Let Freedom Bling?

I was in the city yesterday, waiting to pick up the Mrs. and sitting outside of Independence Hall. Fitting, eh? Today this historically rich city of Philadelphia will be booming and blasting with fireworks and all shimmery with swirling “glow in the dark” necklaces for kids, and cheesy fries. Lots of cheesy fries. It’s gonna be big! Bigger than all of us! It’s America’s Birthday!

We all like BIG. I think in a positive sense it reminds us that we’re small. We discover that we’re part of a BIGGER picture; that the World isn’t just our little brush stroke of a life in one corner of the painting. We play a part in a big Glorious Canvas and are members of one BIG human family. This puts all of our “little” problems into perspective. Or at least it should.

But when BIG becomes quantifiable in the amount of stuff we gather, rather than qualifiable in the measure of love we receive or give, then we’ve got problems. This is a BIG deal. The freedom we celebrate today is the freedom to choose one of these paths. A life, family, country, or world will rise and fall, thrive or thwart their destiny if it chooses poorly.

Ah Freedom…. it’s the unique and inviolable gift that makes humans human. We can choose. We can move. We can be heroic or demonic – selfless, or selfish. We can be super-human by cooperation and abandonment to the Divine Grace that flows from Jesus, or we can reject Him and hence slip into being sub-human, never “awakening” to our divine potential, our promise of sharing in the divine nature. The mystery of mysteries is that God took this tremendous risk in creating us this way! He knew we could fall. But so that we might RISE… God Himself took the risk of creating us free.

The question on a day like today is, in the words of William Wallace, “What will you do with your freedom?” Amass a bunch of stuff, build a bigger nest? Use our freedom for “bling” or let that freedom ring?

Freedom is not our license to have it all. Freedom is the calling to give it all.

And thank God our ancestors did just that.

______________________________________

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

Tuesday Night’s Show

Our culture loves to polarize things; it makes for good drama, which makes for enticing news. One of the long-standing faceoffs in the secular mind is the whole God vs. Science, Faith vs. Reason debate.

Can Catholics believe in the theory of evolution? Is creationism the only alternative? What’s Intelligent Design all about?

If you want to hear the skinny on this one, tune in to 800AM or log in at www.catholicinternetradio.com tonight, Tuesday, May 15, for the Heart of Things Radio Show. My guest is Mr. Tom Stewart, a science teacher, Catholic layman, and colleague of mine from Malvern Preparatory School. We’ll be discussing the ideas of evolution, creationism, and Intelligent Design. We’re not experts, but we’ll be looking at a variety of sources to shed light on just what the Church believes about our origins. You might be surprised!

To call into the show…

In the Philadelphia region: 610-527-2906
Or outside call toll free: 888-343-2484

______________________________________

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

Jimmie vs. Creepy Bunny Man

When you stand back (or sit back on a bench like I did last night at the Cherry Hill Mall) and look at the wacky stuff we do in our culture, you might wonder why things aren’t actually worse than they already are.

Case in point…
We had a FANTASTIC dinner and conversation with mom last night in NJ (Bahama Breeze, 5 stars!). Afterwards, Rebecca and I just popped into the mall for a “quick walk.” As I was waiting for my lovely bride to exit a store, a six foot rabbit (Harvey?) walked past me and disappeared behind a large outcropping of plastic plants.

I was in the mall’s “oasis” area – this is where you can find large palm trees, various ferny plants, goats, and water coalesced in fountains or in pools, which are full of coins (why do we throw our money into their stores AND into these pools?). In the “oasis” you can hide from the heat of great sales and the storms of intense shoppers, finding peace, and sometimes large rabbits. I guess I had forgotten all about the Easter Bunny thing. Or maybe I repressed it. Well, here he/she/it was, hopping back into my life, and into little Jimmie’s life too. Poor kid.

There was a huge Bunny Throne Room set up in the “oasis.” Here kids could come and pay homage to the Great Rabbit. The throne had all sorts of colored streamers on it, and plastic flowers and gummi worms. Jimmie’s dad strode confidently through the fernage and exchanged a secret sign with the Easter Bunny’s henchwoman, who was crouched behind a podium, clutching a neon whirly toy in her hand like a weapon (This torture device was later used to make Jimmie, how did she say it?…. “smile.”)

“Smile, Jimmie! Smile!” They danced and jumped around, the dad and the Nasty Sidekick Lady, waving the torture device like a dagger. I thought of the old western movies where the bad guy’s yelling “DANCE!” Pow! Blam! Then it got serious, because Jimmie for some strange reason, caged in the furry embrace of Creepy Bunny Man and being taunted with a neon swirly to “smile” wasn’t smiling.

“Now why don’t he smile?” growled the Henchwoman.
“Daddy!” Jimmie cried.
“Smile, James! For the love of all that’s holy!! Just smile!!”

Whew…. spring and all. I know we get excited about the changes in the weather to come. I know rabbits are cute and candy is sweet. But the Easter Bunny is like… cute on steroids. It’s like a Cute Monster that’s grown out of its cage. I wonder if the things that are holy and sacred, like the true meaning of Easter and Christmas, I wonder if once we take away the holy we’re left with a mutated substitute? And we feel we have to keep feeding it every year. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

We wonder why kids start to doubt their faith and question us as they grow. Why not? Think of all the things that peel away as they grow up; Tooth Fairies, Santa Claus, Easter Bunnies…. who can blame them when they ask “Is God for real or just made up?”

Hmmm, we just hit deep waters. To be continued! In the meantime, “Smile America! SMILE!!”

______________________________________

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

WOW….

The universe is amazing. Seriously. The fact that we exist at all is amazing. And we are but the size of the head of a pin in the vastness of space. We’re like a grain of sand on a planet full of sand! When we hear the astronomical figures, the ratios, the spaces between things in space, it makes the head swim. There are over 50 billion galaxies in the known universe, there are gazillions of stars, and the one star that is our sun is so large that a million earths could fit comfortably within it’s warm and cozy interior. That is amazing. My brain hurts.

And yet even with this knowledge, people are bored today.

“What’d ya do this weekend?”
“Nothin’ much… what’d you do?”
“Same ole same ole. What’d you do?”
“You already asked me that.”
“Oh yeah…. huhmph.”

I believe we are starving today for a renewed sense of wonder at the universe. Let’s be honest; aren’t we burying our heads for most of the day in malls, offices, cars, and supermarkets? Our eyes more often reflect the glow of computer screens and TVs than the starry heavens above, or the shining sun for that matter (ironically, I’m typing this on my computer).

But we do love getting those unexpected doses of humility from the stuff in the heavens: the rain, snow, sleet, leaves, wind, starlight, and an occasional lunar eclipse! They’re stellar reminders of our smallness in the great big world. They help keep things in perspective. Sometimes they just blow perspective out of the water completely, and we just say WOW, like a clip from one of those new Windows Vista commercials (irony again!).

So last night, we had one of these cosmic moments. I didn’t get the chance to see it (I saw a foggy moon abit after the fact), but reading about it and seeing the pics has been rather “illuminating.” It was a lunar eclipse, and the best seats in the house were in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. (A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth passes between the sun and the moon, closing off the sun’s light for a period of time. Coooooolness…..)

I can’t help but wonder what the ancients must have thought when the heavens did such crazy, creepy, and unexpected things. One thing I’m sure of…. it must have WOWed them, filling them with that healthy sense of their own smallness in the universe. On the flip side, in reading about the eclipse, this statement from one of our “modern” astronomers just made me shake my head: “It’s not an event that has any scientific value, but it’s something everybody can enjoy,” said Professor So and So, of Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society.

Scientific value? It’s not an event that has any scientific value? Why does it have to have scientific value? Some things, I believe, are just made to WOW us.

______________________________________

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

Getting Rid of Jesus – Part 2

Jesus Family Tomb Believed Found
Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Feb. 25, 2007 — New scientific evidence, including DNA analysis conducted at one of the world’s foremost molecular genetics laboratories, as well as studies by leading scholars, suggests a 2,000-year-old Jerusalem tomb could have once held the remains of Jesus of Nazareth and his family. The findings also suggest that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have produced a son named Judah. The DNA findings, alongside statistical conclusions made about the artifacts — originally excavated in 1980 — open a potentially significant chapter in Biblical archaeological history.
____________________________________

Potentially significant? Yes, I would say “yes, that would be potentially significant.”

Let’s see what St. Paul says about this stuff: “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.” (that’s the potentially significant part) “…For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 13-17)

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be still in my sins. I don’t like my sins. I don’t think you want to be stuck in your sins with no power to escape either.
___________________________________

Back to this news bit about “Jesus’ Tomb”

A documentary presenting the evidence, “The Lost Tomb of Jesus,” will premiere on the Discovery Channel on March 4 at 9 p.m. EST. On their website, they post some murky “theological considerations” that try to wiggle through this pretty controversial piece:

From the Discovery Channel – Resurrection: It is a matter of Christian faith that Jesus of Nazareth was resurrected from the dead three days after his crucifixion circa 30 C.E. This is a central tenet of Christian theology, repeated in all four Gospels. The Lost Tomb of Jesus does not challenge this belief.

(ok, how’s that work)

In the Gospel of Matthew (28:12) it states that a rumor was circulating in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. This story holds that Jesus’ body was moved by his disciples from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where he was temporarily buried. Ostensibly, his remains were taken to a permanent family tomb. Though Matthew calls this rumor a lie circulated by the high priests, it appears in his Gospel as one of the stories surrounding Jesus’ disappearance from the initial tomb where he was buried. Even if Jesus’ body was moved from one tomb to another, however, that does not mean that he could not have been resurrected from the second tomb. Belief in the resurrection is based not on which tomb he was buried in, but on alleged sightings of Jesus that occurred after his burial and documented in the Gospels.

(OK, there’s loads of twisted speculation there)

Ascension: It is also a matter of Christian faith that after his resurrection, Jesus ascended to heaven. Some Christians believe that this was a spiritual ascension, i.e., his mortal remains were left behind.

(Who? Wha’? What Christians are these?)

Other Christians believe that he ascended with his body to heaven. If Jesus’ mortal remains have been found, this would contradict the idea of a physical ascension but not the idea of a spiritual ascension. The latter is consistent with Christian theology.”

(Uh… no, that would NOT be consistent with Christian theology even a little bit.)

This is fun. We’re talking about Jesus in the media again! I haven’t had so much fun defending Crucified Love since the DaVinci Code! Remember that one?

Tomorrow’s post we will unpack why it is so KEY that Jesus REALLY physically rose from the dead, and how that rising in His BODY is what saves us, remakes us, redeems, and resurrects us. It’s all about the BODY, America. It’s all about the BODY! I’ll share my favorite John Updike poem too. Who’s excited out there? I’m excited! This is what it’s all about! I wish we had cable so we could watch the Discovery Channel. No I don’t.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
– G. K. Chesterton

______________________________________

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

It’s Time for the Spiritual Olympics!

(The sound of trumpets, booming drums…)

In a world locked in laziness, on a people weighed down by cookies and creme-filled donuts, a light of hope dawns. Yes, it’s LENT, otherwise known as… the Spiritual Olympics!

That’s right America! The 40 days of You-Know-What are glaring up at us from our crumb-covered, soda-stained desktop calendars. The opening ceremonies have already begun, we’ve been stamped (on the forehead) and now we have complete access to the Olympic stadium. Here are some suggestions on how to secure a * medal for yourself:

BRONZE IS STILL BEAUTIFUL
It’s basic but bold. Try cutting some of those ties, those seemingly thin cords that might actually be holding you prisoner to yourself. Is it always ME first? Do I ALWAYS have to put in my opinion, seeming to listen to others but actually just waiting until they’re done talking so I can talk?

SETTLE FOR SILVER
Try letting go of the preciousssss, the one thing you feel you’re entitled to every day without thinking. Unplug it, turn it off, clear it away. (Is it TV? Constantly checking e-mail? A latest news fixation? Radio crowding out the silence?)

GO FOR THE GOLD
Now we’re talking… If you want this Spiritual Olympiad to be a real life-changer, then step up to the plate for this one. In the midst of all of the activity of this season, the “stuff” we hope to work on, the extra prayers, stations of the cross, fasting, blah blah blah, this one shines above the rest. The secret to getting the GOLD? Do nothing. Stop. Surrender. Put your hands up in the air and let yourself become vulnerable before the Mystery of God. Be open and barren as a desert. This is the toughest event by far; the great emptying of self. The letting go, even of the idea of doing lots of good things. In the words of the late, great Pope John Paul II, “Ours is a time of continual movement which often leads to restlessness, with the risk of “doing for the sake of doing”. We must resist this temptation by trying “to be” before trying “to do”. ” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 15)

You may get the jitters for a time, but hang in there. The desert of Lent is detox for the soul. It’s main purpose is to allow us to finally loosen our tightened fists and let Love in. “From the point of view of the Christian faith, man comes in the profoundest sense to himself not through what he does but through what he accepts. He must wait for the gift of love, and love can only be received as a gift… And one cannot become wholly man in any other way than by being loved, by letting oneself be loved…”
– Pope Benedict XVI

So there it is. The greatest challenge in this season is for us to be able to say to God, not “Look what I have done for You!” but to say with Mary “Be it done unto me according to your word.”

Happy Lent!

_____________________________________________
* DISCLAIMER: None of the dynamic Lenten Olympic events listed above would be possible without the sweet influx of grace. We can’t do it alone, but God won’t save us alone either. It’s the Catholic combo of a grace-inspiring, person-perspiring, human-divine collaboration. Grace inflates, inundates, inspires and builds on our human nature. God takes our yes (and even our half-hearted maybe) and makes it something extraordinary.

______________________________________

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

Just Passin’ Through – Ash Wednesday Meditation

It’s not by coincidence that our ancestors in the faith were a Pilgrim People, wandering for 40 years through the Sinai Peninsula. Their journey through the desert, both literal and historical, is relevant to us today, as a parable that’s allegorical.

All of life is a kind of purification; a breaking of the self that’s meant to blossom into selflessness, a stripping away of all encumbrances. Life is meant to be a walk that turns into a run, the crossing over of a Red Sea of suffering and slavery to a new birth; it’s a darkened and dangerous path that breaks open into fertile fields of supernatural milk and honey.

As the great sculptor Michelangelo once said, “beauty is the purgation of superfluities.” The desert has a way of cleansing us of excess clutter. We must travel light or trudge behind! The nomadic life and the daily manna of the Children of Israel are all reminders for us not to settle down in this world. Even the Presence of God, the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, was always on the move, never stagnant. Today the very word we use to describe ourselves as members of a parish, “parishioners,” retains that ancient meaning of movement and unsettledness: “paroikos” is the Greek word that translates as pilgrim and\or exile. We’re strangers in a strange land, or at least we should feel so.

Enter the Evil One….

If the truth about our destiny is that we are meant to pass through this world on the way to the next, what would the devil’s strategy be? To nail us down to earth, of course! Cut the strings to Heaven. To cloud the mind of any metaphor, musing, or memory of that Other World and get us down to the serious business of busyness here and now. Such was the advice given by Screwtape, C.S. Lewis’ senior devil who trains his nephew in the art of tempting humans (read the book “Screwtape Letters” for some amazing insights into these murky waters).

“Prosperity knits a man to the world,” says the demon, “He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it,’ while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home on Earth, which is just what we want.”

The Antidote

In short, the key in life is to “keep on keepin’ on.” Walk the walk! When the fiery serpents bit the People in the wilderness, it was because they stopped walking and started whining. If we are to remember our destiny, keep a clear head about us, and not settle too deeply into the soil of this world, we should keep our minds on things of heaven. We should look up! Look to those things that are above, as St. Paul says. The Devil hates that, hates every breeze that flows from heaven.

“Even if we contrive to keep them ignorant of explicit religion,” Screwtape continues, “the incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry — the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon — are always blowing our whole structure away… The Enemy, having oddly destined these mere animals to life in His own eternal world, has guarded them pretty effectively from the danger of feeling at home anywhere else. That is why we must wish for long life to our patients; seventy years is not a day too much for the difficult task of unraveling their souls from heaven and building up a firm attachment to the Earth…”

Let’s take fair warning from these words. Let’s look up! Keep moving! Never settle only for earth when heaven is offered! Look up and see your redemption near at hand in every sweet sacrament and sign here below; in music, poetry, prayers and the people who point us up! But don’t stop just yet. The journey of Lent is about reading the signs rightly, and nothing says “Home” but Heaven.

______________________________________

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

Some Gems from Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address – June 8, 1978

“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.”

______________________________________

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

Floundering Faith

When I was young we used to love to go “fluking” at Captain Mike’s. We’d get up around 5am and drive through the Pine Barrens to the Jersey shore, to a smelly strip of weathered old buildings on the green fly infested edge of Tuckerton. We’d rent a little boat for the day and tool around the salt water channels, catching the drifts, and catching some rays. Our mornings were spent slicing up squid into slippery strips, and then baiting our hooks with them, as well as the ever faithful “keelies” which were sure to be wasted on the sea robins (very cool to look at but not to eat, by the way). All the while we’d be stuffing chips and sandwiches into our faces with our unwashed hands. Ah, what fun! Makes you want to throw up, doesn’t it? Needless to say, it was Dad who took us “fluking.” And we LOVED IT.

We’d bring the old radio and pop in our Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem tapes, or maybe some John Cougar (Mellancamp), the Chieftains, or Van Morrison. What a life! Belting out the lines of Four Green Fields or The Rocky Road to Dublin, as we tilted and swayed on the briny foam! We were seeking those treasured pockets of the deep where flounder lay in murky abundance. They are weird little critters, by the way. At one point in their development, the eyes of these flat fish migrate to one side of their bodies so that both eyes are facing up from the ocean floor. And that’s where they lay, all the time, those spooky eyes peeping up. Kinda like Picasso fish, if you will.

Let’s get theological!
In other news, I have grown weary of the God vs. Science debate. I am tired of the Creationist vs. Evolutionist debate. I’m saddened by the supposition that faith and reason are warriors fighting when the truth is they are two wings flapping, lifting us up to truth! Everywhere we look there is the desire to pull them apart, and it seems so many want to view all of human experience, the vast scope of the entire universe, with a kind of flounder vision. We’ve settled into a murky, muddy, greyness and let our eyes sort of migrate into a one dimensional plane on the side of the head. It’s a kind of tunnel vision, really. Try living a day like this, with just one eye open. Your depth perception will be off, and every time you reach for something you’ll have to stumble before you can pin it down.

I think there’s a reason why we have two eyes, two ears, two hands and two feet, two lungs, two lips, two nostrils (dang, we have a lot of twos don’t we?), all proportioned the way they are… They are opposites and they’re symetrical and afford us a harmony when used together. God has stamped right in our bodies the way He wishes us to “see.” It’s the integration of two planes into one.

Now if this seems difficult at present, with our eyes trying to discern the place of Science with Scripture, Good with Evil, Faith with Reason, then maybe it’s because we have this flounder vision. Our culture has devolved our view into a single plane of vision, and we’re peering stiffly at either God or Science, and actually limiting our vision. We get pure materialism, a reducing of reality to only the visible, weighable, smellable stuff, or we get a misty, castle in the clouds view of reality that seems completely detached from our every day lives here and now… more a fantasy than a final end. Let the eyes expand, separate but remain in union, becoming more fully human. Don’t be a fish head!

We are not like the flounder, with both eyes on one side of its head, staring blankly up and out from the murky ocean floor. We must see with a fuller vision, viewing all of creation as God intended us to; as sweet sacraments, physical signs pregnant with spiritual meaning, rich in symbolism and yet able to stand up in their own right… solid, sure and utterly sensible.

______________________________________

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