Scum and Villainy

DISCLAIMER: I actually like all of you. I do not think we are scum this the result of and for the purpose of introspection. END DISCLAIMER

Don't take this personally but I think we are all thieves and con artists.

See:

Note: You aren't this cool about it either...

 I am wholly convinced that we are committing highway robbery on a daily basis. Now I want you to put down the blunt instrument you are reaching for and stop looking up my address. Here is what I mean:

We are robbing God. It is not like we can help it but we are loved on a level that cannot be comprehended. This love is what we are called to imitate. (Christian? Christ-like?) Stop asking how we swindle God, I am getting there, in fact, here it is. God freely bestows his unending, unconditional grace and love upon us. What do we offer in return? How often do we haggle the buying price? Though, we are already bought and paid for. In His great Love for us did he not, in the ultimate act of humility, pay the greatest price for us? This is what we believe. Yet we still haggle and ask for a better deal, as if that were possible. Unconditional love, traded for a bit of conditional love here and there sounds good right? Were it you or I being offered that deal  I am certain we would have none of it! However, despite this He willingly takes the deal! Even as we are raking him over the coals he allows it because we are so loved! God takes our imperfect love and magnifies it. He returns our human love with so much more.

It is not only in this way that we find ways to cheat God. When we claim to follow God and fail to live up to what that means we are like thieving employees. We are the guys skimming off the top. We are cutting the corners here and there, testing what we can get away with. That always turns into more and more. We are reluctant to accept the difficulty of what is asked of us. Loving the world is hard. We want an easier way to do things so we always look for shortcuts, or the minimum acceptable amount of work. The thing is no one ever said this was going to be easy. Christ, the God-man Himself, said that it would actually be very very hard to follow in His footsteps. This is why it is ever more important that we learn to love each other. We carry each other through the hard times. Christian, non-Christian, it applies to all. We were asked to love like God to glorify God, BY LOVING OTHERS. That is never going to be easy.

Simply put God loves us, asks us to love like Him and put it to action. What is He getting in return from us?
Here we are in Lent and it is time to evaluate how we love. Can we ever be perfect imitations of Christ? no that is why we need eternity. Everyday presents the chance to make ourselves better than yesterday. In order to be efficient at this we must not just acknowledge our shortcomings but ACCEPT them. Embrace that truth "I am not perfect, i can always improve." Lent is for finding the corners we cut, and returning the 5 dollars we took from the register, and taking on the responsibility of being a true, loving, holy Catholic at a fair price. Otherwise we are nothing more than: (I'll let Alan Rickman take us home)

...an exceptional thief.

Ash Wednesday

    If you are like me then you are usually trying to figure out exactly what you are going to do for Lent right about now. Sometimes we find ourselves wondering about what our Lenten Penance should be weeks after the ashes on our foreheads have been washed off. It seems so natural to hold off on picking out how we will suffer for forty days. Oh how we think we suffer too, giving up Facebook, sweets, or television. Being in Louisiana has conditioned me to think at some level that Penance just means we don't eat burgers or steak on Fridays but  mountains of fried catfish and boiled crawfish are somehow a suffering to be offered up. 

"Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return" the priest says as he traces the symbol of the cross on our foreheads with ash. Ash that I will someday be. This body will wither away. No amount of sit-ups can keep it from happening. There is no bargain I can strike to hold off death. Lent is a time to remember this and to remember that we must always be vigilant of the state of our souls. Lent is a time to stretch and move and see what we are made of spiritually.

For Lent I want to make myself uncomfortable. I want to make challenges and have friends/family/a spouse who hold me accountable to them! If we are constantly in the comfort zone and we do not test our limits then how can we grow? The physical trainer will tell you this of your body, the therapist will tell it to you of your mind, why do we tend to neglect it of the spirit? 

What Penance means to me is the chance to exercise my soul (and maybe exorcise as well). Penance helps us to break the heavy chains of sin, and find within us deeper love. This love will move us to change the world.

As we go into Lent, let us be like the small humble hobbits, carrying the One Ring across the ashen land of Mordor. We are Frodo, weighted down and heartbroken. We struggle and crawl through the muck, and fall time and time again. When at last we fall and cannot lift ourselves with our own strength, the Grace of God steps in and carries us. Just as Sam carried Frodo, God will see our hearts through to the end, even if our bodies fail us.

 As we move through Lent let our focus move from being the carrier of the burden to carrying the burden of others as well. Be like Sam. We cannot carry another's burdens, but sometimes we can, with the help of God's love and grace, make the weight easier to bare. Remind each other, we are not alone in the desert. We will not suffer alone just as we will not be victorious alone. 

Lent is Coming..

A throne made of swords should be Penance enough yeah?

Test post. So, I will be attempting a blog here. Mostly to practice writing and to share my less personal thoughts that I would normally put in a journal. I cannot promise how this will go but for those who stick with me we can figure that out together. First official post: Ash Wednesday.