Prideful

    For some reason the issue of pride and humility keep entering my mind these days.  It is a struggle that I have been fighting for some time now.  It feels like it is one of those "one step forward, two steps back" kind of process.  It is truly one of the more irritating things I have ever had to deal with.  However, I know that I am making progress.  Not much, but some progress is better than none.  The reason I want to talk about this today is because in the past week or so, I have truly seen a lack of humility as a scourge of society.  

    Satan in his trickery offers us all the kingdom's of the world, just as he did Christ in the Gospel.  However, our human frailty allows Satan to warp us into something we are not.  I was talking to a friend recently, and they said that they could not stand their image to be anything different than what it is now.  Satan has successfully won that person over.  Satan now has the ability to twist and mold that person into a worldly person.  Someone who is solely concerned about themselves and affairs of the earth.  We must combat this brothers and sisters.  This person is not out of the fight yet.  Most people in this situation hate themselves, and this person is no different!  They want to change, but Satan has convinced them that their image of themselves is far more important than how God views them!  How can this person feel anything but despair!?  The Satan in his wise ways has completely separated this person from God.  The person is their own God in their own mind.  Hope is not lost though.  We have a God who loves us so deeply that he sacrificed his only son in order that Satan may lose the grasp of our souls.

    Friends, we must fight Satan through our humility.  Through striving for perfection, and being humble in heart we can crush the evil one.  We can help this person too.  It is not impossible to overcome this incredibly ensnaring sin of pride.  Pray friends, pray hard for this person, and for yourselves that may not become victims of this deception.  I was victim of this same ploy a few years ago.  I did things that I seriously regret even unto today.  I am proof that through Christ alone we may win the fight.  We cannot rely on ourselves.  When we do this, pride takes over.  Satan conquers our souls.  It is only when we submit ourselves to Christ that we are delivered.  This is the problem.  This is the solution.  The solution we seek is not in ourselves.  No matter how hard we look we will not find it.  We must overcome our pride and selfishness.  We must humbly approach Christ and let him know that WE ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO OVERCOME THIS ALONE.  Through this act, we can be delivered.  We can be healed and started anew.  We can crush Satan in his own game.  Fight the good fight brothers and sisters.  Pray for each other.  Help each other, but above all, love each other with the love of Christ.

The True Beginning

     Praise be to Jesus Christ!  I just arrived back in Bloomington after a wonderful weekend at Destination Jesus.  I did not have the opportunity to spend as much time as I would have liked praising the Lord, but I still feel spiritually satisfied.  Now on to business.  This blog entry will be directed for a friend who is going through intense struggling, but, I feel as if this is a topic that everyone will go through at some point or another.  I will be sharing about dealing with earthly death.  This is an incredibly sensitive topic, and I pray to God that I can address this topic with prudence.  Now I will move into one lowly man's thoughts about death.

    My friend is (at some point in the undetermined future) going to lose a very close loved one.  The thought of this is causing this person to hate God.  I have seen this as a very typical reaction to the loss of a loved one.  "Why would God take this person away from me?"  "What did I do to lose this person?"  These questions seem to come up.  They put God in a light that screams "Unjust!"  How far from the truth!  Our God is a very just God.  If a person dies in a state of grace (which the person my friend is losing must be, the person is one of my role models), then the reward of Heaven is theirs!  How can we be mad at God for making our loved one eternally happy?  The only injustice I can see is that this person gets to taste heaven!  I am going to quote St. Therese of Lisieux's mother on this one, for I have never read or seen anything that better describes the mindset we must have about death.

Baby [Therese] is a little imp;  she'll kiss me and at the same time wish me to die.  "Oh, how I wish you would die, dear little mother!" When I scold her she answers "It is because I want you to go to heaven and you say we must die to get there!"  She wishes the same for her Father in her outbursts of affection for him.

This marvelous saint teaches us what Christian life really is.  Christian life is not about life on this earth, it is about attaining life for the next.  The losses we suffer in this life, when united to the Cross of Christ, fuel the intense fire that leads us to the gates of Heaven.  It is a long, arduous journey, but we all can make it!  The largest problem that gets in the way is pride.  We all want things our way.  This has been the hardest obstacle I have to overcome in my spiritual journey.  I do not want this wonderful person my friend is losing to die.  That is not my will for him to die, however, it is God's.  And in this way, in humility, I must accept the fact that this person is so important to God, that He must take this person earlier than any of us would like.  It is SO difficult to have the humility to accept something in God's will that is gravely contrary to our own.  However, true, pure happiness comes when our will is united with God's will.  God is all-knowing and all-powerful.  He knows infinitely better than we do what will make us happy.  No matter how intense the struggle is, God knows the end result is worth the pain.  The union with God in Heaven is the greatest reward any of us can ever attain.  It is greater than any title, greater than any material good, and yes, even greater than our own will.  We fall into sin for Satan knows that our will is easily twisted.  This is where Satan wins, and where we crush him.  In the tough times when it is hard to trust that God's plan is the best plan for us, Satan slithers in and plants lies in our head that tell us God is wrong.  God is not wrong.  God is pure love who manifests his love in even the most painful of situations.  Overcoming the lies that Satan has placed in our minds about death is where the fight is.  The antidote to the poison of these lies is humility.  

So Lord I humbly pray that your will is united with our will.  Through this we have the power to destroy Satan.  Your humble son, Jesus Christ, went through human suffering in order to show us what it takes to get to you.  He humbly accepted his cross and led us up the hill to calvary.  Let us humbly pick up our crosses and follow you.  Let Jesus not rebuke us as he did Peter when Peter tried to talk Christ out of the cross.  Satan is at work in those lies, and we must realize our Christian duty to follow your son up the hill.  Through humble hearts, may we destroy Satan and seek the everlasting joy of Heaven.  No joy on earth can possibly equal the joy of Heaven.  With this idea in mind, let us cast our sin aside and focus on you love and Peace.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.

God's peace to all.  Do not be afraid to struggle.  Do not be afraid to seek a friend to help you bear the load of your cross.  Even Christ needed help carrying his.  Pax Christi.

SSA

     It has been an AWFULLY long time since I have had the motivation to write on these pages.  For a multitude of reasons that I will not get into I had to let the blog go for a long while.  Anyway, as always, there are many issues to be discussed on these pages.  Today will be an issue specific blog, seeing as it seems to me this issue has been coming up a lot lately.  Today's topic for reflection will be the very controversial issue of gay marriage.  My reflection points and comments are not meant to be hateful, or inspire hate.  This is meant to be charitable and compassionate, as everything should always be.

     The issue of gay marriage is a hotly contested issue in American today.  The debates on the issue quickly strip down into unaffective Ad Hominem attacks from people on both sides of the issue.  The Catholic Church is on one side of this fight, the side that is against a law allowing gay marriage.  Many people call the Church hypocrites on this issue.  Since the Church is supposed to be compassionate and all-loving, how can it reject the love between two people of the same sex?  The answer is simple, the Church is very compassionate in defending the truth She teaches.  The Church does not downplay the love shared even between same-sex couples.  The issue is that the Church holds marriage to be something more than a love shared between two people.  Marriage is about the full gift of oneself to another person that invites Christ to create a new life in those people.  Marriage is about bringing life into the world and raising it to know the truth of Christ.  In these terms, gay marriage can never be a real marriage at all.  Just as two heterosexual people who get married, but are against accepting life.  In both cases, the people who are "married" are rejecting what marriage even is.

Everyday I am on Facebook and I see a page that says something along the lines of "1,000,000 people for same sex marriage!"  I must say that these groups disturb me.  The people in the groups get angry at anyone that has an opposing viewpoint, calling them homophobes and prejudice.  I fit into neither of these groups, yet hold a viewpoint that is against same sex marriage.  I hold the Church's view on the subject.  The people in a same sex relationship do not meet the definition of marriage.  No matter how often they try, the love they share in private will never allow God to bring new life into the world.  The only sin in being gay is acting on same sex urges.  These people fall into the same sins as heterosexual people.  People of all religions need to realize this point.  The sin lies not on their sexual temptation, but lies in the acting out of said temptations.  Love the sinner, hate the sin.  We are all called to chastity according to our state in life.  There are groups out there for people with same sex attractions who want to seek living out the Church's teachings.  The Church is indeed a Church of compassion, not one with a homophobic agenda.  The Church will continue to show people in these tough situations as much compassion as necessary, assuming the people show compassion back.  This is a tough issue.  Writing about it is not easy.  I just wanted to share a fair honest assessment of the situation without the personal attacks.  I hope this adds some understanding to the situation at hand.  Pax Christi.

Its Advent Right?

  So to begin, I am just going to say that this blog will inevitably offend someone who reads it.  I am going to talk hope.  We end the Church season of hope this week, and this thought just kept coming into my mind all throughout this season.  I thoroughly enjoy politics on the whole.  I find the tension very interesting, and so I was looking back on the year and something that kept coming up was hope.  Of course as I type that, I see the multi-colored Obama face with hope written under it plastered on the back of an SUV.  So let me talk hope.
  Throughout the election of 2008, Barack Obama repeatedly talked about hope during the election.  Which was horribly ironic from how I saw things.  I, at the time, did not see things as very hopeful then, and I sure do not see them as hopeful now.  What hope was Barack Obama talking about?  The hope of killing off ALL of our children?  The hope of the future generations having to deal with a rapidly increasing National Debt?  The hope that the word marriage can just be thrown in between any two people's names?  I don't know about you, but none of this seems hopeful.  As a health care bill comes into law, that will most likely contain ample funding for abortions, I feel hopeless as the best efforts of the pro-life community are for nothing.  I see we are in a hopeless time, yet we are in the season of hope.  What a paradox!  But then I got around to thinking more about true hope.
  Through that entire paragraph of reflection, I never once mentioned what true hope is.  True hope, to me, is that no matter how hard it gets, no matter how hard the darkness of the world tries to snuff out the light, we have Jesus Christ, the true light.  We have the great Virgin Mary, the true Ark of the Covenant. Just as the Hebrews carried the Ark into battle with them, we must take the new Ark as well.  This is hope.  The hope that we cannot lose.  We have true truths.  We have true power.  We have the will to win.  We have the hope to continue the fight no matter what happens.  This is the hope we have as we wait for the coming of the Christ child.  We wait in hopeful prayer that with the coming of Christ, comes the dawning of a new age of life.  As I see the darkest dark clouding today's world, I see the brightest light just over the horizon.  In this true season of hope, let us show that our hope lies not in things that concern this world, but in Christ.  And through Christ, our hope in the world can be restored.

The Key

  It sure has been a long time since I wrote a blog, lets see if I can gain my touch back.  I have been home for two days, and a busy two days it has been!  I have spent a lot of timing praying with and serving my fellow man the past two days, and in a conversation I had with a new friend, we talked through something that has been bugging me for a long time.  Now, before I get down to the nitty gritty, this again may offend some people, I am okay with that.  This is not meant to be a personal attack, or me encroaching on your way of living your faith, it is merely just a reflection I made that will help people further understand themselves.
  To begin, for a long time now I have had issues with this "emotional" Catholicism movement(there is only one Catholicism, hence the quotation marks).  I see people in this movement, and I see how they act and what they say, and for the longest time I could never put my finger on why it bugged me so much.  Is it not just another way to live out the faith?  Am I being unjust in looking at this idea in disdain, and looking down upon it?  With the simple answer being yes, I am being unjust, this answer is not so simple.  We all want to feel good.  Pain is a feeling that wants to be avoided.  Even animals have the want to escape pain.  We try to avoid pain at all costs.  This is where the slippery slope begins.  Did Christ not choose to suffer on the cross?  He was 100% God.  He could have done whatever he wanted, yet when Peter tried to talk him out of the cross, Jesus rebuked him saying "Get behind me Satan!"  What harsh words!  When attempted to be talked out of pain, Jesus accuses the person talking to him as being Satan!  What does this have to do with the emotional movement that I am trying to explain?  The simple reason is everything.
  I notice that for the most part in this emotional movement, people want to feel good.  They think they develop this one on one thing with God that gives them a lot of the answers.  They claim to hear God's voice and they act oddly and have these so called Fruits of the Spirit.  While I am not calling BS on all of this, I am saying think.  These Emotes are so enthralled by their emotional attachment to God, which in itself is not a bad thing at all, that they throw reason out the window.  The first thought that I would like to point out is that no matter what you say, it is near impossible to KNOW WITH CERTAINTY that a voice you hear in your prayers is indeed the voice of God.  This is where reason comes in.  This is where discernment comes in.  It is easy to get caught up in the emotion, I was there at one point too, however, this is a dangerous place to be.  Emotions are difficult to control, they make a person act impulsively at times as well as your current emotional state is hardly stable.  Only through a rational thought process can one fully determine what God is telling them in their life.
  This entire blog entry is derived from a conversation I had.  The conversation was circled around the solution to this mess of a problem.  What my friend told me made more sense than anything I have heard in a while.  It helped me sort this out, and maybe it will help you as well.  Essentially he told me that in our mind, we understand the law of the Catholic faith.  We know all the rules, all of the traditions, and all of the teachings.  However, no matter how much we know, without the heart, we have no reason to act on it.  The heart and having a real relationship with God is where this drive to follow the rules and precepts in your mind comes from.  It is not enough to have one or the other.  Both are fully necessary to the full comprehension of our rich faith.  A healthy balance of strong critical thinking and a strong emotional standing are what make a dangerous Catholic.  A Catholic who can go out and change the world.  A Catholic who will soon find their path in life.  A Catholic who shines as an example of light in the true darkness of the modern world.  I am trying my very hardest to build this foundation.  I am no where near completion, but I am on the way.  I encourage you, no matter where you are in your spiritual journey, to think about where you can balance your intelligence with your emotion.  Do not let one over power the other, for they are both hazardous to living out a true deep faith.  I hope that you took something away from this near incoherent ramble, but I think this is something very important to address.  Especially in youth.  If you have any questions or comments, please, leave me a comment.  I hope you are all living in the light.  Pax.

The Self

  I spend quite a bit of free time just thinking.  Thinking about my past, my present, and my future.  People always tell me that "what is in the past in done, you cannot change it," and while I see that as true, I do not think you should leave the past alone.  It is my firm belief that you have to reflect back on your past, and re-write any wrongs that occurred.  I will discuss what I mean by this by reflecting on my own life.
  For a long time I just left my past alone.  I did not let it bother me, and I just continued about on my life as if nothing changed.  Then it hit me.  How am I to proceed with my future life if my past is incomplete?  By this I mean that our lives build off of themselves.  I see the past as a foundation on which a future is built.  The further I look into the future, the further I must delve into the past.  Years and years of letting stuff slide is taking its toll.  I left bits and pieces of myself behind that I now must bring to God and seek his help in reattaching it.  This process is taking a lot out of me.  Every wrong that I must right forces me to take a blow to something none of us like hurting, our pride.  My pride takes beating after beating as I must man up and tell people I was wrong, I am sorry.  It is not a pleasant process, but one I must accomplish if my future is to have a strong foundation.  The problem I am running into is that some people are too stubborn to accept my apology.  I hurt some of them extremely, and its these situations that really tear me to shreds.  Its through this that I make a link to confession.
  What is confession but going to an old friend you have wronged and telling them what you did wrong? The friend knows what you did wrong, but they still want to hear you admit it to them.  I struggle with confession in the same way as I struggle with manning up to the people in my past.  I do not want to admit that the actions that I took were incorrect.  I hate admitting I was wrong, I love to be right.  But, a greater joy is receiving the forgiveness.  There is no better feeling than the friend telling you it is alright you are forgiven.  The biggest difference I see is that forgiveness from God is much easier than your earthly friends.  I do not understand why we are so slow to forgive people as humans.  We are all as equally flawed as the next, yet, when we are the the ones wronged, we hold grudges and do not let them go.  It is not fair to either person that the grudge is held.  Lately I have been putting myself on the line for some people, and they just push me away.  It is discouraging, but through Christ who strengthens me I shall persevere.  Every loss is a gain.  As long as I remain humble through this process, than I expect what should happen to happen.  My challenge for you readers is to be more forgiving.  If someone comes to you asking for forgiveness or explaining their wrongs, tell them everything will be okay.  Thank them for being sincere.  Try not to hold pointless grudges, without these, would the world not be a better place?

Defense

  Another long week with many exams, little sleep, and multiple situations where I had to put my faith on the line.  This week I am going to focus on defending the faith.  This key concept is something that I think we miss out on.  When I say defending the faith, it involves quite a complex process.  It is one thing to know the knowledge, but an entirely different matter to be able to synthesize the information and put it out in different ways for people to understand.  I have had quite the learning experience since I have been at school about defending the faith.
  I will use an example of an idea that ran over several days this week.  I have a friend named Derek.  Derek has taught me quite a bit in what it takes to back up an opinion.  Arguing with a guy whose religious belief on facebook says "Religious views are the route of a lot of evil," already puts me at a disadvantage.  Derek's huge thing is that logic is king.  If your argument has ANY flaw whatsoever, you are done, finished.  He is great at translating arguments and proving them using propositional logic.  This week our topic was the human sexuality.  We had a roughly three hour long discussion on the topic.  I felt extremely pressed to form an argument that he could not prove to be invalid.  After a while, I presented him with one.  He spent awhile trying to prove it absurd, and thus attack the quality of the argument.  After an hour, he could not do it, and for once, my argument stayed.
  What does this have to do with defending the faith?  It has quite a bit actually.  As I said in the intro, the ability to synthesize information is critical.  I am in an argumentation class, and until this year I have never understood the importance of how to form good arguments.  It is incredibly critical.  As we go out and defend the faith people will constantly challenge the logic and validity of the arguments you present. In high school, I never ran into this problem, and I seemed to be able to conquer any argument placed against me due to my incredible knowledge.  The synthesis never had to come, because I was never challenged on forming good arguments.  In college, I am constantly challenged to present clear, valid arguments.  This has not only led to a deepening of my faith, but also greatly increased my effectiveness as an evangelizer.  I challenge each and every one of you to present great logical arguments when defending the faith, if you do not succeed in winning the point, you will at least gain respect from the other person.  Learn it, Live it, Love it.  God bless.