monthly and quite minimal time commitment. But, as sometimes happens in the spiritual life of any religious person, duty led to devotion.

Praying the night before for inspiration and grace sufficient to the task, I was struck as never before by the serious privilege it is to carry Christ's body and blood to those who desire him. The thought struck me--as I walk the halls of the hospital, I'm carrying God in my pocket!

*          *          *

There is a legitimate strain in contemporary Christian thought that emphasizes God's transcendence, which puts a particular stress on our complete inability to grasp the nature of God. It is, as I say, legitimate because we are all too quick to remake God as we desire. To box God in like this is to cripple our spiritual lives. Ritual becomes stale and loses its sense of communal significance, "ever ancient and ever new;" prayer becomes manipulation of a god we have crafted ourselves. The illusion of controlling God grows old rather quickly, and we find ourselves praying less and less.

Recognizing the fact that God is transcendent frees us from the fool's notion that we can control God, and injects the mystery that is a necessary part of true love. Couple that with the recognition that God is Good, and--spiritually speaking--we start cooking with gas. An uncontrollable but supremely good Father is a great person to lean on, to talk to all day, and most importantly to trust. When we hand over the keys to God, things get interesting...and better.

What does all this have to do with carrying God in your pocket? Simply this: amidst all the good advice about not boxing God in, it is tempting to scoff at the notion of the Eucharist. "God in your pocket? Hah! Who do you think you are? You think that a puny human ritual can cram God, in all His transcendence, down into a coin-sized wafer?" (Apparently the part of The Skeptic is played tonight by the Incredible Hulk.)

But our Christian skeptic is making a serious theological error. "Is God truly transcendent?" we might ask him. "If so, then what better way to transcend our notions of divinity than by shrinking down to a wafer and offering Himself to us as food?"

I accept the notion of the Eucharist because my Church teaches its validity. But I consider it reasonable because of its strangeness. Who would dream up such an idea, and why? The Apostles and early Christians literally risked life and limb to pass this tradition down to us. And I totally buy it.

So, carrying God in my pocket today, as I have done so many times in the past, I felt more than ever the "peace that surpasses all understanding." It took hold of me like never before. I constantly must remind myself in this ministry that it's not about me, and that what I "get" out of the experience neither measures nor affects the grace of the Sacrament for those receiving it. But today, God reached me from the other side of the Eucharist.

All those months--years, perhaps?--I had turned to various idols looking for self-made deliverance from self-made problems: health, relationships, money, experiences. But Ecclesiastes is right--all is truly vanity, at least without God. Pope Francis puts it well in his new encyclical:

Once man has lost the fundamental orientation which unifies his existence, he breaks down into the multiplicity of his desires; in refusing to await the time of promise, his life-story disintegrates into a myriad of unconnected instants. Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth.

Best wishes to you, Dear Reader, as we strive together to recover and retain the epicenter of our existence, Christ Jesus. See you at Communion.

Sincerely,
Joezilla

The 100-Year-Old Tweet

In the 1920s, saxophonist Frankie Trumbauer was the cat’s meow.  Along with other early jazz musicians like the awesomely-named Bix Beiderbecke, Trumbauer enjoyed a brief stint of popularity that earned him a permanent place in jazz history.  His most notable tune, “Singin’ the Blues,” has recently captivated my attention in an inexplicable way.  I strongly suggest you listen to the song (by clicking here) while reading this post.  Not only will it set the tone and give more meaning to my meandering musings, but it will also get your toe tapping.

While Trumbauer’s music may sound lovably quaint and vaguely predictable to our modern ears—which have soaked in a musical atmosphere that is both more developed and less refined than that of the 1920s—it was rather edgy in its time.

As a fan of early jazz, I often wonder about the musicians that wrote and performed this bouncy and light-hearted music, and the young people who absorbed it as the “cool” music of their day.  Working with such old audio, it is difficult to imagine that this was all real.  The grainy recordings, with their muted articulations, poor balance, and general “over-the-phone” impression, seem to me the faint and fading transmissions of a distant and alien people—no less vivid and human than I am—but sadly unable to convey that humanity fully on account of impotent technology.

However, there is a bright side to this heretofore melancholy discussion, and that is simply this: We’re talking about music, and music can be resurrected like the Phoenix by any interested musician.  And that is perhaps the greatest way to forge a connection with these long lost musicians and listeners that I’ve been referring to.  Play the music again, here, now.

Today I was transcribing (i.e. listening to and figuring out the notes to a song) Trumbauer’s “Singin’ the Blues” on alto saxophone.  After blowing through Trumbauer’s first chorus, I was grinning with delight to be playing such outrageously outdated music in the 21st century.  But in truth, music is never outdated—as long as someone is still playing it.  As long as it resonates in someone’s heart and echoes back in their humming, strumming, blowing, or plunking, the sound gap has been bridged, the era barrier toppled.  A connection has been made across time, and the experience and energy of our ancestors is retweeted for a new generation.

The word “tradition” comes from the Latin verb trado which, devoid of any connotations, literally means “to hand over.”  Tradition is precisely that, the handing over of some treasured knowledge, wisdom, or practice to those who come after.  Obviously, not everything can be handed down from one generation to the next.  Rod Stewart (whom, trust me, you do not want to Google image-search) wisely reminds us in “Forever Young,”

And when you finally fly away, I’ll be hoping that I served you well
For all the wisdom of a lifetime, no one can ever tell.

Nonetheless, it is the duty of every person to hand down to their successors all that they needed to survive and thrive, and hopefully whatever they learned along the way—for by way of persistent regret or contented nostalgia, the most important lessons of life have a way of sticking with us to the end.

Christians know all about tradition.  Catholics even like to capitalize the word, and they are wise to do so.  Tradition (thus capitalized) refers not merely to teachings that are written in books or spoken by sages; Tradition is the entire life of the Church, the acts of liturgy, the works of service, and the mysterious but unmistakable presence and personality of Christ that remains in the heart of every genuine Christian.

Think about this: how is it that most anyone who believes in Christ can, with little difficulty, answer the question “What would Jesus do” in a given situation?  The answer is that we have been taught who Jesus was, how he acted, what his presence was like, by our elders.  And where did our elders receive this precious information?  From their elders.  If we continue the inquiry, the chain continues backward through history until we bump into the Apostles, hastily preaching the Good News to anyone who would listen, and finally we reach Christ himself—the source and ever-present life of our Church.

Open up the Bible to the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12), and go live one of those out today.  Put that written word into practice.  Retweet the love of Christ through your own actions.  Those who come after you will appreciate it.

Man of Steel: For Little Boys and Theologians Only

If Michael Phillips’ review in the Chicago Tribune is any indication, it seems that critics (and perhaps moviegoers) have finally had it with absurdly over-the-top, literally earth-shattering special effects sequences in big-budget action films.  It is entirely okay, and indeed often preferable, to have a movie climax that does not involve the potential annihilation of the planet.  Perhaps moviegoers are finally realizing the boredom of sheer excess—when every movie plot threatens a major U.S. city with total destruction, it’s just about the same as if none of them did.  This is a conclusion the public has needed for quite a while (and it’s a horn I’ve been tooting for some time—see my review of last summer’s The Bourne Legacy).  In the wake of such special effects love feasts as the Transformers series—and amidst legitimately awesome blockbusters like The Avengers—America is in need of thoughtful, clever, yet simple films.  Fewer special effects, more snappy dialogue, and a focus on plot.

Yes, we have overdosed on special effects, and Man of Steel may have finally alerted folks to this grave fact.  I am relieved to see that there may be light at the end of this decade’s heretofore entirely computer-generated tunnel of explosions.  How ironic, then, that I found myself loving Man of Steel, and cannot bring myself to agree with the lukewarm or unfavorable reviews that some critics and viewers have afforded it.

There are two reasons for this.

First, the battles.  The battles in Man of Steel are completely over-the-top, exhibiting each and every symptom of dumb action movie excess, including but not limited to: extreme close-ups of hand-to-hand combat that obscure the events of the brawl and render it less exciting; unconvincing computer-generated body doubles engaging in unbelievable stunts that likewise diminish the excitement of the movie; an absurd scale that requires not just the combatants, but entire skyscrapers and city blocks to be brought down over the course of the fight; disconcerting collateral damage that calls to mind the presumably grisly fate of countless bystanders, who are totally glossed over in the movie’s narrative; and volume jacked up so high that one exits the theater both dizzy and wondering how to treat a perforated ear drum.

And yet, for all that, the battles are awesome.  They are everything I would hope for in a Superman battle.  Superman punches with marvelous strength; his enemy returns a blow of equal magnitude.  Superman grabs his foe, flies a mile into the air, and slams him back to earth—and leaving his mark in the form of a crater.  Watching the battles in Man of Steel, I was taken back to my childhood, which was filled with epic battles between Godzilla and King Kong, Spider-Man and Venom, and a host of other heroes and monsters who filled my toybox and my coolest daydreams.

I smirked as Superman flew General Zodd up into space, only to be smashed by his villainous foe into an orbiting satellite and thrown back into our atmosphere (both of them catch on fire as they hurtle back down to earth, and of course neither is affected negatively by this development).  Yet the smirk was not one of cynicism, but fraternal enjoyment; I knew that somewhere on the other end of this movie was someone who agreed with me that “it would be really cool if Superman grabbed him and flew up so high that he went into space, and started punching him while he was up there, and then he crashed into a satellite, and they both fell back down to earth and caught on fire…”  You get the picture.  And yes, that also goes for the absolutely awesome scene in which Superman tackles Zodd at lighting speed, rolls him through miles of dirt, punching him savagely all the while, and eventually launches him full speed into a truck filling up at a gas station.  This is in response to Zodd bullying Superman’s earthly Mom (while he’s punching Zodd, he yells, “YOU…THINK…YOU…CAN…THREATEN…MY…MOM!?!”).  For any boy who loves his own Mom, this is seriously fun to watch.

The battles are not perfect.  The effects sometimes look a little unrealistic.  It is unclear how exactly Superman wins the fight (because spoiler alert, he wins).  And they certainly display no sense of subtlety or restraint.  But sometimes we’re not in the mood for restraint.  And what better way to indulge such a mood than in a harmless and basically innocent couple of hours in a movie theater?  If you enjoyed making your action figures bash each other across the living room and get crushed by giant boulders (i.e. sofa cushions) when you were younger, you will definitely enjoy this movie.

On to the second reason I enjoyed Man of Steel: it got me thinking about spiritual things.  I am a Theology guy, and I always comb movies, books, and shows for religious, spiritual, and moral messages.  Whether good or bad, they’re always there.  Man of Steel continues the recent superhero movie trend of self-sacrifice and responsibility so wonderfully inaugurated in 2002’s Spider-Man and continued by later Marvel and Batman films.

However, there is something about this movie that goes much deeper than the others.  Man of Steel transcends mere virtue and, I contend, delves into specifically religious and Christian ideas.  Throughout the movie, Superman is presented as a sort of Christ-figure.  On the surface level: he’s 33 years old, he’s lived a life of relative obscurity leading up to his public career as a wonder-worker, his father is dead by the time he’s an adult and he is very close to his mother, and he is met with varying degrees of both admiration and suspicion by those who encounter him.

On a deeper level, we see Superman/Kal-El/Clark as a blend of humanity and superhumanity; we see him interact with and master forces the like of which any number of humans couldn’t dream of taking on; we see him courted by evil and tempted to abuse his power by prideful superhumans who consider humanity an inferior creation; we see the hope of an entire people resting on his shoulders; we see him engage in a struggle that literally no one else could begin to take up; we see him banish evil with an act of total self-sacrifice.

I will dwell on only one scene to illustrate this point.  When Superman attacks the terraforming machine in the Indian Ocean, he is weakened by the atmospheric changes surrounding the contraption.  After fighting off a set of serpentine metal tendrils in spite of his weakened state, he is forced underneath the full blast of the machine’s world-destroying might.  We see him engulfed in blue energy emanating from the machine, apparently being pushed to the limits of his resilience and strength.  It seems that he might not survive as he scrunches up his face in pain and yells in agony.  Yet just when it seems that he won’t pull through, he launches up against this stream of energy and slices through the machine’s innards in a stunning upward flight.

Perhaps it seems absurd, but this scene got me thinking about Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion.  What I saw in the movie—Superman withstanding a torrent of lethal otherworldly energy and emerging the victor—made me look at Jesus’ act of sacrifice in a new way.  Specifically, it focused my attention on the spiritual aspect of the Passion.  Of course we often consider, especially before Easter, the extreme physical suffering Jesus went through for our sake.  But we must remember that we also believe that, in taking the burden of the cross on his shoulders, Jesus was taking the weight of humanity’s guilt upon himself.  During those awful hours of torture and death, Jesus took up the unfathomable mass of man’s evil, carried it with him along the way to Calvary, and ultimately destroyed every ounce of it.  There was more negative energy—more evil, pain, guilt, shame, regret, horror, hatred, disgust, and misery—concentrated on Jesus Christ at that time than on any other person in history before or since, or ever.  How amazing is that, that he did that for us?  The blue energy that almost killed Superman in this movie is, to me, another way of expressing the spiritual aspect of Jesus’ suffering.
 

Now I should already know the amazing nature of Jesus’ sacrifice, and in some sense I do.  But seeing this computer-generated spectacle on screen today made me realize the magnitude of Christ’s spiritual agony as he faced off against the worst stuff that evil could throw at him.  In taking our guilt upon himself, Christ did the most amazing, heroic, and wonderful thing anyone has ever done or will do.

I may not be making myself clear.  We illustrate and meditate on depictions of the physical suffering of our Savior (and this is good and important).  But how often do we reflect on the spiritual aspect?  How could it have felt to carry the punishment incurred by an entire race of beings on a single man's shoulders?  It is a fearsome thing to consider.  And we just don't think about it when we see a picture of the crucifixion, because it's not something that comes through in a picture, or even in the physical event itself.  Onlookers could not see the burden of sin Jesus took up on his way to Golgotha.  It was and is a spiritual reality, accessed and understood only through faith.  We believe it, but we could never see it with our eyes.

Man of Steel is certainly not a straight allegory of Jesus.  If it was intended to be, it’s a train wreck.  But I don’t think that was the filmmaker’s intention.  Instead, I think the idea here was to illustrate certain Christian ideas and images in interesting ways.  In that sense, the movie is a complete success.

So there you have it: Man of Steel, a film for little boys and theologians.  Go see it.  I think you might enjoy it.

Gay Marriage and Some Facts

I am a die-hard optimist. That is why I am writing this post.

A few more facts about me:

• I love human beings. I believe that we are a human family, connected by our common humanity and our common Source, the Creator. God made each of us in His own image, and that means that we are all endowed with an inherent and infinite dignity that no one can take away. We cannot even get rid of it, ourselves. We are God’s creations, infinitely loved and worthy of infinite love. I’ll say it again: every single one of us—regardless of who we are, where we’ve been, or what we think, say, or do—has infinite worth and dignity. We all deserve respect, love, and reverence. God loves us, and He loves everyone else. This is the central tenet of morality.
• As a Christian, I believe in justice and mercy. While injustice especially gets under my skin, I try to follow the leaning of my master, Christ, who taught that mercy ultimately wins out over justice.
• I love diversity. Although it is comforting to be with your own kind, with what is familiar—and a healthy person accepts this fact—there is also something deep within me that loves what is different. We often find things and people beautiful not because they are like us, but because they are different. This song by Train says it well.  Same can be very attractive, but so can Different. Both are wonderful. Neither is better. 
• What is true of beauty is also true of culture. America draws its strength from diversity and always has. It combines the intellect of Greece and Rome with the wisdom of Jerusalem. It combines the prudence of a republic with the fairness of a democracy. It combines the modest silence of decency with freedom of speech. America takes what is highest and best from every culture it comprises, and welcomes all people of good heart into its fold. Our country is built not on the blood of a race, but the ideals of a community. Diversity is one of our core characteristics.
• I believe that there is wisdom in the past. While it is true that our predecessors sometimes endorsed and lived serious errors—the ones that come to mind are slavery, racism, sexism, and class distinctions, but the list could go on for quite some time—they also had much to commend them. There is great wisdom to be found in the words and deeds of those that came before us on this planet, and they should not be disenfranchised simply because they are dead, as G.K. Chesterton once pointed out.
•  I like to have fun. If you’ve ever spent any length of time with me in an informal setting, you know this. There are few things more wonderful and therapeutic than a good belly laugh, the kind of hilarity that penetrates to your soul and won’t let you stop laughing. Life is good.
•  I support strong gun control. I think that background checks and licenses should be required for purchasing guns from any vendor, and that anyone who opposes such legislation is being quite unreasonable. I further believe that private citizens should only be allowed to own handguns and basic rifles. Nothing fancy, nothing absurd. If shooting deer is your thing, you don't need a Tommy gun to do it. 
• Finally, I think smoking is harmful and self-destructive. It should be completely illegal. 

In short, I (like anyone else) am an individual; I did not emerge from a cookie cutter.

Now that all of that's out of the way, can we have a rational conversation about gay marriage? I am strongly opposed to it. Will you listen to me, now that you know more about me? Or will you shut me out as a bigot, or try to mock me into submission? Can we have a rational conversation about this?

I hope so. Like I said, I’m an optimist.

The Church is the Agent of Christ

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman.

The following is a brief reflection on the role and purpose of the Church. I wrote it after digesting much material by Bl. John Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel, two Catholic thinkers whose theology was extremely influential on modern theology. Don't be scared off by the phrase "modern theology;" for anyone who doesn't feel much affinity to Karl Rahner, give these two gents a look--you will not be disappointed, I assure you. Anyway, this was written as the result of digesting the thoughts of these two intellectual giants, as well as the mentoring of one of my greatest Theology teachers at Loyola University, Fr. Peter Bernardi. I hope you enjoy it. Keep in mind that my thoughts are not authoritative representations of Church doctrine, but my own meanderings based on what I've learned. I do intend, of course, for all these writings to adhere to Catholic teaching. Enjoy...

Maurice Blondel, looking sharp.

 
One of the jobs of the Church is to preserve the Gospel (not referring only to the 4 books in the New Testament, but to the general "Good News" of Christ and his Resurrection), offering it to the present generation and handing it on to the next. However, Jesus was not a robot who acted mechanically according to divine laws, but a person who acted spontaneously according to divine Love.  Thus, the Church must view itself less as a preserver of information and more as the agent of a life-changing and earth-shaking message.  As the spirit of Christ is continually discerned and lived out by the institution of the Church and in the lives of its members, the Gospel is preserved, offered, and handed on.

St. Peter, the keeper of the keys.

 
The Apostles were profoundly affected by their experience of Christ: seeing the things he did, how he responded to daily occurrences, how he treated other people, and ultimately how he was willing to submit to the Father's will—and, of course, his Resurrection.  In being thus affected they were made able (with the Spirit's help) to gather their experience of Christ into a coherent Gospel message.  So, in every age, the present Church acts as the hands and feet of Christ, doing his work according to the needs of the present historical moment.  But always the Church must remain faithful to its Master and Founder.  Thus, the perennial motto of the Church truly must be: "What would Jesus do?"

Humbly yours,
Joezilla

God Bless You, You Idiot (GBYYI), Part III: Honest to God

This is the third part of a series in which frank confession of a fault paves the way to spiritual enrichment. Enjoy...
 
Solitude often brings about the moments of our greatest peace or our greatest trial.  Jesus knows what I'm talking about.  According to the Gospels, he liked to retreat to deserted spots and commune with the Father—a welcome opportunity to recharge the batteries before stepping back into the fray (see Mk 1:32-39).  I wonder what he prayed about?  We cannot know for sure, but we can guess that these moments gave him the strength he needed to refocus his human nature on the tasks at hand—preaching the kingdom of God and bringing it about through healing, exorcism, and teaching.

But he also knew well the dangerous side of solitude.  He spent forty days in the desert, tested by the devil.  That can't have been a very pleasant experience, though it was a sweet victory he emerged with—proof that God was saving the world through him, and that evil didn't stand a chance.  As soon as Jesus beat the devil in the wilderness, his public ministry began.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all agree on this decisive point: it was the first critical blow in the battle for humanity.

Like Jesus, we are all "driven into the wilderness" sometimes, forced to face down whatever demons (personal or otherwise) might come to cause us trouble.  Such was my case today.  Extended solitude made me keenly aware of a problematic tendency: I often feel compelled to love certain things even when I know I should be setting my heart on what is higher.  In recent years, life has taught me that trying to answer inner longings with anything other than God inevitably results in frustration and pain.  There is a hole in each of our hearts that only God can fill; "Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in You," as St. Augustine so beautifully put it.  And yet, as much as I realize this in theory, it is still very difficult to put into practice.

Thus it happened that later in the day, I found myself praying like a person sick with a fever, but with no idea of how to cure it.  Thank God (literally), the right prayer came to my lips:

Jesus, teach me to love the right things.

Wishing to learn from the example of the Master, I tried reflecting on what Jesus loves.  Almost immediately, the image of Jesus "moved with compassion" for a leper leaped into my mind (Mk 1:40-42).  Jesus loved that man who came to him and said, "Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean."  Why?  Well, of course, he loved everyone, first and foremost.  But let's look for a deeper answer by asking, Why is that story included in the Gospel?  Perhaps it is to show Jesus' special appreciation for vulnerability.  A severely sick man is ultimately vulnerable; he has no regard for appearances or pretense.  He just wants to get well.  One need only spend a small amount of time in a hospital to discover this.  Hospitals are bastions of vulnerability.

I think Jesus liked the vulnerability of this man, because it was real.  Again, there was no pretense.  He wasn't trying to impress Jesus.  He just wanted to get better.  And Jesus was totally for it:  "'I do wish.  Be made clean.' The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean."

Jesus loves honesty.  So should we, both in other people and in ourselves.  When we identify our weaknesses and bring them to Jesus for healing and restoration, he responds.  He always responds.  I hope you, too, Dear Reader, may be willing to be vulnerable and honest with Christ, because this is the way he wants us.  He can see through our masks.  And he loves what he sees.

Sincerely,
Joezilla

God Bless You, You Idiot (GBYYI), Part II: Love as Attention

This is the second part of a series in which frank confession of a fault paves the way to spiritual enrichment. Enjoy...

I confess: I am a kindergartener when it comes to love.  Now mind you, I'm not talking about dating and romance and that sort of thing.  I make no claims about my ability to sweep a girl off her feet (and were I to make such claims, I wouldn't publish them on this Blog!).  No, I'm talking about real Love, the theological and ethical concept, the kind of love that impels us to capitalize its first letter.  In short, I'm talking about the way Christ teaches us to relate to every other person in our lives.

It's kind of amazing, isn't it?  We are told to love our neighbor as ourself, and we can easily understand this simple dictum.  But do we really live it out?  I often find myself confounded by Jesus' words that follow the Golden Rule in Luke's Gospel:

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. (Lk 6:32-33)

Whenever I read this passage, I have a sort of "Oh, yeah" moment in which I say, "Oh, yeah." I say this because I am reminded of how rarely I live this out in my daily existence.  The autopilot of my life has not been programmed to include this sort of ethic.  And that is an unfortunate fact for me, because this ethic is at the heart of all Christian ethics: God loves every person He created, and so we must love them, too.  All of our interpersonal morality stems from this foundation.

As I said, I often neglect this core teaching of Christ.  I am quite good at loving those who love me.  I respond positively to people who like me, and that makes them like me even more.  It's the exact opposite of a vicious circle.  It's quite wonderful, in fact.  And there's nothing wrong with it.  Provided we don't live for human glory, it is right for us to love those who love us.

But the problem lies in the fact that I don't nurture such love for people who don't love me, or for people who don't know me.  It is a rare and blessed mood that finds me choosing to love the random people I pass on the street.  It is an equally rare and blessed mood that finds me choosing to love my enemies.

What lies at the heart of this problem, for me at least, is a dysfunctional understanding of love.  I often unconsciously fall into the trap of dispatching love in a calculated way, "indirect egotism," in the words of Fr. Robert Barron: "I treat you well so that you will treat me well in return."  When I dispatch love like a general dispatches troops, this is not love at all.  Clearly, I need a higher understanding of love.

I think that this higher understanding can be illustrated by a simple equation:

LOVE = ATTENTION

This is the ideal to strive for: the object of my attention must be the object of my love.  If I am looking at you, talking to you, thinking about you, or anything else, I must also be loving you.

This is what Christ did: "Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said..." (Mk 10:21a).  Jesus loved perfectly.  Yes, sometimes he was stern—like when he healed a man on the Sabbath whose hand was withered, and looked at his critics "with anger," "grieved at their hardness of heart" (see Mk 3:1-6).  But even such a reaction, human as it was, was motivated by care, and charged through and through with love.  He wanted better for them.  Search the Gospels and find me a passage where Jesus acts out of pettiness or hatred.  You won't find one.  He was like us in all things except sin.

Inspirational author Phil Bosmans put it well when he said that we "shouldn't weigh out our love like a grocer."  I am called by my God to love fully, truly, wholeheartedly.  That means working toward making the object of my attention the object of my love.  This is my ideal to strive for, demonstrated so wonderfully by Love Himself.

Attentively (wink wink!),
Joezilla

God Bless You, You Idiot: Confessions of an Imperfect Catholic, Part I

The following is the first of a series of posts in which the frank confession of a fault paves the way to spiritual enrichment.  I hope that reading them proves as helpful to you as writing them does to me.

***

A gray midwinter morning in Chicago, about 11:00.  I was driving to Loyola University, where I studied Theology for two years after college.  Driving from the clean, green, comfy suburbs into the gritty city was an experience I chose to see as an adventure, but sometimes a particularly dangerous driver would threaten to shatter my optimistic view.

Today was one of those days.  A fellow driver, speeding around me on a one-lane street via the the empty parking spaces by the curb, cruised ahead and turned off at a distant intersection.

A surge of anger within was followed by a mild flow of compassion for this impatient motorist, and I felt these words flow naturally to the surface of my thoughts:

God bless you...you idiot.

Those were the exact words.

I drove on, my heart expanding to feel a measure of compassion for this hurried traveler, and laughed at the oxymoronic nature of my "prayer."  But looking back, I realize that even then, my judgment against him remained solid and intact.  Who was I to judge this person?  How could I know, for a fact, whether or not he had a compelling reason to speed around me?  For that matter, how did I know it was even a guy?  I had assumed both the gender and the guilt of this fellow human being.

I assume a lot of things.  And I judge a lot of people.  This, in fact, is the first of many confessions I will be making in this series:  I am one of the most judgmental people I know.  I'll even go so far as to say that if I've met you, I've judged you.  Good, bad, or in-between, I have most definitely judged you in some way.  And I am sorry.

Judging actions is another word for morality, and it is our duty to make such judgments every day.  If we believe in our morality, then it is also our duty to take opportunities to encourage others to follow it.  Otherwise, why do we follow it ourselves?  But judging another person is not our job, and was in fact explicitly warned against by Christ.  My most grievous fault.

Sometimes, oftentimes, my humanity gets the better of me.  "God bless you, you idiot," that very human prayer that came straight from my heart, sums up quite nicely my condition as a Christian.  I've been baptized; my sins were forgiven; my new life has begun.  But like the kingdom of God that Jesus began on earth, my new baptized life has begun in time, and exists incompletely, imperfectly.  I am a fallen creature endowed with supernatural grace; my mundane life is sprinkled with droplets of the divine.  And though I believe the heavenly pull will prove stronger than any human force, I nonetheless find myself weighed down by nature from time to time.

The first step in fixing a problem is acknowledging it.  So in future entries of this series, allow me to get some things off my chest.  In so doing, I hope that you, Dear Reader, will find something that gives you hope and inspires you in your relationships with God, others, and yourself.

Sincerely,
Joezilla

It's Your Call

Life is ultimately the individual’s journey to God. When all its secondary elements—its vain glories and tempting ambitions, even its legitimate obligations and sacred promises—are swept aside, the primal structure of life is dictated by our response to the divine Source from whence we came.

It is with this fact in mind (which has been taught to me by my faith, my earthly mentors, and my own life experience) that I offer this piece of practical advice:

Whenever you find yourself weighed down by negative emotions to the point that they may be hindering your ability to thrive, you must return to the source waters of your identity and go for a swim. Reflect on who you are at your deepest level, what fires your heart and to what and where you feel called to end up. Our vocation is the set of roles and responsibilities that bring forth our truest character, our strongest personality, and our deepest fulfillment. It is the call that, if discerned and followed, will lead us to God.

Thus, at heart, we must often remind ourselves that we are simply men and women in search of our vocation.

There is no shame in exploring this idea, following leads and taking chances to discover where the true path lies. What we might be tempted to see as failure is merely another step on the right path. In fact, the only shame would be to look back at the end of an unfulfilled life and realize the number of opportunities squandered. Instead, let us choose a life marked by the daring choice to find our vocation.

Discernibly,
Joezilla

The Roxbury Question

Occasionally my mind and heart will be assaulted by a very specific and very philosophical question. This week's question was the same one that Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan used to jerk their heads to, namely, "What is love?"

In all seriousness, the concept of "romantic love" is something we all have a general concept of, but do we really understand what it is or where it comes from?  Such was my intention when I began pondering the question.  With the disclaimer that love is somewhat of a mystery and cannot be fully explained, I offer my conclusions below...

Romantic Love is the concept that encapsulates the experience of a man and a woman who intentionally share a one-on-one bond.

In order to be a romantic relationship, it is a friendship augmented by two things:

1.  Some degree of physical attraction.
2.  An emotional attachment (not a dependency, though).

Avoid this feeling at all costs! A romantic relationship needs to consist of two complete people who are happy on their own and content with who they are. Looking for another person to fill a hole in your heart is a recipe for disaster, and is a sure sign that you need to do some soul-work on yourself. Everyone is at this stage at some point in their life. If that's you right now, take an extended period of time (a few months, perhaps) to focus on your relationship to yourself and to God. Become totally happy with yourself, and content being alone. Then you will be ready to start looking.

Thus, the ideal romantic partner has to have the qualities you would find in any good friend—i.e. shared values, good rapport with you, and availability; they must be both attractive and attracted to you; and they must admire you enough to relish the prospect of spending lots of time in your company.

Lest this seem to over-intellectualize the concept of Love, it should be emphasized that discerning all of this is best done by someone who is in touch with their own emotions, brave enough to explore other people's feelings, and willing to accept reality as it comes.  If your life seems to lack romance, work on these three things and be patient.  The right person is out there, don't worry!

Love in its highest form is self-sacrifice and self-giving love for another person; but this expression of love is a long-term phenomenon (that, it should be noted, is present in non-romantic contexts, as well—such as a parent to a child).  One commits to such self-offering at a wedding, but the sacrifice itself takes an entire lifetime.

Question:  How do we know who is the right person to make such an offer to in Marriage?

Answer:  To someone whom we trust to make the same offering in return.

To the best of my knowledge, following what I've discussed here will lead you to find that person, who is right for you (and vice versa).

Have fun out there!
Joezilla

Mary Magdalene, Relics, and the Historicity of Christian Claims

CHRISTIANITY IS A HISTORICAL RELIGION—more so than any other religion, in fact. Christian faith centers on the intersection of supernatural reality and human history: God became a human being at a certain time and place—Jesus of Nazareth—who was killed and rose from the dead. Belief in Jesus, and a relationship with Him, can gain us eternal life. There is no myth here; the central truths of Christianity are stark, simple, and shocking. And make no mistake: Christians must have faith in such doctrines in order to truly be Christians. The first known theologian (and in my opinion the best), St. Paul, put it well in 1 Corinthians, speaking about Jesus’ Resurrection: "If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith" (1 Cor. 15:14, NIV).

It is this very historicity that came to mind when my Mom notified me about a unique opportunity: for a limited time, a relic of Mary Magdalene (purported to be a leg bone) was being displayed at various parishes near our home. I consulted the website describing this "relic tour," and read a fascinating account of the relic’s history.

The story, which you can read by clicking here, spans the centuries from the time of Christ to the present day. It is filled with unexpected twists of fate and chance discoveries; in other words, it is a completely plausible story.



A marker discovered with Mary Magdalene's remains, which reads: "Here rests the body of Mary Magdalene."


A good story, to be sure…but is it true? Reading this account reminded me of another story I’d heard about a famous saint. Legend has it that St. Peter, sneaking away from Rome at night during a particularly nasty period of government persecution, met Jesus on the road. "Lord, where are you going?" Peter asked. "To Rome, to be persecuted," was the master’s reply. Realizing the error of his way (as Peter and the rest of us so often must do!), the first pope turned on his heels and headed back to Rome, where he was eventually martyred.

I was told that this story "comes from tradition," a phrase which, despite years of theological study, I have never learned the precise meaning of. I believe this may mean that the story first appeared in a non-canonical writing (i.e. a piece of writing about Jesus or the apostles that was not accepted by the Church as divinely-inspired). Some non-canonical writings are absolutely crazy—consult The Gospel of Thomas if you need convincing. But others, such as the Didache—a sort of handbook of early Christian teachings—is relatively innocuous in its ideas. Thus, although uninspired, some non-canonical writings may still contain elements of truth or wisdom. Perhaps such a piece provides the source of the Peter story above.

But the question remains: are these stories true? We must recognize two facts. First: we will never know. We cannot travel back in time to verify them. But secondly, and more importantly: our faith does not stand or fall on the truth of these stories. Like the Marian apparitions or the Divine Mercy visions of St. Faustina, they are historical claims above and beyond the revelation we are "required" believe in. Faithful Catholics can receive insight, consolation, and grace from devotion to such things (and often do), but said devotion is not a requirement of Catholic faith.

But these stories teach us something important, whether they are true or not. They remind us that these people were real historical figures who lived actual lives and played actual roles in developing the faith we now share with them. Mary Magdalene went somewhere after the Ascension; who is to say she didn’t board a boat with Lazarus, the man born blind, and Jesus’ aunt Mary? I’m being completely serious. We simply don’t know, but we do know that she did something—and considering that the Gospel of John says that Mary Magdalene was the first to encounter the risen Lord, I am inclined to think that she played a dynamic role in the Church wherever she went. If the "real" story is not what is printed on the website linked to above, I’d bet dollars to donuts it’s just as good—or even better.

Lest anyone fall into the contemporary trap of assuming that the more skeptical answers are the more plausible ones, I will offer this final thought. One of my best friends once told me about the supposed origins of Christianity in India. The story goes that St. "Doubting" Thomas (who, we must assume, grew into a mature and inspiring faith) traveled to India and spread the good news of Jesus to the people there. When I heard this story, I must confess, I wondered in the back of my mind (with the intellectual pride epidemic in our age) whether such a tale could really be true. After all, I wondered, how would a poor Jewish man in Jerusalem make it all the way to India? Knowing next to nothing about St. Thomas, though, I accepted it as a possibility.

It was only tonight that I discovered, while reading up on the history of the early Christian period, that there was a commonly used trade route connecting the Holy Land with India. Given that, the journey of St. Thomas from Jerusalem to India would be entirely plausible—and, given the existence of the story my friend told me, even likely. I stand corrected, humbled, surprised, and happy—a common stance when doing Theology.

Slowly but surely, I am learning that Truth is stranger than fiction.

Faithfully,
Joezilla

Hidden In Plain Sight

Today I woke up early.  Very early.  We’re talking three-hours-of-sleep early.  I had to attend a religious education workshop at a local church, but a driveway full of snow required a slight adjustment of wake-up time.  The early morning shoveling, however, proved quite invigorating, and I enjoyed a busy but generally alert and comfortable day.  The three hours of sleep had not caught up with me…yet.

At midnight I went to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which always proves to be a peaceful time of fulfilling fellowship with God.  After about half an hour, though, I was overcome by an overpowering tiredness that put me to sleep like chloroform, the tolerant sort of sleep that doesn’t mind a bent neck or slouching posture.  I was out like a light.

I was awakened by someone else entering the adoration chapel, but only for a moment.  Soon, I was back asleep.  That’s when I had the dream…

I dreamt of a great crowd of people, which I was a part of, walking in a building, maybe a hallway.  We were all walking to various destinations, perhaps a bit hurried.  There was something we weren’t noticing.

I think I woke up at this point, noted the strange something that we’d all missed in my dream, and went back to sleep.  I started dreaming the same sort of dream.

I became gradually aware that each person in this crowd was going about the business of their own day.  But I was acutely aware this time of our utter failure to notice something big and obvious that was almost hanging right by us.  We were walking right by it, oblivious, simply going about our daily routines.  But there was still something there.

I woke up once more.  This time I was well aware of the riddle of the dream—and, for some unknown reason, intensely interested in discovering what this missing something was.  Still deliriously tired, I decided to dip back into the subconscious world for a final time, resolved to learn what that missing something was.

I was back.  We were still walking right by it, unaware of its presence.  Then I realized--this was the presence of God in our lives.  We were going through our days largely oblivious to the most obvious, most important part of our experience--God, the Creator, Sustainer, and Savior of the world.  It is Him we need most, and on Whom we most rely, and yet we pass the majority of our lives forgetful of His intimate presence in our hearts, minds, and souls.

Even though I am still extremely tired, barely able to stay awake as I type this, the magnitude of this experience transcends the capabilities of the written word, resulting in an account that is inherently inadequate.  Nonetheless, I write it down as both a reference point for myself (in hopes that this will remind me of the actual experience, which was a powerful spiritual reminder) and as a potential source of inspiration for any readers who may or may not exist out there.

St. Ignatius of Loyola crafted a spiritual exercise known as the Examen, which is a deliberate, meditative review of one’s day.  The purpose of the meditation is to discover how God was working in one’s life on any given day.  Positive experiences, known as consolations, are obviously portals for God’s grace to enter into our lives.  However, negative experiences or desolations, are also possible entry points for grace.  Learning to find God in both the positive and the negative, then, is the art of the Examen.  The prayer continues with a petition to God for forgiveness of one’s sins in the day, and a resolution to live the future in accordance with God’s will.

Prayers like the Examen are quite useful.  They can reorient our perspectives to find God in all things, both good and bad.  He is, after all, everywhere.  And how often do we go about our business day to day, completely unaware of His presence?  How often are we one of those people from my dream, walking through a hallway unaware of the hidden-in-plain-sight presence of God—life-giving, life-sustaining, life-transforming?  It’s the ultimate act of ungratefulness to forget our God.  But He still loves us.  He even still reaches out to us.  That is an amazing fact—proven time and again to those who seek His face—and it is a fact which should give us hope.  In spite of our fallen nature, which entices us to turn from God again and again, He loves us and reaches out to us.  Let’s try our best today not to forget Him.

Final note: As stated above, there was something surreal about this whole affair, to the point that I classify it less as an inspiring dream and more as a straight-up spiritual experience.  Rarely are we able to revisit dreams to fulfill a certain intention; more rarely still do dreams present us with such an obvious question or riddle, much less a clear solution.  I hope that the weight of this experience comes through in the words I have written.  If not, have faith that God works in very real ways, as He did with me tonight—and be receptive to what He’s trying to tell you today.

God bless,

Joezilla