There are many things in my life that are routine. I wake up sometime between 5:30am and 6am to pray and have a coffee. I get ready for work. I kiss my wife and my two daughters before I head out the door. I will attend morning mass at my parish and then tackle my ministry related “to do list.” When I get home in the afternoon I usually play with my daughters or prepare dinner. Then we go for a walk as a family and upon returning home we proceed with our bedtime routine with the girls. This is a general snapshot of an average day in my life.
Photo by Josh Applegate on Unsplash
I got to be real with you. My mind isn’t always focused on the activities at hand out of the ones I mentioned above. Some mornings, my mind is on something important I have to finish at work, so I passively and quickly kiss my wife and girls and quickly shoot an impassionate “I love you” at them. Sometimes when I am playing with my daughters in the evening my mind is on a YoutTube video I’m looking forward to watching after they go to bed.
Early this morning I was sitting with my morning coffee in the silence of our home gazing out at the sun creeping over the horizon. A cliché question popped into my mind as I was listening in prayer. If I knew that I had a short time left to live, but I still had to do the routine things in my life, how would I approach them?
The word “intentional” popped into my mind. To spare you the boredom of reading through my intellectual gymnastics as I processed my thoughts, in short I resolved to focus on the task/activity at hand and nothing more. FULL immersion in all the moments I mentioned above.
Checklist Catholicism
Like the everyday routine moments in our lives, Catholics (including myself) risk the danger of reducing their faith to a list of routine tasks void of significance.
To be clear, I am not saying all routine is bad. Routine requires discipline, which is a great virtue. And discipline propels us to do the right thing even when we don’t feel like it. But there are of course negative side effects.
Routines such as saying grace before meals, saying daily prayers, going to Sunday mass, and contributing to charity can easily become void of meaning if we are not intentional about living a Christian life.
Intentional Mass Attendance Will Change Everything
Perhaps the number one item in the Catholic life that can become routine is the Sunday mass. Mass consists of a set songs, readings, responses and prayers that some will criticize as boring or void of purpose. And yet the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to the Eucharist (Mass) as the “source and summit of the Christian life” (paragraph 1324).
Do you approach the mass as if that’s true? If not, you don’t deserve all the blame because sometimes our priests and those with teaching authority in the Church don’t behave as if it’s true. I often ask myself why I had to study theology, philosophy, and read countless books (which I enjoyed doing) to see the significance of the mass. Even when I wasn’t Catholic I would on occasion attend mass and the priest would dispassionately rush through the lectionary (the big red book that the mass prayers are written in) and give a generic homily.
Until one day I met a priest name Fr. Michael Basque. Fr. Michael is a man intellect, integrity, humility, and love for the Church and everyone he encounters. When he spoke the prayers at mass he spoke with conviction and purpose. He was actually in a dialogue with God (which is what prayer is) and his homilies challenged me to be open to constant conversion.
Ongoing Conversion is a Must
They key to living an intentional Christian life is to be open to ongoing conversion; to be intentionally present at mass. Read the Bible readings before getting to mass and listen intently to the prayers and respond to the prayers with conviction. Resolve to say to God, that for this hour “I am totally yours.” Then treat the Eucharist for what it really is. Christ’s divine body and blood made present in the simplicity of the host and wine. When we get back to our seat after receiving Communion we should be on our knees loving on God with all our heart, mind, and soul (cf. Matthew 22:37) thanking Him for what we just received.
We can’t allow ourselves to become complaisant like the Israelites in the wilderness after being freed from slavery. The Israelite got so comfortable with their former life of slavery that they would have rather gone back than allow God to transform their lives in freedom. The Israelites complained to Moses and Aaron “If only we have died by the hands of the Lord in Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread” (Exodus 16:3). They would have rather stayed in filth and mediocrity than have their lives changed. They were ready to choose mediocrity as opposed to intentionality.
To live an intentional Christian life is to live a life of ongoing conversion into a more authentic and deeper relationship with Jesus. St. Paul writes to the Ephesians: “You were taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to clothe yourselves with the New Man, creating according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24). We have to make this effort daily. Every day when we step out of bed we have to commit to get one step closer to Jesus.
The Christian life is not a “to do list” that we check off items as we complete them. Anyone can do the Christian thing, but it takes special intentionality to live it.
Peace in Christ,
Greg
