Intrusive thoughts

“What do you do about intrusive thoughts during prayer?”

This is the heart of a beautiful question I received from someone who’s thinking about becoming Christan. Specifically, a Catholic Christian. And they’re starting to pray the Rosary.

They’ve already figured out that the Rosary is meant to help you be present with God. It’s Christian meditation. To make a quiet place inside us to just be with God.

Something a lot of cradle Catholics don’t know.

They’re having problems with intrusive thoughts. It’s frustrating. It feels like the opposite of a quiet place to just be with God.

Something everyone of us who prays the Rosary knows all too well.

So what do you do about intrusive thoughts during prayer?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I can tell you what I do. And it depends on the thought.

If it’s small potatoes. Something I just remembered. Or something I need to do. Or an email I need to return.

I just jot it down on my phone. Then I can let go of it. Because I know it won’t get lost.

What if it’s not small potatoes? What if it keeps coming back? What if it’s something I’m really wrestling with?

Maybe it’s a relationship that’s struggling or a health issue that’s getting worse. Maybe it’s a job search that’s gone cold or financial problems that keep growing. Or anything else that’s weighing on your heart.

Whatever it is, that’s what you need to be talking with God about.

If this time when you pray the Rosary, it creates a place for you to be with God – about what’s weighing on your heart?

Then that is how you need to pray.

Be with God, about what’s weighing on your heart.

If this time when you pray the Rosary, you never even finish the first decade – and the Lord’s Prayer trails off into pouring your heart out to God about the stone on your soul?

Then that is how you need to pray.

Pour your heart out to God about the stone on your soul.

If that is the Rosary that you need to pray in this moment, then that is how you should pray.

Whatever it is, share it with God. Let God be there for you.

Don’t waste your time trying to sort things out so you can have quiet time with God. Do it with God.

Pray as you are, not how you think you should be.

“We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.” - C.S. Lewis

Read More

Who are you when it’s just you?

Who are you when nothing’s happening, when it’s just you?

When you aren’t dealing with something or reacting, what are you like – on the inside?

When you and I get a break in the action, usually we’re so caught up in everything we’re doing, everything we’re expecting, everything that’s not working, everything that’s “oh-and-one-more-thinging” us –  that most of the time we don’t even notice there’s a break.

Or when we do, we never really let go of whatever it is we’re dealing with. Even when we could relax and lighten up a little, we don’t.

It’s like our insides have a case of resting b*tch face.

Our default state, who we are when it’s just us? It’s a sign of what’s going on inside us. Of who or what we’re filling ourselves up with.

And when our default looks like that? It’s a sign that whatever we’re filling ourselves up with, it’s not God.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus heals someone. But instead of focusing on the Pharisees’ BS or the reactions of other people, this time we get to see the reaction of the person who was healed. And it is wonderful.

There’s an intimate, private moment with Jesus. Followed by an eruption of joy. The person who was healed cannot stop telling everyone about Jesus and about what Jesus did.

The joy just overflows. You can feel the excitement. And it is glorious.

The source of that joy? Close contact with Jesus. Not just because of the healing, but because of Jesus. Here’s how it works.

You want joy? Spend time with the One who is the source of that joy.

You want joy to be your default? Then spend time with the One who is the source of that joy until you are so full of joy that you can’t help it – it just overflows.

Sort of the opposite of resting b*tch face.

“If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water.

If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.

They are not a sort of prize which God could, if he chose, just hand out to anyone.” - C.S. Lewis

Read More

Day three

(because, well, you know)

It’s day three. The day I stumble.

Every year, I start out making a bunch of New Year’s resolutions. Every year, I do good for about two days.

And then? Day three. That’s when I stumble.

That is, I forget to do something that I resolved to do. Or I mess up something that I resolved to do. Maybe some of both.

I do this every year. Day three. Like clockwork.

Why?

Because I get so enthused about all of my plans. All of my good ideas. That I just start doing stuff. That I get so enthused that I (and this is pathetic in its predictability) forget to lay the proper foundation. With God.

Both by making sure that all of my big ideas are in accord with God’s will. And by starting the day with God (instead of starting the day trying to do all the things).

It gives me hope to know that I’m not alone in this. That this is nothing new. As C.S. Lewis puts it,

“The real problem in the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals.

And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.

And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.”

Read More

Rejoice always?

“Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.”

Rejoice always? Always always? No matter what’s happening?

Yes.

No matter how bad it gets?

Yes.

That makes no sense at all. And the context doesn’t help.

Paul is writing this to a church that’s being persecuted. How are you supposed to rejoice when you’re being persecuted?

First, Paul isn’t telling them to ignore the hard stuff in life. Or to pretend like they’re not being persecuted.

It’s almost like rejoicing is a separate thing from everything they’re dealing with. Because it is.

How is that even possible?

It all depends on why you and I are rejoicing, on the source of our happiness.

If our happiness is a reaction, a response that depends on something or someone else, then (as much as we might not want to think about it) we know that it’s not going to last.

This is the truth behind C.S. Lewis’ much-quoted line, “Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose.”

That is, do not let your happiness be a reaction. Let your happiness be a choice.

I know people who say they have resting b*tch face. Regardless of how they really feel, that’s just what they look like when they’re not really doing or saying anything. That’s just what happens. That’s their default.

The thing about defaults is that they don’t have to just happen. You can choose your default. If you want to.

Choose happiness as your default. Choose to “rejoice always.”

Not by ignoring what’s going on in your life. Or how hard it is.

But also – by not going with whatever just happens. By being intentional. By choosing how you are going to feel while you’re dealing with it.

And the only way to do that is to do it with God.

Which is the point of the rest of it – “Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.”

That the only way to do it, the only way to rejoice always, is to do it with God.

By drawing close to God in prayer. Not just formal prayers or prayers in church, but a simple, ongoing, often jumbled, conversation with God.

Sharing everything with God. Including frustration and anger, even if it’s with God.

Pouring out your heart to the One who has always loved you. And who will always love you.

And by giving thanks. Even if the only thing left to give thanks for is that God is with you right there in the middle of it.

If you do, if you’ve got the courage to do it, don’t be surprised by what happens in your heart.

No matter what’s happening in your life.

(I know these are last Sunday’s readings, but this one really stayed with me.)

Read More

Getting through

What calls us to God?

When it comes to God, what really gets our attention? For most of us, there are at least three answers to the question.

There’s the answer we’d like to have. The miracle. Something amazing, undeniably supernatural, that cannot be explained as anything other than God’s doing. Something so obvious, so overwhelming that unbelief is not humanly possible.

There’s the Official Answer™. The one we give if anyone asks. Where we talk about things we want people to hear. Maybe we’re pushing a retro Catholic image. Maybe we’re chasing trends. Maybe we’re “spiritual, not religious.” Whatever the flavor of the day happens to be.

Then there’s the real answer. The one we live but don’t admit. That we’re not really listening to God much at all. While things are okay, we’re good. We’ve got this.

But when things start falling apart. When we’re hurting. Suddenly, we’re listening.

C.S. Lewis says it well, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains.”

Truth be told, God is speaking to us every day. Sometimes it’s deep within us, more like the Holy Spirit moving in our hearts. Sometimes it’s through the people and events of our lives.

However it happens for us, God is always right there.

The thing is, because we so desperately want to have the miracle. The big moment. Something amazing, undeniably supernatural, that cannot be explained as anything other than God’s doing.

That we get good at ignoring any other approach. Especially the everyday ways that God speaks to us.

Which is why C.S. Lewis is right. That God speaks to us through every avenue available to get through to us. Why?

God is shameless. And God’s love for us is shameless.

If nothing else, Good Friday shows us that.

God loves us so much. God wants so much to have a relationship with us, that He will use every part of our lives to reach us. Even our pain. Even our very worst moments.

Make no mistake, God is not the one who sends those moments to us.

But God loves us far too much to let us go through the worst moments in life by ourselves. To let even those moments go to waste.

Read More

“Do not bother me.”

Today’s Gospel is the story of a man who finally got the kids in bed. It’s late. At the end of a long day, finally he’s in bed. Trying to go to sleep.

And suddenly, his friend is blowing up his phone.

Asking for all kinds of stuff. He’s got an unexpected guest. And he needs, well, everything.

The man who was trying to get to sleep? His first words in response (and this is to a friend) are ones that you and I understand very well. Because they’re our words.

“Do not bother me.”

Why does this ring so true for us? Because, in our own ways, all of us have been there. And because (on some level) all of us feel like our time is our own.

Even if we’ve never formed the thought, it’s how we act. C.S. Lewis explained it this way,

“…nothing throws a man into a passion so easily as to find that a tract of time that he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening),…that throws him out of gear.”

“They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.”

That’s why we react that way. It’s the unspoken assumption behind much of our resentment at having to be bothered by the needs and cares and suffering of others.

And it’s why actual compassion is hard – not what Henri Nouwen observed as “our spontaneous response to suffering,” “to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.” But actual compassion.

“Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to places where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken.”

The only way to even want that inner disposition, much less actually acquire it, is to get over ourselves. Something we can never do on our own. The only hope we have for doing that, for getting over ourselves, is with God. And with God’s help.

It starts by trading our limited perspective for God’s eternal perspective.

And with getting over ourselves enough to ask God for help.

But it’s the only way that we’ll ever be anything more than perpetually aggrieved at everyone and everything – for taking something from us that was never ours to begin with. Time.

Read More

“Mine”

(by request, my homily from earlier today)

If you were going to summarize the Gospel we just heard [the parable of the wicked tenants, linked at the end], how would you do it?

For me, it comes down to one word – “mine.”

What we see in today’s Gospel is ugly. And it is nothing other than the end product of “mine,” the most dangerous idea our species has ever come up with.

When I say “mine,” I mean all mine.

Not just me first. It’s not enough that I win. You have to lose.

Taken to its natural conclusion, that is where “mine” ends up.

We’ve all seen it happen, maybe even in our own families. When mom dies. And one of the kids says “mine” about something in the estate. Something that mom left to someone else.

Whether it’s been a long time coming, or it’s a complete surprise, as that estate plays out you get to see a side of someone you thought you knew. A part of them that is truly ugly. And one that has no room for anyone else.

That is “mine” in action.

Or maybe you’ve lived it.

You worked there for ten years. You’re a top performer. Nobody does the job as well as you do. And everyone knows it.

When the chance for a promotion opened up, you were the obvious choice.

And then they gave it some kid who hadn’t even been there for a year.

That was your opportunity! You put in the time. No one was more qualified than you. It was yours. You deserved it. You were robbed!

That is what “mine” feels like.

And that is what we see playing out in today’s Gospel. “Mine” has gotten its claws into the tenants. And once it starts, it doesn’t stop.

That’s why it keeps ramping up, and why it gets completely out of hand. So that they can finally say “mine” – about the vineyard.

The thing is, the parable stops before “mine” is done having it’s way with the tenants.

If the owner hadn’t stepped in, if the tenants had taken over the vineyard?

“Mine” would have kept going. And they would have turned on each other, until only one of them was left to say “mine.”

Because that is how “mine” works. “Mine” means all mine.

It’s not enough that I win. You have to lose.

Taken to its natural, unavoidable conclusion, that is where “mine” ends up.

If you want to know what can destroy the strongest bonds of family, love, and friendship, this is it.

If you want to know what can separate us from God, this is it.

If you want to know what got us tossed out of the Garden, this is it.

“Mine” is the original sin.

And you’re thinking, “That’s not me, my sister was the greedy one when mom died. Besides, I’ve never beaten up a messenger, much less killed someone. None of this applies to me, right?”

I wish.

What Jesus is showing us is where “mine” ends up. But that’s not where it starts.

For most of us, it usually starts in disguise. And you and I are the ones camouflaging it.

We disguise “mine” in all kinds of ways. But whether we clothe in the language of success. Or power. Or influence. Or wealth. Or anger. Or even fear. They’re all just different ways of saying “mine.”

And no matter how we disguise “mine” at the beginning, if we let “mine” get its claws into us, this is where it ends up.

So, what can we do about it?

First, we’ve got to be honest about our limitations. You and I both know that we can’t just tell ourselves to not do something. And then pretend like that’s going to work.

If nothing else, we’ve been through enough Lents, where we’ve tried to give up even the most trivial things, to know better.

If we’re going to keep “mine” from sinking its claws into us, you and I need to do something. We need a concrete, positive way to respond.

This is what discipleship and stewardship are all about. How?

Discipleship is practical. It’s accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And then? Actually living like Jesus is your Lord and Savior.

As our diocesan synod put it, discipleship means making “a conscious, firm decision, carried out in action,” to be a follower of Jesus Christ – no matter the cost to yourself. It’s “a committed approach to living a Christian life within the Catholic Church.” That’s the official stuff.

What it really means is being who you are, as a Christian.

And stewardship? It’s how we put discipleship into practice. In every part of our lives. From how we treat ourselves, to how treat others. From how we use the influence that we have, to how we use the things that we have.

It’s living out who you are, as a Christian.

So, how do you and I do that?

I’m going to tell you something you already know. This is not easy.

And it’s not a one-and-done. This is something that has to be done over and over.

In every interaction. In every decision. In every action.

In every day. In every hour. In every thing.

If you’re serious, here’s the roadmap. From C.S. Lewis,

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.

Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end. Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life.

Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.

Look for yourself [say “mine”], and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

Read More

Follow me

“As Jesus passed by, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And Matthew got up and followed Him.”

That’s how today’s Gospel opens. And to many of us (myself included), the more you think about it the scarier it gets.

You’re going about your day – at work or school or whatever – minding your own business. And then God calls you to follow Him. With the expectation that you will just (literally) drop everything. And get up and follow Him.

I have so many questions.

Follow You where? What are we doing?  What do You want from me? Etc.

But all of them really boil down to this basic fear – if I really follow God (and I mean actually give up trying to do it all myself and let God lead), am I going to lose me in the process? Am I going to become some sort of mass-produced, bland, nonentity lost in the herd?

Of course, a minute’s look at the saints (the ones that do the best job of letting God lead) and their massively different personalities and gifts would put the lie to all of that.

Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, Dorothy Day, Augustine Tolton? No bland, nonentities here.

But in the moment, when God’s asking, that’s not where my lizard brain goes. Because I don’t want to admit who the author of my life really is.

Not that any of that changes the truth about me (or anyone else).

Because the truth is that I’ve got it wrong. This isn’t an “either-or” (either I can be God’s or I can be me). The truth is that it’s a “both-and.” As the Psalms put it, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

That is, if you and I understand what Paul is telling us in Ephesians (“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”), then it becomes clear that in choosing to follow God we are choosing to be exactly who we were created to be.

That’s not an “either-or” at all. It’s a “both-and.” And a roadmap.

As C.S. Lewis puts it, “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.”

In short, Matthew got it right. All that remains for you and me is to follow his example.

To get up and follow God.

Read More

Daily

“Take up your cross daily and follow me.”

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear that? Good Friday. With a bloodied, beaten Jesus carrying His cross to His impending death.

It sounds like a call to be like Jesus in a moment of great crisis – when martyrdom stands clearly before us. Where the choice is to deny Christ or to be killed, like St. Andrew Kim Taegon and his companions (today’s saints).

The first clue that I’ve got it wrong? The word, “daily.” Why?

Good Friday is a one-time thing. The martyrdom of St. Andrew Kim Taegon and his companions? It’s not something that I can do again tomorrow.

But “taking up the cross” is something Jesus wants you and I to do daily, so that we can be free to follow Him. So that we can be free to become who God made us to be.

So, what is Jesus is talking about? What is this “cross?”

It varies from person to person and from day to day. Because the things that try to get between us and God are different. And they change.

What makes this hard is that the things that come between us and God? It’s not just the obvious stuff, like the 10 Commandments or denying Christ to avoid being killed. Because you and I are vulnerable to just about anything getting between us and God.

From things we like, to things we don’t like, to things that don’t really matter, and even the general busyness of life. Our cross, our struggle?

As St. Basil puts it, our struggle is with “the obstacles springing from the habits of life.”

The things that are rushing at us as we start a random Wednesday is September. That’s the level that we’re working on here.

So here’s the plan, and it comes from C.S. Lewis,

It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals.

And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.

And so on, all day. Standing back from all your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind.

If we want the freedom that comes from following Jesus. If we want the joy that comes with being who God made us to be. If we want to be ready for the more obvious stuff.

Then this is what we need to do, and it’s why Jesus is telling us to do it daily.

Read More

Are you always this nice?

I was at the glasses place, getting my eyes checked. Talking with the tech who was running the exams, about nothing in particular.

Until she said, “Are you always this nice?” I didn’t know how to respond.

After an awkward silence, she told me about the guy before me. Who – given how he treated her and the garbage he dumped on her – was either having the worst day in his life or was just a raging jerk.

It got me to thinking. About how you and I treat other people.

About how nothing that you and I say or do to each other, no matter how small, is inconsequential. None of it is neutral.

Why? It has everything to do with this simple fact: you and I – and everyone that we have ever met or will ever meet – are made in the likeness and image of God. Every person who ever has been, whoever is, and whoever will be is God’s creation and is destined for eternity.

It’s a profound reality, one that we all too easily ignore. C.S. Lewis puts it this way,

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Which means what exactly? It means that what you and I do to other people – what we say to them, how we treat them – has an impact on them. On how they see themselves, on whether they become who God made them to be, on the character of their eternity.

It means that nothing you and I say or do to each other, no matter how small, is inconsequential or neutral.

It means that everything you and I say or do is either building them up or tearing them down. Leading them towards God or pushing them away – especially if we call ourselves Christians.

And it means that for her question, “Are you always this nice?”

There’s only one answer – I need to be.

Read More

Coffee

I have a friend who is very particular. He wants things just so. If something doesn’t meet his standards, he will complain about it. Endlessly.

He has yet to have a decent cup of coffee.

I learned this going to all of the big-name coffee places with him. Then, when none of those measured up, going to all of the most micro-batch, one-off, exclusive coffee roasters you could think of.

It was an amazing tour of the coffee of Chicago. And it was that tour, accompanied by his endless soundtrack of complaints, that showed me what was wrong with the coffee.

Him. He was what was wrong with the coffee.

It wasn’t that he had exquisite taste. It was that he was exquisitely skilled at finding fault.

Because he was busy finding fault, he missed out on some of the best coffee I’ve ever had.

I know this, because I went back to some of those places without him. When I didn’t have someone telling me how awful they were, it turns out they were great.

It easy to laugh at someone who does this to themselves. Piling up preconceived notions and finding fault, until they keep themselves from enjoying…pretty much anything.

But it’s not just the dynamic that we see playing out in today’s Gospel, with its violent rejection of Jesus.

It’s a trap that all too many of us fall into with our relationship with God.

We miss out on God’s best for our lives, because it doesn’t meet our preconceived notions. We keep ourselves from being able to enjoy all that God has given us, because we’re too busy finding fault.

It’s not that God isn’t pouring out His grace upon us. It’s that we are so wrapped up in our ideas about God, about how things have to be, that we aren’t able to receive what God is giving.

When we get stuck like that, it’s easy to blame God.

Even though we’re what’s wrong with the coffee.

When we get stuck like that, the only cure is God’s grace. To ask God to take away our love of fault-finding.

To ask God to give us a desire for Him, not our ideas about Him.

Read More

77 times

(for me, because I need to hear this again)

“Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?”

Peter’s question opens today’s Gospel. And I really don’t understand why Peter is beating himself up about this. I’m struggling to forgive someone once.

Peter’s doing pretty good, as far as I can see.  But he still gets this answer from Jesus,

“I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

The classic understanding is that isn’t a literal count. Jesus isn’t saying, “The first 77 times, you’re good. I’ll forgive you. But at 78? I’m done.”

Jesus is telling Peter that if we are truly God’s, then our forgiveness has to be like God’s. It can’t be just a one-time thing.

It’s forgiveness. Followed by forgiveness. Then more forgiveness. 

But what if forgiveness doesn’t come easy for me?

What if I’m having trouble actually letting go of the wrong that was done to me?

C.S. Lewis put it this way: “The real trouble about the duty of forgiveness is that you do it with all your might on Monday, and then find on Wednesday that it hasn’t stayed put, and all has to be done over again.”

It may be that I am having to forgive someone over and over for the same thing.

Not because they aren’t sincerely sorry. Not because they haven’t tried to right the wrong.

But because I’m holding on to the wrong that was done to me.

Because I’m enjoying my resentment. At least at first. Before it becomes toxic.

This is the other side of “seventy-seven times.”

Sometimes it feels like it’s taking me seventy-seven times – of trying to actually forgive someone who wronged me. Because I’m having trouble letting go of my resentment.

Jesus doesn’t condemn us, for trying to forgive and not being able to. Jesus lets us know that if we fail, it’s okay to try again. That the important part is that we try again.

That He’ll be with us every time we try to forgive someone.

Even if it takes us more times than seventy-seven times.

Read More

The Enemy

I got a great question after Sunday’s homily (Monday’s post).

“Why do you always say, ‘The Enemy?’ Why don’t you ever say, ‘the devil’ or ‘Satan?’”

There are two big reasons, the first is cultural. When you say “Satan” or “the devil,” our minds go off in so many different directions.

From cartoon figures with pitchforks and horns, to Halloween costumes, to music we don’t like, to teens wearing black clothes to annoy their parents, to Charles Baudelaire’s observation (quoted in The Usual Suspects) that,

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

All of which serves to distract us, to keep us from thinking about reality. Which is?

Jesus tells us, that the devil was a liar and a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44).

For some people, saying “The Enemy” helps them get a glimpse of reality past the distractions.

The other reason goes back to the desert fathers and mothers, early Christian monks and nuns living in the Egyptian desert in the 3rd and 4th centuries.

When you read their writings, they talk about the devil as a tempter – outside of themselves, leading them astray. Someone or something trying to come between them and God.

Like the junior devil, Wormwood, in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.

But if you keep reading, you’ll find them moving fluidly from talking about that bent towards pride and separation as being “the other,” something outside – to talking about that bent towards pride and separation as being part of themselves, something inside.

With the same seriousness. Because both present the same dangers.

The desert fathers and mothers knew that we are just as capable of leading ourselves astray as any fallen angel.

In the immortal words of Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Read More

Grace bears us

“For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

We all know people for whom the Faith is harsh, bitter, divisive. And people who have had the Faith used against them, to manipulate, to hurt, to abuse. Maybe we even are those people.

How does that lived experience square up with what Jesus is saying in today’s Gospel?

No matter how it goes wrong. All of them begin with something C.S. Lewis called “Christianity and…”

Where the Faith is no longer the focus. Where it has been yoked to something else. And has been reduced to a means to that end. Instead of the road Home.

Whether it’s Christianity and Politics. Or Christianity and My Favorite Issue. Or even Christianity and An Inarguably Noble Cause. It kind of doesn’t matter.

Because anything. Even the most seemingly good stuff. Is enough to taint things. To turn our focus to the other side of the “and.”

Until Christianity becomes little more than a public image attached to whatever is on the other side of the “and.”

The thing is, once we let that happen, we lose what Jesus is talking about. And the weight of “Christianity and…” becomes just like the weight of every other burden of our lives. 

Wearing us out. Wearing us down.

Which is the giveaway, the tell that - even though it might have some Christian stuff attached to it - what we’re carrying isn’t Christianity at all.

As Jesus says, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Unlike every other yoke, every other weight in this life.

“The weight of Christ helps the one who bears it. We do not bear grace, grace bears us.

It is not for us to help grace, but rather grace has been given to help us.”

(from the Incomplete Work on Matthew).

Read More

Mine

Mine.

A simple, four-letter word. A basic concept.

And the most dangerous idea our species has ever come up with.

When I say “mine,” I mean all mine. Not just me first.

It’s not enough that I win. You have to lose.

Taken to its natural conclusion, that is where “mine” ends up.

If you’ve ever wondered what can destroy the strongest bonds of love and friendship, this is it.

If you’ve ever wondered what can separate us from God, what got us tossed out of the Garden, this is it.

“Mine” is the original sin.

We disguise “mine” in all kinds of ways. But whether we clothe in the language of success. Or power. Or influence. Or wealth. Or even fear. They’re all just different ways of saying “mine.”

In today’s Gospel, the questioners of Jesus may have dressed it up as a question about eternity. But Jesus sees it for what it really is. Just another way of saying “mine.”

It would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad. Because they’re saying “mine” about something that none of us can ever really say “mine” about. Eternity.

Not because eternity is beyond our control (although it is). But because eternity is the exact opposite of “mine.” As C.S. Lewis put it,

“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.

Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body, in the end submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life.

Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours.

Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay.

But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

Read More

First things

The worst way to read the Bible? Out of context.

Pick a random verse, maybe even just part of a verse. Then try to figure it out without any reference to the story or saying that it’s a part of. And don’t even think about the big picture of Jesus’ teachings or Scripture as a whole.

Reading the Bible that way is like taking someone who’s never seen corn on the cob, much less corn growing in a field. Handing them a single kernel of corn. And then asking them to describe the plant that it came from.

The odds of them getting anywhere close to actual corn (corn silk?) are about the same as winning the lottery.

It’s the same thing with Bible verses out of context. Only the odds are even worse.

In today’s Gospel, Peter gets whiny with Jesus. Again. “We have given up everything and followed you.”

Jesus doesn’t deny it. Instead, Jesus doubles down,

“There is no one among you who has given up house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age,…and eternal life in the age to come.”

Does that mean that we’re supposed to give up everyone and everything? Is that the standard? Because if it is, my life does not measure up.

Writing around 200, Clement of Alexandria has the answer. And it starts with context, with how this passage fits into the rest of Jesus’ teachings,

“Do not let this passage trouble you. Put it side by side with the still harder saying Jesus delivered in another place in the words, ‘Whoever hates not his father, and mother, and children, and his own life besides, cannot be my disciple.’

Note that the God of peace, who exhorts us to love our enemies, does not arbitrarily require us to hate or abandon those dearest to us. But if we are to love our enemies, it must be in accordance with reason that, by analogy, we should also love our nearest relatives.

But insofar as one’s father, or son, or brother, becomes for you a hinderance to faith or an impediment to godly life, one should not collude with that temptation. Attend to the spiritual meaning.”   

This is why I love the early Church writers. They struggled with the same things that you and I do, especially when it comes to how to live the Faith. As they saw it, the only way to do that was to first understand Scripture as a total package.

So what is the spiritual meaning?

It’s all about first things, about priorities. Because what you focus on, what you put first, determines everything else that follows.

If things are getting between you and God, you may not need to step away from them. But your relationship with them needs to change.

If those closest to you are getting between you and God, you may not need to step away from them. But your relationship with them needs to change.

Although they won’t lead you to God, God will lead you to a healthy relationship with them. If you let Him.

As C.S. Lewis puts it, “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in,’ aim at earth and you will get neither.”  

Read More

Why did Jesus have to die?

Today’s Gospel is John 3:16 - “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

It’s beautiful. But it also begs a question, one that I struggle with. Why did Jesus have to die?

When you ask why Jesus had to die, once you get past the basics (“Christ was killed for us, His death washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself.” – C.S. Lewis), the usual responses get into theories about how salvation works. Things like atonement, forgiveness, suffering, sin, reconciliation, etc.

Important stuff, to be sure. But it really doesn’t answer the question.

Why did Jesus have to die?

That is, if God is God, then God can do anything (that’s part of what it means to be God). So, couldn’t God have done it some other way?

The answer is an unqualified yes.

Then why didn’t God do it some other way?

The best answer that I have found (by “best,” I mean most unsettling, most disruptive to the preconceived notions and limits that I am way too comfortable putting on God’s love) comes from St. Isaac of Syrian.

“Not that God was unable to save us in another way, but in this way it was possible to show us His abundant love abundantly, namely, by bringing us near to Him by the death of His Son.

If God had anything more dear to Him, He would have given it to us.”

That last sentence is everything.

Through the greatest example possible (the way of salvation for all of humanity). One which is at the same moment the most personal example possible (because God would have done exactly the same thing if you or I were the only ones who needed to be saved). God shows us what love truly means.

Love is not an exchange. If it’s a transaction, it’s not love.

Love is not measured. If it’s limited, it’s not love.

To truly love, as God loves (the One whose very nature is love), means not counting the cost.

This is how you and I are called to love.

Because this is the love that God has for you.

Read More

Those people

Imagine you’re the leper in today’s Gospel.

You know the consequences of leprosy. It’s a slow, horrible death sentence. With no cure.

Because it’s so contagious, society demands that you separate yourself from everyone else. So you don’t spread it. With other lepers as your only company. It seems like an easy road to despair. Or worse.

Which means there’s a strong temptation to cover up the signs of leprosy. To ignore the danger. So you can be with other people. Friends and family. Try to have a normal life. Even though it means risking their lives.

It’s an “either/or” trap. It traps us into thinking that if we don’t do one thing, then we have to do the other.

Which makes the actions of the leper so remarkable.

The leper ignores both options of the “either/or” that he’s stuck in. And chooses a third way. The best possible third way. Going to God.

If this dynamic – of an “either/or” trap that pushes us into thinking that if we don’t do one thing, then we have to do the other – seems familiar to us? It should.

Social media provides us with some of the most obvious examples, but our lives are loaded with it.

Why? Because it’s one of the Enemy’s most over-used sucker plays.

And we fall for it. All. The Time. C.S. Lewis explains,

“The devil always sends errors into the world in pairs – pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worst.

You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.

But do not let us be fooled.

We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.”

Something to keep in mind. Whenever we’re loading up to go off on “those people.”

Read More

Family tree

Genealogy is interesting. Kind of. If it’s yours.

Somebody else’s genealogy? Not that interesting. Unless you know something about the people listed in it.

Today’s Gospel is the genealogy of Jesus. At first glance, it’s little more than a list of who was the father or mother of someone. Mostly names you’ve never seen before.

But if you start looking more closely at the people on the list, a picture emerges. But it’s not one that we would necessarily expect.

The list includes kings and priests, farmers and warriors. But it also includes murderers and adulterers, prostitutes and thieves. C.S. Lewis called it a bloodline with “both honor enough to raise the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the proudest emperor.”

God is calling you to do something. God put you here for a reason. If you’re still drawing a breath, there is something that God is calling you to do.

And God will give you everything you need to do what He’s calling you to do, if you let Him.

If you’re holding back, because you don’t think you’ve got what it takes. If you’re thinking, “I could never do that” – because of how you were raised, or the problems in your family, or your ethnicity, or where you’re from – take a look at the family tree of Jesus.

It’s a mixed mess. One that God intentionally chose to be the gene pool of His only Son.

God intentionally chose it. Not just to fulfill the prophecies about where the Messiah would come from.

But to give you and me the most personal example possible (His own Son) of what really matters. For Jesus to show us, with His life, that living fully in God’s will for our lives (think Garden of Gethsemane) is the only thing that really matters.

That no background or baggage can keep you from fulfilling God’s will for your life, if you give yourself fully to God.

Read More

“Do not bother me.”

Today’s Gospel is the story of a man who finally got the kids in bed. It’s late. At the end of a long day, finally he’s in bed. Trying to go to sleep.

And suddenly, his friend is blowing up his phone.

Asking for all kinds of stuff. He’s got an unexpected guest. And he needs, well, everything.

The man who was trying to get to sleep? His first words in response (and this is to a friend) are ones that you and I understand very well. Because they’re our words.

“Do not bother me.”

Why does this ring so true for us? Because, in our own ways, all of us have been there. And because (on some level) all of us feel like our time is our own.

Even if we’ve never formed the thought, it’s how we act. C.S. Lewis explained it this way,

“…nothing throws a man into a passion so easily as to find that a tract of time that he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening),…that throws him out of gear.”

“They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.”

That’s why we react that way. It’s the unspoken assumption behind much of our resentment at having to be bothered by the needs and cares and suffering of others.

And it’s why actual compassion is hard – not what Henri Nouwen observed as “our spontaneous response to suffering,” “to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.” But actual compassion.

“Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to places where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken.”

The only way to even want that inner disposition, much less actually acquire it, is to get over ourselves. Something we can never do on our own. The only hope we have for doing that, for getting over ourselves, is with God. And with God’s help.

It starts by trading our limited perspective for God’s eternal perspective.

And with getting over ourselves enough to ask God for help.

But it’s the only way that we’ll ever be anything more than perpetually aggrieved at everyone and everything – for taking something from us that was never ours to begin with. Time.

Read More