Tag: new

Where Saints Are Made

Where Saints Are Made

Young St. Francis kept trying to leave home to pursue greatness. Dazzled by the heroism of knights and soldiers, St. Francis attempted twice to enter into battle or to join the military. Sickness, imprisonment, and the continued call to return home became his lot instead of armed valor and glory. While he did eventually travel great distances, St. Francis grew to be great by condescending to become very little.

On a recent pilgrimage to Italy, I was near the castle fortress overlooking Assisi as I took in the quiet beauty of the medieval town as the sun slowly lowered. The place of burial for St. Francis was awash in warm light and I soaked up the stillness of the moment. As my mind rifled through memories from the past few days, I thought of the holy places I had visited and the different talks and tours I had taken in. A simple thought came to mind and I made a note on my phone so as to not forget it.

“St. Francis kept trying to leave home to do great and noble things. Instead, it was in Assisi that he became a saint.”

It was in Assisi, the place where the follies of his youth were known and the place where people were aware of his flaws, that the Lord chose to craft Francis into St. Francis. In many ways it is easier to go elsewhere to become holy. To be holy at home, where your lack of holiness is clearly known, is one of the most difficult things. Yet it was this point that the Lord wanted to remind me of as I stood at the end of my pilgrimage. Home is where we can become holy.

I, too, like Francis often find myself wanting to run off to some corner of the world and do great and heroic things. Noble missions or bold adventures or grand quests for the Lord are enticing. To do something enduring and memorable seems to be a desire within all humans, even if what we consider memorable varies from person to person. Yet here the Lord was reminding me that in our native place, in our homes, among the people who know us, He can and does make us holy, if we permit Him.

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Jesus Knows What it is Like to Wait

Jesus Knows What it is Like to Wait

Within the past year, I stumbled upon a verse in Scripture that gave great comfort to my heart. I know I’ve read this verse before and so it surprised me when I read it before quickly backpedaling to read it again. Maybe I had always read it in a slightly different translation or it didn’t seem like it applied to me, causing me to gloss over the words. Whatever the reason, the particular moment I read it was the perfect one for it to have an impact.

Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work.

Luke 3:23 (NRSVCE)

I paused.

One sentence helped lay to rest some of my worries and concerns.

The God-man began His work when He was about thirty years old. Perhaps I’m not behind. Perhaps this isn’t all a waste. Granted, I didn’t spend the first thirty years of my life with the profound intentionality of the Incarnate Word, but it was a gift to be reminded that missions can begin at thirty.

It isn’t that I think thirty is ancient. I don’t. It is simply that I had assumed I would arrive at different milestones before reaching this particular one. This time hasn’t been a waste, but it is difficult to see what has been accomplished. In high school and college, one moves from one grade to the next, learning information, being continually formed, and preparing for what lies ahead. And I’m still very much on an academic calendar, with neat endings and fresh beginnings. Yet…there doesn’t always seem to be movement.

Interestingly, it wasn’t that I longed for a life filled with adventure. I mean, I did and yet I was entirely prepared for a life that was normal, ordinary, even repetitive. Oddly, it seems that doing mundane tasks for someone else would seem far more fulfilling than doing mundane tasks for myself. Realistically, I know that is simply the lie, the trick that makes one think that the things that frustrate wouldn’t if they were shrouded in different circumstances.

Jesus lived a hidden, ordinary life for thirty years. Over the past year, I’ve returned repeatedly to this reality of angels heralding His birth and then shepherds and magi and then…a seemingly ordinary child grows up. Each day wasn’t lived in a glorious ray of light. People weren’t continually falling at His feet, acknowledging His divinity. He played, studied, prayed, and lived with others and nobody recognized God was pitching His tent among them.

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Let Our Desires Be Big

Let Our Desires Be Big

He complains much of our blindness, and cries often that we are to be pitied who content ourselves with so little.

The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence

This Lent, I want to not settle. I’ve been slowly plodding through The Practice of the Presence of God and I find little bits of wisdom, such that makes me want to savor the book and not just rush through it, although it is brief. As I’ve been seeking to delve into a new relationship with the Lord during this new season of grace, I’ve been moved by this plea of Brother Lawrence to not content myself with so little. My “big” desires turn out to be not so big in light of what the Lord desires. In fact, it turns out that I want too little instead of wanting too much.

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The Weight of Glory, CS Lewis

The Lord offers deep and intimate relationship with Him. And we want ease and comfort. Or nice clothes. Or relaxation. Or sleep. Or any number of things that show how little we will settle for when grand things are held before us. This time of Lent is a time to re-focus and shift my perspective to be more eternal, to focus less on the things of this world and see the unending delights the Lord promises if we but bypass the immediate half-goods. I write this as much for myself as for anyone else. This Lent, let us run the race well and seek after the things not of this world and let our longings increase and become longings truly worthy of the beauty for which humanity was created.

Let us deepen our desires. They cannot be too big for the Lord, only too small.

—

Photo by Jan Kronies on Unsplash

Home Away From Home

Home Away From Home

Every time I go to the ocean or sea I think of where I grew up. Mountains in their majestic reaching for the heavens are beautiful. Forests brimming with greenery and a thick growth of trees are lovely. Sprawling canyons surrounded by arid, desert bloom have a foreign intrigue. But water, rolling and churning as far as the eye can see, makes me think of home.

Some consider that odd since I grew up on the prairie. But I find it necessary every now and then to get somewhere I am able to breathe. When I stand by the water and am able to look until the earth curves, I feel a sense of freedom, a deep breath builds interiorly that needs to be exhaled as all that confines falls away. And though the ocean and sea embody an exotic newness that I’ve never fully explored, they also contain within them a sense of home.

The other day I was driving and spent a long time marveling at how the tall prairie grasses rolled so wave-like under the ever-present prairie wind. The pliant bending of the grasses followed by their rebounding over and over again was simple yet lovely. It made me want to tell my neighbors that the reason I mow so infrequently is because I love our prairie heritage and would love to see the oceanic movements in my own backyard. Instead, I drove on as I gratefully took in the ebb and flow of the grass, resilient and fierce despite the slender bowing.

This need to breathe and to have the space to do so is one of the reasons I couldn’t last long in a big city. As it is, the city I live in causes me to feel slightly suffocated, something I don’t realize until I’m driving into the country and feel myself unconsciously breathing deeper and freer. I thrive on the flat prairie, a gaze that goes on and on with a vastness that yearns to be appreciated.

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There Is Always Hope

There Is Always Hope

I don’t recall exactly what it was about. During parent teacher conferences, I spoke with a parent and it was either about the grade, the student’s faith, or something, but whatever it was, the parent ended with, “So there’s hope?” And I, filled with a conviction that stretched beyond the moment, replied, “Yes. There is always hope.”

I felt the weight of that truth in the moment after the parent left.

Always. Hope endures despite all difficulties.

For someone who often skews toward pessimism, it is helpful to remember that hope persists, even when it seems illogical. I mean, we worship a God who rose from the dead after three days. He chose the most unlikely people to pass on the faith, who continually misunderstood Jesus and ran away when scared. Yet this Church still lasts. In spite of corrupt popes, Church scandals, intense persecutions, harsh dictatorships, and every other difficulty, we see that life can still burst forth from death just as the frozen ground will one day again yield to the gentle strength of new flowers.

The other day in class, I found myself saying, “Death isn’t the worst thing.” For me, it was obvious that this was true. I spent much of my first year of teaching hoping for death. Not in a morbid or depressed way. Rather, I was thoroughly convinced of the glory of the Beatific Vision and I was also thoroughly convinced that I wasn’t yet experiencing it in a room filled with angsty, complaint-filled teens.

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Salt and Light

Salt and Light

This past Sunday, the Gospel spoke of how we ought to be the salt and light the world needs. It concluded with this line:

Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.

Matthew 5:16

After we read it in class, we spent time on Friday discussing it. Near the end of our conversation, I pointed to the reaction that we should desire from others. As we strive to live as salt and light, we should desire that people give praise to God for what they see instead of praising us.

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Maybe I’ll Climb Into My Classroom Through the Ceiling From Another Teacher’s Room

Maybe I’ll Climb Into My Classroom Through the Ceiling From Another Teacher’s Room

GK Chesterton wrote Manalive, a novel that revealed his desire to gaze at the world through a life-giving haze of wonder and awe. I was reminded of this recently at a talk and it made me reflect on the stories that he speaks of taking place in the fictional life of Innocent Smith.

(If you haven’t read the book and want to, you should probably stop here because I need to ruin a few points in order to reveal what is so attractive about his life. This is your warning. Stop here! Proceed no further. Or, if you don’t care, carry on.)

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Something New

Something New

Teaching is an odd profession.

It is one of those careers that is clearly marked by beginnings and ends. I start the school year with a lot of fanfare, an open house for the parents to see all the teachers, and plenty of introduction activities. At the end of a semester, I wrap up the grades, submit them all, and tuck away another half of a year.

When I come back at the start of another semester, it is with newness. Some of the students might be the same, but they are often rearranged into different sections. Old students in new classes often yield new experiences because they all interact differently with one another.

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For the Love

For the Love

“The only part I didn’t really like was when she said that before she was a Christian she didn’t know what love was.”

After a recent talk at school, a few students were voicing their thoughts about the talk. The speaker had made a bold claim, one I hadn’t really thought about too deeply before my students offered their critique. Another student agreed and said he thought the speaker was being dramatic.

“Is it possible,” I questioned, “that being a Christian profoundly changes how she loved?”

“No,” said one student.
“Yes,” said another.

The one who said no came closer and continued with this question. The more I teach and the more I know about people, the more I realize that questions help answer better than arguments. Questions help clarify where exactly the person is, how much they know, and how much they have thought about the idea in the first place. So I posed another question, uncertain as I did so where exactly I was headed or what the next question would be.

“Is there anything different between how Hitler loves and Mother Teresa?”

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Living and Active

Living and Active

It continues to surprise me how extremely relevant Scripture is to the lives of prisoners. Whether I’m reading an Old Testament prophet or the epistles of St. Paul, the circumstances of the imprisoned are never far from any given page. Listening to the readings in prison, as Paul speaks about the chains he bears for the sake of the Gospel or how many times he found himself imprisoned, adds a whole new depth to the readings.

Earlier this week, as my sister and I drove to prison for a bible study, I read the Gospel passage aloud that we were going to discuss. It was something I’ve heard and read dozens of times and yet my eyes were opening in a new way, something that has happened innumerable times since I started going into the prison. The passage for the upcoming Solemnity of Jesus, King of the Universe, was about Jesus on the cross and the conversation He had with the good and bad thief.

The rulers sneered at Jesus and said, “He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Christ of God.” Even the soldiers jeered at him. As they approached to offer him wine they called out,
“If you are King of the Jews, save yourself.” Above him there was an inscription that read, “This is the King of the Jews.”

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Luke 23: 35-43

I could hardly believe it when I read the passage to my sister. How striking. A passage about how Jesus, the sinless one, who enters into our lives and takes on our sin, dying amongst criminals who were sentenced justly for their crimes. What would it be like to hear this as a prisoner?

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