discipleship

Wednesday Witness: On Busyness

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Blogger’s Note: This post first appeared as part of the Wednesday Witness blog series on the St. Michael Catholic Church website.

“Idle hands are the devil’s playground”—so goes the old saying, and I can verify its truth. So many of the sinful traps I fell into as a young man were concealed in downtime and baited with curiosity and pleasure.

It’s good for young men to keep busy, but I am no longer young. These days I struggle with having too much to do rather than too little, and that, too, can be a sin trap. A mentor of mine even has an acronym for BUSY:

Burdened Under Satan’s Yoke

Even if you work for the Church, as I am blessed to do, the acronym may still apply. Perhaps the best Christmas gift I got this year was the Monk Manual, a special sort of planner based on the prayerful patterns of work and reflection in monastic life. This beautiful leather-bound book serves not only to organize and schedule your work days, weeks and months, but leads you to examine what you achieved versus what is really important to you, at which points in the day you were at your best and worst, the state of your relationships and habits, and what God may be trying to teach you. Continue reading →

Wednesday Witness: His Plan, In His Time

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Blogger’s Note: This post first appeared as part of the Wednesday Witness blog series on the St. Michael Catholic Church website.

“So I hear you’re back at St. Michael?”

That’s been the refrain almost every day for the past few weeks, usually with the lilt of a question at the end—and no, I am not sick of it yet.

The short answer to the implied question is yes – I am now working as the parish’s communications manager. It is a full-time contract position, which gives the parish and me flexibility in how we approach the work that needs to be done, when it needs to be done. This is my dream job, and I am grateful and excited for the opportunity.

The longer answer is that I never entirely left. I resigned from the Faith Formation role here because God was calling me to write and evangelize on behalf of the Church. I had many dreams at the time: to start a radio program, to finish a book, to drum up enough writing and speaking opportunities to be self-employed. But before I pursued any of those, I sought this job—a job that didn’t exist at the time. And for the past two-plus years, we have remained Mass-going, LIFT-attending, sacrament-seeking members of this parish. Continue reading →

Stewardship Witness: The Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Blogger’s Note: Awhile back I offered to Father to speak to the parish on the purpose of the Open Adoration events we have been hosting, and instead, he asked me if I would share a stewardship witness—a conversion story of sorts—on the Eucharist and Adoration. This short talk was delivered after all the Masses the weekend of October 26-27, 2019.

Brothers and sisters: I’d like you to ask yourself the following question: At this moment, who is the most important person in the room? Does everyone have someone in mind? OK, on the count of three, point to that person: 1…2…3…

Several years ago, I was helping to get our faith formation program going, and the director, Carol Freeman, asked a favor of me. During LIFT we were going to spend time in Adoration—silent prayer in front of the Holy Eucharist—and she asked if I would lead a closing prayer at the end.

I said I would—then spent the rest of the session trying to figure out why she asked me, of all people. I was on the Faith Formation Committee, but beyond that, I was nobody important in the parish. I looked around the church and thought, I’m not even the most important person in the room. Father’s here; he’s more important. Carol’s the director; she’s more important. Continue reading →

The Phantom Cross, or ‘It’s Not About You’

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

I’m Mary and I’m Martha all at the same time
I’m sitting at His feet and yet I’m dying to be recognized.
I am a picture of contentment and I’m dissatisfied.
Why is it easy to work and hard to rest sometimes?

– Audrey Assad, “Lament”

My last post, “The Better Part,” was on Mary and Martha, and God continues to hammer my heart with the example of these two holy women. Yesterday was St. Martha’s feast day, so Jodi and I reflected again on the story in Luke chapter 10, and I was struck by how much of my busy-ness—which I pretend is selfless and sacrificial—is in fact all about me. Continue reading →

The Better Part

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Nearly everyone I talk with these days agrees with me: The summer is flying by, in part because our families are so busy.

A friend has an acronym for BUSY: Burdened Under Satan’s Yoke. We may object that the numerous things we are doing are not evil, but are good and perhaps even important. But we would do well to ask ourselves, are they necessary?

Necessity is a high bar, when you think about it. As animals, we have very few absolute needs: food, water, shelter, and the like. As humans, made in God’s image, we have a few more: freedom, community, love. Meeting these needs for ourselves and our families requires effort on our part—but for the person of faith, there is a hierarchy: God, spouse, children, everyone else, everything else.

Which of these things are we spending time on these days, and in what order? Continue reading →