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