Unearned Luck

Photo by Veri Ivanova on Unsplash So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority." -Acts 1:6-7 He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. -Ecclesiastes 3:11 This afternoon at Mass, Father began his homily on the need for patience with God by relating his recent frustrations trying to return from his three-day vacation in Colorado. In the end, he and his traveling companions drove seventeen hours to get home in time for him to say his Masses today. Traveling seventeen hours in a vehicle with three other people does require patience of a kind. The boon patience receives in this scenario is knowing that there will be no need for patience in seventeen ...

In the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. -Romans 4:17 If you wish to read this with the footnotes in place, please click:  Is God's Being Love?        Love is understood to be many things: an emotion, a feeling, an action. There are many kinds of love: philio , caritas , and Minne . Yet, in the Bible, love is action. “Rebekah loved Jacob,” and so helped Jacob obtain the birthright from the elderly Isaac. Mary Magdalene loved Jesus, and so she washed his feet and perfumed his head. Jesus Christ loves all mankind, and so He died on the cross to release mankind from its slavery to sin and death. St. John the Evangelist, however, states simply, “God is love.” Since God is simply subsistent being, St. John is stating that being is love, since the source of all being is love. To begin, being and subsistent being need defining. Being is tha...

Photo by Zhipeng Ya on Unsplash Do not wonder at the works of a sinner, but trust in the Lord and keep at your toil; for it is easy in the sight of the Lord to enrich a poor man quickly and suddenly. Sirach 11:21 While I have worked very hard to achieve success at various times in my life, I have never worked for success in my spiritual life. It's been my idea, that if I pray for it, then God should grant it. This has seemed only natural. If I want to be healthy and stay in shape, then I have to eat right and exercise. Obviously, God is not going to just make that happen for me. Since I can't see the spiritual side of my life, though I haven't done much more than pray to God to make good things happen. This strategy has proved very frustrating. God has not miraculously removed my habitual sins nor has he miraculously caused me to trust entirely in His Divine Providence. He has been surprisingly obtuse. Or so it has seemed. Rather, God has been teaching me,...

Photo by  Jackson Hendry  on  Unsplash "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge  of God, rather than burnt offerings." -Hosea 6:6 In relating the narratives surrounding Christ's Passion and Resurrection, all four Gospels point out "...the women who had followed him from Galilee..." (Luke 23:49), namely, Mary , the mother of Jesus, Mary , the wife of Clopas and the mother of James (the lesser) and Joseph or Joses, Salome , the wife of Zebedee and the mother of James (the greater) and John, and Mary Magdalene , "from whom he had cast out seven demons" (Mark 16:9). These women "had followed Jesus...ministering to him" (Matthew 27:55). Now they were witnesses to his death and, soon, would witness his Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven. There is more to glean from the Sacred Scriptures about these women. The Blessed Virgin Mary was the widow of Joseph, a carpenter in Nazareth. Her son is the Son of G...

"Then Job arose, and rent his robes, and shaved his head, and fell upon the ground, and worshiped. And he said, 'Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return; the L ORD gave, and the L ORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the L ORD .'"    -Job 1:20-21 "'Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on....[D]o not be anxious...[Y]our heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.'"    -St. Matthew 6:25a, 31a, 32b, 33 Recently, I read through the Book of Job again. I had forgotten how beautiful a text it is, and in its beauty is its inspiration. From the account of Job offering sacrifice daily for the sanctity of his children to the description of God holding court and His interaction with Satan to God's own testimony to His infi...

Jack Sharp on Unsplash For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.    -Psalm 84:10 I went to confession, Adoration, and Mass this morning. It was indescribably incredible. There is no place I would rather be than at Mass or Adoration. I could live there, but do I? No. For reasons I don't even know, I always find something to get in the way. I maintain an illusion that I must do something else, that something else is more important at the moment. That's just sheer ridiculousness. It's easy to maintain illusions. In high school, I maintained the illusion that I was fat. Now I maintain the illusion that I am not. No, illusions are worthless. God is not a God of illusions. He is a God of the tangible and of presence and not of time. I may not think I have the time, but when I am with God, I am outside of time. Time becomes irrelevant. Anyway, if I don'...

I hate winter. The snow is pretty and the sun, when it is out, is always beautiful, but it ends there for me. It's the miserable cold that blankets Indiana at this time of year I dislike the most. It's like waiting for someone to break your legs. You know it's going to happen and you know when, but there's nothing you can do to stop it. The cold is horrible. It's as rude as a home invasion, as harsh as truth, and as bitter as the next morning. No matter where I go, it's there. In this over-priced box I call home, the only thing kept out by the windows are comatose people and animals, so the cold traipses in and out like drunk guests at a cookout. Whenever the thermostat decides to kick on, it blasts this space with heat straight from Hephaestus' forge. The dry, hot air mixes with the dry, cold air. The air, now devoid of all moisture, sucks it out of me, my sons, the wood, the plants, the dishwasher, towels, cups, the drywall,... I've awoken in the ...

  I made known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.    -St. John 17:26 A friend and I were talking about living the Christian life and I used the term "radical Christianity," then corrected myself. "Radical Christianity" is a term I've heard many, many times used to describe the lives of people like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Theresa of Calcutta. What hit me in our conversation was that we were talking about the kinds of life every Christian should be living, so there shouldn't be any "radical Christianity." We should all be living a radical life, but radical only because we are daring to live it as authentic Christians, true followers of Christ. St. Francis and St. Theresa were living their lives in response to the call of Christ. They were doing exactly what God had called them to do. We are no different, though, perhaps, not called to live the charisms to...

Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet all kinds of trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.    -St. James 1:2 People annoy the daylights out of me at times and it is the hardest thing for me to keep from responding to their insensitivities and intrusions in ways demonstrative and even violent. Most of it comes from their mistaken understanding of their own importance, a selfishness deeply rooted in their personalities. Short of a miracle or their deaths, nothing will ever cure these people of doing exactly what they want when they want without any regard for anyone's regard. What I want to do is to lay out in a very logical fashion why they are wrong and what they need to do to become better people and leave me alone. Unfortunately, their own behavior makes it clear that they are impervious to logic or pleas to anything higher than their own egos. Then I fantasize about battle axes and dungeons, but that wouldn't really get...

Ashwin Vaswani on Unsplash The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to work, it ceases to exist.      -St. Gregory the Great Do you wish to discover the mysteries of God? Ask a man who, for the love of God, lives in evangelical poverty with joy. He knows the mysteries of God better than the wisest theologian in the world.                                    -St. Albert the Great True power is service. The Pope must serve all people, especially the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.                                    -Pope Francis It seems everyone is getting all in an uproar about the work Pope Francis is doing. It's what got Mr. Ben Shapiro into a dither. From whence comes such madness? Someone, perha...

Eric Mok on Unsplash   "Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.'"    -St. John 20:19b Yesterday's post was about avoiding the trap of fearing the devil. The more we know Jesus and the more we love Him as both Our Lord and Our Brother, we lose our fear and have an easier time living out the lives to which God is calling us. As with any relationship we have in our lives, the more time we spend with the special people in our lives, the more we know about them and the more deeply and the more intensely we love them. Many couples set aside date nights for just this purpose. The same is true with our relationship with Jesus. We have to spend time with Him alone. The most personal way to spend time with Jesus is by visiting Him in the Blessed Sacrament. Just go to your parish church and sit before the Tabernacle or the Monstrance, if it is a perpetual adoration chapel. Start talking to Jesus as you would talk to your best friend. Then s...

  "And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."    -St. Matthew 10:28 One night, as young teenagers, a friend and I watched a horror movie involving something to do with the devil possessing one of the protagonists of the film. That movie terrified me, but the dreams I had later that night terrified me more. Upon awaking the next morning, I knew that I didn't want to ever be possessed. What the movie had presented coupled with my profound ignorance of parts of my own faith and an irrational fear led me to an incredibly stupid and dangerous conclusion. I figured that to get into heaven, while avoiding any from the devil, I would be just a little bad. I had taken the devil's bait and I was never just a little bad. Have you ever done something similar? Christ teaches us that we are not to be afraid of Him nor of His Gospel. The fear that God and His angels inspire in the Sacred...

There are six things which the L ORD hates, seven which are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and a man who sows discord among brothers . - Proverbs 6:16-19 John said to him, "Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us."  But Jesus said, "Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me.  For he that is not against us is for us." - St. Mark 9:38-40 It is already so easy for the average Catholic in the pew to feel isolated.  Most parishioners relate through the parish school and the extra-curricular activities surrounding the school.  Catholics without children in the parish school are out of luck.  Most Catholics are so harried and exhausted that they pass...

Demon, demon on my shoulder Whispers in my ear. “Tell me. Tell me now Everything you hear.” “All I tell you is the truth. You’ll feel it in your heart. I hear tell of your failures, your weaknesses, your many false starts. No one really likes you. They’re all using you just the same. For everything that does and has gone wrong, you’re the only one to blame. I hear tell that even God laughs, when you kneel at the rail. Your thoughts aren’t real. Your dreams are fake. All you do will fail. Everything is nonsense. All your life is crap. You’re much too scared for life now. Your fear has become my trap.” “But what of my girlfriend? Surely, she must be for real. She loves me so, is always true and always will be there.” “Are you kidding?” the demon replied. “She’s a nympho, never true especially to you. She’ll never leave? She’s gonna stay? But what can you offer her? You’re critical, condemning ...