As ministers of a sacrament which is constituted by consent and perfected by conjugal union, man and woman are called to express that mysterious “language” of their bodies in all the truth which is proper to it. By means of gestures and reactions, by means of the whole dynamism, reciprocally conditioned, of tension and enjoyment – whose direct source is the body in its masculinity and its femininity, the body in its action and interaction – by means of all this… the person, “speaks.”
– Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body address, 1984
The person speaks… but oh, sometimes we wish we hadn’t! Words are like arrows shot, once released they cannot return! So think before you fire away. What husbands and wives speak or communicate to each other, in word or in action, should always lead to communion. But sometimes… we slip. And it does just the opposite. Ladies, forgive us our trespasses, for often, we know not what we do! So men, here’s a goofy little reminder of the things you don’t say to your wives, courtesy of Tim Hawkins. Can the ladies come up with a list of things you shouldn’t say to us?
Archive for the ‘man’ Category
Things You Don’t Say to Your Wife
October 9, 2009True Knights – Tuesday’s Radio Show
August 9, 2007
This week’s guest on the Heart of Things radio show was Ken Henderson, founder and president of TrueKnights.org, a ministry “dedicated to leading all men to fight against the increased “pornization” of our culture and take the lead in being True Knights by being sacrificial, spiritual and protective leaders for their families.”
Here’s a list of resources and links we mentioned in the show:
Ken’s website and blog:
E5 Ministry for Men
Theology of the Body
That Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn Iggulden
Other Resources:
The King’s MenCatholic Men’s Quarterly
Real Catholic Men
Catholic Men’s Ministry of Oklahoma
More Links…. Thanks to the King’s Men Website
www.lionheartapparel.com
www.catholictherapists.com
www.theologyofthebody.net
www.generationlife.org
www.malvernretreat.com
www.xxxchurch.com
www.christlife.org
www.catholicmensresources.org
www.ascensionpress.com
www.christopherwest.com
Ladies out there, we love you and hope that you’ll forgive the times we’ve failed to be men of honor, purity, strength, and grace. If you can think of a man in your life who needs some inspiration and solid connections to other men of faith, then please pass this on!
The Two Greatest Questions
June 6, 2007
(This is a follow up on last Thursday’s post “The Building No One Built”)
According to St. Augustine, the two greatest questions we can ask our whole lives long and never get to the bottom of are these:
1. Who am I?
2. God, Who are You?
Now because each of these questions is about a person and not a thing, each question is like a bottomless well or an infinite sky. So to answer the first question, “Who am I?”, we have to come to terms with the fact that we can never fully answer it. Hmm…. are we OK with this?
See, we can’t spread a person’s parts out on the floor and say, “Oh, I get it!” (Besides, that would be nasty. Wordsworth comes to mind “We murder to dissect.”) We can take apart a thing, like a lawn mower or a vacuum and spread it out and say “OK, I see how it works.” But we can’t do this with persons. The animating principle that makes he or she animated is just that…. anemos from the greek for wind, breath, spirit. Spirit is intangible; can’t bruise it, can’t lose it, slice it or dice it. Spirit is that which is outside the bonds of space and time. We’ve got this stuff inside us! It’s us! It’s YOU! Do you even know yourself yet? That’s the human journey.
Getting to the heart of “Who am I?” involves getting beyond pure materialism. We’re in a different realm now than we were when we looked at the material universe and saw intricate elements of design. Now we’re in the realm of persons, you and me; funky composites of mud and spirit, part atom and part angel, in a certain sense. That’s us! Pope John Paul II said we’re “a unique composite – a unity of spirit and matter, soul and body, fashioned in the image of God and destined to live forever.” Now that’s cool….
In our quest to really know the world and ourselves, we must get beyond the stuff and up into the personal realm. If we don’t ascend, then we’ve got only half the story. What allows us to even know this truth in the first place is our spirit, our invisible and indivisible soul, empowered with gifts that send us into a quantum leap above the rest of the natural world we’re born into.
This accounts for the lack of inquisitive, hoofed mammals in the Borders bookstore, and chickens reading poetry in coffee shops. Animals are not interested in a deeper meaning to life. They feel quite at home here, because this here is their home. But it’s not the end for us, ultimately; at least not now and not until the phrase “new heavens and a new earth” comes to be…. This too is coolness…
A SEEMING DIGRESSION…. STAY WITH ME!
I just had the tune from the Greatest American Hero pop into my head…. “Believe it or not I’m walking on air, never thought I could feel so freeheeeeheeee! Flying away on a wing and a prayer…. who could it beeeeeee…. believe it or not it’s just meeeeeeee….”
Believe it or not, that was relevant. Our freedom is one of our greatest gifts. So to the question “Who am I?” comes part of the answer; I am free.
Of all the creatures in the universe, it is we alone who are truly free. All else is bound by instinct, and although we humans are most certainly instinctual, we always have the power of our will to rise above those instincts. We can give up our lives for loved ones, and even total strangers. We can will to love, sacrifice, and serve, even when our feelings say “yuck” or “heck no!” We can be heroes!
We can engage in choices that dramatically alter the course of our life and the lives of others. We are self-aware, self-reflective. We can choose between good and evil. Wow. Now this gift comes at a high price. It’s priceless actually.
Because this freedom that enables us to become heroes can also lead to our becoming devils.
So…. Who am I?
1. A rational animal, categorically higher that anything else that lives and moves and has its being here below; that proof is in our poetry and our prayer and our power to ponder.
2. A free agent, with one foot on earth and one foot in eternity; masterminds that have the power to dominate, manipulate and pontificate over this world (in the good sense of each of those words). What a task.
3. But we are all the while and always created beings…. and this is the key to a peaceful and grounded and realistic self-knowledge. It’s the key to understanding “Who am I?”
Gaudium et Spes (a spiritual karate chop of a document from VII) said it so well, “For without the Creator the creature would disappear…. When God is forgotten, however, the creature itself grows unintelligible.”
So… tomorrow…. the question remains: “God, Who are You?”
It can get pretty dark when we stay inside our own heads and try to figure things out. We’ll understand ourselves much better when we step into His Light.
Who’s the Man?
April 8, 2007
A few years ago, a movie called “Walking Tall” opened, starring the Hollywood muscle man known affectionately as “The Rock.” This remake of the 1973 bruiser was about a man roughed up by some thugs in his hometown, which by the way was a ‘cesspool of corruption.’ He decided to take the law into his own hands, literally and figuratively: it was a huge piece of wood to be exact.
I saw a billboard for this movie while waiting for a train. There he was, “The Rock” looking righteous and rough, with the wooden beam resting ominously on his shoulder. Now is this the man? Muscle-bound, merciless with his enemies, trading an eye for an eye, and a punch for a kick? Is this what we’re encouraged to become when times get tough, when the other team scores, when someone steals your parking space?
Coincidentally, the day I saw the poster of The Rock and his trusty wooden weapon, previews for “The Passion of the Christ” were out; it was set to release at the same time as “Walking Tall.” Here I saw a vision of another Man, looking ridiculed and beaten, with a wooden beam resting ominously on his shoulder. He had entered into a town that could also be called a ‘cesspool of corruption.’ He too decided to take the law into his own hands, literally and figuratively. The law said death was the penalty for sin, but instead of dishing it out, he took death onto Himself. With the weapon of the Cross, he faced down the Devil and beat death at its own game.
This Man, who had every right to deal out justice to the nations (since He was and is the Just One), instead took the hits for us, laying down His life. What a paradox, what a total reversal of what we’d expect.
Which way is the more manly way? Which path is the more difficult one? Which man was more effective in his mission against injustice?
Isn’t it ironic that the day the world was asked to choose their answer, these two visions of man were both physically present? On Pilate’s left in that stone courtyard was Barabbas, a revolutionary, a fighter who had killed for his cause, and on Pilate’s right was Jesus, a revolutionary who would be killed for His cause. “Bar abbas” is Hebrew for “the son of the father.”
And which son did they choose?
And which Son will you choose?
Pontius Pilate himself tried to show us the answer, as he pointed to the wounded and broken one to his right; “Behold the Man!”
Saint Joseph and Fatherhood
March 19, 2007
I’ve heard it said that the crisis in the Church today, the crisis in vocations, and the crisis in the family, can all be traced back to a crisis in fatherhood; a cultural confusion regarding just what it means to be a man.
Interesting. Think of the failure of Adam in the beginning, to guard and protect Eve from the serpent. He chose silence rather than to cry out to God for help against the foe. He gave in and grasped at the forbidden fruit, rather than to suffer the bullet, to stand in the gap and offer his life for his bride. Men ever since find it easier to lust than to love, to take rather than receive the gift of the Bride. To cling to life rather than lay it down for others.
In the present state of affairs, in a society that thinks the only “sin” is intolerance and the greatest virtue is “niceness”, the drive, the passion, and the initiation of the gift of self that is inscribed in the very soul of a man is looked down upon.
Our culture contracepts it. It robs men of their spiritual patrimony, and relegates the drive to a merely biological level. And so we say “boys will be boys” but they are not. Men are turned into animals. Lust is to stoop to the level of the beasts. Love, real love, is to rise to the heights of holiness. But this radical gift of self is seen as so… “radical.” Nobody loves like that anymore, do they? It’s so extreme. So selfless! What’s in it for THEM? So women are tempted to settle, and with no damsels in distress, the knight’s armor gathers dust, and rust, and men forget their higher call.
The confusion about the spiritual dimension of a man to become a gift for others has caused an identity crisis in the Church. It has, in a very real sense, emasculated the mission of the gospel. When we take away the masculinity of Jesus, the passion of this God-Man who turned over tables in His Father’s House, cleansing it of compromise, then we are left with the Jesus who is nice. The anemic, soft-skinned nice guy who just luvs, luvs, luvs and never mentions the cross. But this is not the Christ in the gospels. The carpenter’s son who alone had the gall to call the religious leaders of his day a “brood of vipers.” The One Who laid down his life for us devils, just where the old Adam failed.
Today, we the bride still dialogue with that serpent. And we say to the Christs of today, those fathers in the line of apostolic authority, “Don’t impose your beliefs on me!” And so some priests and bishops don’t even open their mouths to challenge us. They stand silent in the garden of the world as we reach again and again for that forbidden fruit. I believe we must let fathers be fathers, and not sterilize the life-giving gift of the gospel. If we stop the fathers from giving up their lives for us, from giving us the whole gift of the gospel, then how will the new life of grace ever grow within us?
St. Joseph, pray for us! At a word you leapt out in faith, guarding and protecting the Woman and the Child within her womb. You loved Mary, putting her first, and before you knew the truth, you were willing to take the “shame” of her unmarried pregnancy onto yourself. Now you are in God; spinning and swirling in the heart of the Great Dance, and we need to learn your steps of self-giving. Pray for us, St. Joseph… pray for all fathers now. Make our lives fruitful again!
Some Gems from Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address – June 8, 1978
January 17, 2007
“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature.
It cannot (be) unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one’s life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”
December 14, 2006
I Passed By Grace
I passed by Grace the other day
she wanted to talk but I couldn’t delay
Stuff to do, calls to make
She knows I’m working for heaven’s sake!
So I kicked out some e-mail
I checked off my list
I ran and I ran
with my stomach in a fist
The day moved along
I had a tune in my head
Grace was singing that morning
Not sure what she said
Some words about life
there was water and bread
something simple, so simple
It wouldn’t leave my head!
At the end of the day
standing by the gate
She said “Sit for awhile, love
you won’t be late.”
Rich, full and so fresh
She’d cooked us a meal
But for me the dollar menu
Was the reasonable deal
I hadn’t the time
To sit and to sup
I McHurried along
With my bag and large cup
A pre-packaged bundle
And the lines weren’t too long
I gulped it right down
Still humming that song
Some words about life
there was water and bread
something simple, so simple
It wouldn’t leave my head!
The Heart of Things 