Same ol' same ol' - Holiday edition

Routine is an interesting phenomenon. For people like Liz and I, routine is something necessary. We like having certain days where we do certain things. We enjoy knowing pretty much what we're going to be doing and when. It's a source of comfort in an ever changing world. It allows us to stop worrying so much about all the changes going on around us, and instead focus on the more important, more lasting things. Indeed, never changing routine is a reminder to man of the eternal destination that awaits him in Heaven. Scores of monks and nuns have lived their lives behind the never changing walls of cloisters. They have spent their lives doing very nearly the same thing, at the same time, day in and day out for years. They do these things "routinely" so that their minds and hearts no longer cling to this changeable world, but instead reside in a changeless life to come.

While Liz and I definitely do not have the same routines of monks and nuns, we do have certain things we do on a regular basis. We go to mass at 7:30 in the morning and then come back and have breakfast. Then it's off to work, only to meet up for lunch at 12:45. Then to work again and home again at 5:00. When I get home I feed Alan his rice cereal, and Liz and I have dinner. Then the little guy goes to bed at 6:30 or so, and Liz and I have the rest of the evening to ourselves. This pattern is repeated often, with the occasional break-up, such as dinner on Thursday nights with Walter and the gang.

So, it is a little crazy to be thrown off this routine, something that is certainly very common starting with Thanksgiving, running through Advent and past Christmas and the New Year. This time of year is a time when routine is thrown right out the window, and we are asked to pack an incredible amount of meaningful activities into a very short period of time. And thus it's begun, starting with this past week when we drove 13 hours out to Illinois for Thanksgiving with my family, during which time we had two relaxing days of just playing with Alan and two more days of lots of visiting with family. During this time, we had no chance for 7:30 mass, lunch at 12:45, or any of the rest of the schedule (not to mention what a big trip can do to a 7 month old's schedule, though in fairness it didn't really affect him much until after we got back).

Having gotten back on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday have mainly been about trying to recuperate and get back into the routine. In trying to get back into our normal routine, it has struck me exactly how beautiful routine is. Over the weekend I realized routine is valuable not just for those times when you are living it, but also for those times when it's impossible to live routinely. For, when you're 13 hours away and visiting family, the impulses of routine still work on you. Having become ingrained in your soul, they still draw you to the permanent truths, the higher things.

By living routinely, we cultivate a soul in which the habits of drawing our minds to God can be firmly implanted. During the craziness of the holidays, it is so easy for us to lose sight of these habits. With so much earthly goodness, i.e. family, friends, food, presents, etc..., we can forget to draw our minds to God. Since we our out of routine, we lose those times when we would normally pray and talk to Him. However, if we're living out a regular routine outside of these crazy times, we will have impulses that we carry with us when we're out of our routine. We'll recognize when we're not drawing our hearts to God, and we'll miss it. We'll want to draw our hearts to God.

The challenge for us during this time of Advent and Christmas is to answer that call of the routine. No matter how busy things get, we must let our normal daily prayer lives make their demands on us. We must try to live out our routines as much as possible, but when it becomes impossible we must still answer the spirit of those same routines. The spirit of our routines, being deeply ingrained in us, are there to draw our minds back to God. This calling, this impulse, is a gift God gives to us to remind us of Himself during hectic times. This season, we must be docile to this calling, and no matter what is going on, we must raise our minds to God.

The Autumn and the Fall of Leaves - by Hilaire Belloc

I couldn't describe this time of year, this phenomenon, any better than Belloc does. Enjoy!

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It is not true that the close of a life which ends in a natural fashion--life which is permitted to put on the pomp of death and to go out in glory--inclines the mind to repose. It is not true of a day ending nor the passing of the year, nor of the fall of leaves. Whatever permanent, uneasy question is native to men, comes forward most insistent and most loud at such times.

There is a house in my own county which is built of stone, whose gardens are fitted to the autumn. It has level alleys standing high and banked with stone. Their ornaments were carved under the influence of that restraint which marked the Stuarts. They stand above old ponds, and are strewn at this moment with the leaves of elms. These walks are like the Mailles of the Flemish cities, the walls of the French towns or the terraces of the Loire. They are enjoyed to-day by whoever has seen all our time go racing by; they are the proper resting-places of the aged, and their spirit is felt especially in the fall of leaves.

At this season a sky which is of so delicate and faint a blue as to contain something of gentle mockery, and certainly more of tenderness, presides at the fall of leaves. There is no air, no breath at all. The leaves are so light that they sidle on their going downward, hesitating in that which is not void to them, and touching at last so imperceptibly the earth with which they are to mingle, that the gesture is much gentler than a salutation, and even more discreet than a discreet caress.

They make a little sound, less than the least of sounds. No bird at night in the marshes rustles so slightly; no man, though men are the subtlest of living beings, put so evanescent a stress upon their sacred whispers or their prayers. The leaves are hardly heard, but they are heard just so much that men also, who are destined at the end to grow glorious and to die, look up and hear them falling.

* * * * *

With what a pageantry of every sort is not that troubling symbol surrounded! The scent of life is never fuller in the woods than now, for the ground is yielding up its memories. The spring when it comes will not restore this fullness, nor these deep and ample recollections of the earth. For the earth seems now to remember the drive of the ploughshare and its harrying; the seed, and the full bursting of it, the swelling and the completion of the harvest. Up to the edge of the woods throughout the weald the earth has borne fruit; the barns are full, and the wheat is standing stacked in the fields, and there are orchards all around. It is upon such a mood of parentage and of fruition that the dead leaves fall.

The colour is not a mere splendour: it is intricate. The same unbounded power, never at fault and never in calculation, which comprehends all the landscape, and which has made the woods, has worked in each one separate leaf as well; they are inconceivably varied. Take up one leaf and see. How many kinds of boundary are there here between the stain which ends in a sharp edge against the gold, and the sweep in which the purple and red mingle more evenly than they do in shot-silk or in flames? Nor are the boundaries to be measured only by degrees of definition. They have also their characters of line. Here in this leaf are boundaries intermittent, boundaries rugged, boundaries curved, and boundaries broken. Nor do shape and definition ever begin to exhaust the list. For there are softness and hardness too: the agreement and disagreement with the scheme of veins; the grotesque and the simple in line; the sharp and the broad, the smooth, and raised in boundaries. So in this one matter of boundaries might you discover for ever new things; there is no end to them. Their qualities are infinite. And beside boundaries you have hues and tints, shades also, varying thicknesses of stuff, and endless choice of surface; that list also is infinite, and the divisions of each item in it are infinite; nor is it of any use to analyse the thing, for everywhere the depth and the meaning of so much creation are beyond our powers. And all this is true of but one dead leaf; and yet every dead leaf will differ from its fellow.

That which has delighted to excel in boundlessness within the bounds of this one leaf, has also transformed the whole forest. There is no number to the particular colour of the one leaf. The forest is like a thing so changeful of its nature that change clings to it as a quality, apparent even during the glance of a moment. This forest makes a picture which is designed, but not seizable. It is a scheme, but a scheme you cannot set down. It is of those things which can best be retained by mere copying with a pencil or a brush. It is of those things which a man cannot fully receive, and which he cannot fully re-express to other men.

It is no wonder, then, that at this peculiar time, this week (or moment) of the year, the desires which if they do not prove at least demand--perhaps remember--our destiny, come strongest. They are proper to the time of autumn, and all men feel them. The air is at once new and old; the morning (if one rises early enough to welcome its leisurely advance) contains something in it of profound reminiscence. The evenings hardly yet suggest (as they soon will) friends and security, and the fires of home. The thoughts awakened in us by their bands of light fading along the downs are thoughts which go with loneliness and prepare me for the isolation of the soul.

It is on this account that tradition has set, at the entering of autumn, for a watch at the gate of the season, the Archangel; and at its close the day and the night of All-Hallows on which the dead return.

The joy of ... not having money?

Money is on the mind of a lot of people these days. With the downturn of the economy have come a number of movements claiming to have the solution to all of our financial woes. The Tea Party states that what we need to do is deregulate, and then anybody that works hard enough and wants to be rich can be. Occupy Wall Street seems to think the way to financial comfort is by taking from those who already have it. Both movements are agreed upon the end, greater wealth; they just seem to disagree on the means.

But what if the end we should be concerned about isn't wealth? What if the goal of our lives is something beyond the green stuff? Then neither of these movements is really addressing the questions that matter. In fact, they're doing quite the opposite: they're putting up a big fuss about something that, in the end, doesn't matter as much as they'd like to think. And, by putting up such a big fuss, they're distracting others from focusing on the things that really matter, like God, family, and friends.

We Christians can become distracted by this talk as well; I know, as I've been distracted by them recently. For a couple of days now, I've been worried about our financial status. Liz and I aren't on the brink of destruction or anything like that. We know we're very well off: I have a job, we have food on the table and a roof over our heads. We can even afford luxuries like going out to eat with friends once a week. We're what I like to think of as "comfortably tight." There are a number of people in the world who are worse off than we are, but that doesn't mean we don't worry about making the ends meet.

Truthfully, this week hasn't been much different from all the times before. We're trying to save here and there so that we can put some money away for a rainy day. We take two steps forward and one step back. The problem comes when we simply want to run forward, something that I've been trying too hard to do recently. I get in trouble when I want all our debt to be gone now so that I can be saving everything we make. Then, I hear the words, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'" Lk 12:20.

Of course, I don't just want to save up money so that I have a nice looking balance on the bank account. I want to save so that my family can have a good future, so Liz and I can buy a house and help our children go to college. These desires are ultimately good. However, to truly give my children a good future, a good life, I cannot be focused on giving them a wealthy one. Rather, my focus should be on giving them a Christian life, for that is what will ultimately make them happy.

And in the end, the Christian life, the living out of a relationship with Jesus, is what ultimately makes all of us happy. This is something that the disordered concern with money makes us loose sight of. We don't have to be incredibly wealthy to be happy. We can be "comfortably tight" and still live good, happy lives. This is a lesson Liz and I need to learn as we look to the future. If we're committed to me being a high school teacher at some point, and she being a stay at home mom, then we're probably never going to move much beyond comfortably tight.

In fact, wealth can often be a hindrance to living out the relationship with Jesus, though it's a hindrance that can be overcome. Christ says "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Mt. 19: 24-25. Money, though in itself a good, often distracts us from God because of our fallen human nature. Our sin throughout time has been to wish to do things on our own apart from God, and money allows for a number of material pleasures we can experience apart from God. It provides man with the ability to do whatever he wants and feeds the multiplication of his desires. Lack of money, on the other hand, quickly narrows his desires so that he must be happy with what he can always have, namely God.

In the end, life is not about money. It's about love; it's about Faith, Hope, and Charity in Jesus Christ. What is all the money in the world really worth if we don't know Jesus's mercy? So, we'll go on living comfortably tight. That doesn't mean money will never stress us out again, I'm sure it will. Hopefully, though, through God's grace, we can always come back to what matters most: God, family, and friends.

Dryness

There are certain times in our relationship with Christ when we are called to live out a period of dryness. This lack of sensation is something that the saints have commonly talked about. They say that it is a chance for the soul to grow closer to Christ, a chance for the individual to choose Jesus out of love and not because Jesus makes him feel good. Indeed, many people choose Jesus for just that reason, because He provides them with an emotional rush. The true test for a Christian, though, comes when that rush fades away.

Everybody struggles with this to one degree or another. It is so easy for us to become attached to how Christianity makes us feel. We become attached to the results of the relationship and begin to lose sight of Who we must have a relationship with. So, at certain times, God withdraws His presence from us so as to give us the opportunity to choose Him more freely. He makes it possible for us to choose Him for His own sake, and not simply for how He makes us feel.

These times of dryness are not a sign of holiness, nor are they something that should be sought after. How God makes us feel should not be the object of our religion. How we feel is totally determined by His Divine Providence, and it is done so as to lead us closer to Himself. Sometimes, He wishes us to feel His presence, and at other times He withdraws so that we might feel our littleness and draw closer to Him. That's why these times of dryness are not a sign of any type of holiness; they are an emphasis on how dependent we are on God. We begin to recognize how attached to His consolations we are. When the security blanket of good feeling is withdrawn, we begin to see that we have used Christianity as a way to live happily in this present life. We have lost sight of Who it is we seek to love, now and forever.

This recognition of our littleness, of our dependence, is only complete, though, if we respond in Faith, Hope, and Charity. What good is it to simply know how small and weak we are? If this were the only part of periods of dryness, they would end in despair. However, our littleness and weakness cries out for a Savior, for one who will come and augment our injured being. He does this by working miracles of Faith, Hope, and Charity in our lives. He gives the strength to believe in Him, even if we cannot see. He becomes the object of our hope, so that we make Him the goal of all our actions. He fills our soul with His love, so that we do not become lost in self-pity over our weakness.

We cannot be afraid of these times of dryness, for they are times that are gifts to us from God. We must believe that. We must trust the God knows where He is taking us down this road. He knows how to woo our souls, for He was the one who made them. If we can trust Him to give us these periods of dryness, then we will begin to move beyond how we feel. It will begin to make less of difference if we are receiving consolations or not, and instead we will be focused on Love Himself.

It is my prayer that all of us, as we continue to live this relationship with Christ, might abandon our paths to His control. May we always trust that He knows how to woo us, and may we always respond with the docility of Mary. May we say with her, "Let it be done unto me according to thy word."

What it's really all about

I have been incredibly blessed to be a Catholic throughout my life. Growing up in the Church, being educated at both a Catholic high school and a Catholic college, I have been given the opportunity to see all the riches the Church has to offer. I've seen the beauty of her cultural impacts in art, music, literature, theater and poetry. She's captivated my intellect with her many theological and philosophical contributions. She has overawed me with her beautiful collection of religious orders, teachers, and friends.

We Catholics have a beautiful treasury of tradition that is ours to give to the world. We have small symbols, such as the sign of the Cross, that mean so much. Most of the time when I talk to other people about the state the world is in today, we talk about how we can make these things prominent again. We wonder why Gregorian chant is not more common in the liturgy, or we rail against the effects of immodesty in our culture. We talk about how we can once again bring about a "Catholic culture" in the world, and often times our minds go back to the Middle Ages when Catholicism was in every fabric of societal life.

Well, sort of. In the end, what we end up doing is romanticizing the Middle Ages and forgetting what Catholicism truly is. We look at the art, the music, the buildings but we forget the people of the Middle Ages. We brush over in our minds the fact that so many priests kept mistresses, that there was rampant corruption among the bishops and cardinals of the Church, and that even the papacy was often occupied by less than reputable characters. We forget that the philosophy and theology so widespread throughout the laity of today were not available to the peasants of the Middle Ages. Yes, the Church was everywhere, but the majority of those within the hierarchy were not living as disciples of Christ. The Middle Ages had all the trappings of a Catholic culture, so why wasn't it perfect? Why was corruption in the hierarchy of the Church so rampant?

It's an age old error found within the Church; we begin to equate Catholicism with its effects. We begin to think of Catholicism as simply a system for organizing all human life, including culture, morality, intellectual endeavors and government. However, Catholicism loses its core meaning when it becomes solely a source of temporal salvation and well being. Its core meaning is not to organize the world, but to draw souls into a relationship with the Creator of the world. Pope Benedict XVI said it best when he said:

 "Christianity is not a new philosophy or a new morality. We are only Christians if we encounter Christ...Only in this personal relationship with Christ, only in this encounter with the Risen One do we truly become Christians." Sept. 3, 2008 Wednesday Address

Catholicism, then, is not ultimately about the music, art, or literature. Catholicism is first and foremost about a relationship with a person, THE Person. It is about living out a love story with Jesus. All the music, art, and literature find their meaning in how they lead the soul into a more intimate knowledge of the Savior. The cultural influences of the Church only derive their goodness from how they lead people closer to Jesus.

Many in the Middle Ages lost this understanding of Catholicism. They began to see the Church as simply a means to organize a world in chaos after the fall of the Roman Empire. What made the great saints of the Middle Ages saints, such as Sts. Francis, Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Teresa of Avila, and Catherine of Sienna, was that they were in love with Christ, and they wanted to make other people fall in love with Him as well. Yes, they made their contributions to culture, but only in order to bring souls to Jesus. St. Thomas never sought to revolutionize philosophical thought simply to make it more "Catholic," his goal was to introduce others to the Truth. St. Theresa of Avila didn't just want to reform the Carmelites because they made the Church look bad, she wanted to reform them so that they could come closer to Jesus.

These saints also understood another thing: Jesus's kingdom is not of this world. Despite the best intentions of Catholics throughout history, this world will never become the New Jerusalem until the end of time, and then it will not be brought about by the efforts of man. True Catholicism, the living out of a relationship with Jesus, has never been popular, even during the supposedly "Catholic" Middle Ages. Yes, the Church was prominent, but that didn't mean that St. Theresa of Avila was popular. When she began her reforms of the Carmelites, many were angry with her.

Jesus promised us, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you" Jn 15:9. As Catholics, we must strive to love Jesus, to live out this relationship with him. We cannot become distracted by trying to make this world into a Catholic paradise. Rather, all the things we do to bring about a Catholic culture must be done out of a true desire to introduce others to the Love we already know ourselves. We should expect the world to hate us, because it hated Him. We have become and are sojourners in a foreign country. In turn, let us then run all the more towards Jesus, focusing on the Person of Christ more and temporal welfare less. This is one of the great themes of Benedict XVI's papacy: to be a Christian is fundamentally to be in a relationship with Christ, nothing more and nothing less.

Snow days: Ruined work or a chance for leisure?

This past Saturday, Virginia received snow. The leaves aren't even off all the trees yet, but on Saturday we received a good three or four inches of the white stuff. It made the day feel like January instead of October, and it definitely threw a wrench into our plans for the weekend. We had been planning to go out and run several errands (including, ironically, getting Alan a snowsuit). However, as the thick stuff continued to fall we decided to call it a day in. We got in comfortable clothes, made warm drinks, and holed up for the day.

As time went on, though, I began to feel a little cooped up in our one bedroom apartment. I began to notice how the snow was lessening, and how the roads looked a little bit better outside. The temperature outside was starting to rise above freezing, and the snow just wasn't going to be an issue going out any more. Maybe, after all, I could get out to run some errands after all.

Of course, my wife Liz could immediately tell what was going on in my mind. She saw my quick glances outside at the road and noted my ever so casual comments about the good state of the roads. After lunch, I think I might have been beginning to pace because she finally said, "Are you going to go crazy staying in all day?" That's when it hit me, I WAS going crazy staying in all day. I was beginning to fidget from not getting something done, from not going out.

However, being of a contemplative bent, I realized this wasn't good at all. We had made the decision at the beginning of the day to stay inside, and I knew Liz was looking forward to having me home all day. We were having fun watching movies, reading our books, and playing with Alan. So why was I itching to get outside? Where did I really have to go that was so important?

Several times on this blog I have mentioned how important it is to work. I've talked about the necessity of doing the daily duties out of love for God, and about the importance of focusing on the details in work. However, on Saturday I was confronted with the fact that work can also be a temptation - the temptation to constantly accomplish something so as to feel good about yourself. Instead of taking a day of rest with my family, I wanted to get something done simply so that I could say that I did. I was faced with the choice between work and leisure, and my impulse was moving me towards work.

Work, though, means nothing without leisure. Joseph Pieper talks about how leisure and work have gotten totally confused in today's world. Many people view leisure as a time to "reenergize" so that they can work more. Work has become the end of life, the purpose for existing for many people. All human beings suffer from this temptation to one degree or another. However, it is not work that is our end, but rest, leisure. We should be working so that we might have leisure. Without leisure, work becomes a sort of slavery that drives us day in and day out, even when we don't really want it to. What truly constitutes leisure is, of course, of the utmost importance, and our current culture often gets it wrong. It's a rich concept, one that involves the praise of God through the experience of the goodness of His creation. However, my primary topic of this blog post is not what constitutes leisure, but the fact that work is subservient to leisure.

So, on Saturday, after Liz asked "Are you going to go crazy staying in all day?" I finally responded, "No, honey, I'm not going anywhere." Thus, I spent the rest of the day reading the Brothers Karamazov, practicing banjo, and talking with my wife. As I lay down to sleep that night, I realized that my day had been far more fruitful staying in than it would have been had I gone out. Instead of going crazy, I had indeed become more sane. My priorities had been refocused, and I had gained a greater appreciation for the good things in my life. While we human beings can't give up work totally, it is good from time to time to step back and give up work, especially on a snow day.