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Your Eternity Begins Now

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

For the past few years, our family has joined numerous others from our parish and surrounding churches for Life Chain, an hour of silent public prayer for an end to the evil of abortion in our country. We spread out along Highway 19 between the parish school and Middle School West and stand facing the road, holding signs and praying.

On the back of the signs are suggested hymns, prayers, and petitions to guide our personal reflection during that hour. Every year, I am taken aback by the petition that asks me to pray for God’s mercy for all I have failed to do to protect life and work for an end to abortion—because every year, I am convinced I could have done more.

Now we are two weeks out from electing a new president. Most of us have likely made up our minds how we will vote—guided, I hope, by reason and a well-formed conscience.  God willing, no Catholic will cast a vote in support of abortion or its proponents. Beyond that, faithful Catholics can and do disagree on how best to combat the evils in our society by our actions at the ballot box. With that in mind, I would like to share three thoughts about the aftermath of Election Day.

First, remember the words of St. Therese of Lisieux: “The world is thy ship and not thy home.” We are a pilgrim people, and although our country is great and worth fighting for, the kingdom to which we truly belong is not here. We are called to evangelize and make disciples; to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. The outcome of this election will not change our mission.

Second, we are all called by God—and not one of us is worth less in His eyes because of the votes we’ve cast, the mistakes we’ve made, or the sins we’ve committed. Whatever happens on November 8th, we will continue to suffer for our faith, as Christ foretold, and our nation and world will continue to need our light, our service, our faithful example. Cast your vote on Tuesday and move on, because we must pull together as one body, one spirit, in Christ.

Finally, we have no time to waste. Too often our efforts on behalf of the unborn, marriage, freedom of conscience, or religious liberty hinge on the headlines and reach a fever pitch every four years with the election of a new president. We support particular candidates or policies; we act as though everything is riding on the results of the next election, then shake our heads when nothing changes and go back to minding our own business.

What about the roughly 1,460 days between presidential elections?

As Catholics, our opposition to abortion and the other great evils of our time is not primarily about saving lives, but about saving souls—including our own. Obedience to Christ and His Church is a daily choice. Disobedience is also a choice. So is complacency and non-action.

Every moment, God calls; every moment we respond. Our eternity begins now.
Lord, have mercy on me for all have failed to do here in my own community to draw people to you and build your kingdom. Amen.

Summer School

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Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest,to labor and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your will. 
– St. Ignatius of Loyola

This has been the shortest summer of my life.

I realize that speaking about summer in the past tense is part of my problem. But this summer, in particular, has emphasized how brief our time in this world actually is.

It has been a summer of firsts and lasts. Our first child graduated high school, so after his last wrestling banquet, prom, and awards night (and his first trip to the doctor for stitches), we attended our first graduation and registered for classes at the University of Mary for the first time. My own age doesn’t bother me much, but Brendan’s does—I can’t figure out how he could be leaving for college when I’m only just out of college myself.

June and July were relentless, planning and preparing for events at church and on the home front. On July 23, Gabe and I left for Poland with a group from three area parishes to join 2.2 million other pilgrims in Kraków for World Youth Day. It was a beautiful, faith-filled, overcrowded, and exhausting trip, packed with numerous graces and more than a few trials. We returned on Wednesday, August 3, to a house full of guests getting ready for Brendan’s grad party/college send-off on Saturday. On Sunday Jodi and I had our marriage blessed with a number of friends unknown to us when we got hitched 20 years ago, then went home to clean up from the party before Vacation Bible School, which started Monday.

Finally, on Thursday of VBS week, I left with Brendan for the Jesuit Retreat House in Demontreville. After the noise and chaos of the previous few weeks, three days of silence and reflection alongside my soon-to-be college-bound son seemed just what I needed.

On Thursday night, one of the priests advised us to pray specifically for whatever grace we hoped to gain from the retreat. Here I made a mistake: I had been anticipating rest and recuperation, but in that moment, my soul blurted out, “Intimacy with you, Jesus—I want to be close to you!”

I went to bed Thursday night expecting to sleep soundly and long for the first time in weeks. Instead I tossed and turned and woke multiple times, stiff and store and thirsty. In the wee hours of the morning, as the sky began to pale, a single verse from the Gospel of Matthew took root in my head: “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head” (Matthew 8:20).

My eyes opened. I had prayed for intimacy with Christ and had been given the smallest taste: I was lying awake, exhausted, aching, and alone, with no one to talk with but my God. I prayed. I gave thanks for this new perspective. I slept peacefully, if briefly, until the sun rose.

This lesson—that intimacy with Jesus brings both suffering and peace—is not particularly profound, but it is important. Like a child, I had desired the benefits of heaven and God’s love without considering deeply what might be required of me. I think we do this often. Heaven sounds great if admission is free.

The retreat master offered another lesson, throughout the weekend. He told us to remember that the Holy Spirit is the Consoler: God does not motivate through discouragement, but encouragement. He wants us to take heart, not lose heart—and if He gives us a rock, it’s to build, not to bloody ourselves. Whether we seek intimacy with Jesus or not, things will change, people will come and go, time will fly, death will come. But with Christ, we can take heart: He has walked this road before, and it leads home.

O Jesus, our life here is short, and we cannot save time, but only spend it. Help me not to hoard the blessings I’ve been given, but to share them, and to pour myself out completely in union with you. Amen.

Be the Bedrock

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Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock. – Matthew 7:24-25

 
A few weeks ago, my daughter Emma shared a beautiful encounter she had during Adoration at Extreme Faith Camp. While praying with her eyes closed, she saw a young girl not unlike our younger daughter Lily, and received the distinct impression that this was Jude, the baby we miscarried before Lily was born. At first she felt sad, reflecting on how she never knew her other sister—until she heard words of consolation from our Lord. After those words, she even invited Jude to sit in her lap, and felt her sister close to her.

Emma used this experience as an opportunity to witness to others: “I guess that what I’m trying to tell you from sharing this story is that the Lord is truly in the Eucharist and he is there to show you amazing things and bring you closer to him. Don’t doubt for a minute that he isn’t truly present because he is. He loves you and wants to have a relationship with you so you can have the amazing life he has planned for you. Also, remember that your loved ones you have lost love you and are praying for you so that you can join them one day in God’s kingdom.”
 
Experiences like these move me deeply, because I didn’t grow up this way. My children are learning at an early age that Jesus is really present in the Blessed Sacrament, that the Holy Spirit moves in their lives, and that God has a plan for their happiness, both here and in eternity. I am an old dog, struggling to learn tricks my pups have already begun to master.
 
I mentioned this to my confessor last week. “We’ve done the best we can for them,” I said, “but activities like Extreme Faith Camp and Core Team have changed their lives. They are experiencing things that I never have!”
 
“You know how this works, right?” he said. “The reason they are able to reach higher than you is because they are standing on your shoulders. You have given them stability—a firm foundation to stand on. So often we hear people say they just want their kids to have what they didn’t have. … But you are actually doing it. You are giving them spiritual gifts.”
 
So many of us want to provide our children with a better life, so we focus on material things, like money, toys, gadgets, or cars; or on opportunities, like extracurricular activities and camps; travel, food, and recreation.  These are not bad things, necessarily, but when we consider all of eternity, we realize we are focused on the wrong kind of better. As St. John reminds us, “the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever” (1 John 2:17).
 
What is truly good is not of this world at all. By doing as Christ Himself instructed—by loving God, neighbor, and enemy; by leading lives of prayer and striving for holiness; by sharing the Good News that Jesus is Lord and Savior—we can be bedrock for our children: the solid ground upon which they plant their feet and lift their hearts to heaven.

What Does It Mean to Be a Member?

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This past week I finished reading The Weight of Glory, a collection of essays and lectures by the great C.S. Lewis. The piece that made the biggest impression on me was a reflection called “Membership,” in which Lewis explains the fundamental differences between what St. Paul meant when spoke of members of the Church and what we mean today.


Today, when we say someone is a member, whether of a church, a club, a team, or a family, we generally mean a unit—a part or cog in some bigger machine that shares some commonality or purpose. The emphasis is on similarity or even uniformity.

This is nearly directly the opposite of St. Paul’s usage of member in the sense of a part of body. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul emphasizes the uniqueness and irreplaceability of each part:

Now the body is not a single part, but many. If a foot should say, “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body. Or if an ear should say, “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended. If they were all one part, where would the body be? But as it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I do not need you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I do not need you.” – 1 Cor 12:14-21

God has created each of us as a unique image of Himself, with a unique purpose in the Body of Christ. That’s an exciting thought, but it also underscores the challenge of a one-size-fits-all approach to sharing our faith and the importance of each of us spending time with God to discern His purpose.

It is also important, however, not to compromise the truth of our faith in an effort to find our own path. The gospel reading a day or so after I finished reading Lewis’s essay was Matthew 5:27-32—in part:

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your membersthan to have your whole body go into Gehenna.”

Our Lord is speaking in hyperbole, exaggerating to illustrate how seriously we must take repentance and avoidance of sin with our own bodies. The Body of Christ—the Church—exists for our salvation, but just like any body made with human parts, it too is prone to error and illness, and susceptible to temptation, comfort, and pleasure. Our members sin, and although the Lord desires everyone to be saved, He gives us only one way: Himself—“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Jesus in Scriptures. Jesus in the Holy Catholic Church. Jesus in the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist. This is the path we’ve been given, and the only path we know leads to salvation. As members of the Body of Christ, it is our call to obey the Head, to pick up our cross and follow, and to bring as many others with us as we can.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) said, “Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love, and do not accept anything as love which lacks truth! One without the other becomes a destructive lie.”

There is no good compromise. Nothing short of the Truth satisfies, and Love cannot exist without it.

Book Break: Three Quick Reads

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I’m playing catch-up on “reviewing” a few faith-building books I’ve read in recent months. I recommend all three, depending on where you and your family are on your faith journey.

Blessed Are the Bored in Spirit by Mark Hart

cee7e-boredinspiritMark Hart is a former Catholic youth minister, self-proclaimed Bible geek, and vice president of LIFE TEEN…and a recovering cultural Catholic who was just going through the motions in his younger years. Blessed Are the Bored in Spirit: A Young Catholic’s Search For Meaning is a short (less than 150 pages), light, and humorous look at the temptations, attitudes, and obstacles that keep teens and adults lukewarm in their faith. If you’ve heard Hart speak (as in this video we shared at LIFT this past year), you’ve got some idea of the tone and level of this book. I recommend it for teens, young adults, and family discussions.

Jesus Shock by Peter Kreeft

19ac5-jesusshockThe title and cover of Peter Kreeft’s 176-page Jesus Shock make you wonder if it’s by that Peter Kreeft. It is. Kreeft  is a professor of philosophy, lecturer, and author of countless books on theology, philosophy, history, and apologetics — but Jesus Shock is the result of asking God, “What do You want me to write?” The answer, he says, was “Me.” Kreeft asks questions of his readers to help them probe their knowledge of and attitude toward Jesus, and uses Scripture to show how the Incarnation, the God-Man, the Word of God and Savior of the World, is everything we long for and anything but boring. This a somewhat deeper and more academic read that Mark Hart’s book, and more clever than humorous, but still very accessible for adults and motivated teens. It’s a good book for self-reflection or discussion.

The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis

5a453-weightofgloryAnd now for something completely different: The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis is a collection of beloved homilies, lectures, and essays by the great writer and apologist, on topics as diverse as the problems with pacifism, why study of the liberal arts matters, the challenge of forgiveness, the incoherence of a strictly scientific worldview, what membership means (and what it should mean), and more. These individual pieces are not directly related to each other, except by authorship, but they present a picture of Lewis’s Christian outlook and concerns about the direction of modern culture that have stood the test of time and are perhaps more relevant today than ever. If you enjoy Lewis’s writings beyond the Narnia series, or if you want to dig more deeply into Christianity in the modern world, brew some coffee, get comfortable, and enjoy. This book is great for personal reflection and deeper discussion, especially if you like stretching your intellectual muscles a bit!