Bringing Clarity to Uncertainty in Our Church

Tag: Christianity (Page 1 of 3)

Daily Reflection and Prayer – March 23, 2020

When my grandfather was a young man in the 1950s he was in peek athletic shape, but it’s something he took for granted.

When he turned 18 he joined the Romanian Soviet military, like many men during that time. During his time his time in the military he picked up smoking cigarettes. He didn’t think much of it; it’s something he just did since all his buddies were doing it.

During the time my grandfather was in the military, he met my grandmother. After about a year of dating, they got married and shortly after had my mother.

As my mom was growing my grandfather dedicated countless hours to teaching her how to skate, swim and do gymnastics. He also enjoyed hiking in the dense forests just outside of their town.

Throughout all this, my grandfather continued to smoke without giving it any thought. After all, smoking was just the norm. Every man did it. Until one day, he was swimming with my mom in a pool and realised he could no longer swim its length. He was completely out of breath before even reaching the halfway point of the pool.

Concerned, he went to the doctor and had his chest x-rayed. The x-ray revealed black soot covering the inside of his lungs.

This image was a wake up call for my grandfather. There was nothing he valued more than his health and time with my mom. My grandfather realised that if he didn’t stop smoking he will loose the things he values most. Since that day in the doctor’s office, he has never touched another cigarette.

My grandfather is now 85, still rides his bike, goes for longs walks and is able to care for my grandmother.

It took an alarming “wakeup call” to shock my grandfather out of his complacency.

An Opportunity for Renewal

I’m of the belief that God can permit some evil (natural or moral) to shake us out of complacency. More importantly, I believe, that He can permit evil so that his power can become more evident.

One example of this is Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the grave.

As C.S. Lewis reflects on the early death his wife in his book “A Grief Observed”, he arrives at the following realization: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Keep in mind this is a written by a man, who not only lost his wife, but also lived through WWI and WWII.

A common theme in today’s mass readings is renewal in the midst of suffering.

Amidst this current crisis, what is Jesus trying to renew in your life? I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this pandemic has forced us into retreat during Lent.

The purpose of Lent is to deprive ourselves of worldly comforts so that we can come to recognize our dependence on God.

I don’t know about you, but I have certainly been deprived of a lot of things I take for granted. For one, financial certainty. To be frank, when I looked at my families investments in the past week I dropped more than an F-bomb. Another things I have often took for granted is going to a store whenever I want and the shelved being so full that I have trouble deciding between which brand of canned black beans to get for making burritos. Recently I didn’t have the choice of buying and brand of black beans; I had to settle for green beans, which I despise.

Of course this is trivial in the greater scheme of things, but it goes to show how comfortable life I have been living.

Takeaways

So to conclude, I’d like to share with you some things I have been forced to realize in the last week.

First, is the importance of family. Luckily, we are staying with our family in St. Catharines for the time being. I feel the temptation to binge on YouTube Videos, Amazon Prime Shows, or scroll through endless social media updates regarding the pandemic. With two little girls, that’s not an option.

So with our family’s schedule being completely blank, I have been playing with my girls in the backyard as they jump and roll around in muddy puddles (they’re Peppa Pig fans).

I also have been practicing being still, reflecting on daily mass readings and praying the rosary. In the face of so much uncertainty, I have no option, but to lean on Jesus, if I don’t want to be overburdened by anxiety.

These two things I am grateful for.

Prayer

Almighty and powerful God. Help us to lean on you and trust that from this pandemic a renewed world will emerge. We pray for the ill and frontline healthcare workers, including my mom (who’s a nurse), that they received the wisdom, strength and peace to overcome this virus. We pray all this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

 

Loving God All Our Heart When We Can’t See Him…?

 

Looking to outsmart Jesus a scribe asks, “Which is the first of all commandments?” Jesus responds: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” Jesus continues: “The second is this: You shall your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Isn’t it strange that the scribe asked Jesus for one commandment, yet Jesus answers with two commandments? Did Jesus not hear correctly? Did Mark make a grammatical mistake? I don’t think so.

Keep in mind that the gospel writers did not have Microsoft Word where they can start writing without much thought and not have to worry about using up paper. Papyrus went for a premium in the ancient Near East, so those who were able to afford it used it with intention. So why did Jesus respond with two commandments instead of one?

#LoveIsLove….?

I think the answer is quite clear; you can’t have one without the other. Skeptics or atheists may respond by saying that they don’t believe in God, much less love him, yet they are capable of loving their neighbour. I agree, you don’t need to love God to love your neighbour. As a Catholic Christian I believe that every human person is created in the image of God. Since God is love (see 1 John) he can only create out of love; therefore, it follows that humans are created from love to love (though sin distorts authentic love).

Yet when I was an atheist I found it difficult to find an objective source for what we call love. Is love merely a feeling associated with survival that is the result of an evolutionary process. Do we love in order to survive. We know that’s not always true. Many people throughout history loved to the point of suffering and even death.

In our relativistic society some believe that love is subjective, evidenced by popular phrases as #LoveIsLove. This is an incoherent phrase because if anyone can define love to be whatever they wish. Love is…euthanizing one’s neighbour; Love is…aborting one’s neighbour; Love is…a cozy feeling towards my cat. Love can quickly be twisted into something unrecognizable if the source of love is not affirmed in our lives.

Everyone appears to have a sense of love, yet no one can point to one love that is perfect – a love that is not lacking. Yet, we all have a sense of perfect love – the sense that things can always be better. The source of this perfect love, I believe, is God, whose very essence is love.

Tapping into the Right Source

So if we acknowledge God as perfect love and ground ourselves in Him we tap into the source of authentic love and we can learn to see our neighbours a little bit more like God sees them.
We all know the saying, “You are what you eat.” I believe we also are what worship. Does this mean if we worship God we can become gods ourselves? Of course not. We can no more become a god anymore than we can become the salad we had for dinner. Like food that can effect our physical health, our object of worship affects our spiritual health, which in turn affects how we treat others around us.

The process of learning to see things as God sees them is called “theosis.” When we love God with all our heart, mind and soul it becomes impossible to not see the inherent dignity of other people, independent of their social status, personal struggles or utility.

Getting to Know Perfect Love

So if we want to love our neighbour to our fullest potential then we must tap into perfect love first. Tap into God.

Luckily, we as Christians believe that God became human in the person of Jesus Christ, so knowing God and loving him becomes a little easier. St. Paul writes that Jesus has become “the visible image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15). God is no longer an abstract concept or entity, but a person, so it can become a little easier to love him.

I can only speak for myself, but there is a major difference in how I see the people closest to me and even those who I may not like that much since becoming a Christian. Knowing Jesus allows me to know others as Jesus knows them. That changes everything.

The Closing of the Canadian Mind: Selective Open Mindedness and Learning to Take Offence

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.

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Why Some Catholics Miss Out on the Christian Life

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.

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