Category: accepting the truth

The Lord is Not Slow

The Lord is Not Slow

Propped up on my desk, challenging me to deny the truth of it, is a square of cardstock with the quote, “The Lord is not slow about his promise.” (2 Peter 3:9) And in between lectures and classes, I go back to my desk, sit down, and re-read the quote, wondering what it means or how it can be true. Just the other day, I was perusing Instagram and came across a post with a quote from C.S. Lewis saying, “I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait.” And, on a more secular note, today I watched a recent clip from a late night show interview where a comedian spoke of the years of waiting to make it big and yet recognizing that if he had become successful earlier, he would have been less prepared to handle the current pressure.

Waiting.

Probably every other post I write deals in some way with the reality of waiting. When encountering the waiting others experience, I think I’m pretty quick to offer some “wise words” or to console them that the waiting is not in vain. Yet it is hard to carry these words in my heart and in my life, to choose to be patient and docile when it feels like the waiting is fruitless.

Recently, I assisted with prayer teams at an event and I found myself saying things like, “Don’t be too rushed to figure out your vocation, God will reveal it in time” and “God won’t forget about you–you aren’t falling behind” and “The Lord has a great plan for you and He won’t forget about you.” These are all things I believe to be true and yet part of the way through the evening, I found myself questioning how I could be so certain about it for others while being so doubtful for myself.

If I believe God has a great plan for this person I barely know, why is it so hard to believe that He has a great plan for me? If I believe God won’t abandon or forget about this person before me, why do I have the nagging concern that He might forget about me?

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The Light Doesn’t Lie

The Light Doesn’t Lie

The light shines through my dining room windows and reminds me that I have a consistent layer of dust coating the glass. That same light, however, shimmers through the young spring leaves on the tree and causes cheery shadows to flutter on the deck. It is an equal opportunity gaze, this light, and casts beautiful beams through one thing while highlighting the imperfections of another. It basks the flowers on the table in an ethereal brilliance and then reminds me to change the furnace filter as I see a haze of dust lingering in the air.

…for He makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

Matthew 5:45 RSVCE

The light of Christ does the same thing as it covers the earth. It reveals deeper beauty than we saw before and yet unearths deeper ugliness than we knew before. This is true for the world, the community, and our own hearts. When we step out of our artificially coordinated world and into the unwavering light of the day, we don’t become worse. Instead, we are seen for who we truly are. The light doesn’t lie, but the truth can be equally unnerving.

Often, those rays of light slice through the walls and resistance and point to something I had overlooked or forgotten or hoped I had masked well enough. It strips back the covering and points, unswervingly, at the reality of what is. Like Adam and Eve, we want to sew together anything at hand that would do the trick of providing some coverage, some semblance of disguise. It can be intensely uncomfortable to step even further into the light, to welcome the piercing rays and drop to the ground whatever excuses might be nearby.

A confessional attitude means that one does not hide oneself, does not avoid God’s gaze, but rather exposes oneself to him voluntarily out of love. One lets oneself be seen and exposed….After the Fall, man no longer wanted to stand naked before God. He could not tolerate being illuminated by God’s bright light. A confessional attitude means, not that one actively shows to God everything one has done, but that one places oneself without defenses before his penetrating gaze.

The Holy Spirit, Fire of Divine Love, Fr. Wilfrid Stinissen, OCD

The joy of the Resurrection demands something of us, something beyond a delightful entry into feasting and boisterous alleluias! It requires that we enter into the light of the Risen Lord and be willing to stand in that gaze. The Lord’s gaze is always one of love. Yet it is a love that does not overlook the damnable parts but desires particularly to save those very parts.

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Birth and Death and Rebirth

Birth and Death and Rebirth

In March, before COVID became a full-blown pandemic, I ordered four icons from an Orthodox icon shop I’ve used in the past. They were able to ship two of the icons before needing to close their shop due to state restrictions and for the health of their employees. The other two would be shipped at a later date, as they were able to re-open and continue production of the icons.

When I got an email a few weeks ago, it said the icons were shipping and would arrive the middle of the next week. The situation was humorous since I had been home for weeks on end and during the one week of the summer I was away, the long-awaited icons were delivered to my doorstep, where they waited for my arrival a few days later. Of course, I exclaimed, to anyone who would listen to me, of course the icons arrive when I cannot be there to get the package.

A couple of days later, I learned of the death of a dear friend of the family. There are dozens of memories of my childhood and young adult life that I can return to and find this man filling the scene with his lively personality. He and his wife were friends of my parents. They were present for important sacraments and were the babysitters for my younger sister and me on occasion. Later, they were my bosses as I worked for them during the late-summer and fall. So many reflections on their frequent presence in my life and the unique role they had in relation to my family. Over the next few days, my family and I reminisced over the eccentricities and humor of our beloved friend.

When I returned home a few days later, I retrieved the package on my doorstep, grateful that it wasn’t damaged by rain or heat. I opened up my package and saw the two delayed icons.


The Raising of Lazarus from the dead


“Epitaphios”–an image of the body of Christ used in Orthodox and Byzantine liturgies at the end of Holy Week

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A Strength To Find Rest In

A Strength To Find Rest In

It was a late meal and before too long, my niece was soon battling sleep. Eventually, it overtook her and she laid with her head on the restaurant table while everyone else chatted and finished their meal. Then, my brother picked her up and carried her to the vehicle to go home. I don’t know if she slept through the entire trip home or if she simply acted like it, exhaustion keeping her calm and still.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t until the next day that I found myself pondering that scene. The similarities made me think of how my parents would often carry me from the car into the house after a drive home from somewhere. At times, I was really in a deep sleep and other times I just wanted to act like it. I would be partially awake as I heard the vehicle turn off, but I wanted to be effortlessly transported into the house. Once I reached a certain age, my parents would wake me up and I would need to enter the house on my own two feet.

What was so nice about being carried? Perhaps it was the sense of being cradled tenderly or the chance to be lovingly provided for even as reaching ages of independence. I’m sure sometimes it was just laziness, but it was probably most often the joy of resting in the strength of another. At six or seven, I wouldn’t have phrased it that way, of course. Yet if I look at the desires of the human heart, I am certain that was a central focus.

As an adult, we have to re-learn the art of resting in the strength of another. We often don’t want to be carried, physically or emotionally. The ease that comes with being carried in childhood often vanishes as we become adults. The sense of being carried starts to feel awkward and uncomfortable, like how it would feel if someone picked us up and carried us over their shoulder like happened when we were kids. We need to find anew the gift of resting in the Lord’s strength.

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A Scandalous Mercy

A Scandalous Mercy

“If Hitler repented before he died, after all he had done, would he be able to go to Heaven?”

You know, just some light, casual conversations on a Friday afternoon.

“Yes, if he repented….You don’t like that answer, do you?”
“No, I think he should be in Hell.”

“Let me ask you a question,” I said, knowing that sometimes asking questions is the only way to escort them to the doorstep of truth. “Where do you draw the line? How many people can someone kill or order killed and get to Heaven?”

“Ummm….none.”
“So nobody who has ever killed anyone could have a conversion and go to Heaven?”
“No.”
“Are there any other sins that you think God should be unable to forgive?”
“No.”
“But do you see the problem with choosing what is too much for God to forgive?” And he did, but he still wasn’t convinced that God should forgive Hitler if he repented.

This interaction prompted a much longer conversation than I expected. Our starting point was the Gospel for this upcoming Sunday and it bothered some that the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the wandering son were all received with joy and the ones that remained weren’t so celebrated. The father in Luke’s Gospel extending abundant mercy to the younger son was troublesome and annoying to them. Why does the one who wanders get a party and the one who stays gets nothing?

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Eyeliner and Reality

Eyeliner and Reality

I was expecting a lot of things for my retreat, but I wasn’t expecting that not wearing eyeliner would be one of them.

By most standards, I don’t wear much makeup. Despite the fact that my mother has sold it for my entire life, I don’t like even really talking about it or experimenting with it or purchasing it. I utilize it, but I don’t really care about it. On retreat, I eliminated it from my morning routine for a few practical reasons: I wasn’t going “out” anywhere and it seemed it would only look worse when I would inevitably cry as the Lord worked through different matters within me.

The second or third day of not wearing eyeliner, I found myself looking in the mirror, slightly bewildered. That is what my eyes actually look like? My fair complexion and light hair is exactly why someone created eyeliner and mascara. Without it, my eyes aren’t as emphasized and everything looks a little paler.

Since I was on a silent retreat, I leaned into the discomfort rather than away from it. It wasn’t about vanity so much. I would look in the mirror and I would remind myself: these are your eyes. This is what they actually look like. And as the days passed, they seemed more mine. It stopped seeming like I was missing something that ought to be there, but rather that I was seeing reality. When I left retreat, I found that I wanted to keep seeing those eyes that are really mine and in the way they actually are.

(Stick with me, guys, I promise this is not an entire post about makeup!)

I’m not swearing off eyeliner: it does what it is supposed to do–it makes my eyes stand out. But I realized on retreat that I never want to forget what my eyes actually look like. It was a perfect physical takeaway from the tremendous interior work that the Lord was doing during that time of silence. The entire retreat was one of re-crafting my eyes to see me how the Lord actually sees me.

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Basic, but Beautiful

Basic, but Beautiful

I have a feeling that for the rest of my life when I return from a retreat, I will only be able to speak of graces and revelations that are profound in their magnitude but elementary in their complexity. This doesn’t bother me, but it was a bit surprising when I came to this conclusion a few years ago. While I’m not saying the Lord can’t reveal anything new to me, I think the revelations will primarily be a deepened understanding and solidifying of truths I already know, albeit superficially.

This understanding came about when I returned from a beautiful retreat. It was enlightening and life giving. Yet the main take-away was nothing new: God loves me. In fact, it seemed laughably basic. Didn’t I already know God loved me? Yes, of course. But after that retreat, I knew it in a deeper, more significant way. I experienced the love of God and it left behind a smattering of old truths seen with new eyes.

Sometimes, the students insist we all keep teaching them the same things. Sometimes, it is true that unnecessary repetition happens. But, it is also true that learning something as a child is quite different than learning about it as a high schooler or an adult. They believe that since they have heard the words before, they know it. Knowledge, however, is something that can be known with the head yet not known with the heart. It is often important to repeat well-known truths because they haven’t journeyed yet from words the mind understands to a reality the heart lives from.

High school students are far from the only ones to do this. The familiar sometimes seems uninteresting when actually we just haven’t plumbed the depths of it yet.

Jesus loves me.
God became man.
The Lord is faithful.
Trust in the Lord.
Jesus rose from the dead.

All of these truths have been heard by Christians innumerable times. Yet how many of these truths have fully penetrated our hearts? How deep of an understanding of the Lord’s love do we actually have? Do we really know and experience the faithfulness of the Lord or do we simply parrot the words? We can stay on the surface with these realities or we can bore down deep and imprint these words on our hearts. Like the circles within a tree, each experience with a particular truth can be packed in deeper and deeper, each additional layer increasing the beauty and profundity of the simple reality.

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Particular Love

Particular Love

During “contemplative time” last week, I had my students reflect on the Resurrection account from John’s Gospel. Fresh from my own ponderings, we discussed the whole “John as the one whom Jesus loved” bit.

“Doesn’t Jesus love everyone?”

Yes, of course.

“Why does John even bring it up?”

I mentioned that perhaps it was because John had encountered the particularity of Christ’s love for him.

And they brought up something that is ingrained in us from our earliest years: the sense of things being equal or the same.

“Doesn’t Jesus love us all the same, though?”

No, He actually doesn’t. They seemed skeptical, perhaps because we automatically begin to assume that Jesus might love me less if He doesn’t love us all the same.

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Truth and the Balancing Act of Teaching

I hesitate to say this too soon.  Mostly because I have one class period left and that could very well be the class where it all falls apart.  But so far, so good.

Today we spoke of truth.  Specifically objective and subjective truths.  My first year, I naively threw around bold statements like, “The Church is the fullness of truth” and the thing was, I didn’t know they were bold claims.  I was simply saying what I believed and had been taught.  How that translated in the minds of some of my students was that I hate every other religion and think they are stupid.  Or something to that effect.

It is a delicate balance, this teaching high school students thing.  I do not want to tip-toe around and offer the truth with an implied, “I’m sorry that I believe this, but here it is” attached to it.  However, my students aren’t quite ready for the fullness of truth.  There is something to be said about trying to put them in the best possible frame of mind when presenting the teaching of the Church.  Sometimes I come on with too much and sometimes I am a coward by choosing to say too little.  It is an art and I’m not very artistic.

Last class period, I think it went pretty well.  I didn’t want to argue with pitting specific religions against each other.  Instead, I chose the logic route.  Logically speaking, can all of the world religions all be completely correct in their teachings?  Some teach there are several gods, some teach one god, and others profess no god.  Can they all be correct?  Logically, the answer must be no.  I used this to apply it to the different religions.  Is it intolerant to say that not all of the world religions can all be correct?  You can argue that no religion is entirely correct, but you cannot argue that they are all completely true.  I then encouraged them to seek the truth.  Obviously they know what I believe to be true.

My hope is that I intrigued them and challenged them to evaluate their beliefs.  I want them to be grounded and I want them to actually believe what they profess to believe.  If they will honestly pursue the truth, I am convinced that they will find it.  That they will find Him.

Rule #1: Be Controversial

Sometimes when I really think about the “controversial” issues of today, I am completely baffled by the fact that they are controversial.  Society has made these issues into emotional issues and situations that prevent one from really looking at the truth objectively.  I find it interesting that my high school students have been almost more instrumental in my grasping the extent of society’s depravity than the past eight years of college and high school.  My students are not depraved but they give me a window into the mind of society.  And I find it to be quite frightening.  I am realizing, as I told a friend a week ago, that I wasn’t the typical high schooler.  As I speak to my students I waver between feeling as though we are in the same generation and then thinking that we are in completely different generations.  But, to be honest, I often feel that I am in the wrong era altogether and that I would have fit rather nicely into the 1800s. 

My viewpoint into the culture made me slightly frantic this week.  If my students, who attend a Catholic high school in a rather conservative state with typically traditional values, seem this affected by the culture, I was quick to bemoan the fate of the entire world.  Especially after listening to their defense of their opinions, I was convinced that we, as a society, do not understand truth.  My students aren’t stupid and they don’t seem to hold beliefs that they think are radical.  There is also an interesting mixture within most of them, they don’t exactly buy the Church’s teaching on human sexuality (for example) but they appear open to know more about it.  This doesn’t mean they come off as accepting of it, rather they appear to be skeptical of anything the Church says that doesn’t mesh with society.  Yet many of them are hesitant to say they flat out disagree with the Church’s teaching.  These opinions provide an interesting blend of hope and despair for me.  I have come again and again to the realization that I do not know how to accurately convey my beliefs or the Church’s teaching to them.  I accept what the Church teaches but I cannot properly show them how this should impact their beliefs.  Multiple times this past week I have felt acutely the limitations of my abilities and knowledge.

What do you do with a society that makes truth seem bigoted and intolerant?  How do you present a truth that is immediately labeled as hate speech or offensive?  The truth is remarkably offensive.  Don’t believe me?  Take a quick look at the videos below. 

The original TV clip
His defense of “hate speech”
The Media Portrayal

Why does this continue to surprise me?  Perhaps because our culture is very good at pinning “radical” and “extreme” to things that are simply not in line with the secular media.  If you say things often enough and loud enough, people will begin to think that they are true.  So when you begin to speak the Truth, be it ever so softly and charitably, it comes off as cruel and unjust. 

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you!  How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!  Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate.” –Mt. 23: 37-38

It lead me to wonder how one could possibly win.  Not because I am making the transformation of a culture into a competition, but because it seems that the odds are so against the truth.  Even the fact that when the Church teaches the truth it doesn’t make any head-way in many modern minds, points to a culture so “open-minded” that it is closed off to truth.  Modern progress seems to be running full speed away from everything good, true, and beautiful.  And the issues that seem to be the most fundamental–marriage, families, life, and the human person–are the most attacked now. 

“It is true that I am of an older fashion; much that I love has been destroyed or sent into exile.” -G.K. Chesterton

Perhaps I should have been more encouraging when one of my students asked what we should do when the whole of society seems to be opposed to what the Church is teaching.  I told him that we need to be prepared to be martyrs for the truth.  That we will be at least verbally mocked and crucified is seeming to be a closer and closer reality.  It is not something that will take place when I am old and gray but is gradually sweeping society right now.  The hope in this is that Our Lord knows all of this.  And the times of greatest persecution and evil are the very times when He raises up the greatest of saints.  They give hope and inspiration that standing with the truth is something that is only fully rewarded in Heaven.  As for now, we are the Church militant, battling anything contrary to that which is true.  Not just “true” by our standards, but is actually and objectively Truth.

“Strive even to death for truth and the Lord God will fight for you.” –Sirach 4:28

This causes me to think of the book of Daniel with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Like them, we should refuse to serve the gods that society worships and refuse to conform our lives to the tune that is being played.  Instead, even in the midst of the flames of persecution we should bless the Lord.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures for ever.”