Thirst

Today, during my sophomore classes, we prayed the Stations of the Cross. Though I’ve prayed them many times before, God seems to repeatedly sow new meaning into the lines. Phrases I hadn’t before realized, come to life in a startling way.

The thirst of Christ struck me in prayer today.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, far from my prayer, far from the words of my cry? O my God, I cry out by day, and you answer not; I cry out by night, and there is no relief for me. All my bones are racked. My heart has become like wax melting away within my chest. My throat is dried up like baked clay, my tongue cleaves to my jaws; they have pierced my hands and my feet; I can count all my bones.” (Ps. 21/22, The Way of the Cross)

I’ve grown up hearing about Bl. Mother Teresa saying that Christ was thirsting for our souls while on the cross. And that took on a new depth today and will be something I will return to throughout this Holy Week.

For a few brief seconds, I was able to imagine the intense thirst of Christ. I considered a couple moments in my life where I have felt extremely thirsty, when my tongue seems to stick to my mouth. The instances have been few and far between. I had always passed over these words with little thought, but today I was unable to. I could imagine Christ’s dry mouth and His tongue sticking to His jaws, as He tried to peel it away to speak a few words. He longed for a little water.

This thirst Christ had was one aspect of His intense suffering. He also had the scourging on His back, His hands and feet were pierced, His head was seeping blood as the thorns bit into His scalp, and He was repeatedly pushing Himself up to take in some air. His thirst was one part of the physical agony. But it struck me. For a few seconds, I imagined, to a degree, that thirst and my heart seemed unready to take in the rest of the Passion while surrounded by a bunch of teenagers.

A new depth of thirst was realized. If I now have a greater understanding of His physical thirst, how much deeper was His thirst for souls. Even more than for a cup of cool water, Christ was longing for our souls. The intensity of such a thirst pains my heart. Here Christ so deeply desires my heart and I am slow to give Him it in its entirety. May a new thirst fill my own heart for the Lord. May the intense thirsting of Christ on the cross be my new attitude toward Christ Himself.

As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? (Ps. 42)

Small Heart

Oh, you of little faith. Oh, you of little heart.

Jesus is calling us to cast out into the deep. But isn’t it easier to not? It is easier to stay on the shallow side. Yet we long for the depths, for the great things that can happen on the other end of the pool, the other end of the lake. Sometimes we just wish it wasn’t so deep.

“You desire greatness, but you keep your heart small.” The Lord told me this during my retreat and I had to admit that it was true. I was in one of my favorite Scripture passages–Jeremiah 18–and the Lord was the potter at the wheel, shaping and forming my heart. Over the next few days, I spent time considering the ways I keep my heart small. I’m sure my list was not exhaustive, but there were a few convicting realizations. The small heart is often maintained because of fear. Fear that expanding the heart will mean pain or disappointment. Jesus, though, is asking me to cast out into the deep. “Do not be afraid…” Ah, Jesus, but I am.

In conversation this past week, I came to a renewed realization of the necessity of seeking healing for the sake of myself and for others. My small heart, if it expanded, could be a catalyst for others to let their hearts grow. If I allow my heart’s state to be dictated by how others respond, then why couldn’t I flip that around? Why can’t my choice to be large-hearted move others to embrace the same? Even if it doesn’t, my internal freedom will be transforming my own heart.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves)

He calls us to cast out into the deep. Not content to simply tell us, He models the pathway for us. He casts His net into the depths of our hearts, the places we hoped were sufficiently covered, the areas we ourselves had almost forgotten. And He shines His light there, His mercy a mantle covering it all. Then He turns the net over to us and asks us to do the same. Cast deep into my heart, He says. Go deeper, plunge further in. In the safety of such a vast heart, we are then able to let Him plumb the depths of our own. We will want Him to bring all to light and we won’t resist when He pushes the edges of our heart, widening the chambers to be filled with more of Him.

There is a greatness of heart that awaits us if we relinquish our clasp on our small hearts. Give the Potter free reign over the size of your heart and follow His lead in casting into the deep. Who knows what you will catch?

Bold Claims

The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the answer to all its yearnings. (Gaudium et Spes, 45)

Christianity makes shockingly bold claims. It does this because Christ made bold claims. If the Gospel message that you have heard doesn’t ruffle feathers or irk people, then it isn’t the same Gospel that Jesus Christ proclaimed.

Think about how people responded to Jesus Christ. Numerous times we hear about Jesus being driven to the brow of the cliff, or people picking up stones as He spoke, or people simply becoming angry at His words. This wasn’t because He told people that they just needed to be nice people. His words challenged. His words provoked. His words called people to look inside themselves and to realize that they could not save themselves.

Though we may accept the Gospel and profess to believe it, if we are honest with ourselves, each must continue to wrestle with the call of Jesus in our lives. There are still teachings of Jesus that have yet to be fully accepted in our hearts.

And there are bound to be things in his teachings that each of us finds offensive if we look at the totality of those teachings rather than confining ourselves to comfortable and familiar ones. (The Pocket Handbook of Christian Apologetics, p. 60)

For example, Jesus tells us that we are to forgive. The love of Christ compels us to love and forgive all. That means the survivors of the Holocaust are to forgive the very people who imprisoned them and took the lives of their friends and family members. It means the families of those who died in 9/11 are to forgive those who applauded themselves for being the masterminds of the attack. No, neither of those situations have impacted me in a directly personal way. But it is the message of Jesus Christ and it is not a message meant simply for forgiving the person who cut you off in traffic or the store clerk who is annoyed that you need her assistance. The Gospel message is precisely for those moments that seem unforgivable. It is then that we can recognize that it must be Christ working through us, that grace must be received in order to live out this bold life.

Christianity is not calling us to a life of ease and comfort. The King of this kingdom was crucified and the Queen watched it all unfold. Christianity, in its truest sense, is calling us to such a death. But it is a death that must be experienced so that we may embrace a fullness of new life. Once we experience that death and new life, the next death doesn’t really matter anymore. It will be a mere parting of the veil, a stepping into the throne room of the King, entering into the Holy of Holies. From life we will pass into Life.

With such a reward, it is no wonder that the early Christians were willing to lay down their lives for the sake of Jesus Christ. They looked upon death with no fear, but rather with joyful anticipation. Because, in that moment, they recognized that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was for those particularly difficult times.

We cannot accuse Christ of shielding the disciples or us from the realities of what following Him would require. He is direct and His voice is clear: if we love anything above Him, we will need to re-order our heart, even if the beloved is our family or our own selves. For Christ, we give all up and we received it back one hundred fold. I do not claim to have perfected this, but I know there is a tremendous freedom that is found in giving all to Christ. When my sisters entered the convent, the bitterness I felt was a result of not letting them go or surrendering them to the Lord. I’m a slow learner and so years later, when I actually began to sincerely let them go, I felt a tremendous freedom in my relationships with them. Problems may still arise in my heart regarding my sisters’ vocations, but I think God’s grace has pretty much vanquished that demon as of this past summer: but it took me eleven years. That freedom, though, is tremendous.

The Lord seeks to answer the deepest longings of our hearts. He boldly declares that He not only has the answer but that He is the answer. The fulfillment of all our desires is Him. The longings we experience are for relationship with Him. The joy we yearn to have fill our hearts is found in none other than He who fashioned our hearts. It isn’t Titanic-style love. It is rugged cross, pierced with beauty and sacrifice, blood pouring out that transforms hearts of stone to hearts of flesh-style love. And it asks for a great price. It asks for all we have. The return, though, is worth the investment.

Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel,who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10:29-30)

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.

It doesn’t have to be perfect

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

I’m sitting in my college Honors class. The two hour class occurs twice each week and is entirely discussion based. We are reading the classics and then we discuss them, seated in a circled with annotated copies of Western Civilization’s greatest works at hand. I cannot bring myself to talk and I feel helpless as class after class passes and I say nothing. The longer my silence goes, the more convinced I am that the first time I say something, it must be brilliant. It must be perfect. It must redeem the previous hours of silence. But with such pressure, how can I ever speak? After a class mid-way through the semester, one of my peers tells me that I have things to say, I just need to say them. The perfectly sculpted answer never comes into my head, though.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

It is my senior year of college and I am sitting in my boyfriend’s car. It doesn’t matter what the question was that he had just asked me. It wasn’t a one time occurrence. He asks me a question and the little introvert retreats into her mind. Maybe the question really required some deep thought, but sometimes it was just trying to come up with the perfect way to phrase my response. Sometimes we sat there for fifteen minutes, the silence heavy and my brain actively trying to arrive at perfection. I was asked to just say something and I found it difficult. It needed to be just right. It should be a perfect answer after twenty minutes of deep thought.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

But I want it to be perfect.

Twice over the past week it has been presented to me that it is alright that something is not perfect. I am an idealist through and through. While I live in this reality, my mind is often caught up in a world of what should be. After a talk I recently attended, there was a bit of discussion. One of the women who attended shared a bit of her heart with the group and one of the guys there responded to her. There was an exchange of dialogue and then a couple beats of awkward silence, the group trying to transition to the next subject. I found that the awkward transition bothered me. My idealistic self wanted the conversation to flow naturally, for people to share their hearts and for everyone to respond in the perfect way.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, Trish.

Humanity is a sea of imperfection. I should be used to it: I’m a little pool of imperfection. And yet I find myself wanting for things to play out as they do in the movies or in book: perfectly scripted where everybody knows their cues. But it is fine for things to not be perfect.

Then I went to a retreat and there were a few times when people were able to share a little witness of what they had received in prayer. When people got up to speak, I felt sorry for them if they seemed a bit nervous. Yet I found myself internally willing them to not be nervous and hoping they would say everything perfectly.

It made me pause: what is my hopeless addiction to things being perfect? I’ve scripted and re-scripted how I meet the man I will marry. I look through food blogs and I pin recipe after recipe of perfectly photographed culinary delights. I imagine running race after race to become perfectly in shape.

It doesn’t have to be perfect. In the midst of someone’s suffering, some words spoken in comfort are far better than the nothingness while you seek for perfection. When hungry, something adequate is far better than the perfectly pulled together meal that never happens. When training for a race, the ugly flailing of limbs is better than waiting for perfection to spontaneously take root in you.

I am now beginning to understand the phrase that a dear priest would say repeatedly: if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. So he was quoting dear G.K. Chesterton, but I will always think of him with that phrase. And now I am getting it. At the time I probably thought: wouldn’t it be best to do it well? Of course, if one can do it well, they should do it well. But some things, one must simply do, whether or not they do it well. If the race is worth running at all, then I should do it, even if I do poorly. If the class is worth teaching, then I should teach it, even if I don’t do it perfectly. If the words are worth speaking, I should speak them, even if I fumble and don’t find the exact phrasing I want.

Chesterton and that dear priest were advocating trying, even if you failed. That has not been my life motto. Mine would be pretty close the opposite. “If something is worth doing, think about it for a long time until you think you can do it perfectly, otherwise don’t do it at all because it might not be quite right.” A bit of a different worldview, I would say.

I cannot advocate the absolute crushing of the ideals I have, but I can propose that the ideals should be remembered as something to strive for, not the intended starting point. The goal isn’t to be imperfect, but it is impossible to plan to arrive at perfection immediately. Instead, the reality of humanity must be taken into full account. It is acceptable to stumble and fall along the way, as long as we keep getting back up and moving forward. If I come to terms with the imperfection that is naturally within others, perhaps I can give myself greater permission to come to terms with the imperfection that is overflowing within me. Instead of masking it, I could acknowledge it and then set about pursuing something more, something better.

Reality isn’t perfect. It is flawed, messy, and doesn’t follow a neat set of rules. But it is what I have.

If life is worth living at all, then it is worth living badly while in the pursuit of something great. And this little heart of my deeply needs to just live without the strain of perfection. Jesus said His yoke is easy and the burden is light. Being perfect is not a part of that easy and light.

I’m not perfect and I don’t need to be…yet.

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.

Tangible

The Lord understands the need we have for the tangible.

We have a soul gifted with intellect and free will. In this way, we share in the likeness of God. Yet we also have bodies and this is no small part of who we are. We are not to have a Puritanical mindset that declares the body is bad. Our bodies matter. This physical world matters. And God reaches out to us in the midst of what we know and understand.

Over the past few days, I have soaked in the beauty of the tangible in the Catholic faith. On Ash Wednesday, we have a cross of ashes inscribed on our foreheads. We hear, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Remember, remember the brevity of life. It is hard to miss the symbolism–our bodies will return to dust, like the dust from which Adam was formed. Our life is fleeting and we do not hold within ourselves the meaning for our own existence. Civilizations and generations will return to nothing. We are called to remember that our treasure should rest in something other than these earthen vessels, something that will survive time.

Even as we are told to look beyond the physical, the very means of this heavenly gaze is found in the physically tangible. The black ashes that seal your forehead. The words we hear that speak of the end for our physical bodies. Physical signs point to spiritual realities and truths.

That evening I went to a funeral home for my uncle’s wake. My four year old nephew wanted to touch my ashes and so I tried to keep him at an arm’s length. When he saw me the next day at the funeral, he noted that the thing on my forehead was gone. Sometimes kids have the appropriate response. Familiarity leads adults to see the ashes as commonplace, but my nephew was intrigued by the smudge on my face. In a way, he saw that the ashes said something significant.

At the funeral there were numerous tangible elements. The body is reverenced in a way that might surprise us if we pause to think about it. No longer is this the person we knew, but yet we bring the body into the church. The casket enclosing the body is nearest the altar, as we hope that this person is nearest the throne of God, participating in the eternal Wedding Banquet of the Lamb. We cover the casket with a white cloth, remembering their baptism into the death of Christ and into His everlasting life. The pallbearers, an honor given to a few friends or relatives of the deceased, carry or follow the body from the church to the hearse and from the hearse to the grave site. This isn’t a task relegated to people paid to help with the funeral, but rather is seen as an honor. The importance of the body causes us to have a committal ceremony where we place the body into the ground. We mark it and return to visit this place even though the body will return to dust and the person as we knew them does not remain.

Our physical body matters. The physical world matters. The Catholic Church has a beautiful tradition of keeping this in mind. Whether it is investing in beautiful basilicas or commissioning great works of art, the Church sees the beauty in calling to mind the spiritual through the physical. Other churches see it, too, but I would say the Church has a deeper understanding. Weekly, we come together to be nourish by the Bread of Life, by the Body of Christ. We enter a room or a box and we hear the words that declare that our sins are forgiven. In entering the the mystical Body of Christ, we are plunged into water as a sign of the cleansing of our soul.

The Catholic Church is all about the incarnational. Jesus Christ entered into the physical and the tangible. Of course, we can say that God would completely understand human nature even if He never took it on because He is all-knowing. But it adds a depth when we acknowledge that He chose to take on human nature so that His knowledge would be experiential and His experience salvific.

By doing this, He shows us that holiness is pursued through the physical and the spiritual realms. It isn’t only about the soul and deep meditative prayer. It isn’t necessary to retire to a desert cave to live on little food and spend days in ecstasy, although He does call some to that life. The Church has the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy. It is not enough to admonish the sinner, we must also give drink to the thirsty. It is insufficient to teach/instruct the ignorant (although important and, technically, my job) but we must also bury the dead. In the Catholic tradition, we have the great both/and. We are called to pursue the delicate balance of body and soul, both seen as important aspects of who we are as human beings.

At times, we want to accuse God of being silent or distant. We ask Him why He does not reveal more of Himself to us or why He requires such faith to believe in Him. Yet He gives us many signs of His presence with us. The sanctuary candle that burns in every Catholic church, indicating that the King of Kings is present. A hand raised in absolution also involves a voice audibly telling you that all is forgiven. The nearly scandalous declaration of love and sacrifice found in each depiction of the crucifixion. We belong to a church that firmly declares that Christ walked with us yesterday and still walks with us today in a very concrete way.

God knows what we need. We have one foot on earth and one in heaven. And He meets us in both ways. He is a God who is tangibly with us. Emmanuel. God with us. Our foreheads have been sealed with ashes where we declare that we have sinned and that we are destined to return to dust. He encounters us, mercifully, in that declaration. We seek Christ in this desert walk, in these forty days of sacrifice. How will we tangibly encounter Him? How will our body and soul be in the union they were created to live in?

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?

Whoever Has Ears Ought To Hear

What if St. Paul didn’t respond to God’s call in his life?

Too often, I assume that the saints would, naturally, follow God’s will in their lives. I mistakenly believe that it was easy for them–of course they responded correctly, they are saints.

Now we hold them to be saints, but they were not always so. They had free will and probably had many compelling reasons for not following God. It probably seemed just as inconvenient to them as it does for us at times.

St. Paul is bound for Damascus and Jesus intervenes into his life in a very dramatic way. The bright light, the physical blinding, and the clear voice all point to a powerful divine intervention. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” What if, after this encounter, Saul instead returned to his original mission of hunting down the Christians? In many ways, it might have appeared to be a better life decision. Or he stops pursuing the Christians, but he doesn’t start to follow Christ.

Following his conversion, Paul goes off to immerse himself in the study of the Gospel. Then, he presented himself to the Apostles and they were hesitant to accept him. For a while, he is then considered a traitor by the Jews and someone not to be trusted by the Christians. When he goes on his journeys to preach the Gospel, riots will frequently spring up as he evangelizes. At one point, they pick up stones and hurl them at Paul, intent upon killing him. Dragging him outside the city, they leave him for dead. When his disciples surround him, he gets to his feet and continues preaching the next day. In the end, he will be beheaded in Rome, a death he underwent since he was a Roman citizen.

The Lord gave St. Paul the grace of an indomitable spirit, but that doesn’t mean that each movement was filled with absolute certainty. Perhaps some mornings, Paul woke up and was tired, not wanting to preach and be ridiculed yet again. Maybe as his feet pounded over miles and miles of Roman roads, his heart was constantly uttering, “Lord, come again. Lord, end this suffering. Lord, take me home.” In the spirit of St. Teresa of Avila, maybe St. Paul experienced the pain of being pummeled with rocks and as he pulled himself to his feet said, “Is this how you treat your friends, Lord? It is no wonder you have so few.” St. Paul was a dedicated and faithful evangelist, but that doesn’t mean the Lord surrounded him in constant reassurance or prevented any doubts from entering his mind. The beauty is that Paul chose Christ daily, even when it seemed foolish in the eyes of his friends and family.

These thoughts about Paul came to mind when I started to watch a video about him in preparation for one of my classes. The movie opened proclaiming what a great evangelist he was after encountering Jesus and the thought came to mind, “What if he didn’t answer that call?” The realization was similar to when I realized that perhaps in Old Testament times, God called other people, but it isn’t recorded because they didn’t say “Yes.” St. Paul had a free choice. Although God revealed Himself in an undeniable way, it didn’t require St. Paul to choose to follow Him.

My students received the assignment to write an imaginative story about either being a traveling companion of Paul or being a villager in one of the places Paul preached the Gospel. The goal of the writing was to consider how they would respond to his preaching and to think about what it would be like to experience those events first hand. Scripture isn’t a nice storybook about events from hundreds of years ago, but rather it is alive and applies to us right now. So the underlying question to consider is: how am I now responding to the compelling, radical message of the Gospel?

Familiarity with the message of Christianity makes it appear dull and commonplace. Yet it is anything but that. We preach of a God who loved so much that He entered into humanity so that He might pay the price to reconcile all of humanity with Himself. All of salvation history is God reaching out to humanity and working with our “Yes” to bring about transformation. God knows how we will respond but He never takes away our free will in order to get a “Yes.” And even if He knows we will refuse, He still asks and offers us a chance to follow Him.

The beauty of the life of St. Paul is not so much that God called him. God calls each of us to a unique mission that leads us closer to His heart. The beauty of St. Paul’s life is that he heard the voice of God and he responded with zeal. His fervent “Yes” opened the pathway for others to hear the Gospel and commit their lives to Jesus. May we, in this world that is thirsting for the Gospel in all of its truth and radicality, present the beauty, truth, and goodness found in the message of Jesus Christ. One that is compelling enough to sacrifice home, family, social status, and all worldly goods to pursue.

St. Paul responded wholeheartedly to God’s call in his life. What if we didn’t?

A Lesson in Snow

The evening air is cool, but it feels nice as I lean on my shovel and survey the path ahead. I’ve been outside for nearly forty minutes and the end is in sight, but not as close as I would have liked. At my house, we take turns shoveling the lovely snow and I thought it was unofficially my turn to do the honors. A corner lot with long, long sidewalks make for an impromptu workout and time to reflect. The front sidewalk is easy and I simply slide the shovel along, emptying it every few feet. I turn the corner and it gets progressively more difficult. Finally, I’m looking up the path, realizing that the sidewalk is inches below, under freshly laid snow as well as snow that has been crunched underfoot for days. So I forge a path of my own, seeking to find the trace of civilization beneath nature’s blanket.

I pause again and it pops into my head.

Shoveling snow is like sin/bad habits–it is easiest to get rid of it right away, rather than wait and do it later.

I smile, wondering if any of the other evening-snow-shoveling-folks are theologizing as they scoop.

Admittedly, I like the reflection, though. The front sidewalk was easy because it had been maintained and all I needed to do was take care of the most recent snowfall. But the back sidewalk had been a bit neglected and getting it to the same state as the other required far more work. Ice needed to be chipped and compacted snow had to be disposed of. It was work that wouldn’t have been needed if it had been taken care of the first snow.

The same thought can be applied to the spiritual life, particularly in regards to cultivating good habits. What if when I noticed myself doing something I didn’t like or was bad or was not going to help me grow in my life, I would immediately correct it? Instead, it is easy to say it isn’t that big of a deal and continue until it becomes a habit. Then we realize we need to take action, but it is no longer just a tendency or inclination but an ingrained habit. So we go to work: we chip away at it and look longingly down the path to the time when this flaw can be behind us.

What if we got to work on those little things right now so that later on we wouldn’t have to pour more energy into them? What if we worked so that little things could simply stay little? Makes a bit too much sense, probably.

It would mean combating laziness with productive work and using my time well. Not planning to work on laziness later. Instead of thinking, “Yeah, I probably should do something else rather than peruse Facebook (again) or watch another movie” and then justifying said behavior anyway, I would get up and go: pray, take a walk, go for a run, read a book, clean my room, lesson plan, grade papers, etc. This goes back to the whole mentality of sacrificing the easy thing in the present to do what I actually want to do, things that bring me life and fulfillment.

Yet another goal and way to grow in my daily life discovered. Instead of waiting to tackle little problems or flaws, I should enter into the skirmish now so there doesn’t need to be a full-out war later.

From one person on the frontlines to another: let’s get to work.

Seeking After His Heart

A Blog Following the Quest of A Human Heart