Seeing Jesus

Listening to a talk by Bishop Fulton Sheen the other night, he gave the reminder that we were taught to pray, "Our Father, not my Father," and that we, "see the face of Jesus in the face of the poor." This takes our invisible Lord and makes him visible. It helps calm our doubts, and helps us to feel the amazing warmth and love of God.

We can experience this most powerfully by going to help those who are the most needy: Feeding the homeless, counseling the despondent, bringing the gospel to the faithless. We need to do these things when we can (something some of my brave friends do far better than I). But we also need to recognize that everyone is poor or broken at times, in their own ways.

By recognizing the needs of those in our daily lives, and showing them compassion we can all feed the poor every day. Most of us eat several times a day. And we need emotional and spiritual sustenance each day as well. Be a friend, be a brother, look past what people ask for, and give them even more. "For if we can not love the people we see, how can we love God, who we cannot see."

Romancing the Rocks

For the longest time, I misunderstood romantic love to be the love between a man and a woman. The love properly ordered toward marriage. But I am beginning to understand that there is romance in everything.

Also, along the same lines, romantic love is often tied in with sex, as if the two went hand-in-hand. It's not that the two are entirely unrelated, but properly ordered, most romance is not sexual in nature (or perhaps, as taught in John Paul II's Theology of the Body, it might be better to say that not all our sexuality is ordered toward sexual activity).

Romance starts with our experience of the beautiful, whether something looks beautiful, sounds beautiful, smells beautiful, and so on. But it is not only from the experience of the senses directly, but also the mind. We can experience a beautiful idea or a beautiful personality.

Thus, we can "fall in love" with things as well as people. We see a beautiful mountain in the distance, and we want to get closer and climb it or touch it. At the least we want to take its picture, so we can preserve a part of our experience with the mountain to bring with us.

One of the things that helped me realize the greater dimensions of romance was having children. You fall in love with the beautiful little faces, the cute voices, the new personalities. You want to hug them and kiss them. You can sit and stare lovingly at them (when they aren't driving you crazy).

Of course, each love, for each person and each thing, is unique, but they are not an entirely different kind of thing. They are different in intensity, they have different components, they are associated with different roles and duties, but they are all loves of the beautiful.

And properly ordered this all points to God. As Plato discovered using pre-Christian philosophy, God is the perfect beauty, and the source of all beauty. And as the the scriptures tell us, Christ came as Lover, to be the bridegroom of the Church, to unite himself with us in a kind of heavenly marriage.

So all that is beautiful, all that we love, should remind us of God. We should be thankful for all the good that he presents to us here on Earth. And when we marvel at the beautiful things he has given us, we should feel even greater awe, wondering how much greater is the source of all beauty and love.

Pain and Darkness

For the first time since her mother died, my wife is spending time alone. And with the alone time comes the sadness. I have no experience with the death of someone close, but I have experienced the pain of loss. A few times my strange ways have lost me friends (thank God, I sometimes got them back). My situation was very different, and not something most people would even recognize as comparable, but I think perhaps the pain, the feeling of loss, was the same.

Think of what it is to lose even a little thing, like in the example our Lord gave about the woman with ten coins who lost one. When we lose something it becomes the most important thing in the world to us. Perhaps this lasts for just a moment when it's something small, but it can last for weeks or years if it is a family member or a friend.

The sadness of a lost loved one is a terribly lonely thing. Other people can help ease the pain, but each person who is important to us fills a unique role, holds a unique place in our heart, and nobody else can fill it entirely. So the pain of waiting for our loved one to come back to us, or waiting until we join them in Heaven, is ultimately between us, God, and the one we lost.

In this lonely time a shadow descends upon our lives. The emotional pain becomes tangible, like a stabbing in the heart. And while we may have prayed all along, now we call out desperately, knowing only God can comfort us. But where is he?

We need to see him. We need to hear him. But when does Jesus come down, and give us a hug? When does he speak up to us, and tell us our loved one is fine? When does he show us we will not be alone, and the hole will be filled?

The miracles of God are so hard to see. How can we find any peace in this life? Where is the joy we are promised? Is there a joy even in our sorrow? Can we find in our sadness the seeds of true love? The loved one we lost reminds us how precious our loved ones are... but can't God show us this truth a different way?

I do not begin to understand God's plan for suffering. I keep hope that he will one day answer me more clearly, and show me a love and a light that is more tangible than the pain and the darkness.

For now, in the shadow of death, I can only cry out in prayer:

Oh Lord, shine your light into this darkness. We know you are there, but we feel so alone. Help us find peace in our sadness. Help us to hear your voice. Help us to feel your invisible arms. Lord, comfort your broken children, and help us to comfort one another.

The Best in People

While it does go against my belief that the joy of complaining is why God lets us suffer in life, I've been engaged in an interesting thought experiment.

What if we could look at our family and friends, and only see the good memories, and let go of all the bad?

I pick good family and close friends, so it's not like there's anything huge ruining our relationships, but it seems most every relationship has little annoyances or dark spots.

Yeah, I said I pick good family. "That makes no sense," you say? Well you're just saying that because you picked such a lame family.

Anyway, to clarify this idea about forgetting the problems, I'm not saying that if your lunatic brother threatens to kill you the next time he sees you, you should forget it, and invite yourself over for tea. I'm talking a bit more about issues that are clearly in the past or more minor issues in the present, like if someone forgot your birthday, they complain about your cooking (can you blame them?), they don't answer your emails, they don't show interest in some of your favorite things, or things like that.

If something is solidly in the past it could be a big issue, and you can still forget it, like the time your brother lit your hamster on fire (how could he do that?!?). Let it go. Also you can forget things on your own side. Forget the worries about being misunderstood, forget the embarrassing moments of the past, and don't worry about how much they like you.

Doing this, focusing on the kindness, the fun, the beauty of the person and your relationship with them, and removing the dark spots from the picture, I think you can find a greater happiness in your relationships, and love your friends and family more fully.

I even wonder if we might discover some hidden treasures this way. Maybe we'll see the people who might not have been the easiest or most exciting friends, and realize how much love they showed us while we weren't paying attention.

As for my actual experience, so far my results are mixed. I kind of do this by default with my wife. Next, I find it easier with my family and close friends, where there are lots of good memories and displays of love to draw upon. I've had moments of realization that friends were not just good friends, but great and wonderful friends. Other friends and acquaintances I'm finding that the kindness-to-difficulty ratio is still a more major factor.

But even if we still have difficulty loving, it doesn't hurt to prayerfully work with God to look at people with greater love. Remember, just as our love for God helps us love people, our love for people also helps us to love God.

This is part of why most of us are not called to be hermits. Most of us are supposed to be spending time enjoying the company of our family and friends, as well as touching the lives of others beyond our circle.

And if we are doing this with greater focus on what is right with the person, perhaps we'll love them a bit more, and we will all grow a little closer to God just being near each other.

The "Question of Coercion"

I recently came across this challenge to the faith in an Amazon book review:

My belief in God, if not out of love or a want to establish a relationship with God, would be based on nothing more than coercion:

I want a pleasing and pain-free after life; I want to be as happy in the after-life as I am with life, but I don't have or have a desire for a relationship with God; therefore, I may be cast to hell (which, according to this book, I've created). If I want to be happy in the after-life, I need to establish a relationship with God. I don't want a relationship with God either because I don't believe one can exist or I don't believe a relationship with God is beneficial for either participant; however, I want to avoid discomfort and joylessness. I'll establish a relationship with God so I do not experience pain or joylessness.

Unless I missed it, Tim doesn't address this, and I think it's quite possibly the most difficult obstacle for any organized religion; I would like the author to address coercion without resorting to "you've misunderstood the point of God's love."

I would say that the first problem with this "question of coercion" is that it ignores what Christians believe heaven and hell are. Heaven is a place where we are happy because we are in a relationship with God; therefore, if we truly want to be in heaven, we want a relationship with God. Basically, what the one who asks this question wants is to have a part of something without having the whole. He wants to live in a man's house without asking that man if he can come in, and without acknowledging the man once he is inside. He wants love without a lover, a smile without a face. He is separating the inseparable.

The alternative, hell, is terrible because we are separated from God. That is why we go to hell. We didn't want God, so he let us be alone. But, since God is the source of all good, we are left with no good, and thus no joy. This is a deranged choice, but we men make deranged choices all the time.

We cannot separate cause and effect. I cannot ask for sunlight, but without the sun. I think we all ask for such absurdities sometimes, and that is more-or-less the definition of sin. We want to live on a diet of candy, but without gaining weight, rotting our teeth, and having stomachaches. We want to walk through fire without being burned, but burning is inherent with fire.

Flesh and Bones

The Church is the body of Christ.

Occasionally the people of the Church cause her wounds, but her bones are strong, and Christ will always heal her flesh. Let us, for the moment, envision this body as representing two things: Her flesh is her love and compassion, her softness. Her skeleton is the Truth, composed of her infallible teachings, the deposit of the faith, the Scriptures and Tradition.

Now, what happens when a church breaks off from The Catholic Church? It becomes more prone to decay. When it is injured, it is more likely to get an infection, and Christ is less able to heal it, since it is not as fully connected to him.

Thus, Protestant churches, as time passes will often get infections or tumors, and the only response is to excise the damaged tissue. This provides a kind of restoration, but at the same time it leaves scars and sometimes disfigurement.

Let us now look at some of the extreme examples of this disfigurement:

There is a minister named Fred Phelps whose congregation is often seen carrying signs that read, "God hates Gays." This is what happens when an injured body strips the flesh from its bones. We are left with a broken and gruesome skeleton. It keeps fragments of truth (not that God hates gays, but that god disapproves of sin), but it can no longer reach out and touch with healing hands. It only has vicious bony claws.

At the other extreme we find those in the liberal Episcopalian hierarchy. They have abandoned their bones, seeing them as too hard (or intolerant). They have become like a jellyfish stranded on the seashore, a blob of flesh that knows only how to be soft and has lost its real purpose. It takes bones to walk, and bones to reach out your hand to make a difference.

As another illustration, I would like you to imagine a police officer. He is a strong and confident man, trained to enforce the law. He has his uniform, his badge, his gun, and all his other equipment. This is the way a police officer is supposed to be.

Now, a Pastor in one of the conservative Protestant denominations is like this police officer, but without his uniform and his badge, and missing much of his equipment. He is still willing and able to fight crime, but he is seriously hindered.

The liberal Protestant ministers, like the aforementioned Episcopalians, are in a different position. Such a minister may have the uniform and carry much of the equipment, thus appearing from a distance to be a fully equipped officer. But, when you get closer, you see that it is not a police officer in the uniform, it is a great dane.

Pseudogamy 101 & 102

I have to recommend this brilliant set of articles by Anthony Esolen. I'll give a little bit of the first one here, but make sure to go and read them both!

I've written [...] that the real social problem we in America face is the number of people who are not married who behave as if they were. I'd like to revise that claim. Our problem is pseudogamy, false marriage, and it assumes many forms. Same-sex pseudogamy is but the latest and most flagrantly absurd, but it is not the first. We find the most fundamental form, from which other corruptions rise up like diseases, when a man and woman go through the ceremony and utter the traditional words "as long as you both shall live," while harboring the mental reservation, "as long, that is, as I am happy," or "as long as the marriage 'works,'" whatever that is supposed to mean. In other words, in the fundamental form of pseudogamy, we don't have people who are not married behaving as if they were, but people who are married (or who present themselves as having been married) behaving as if they were not.

Read the rest of the article and then the next article by following the links below:

pseudogamy-101

pseudogamy-102

Hopefully there are more in this series.

The Relationship

The Shack claims that Jesus doesn't want religion, he just wants a personal relationship with us. This view is fairly common among Protestants.

Now, he's right to an extent. If we just try to "follow the rules" of our religion, but we somehow do so in a way that does not recognize Jesus as the purpose of everything we do, then we are just engaging in vain works.

But there is a danger going the other direction as well. Jesus does not just want to be our buddy. As the Bible teaches, the relationship we are intended to have with him is far more like marriage than it is like a casual let's-hang-out-at-the-mall-on-Saturday friendship.

Let us compare marriage to our relationship with Christ:

1) Introduction: Before anything can happen, a bride must be introduced to the groom. We are introduced to Christ when we hear the Gospel.

2) Falling in Love: There is a difference between hearing the Gospel, and accepting it. When we really start to know Christ, we will fall in love. He will make sure we are introduced to his father, because if we are to love Jesus, we must get to know and love his father, The Father. We will spend more time with him in prayer, and we will want to make ourselves more attractive to him.

3) Proposal: After we fall in love, we will realize that we are betrothed to Christ, he proposed to us before we were ever born. We have only to say, "Yes," and we will enter into the engagement.

4) Wedding Plans: During our engagement, we plan the wedding, and continue to learn more about our beloved. In the Church we do this by attending RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) classes, among other things. If we haven't already, we should start meeting more of Christ's family: being introduced to his brothers on earth (our fellow parishioners), his brothers in heaven (the Saints), and his mother (Mary).

4b) Confession: You want your marriage to be a clean start, and you want to be completely honest with your spouse, so before you are married, you share with Jesus your past failings, and ask his forgiveness.

5) Wedding: The wedding is a major point in the relationship. At this point our love is formalized. This corresponds more-or-less to Baptism and Confirmation. At this point we enter into the family of God. Jesus becomes our spouse, his Father becomes our Father, his brothers and sisters become our brothers and sisters, and his mother becomes our mother. This is a momentous change, and may be marked by taking a new name, in recognition of the new life that has begun.

6) Consummation: Only after the wedding do we consummate our relationship (Christ is without sin, after all). In the Church, Christ gives us his body in the Eucharist (communion). Unlike the wedding, this step is normally repeated many times over the course of a marriage.

These are the major steps in the relationship. After this, we will continue to grow closer to our spouse, and only love him more with time. But as sinners, there is still a problem that is likely to come up:

Infidelity: Christ will never be guilty of infidelity, but sadly, it can almost be guaranteed that we will not always be faithful to him. When this happens there are two paths we can take.

1) Divorce: While Christ will never desire divorce from us, no matter how we betray him, we can choose to run off, chasing after our sins.

2) Reconciliation: Even though we have betrayed him, he will always forgive us if we ask. Here's where confession shows up again. To have a lasting marriage, we must learn to say we're sorry.

Now, if we look back through these, we can see how the Catholic religion is not a contradiction to the relationship with Jesus, but is rather what you would expect from a deep relationship that is so much like marriage.

We can also see that removing the "Falling in Love" step makes the rest of the events lose all their meaning, but that still doesn't answer why many Protestant groups seem to think that the relationship shouldn't have any more steps after the acceptance of the proposal (though for them, acceptance of the proposal also counts as making wedding vows).

But what about all the things that leaves out? Under normal circumstances, who would say, "It's only our personal relationship that matters," and get married quietly without any witnesses? Who would say, "I don't need anyone interfering with my personal relationship," and refuse to speak with their spouse's family? Who would say, "It's only how we feel about each other that matters," and abstain from a physical relationship and consummation?

The truth is that relationships are both simple and complicated, and our relationship with Christ is no exception. The relationship is rooted in faith, hope and love, but living that relationship, and experiencing it in its fullness, through all the intricacies of our daily lives can get more complicated. That's why we have the Church, through which we come to a fuller knowledge of our beloved, and experience our relationship with him in all the ways he intended.

Same-Sex Sympathy

Before talking any more about my opposition to same-sex marriage, I must let it be known that I have a great deal of sympathy for those with same-sex attraction, especially those who are "in love" with someone. I'm sure their feelings of "love" are just as real as the feelings that heterosexual couples feel when they first meet someone new and exciting. Of course, even for heterosexuals these feelings can be misleading, causing them to enter harmful relationships.

I myself used to believe we should just let them marry. I believed it would make them happy, and cut down on homosexual promiscuity.

But, after studying the matter further, I changed my mind. While it is possible that some individuals might be happier if they had legally recognized marriages, the general trend for society, for people with same-sex attraction, and especially for children, will be toward unhappiness.

Further, it is apparent that redefining marriage so that it has nothing to do with tradition or children will just lead to other people asking for their own ideas of marriage to be recognized (as it, in fact, already is).

Most important, same-sex marriage will not guarantee free speech and religious freedom as its supporters claim. It will, in fact, undermine the free speech and religious freedom of everyone who doesn't "get with the program." Gay rights activists are already emboldened, asking for the Bible to be considered hate speech, trying to force independent citizens to accept their relationships, and teaching kindergartners that homosexual behavior is normal.

Homosexuals already have the right to live in committed relationships. What they don't have is the right to force everyone else to accept those relationships as healthy and equal to traditional marriages.