Looking Up

It’s exhausting to hear, night after night and day after day, of the countless stories of war, and death, violence, and poverty that circle our globe like a dark cloud. Yet, still, we persist in our efforts to “make the world a better place.” Don’t we? The human spirit still longs for communion, even when so many things reach in to tear it apart. We yearn for harmony even when so much discord fills our ears. We seek love, even when faced with so much hatred and indifference.

So what are we doing wrong? When will we get it right? When will peace become a reality? Will there ever really be “united nations”? In the eyes of our Holy Father, Benedict XVI, the answer is… never. All of our work is in vain.

“Will it ever be possible to obtain this brotherhood by human effort alone? As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbors but does not make us brothers. Reason, by itself, is capable of grasping the equality between men and of giving stability to their civic coexistence, but it cannot establish fraternity. This originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first…” (Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 11)

It’s really a simple truth, and logic would lead us to it if we could just step outside of ourselves and away from the din of the modern world for a time. Have we forgotten that we are not the Creator, but the creature in this vast and beautiful universe? Have we forgotten our ultimate destiny, of which the restlessness within us is always a reminder? Man is not “a lost atom in a random universe: he is God’s creature, whom God chose to endow with an immortal soul and whom he has always loved.” (CV 29)

Pope Benedict XVI’s letter Caritas in Veritate has its feet on the ground and its heart in the heavens. It speaks to the men and women of our time, gripped by an economic crisis, split apart by the digital divide of rich and poor, and smothered under the blanket of consumerism with a message that is practical and powerful; Look up.

Only through an encounter with God are we able to see in the other something more than just another creature, to recognize the divine image in the other, thus truly coming to discover him or her and to mature in a love that “becomes concern and care for the other.”

– CV 11

Our consumer culture is bent on clipping our wings and drawing the curtain over our more transcendent desires. But in so doing, it has created a vacuum, and we are suffocating. Men and women have a desire for the Infinite stamped within them; we are searching for the More we are made for our whole life long. We often try to plug finite shapes into that Infinite hole in our hearts, but it never satisfies. The false idols of our ancestors are no different for us in this 21st century. The cult of the Golden Calf in its thirst for wealth, sex, and power has many if not more devotees today. Worse still, we seek to create our own laws to justify our greed. From the heights of our court system come absurdities like the following:

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
– Planned Parenthood of Southeastern PA v. Casey (1992)

In the end, is our dignity defined by ourselves? Should we design our own way of envisioning the world and each other? Must we reach out and grasp at it for it to be realized? Sounds stunningly familiar…. “You shall be like gods…” said the Serpent who was once an Angel. Bishop Fulton Sheen used to call this old errors with new labels. As we advance as a people, many things have stayed sadly the same. One of the them is our stubbornness and pride. But finding the Truth remains our highest call. Benedict, our German Shepherd, is doing his best to lead this confused flock into those greener pastures where true liberty spills its life-giving waters.

Throughout CV, the Holy Father quotes from his predecessor Pope Paul VI: “There is no true humanism but that which is open to the Absolute, and is conscious of a vocation which gives human life its true meaning” (Populorum Progressio). According to Benedict XVI, this act of “looking up” to the Absolute is exactly what ennobles man and gives him his truest identity. Man cannot be reduced to mere biological material or to a faceless “cog in the machine” of human progress and development. Rather, men and women stand at the crossroads between the material and the spiritual realms. Looking up we see that we alone are the voice of all creation, and we alone can “speak” on the natural world’s behalf.

This is the general invitation in CV; for man to humbly accept his place in the universe as creature, but to rise up and recognize at the same time that man is the pinnacle of creation! The Pope states in CV18: “…the humility of those who accept a vocation is transformed into true autonomy, because it sets them free.” This freedom on our part plants our feet squarely on the ground where man encounters man; in the family, at church, in the marketplace, and the meeting spaces of the world. In the face to face encounter of every day life, love must be lived in truth, and that truth is ultimately this: God is our Father and we are His Children, and the human family is called to come home to Him, drawing in love our brothers and sisters along the way. “The Christian vocation to this development therefore applies to both the natural plane and the supernatural plane; which is why, “when God is eclipsed, our ability to recognize the natural order, purpose and the ‘good’ begins to wane.” (CV 18)

Pope Benedict’s words are refreshingly simple, and as clear as the Gospel message to “love one another.” His invitation to “look up” is a challenge to view the world and each other once again as a pure gift, not something to be grasped and used and then cast aside.

Charity in truth places man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present in our lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely consumerist and utilitarian view of life. The human being is made for gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself… (CV 34)

Pope Paul VI noted in his work that “the world is in trouble because of the lack of thinking” (Populorum Progressio 85). Thinking, pondering, and making space within us for that deep and loving gaze at reality is essential if we are to discern our purpose and place in the world. Benedict’s encyclical invites us into this wonderful and forgotten art of contemplation. As the holy season of Lent dawns upon us again, perhaps we should allow ourselves this time for peaceful reflection on those deeper questions of our existence, our purpose, and our call to authentic human development. With the help of the Holy Spirit, perhaps we will see things, all things, in a new light. Maybe our darkness is simply the edge of night, and the sun will soon rise over the human family. I believe with the help of Pope Benedict’s words, things are definitely looking up.

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First published in The Publican

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

What Must I Do?

Two weeks after the tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti, and people of good will are still wondering “What more can we do for Haiti?”

Many of us realize that there will be no real change in Haiti so long as the gifts sent are merely cash or the construction of a new infrastructure. Haiti needs more. Haiti needs our hearts. Haiti needs communion with the community of the world. Haiti must not again be forsaken. We must see in Haiti’s brokenness an opportunity for togetherness.

We must do for the least of our brothers and sisters as if we were doing for Jesus Himself. For Jesus is truly among us, in the “distressing disguise of the poor.”

For many too, I think, another question is rising out of the smoke and dust of this tragedy; “Where is God in all of this?” I believe the answer is not up in the clouds… God is in Haiti. Again, since Jesus has entered our world, our world is not the same. The Author has entered his own pages. He has bound Himself to the paper and ink of our history through the Incarnation of the Son of God. So where is God in all of this unimaginable suffering? He is at its heart, for He has already suffered unimaginably.

I don’t believe God is simply looking down from Heaven. I believe He is also looking out from the rubble. God is on the Cross where He has been hanging for centuries.

“So where are we in all of this?” I think the first place to start is at the foot of this Cross, looking on Haiti who has been pierced, hands and feet and side… head crowned with thorns, and in seeing let us believe! Let us hold Haiti like the Pieta…

God is in Haiti. And He is calling out to us…

“Come, all you who pass by the way, look and see whether there is any suffering like my suffering…”

– Lamentations 1:12

Where is God? He is in our suffering, He is really in it. And so now none of it should go to waste. Not a drop of it, for it’s mixed with our blood, sweat, and tears. As the priest prays in the Mass, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the Divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

May this God of blood, sweat, and tears bless the blood, sweat, and tears of Haiti, and of all the generous men and women who are now lending a hand to a suffering people.

“For we are like olives, only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us.”

– Talmud

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

Avatar (or Pocahontas in Space): A Reflection

James Cameron’s epic film Avatar is definitely worth seeing. It is a visual feast that makes Star Wars look like the dollar menu at a fast food chain. Avatar is imagination pushed to new heights. It’s a journey into a strange new world that drips with as much intoxicating beauty as Eden must have before the Fall. This, I believe, is the film’s greatest appeal.

Avatar gives us all a chance to play again; to get lost like kids in the middle of summer, when school seemed like it was light years away. Our seat in the theater becomes our personal “avatar,” plugging us into Pandora, the alien world far, far away. And we drink in the elixir of its created beauty straight from the fountainhead. I don’t remember being given an invitation to imagine like this since C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra.

There’s an innocence and a harmony in the alien race of the Na’vi that we all wish were our own. We hear an echo of what was perhaps our own story in the beginning, before Darkness fell on that First Day.

…But certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile.’
– J.R.R. Tolkien

This glimpse of Eden, this visual feast and exhilarating exploration, is, again, the film’s greatest attraction. But it may well be its only attraction. The story is nothing new. James Cameron, who reportedly has been brewing this cinematic potion for a dozen years now, has poured someone else’s wine into new wineskins. Swirling the glass of Avatar and sniffing its scent, you catch whiffs of everything from The Mission to Return of the Jedi, Dances with Wolves to the Battle for Terra. Still, Avatar is overwhelmingly original in its unoriginality. As Steven Greydanus has said in his excellent review, “It is like everything and there is nothing like it.”

Avatar is Pocahontas in Space.

Now that being said, the theme of civilized man meets savage and gets civilized by the savage is a powerful one, and worth repeating. It’s a chance for introspection and self-examination; a culture clash and conversion opportunity worth reflecting over. There’s also a “green” agenda in Avatar that’s as prolific as weeds. Truth is though, we need to hear it. We’ve had a love/hate relationship with Creation since that Fall in Eden. It’s time to make peace! I was refreshed and inspired by the harmony of the Na’vi with their world, and found it in harmony with what Pope Benedict XVI’s been saying of late. That’s right, even the Pope has “gone green.” (Actually, the Church has called us to be so from the start):

Nature expresses a design of love and truth. It is prior to us, and it has been given to us by God as the setting for our life. Nature speaks to us of the Creator and his love for humanity. It is destined to be “recapitulated” in Christ at the end of time. Thus it too is a “vocation.” Nature is at our disposal not as “a heap of scattered refuse”, but as a gift of the Creator who has given it an inbuilt order…”

– Pope Benedict XVI (Caritas in Veritate, #48)

Did Avatar go a bit too far with this “green” agenda? Did the chanting, swaying to Mother Eywa scene push the envelope a little too forcefully? Yes, I think so. In a certain sense, I haven’t seen that much “religion” in a blockbuster film since The Bells of St. Mary’s. But scratch below the celluloid, and sprinkle a little holy water on the picture, and you see a yearning for communion. At the base of the Tree of Souls, we see a real sacramental expression of the Communion of Saints. The People were in touch with Divinity and with those who had died, their ancestors, through a real physical link. Isn’t that what Catholics call Holy Communion?

…it should also be stressed that it is contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person. This position leads to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism — human salvation cannot come from nature alone, understood in a purely naturalistic sense. This having been said, it is also necessary to reject the opposite position, which aims at total technical dominion over nature, because the natural environment is more than raw material to be manipulated at our pleasure; it is a wondrous work of the Creator containing a “grammar” which sets forth ends and criteria for its wise use, not its reckless exploitation.

– Pope Benedict XVI (Caritas in Veritate, #48)

By far the best sacramental expression of a real sacrament in literature has been Tolkien’s concept of the Elven lembas, a kind of bread that sustains and strengthens the hobbits for their journey through Mordor, the Black Land. Tolkien’s mythology is full of such hints and glimmers of the gospel. Although Avatar never reaches the depths of Tolkien’s classic, it at least gets us out to the sand bar. It’s dialogue may be predictable and some of its characters shallow, but its vistas are wide and breathtaking nonetheless. It touches the hem of the garment of Beauty with both hands, and a real healing has taken effect. People can’t stop talking about the riotous splendor and wonder of Pandora.

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity… If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves.

– C.S. Lewis, in a review of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

Some say the film is controversial because it’s promoting a kind of neo-paganism. Well, I don’t think that kids are going to become Pandorans (although there is a tiny subculture of Jedi devotees, I’ve heard). But what’s provocative is Jonah Goldberg’s question, in his review of Avatar: “What would have been controversial is if – somehow – Cameron had made a movie in which the good guys accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts.” Now that’s controversial!

But Pandora is not the real world, the one Jesus redeemed. There is a Spirit on Pandora, or should I say in it. Yet even here, remembering this is science fiction, how different is Eywa, the All Mother, from C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra? In this well loved Christian apologist’s story, the planets were under the stewardship of the Oyarsa, great guardian spirits (some masculine, some feminine) that held things in motion. Tolkien’s own mythology of Middle-Earth has the Ainur (some masculine, some feminine) as angelic shapers of the world that is called Arda. One distinction is clear though for both of these epic Christian storytellers; these gods and goddesses of Lewis and Tolkien are not God, but servants of the One. And that One is called Father; He sews the seed that is Life, and all creation receives it like a mother. This is the cosmic paradigm of the Great Dance we are invited to step into.

At the end of the day, Avatar is a movie, a trip to Never Never Land with glimmers of some transcendental truths drizzled over it like butter on popcorn. It’s very tasty, but not something you’d have for dinner. Like so many things in this world, it’s an appetizer, with little hints at what’s to come. I think we should enjoy it.

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.

– C.S. Lewis

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

Ambrosia

Have you ever been captivated by a word, a phrase, a song? Has it drawn you in? Do you return to those words, that music, again and again? I have books that are weathered, crammed with bookmarks and holy cards, pages dripping with the ink of my notes, and the faded glow of a highlighter. I have songs that if they were still in cassette form, would sound like they were singing underwater! Like a thirsty man, I return to the sweet ambrosia of Jesus, John Paul II, John Mellancamp, Thoreau, Kreeft, Sheen, Morrison, Einstein and others again and again.

There are thoughts and ideas, insights and inspirations that do not age. There is Truth and Beauty in our midst, wrapped in immortality as in a robe, shielded from our mortal weakness. They are here to warm us in a post-modern age that has too often stripped life of its transcendent truth and meaning.

Today’s saint was one who was so clothed. Ambrose was ambrosia to those around him. He hailed from the 4^th century, a bishop and teacher, and his words burned with that eternal fire, and we are forever grateful. Because of his preaching, the great Augustine was converted; he who was a drifter was caught in Ambroses’ stream of inspired words, and the music of the Mass.

So what are the thoughts and ideas, insights and inspirations that you have been captivated by? What Truth and Beauty do you return to, especially in these days of holiday hastiness, and the rush of the culture to fill every void of silence, and empty every pocket of substance? Where is the ambrosia that fills you up?

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

The End is Here!

How many times have we seen a movie or a TV show with the iconic “crazy” person on a street corner wearing a placard with “The End is Near” scribbled on it? And how many times have we quickly dismissed that person as extreme, ludicrous, ultimately sad? But have you ever gotten the itch that invites you to scratch and see below the surface? What if it was true?

It seems Hollywood has the itch…. really bad. She can’t make the budgets big enough for these gloom and doom dramas about the End of All Things, from Armageddon and Deep Impact to The Day After Tomorrow and last weekend’s latest installment “2012.”

The box office seems to be saying something as well; people love it. People want to see it. It may be out of a morbid desire to see historic landmarks crumple under a 900 foot tsunami, but behind that, I think there’s a bit of good ‘ole fashioned Catholic spirituality at work.

Memento mori, as the saying goes. “Remember death.”

As creepy as it sounds, we’re invited to reflect on our death many times throughout the liturgical year. We’re actually entering into the season for this right now. Advent is beginning, and it is more than just a glance backwards to the Birth of Jesus two thousand years ago. It’s a glance to the future, to the End, when we believe He will return. This story, History, will indeed end… and simultaneously…. begin.

The readings from this week’s Mass matched up quite perfectly with the debut of “2012.” (I wonder if Hollywood was reading the lectionary?)

Jesus said to his disciples: “In those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’ with great power and glory, and then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.

– Mark 13:24-32

The twist however is that Christians look to this End with, now get this, joyful expectancy. “Lift up your heads, Scripture tells us, for your redemption is near at hand!” Now this doesn’t mean we sit around with hands up high like kids waiting for Daddy to pick them up and take them to his warm chest and carry them home. (Although that sounds like the orans position of prayer and a great way to live to me!) It means we keep our feet on the ground and keep working. And we whistle while we work, too, like little dwarves, keeping the Palace of our hearts clean for the arrival of our King and Queen. St. Francis was once approached by a nervous brother friar, who was a bit stressed about the End and perhaps more so, about his conscience. Francis looked up from the patch of earth he was tending in the garden. “Brother Francis, what if our dear Savior were to return this very day. What would you do!”

“I would keep gardening, until He found me” smiled the saint. Now that’s peace.

For the believer, the End is not at some remote or proximate point, not a number like 2012, or 3012 for that matter. The End is… here, now. The Kingdom of God is within you, here, now. It is already, and not yet. All of the world that we see is simply a veil pulled over the Eternal Now where God abides. Why should we be afraid?

Can the unborn child in its dark and watery womb imagine the vibrant life that moves about just past that veil of mommy’s flesh? Can it be so near and yet seem so distant? Perhaps our End is closer than we think. Maybe our true birthday is about to begin, as it has for the saints. Their death is remembered as their feast day, their birthday into Eternal Life.

In the meantime, as we close off another liturgical year, and step closer to 2010, 2011, and 2012 (wink wink), let’s not panic, let’s pray…. and keep smiling, with our heads and hands busy in the garden of this world, preparing a harvest of good deeds and much love for the World to come.

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

God "Loves" Me?

GOD.

Simply saying this three letter word can conjure up different thoughts for different people these days. Thoughts that perhaps are hard to wrap our heads around, let alone our arms: A Bright Light, billowing clouds, a booming disembodied voice, a Force that is distant and yet somehow accessible, or even a kind of Cosmic Grandpa who some say actually hears us through a thing called prayer.

For others today, the word GOD seems small, antiquated, and irrelevant. Hasn’t science disproved all that supernatural stuff? “We’ve evolved as a species and feel it no longer necessary to have a psychological crutch like GOD to get us through this life.”

Finally, for others, (and this one perplexes the unbeliever to no end) GOD is as close and intimate and personal as, well, a person. God, they say, is above all a Lover, in fact, and He is crazy about us measly humans! So crazy that He came among us and has now and forevermore, a human face, a human heart! These folks believe Divinity married humanity in Jesus, forever.

Our first experience of God is so important, we either experience Him as the police guard that wants to punish or as Creative Love that awaits.

– Pope Benedict XVI

I think in our American culture, so focused on ME that we too often forget about the OTHER, the idea of an objectively real and personal God somehow feels like an affront to our freedom, our reason, and individuality. God? Oh, right. Him again? The Big Landlord? Believing in Him means joining the rank and file and stifling the fun. It means losing your spontaneity and intellectual freedom because every Sunday you have to blindly “pay the rent.” Or pay for “fire insurance,” as some glibly joke. But this is ridiculously simplistic.

In our deepest being we all know that we were not made for laws. We were made for love.

I think this fear of losing ourselves in a love relationship with God is actually keeping us from true freedom. After all, when we close the door to the transcendent, we fail to become fully human. A caged, clipped bird can forget it was designed to fly.

Humans by nature are religious beings, made for the Infinite, made for the Bottomless Mystery of a God Who loves us. We have a longing for this unending love, truth, and a beauty that does not fade. Need proof? Just listen to your own heart’s desires! (or the music of Journey or Foreigner, heh heh). We long to give ourselves to the Infinite, to lose ourselves in Love, but when we close our minds to the idea of it being really real, transcendent, responsive, immanent through grace, then we clip our own wings. Consequently, we discover that we cannot give ourselves fully to anyone.

“Once God is forgotten… the creature itself grows unintelligible.”

– Gaudium et Spes

When we deny or dismiss the Infinite as unreal or irrelevant, we end up eventually stagnating in a pool of boredom. or narcissism, or egocentrism. What is the meaning of life if the source of that Life is dead? We then fall back on ourselves, but without the real power to love, to get beyond ourselves, to transcend. Then we settle on giving part of our hearts but not all, or worse, we go through relationships grasping instead of trusting that love will be given to us.

So where is the truth that will set us free? How can we know if God is real, and really loves me? Read Scripture.

When we’re quiet and alone with that book, we can get some pretty deep thoughts. You might even catch a thought like the one Augustine whispered to himself way back in the 4th century when he cracked open the Scriptures. “The deepest desire of my heart is to see another and to be seen by the Other.”

Is God Love? Is it just Law? Well, ask God. Let Him in, and you’ll discover you have an infinite capacity for Him. And if God is truly a Person, a Communion of Persons, in fact, then how else could we actually know Him unless we let Him into the heart? I don’t think my way through relationships with people, I don’t reason out the issues at stake, mentally prep myself to fall in love. “On September 24, 2009 at precisely 9:37am I will fall in love.” No, I reach out and speak words. I open the mind and let down the guard a bit with the one standing before me. I listen, wait, gaze long and let myself be looked upon. That look builds a relationship. Why should this be any different with God?

Prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrating at the Spirit’s touch, resting filially within the Father’s heart. This is the lived experience of Christ’s promise: “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

– Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte 33

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Originally published in The Publican

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

Wanna Be

Do you wanna be happy, whole, integrated, joyful, successful, at peace, part of something amazing, purposeful, powerful, confident, loved, loving, redeemed, relaxed, realized, real? Then you wanna become a saint.

Do you wanna be a person in touch, in truth, inspired, desired, magnetic, magnanimous, moved, and moving? Then you wanna become a saint.

There is only one tragedy in the end – not to have been a saint.
– Leon Bloy

So save yourself all the yogi guru self-help hullabaloo. Wholeness is simpler than that – it’s found in holiness! Let’s cut through all the plaster cast, plastic past, Campbell’s Soup Kid lookin’ holy card pictures of saints for a moment. What does it really mean to become a saint?

It means to become vulnerable. To be open. To receive all things from the Hand of God in trust and in love. A saint is synonymous with what’s sane. A saint is the ultimate realist, for there is nothing more real than the Cross and the Broken Body stretched upon it. And there’s no place for vanity. The hollow of the heart is open to the Mystery, the metal of the mind is sharpened by this Truth…. We are small, we are creatures, but we are made for the Infinite, and nothing in this finite world can satisfy us. And our deepest dignity lies in this longing…

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

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

The Apostles…. The Big Dawgs of the Catholic Faith

The Twelve – they so often adorn facades and rest atop pillars, gilded, massive, epic figures, each Atlases on whose shoulders the Church rests…. or so we grow up imagining. But what do we know, really, about these figures when the dust of millennia settles and we glance back at Sacred Scripture?

We know their names. We know they were mostly an “uneducated” lot (though schooled strong in the Book of Nature). We know they didn’t always have a clue what their Master was saying. We know all but one abandoned Him at the moment when He would have needed them most. A pretty shaky foundation for a Church, you might be thinking. But we also know that they came back to Him, and preached His Name from the rooftops, and in every conceivable way they poured themselves out for Him. That’s about it. But isn’t that what it’s all about?

The good news is that this shaky foundation has Christ Jesus as the capstone, and through Him the whole structure is held together. The good news is that Simon and Jude and all of the Apostles were madly in love with the God Who had become flesh for us. They cared little about themselves anymore. It was always Jesus.

The bad news is… this cornerstone has been rejected. So were all but one of the Apostles (John died in exile in his old age). Jude, whom we celebrate today, was eventually murdered with an ax, and Simon, also celebrated today, was beaten and cut to pieces. Destroyed, just like their Beloved Master.

They died for Jesus. What else do we need to know? They were open to God. That’s the key. They were martyred by the world, that’s the lock. They were open to the possibility that God had come in Jesus… They were closed off and shut up by a world that did not want to hear it. A world afraid of the possibility that the Door they opened might lead to Sacrifice, to Suffering, to Real Love, and to Mercy Immeasurable. Too much work for many of us.

Simon and Jude lost their lives but found themselves. And they now point us to that Cross-Shaped Door that leads to our true selves, for in Heaven we shall know as we are known. Let us pray that we too can stretch out our arms, clutching nothing, for a chance at winning everything.

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

The Riddle at Twisted Mystics

A couple of years ago, my wife and I were driving from some place to some place else when Five for Fighting’s “The Riddle” came on the radio. “Have you heard this one?” she asked. “I don’t think so…” Then she smiled, “You’re gonna love it.” She was right….

Read the rest at the Twisted Mystics Blog

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

How Babies Can Save the Human Race

First off, let’s all agree that the world is presently screwed up. For proof, click here. We’re too busy, too angry, too focused on work, too ignorant towards each other, too selfish, too lazy, etc… (or is it just me?)

Well, don’t despair! I’ve discovered in the past 10 months that salvation is near at hand.

BABIES CAN SAVE THE PLANET.

Oddly enough, you may have heard just the opposite. Some propose that babies eat up the planet’s resources, that there is a “population crisis”, and that we should all feel very, very guilty and irresponsible for not routinely contracepting and for ever considering having more than 1.5 children. Because aside from being stinky, babies leave a “carbon footprint” everywhere they go. As to the “population crisis” click here and check out Caritas in Veritate, section 44 to top it off.

But I believe the secret to building a happy, vibrant, life-affirming, love-soaked Civilization lies in a healthy abundance of those squishy Little People who are utterly dependent on us Big People. Here are Ten Reasons Why Babies Will Save the Human Race (feel free to add more reasons through the comment link below):

1. Babies make people talk to each other in parks, who normally might not give each other the time of day. Talking to people builds friendships, friendships build communities, communities build parks. Babies hang out in parks (and around and around we go!)

2. Babies learn EVERYTHING from their parents, by watching, listening, studying, and looking up at Mommy and Daddy…. and so should we.

3. Babies are the greatest “man-made” creations in the universe; they shall grow up and outlive the stars, each in their own way altering the course of human history, each absolutely unique and unrepeatable. How cool is that?

4. Babies are the fruit of the sexual union between a man and a woman. We need to be reminded that that’s how it works.

5. Babies are aware of everything and everything amazes them: lights, noise, colors, tinfoil, keys. We could all stand to be amazed again by the ordinary things around us.

6. Babies smell really good.

7. Babies conversely can smell really BAD. They need us to clean up their “poopy.” A constant reminder that we have our own “poopy” to clean up.

8. Babies are completely innocent, regardless of the way they were conceived, and have no guile, no sarcasm, no agendas. They are pure as the driven snow, fresh as a sea breeze, vulnerable as a flower. We need more purity, sea breezes, and flowers in this world.

9. Babies need us and we all need to feel needed.

10. Babies see the world as their playground, a wonderful gift made just for them. And so should we.

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