Dressed to Pray, or Something Else?

     I want to keep this one short, but it has a point. I was in a conversation with a good friend and he mentioned to me someone he knew who made a rather big deal about someone wearing shorts to pray in the Adoration Chapel. I am sure this well meaning fellow saw this as an opportunity to educate someone on the proper dress when approaching the Lord and what a missed opportunity it was! Imagine saying “Is THAT what you are wearing?” to someone who simply wants to go pray. The simplest remarks could turn a person from yearning piety to shameful aversion.

      I have been on the receiving end of such scorn, in Mass no less. Let me set the record straight I do own a suit and some nice clothing BUT there was a time when I did not, and my nicest clothes were still packed. (Nicest being a polo and jeans without holes in them) So here we are, my wife and I, in a new town, going to Mass at a parish that apparently had a dress code. I get it we want the congregation to look nice. In no way were we dressed as slobs but I was not wearing a fine suit or anything either. Like I said, polo and jeans. We did get looks throughout Mass but the icing on the cake was the literally “once over” look we both received from a Eucharistic Minister who in this order: Held the Body of Christ in her hands, looked my wife from head to toe, rolled her eyes, and mumbled “The Body of Christ.” I swear if I had been wearing shorts she might have refused us Communion!

     Now this brings to mind several things. What if some poor soul stumbled into that Mass after the worst day of work in his life, dirty and tired, with no time to come home, and in a state of desperate need for love? What if that look I received had been given to him? If our dress is regarded as a prayer then should we not go into the quiet place of our heart and, you know, not worry about what the other guy is wearing. Maybe that guy in shorts or jeans is like the poor woman at the well who gave her two coins. The nicest I have had at times, my two coins, have been a pair of jeans and a nice shirt.

      I do like dressing up nice for Mass. I really do, but I am not about to flaunt it as though it is the highest and almighty good, or that it is the requirement to come before the Lord. Certainly some will argue: You would dress as nice as you could to see the President! Yes that is true but I don’t plan on having a relationship with the President, nor do I put God on such a low level as to compare him to a politician. He should be held in much higher regard than that. He is the ruler and Creator of All. So if you think about it, if we were to come before the Lord as he wants us, as he sees us, then we would all be naked.

Quick! Tie me to the Mast!

In the series A Song of Ice and Fire, the character Mance Rayder makes the interesting comment that men must have someone to bend a knee to. While he spat this as an insult it does ring true. Humans have a propensity to gravitate towards leaders, have people they look up to, and are, no matter what we think, servants.

What's that? You aren't a servant? of course not how silly of me to assume. you can leave the room now, OK now let's get back to it. Yes. Slaves. We are kidding ourselves if one of us wakes up one morning and says "Oh yes, I am in complete control of what is going on!"

The truth is that we have to, at some level, acknowledge that we are not in control. We are following some code of behavior or thought that has us chained. What are we chained to? Christianity is a religion of paradoxes. Eternal life was won through death, and in order to be free we must be servants. Of course our silly human brains hear this and think "How dare God claim I should be a servant to anyone? Should I not be free?" It is our nature to rebel against this and that is why it is all the more beautiful when a person rebels against their own broken nature and links their mind, body, and heart to serving the Lord.

The truth is, we are put into slavery no matter what we do. The free thinker is still subject to his own ideas and experiences. He is a wanderer without a map. The Congregation of the Amalgamated Church of the Spiritual but Not Religious are still lost to the extend that they have a destination but no directions or guide. The sinful are slaves to their sin. So that is the choice, bond one way or another. While there is another choice, it is certainly the worst of the three: we can always not choose! (which is still a choice) Not taking the servitude of one Master or another leaves one without quarter. It leaves one to stagnate in the cold darkness of the night. To be bound to an ideal or belief is to be pulled in the direction of it, and we must always be aware of the direction we are be led. We are not called to be blind, but to follow. This is true in life and in the everlasting life. BadCatholic wrote a piece on Heaven that was more intelligent and elegant than I can hope to write today. He has it right though, Heaven is an absolute forward motion. "Further up and further in" as my good friend C.S. Lewis would say (I can say that because he isn't around to defend against such allegations like being associated with me). We are Ulysses, tied to the mast, with the world spinning around us but being pulled ever towards our goal: home. Whose mast have we lashed ourselves to? Where is this boat heading exactly?



You guys know how to steer this thing right??

We are all indentured servants working off our debt to our Masters. The question is how will the Master treat us once we are free. For Catholics, in the midst of Lent especially, we have cause to examine who the Master of our spiritual home is. We give ourselves away by our actions. By making our actions an imitation God, who loves, and making God the master of the house, then we free ourselves from bondage only to bind ourselves to a Master who wants to pull us forward, and make us new.

Saints of the new Millenium, Assemble!

It is no secret that I am super excited for The Avengers. It appeals to the comic book fan, the Joss Whedon fan, and the action movie fan in me all at once. One of the things that sets Marvel comics apart, for me, is the humanity of the characters. DC's Batman, and Superman are all seemingly the god figures of a mythology, but Spider man, the X-men, and The Avengers are all very human with very human flaws. Portraying our heroes with some sort of tragic flaw adds a layer of relation to the character because we are all flawed beings. We all have our weaknesses, and unlike Superman's Kryptonite, our weaknesses are from within ourselves.

So that leaves me asking which Avenger am I? Which weakness do I carry in my faith and how I live my life? Am I:

Tony Stark/Iron Man: (addictions aside) Am I the flashy one? Do my arrogance and aloofness leave me segregated from my fellow heroes? Is it hard for me to accept their help or acknowledge they are right and I am wrong? Do I think that I am somehow more qualified than the rest of the world?

Thor: Is it a different kind of pride that I have? Do I think I am invincible? Do I lack humility?

Bruce Banner/The Hulk: Is there something within me that I fear so much that i simply run? Is what I think to be my weakness actually my gift and strength? Do I hide my light from the world and thus fail to work to save it?

Steve Rogers/Captain America: Do I feel purposeless? Do I feel like i belong to another world, or another time, and that my gifts have nothing good to offer this world?

or am I something else entirely?

In what is sure to be a tense moment in the movie the main antagonist (that we know of) Loki is asking "How desperate are you that you would call upon such a creature?" referring to if not one but all of the members of the superhero team brought together by Nick Fury. I am sure we often find ourselves asking God the same question, referring to ourselves, or sometimes to others. It usually sounds something like "I am not worthy." (hopefully some of you read that in your best Monty Python accent!) The point is not that we are not worthy but we were chosen despite that! Despite our weaknesses and flaw we have been given a task to be stewards of the world and to be a light of love when there is no hope! When Jesus picked his apostles He did not go find the most upright citizens in town, he picked the weak, working men, some who would deny Him. He had to know they would fail him, but He called them out anyway because He knew their potential. So Christ assembled his team, and has called us to so assemble.

The orders are simple: make the world better, by loving one another.
Clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, care for the sick.
Love each other as you are so loved. Sin or no sin, we are all deserving of that love.

As Catholics we have a unique set of individuals to look to for inspirations. The Saints! From the Early Church to Modern Day there are stories of flawed men and women answering the call to make the world a better place. These are the heroes who existed and walked the same Earth we do, with the same struggles, and felt called to serve. They let their gifts shine as a light to the world in times of darkness.

We have the same call. John Paul II himself said in his World Youth Day address: "Young people of every continent, do not be afraid to be the saints of the new millennium! Be contemplative, love prayer; be coherent with your faith and generous in the service of your brothers and sisters, be active members of the Church and builders of peace." Read the whole thing here (It's a good one)

ASSEMBLE!!

If that doesn't sound like a call to form the Justice League I don't know what does! WE can be the heroes, WE can be the Saints, WE can inspire the future generations to take care of one another. What we don't have to do is be flawless about it. Fall down, get back up. Easy as that.

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.