Unearned Luck

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 John Torcasio on Unsplash Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. -Hebrews 12:1-2 Overcoming sin and conforming our wills with God's Will is very, very difficult. We all know this. This is not news. What can we do? To be successful in overcoming our sins and conforming our wills, knowing our triggers is important. In other words, how are our lives usually going, when we most easily fall into sin? It's usually part of a pattern. We get sick of sinning like a fool. We resolve to change our lives and begin taking part in the sacramental life of the Church. We turn more often to prayer, es...

Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you. -1 Peter 5:8-10 The LORD said to Satan, "Whence have you come?" Satan answered the LORD, "From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it." And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?" Then Satan answered the LORD, "Does Job fear God for nought?...touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face." -Job 1:7-11 St. Pe...

Having eyes, do you not see, and having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember?    -St. Mark 8:18 The Midnight Mass is the most beautiful liturgy of the year for me. For the most part, the people attending Midnight Mass have made the choice to be there, possess the willingness to participate, and bring with them an eager anticipation upon which comes a peace, a joy, and an energy rarely, if ever, seen at that dark, lonely ushering of the Eve to the Day. At the Midnight Mass, we are there with the shepherds in the fields and join them as the first witnesses of the miracle of the Incarnation, walking into that cave and falling to our knees in silent, fearful adoration. We see St. Joseph, the Blessed Mother, and the Christ Child and are quickly overcome with a joy and a peace we have never known before, but unlike the shepherds on that first Christmas, we know the reason for our joy and peace. We know that the Word of God has become Man, so that through His pass...

  "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...

  A friend and I were talking today about events around the world and in our own country and how very little of it seems to affect the lives, thoughts, or actions of those we know and observe in our daily travels. It struck us that the Holy Father's view of all of this must be fairly distressing. To wit, in one half of the world Catholics are being slaughtered physically by the hundreds or even the thousands every day. Just a daily reading of the news blurbs coming across the Missio app makes clear the sheer horror these people are facing as they are being identified, culled, and killed. The Catholics in the other half of the world are being slaughtered spiritually. Consumerism, cynicism, self-hatred, incredibly poor catechesis, complacency, and countless other evils either have pushed Catholics out of the Church or have left them in the Church as cultural Catholics with no real attachment to the faith. While not as dramatic, so not the fodder of news editors, this slaught...

Kurt Wallander, an inspector with the Ystad Police Department, is the protagonist in a series of crime novels written by Swedish novelist, Henning Mankell. Nine of the novels were dramatized and presented on the BBC in 2008, 2010, and 2012. Starring Kenneth Branaugh as Wallander, the BBC production, according to critics, did a very good job of presenting the novels and Branaugh did an equally good job of portraying the police inspector. Wallander, tortured by the evils and horrors that confront him in his job, has become detached, depressed, and cynical. In the first story in the BBC series, his wife has already left him and found another man. His daughter seems to have little respect for him and is not at all sympathetic with the sorrow he feels in losing his wife. Having no faith of any kind, trusting no one, and unable to form any friendships, Wallander's only solution to the pain, confusion, and frustration in his life is to spend every night drinking until he passes out, the...

A friend asked to hear the story of how I came to Jesus.  I replied briefly in an e-mail and I think I messed up a story I told.  I should never do more than one thing at a time. I don't know that my story is a matter of coming to Jesus.  I've always known that Jesus has been with me.  We used to have long conversations, when I was growing up about how things were and nothing ever changed.  I went to a Catholic grade school and had a fairly typical experience there.  We were a small class with the usual cliques and issues that exist among a small group of very different children who are together for three-fourths of every year for eight straight years. Our pastor for those eight years, Fr. Noll, was an eccentric man given to distraction and preoccupation, but he was a very good man and priest.  One of my classmates and I had similar builds, but very different names.  For eight straight years, though, Fr. Noll called me, "Alex" and called Alex,...

Before we describe as paranoia the thoughtful consideration of the possibility that there will not be a general election in November, we should take an educated look around the world today and throughout history and come to understand how people have thought that the drastic changes quietly overtaking them were only others' paranoia.  Most in Weimar Germany never believed that the funny little man and his pitiful group of losers would ever be a leader let alone lead them into a world war which would destroy their families, neighbors, friends and lives and would leave a lasting sorrowful legacy for their nation.  Few believed that a book written by a couple of pissed off intellectuals would result in almost 100 years of organized, government-sponsored terror, murder and poverty like the world has never seen in two of the oldest countries on the planet during a century that historians and popes have called the bloodiest in history.  Calling a sensitivity to the lessons of...