discipleship

Strong and Wrong or Weak and Wise?

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment


This post appeared as a column in the Sunday, November 19, edition of the St. Michael Catholic Church bulletin.

Last Wednesday’s gospel challenged me. Jesus starts and ends with strong, provocative language—”If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26) and “In the same way, every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).

In between, he offers two examples for our reflection. In the first, He asks who would undertake to build a tower without first calculating whether or not he could finish it; in the second, he calls to mind a king assessing the strength of an advancing army to determine whether he could successfully oppose them.

In both examples, the concern is clear: Will I be able to persevere and succeed with the resources I have at hand? But the actions and outcomes are subtly different. In the first, the builder does not take the time to calculate, and his inability to complete his tower leads to failure and ridicule. In the second, however, the king does take the time, and upon realizing he cannot win, seeks peace before the battle ever begins.

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He’s Got His Little Ways

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Blogger’s Note: This is a strange column. It appeared in last weekend’s bulletin for St. Michael Catholic Church. I wrote it early last week, just before deadline. Reading it, I recognize it as mine, but it feels like someone else wrote it. I have received direct feedback thanking me for writing and sharing it, because someone needed to hear it. Holy Spirit moment, then?

This morning an old Dwight Yoakam tune popped into my head: *

You’ve got your little ways to hurt me
You know just how to tear me up
And leave me in small pieces on the ground

The context was not a bad breakup or a cruel mistress, but the realization that I am, in many ways, the same sinner I was before my conversion. I’m not struggling with big sins that kept me separated from the Lord. But the struggles and temptations are still there, and I am often seemingly helpless against them. I’m still tempted to seek physical pleasure—most often in the forms of food, drink, and rest—instead of spiritual goods. And I still turn to the internet when I’m stressed or desire distraction—only now its online TV series, silly YouTube videos, sports highlights, and political news.

These are not grave issues, and most of the time, I am not consciously choosing them in opposition to what God is asking of me. The reality is less serious, but much more insidious: I slip unconsciously, effortlessly, out of the present moment and away from my family and responsibilities. Often I don’t realize until much later how much time I’ve lost or what I’ve missed; when I do realize, the Accuser is there, reminding me how childish and helpless I still am.

That’s where I found myself this morning. Last evening, I spent the final three or four hours before sleep vegging in front of a screen. It started with a family movie, followed by a clean comedy video, but then devolved into satirical movie trailers and political pundits by myself, on my phone. When I was almost too tired to get ready for bed, I realized I hadn’t prayed a rosary yet, despite having friends who needed those prayers. I rushed it while shuffling about getting ready for bed—then rose this morning and immediately opened a browser on my phone.

Holiness indeed, whispered the Accuser in my ear. You have no self-control at all, do you?

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Seeing Jesus in the Poor

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

James 1:27

A year or two ago, I took my dad to visit an old friend. I heard many stories from their younger days, from middle school through their time in the Army.

I knew my father grew up with a little bit of nothing: He was the youngest of his siblings; his mom died when he was little, and his dad and stepmom had new babies to provide for and little means to do it. That morning I learned that Dad and his friend lived out of Dad’s car for awhile when they were in high school, scraping together what money they could for food or a cheap hotel room by doing odd jobs for their teachers and neighbors.

I learned something else as well: As tough as Dad’s life was at that point, his friend’s was tougher. From his outside perspective, Dad had a wonderful family—a place to get a half loaf of bread if things got really bad. Dad was his friend’s safety net.

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All That Wasted Time…

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Several weeks ago I resumed praying the St. Joseph the Worker prayer on a daily basis for the first time in years. The Church teaches that the Holy Spirit calls us to prayer, and this was definitely a Holy Spirit inspiration. For the past month, time and again, I’ve been convicted by a few brief lines near the end of this prayer:

…having always before me the hour of death and the accounting I must then render of time ill spent, of talents unemployed, of good undone, and of my empty pride in success, which is so fatal to the work of God.

Prayer to St. Joseph the Worker

I don’t know about you, but I waste a lot of time. Oh, I get done whatever needs to get done, but that’s a low bar. The real question is, how do I spend the bulk of the time given to me?

I’m working on my old ’66 Ford pickup this summer. Three years ago it was a daily driver, until it conked out along the roadside between Elk River and home. Since then, it has sat in our driveway, in various stages of disassembly, while I tried to track down the problem and fix it. I’ve had the diagnosis and the parts for two years or so, and finally got it running again last month.

What took so long? First of all, there was the anticipation that the job was harder and the problem likely bigger than I understood. I was so worried I wouldn’t be able to finish the job that I failed to start it!

But more than that, I chose not to do it, because I had other projects, other priorities, other things I’d rather do. For example, in the past three years:

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Rising to the Occasion

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This post ran in the Ascension Sunday edition of the St. Michael Catholic Church bulletin, the weekend of May 28-29. Another note: My mother and my sister are both practicing Catholics these days…my bride sets a good example!

On this Ascension Sunday, I want to share with you a different sort of rising. Many of you know I didn’t grow up in the Catholic Church. I didn’t grow up in any church to speak of, aside from a brief period in the mid-1980s when my mother brought to St. Joseph the Worker in Beal City, Michigan, to be instructed in the catechism and receive our first Holy Communion from kindly old Father Hart.

Mom grew up in a Polish Catholic farm family. Dad was her next-door neighbor, of no particular faith; his grandmother shared Bible stories and values with him, but though he saw the sense in it, he has never claimed to be a believer. When I met my bride, I guess I was just Catholic enough—that brief period as a kid, plus a few dozen Catholic Masses and weddings, made enough of an impression that I could hold my own alongside her on Sunday mornings. And I was thoroughly smitten, so Jesus had His opening. He took full advantage.

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