Category: God and Society (Page 6 of 10)
By Insight Not by Sight
Perception is not always reality. In other words, our eyes can sometimes deceive us.
In his second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul famously writes, “For we live by faith and not by sight” (5:7). Is Paul telling us that we should just put on blind folds and blindly walk through life hoping that everything will turn out fine? Not at all! At the time of Paul’s writing Corinth was a wealthy metropolitan port with several “shiny” distractions that were not too different from major metropolitan hubs today, like my own Toronto.
Photo by Yeshi Kangrang on Unsplash
Emerging from the subway steps onto Dundas Square in the heart of downtown Toronto we are immediately bombarded with shiny colourful advertisements, loud music, and several restaurants, cafes, and outlet stores swarming with people. All these distractions can easily lead us to miss a reality that exists under the surface.
Homeless men and women begging for food and money, drug addicts, the garbage in alleyways, police attentively scanning the area for any possible crime and those things that are even hidden from all our of our senses, like the inner brokenness or happiness of the people who fall into our sight. These are all things that lie under the surface of regular sight.
There have been a few people on mind lately for various reasons. An Amazon delivery man who recently delivered a package to us. This gentleman patiently waited at our front door until I was able to open it. Most amazon delivery persons drop the package and book it. He kindly greeted me as “sir” (even though he was at least twice my age) and with a warming personality wished me good night. Two of my admittedly favourite people to speak are two of my wife’s friends from her days in university. Warm hearted, compassionate, and loving are the first three ways I can describe them. One my good friends, who has a great sense of humour, is classy, and just a joy to hang out with. My sister is hard working, always puts her whole being into tasks and is a loving aunt of whom my daughters can’t get enough of. Finally, last year, at an interfaith event I spoke at I had a brief discussion with a young woman who had two toddlers who were about the same ages as my daughters. We shared a few laughs about the similarities of our experiences.
Besides being exceptional human beings they all share something else in common. They all have different belief systems then myself. The Amazon delivery gentlemen, one of my wife’s friends, and the young woman with toddlers are Muslim. My wife’s other friend is Hindu. My close friend and sister are agnostic, based on previous conversations we’ve had about religion. Oh by the way, I respectfully disagree with their belief system and I love asking them critical questions.
Wait a minute…. So I am delighted to be around these human beings, I respect and even love some of them, but I am critical of what they believe? For some, the idea of caring for individuals, disagreeing with them and potentially offending them is oxymoronic, even if the criticisms are regarding matters of facts. It is in this “oxymoronic” mode of thought that I witnessed the closing of the Canadian mind this past weekend.
Attached to the church I work at is a residence for seniors and for individuals with disabilities called “The Lodge.” In the Lodge lives an elderly lady named Rose. Rose is one of a kind person. Once you meet her it’s impossible to forget her. On weekends before and after the masses she can be seen greeting people as they enter the church, guiding people to empty seats, and making sure people with disabilities get accessible seating. After the masses she can be seen handing out cookies to young children. If you’re a new face at St. Luke’s on a Sunday, Rose will find you and get to know you. You can’t miss her. She loves speaking to new faces and sharing exciting parts of her life and about her memories at St. Luke’s in her heavy South African accent.
During the weekdays, early in the morning (and I mean really early, like 5am-6am) she can be found cleaning up the sanctuary. She will organise the hymnals and straighten up the donation envelopes. Some have lovingly given her the nickname “The Church Mouse.”
If you have a chance to meet Rose, immediately you will notice that she speaks with confidence, has a positive attitude, shows genuine interest in your life, is overflowing with joy, and loves to share stories. …Oh before I forget, she is her 90s, she lives on her own, her children and grandchildren live out of the country, and her husband has been suffering with dementia for over a decade in a nursing home. Despite all this she is full of life. What the heck?!
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.
Discipleship and The Privatization of Religion
A Reflection on Mark 1:14-20.
Some time ago I was reading the late Christopher Hitchens’ book “God is Not Great.” If you are familiar with Christopher Hitchens you will know that he is one of the leading figures in the “New Atheist” movement of the 21st Century. In his book one of the claims he makes against belief in God is that God always seems to reveal himself to the uneducated, vulnerable, and the poor, who, in his judgment are more naive and gullible. If God is real why is he so afraid to reveal himself to those who are well educated, hold prominent societal positions, or might pose tough questions towards him? So the assumptions ago.
Is this a valid question?
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If I were to ask you if you consider yourself to a holy person, how would you respond?
I think it’s safe to say that most of us would hesitate labeling ourselves as holy because over time “holiness” has come to be associated with images of hypocrisy in the Church.
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Desire Jesus
Holiness is the desire to be like Jesus. Holiness is less of a state of being and more of a disposition of the heart. Do you desire to be more like Jesus? If the answer is “yes”, then you are holy. If holiness was dependent upon perfection, then no one would be holy.. Pope Francis refers to the Church as a “hospital for sinners.” If everyone had the capacity to be perfect there would be no need for a church and we would still be living in the Garden of Eden. It is possible to be holy and yet still find ourselves being hypocritical. In fact every time we sin, whether it’s visually apparent to others or not, we are being hypocrites. If you’re a hypocrite then you’re in the right place. Jesus established the Church for you and for me.