What are We Waiting For?

The other day my daughter started whistling a Christmas tune. I don’t know if she did it because it feels like Christmas to our family, or because she wanted to get under my skin. This is our first fall as residents of the Midwest. Where we came from, in the desert, it doesn’t feel like Christmas until February. In early December in our former stomping grounds, one still finds it too warm most days to wear a jacket.

So my family is pretty excited that we will need coats this Christmas. Sorry, but for all my years in Arizona, the whole Christmas by the pool gig just didn’t work for me. I’m an old fashioned kind of guy, and I like Bing Crosby’s version of Christmas better. (Yes, I know Jesus wasn't born in the Midwest, but still...)

At any rate, I suspect she did it just to annoy me. She knows where I stand with the premature Christmas celebrations. I want to enjoy Advent before it slips away, for crying out loud!

The Season of Advent gets neglected--- let’s face it. That’s why one of our priests, in his homily for the First Sunday of Advent, so passionately proclaimed that it is not Christmas yet. He’s right!

The word Advent means arrival, or coming. It means something is going to happen. In this case, it is something big.

I was talking to a colleague about this, about how we are a culture that does not like to wait for anything. We want what we want now. Our culture wants Easter without Lent and Good Friday, and Christmas without Advent. We Catholics have such a gift in our liturgical calendar which helps us stay in season, and in sync with God’s Plan. That is hard for the culture to grasp.

This is a sad thing because so much happens in the waiting.

In the waiting, God prepares our hearts. In the waiting, we anticipate and consider the value of the coming event. For instance, part of the enjoyment of a friend’s visit is the anticipation and planning for it. During Advent we are preparing to celebrate the birth of the Christ which happened, but we are also preparing for the Second Coming which is to come. Are you ready? Are you prepared? Are you working on being prepared?

May I suggest--- stealing an idea from a priest whose blog I read recently--- that one thing we do in the waiting is spend some extra time with the Eucharistic Lord in adoration? Wait with Him in the chapel. Speak to Him in the depths of your heart, and listen to Him as He prepares your heart to celebrate His coming. It will be Christmas soon enough.

(By the way, Drawn to Life Ministries will be presenting an Advent mission in the Valley of the Sun on the evenings of December 9, 10, 11 at St. Helen Catholic Church- 5510 W. Cholla St., Glendale, AZ, 85304. The presentations begin at 7pm and will end by 8:30pm.)

In the meantime, go ahead and whistle some Advent tunes.

Made for... Mediocrity?

I didn’t wake up one morning in my youth and think, “I want to grow up to be a mediocre husband and father, and to fritter away my life on selfish pursuits and unfulfilling drivel.”

But there came a point in which I recognized, as a young man, that was where I was headed. I realized and acknowledged that my life was mediocre and even bad. There was an absence of goodness in my heart, and so in my life. It touched everything around me.

My journey toward badness entailed choices made step by step. The path of mediocrity and moral degeneration is a wide and spacious one, and easy to tread. My own journey will have to be chronicled elsewhere, but to sum it up, basically I bought into the culture's "gospel": "Live for yourself and you will be happy." That is, of course, the sure road to hell. 

Eating Humble Duck Pie

Copyright 2013, Used by Permission

God's truth can be found in the most surprising places. Even the infernal mind-jello mould known as television can be used by God to share the wisdom of God.

In my last blog post, Questions that Wake You Up at Night, I offhandedly made reference to people who believe that deep reflection on the meaning of life entails watching episodes of Duck Dynasty. I wasn't criticizing people who watch the show, but those whose theological reflection and inquiry goes no deeper.

While I stand by the point I made with reference to the reality show (which you can find in that post), I am humbled by the following video interview with one of the "stars" of Duck Dynasty. If I had possessed this sort of wisdom when I was this man's age... well...

Watch the brief interview HERE and be schooled by a big-bearded man of God and his bride on the topics of "what really matters in life" and "godly marriage!"

Questions That Wake You Up at Night

Copyright 2013, Used by Permission

What if this whole Christianity is one big, wish-it-could-be-true sham?

What if we have latched on to some ancient mythology out of a desperate desire for something beautiful, something to allay the deep loneliness of the human heart, which, no matter how superficially connected to others of the species it may seem to be, fears in its depths that it is somehow disconnected and alone? What if Christianity only depicts, like a painting, a beauty that is too good to be true?

What if Jesus of Nazareth has become the mythic man-god of Christian belief, a great man clothed with divinity by man's collective imagination?

These are questions that are especially prevalent in this skeptical age. They are questions that must be faced with courage because they will not go away. They will be asked with more frequency. And they will be asked not only by skeptics outside the Church, but those within.

When I was agnostic, I worked next to a fellow who loved the Lord. He took his Bible with him on his lunch hour for prayer and study with a colleague. He seemed happy and secure.

I asked him once how he could be certain God was real. His answer irritated me. He said, "I just know it in my heart." I wanted more. I wanted him to give me a reason for his certitude, for his hope.

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up?

Copyright 2013, Used by Permission

It seems to me there are a lot of impostors out there. 

When I was a kid we watched a show called "To Tell the Truth." I am dating myself here, but the way it went, to the best of my memory, was this: A celebrity guest would face three guests claiming to be a certain person. Two were impostors and one was the real deal. The celebrity's challenge was to question all three and figure out who was being truthful. At the inquisitor's questions, the impostors could lie their heads off to trick the guest, but the authentic person had to tell the truth. 

I sometimes get the feeling we are in the position of the celebrity guest, having to discern between various claimants to the role of Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. 

In this case, the question is: Who is the real Jesus Christ among a myriad of impostors? 

The Vanity of The Gospel of Jesus Nice

The Gospel of Jesus... Nice?

Following my entry into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil as a young man nearly two decades ago, I was bewildered. Much of what I heard in catechesis seemed saturated in a banal sentimentality that presented Jesus as more of a sort of Deepak Chopra figure than the revolutionary Son of the Most High God who said, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!” (Luke 12:49, NABRE)  

Rediscovering the Sacrament of Mercy, Part Two

One's view of God determines just about everything.

In Part One of this blog, we looked at the societal loss of the sense of sin, and how that may be a root cause of Catholics' avoidance of the confessional. 

But I am convinced that there is a second reason so many Catholics don't celebrate the sacrament of Reconciliation. 

Many of us live with a distorted image of God.