8. You are a gift!



www.colourbox.com

 

Last Christmas, one of the teens in our church’s youth group was trying to think of creative gift ideas for his family members. The main reason for his creativity: he didn’t have a lot of money. So he decided he was going to wrap up a large box and climb inside, and present HIMSELF as a gift to his sister.

There’s something in that kind of a gift that is both delightful and disappointing. I mean, let’s be honest.... It’s like the time I gave my brother a pair of his own pants for Christmas. (That’s right). I’m sure this young man’s sister was expecting to receive something new, something she didn’t have before. But her own brother? Awww…. I already know you! I’ve known you for 16 years.

It is fun to receive new things. In fact, I quite enjoy this cultural tradition of gift-giving on Christmas and birthdays!

But how do I receive the people who walk into my life each day? With this same attention? With the same joy? Actually, most often, I am distracted, indifferent, or worse, keeping a distance behind walls of fear, pride or judgment.

I already know you. I’ve known you for months….years.

Maybe for my birthday this year, someone needs to jump out of a box (or a cake!) for me and remind me that the real gift is not new “stuff” but the person right in front of me.

A gift far more precious than money or merchandise is the gift of human life…..of YOU! Although God has no need of man, He chooses to bestow life upon him as a free gift. Man, in his all his complexities and his distinctive beauty, is a gift from God. We experience this so profoundly at the birth of a child – or even the elation of falling in love – as we marvel at how amazing this other person is. It is good to be reminded and to wonder at the glory of man – and not just of some vague, global “man”, but of the  actual people I meet each and every day: my mom and dad, my siblings, my neighbors, my coworkers (even the ones that get on my nerves), my pastor, my friends….. Each one of them is a gift, created and given by God to the world (and to me!) to serve Him, fulfill His purpose for their life, witness to His love and give Him glory. And each one of them is unique and unrepeatable. That could be the subject of a year’s reflection!

But that’s not all……
St. Augustine says, “Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.”

If everyone around me is a marvelous gift of God, am I not also a gift? Yes!

In fact, as Pope Paul VI puts it, “Man is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, [and he] cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (Guadium et spes, 24). Not only am I gift from God, but as a creature with free will, I can and must choose to make of myself a gift to others! I can be a gift to others when I serve them freely, when I choose to put aside my own wants for the good of another, when I am fully present to others and focus sincerely and attentively on who they are and what they need and desire. Among other examples, I can give myself as a gift to my (future) spouse by remaining chaste in mind and body, before and within marriage. Most importantly, I can choose to give the gift of my life back to the One who gave it to me, by committing to live a holy and virtuous life.

I can choose to give myself freely and totally to the One who gives Himself freely and totally to me. This is the even greater mystery - that the Almighty God would give Himself as a gift to His creatures. Not only in the Incarnation, not only throughout His entire life, not only on the Cross (as if this weren't enough!), but every day, in every Mass, Jesus Christ gives Himself - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - to me, in the Holy Eucharist. In a certain sense, as the priest opens the tabernacle at each Mass, Jesus leaps out of a box and proclaims, "I am the greatest GIFT you could ever ask for, and I am totally yours!"

Question: What are We Waiting For?

Once I was babysitting several children and told them they just needed to wait a little bit longer before we could go outside and play. Of course, this response was agonizing to them, as their little hearts were set on it. One girl, a 6-year-old, kept asking me every few minutes if it was time yet. Ugh, not yet. Joking around, I said, “Let’s make up a ‘waiting’ song!” Without missing a beat, she sang, “I hate, hate, hate to wait!!!”

Wow, a girl after my own heart.

Last week, I wrote about different forms of poverty. Here is an area in which I acknowledge my own: I LACK patience. Sure, I can usually stand in a line for a fair amount of time, I can endure it when someone postpones an appointment or phone call that was important to me, and I am typically relatively quiet about my frustrations and discontents when things are not going my way. But most of that can be attributed to personality characteristics and not virtue. When it comes down to it, I am squirming all over on the inside and wishing – sometimes subtly trying – to deliver myself from the discomfort of having to wait.

I hate, hate, hate to wait.

I sympathize with that little girl. It is so hard to have your heart set on something, even to hear it promised to you and to know it is coming, but to hear those words: “Not yet.”

Often, the Lord reveals something of His plan for me – for healing or marriage or mission work, etc. - and I get excited and say, “I’ll take it from here!” and I start planning the next three steps….. Just the other day, I was exciting to talk to a friend about foreign mission opportunities and so I asked him to call me so we could chat.  As I was leaving, he said, “Keep praying!” My heart sank just a little bit. I could just hear God saying, “Lindsay, relax. You don’t have the whole picture yet. Wait.”

But, Lord, you know I don’t like that word….

It is hardest for me to wait when I don’t understand. When it seems to me there is an easy solution to a problem and it is not being resolved as I wish it would be. When I or someone I love is in pain or in a bad situation and I am powerless to help. When I long to go somewhere or do something, and the door is just not open. Waiting takes humility and trust, because it requires me to admit that I am not in control and to believe that God has my best interests at heart.

When Jesus was 12 years old, He wandered away from His parents on their way home from Jerusalem. Scripture says that “after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). I can only imagine this scene of Jesus as a boy. Though He was God, He was also man, so He probably came to discover His own vocational call just as many of us do. Perhaps one of the Rabbis put his arm around Jesus’ shoulder and gave Him a very fatherly tour of the Temple, taking great care to explain everything present there, and helping to stir in the Heart of the Incarnate Word Himself a desire to one day stand before everyone and read from the scrolls…. And was not his heart burning within Him? J

Then Mary and Joseph finally find the boy and insist that He come home right this instant! Jesus knows in a much deeper way now that His Father is here (Lk. 2:49), His mission is broader than a life of carpentry work in Nazareth. Yet, what does He do? He returns with His parents to Nazareth, and for 18 more years carries on His life there. 18 years! What a long time to wait! 18 years of waiting for 3 years of public ministry. Jesus heard the call. No doubt He knew His identity. He could have begun His ministry at age 21. Or 25. How much more good He could have done!

Or.... how much good He could have failed to do.

For those 18 years, He was growing in intimacy with God the Father. He was growing in His identity and in His gifts and in His call. And for those 18 years, the Father was preparing the hearts of all those Jesus would minister to, so they would be able to receive His words. Had Jesus stepped out earlier, on His own initiative, the grace would not have been there, the fruits would not have been ripe, and so many conversions and healings would not have happened.

It is the Father Who ordains the perfect time for the carrying out of His will, and He knows what is best. I need the humility and trust to allow Him to work. And God knows that I have nothing good unless He gives it to me, so I ask for what I lack: God, grant me patience, and please hurry!


“Simply by making us wait, God increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.” - St. Augustine -

7. You are a Beggar

The Rise of Pro-Life Africa

“In a world that is currently being redefined and redesigned in the hands of wealthy and powerful social engineers, Africa is being increasingly pressured and prodded to embrace the new and emergent decadent culture of death. Issues such as abortion and contraception are being pushed as women's empowerment and reproductive healthcare by many western donors who seem obsessively committed to eliminating poverty through the elimination of poor people.”

First of all, Western society: PLEASE keep your CRAP out of the developing nations. They have enough problems of their own without your propaganda and your lousy excuses for “healthcare.” Thank you.

Secondly, I think this article – specifically this quote – really provokes this question: What is poverty?

Here we see Nigerians portrayed as a people renewed in their long-established commitment to honoring “the blessing of married life, the beauty of womanhood and the inestimably precious value of human life from the moment of conception.”  Beautiful! And according to the UN, 68% of the population of Nigeria lives on $1.25 or less a day, and at least 50% live in “multi-dimensional poverty” (significant deprivations in education, physical/emotional health and income). Not beautiful…

In contrast, we see the United States, a country not without economic problems, but certainly not known for widespread abject poverty (much more for reckless spending and ostentation). And yet the United States is a country so enamored with equality and freedom of choice that it writes immorality (even murder ) into its law books, celebrates things that ought to be lamented, and influences other countries to follow suit.

So who is poor?

Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a nun who worked for many years in the slums of India, had this to say:

"When I pick up a person from the street, hungry, I give him a plate of rice, a piece of bread. But a person who is shut out, who feels unwanted, unloved, terrified, the person who has been thrown out of society - that spiritual poverty is much harder to overcome. And abortion, which often follows from contraception, brings a people to be spiritually poor, and that is the worst poverty and the most difficult to overcome.” (From her address to the UN, 1994)

"There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God."

I write this not to minimalize material poverty, nor to make those from Western society feel horrible or godless. The material poverty that exists in many "developing" nations (as well as in many places in "developed" countries) is very real, but it is no more real than this "hunger for love" and "poverty of spirituality" which, in fact, exists throughout the world. In many places, this poverty, both physical and spiritual, is squalid and extreme, and it is right and just that we work to eliminate this kind of poverty, wherever and whenever it is found. We should seek to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to give hope to the hopeless, to instruct the ignorant, to “put love where there is no love” (St. John of the Cross). But we can do so with humility and true charity (rather than an attitude of superiority) when we recall the human poverty that we all have in common.

For, indeed, in every country and every culture throughout the world, man has the same fundamental need for love, companionship, and yes, God. Everywhere in the world, man stands before God as a beggar, naked and hungry, with empty hands, hoping to receive from Him what he needs. The more “stuff” that we have, the easier it is to forget this basic truth and depend on things or people other than God, imagining that these things belong to us and so they will always be there or we can always “get” more. But all of this “stuff” is in the hands of God. It is He who gives, and He can take away. We need to be reminded more often that everything is a gift, and we have nothing but what God gives or allows us to have, not even our very life and breath.

In the final analysis, there is no African or American, no upper class or lower class, no liberal or conservative, no pro-choice or pro-life. These are labels and categories created by man.

Before God, we are all only human, and to be human is to be poor.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit [those who are humble and recognize their poverty before God, and who are not attached to the things of this earth], for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).

Question: Why Value Marriage?

I’ve sure been hearing a lot about marriage lately. From friends wanting to get married, to court decisions on DOMA and Proposition 8, to various Feast days in the Church celebrating martyrs who gave their life to defend God’s design for marriage.

Last week I heard a homily about how we NEED to have more esteem for marriage. As I listened, I shouted silently, “Why? WHY?! You MUST tell me WHY!!!”

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the priest. We need to have more esteem for marriage, and marriage as God intended it, between one man and one woman (if you are bothered by that statement, please go back and read my previous blog). We live in an age and culture that values “hooking up”, “friends with benefits”, cohabitation, non-commitment, and sexual experimentation. The institution of marriage is not esteemed, but all too often undermined and disregarded. We want what is easiest, most convenient, and most pleasurable, and a lifelong commitment to love and be faithful to another person, in good times and bad, is not always all of those things.

I agree that we must esteem marriage. But as I live in this age and this culture, in which even the Christians (who profess to believe that marriage is something far greater than a civil union) share in the cynicism and settle for second-best, “why?” is a logical and necessary question.

So, why should we esteem the institution of marriage? Here are just a few thoughts (I'm sure you can think of others - feel free to add)….

1) Marriage is a Sacrament. For those who may not know, a Sacrament is an outward sign instituted by Christ to bring grace. The Catholic Church acknowledges 7 Sacraments (Baptism, Reconciliation, Holy Eucharist, Anointing of the Sick, Confirmation, Matrimony, and Holy Orders). Indeed, marriage has been around long before the time of Christ, but it has been “raised by Christ our Lord to the dignity of a Sacrament” (CCC* 1601). He desired that, by His grace, we come to experience again the union of persons as it was “in the beginning” (see Matt. 19:1-12) AND ALSO realize that that union of persons is not the end which we seek, but a foreshadowing of the union we will have with God in heaven. Earthly marriage is only a “sign” of a greater heavenly reality!

2) Marriage is sacrificial. Yes, indeed, a great marriage requires great sacrifice. “As the Church is subordinate to Christ in everything, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives even as Christ loves the Church and handed Himself over for her” (Eph. 5:24-25). In essence, spouses must love one another more than themselves, because they must be willing to set aside their own desires oftentimes for the good of their spouse. We hail our servicemen and women for the sacrifices they make for our country (and rightly so), and we regard military service very highly. What if we upheld marriage in this way? Married couples ought to be encouraged for their sacrificial love and supported in their "heroism".  Then perhaps they would never forget that their marriage is something worth fighting for.

3) A healthy marriage is good for the children. Children who come from a stable home life have a much more solid foundation to build upon, emotionally, mentally, psychologically, even spiritually. And a healthy family flows from a healthy marriage. So what makes a healthy marriage? Fundamentally, that father and mother live the truth of their human sexuality (See: You have a body!). And second to that, that the love between the spouses is faithful, fruitful, free and total. In such an environment, spouses are more secure in their identity and their love for one another, and can better transmit that love and support to their children. Their children, in turn, may be better equipped to make healthy choices in regards to their bodies and lifestyles. “The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life” (CCC 1603). To quote our U.S. Bishops: “Our culture has taken for granted for far too long what human nature, experience, common sense, and God’s wise design all confirm: the difference between a man and a woman matters, and the difference between a mom and a dad matters. While the culture has failed in many ways to be marriage-strengthening, this is no reason to give up. Now is the time to strengthen marriage, not redefine it.”

I may not be married, but it is well for me to esteem marriage, to support married couples, to honor their commitment, and to encourage them in their struggles, because this is their path to holiness – to heaven! – and I want to help them get there. Plus, from healthy marriages come healthier families, and the children of today’s families are the children who will tomorrow be leading our country, our church, our world.

I may be disheartened by negative societal trends, but I will not reject marriage because of the example of those who failed to live it as they promised. Marriage is a beautiful vocation, and ought to be regarded as such. Let us pray, and together rebuild a marriage culture!

In light of recent court decisions, you may wish to also reference this article on the well-being of children of homosexual versus heterosexual parents.

6. You are Called to Communion

Betty Ross and Bruce Banner (the Hulk)

Bruce: You found me!
Betty: You weren't that hard to find.
Bruce: Yes.....I was.

“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found lost sheep!'”
- Luke 15: 4 -   

I don’t know about you, but oftentimes I am that lost sheep.  Sometimes I am not paying attention (or, rather I am paying attention to all sorts of distractions and other attachments) and I stumble away on my own path and become lost.

Sometimes, I knowingly choose something which is foolish or sinful, and which ultimately leads me into a thicket from which I need to be rescued by the Hand of Grace.

But sometimes I am a bit more subtle. Sometimes, I attempt to continue on, to stay with the group and go with the flow, and all looks relatively normal on the outside. But on the inside, my heart is not in it. For whatever reason (hurt, fear, anger), I am attempting to protect myself, that most intimate part of myself, and keep my distance.

And you know what, I still end up lost.

I get lost because I become disconnected from both the Shepherd and the other sheep. I don’t feel a part of the whole because I’m only giving a part of myself. And because I’m stuck inside myself, behind whatever interior wall I’ve constructed, I can’t really give myself to others in love and service, at least not fully. This creates discord which often spreads in an unfortunate ripple effect.

The Good News is that Christ is constantly seeking me. He can see me through those walls (just like Betty Ross can see Bruce Banner through his hulky green skin. J) He can see who I really am, and not any façade that I put up to carry on while I bury what I truly feel. And He is willing to go on a reckless pursuit, through thickets and briers and (more importantly) interior walls, to find me, love me, and restore me to the life He intended for me.

What does He intend for me?

1. He calls me to community. I am a part of His flock and He wants me to be united with the others in it. But wait a sec’! Wasn’t it the community (or someone in the community) that caused me to put up this wall in the first place? Wouldn’t I be better off alone? No! It’s true, we are often bothering each other, disagreeing with each other, even hurting each other. But without that – without other human beings that are different from me – I do not have such great opportunities to accept differences, to forgive wrongs, to learn new things, to listen, to develop my gifts and appreciate others’, to learn humility....the list goes on. In community, I realize and am reminded that I am not the center of the universe. It is not easy to be in relationship with others, but we need each other.
2. He calls us to union with Himself. In our broken humanity, we inevitably sow pain and discord in our communities. But thank God we don’t have to be our own shepherd! Jesus Christ is and wants to be our Shepherd, to heal us (individually and collectively) and to give us the strength and courage to forgive and to keep our hearts open to Him and to each other, even in our hurts. And the more we are united to Him, the more our hearts will be transformed…..which often spreads in a most delightful ripple effect.

No human being can ever fully satisfy our longing for union, and no community on this earth will ever be perfect. And yet, isn’t the cry of every human heart for union and communion with another? Indeed. So let us open our hearts to each other and to community, and focus on becoming and remaining united, so that TOGETHER we can help each other in attaining the ultimate goal of union with Christ.


And as a bonus! One of my friends was mentioning this song this past weekend, saying someone had done a dance routine to it on So You Think You Can Dance and it was beautiful. Looking for pictures of the Hulk and Betty Ross, I stumbled across this video, set to the same song. Oh, the irony.
(I know it doesn't have quite the same beauty :/ , but I just had to do it. It was just too perfect! Stay tuned next season for the Hulk's dance routine....)

Question: What is sin?

So far, in these blog posts, I have tried to address basic questions of human identity. I have said that, as a human being, each of us is 1) created by God, 2) in the image of God, 3) male and female, and 4) we are loved by God 5) even in our imperfections. In general, I’ve been trying to first address a theological point regarding man’s identity, and then discuss some related philosophical or cultural question, for those reasonable people who may not share the same religious background but are just as distressed by the crisis of identity in our world.

So, realizing that I have several times mentioned the word “sin”, I feel I should explain it.

Here is the basic dictionary definition of sin: A transgression of divine law.

There is more to this, but law is something that makes sense to us. We live in a country, a state, a city, that is governed by laws. We may not know all of them, we may not agree with all of them, but we know that whether or not we know them or agree with them, we are subject to them. There are consequences if we break them, and those consequences can sometimes be very severe, especially if we knew that what we were doing was wrong and we chose to do it anyway.

It is the same with God’s law. Well, almost the same. Scripture says that, “The law of the Lord is perfect…The decree of the Lord is trustworthy…[and] the precepts of the Lord are right” (Ps. 19: 8-9). How often can we say just the opposite about our human laws? But God is perfect, and so all that He does is perfect, good, holy, and right. He does it not only because it is the best thing, but because it is best for us, if not always materially (in our eyes) at least always spiritually. Therefore, God’s law is not always the same as man’s law. In fact, man’s law is sometimes in direct opposition to God’s law. But I do not see angels policing the planet and taking people to divine prison, so it can be easy to forget the consequences of acting contrary to God’s law. What are the consequences of sin?

Well, for lack of space, sin causes suffering. “It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity” (CCC #1849). If I choose to get drunk every weekend and sleep with different men, chances are I am going to suffer not only from a hangover but probably from an inner emptiness, if not also a sexually transmitted disease. I suffer natural consequences within my own person when I sin, because I am not living as I was created to.

I also injure others when I sin, because sin is like pee in the pool; it gets on everyone. That’s right. No matter how much I may argue that this is my choice and it’s my life and it’s my body and it doesn’t affect anyone else, it’s simply not true. For example, if I look at pornography, I have filled my mind with perverted images of the human person which then color and distort my interactions with others and encourage me to see them as objects to be used rather than persons to be loved.

More than anything, sin wounds my relationship with God, because it hardens my heart and prevents me from receiving His love and being a channel of His love to others. Consequently, if I persist in my sin without making an effort at reforming my life, I may lose a sense of His presence, or become lost or hopeless because I’m not connecting with the One who gives me life and identity and purpose. Furthermore, I could suffer this separation eternally, which is the worst tragedy a human being could endure. God respects my free will, and if I do not want to be with Him during my life, He would not force me to be with Him when die. I must choose it.

Let’s consider the rewards! When I choose virtue – when I choose God – over sin, I am happier, I am healthier, I become more free, I am better able to love, my relationships with other people are often strengthened, and I am better disposed to receive the love of God and to choose Him the next time and the next time and that final time for all eternity. (And if you are asking yourself, “How do I know God really exists?” I refer you, for starters, to Pascal’s wager. If God exists, and you live according to His laws, then in following them you gain not only an eternal reward but a virtuous life, which is a source of happiness and edification to yourself and those around you. If God does not exist, and you live according to “His laws”, I submit that your life will still be much fuller, freer and happier than if you did not.)

So, the final question: How can I follow God’s laws (and His Will, His desires) if I do not know them? Not very easily, that’s how. But wouldn’t you just rather know what God desires of you, so you can experience the rewards of living in accordance with it? 

Here are some suggestions:

·         Start with the Ten Commandments. Do you obey them? If you do not agree with one of them, seek to understand it more fully.

·         Then, consider Jesus’ example and His words. In particular: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments” (Matthew 22: 37-40).

·         Finally, ponder the Beatitudes (In the Bible, Matthew 5: 1-12) and how to put them into practice in your own life. And pray! The more we pray and the more we reflect on the Scriptures, the more we see the sinful areas in our life (because no one is without them) and the ways we fail to love others, and we are reminded all the more that we need God, because we cannot save or perfect ourselves.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” – Romans 6:23

“Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” – Romans 5:20


Perhaps we could say that if sin is like pee in the pool, virtue is like chlorine....

5. You are Beautifully Imperfect

You are imperfect.
Yes.
You and me both.
It is a part of being human.
I make mistakes, and I hurt you.
I don’t mean to, but I do not always know the best way to love you.
And you don’t either.
And you mistakes, and you hurt me.
(It's okay, I forgive you.)
We are not perfect.
Our relationships are not perfect.
Our work is not perfect.
Our lives are not perfect.
How could they be,
When you are a part of them,
And so am I?
Two imperfect people.
Is there any hope for us?
Are mistakes and failure all that can be expected from us?
On our own, maybe so,
But we are not on our own.
We are not alone in this.
He understands our weakness, our frailty
He knows our hurts and our fears
He has borne our imperfections and our sins.
And He has embraced, overcome and redeemed.
Maybe when He looks at you, at me,
He does not see imperfection, but the intention
He does not see a blemish, but individuality
He does not see weakness, but an opportunity to show His strength
Maybe, just maybe, He does not see in the negative, but in the positive
Could it be that this struggle actually contains your greatest treasure?
Could it be that this pain will be the source of your deepest compassion?
Could it be that your greatest sin will be transformed into your greatest virtue?
You are imperfect, yes.
So am I.
But there is One Who is not.
And He who has brought us together –
Two broken, imperfect people –
And called us to love each other
Will not abandon us to our own devices
In His justice, He would not, could not, expect us to do something impossible
And it is impossible to love you
Without His help.
I simply don’t know how.
I make mistakes, and I hurt you.
(I ask your forgiveness.)
But I can do all things through Him who gives me strength.  
He alone can direct my misdirection, channel my passions,And teach me to how to love you
The way that He loves.
Most blessed union!
When the three become one.

You are not perfect,
but you are you,
And I love that about you.