Some Pictures from the March for Life

Click to enlarge!

It was such a blessing this year for my wife and I to bring our little boy to the March for Life in our nation’s capitol. And this year’s numbers were incredible; over 300,000! All of us from all over the country, different colors, different creeds, all in support of the dignity of human life, born and unborn, womb to tomb. The Boy and his sign got lots of smiles and oooos and ahhhs. He even marched a few steps! As always, the mass media either completely ignored or grossly misrepresented the March for Life this year. For the most accurate coverage and for links to the mainstream media’s poor reporting, read this article!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Imagine

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Welcome Aboard!

We celebrated our son’s baptism on Sunday, the Feast of the Holy Family (Picking that date without knowing this feast fell on it brought a broad smile to our faces. I think our guardian angels we’re behind it).

Now baptism is an amazing thing. Let’s check out what the Triple C (Catechism of the Catholic Church) has to say about it:

“This sacrament is called Baptism, after the central rite by which it is carried out: to baptize (Greek baptizein) means to “plunge” or “immerse”; the “plunge” into the water symbolizes the catechumen’s burial into Christ’s death, from which he rises up by resurrection with him, as “a new creature.” (CCC, 1214)

“This bath is called enlightenment, because those who receive this instruction are enlightened in their understanding . . . .” Having received in Baptism the Word, “the true light that enlightens every man,” the person baptized has been “enlightened,” he becomes a “son of light,” indeed, he becomes “light” himself…

Wow, that’s grand. “Becomes light himself”… What a goal to reach for, to become all light, to be clear in mind and heart. I’m all over this.

Baptism is God’s most beautiful and magnificent gift. . . .We call it gift, grace, anointing, enlightenment, garment of immortality, bath of rebirth, seal, and most precious gift. It is called gift because it is conferred on those who bring nothing of their own; grace since it is given even to the guilty; Baptism because sin is buried in the water; anointing for it is priestly and royal as are those who are anointed; enlightenment because it radiates light; clothing since it veils our shame; bath because it washes; and seal as it is our guard and the sign of God’s Lordship. (CCC, 1216)

Very cool. “Sin is buried in the water.” We die to live. We die to the old ways, the grasping, the fear, the doubt that has seeped into our very bloodstream because of the fall of our first biological parents right up to our present day parents. The desire to sin will still be there, but the power of it over us is GONE. Death, where is your sting? And the life of God that sin swept out of us comes rushing back in like a warm summer breeze…. an eternal summer breeze, so long as we keep those windows open to receive it.

I grew up going to Church hearing about this sacrament all the time. We have our sprinkling rites for the Big People, “to serve as a reminder of our Baptism,” as the priest says. (I think he secretly enjoys spraying us in the face with the Holy Sprinkler Thingee, by the way. I know I would). But on Sunday, we got a much stronger reminder of what this all means as we watched our son “get religion.” It means he is no longer his own, nor is he “ours.” We are stewards merely; he belongs to God.

This could be scary depending on your knowledge of Who God Is. But I believe our little one is now in the best place he can be, and the safest place – the State of Grace. The arms of the Father.

Some people have issues with infant baptism. “Here you go, placing your child into a faith that they are incapable of freely choosing. You should wait until they can make their own decisions.” Well, I think of it this way; if a person has poison in them, shouldn’t you give them the antidote as quickly as you can? Is there really a need for dialogue on this?

Another thought: Your little boat has struck a rock and you are sinking. You are lost at sea. A Bright Ship has set sail over the waters of time, and God Himself is at the helm. He casts out a set of life preservers (the Sacraments) to draw you into safety, into warmth, and into a community of others who were shipwrecked once too. He wants us all to be safe now on the Bright Ship.

I’m on the Ship now. Why should I wait to cast out that first line, Baptism, to rescue him? Why wait until he can “dialogue” about it, or discern if this life preserver is the one for him? There are no others! In this dangerous sea of sin, all that floats about are fakes and failed attempts to save. When the flood came in Noah’s day, it was the Ark or the bottom of the sea.
We chose baptism for our son. It was an easy decision.

As he grows up and finds himself, walking about on the sunny deck of this Bright Ship we call the Church, he will look out at the watery world, and we will be there with him. We will point to the thin line of the horizon and say to him “There is our destination. A Blessed Realm beyond the world’s edge.” He will feel the salty breeze upon his face and hear the gulls cry, and feel that pine for More within him. He will learn to read the signs, and study the great books and scan the maps. He will explore the many levels of his Ship from the galley to the Crow’s Nest, and he will decide whether he will stay on this Bark of Peter’s or remain behind on one of our many island excursions. As for us, his parents and godparents, we pray that we will be there for him; guiding, inspiring, exploring, and learning our way right along with him.

Welcome aboard son! And may God help you stay the course!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Who’s Your Daddy?

Our son loves to laugh and smile, but just when we think it’s our funny faces or noises that are the cause of it, we’re given cause to think again. He’s like the ent named Quickbeam from The Lord of the Rings; it’s simple things that stir up joy in him; the pattern on a couch cushion, a light fixture, a sneeze, a toot (of course, those are funny even if you’re 90). These are the things that make him laugh and smile. The reality is, he has no clue who we are…. at least not yet.

Unknown hands pick him up to carry him. Food comes right to his tiny mouth just when he needs it. He can barely see things that are just a few feet away from him. He’s wrapped, rocked, cleaned, comforted, and cuddled by a love unknown to him.

I was thinking the other day as I was feeding the wee lad, it’s the same thing with us and God. So often, we have no clue just how close this Heavenly Father is to us…. just when and where He is comforting, cuddling, cleaning and caring for us. Even when, in our tears and cries, He seems absent, He’s just a few feet away, and only our undeveloped vision keeps us from seeing Him.

This fatherhood thing is doing wonders for the prayer life. I can see in our love and care for this beautiful baby boy and for his unborn sister Grace, a tiny glimmer of the love of God for us. I wonder if that too was part of His plan?

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Fatherhood

“Become who you were born to be.”

I’ve always loved this line, taken from a scene in Peter Jackson’s film “The Return of the King.” In a darkened tent where the army of Rohan encamps on the side of a mountain, Elrond speaks a word of challenge and invitation to Aragorn. He is the descendant of a royal line who has for too long wandered and waited for his vocation to be actualized. In this scene, the Ranger from the North takes up his forefather’s sword and takes hold once and for all of his high calling. He rises with a new name, Elessar, and a new mission.

Since the adoption of our son last month, I’ve been feeling the weight of a call; of a new vocation. I think something was activated in me just a few weeks ago, something that has perhaps lain dormant until now, like a seed that was planted but never cracked open until God knocked on the thin shell of my heart and whispered “Let there be life.”

It’s the glowing ember of fatherhood, which was nearly snuffed out in these past years of trial, of purification and waiting. But now it’s stirred by the breath of the Spirit and the gift of this adoption. In our sad experiences of miscarriage and loss, and in the midst of our unborn baby’s condition in the womb, I have always felt this vocation growing. Our prayer for a miracle for Baby Grace continues, but it’s as if in this time I were looking through a clouded glass, slightly removed, distant in a sense from this new act of “fathering.” I know in my heart I am a father, but until now I’ve been standing in this “Waiting Room,” pacing about, back and forth.

A mother’s vocation seems to be woven and spun so early, as the little ones are knit together in the womb. For a father, the world is like a second womb; he must wait to receive the new life in its second stage. (I think our Heavenly Father waits at the world’s end to receive us all. And what a happy, expectant Father He is! I wonder if God is pacing the halls of Heaven overjoyed for that moment when we are born into the Light of that Unending Day! Maybe all of the angels get cigars when someone enters Paradise?)

Right now, a child sleeps just feet away from me. Unbelievable. My vocation has made its “quantum leap”… has passed a test and is being given a new one. I feel this inspired instinct, this primal proclivity to guard and protect, to sacrifice and to serve my family at a new and deeper level than before. It’s amazing! And I can see the design here, the plan of God that allows us massive opportunities for grace. Life is meant to be, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, an “an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God.” It can begin in the self-gift of marriage, and continue for a couple in the gift of children.

Thank God for this plan, the plan of fatherhood and motherhood, of self-gift and self-emptying love! Like the vocation to celibate love, to spiritual fatherhood and motherhood in the priesthood and religious life, the vocation of marriage allows us to break free of the bonds of self-gratifying gravity and into the Great Wide Open of Selfless Love. It is this kind of love that makes the world go ’round, and that builds a culture of life and love.

May we all become what we were born to be!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Just a Moment

So we’ve had a wee bairn in the house for sometime now. That’s Scottish for “little one.” And after five years, cries fill the house, and we are singing 80’s songs put to new words, like “We’ve been waiting… for a boy like you… to come into our lives… yeah waiting, for a boy like you, to make us feel alive…”

And then we tag team bottle time, and snuggle time, and we gaze into the little pools of this other little person’s eyes…. and we see they are “impregnated with distance” in the words of C.S. Lewis; his eyes are full of light and of a future full of walks in deep woods and sword fights and drawing maps of Grandpa’s land in Maine, of leaping from cliffs into cold water, and singing the Clancy Brothers songs, and a host of other adventures. Sure, the weight of glory that’s been set upon our hearts with him is beyond measure. What greater thing is there in the world than to be given stewardship over one of His little ones? We have fallen head over heels in love with this squishy wee babe. Thank You God.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Unbelievable

There is weeping in the night; but joy comes in the morning.
– Psalm 30

All’s been quiet on the blog front for a while now. Today, I’m ready to tell you why! Rebecca and I wanted to say a quick thank you for the continued prayers and support for Baby Grace. She is now at 25 weeks in the womb and kicking more and more (or “dancing” as I like to say). There has been no apparent change as yet with her condition of acrania. Please keep praying through Pope John Paul II for a miracle; we believe it can happen.

On another note, unconnected but providentially related to our story with Grace… we have been given a different kind of miracle, and you may from the picture have already guessed it!

We have been chosen to adopt a BEAUTIFUL BABY BOY! It’s been a real whirlwind of finding out about him, praying about it, deciding, and then being chosen. It all happened in a period of just about three days! When God cooks up a miracle, sometimes He just pops it in the microwave.

So, what are feeling right now? Peace, joy, love…. The fruits of the Spirit, and that’s been a good sign for my wife and I that we made the right choice in opening the door of our hearts and our home to him, even in the midst of our via dolorosa with Grace. There was no fear or feeling of not being prepared, or anxiety. We gave our YES and a YES was given back! He’s come like a ray of light into this fog of uncertainty with Grace, and I think he’s the reason his little sister is dancing in the womb! Like a little Simon he’s helping us carry this Cross, just by being who he is.

Because of the nature of this private adoption, and because it’s still in process, there are a few things I think I should keep from print, simply because of its sensitive nature. One amazing thing I will mention is that his given name from the birth mother can be translated as “appointed one.” For my wife and I, waiting years for the gift of children, this was a pretty amazing sign! He’s unlocked a new level in the adventure of our lives; he’s given us new names too. For five years Rebecca and I have been husband and wife… now we are mommy and daddy. It’s all a grace, everything is a grace! And every day, we will pray for grace to be the best parents we can be.

The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face.
– Isaiah 25

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Amazing Grace

An update on our Snowflakes adoption story….

We had another ultrasound this week, and our baby’s condition has not changed since the diagnosis of acrania. We’re still holding out for our miracle, through the prayerful intercession of Pope John Paul II, because nothing is impossible with God. And what our baby needs is the impossible. Bone where there is no bone; a total and complete healing.

We did receive a tremendous blessing, though, in coming to discover the baby’s sex. So we welcome to the world, though still hidden in the womb, our little girl, Grace Elizabeth.

And she is a dancer. In our 22nd week, the images seem so clear. She came waltzing out of the murky shadows of the ultrasound screen, in a dimly lit room at the perinatal testing center. We could see her hands waving, the bones of her tiny fingers, her heart pounding strong and fast. When the technician, Janene, said “It’s a girl,” I felt such a swell of emotion. Coming to know someone’s name has a power in it. It’s a privilege actually. And now it strikes me as so much more personal than before… We have a little girl… and we will always have a little girl. Sixteen years from now, come what may, we’ll be celebrating her birthday. We’ll speak of her, dream of her, talk to her, and if the miracle doesn’t come (though in a certain sense it is here already) we’ll ask her to wait for us in Heaven. And we’ll all look forward to meeting her in that Perfect Place where everything is whole and every tear is wiped away.

But here below, this new knowledge is a two-edged sword; even as it helps us cut through a section of the sadness by our naming and knowing our little girl, it tears at us because we must consider all ends; we might have to say goodbye just as we say hello. I know it’s not by coincidence that we found this all out on the Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. Feasts of Mary and the saints have been curiously aligned with our visits and appointments throughout the past couple of years. A comfort on this way of the Cross.

Grace Elizabeth…. be strong, be whole, be healed. We love and wait for you. Keep dancing in your watery world as we treasure every second of this journey.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

10,000 Years

When we’ve been here ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’ve first begun. – Amazing Grace

When I was in college seminary, our rector gave a homily that I’ve never forgotten. Well, at least the line I’ll quote today. I remember it so well because I thought it was goofy when I first heard it. Really goofy. And I think he said the line three times.

We all thought it was goofy, and had a good laugh afterwards (wasn’t that very Christian of us?), thinking it was one of those “how not to preach” moments to keep in mind, should we be called all the way to ordination. But now, years later, having left those studies and discerned this beautiful vocation to marriage, having experienced so many joys and sorrows already that Life has spilled out before us, watching five fast years unfold like delicate wrapping paper from each “present” moment, the phrase from that homily has come back to me.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

That was it. Want to hear it again? OK. “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” You can sort of put your inflection anywhere, which is fun. For example, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Though, personally, I think I like “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” This sentence, of course, begs the question: What is the “main thing”?

Right now, it’s easier for me to see than ever. In the midst of the fires of our sorrow, of possibly losing our unborn child, all the plans, desires, dreams, worries and wants of a lifetime just melt away, like paper tossed onto a burning wood. What matters most? The main thing is life with God in it; with God all around it, surrounding it… because this life and this suffering make no sense without Him. Honestly, this suffering makes no sense with Him.

I think suffering falls sometimes without rhyme or reason; it can be random and reckless. Sometimes we bring it on ourselves, it’s the friction caused by the scraping of sin in the world against God’s original dream for us. But mostly I think it’s the fallout or aftershock of that rebellion, sending rippling waves throughout the universe. “Thorns and thistles grew,” nature rocks and rolls and reeks havoc, from the macro to the micro, the physical and the spiritual, and even into the tiny cells of a little baby that should be healthy and whole.

I don’t know what it is keeping me afloat. I’m not angry at the world or God. I’m just in a white-hot furnace of sorrow. Barring a miracle, our baby will die. This is insane and this is burning us. I’m not carrying the baby, but I’m doing my best to carry Rebecca and the baby. I don’t know what to say. But I know God isn’t doing it to us. It’s not His fault. It’s not our fault.

His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
– John 9

The main thing, it seems to me, is a life with God in it. The kind of God Who Himself entered into this mess, bore suffering to the extreme, and redeemed it. He tells us to carry on, the way He did unto the Cross itself. The main thing is for us to know we need God. We pray that this suffering might end in a miraculous healing so that the works of God might be made visible through our baby. We are fervently praying for this. But in it all, I remember the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Love is here, burning us in sorrow. But in 10,000 years this sorrow will have passed, have been redeemed, transformed. In eternity we pray that we will be surrounded by the beautiful little ones we’ve adopted and lost. And the destiny of our 13th little child, who soon will be given a name, we don’t yet know. We live in hope for life here and now, to have the grace to walk a little life through the beauty and the brokenness of this world, and we hope for life in its fullness in the world to come for all of us.

I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Pope John Paul II, intercede for us.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

"Embracing" Suffering?

I watch the movie The Passion of the Christ about six times a year; five times with the five sections of freshmen I teach at Malvern Prep, and usually once at home with Rebecca during Holy Week. Needless to say, the powerful images, encounters, music, and ancient languages in this film are deeply ingrained in me the way few things are.

One of those images occurs as Jesus is pushed by the people outside of the walls of Jerusalem (and this image alone speaks volumes) and encounters his cross for the first time. One of other condemned criminals watches the Christ kneel and take hold of this tool of torture and press his face against it, almost lovingly.

“Fool! Look how he embraces his cross!”

I’ve been thinking about that line these days, now two weeks into our own way of the cross. When I was a kid, fresh from my own “awakening” to the reality of God and the call to a relationship with Him, I used to be perplexed by the whole “embrace your cross” mentality. I was reading about it in the lives of the saints, and over and over again I could hear in their voices such a passion for the Passion, a real love for suffering. I struggled with my own attitude towards the cross. I thought… “Well, these guys are saints, I should feel this way too, but this sounds nuts.” It was very unsettling, almost morbid, I thought. “Is this what God wants of me? Doesn’t He want me to be happy? Am I missing something here?”

Suffering is a funny thing. It surrounds us all like air, it trembles beneath nearly every step we take, and sorrow echoes in so many of our conversations every day, but we rarely look it in the eye. Our right to the “pursuit of happiness” as Americans has become an all out mad dash, an arms flailing race towards almost any door that will get us out. Anything but that narrow, cross-shaped Door that seems to lead only to pain.

But here’s the truth we’re coming to see, and strangely it was quoted to me in a movie back in 1986 that seems totally random right now, but perfect. The Man in Black says to the Princess Bride… “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.”

Well, there it is.

Ever since the Fall there has been conflict, pain, death, and war; inside and outside our hearts. So what do we do with it? Most people want to run from it (hedonists), some people pretend it doesn’t exist (Buddhists), a few take a morbid pleasure in it (masochists), and a few, a select few, have come to peace with it by allowing themselves to be nailed to it, trusting in a greater plan.

So the saints weren’t nuts, though some may have been slightly off balance in the penance department. Really they were just…. realists. Just like the One Who came in a body to take on Death like a hero. And He destroyed it. He really did.

So all of this is to say that I think I’m going to pray harder every day facing not fleeing from this cross that Rebecca and I have been allowed to carry. Maybe some will say “Fools! Look how they embrace their cross!” (We’ve already gotten that from the eyes of one of our doctors).

Good Friday has come early again. But we hope it leads to a miraculous Easter Sunday, and we’re imploring the prayers of a man who bore his cross heroically, Pope John Paul II. We don’t know how long this via dolorosa will twist and bend, but I want to feel the wood, let the weight of it sink in. I was encouraged by a good friend to swim into this dark abyss, and keep swimming into Rebecca’s pain as a mother, to swim and not to give up. He said that at a certain moment, if I hold fast like an Olympian, then I’ll make a quick turn, like Michael Phelps, and we can rise again into golden light. I’m banking on that!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org