love

What’s Keeping You?

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

It’s been nearly eight months since I left the University of Minnesota to work full-time for our parish. At some point in each of my previous jobs, I looked around and asked myself, “Jim, what are you doing here?” Thankfully that has yet to happen since I joined the church staff, but I don’t doubt that it could—work is work, after all.

Faith is work, too. It’s hard sometimes to believe in a good God with so much wickedness in the world, including within the Church. It’s hard to do the right thing when so few people agree on what the right thing is, even within the Church. It’s hard to pray or read or learn more about Jesus, to drag ourselves to Confession, or to haul the family to Mass each Sunday when so many Catholics just…don’t.

I’ll bet at least once you’ve sat in church, looked at Father and the people gathered around you, and asked, “What am I doing here?” It’s a worthwhile question to consider. According to data collected by the Pew Research Center, not only do most U.S. Catholics say they attend Mass once a month or less, but many disagree with the Church’s fundamental teachings regarding marriage, contraception, and the sanctity of life. Yet they persist in calling themselves Catholic. What’s keeping them in the Church?

Well, what’s keeping you? Is it habit or family tradition that brings us here week after week? That makes us seek the sacraments for our children? Is it a hope we hold out for the next generation, even though we may have lost it for our own? Is it a hollow ache in our chest that insists there must be something more to this life? Or is it the peace that radiates from altar, the tabernacle, the Eucharist—peace the world cannot provide?

This month the adults in our LIFT classes focused on the Mass and Holy Communion. We heard the deeply personal testimony of one of our youth ministry volunteers on her own struggles with her Catholic faith—and ultimately, on how she could never turn her back on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Jesus said, “This is my body…This is the cup of my blood”—and so it is. Jesus is God, and God’s words are the very words of Creation. They bring about exactly what they say.

I’ve said more than once that if we as Catholics truly understood who was present in the tabernacle, nothing could keep us from Him. We would fill the pews to overflowing, bring family and friends to a personal encounter with Jesus. We would gladly sacrifice to spend time at His feet, listening to Him, learning from Him, serving Him.

And yet I don’t do these things. We don’t do these things.

The red lamp above the tabernacle signifies that He’s always there. What’s keeping you?

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, Jan. 25, church bulletin .

Book Break: Your Life In the Holy Spirit

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Blogger’s Note: I reserve the right to re-read this book and revise this review as what I’ve read continues to sink in. I wanted to write about it soon, but honestly, my head is spinning!

If you’re like most Catholics, the concept of the Holy Trinity — three persons; one God — is one of the mysteries of our faith that is most difficult to grasp. The best explanation I’ve heard uses marriage to teach us about the Trinity, and vice versa:

  • God is a loving communion of persons.
  • Just as God the Father loves God the Son, and God the Son reflects that love back to God the Father, so to with husbands and wives: the two are united in love so completely they are inseparable and become one person.
  • Just as that shared love between husband and wife can become so powerful, life-giving, and tangible that it results in a new person and is given a name, the shared love between God the Father and God the Son is so abundant and powerfully life-giving that it takes on a life of its own and becomes a third person, God the Holy Spirit — who, in the Nicene Creed each Sunday, we call “the Lord, the Giver of Life.”

This explanation helps me to conceive of the Three-In-One, but the ability to relate to the Holy Spirit as a person remains elusive to me. I recently found up a copy of Alan Schreck’s Your Life in the Holy Spirit and decided to read it, in hopes that it would relieve this difficulty and help my devotion to the Holy Spirit as a person, rather than some mysterious force that helps me understand the Father and the Son. Schreck is a theology professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville and a contributor to Catholic Answers — so he seems like a good source on the topic.

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Birthday Mix-Tape

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It’s my bride’s birthday today, and I thought I resurrect an old tradition of sorts and give her an online version of a birthday mix tape. Now, back in the day, mix tapes were great for a couple reasons:

  • First, when you’re short on dough, a blank Maxell is downright affordable.
  • Second, when you and your gal have vastly different tastes in music, a well-chosen mix can ensure that the next time you’re in the car together, you’ll both enjoy the tunes — you because they’re yours, and she, because they were hand-picked and “mean something.”
Can you feel the love? This is more of an EP, but nevertheless — here goes. (Sorry about the ads and redirects.)
“Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground” by The White Stripes



First off, The White Stripes are the one band the whole family agrees on. Secondly, this was the first song we ever heard of theirs. Third, lines like the opening: Dead leaves and the dirty ground when I know you’re not around/Shiny tops and soda pops when I hear your lips make a sound…

* * * * *

“I Will Wait” by Mumford and Sons

Now I’ll be bold 
As well as strong 
And use my head alongside my heart 
So tame my flesh 
And fix my eyes 
A tethered mind freed from the lies 

Enough said…


* * * * *
“New State of Mind” by Matt Maher


She is alot like grace. And mercy. Next to you I’m more than alright…

* * * * *
“Before My Time” by Johnny Cash

This says it all, in Johnny Cash’s baritone. Plus, beer is mentioned, and dusty books.  Better even than “Grow Old With You.”

* * * * *

Happy birthday, love — here’s to many, many more years together!

Fiesta for Jodi

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments
My bride, looking pleased;
she also got chocolate…

Those of you who know my bride know she spends herself for others. She generally does not express anger, disapproval, discomfort, or exhaustion. She does her level best to anticipate the needs of others and to avoid being the cause of conflict. So foreign is her approach to me that the majority of the tensions between the two of us are the result of me projecting my own tendencies and motives onto her actions in a misguided attempt to understand her. I look at her and assume she’s like me – and apparently, I don’t always get along with me or like the way I think.

Two other things about Jodi:

  • Since she was a little girl, she has tried not to be a burden to others. As a result, once she asked her parents not to spend money on Christmas presents for her. Also, she recalls a death in the family when she was young, in which she was asked to be strong for her grieving relatives. She only rarely cried from that day forward, and her stoicism and general toughness (plus her origins on the plains of South Dakota) earned her the nickname Injun Jo from an elderly (and un-PC) friend of the family.
  • She is conservative in dress, but loves a colorful home. Our bedding gets more colorful year by year, our kitchen features colorful artwork, and she likes fun, brightly colored dishes and cookware.
She’s seeing a pattern!

When we first married, I worked in the housewares department of Younkers department store in Sioux Falls, and Jodi would visit the department to browse.  Seventeen years ago she began looking at Fiestaware dishes, drawn to them by the soft, bright colors: tangerine, lemongrass, peacock, sunflower, flamingo, and turquoise. Since she rarely buys anything for herself (and when she does, it’s on the cheap), we’ve used discount, cream-colored stoneware dishes for years now. Periodically, however, she would talk about how much fun it would be to have a mismatched set of Fiesta dishes – all different colors – to brighten up the kitchen and mealtime.

Jodi will turn an unmentionable age next weekend, so after 17 years of browsing and daydreaming, I decided it was time to act. A couple weekends ago, I planned a party for her. I invited family from Minnesota, Michigan, and South Dakota, and some friends from the area. It was a not-quite-surprise party – in order to pick and hold a date on our busy calendar, I had to let her know something was up, so I told her I was having some friends over for her birthday, and that was the weekend that worked best. I told her the kids and I would take care of everything.

I conspired with Jodi’s mom and sister and mine to buy her eight place settings in different colors, plus extra plates and bowls, then urged those guests who were planning to bring gifts to pick up serving pieces or Kohl’s gift cards that Jodi could use to add to her collection. Large boxes began showing up at our house (as well as money from relatives contributing to the gifts). It turned out better than a surprise party, in that Jodi was for weeks trying to figure out what was going on.

Big smile, blushing.

I’ll confess that once the plans were in motion, I became paranoid: what if I misremembered or misinterpreted how much she wanted these dishes? When I worked at Younkers, I would politely steer men away from the kitchen area when seeking gifts for their spouses. What if she was so excited – then crushed at the prospect of…just dishes?

But when I told the kids of my plan, Rose lit up. “Every time we go to Kohl’s, she walks through the kitchen area and walks past the Fiesta dishes, then walks back to them and looks,” she said.

A candle per decade? Can’t be!
C’mon — no boyfriends!

When people began showing up the day of the party – from South Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan – Jodi was surprised and delighted. Later in the evening, when we insisted she open her gifts (she didn’t want to interrupt the visiting or to be the center of attention) she was genuinely floored. She opened one package, then another, and began to discern the pattern. Then she blushed, and smiled and smiled.

Mixed and unmatched

After 17 years of desire and denial, it was time, don’t you think? I used to call her my “bright side”—it’s about time I found a way to be hers.  Happy birthday, love!