Today

Today was a good day.

I slept in later than I should have and rushed to get ready in time. Rushing around, I didn’t eat breakfast and threw a bagel in my lunch bag. Preparing to submit my grades during my lunch time, I completely forgot to eat my lunch/bagel. A student asked me why we don’t have a class that covers all of the bad things Catholics have done in the past. And my supervisor mentioned (in a kind way) that I never date. (I had noticed.)

But today was still a good day.

I met this morning with lovely young ladies and we talked about preparing ourselves for the relationships for which we all long. I had multiple times today where I would realize, “Hey, I’m doing this teaching thing!” A couple moments with my seniors resulted in laughter, partly because I am less defensive than I’ve been in previous years and I was able to take things in stride with a smile. Today, I laughed: when a student flipped his pencil to the ceiling (and looked like he surprised himself), when a student asked if I would take them all to walk the Camino (my answer: I don’t think we would all make it to the end alive), and with various friends during conversations. I had a cup of coffee in a mug decorated with pictures from a trip my sister and I took. During school, I prayed the Holy Sacrificed of the Mass. I made Thai food. I read more in my current book. I was able to talk about art and martyrdom today and feel passionate for the topics even if my students appeared less than excited to hear about them. One of my housemates shared her leftover cheesecake. And I can hear a couple of my housemates trying to figure out the suspenseful show they are watching.

Today was a good day. The Lord used the nothing that I had and He brought about something. It wasn’t perfect and it probably could have been better if I had given more of myself. Thank You, Jesus, for this day.

Pierced by Beauty

Nearly all of my students disagree with me, but you cannot convince me that beauty is not one of the most compelling arguments for God’s existence.

I understand, at least in part, the seeming flaws of the argument. They protest that beauty is subjective and that nobody would believe in God simply because someone says there is lovely music or they saw a sunset. Perhaps, perhaps most people would not listen to Bach and then profess belief in God. But, perhaps some would, perhaps some have.

When I was in middle school, I read the book A Memory for Wonders. It was by a French woman who was raised in Morocco because her parents, staunch atheists and communists, didn’t want anyone to speak to her about God, filling her mind with such superstitions. Despite her parents’ best intentions, her initial experience of God took place when she was three years old.

“Suddenly the sky over me and in some way around me, as I was on a small hillock, was all afire. The glory of the sunset was perhaps reflected in the myriads of particles of powdery sand still floating in the air. It was like an immense, feathery flame all scarlet, from one pole to the other, with touches of crimson and, on one side, of deep purple. I was caught in limitless beauty and radiant, singing splendor. And at the same time, with a cry of wonder in my heart, I knew that all of this beauty was created, I knew God. This was the word that my parents had hidden from me. I had nothing to name him: God, Dieu, Allah or Yahweh, as he is named by human lips, but my heart knew that all was from him and him alone and that he was such that I could address him and enter into relationship with him through prayer. I made my first act of adoration.” A Memory for Wonders, Mother Mary Francis, p. 30

My parents spoke freely to me of God while I was growing up. So this experience of seeing the beauty of a sunset and being unable to name the author of it, isn’t something I can share. Yet I can share, in part, the feeling of piercing beauty at different sights and sounds.

It was during a semester studying abroad that the power of beauty become real to me. Surrounded by history and architecture unlike any in the United States, I was continually amazed at what I saw. In Switzerland, my heart ached as I walked around a lake and soaked in the beauty of mountains. I was nearly in tears as I surveyed God’s handiwork, and I kept thinking, “No atheist can live in Switzerland. How could you deny God in the midst of such splendor?”

I climbed a radio tower on a mountain in Austria and watched the sun rise. As the light spread across the mountains, I felt fully alive. My heart was in awe at the magnificence, at a beauty that did not need to be there even if the sun was necessary for our survival. The glory of a sunrise is entirely “extra.”

My awareness of the power of beauty began during my European adventure, but it has continued ever since. Probably three times this week I have been near tears as I watched the sun rise or set. My heart cannot stop itself from aching and expanding, my mouth uttering the briefest of prayers, “Lord!” Beauty is not always warm and delightful. Sometimes it aches: it is a blade, a spearing of the heart, a breaking into my world, and an unearthing of the hidden wellspring within.

For most, beauty may never transform their hearts of disbelieving atheism into ones of faith. Yet for me, beauty is one of the most potent reminders of God’s presence. It is a sunrise offered to millions and I look at it, bold colors covering the expanse of the prairie skies, and I think, “For me, Lord?” For a little girl in Morocco decades ago, it was a sunset that started a relationship with the living God, one that grew into her conversion to Catholicism and her entrance into a religious community.

A heart that is able to see beauty is one that is more fully alive. Beauty opens us up to an experience of something outside of ourselves. It places us in a feeling of smallness at such majesty and yet a feeling of greatness to glimpse such sights. You must be open to such beauty, however, to be transformed by it.

So, perhaps my students are right. Beauty will never force people to believe in God. It cannot overcome your free will. But beauty, if you are open to it, can seize your heart, providing the ineffable conviction that the Creator of all this splendor must be worth seeking, following, and loving.

Encounter

“You’ll enjoy it. You’ve been excited for this talk since you heard about it. You don’t go out much…you really should go out tonight.”

This wasn’t me trying to convince a friend to go out. This was me trying to convince myself to go out last night for a theology talk at a bar. Shouldn’t be that hard of a sell except I have one little quirk: sometimes my introvert takes over. Going to bed early or spending the night at home reading or doing some needed homework sounded like lovely alternatives to going out to talk to people.

Introverts like social interactions (humans are social beings…and introverts are humans), but it doesn’t take much for me to prefer a quiet evening. Or at least just a few friends and not a potentially crowded room where I would engage in the ever-hated small talk. But I did it. I went. Initially, I was annoyed that I was an introvert and it took so much convince myself to go out. But, gradually, I forgot about it and enjoyed the evening.

When I got home, I listened to a voicemail from a friend and I had to laugh. She was telling me about how that evening she went out to a party with co-workers. For a couple days she had not been herself, but after an hour of talking to co-workers at a crowded bar, she left happier. We’re both introverts and so we get the lack of desire to do social things sometimes. But a question she posed in the voicemail resonated with me. She said, “Why, Trish, why would going and talking to my co-workers at a crowded bar change things/make me happier?” (I paraphrased it a bit, but that is the gist.)

My first thought was because we need community. On our own, we can become isolated and it can be a bit miserable to be lost inside your own head. But community brings us outside of ourselves. I was grinning as I listened to my friend ask this question because I had just experienced the fruit of being with people. It wasn’t that I was with my best friends or that it was the most fun I ever had. Rather, it was the experience of the encounter.

What is amusing to me is that the talk I attended focused around the fact that Christianity is not a set of rules but is an event, an encounter with a person. We are Christians not because we follow the Christian code of conduct (although Christ definitely asked us to live in a certain way and how we live does matter) but because we have encountered the person of Jesus Christ and have been changed because of it. This encounter with Jesus can happen through our encounter with other people. We experience the presence of God in a situation and it can seem magnificent, but it is acknowledging a truth that is constant: God is here with us. He is dwelling among us. We can find Him in one another, experiencing the same person of Jesus Christ even though He has the face of a stranger.

One of my Lenten goals/penances is to personally encounter my students more. It is so easy to have them come in, sit down, ask the class a general question about their weekend, and then launch into the subject at hand. And it is important to actually teach them something substantial. However, I have a desire to know my students. Small talk doesn’t come naturally to me, so I am making an effort to have a little conversation with different students. Today, I talked to one of my quieter students who seems to just be slipping by in the class. It isn’t that the grade is low, but the student seems to not have close friends or reach out to many people. So we talked briefly. She was one of the first ones in my classroom and we talked about her job that she was working at this weekend. In the midst of this conversation (neither very monumental nor very deep), I was struck by the encounter. It was something small, but it was something. She didn’t bare her soul to me, but she shared something about herself that I didn’t know before. We found something we had in common and we shared it with each other.

We are communal beings and in encountering each other, we can encounter Christ. That is why a trip to a noisy bar with co-workers can transform us from glum to joyful. It wasn’t where we went or even what we talked about or what we imbibed.

It was the encounter.

Maybe Mercy

What I really wanted to do was call the teenage girl out on her attitude. Yes, I should have prepared better for class by having the questions printed out for them instead of having them write them out. At this point, however, it was the end of the day and I didn’t feel like trying to convince my students why school required them to do schoolwork.

Instead of writing down the questions, this young lady was resistant. Her face was one of annoyance that she would have to write down questions.

“Do we have to write these all down?”
“Well, I think you would want to. You need to answer these questions over the movie we are going to watch and you won’t be able to see the questions when I pull the projector down.”
“So we don’t have to?”
“I guess not if you think you can remember all the questions and answers.”
“Cool. I’m not doing it then.”

I was frustrated that something so little was seen as such a heavy burden. She wasn’t the only one who was put out by this task. As the students wrote down the questions, they would take time to heave a sigh or breathe deeply.

“I hear your sighs.” I told them as I waited for them to finish copying the questions.

So while others were not enjoying the task at hand, this girl was the most vocal about it. She has her days. Some days she is bubbly and excited, calling me “girl” and sharing different stories. Other days she has a bit of an attitude and looks unimpressed by nearly everything. I was trying to decide how to handle her responses to me in the classroom. Should I take her aside? Should I give her a look? How should I respond?

In the midst of my frustration, I remembered a personal detail she had written on an assignment at the beginning of the semester. She wrote briefly of a family life difficulty and in that moment of her less-than-desired responses, I thought of it. And I prayed for her. I ask Our Lady to give me the patience to deal with this young girl who was struggling with things that I didn’t know or understand. In a moment of clarity, I recognized her responses as being, at least in part, the fruit of inner turmoil and pain. She was hurting and something she felt she had control over was complaining about a simple task in class.

I wish I could say that I have applied this merciful attitude toward all of my students all of the time. I haven’t. But it did make me stop and consider: why don’t I extend to those I meet the same mercy I would desire others to extend to me? Of course, we all need to grow in not letting our emotions overrun us. We strive to not take frustrations out on people who are completely removed from the situation. But I know I have been unkind many times and what has brought me out of that rut before has been people looking beyond my ugly words or actions and treating me with kindness.

This brief interaction made me want to extend mercy, without being a doormat for my students. Not everything in their responses is about my teaching or what they think of me. Perhaps they just had a difficult test or a fight the night before with their parents. It doesn’t make what they have said or done acceptable, but it can make them more real to me, people with hearts and problems, struggling to navigate the difficulties of life.

It was once again impressed upon me the need to pray. I do not enter the classroom alone to fight in a fierce battle against teenagers. Those would be rather bleak prospects. Rather I go to them (hopefully) as a missionary and I go armed with the best of warriors–the universal Church. Particularly during this year of mercy, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could encounter my students and everyone I meet as a missionary of mercy? How beautiful would it be if through an encounter with us, people could know that attribute of God in a deeper, fuller way?

George Bailey

I never really associated myself with George Bailey. “It’s a Wonderful Life” is a classic movie, but I’ve always viewed it as a movie, not something that seemed to speak into my own life. A couple days ago I re-watched it. Apparently, the wanderlust desire to see the world and do incredible things is more an aspect of the human condition rather than my generation. So I watched the classic film, shed some tears, and realized that the longing George Bailey had was fiercely beating within my own heart.

I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things. I’m gonna build airfields, I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…

As high school neared its end, I was never one of the students who couldn’t wait to get out of the small town. It just happened to be that I chose a school hundreds of miles away from home and was only able to come back for Christmas and summer breaks. When college was finished, I moved back home because moving far away for a job seemed strange to me. Now I’m in my fourth year of teaching high school and I live about thirty minutes from where I spent my childhood.

Young adult life is filled with many different experiences, but I keep coming back to a desire to pursue greatness, a desire that filled George Bailey his entire life. He wanted to see the world, to travel, to build structures that will last years, and to pursue adventure. Yet he ends up spending his life in Bedford Falls, a seemingly idyllic town that feels like a prison if one doesn’t want to spend the entirety of one’s life there.

Any place can feel like a prison, though, if one is constantly desiring to be elsewhere. The greatness found in the little and the simple can be overlooked so quickly. St. John Vianney would spend hour after hour in the confessional. Looking at his life from my vantage point, I can see how much fruit his life of simple faithfulness bore. Yet in that moment of waking up early to say Mass and then spend the whole day in the confessional, he might not have felt this aura of greatness surrounding himself. St. John Bosco rallied together the poor street children from Turin and taught them how to be men. In the daily grind of loving them in the midst of their flaws, he might not have recognized the monumental work he was doing.

And I teach. It isn’t much. My younger sister was watching “Freedom Writers” with me and she said each time she watched the movie, she thought of me as the teacher. I am laughably not like Mrs. Gruwell. I’m not taking on extra jobs to buy supplies for my students or going to bat for them against a racist administration or devoting all my time to helping them graduate from high school. There are many teachers who spend hours with their students after school as they guide them through problems (academic or otherwise) and leave this deep impression on their very beings as an adult who cared and sacrificed for them. I am not that teacher.

During finals, one of my students walked into my classroom with a card. She told me she was giving me this card because she was thankful that I would go over the study guides with her before tests. All I did was spend fifteen to twenty minutes after school with her the day before the test to review her answers and go over any questions she had. But the gesture she made was worth ten cards. Hidden within that quiet exchange, one done without any fanfare or balloons, was the greatness I am seeking.

Greatness is found in the simple, in the little. I’ve written about this before. I write about it again not to convince you, but to convince myself. As a teacher, affirmations are few and far between. Even if administration affirms your work, you want to hear it from those you spend day after day with. Students are unaware how powerful their words are about their teachers. I don’t need their support or affirmation, but I love it when I receive it. It means something is sinking in, something is being passed from my soul to theirs. I don’t have state standardized tests to rely on as a Theology teacher. I want to know if they know the Lord, rather than if they can ace my tests. That is when I know that I am successful.

George Bailey wanted a blazing kind of greatness, one that tears through towns and astounds people. What he finds instead is the greatness of enduring friendships, believing in the dreams of others, helping others pursue human dignity, and building a family that bands together. A greatness that his father pursued in that very town.

There is greatness in simplicity. There is simple greatness. There is unassuming greatness. Perhaps greatness is found not in doing wild things or going to exotic places but in doing what you do to the best of your ability. Maybe greatness is simply living your own life well, even if you remain unaware of the impact it makes on the lives of others.

Pa Bailey: I know it’s soon to talk about it.
George Bailey: Oh, now Pop, I couldn’t. I couldn’t face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office… Oh, I’m sorry Pop, I didn’t mean that, but this business of nickels and dimes and spending all your life trying to figure out how to save three cents on a length of pipe… I’d go crazy. I want to do something big and something important.
Pa Bailey: You know, George, I feel that in a small way we are doing something important. Satisfying a fundamental urge. It’s deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace, and we’re helping him get those things in our shabby little office.
George Bailey: I know, Dad. I wish I felt… But I’ve been hoarding pennies like a miser in order to… Most of my friends have already finished college. I just feel like if I don’t get away, I’d bust.
Pa Bailey: Yes… yes… You’re right son.
George Bailey: You see what I mean, don’t you, Pop?
Pa Bailey: This town is no place for any man unless he’s willing to crawl to Potter. You’ve got talent, son. I’ve seen it. You get yourself an education. Then get out of here.
George Bailey: Pop, you want a shock? I think you’re a great guy.

Why I Am a Catholic

For the last couple days of class for the semester (before preparation for finals), I decided to try something new. It was an idea I had a while ago, but it just seemed to work to implement it this year. The section is dubbed, “Why I Am a Catholic.” After weeks of (hopefully) learning Apologetics, I wanted to have them consider why they are Catholic. I challenged them to find something beautiful, compelling, or desirable within the Church, even if they struggle with different facets of the faith.

I listed off for them Peter Kreeft’s seven reasons why he is a Catholic. I read a line from G.K. Chesterton’s “Why I Am a Catholic” essay. Then, because I wanted this to be real for them, I told them my reason for being Catholic.

In all actuality, it cannot be boiled down to one reason that I am Catholic. Yet, for the sake of simplicity, I picked what was central to my faith and declared that it was the reason why I was Catholic. What I didn’t expect, though, was that I would nearly cry in every Apologetics class as I told my story.

Honestly, I was a little annoyed with myself. “Really, Trish, get it together! It isn’t as though you have never talked about this before.” I’m still a little confused, but I think the primary reason is that I was opening my heart to them.

I’ve shared with my students different experiences I’ve had, places I have traveled to, and stories I have heard. As a Theology teacher, I am daily speaking of persons and ideas that are very close to my heart. But to open my heart, to share part of “my story,” and to point to something so personal, in a classroom setting, is difficult.

I told them that I am Catholic because of the Eucharist. Yet I had to give a bit of a back story for why the Eucharist is so pivotal personally, not just theologically. So I had to go to the beginning of my faith hitting the pavement, nearly the beginning of a heart that aches yet keeps it all tucked away within.

Naturally, it was a story about my sisters.

My two older sisters, specifically. And my throat became scratchy and I prayed that Jesus would just let me get through these stories without crying. The feelings I was portraying aren’t ones I typically feel now, but ones that were jettisoned across time from nearly 12 years ago.

When I was in 8th grade, my older sister entered a Carmelite cloister. She was the one who seemed to know me. As an introverted melancholic, I’ve always ached to be known. While she was still my sister, our relationship was dramatically altered. I could pour out my heart to her in writing, but then I would need to wait months for any sort of response. I became angry and bitter, yet still had to present a happy exterior, because that was expected of one with a nun for a sister. When I was a junior in high school, my other older sister joined a different convent about twenty-four hours from home by car. The feelings of bitterness and anger were once again kindled.

I was teaching myself something that is untrue about God. Internally, I was learning that God will take from you that which you hold dearest. Whatever you don’t want to do, He will ask it of you. I was learning the sacrificial part of Catholicism without the love or joy that must accompany it.

As I’m telling my little stories, I am looking into their eyes. For once, the classroom is mostly silent and their eyes are on me. I’m wondering, as my insides quake a little and my hands shake, if they can see that I’m opening up part of my heart to them. I’m hoping that even though their story is different, that they are open to discovering the beauty of Catholicism, too.

So how do my sisters entering the convent make the Eucharist the reason I am Catholic? When my sister was entering the cloister, she turned around and said, “I’ll see you in the Eucharist.” Eighth grade me wasn’t impressed. That’s nice….but how about you see me on my birthday and at Christmas? How about you hold my children and are answering the phone when I want to talk? Despite the minimal impact it made initially, it eventually became a central point of my personal spirituality.

When we go to Mass and receive the Eucharist, we are receiving the Body of Christ. The Church is the Body of Christ. When I receive the Eucharist, I receive the entire universal Church, the Church inside and outside of space and time. As I missed my sisters, I would receive the Eucharist and know that this union that I tangibly experienced in Holy Communion was the deepest union I would have with them. It was comforting when I went off to college eighteen hours away and I missed my family. The Eucharist bound me to all my loved ones. Moving from college back home and being separated from beautiful friends, I found solace in the ties of the Eucharist, bonds that even death cannot break.

Why I am a Catholic cannot be simplified to only one reason for me. There are many factors and influences, but the central point is the Eucharist, God Himself.

“The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true.” -G.K. Chesterton

Holiness in the Mundane

Their faces are registering complete shock.

Personally, I’m a little taken aback that what I said is so surprising to them.

“How can homework make us holy?”
“Do you want to do homework?”
“Yes….er, no,” my student responds, wavering, it seems, between what he feels he should say and what is actually the truth. “No, I don’t.”
“So doing your homework would mean you are going against your own will and desire to do what you should do.”
“So we are supposed to stab ourselves in the arm?!”
“Doing your homework is a bit different than stabbing yourself in the arm. I’m not saying you need to intentionally inflict pain upon yourself so that you suffer. Simply accept the suffering that comes your way and offer it to God. Choosing to do your homework when you don’t want to means saying no to your own will and yes to God’s will. Right now you are to be a student. God isn’t requiring that everyone gets a 4.0 GPA, but He does want you to do the very best that you can.”

How often we fail to see the ordinary, inconvenient, monotonous tasks of the day as paths to sanctity! We want something extraordinary. Lord, give us some big task, some grandiose mission and we will fulfill it for You! Instead, we are given long lines at the grocery store, disobedient children, laundry, and snow shoveling. They don’t seem quick paths to holiness, but the Lord only entrusts big missions to those who are faithful in small matters.

If the cross my students carry is homework, my cross is found in grading their homework and tests. It is easy to push it aside, to think I have far better things to do. Yet, in a way that I don’t fully understand, my holiness can be brought about in grading the 63rd paper about the Shroud of Turin or test over the arguments for God’s existence. Somewhere in the monotony of that work, I can utter with my actions, “Not my will, but Thy will be done.”

So homework, study guide writing, end of the year planning, and room cleaning here I come. And somewhere in the midst, may sanctity be found.

A Shift of Perspective

I just wanted this day to be over. It felt unnecessarily long and drawn out. In fact, this whole week had felt tiring.

On Tuesday, near the end of my last class, I decided to start thinking that it was actually Friday. With growing excitement, I started to wrap the class up, thinking, How could I have forgotten all day that it was Friday? When I told them that we would discuss their assignment on Monday, I suddenly realized (spurred on in part by some confused faces) that it was really Tuesday. Each day since then has been more of the same desire to get to Saturday.

As I followed my class to the computer lab, I internally rolled my eyes. Such a rough day.

Then I mentally interrogated my self-pitying soul:

Why is this such a rough day?
Because the computers didn’t work like they were supposed to and now we have to go to a lab.
Did you get enough to eat?
Yeah…
Did you fear for your life?
No…
Is it really that big of a deal?
No…

I’m not saying I was chipper and happy-go-lucky the rest of the day, but it helped slap me out of my first-world troubles. The computers didn’t cooperate: get over this little difficulty, get over yourself, and be thankful for what you do have. It isn’t worth getting stressed out over and it shouldn’t ruin the rest of your day, but rather it was a little mishap.

The change in perspective was very needed. Let little things stay little.

To Be or Not To Be….All is a Gift

It was the end of the day and one of my students was posing one of my least favorite questions. The question is mildly manageable if I sense that the student is asking this question out of sincerity and a desire to understand God in a deeper way.

That wasn’t how he asked the question.

His question was posed more in opposition to God. It was meant to hurt our perception of God as loving and merciful. And I find that attitude very difficult to tolerate.

“Did God use Satan to strike the people down in Egypt at the Passover? Or did He use one of His angels? And if it was one of His angels, how come God decided to kill so many people?”

In a certain sense, it is a fair enough question.

In another sense, it tears at my heart.

So perhaps my reply was a little more abrupt then necessary, but it was to illustrate a point. I didn’t directly answer the question at first, but I attempted to answer the incorrect aspects surrounding his perception of God.

“God doesn’t owe us anything. God doesn’t even owe us life.”

I think they were surprised by that response, in all its bluntness. I reassured them of God’s great love for them, but spoke of how it is never our “right” to exist. Existence, in its entirety for humanity, is a gift. God, in His great love and mercy, never blots out our existence. For mere mortals, death will come. For even the God-man, death came. But life continues beyond the grave.

We are a people who expect that certain things are our due. It seems an injustice to us that bad things happen, that we are not treated as we wish, and that death will come to us all. How many people have expressed, in the throes of sorrow after the death of loved one, that it was so unfair to lose them as they did, when they did? I do not disagree that death can be tragic or that we will be left with many, many unanswered questions and seemingly unheard prayers. Yet isn’t it the natural course of life?

I am not owed this next breath.

It is not my due that tomorrow will dawn and I will be alive to see it.

It is not my right to live until an old age, surrounded by loved ones.

In reality, God owes me nothing, because He has given me all I have in an act of extreme generosity. It is not necessary that I am alive, but He wills it to be so, for now.

God gives life and God can take that gift away, too. It doesn’t make Him a murderer, as the question my student posed seemed to imply. A murderer is one who does not have the right to take a life and yet does.

Let’s say each month you receive $100 in the mail from a close friend. If that friend should stop sending that money, would you then call them a thief? Of course not! They were generous to give the money, but as a gift, it must be freely given. And as a gift, it can end.

All of this is not to make you question the tenderness or faithfulness of God. He cares about you with a fierceness that is intense to behold. Yet His ways are so often not our ways. It can be confusing to muddle through the events that befall us and see how God is working in the midst of devastation. It won’t always be easy and we often won’t understand.

But this is necessary to know: If God removes a gift, it is because He is offering a different kind of gift.

It may not always be easy to see the beauty in that new gift, though. When we are no longer healthy, we can experience the gift God offers in suffering. When we experience a death, we can see the gift God offers in grief. The gifts never cease to flow abundantly from His hands, but they may look other than we would wish.

To a generation that thinks they are owed so many things, I told them God has never been beholden to them. Everything they have and everything they are can be chalked entirely up to the mercy and love of God. They did not have to exist and yet they do. And it is very good.

You are here because God desires you to be here right now. It would not be less loving of Him for you to no longer be alive; He would simply be offering you a different kind of gift. However, since you are here right now, God has a purpose and a mission for you. Throughout this life, He will offer you many gifts. You might not like them all. But in the end, He will offer you one of the greatest gifts, life everlasting with Him. I see that not as robbing me of something that is my due (how pale this life will seem in comparison to the Beatific Vision), but inviting me into a mysteriously beautiful gift that is entirely undeserved.

So breath in and breath out.

Those were gifts. Handcrafted, uniquely given to you. Not because He had to, but because He chose to. Someday that won’t happen. And that will be a gift, too.

Thank You, Lord, Giver of all Good Gifts.

Converting a Slow Heart

Thursday night, I was sitting in adoration. When I left and went home, I decided to journal a little bit. Writing down my thoughts and feelings has always helped me sort through the mess that is my heart. At times it is only after writing something down, that I will have a revelation about it. I re-read what I wrote and it clicks. That’s it! It is an interesting method of learning from myself.

So I sat down and wrote a bit. It wasn’t much, but the second to last line I wrote struck me. I just looked at it again, closed my journal, and laid back on my bed, knowing that I would need to spend more time with it to fully unravel what I had just discovered.

Maybe, like Totus Tuus, I’m teaching not primarily for them, but for the salvation of my own soul.

Perhaps that won’t strike you as particularly profound. That is alright—the Lord did it for me anyway. I do find it to be profound. What if the struggles I encounter in the classroom are not simply the quirks of my students or the secular culture pervading the hearts and minds of the youth? Or, more accurately, it is that, but that primarily what the Lord desires to do is use all of it for my own salvation.

I’ve had this realization a few times before. Leading a mission trip to Honduras, I wrote up a talk to give to my mission team. I still have a phrase written down, the sheet bookmarking a place in my Bible, that came to me while preparing for the talk. Re-reading it reminds me that it relates to my whole life, not just the experience of leading a mission to Honduras.

In a way, God is calling you to this mission not because of a beautiful gift you have to offer the people of Honduras, but because He desires this mission to convert your heart in some way so as to be more aligned with His.

After I taught Totus Tuus (a catechetical program), I realized that all of the summer was spent not primarily for the sake of educating the youth of the diocese, although that is a great benefit. I was tricked into thinking it was that. The real purpose was to form my own heart and soul during the summer through living in community, teaching the Gospel, prayer, and play. We were told that we were going to help bring Christ to others, but really it was all about going out and encountering Christ ourselves and letting that transform us.

Whether I am teaching or leading a mission trip, the Lord seems to keep pounding on the dense door of my heart, calling me to realize that all I encounter, all I do, all I learn, all is for the salvation of my own soul. It is for converting this heart that is slow to hear, unwilling to follow, too proud to admit wrongs, and too quick to think I’ve already been converted.

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. –Philippians 2:12-13

Seeking After His Heart

A Blog Following the Quest of A Human Heart

Category: teaching