Sunday, October 21, 2012

Flash of wisdom

I believe I've discovered a large part of my recent problem with work/home balance. I need to find joy in piles of laundry. 

To those who aren't housekeepers in one form or another, this may sound silly or counterintuitive but I believe the key to my sanity lies within that statement. 

I must find joy in piles of laundry. Joy in work yet done. 

Monday, October 15, 2012

Jesus, period.

I never intended for this blog to be so Catholic, but it does seem inevitable if I'm to be a honest blogger, as I strive to be. So, let it be.

There are some days I just can't leave for work on time. Some days are my fault, some days are because of the kids, other days it's no one's fault, it just happens. Today was one of those days. And I think it happened because one of my favorite preachers was celebrating Mass on EWTN this morning.

Father Wade Menezes, I'm making a public confession: I am a fangirl. You bring home the faith like no other priest I've heard, aside from my very own Father Jim. You're a riveting public speaker and a white-hot conduit of the Holy Spirit.

Okay. I feel better now.

Click here to see/hear this morning's homily.


Hearing him speak about our need for trust in Jesus and nothing more made me realize just how self-involved I've been lately. You see, I got braces on Thursday. Yeah. Because of my jaw/bite issues, I've been needing them for a while but talked myself out of them for many reasons -- cost, vanity, pain. But the jaw pain in the last several months has gotten so crazy that I figured with summer daycare costs out of the way, now's the time.

So I took the plunge and got spacers in week before last and braces on last Thursday. And they suck. And they hurt. And I look quite different with them and have a wicked lisp. And oh yeah. They're expensive too.
So anyway, here we are, I'm listening to Father Wade talk about "Jesus plus a good job, Jesus plus money in the bank"and I realize I've been withholding my trust in Jesus alone and trying to figure out how to fix everything. Again.

I really don't know how many times I'm going to be hit with that same anvil. I mean, really.

Faith and grace

Friday's homily from Father Brian Mullady is a great follow-up (or should it come first? He certainly knows more than I do) to my previous post on faith.


Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Faith ... what it is


This is the talk I gave to the RCIA class at St. Maria Goretti Catholic Church on Sat., Sept. 29. I've edited it a bit for privacy's sake. 

I want to share something with you today that I wish I’d known when I was where you are today in the RCIA process and it is this – faith is not something you find, it is not something given to you.
Faith is a deliberate movement of the will. It is moving your will to align with God’s will. This is a continuous, deliberate and conscious choice that you make.

Faith also requires several things of us. First, it requires revelation, which you each have experienced in different ways, or you wouldn’t be here. And God willing, that revelation will continue throughout your life in what I like to call your faith journey.

142 By his Revelation, "the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company."1The adequate response to this invitation is faith.

Second, it requires submission of the intellect and will to God. Again, faith is a deliberate movement of the will.

143 By faith, man completely submits his intellect and his will to God.2 With his whole being man gives his assent to God the revealer. Sacred Scripture calls this human response to God, the author of revelation, "the obedience of faith".3

Next, faith requires obedience. Now, obedience is a word we don’t like to hear these days and in this world. Obedience has become synonymous with following rules and being told what you can and cannot do. However, true obedience is a product of love, not coercion. Think about the things you have faith in – for most of us, we have (or at least had) faith in the love of our parents or other family members. We couldn’t prove it – couldn’t put our finger on it or hold it in your hand, but you just knew. You knew those people loved you. I think about this with my kids – even my son with autism who has a real hard time with understanding emotions, even he knows I love him even though he doesn’t know why. The same is vice verse. They may not always act like it, but I freely submit to the truth of their love for me.

144 To obey (from the Latin ob-audire, to "hear or listen to") in faith is to submit freely to the word that has been heard, because its truth is guaranteed by God, who is Truth itself. Abraham is the model of such obedience offered us by Sacred Scripture. The Virgin Mary is its most perfect embodiment.

Lastly, faith requires trust. Trust is another word that is loaded with meaning in this world. Some of us are actually taught to not trust anyone else, to trust only yourself. Not only is this no way to live, you can’t have faith in God without trust in God.

Let me share with you a little about my life and faith journey. I was raised Catholic, Catholic in name only that is. I was baptized but that was really it. My parents are a product of the ‘60s and reflect the disillusionment that happened to many young people during that time. They raised my sister and I to follow our feelings, to question authority and to trust no one but yourself. It was a very relativistic mindset. 

I was told to find my place in this world and I spent years and years looking for it. Deep in my heart was a yearning for faith, so I looked everywhere – the Baptist church, Methodist church, a little of the occult – but I couldn’t find the answer to my searching.

Finally by the time I was in my late 20s, I thought I’d found the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and when that didn’t work out I was crushed physically and mentally and I absolutely refused to let it go.So, we were “just friends” for a while and during the entire course of our relationship he actually helped me a lot. 

He was a non-Christian, and I was fascinated by his faith and how it formed and shaped his days and life in general. It was he who told me to start my faith foundation with what I knew, with where it began as a child. So I did.

I joined RCIA, and it was great. But I still struggled the whole time with what this meant for my life. Where was I supposed to go from here? No one else I knew was Catholic, let alone faithful. And, well, the answer came in the form of the greatest gift from God – my son.

I offer this somewhat cautionary tale to help you understand that your faith life, your faith, will only happen and grow when you submit your will to God’s. And you’re already doing that by being here. Just remember that faith is a continual process, not something you have once and that’s that. It is ever-growing expression of God’s revelation, God’s will, obedience to that will and trust in God.

Italicized text from the Catechism of the Catholic Church

Copyright me 2012  Don't plagiarize, for the Lord is just even if you're not.