An Interesting Article about Vampires and Moral Relativism

Defanged: about how a culture unable to say, "Evil," when it sees evil is a culture that cannot defend itself, from a blog I just encountered for the first time called Hey Miller.  The article basically argues that the media, what Peter Kreeft calls informal educators in his book How to Win the Culture Wars, have for some time been teaching us moral relativism.  In his blog, Miller shows how a number of very successful novels, plays, and movies have been conducting a sly campaign to teach us that right isn't right and that wrong isn't wrong.  They have been doing so by sleight of hand, substituting the psychological complexity of persons for the morality of their acts.

Thanks for the link, Eric.  (For those of you who have never read it, the Daily Eudemon is a genuinely intelligent blog with a variety of topics routinely covered.)

Fr. Robert Barron and the Vatican's Investigation of Nuns

The Bishop of Bayonne Roars

Consider the policy of His Grace, (Catholic) Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, regarding organ donation, which is uncritical and careless at best. Click here to read. His attitude shows a clear lack of the sort of cautious discernment manifest in the Catechism, for instance.

Contrast this attitude with that of Msgr. Marc Aillet, Bishop of Bayonne, to another part of the Brave New World agenda. He has been gaining notoriety in France for his outspoken opposition to actions the French government, most recently the Gay Pride event hosted by a city in his diocese. Click here to read.

It is interesting to note that in England, the Church has legal freedom to preach its conscience on any matter, whereas in France it is illegal for the Church to speak on issues considered (by whom? the Government?) to be purely political. I suppose it is natural that we Christians sleep when left alone, but wake up when prodded and persecuted. We have to pray for our bishops hard, because it is their job to wake the rest of us up!

A Bit Carried Away?

I think a lot of people have gotten carried away in their enthusiasm over Obama. Here is the editor of Newsweek Magazine.



Is there any question whether the magazine he edits will give the American people a balanced presentation of the acts of the man he calls, "sort of God?" The so-called Fourth Estate of our society, the press, is perhaps falling asleep at its job, providing the American public a final check on its leaders.

Guidelines for Fraternal Correction, pt 2

The last article discussed when to fraternally correct, and this second one will address how. As in all things, the Golden Rule (Mt 7:12; Lk 6:31) applies.

First, consider how we would react if someone, even someone we liked and who liked us, came to us arrogantly making demands and threats. It probably wouldn't go over well, and if we complied, it would be out of fear or guilt, and resentment would accompany our compliance. True?

So as a matter of sheer practicality, it is best to take the opposite approach once we've decided that someone must be fraternally corrected, and that we should be the one to do it. An attitude of humility and concern for the one corrected is key. The attitude must not be fake, nor should it be a ruse or a cover for other motivations. If we have more personal reasons for wanting a change, we should be honest with ourselves and the other about that.

To humble our heart, I have found a few reflections helpful. I try to think of ways I have contributed to the negative situation. I consider times when I have harmed the other, or done the same thing to another person that I want to challenge the correctee about. "He lives dirty dishes all over the house," should be balanced in our mind with, as applicable, "and I leave laundry in a big pile in the basement." This balanced recollection should be part of the discussion we have with our correctee. In such a situation, the correction is also a self-correction.

"Hey, dude. I've been thinking. Our house is trashed. I'm not blaming you at all - all those clothes piled in the basement are mine. I don't know how you feel about it, but I'd like to live in a tidier place. Maybe we could each resolve to straighten up our stuff in the next day or two. Would you be willing to clean up these dishes and put them away? I've definitely got to get those clothes to where they belong."

Another approach, rather than simply making a demand, "You have to stop doing X," is to show how the other's actions affect us. "Buddy, I don't think you know, but last night, I had a hard time falling asleep because of the music you were playing. I was useless at work today because I was so tired. Do you think you might be able to turn it down on weeknights, to help me out?" By temporarily abandoning the language of rights and justice, and simply sharing our heart and mind with our brother, we will often move him to compassion and sensitivity, building our community. If that doesn't work, then we may need to take stronger action, but usually easy does it, and a mild approach is more effective.

In cases where there are wrongs done in both directions, we must be willing to take responsibility and apologize for our share of the hurt. The killer thing about being a Christian, and the nature of a sincere apology, is that both are free. That is, we Christians make our apologies for our sins without regard to any sort of recompense. We apologize for our faults as they negatively impact others because that is the right thing to do, the thing that reflects our true role in the situation. It is not our concern whether the other accepts our apology or responds in kind. Often, he will not. He will feel he is righteous and that our apology has vindicated him and proven that aching spot in his conscience to be wrong. So be it. It may often be that, for the sake of doing the right thing, we must tolerate harm done to us or a justice left undone. I apologize to try to make amends, and he responds arrogantly. I cannot affect his response. I only know that I have at last done the right thing; any harm that comes to me as a result, even a mild one, is a harm that makes me more like Jesus. And that is a very good kind of harm to endure.

Guidelines for Fraternal Correction, pt 1

I learned about the concept of fraternal correction for the first time in the seminary. The concept is simple. When one has a complaint or problem with another, and neither has authority over the other, the one with the complaint shares it with the other in an attempt to correct him or the situation as a whole.

In another post I will babble on about how to do a fraternal correction. The spiritual director gave us guidelines for the how. For now, I will discuss briefly the why and when. These come from my own observation. Take them for what they are worth.

Fraternal correction is important in the life of a community because it prevents a grievance from festering. By providing a healthy outlet for problems, it reduces the temptation to the divisive and diabolic sin of gossip. Make no mistake about it: gossip destroys the life of a community and comes straight from hell. The Greek word for gossip, or slander, is diabolos. There is a good test for whether "sharing" is "healthy venting to a third party," "seeking outside advice," or whether it is actually vicious gossip. The test is to consider our willingness or eagerness to relate the events only to persons who know nothing of the situation or the individuals involved, and to leave out all identifying characteristics. If we are just itching to say someone's name, we are almost certainly about to engage in malignant gossip. Don't. Now, back on track.

Fraternal correction encourages proactivity and ownership on the part of the members of the community, rather than passively waiting around for someone else, someone in authority to solve every interpersonal tension. Fraternal correction should be a skill in the repertoire of every grown man and woman.

When should we fraternally correct? I mean, if we all run around venting all of our grievances all the time, without ever being judicious and careful in doing so, we will almost certainly tear everyone around us down, and ourselves too, and end up friendless. Sensing this possibility, I came up with these criteria for a correction. All three criteria being met fully, I proceed with my intended correction.

#1. I must like the person whom I am considering correcting. Love isn't good enough a criterion because we Christians are supposed to love everyone, and boy, do we. Lol. We fool ourselves too easily on this point. But if I actually like the person and feel warmth and affection toward him, then I can be confident that my motives are pure enough, that I am doing it at least partly for his own good and not my own weird, selfish motivations.

#2. My complaint must be graver than my ability to endure. If it is a petty thing that I can deal with on my own, then I do. The expression, "suck it up," comes to mind. If what the person is doing is an objective wrong against me and is making hard for me to avoid doing wrong to him, then I should bring it to him in correction. If my brother is doing something that will lead him or others to real harm, then I should bring it to him. If my brother chews with his mouth open and it disgusts me, but doesn't actually harm me or immediately lead me to sin against him seriously, then I should chill out a bit. At this point, I need to be careful there is nothing I can do to let go of the problem: work through my own issues, reprioritize my values (close friendship over mere table manners, etc).

#3. I should be reasonably confident that he will heed my concern. We listen most to peers whom we know to care about us and to like us. The more serious the matter, the more personal or painful, the more confident we must be that the person confronting us is doing so out of love. There are extremes, though. I cannot wait until I am absolutely sure that someone will listen to me, when I am concerned that he is suicidal, or that someone under his care is in harm's way. At times we must discharge our conscience and let the chips fall where they may. The more grave the concern, the less confident I need to be and the more willing I should be to go out on a limb.

These three criteria are those I came up with. It would be great to receive feedback and correction from a brother or sister on the matter. In part two I will outline the procedure for correction that the spiritual director laid out before us at the seminary.

What I Learned By Not Running Sixteen Miles

Sunday evening I was scheduled to go back to the C & O Canal Trail and run sixteen (16!) miles. I started a wee bit earlier than I had the week before, hoping to avoid the deep darkness and the Terror of the Woods. I got to the Canal and stretched, and off I went. The problem was that the date being a week later, and so close to the autumnal equinox, we are losing a half hour or so of daylight each week at this point, and so very quickly it began to get dusky again. On top of that, some Spanish rice and chicken, which I had scarfed down a couple hours earlier hoping to digest quickly for some last minute energy, was causing some, um... mild unpleasantness. Now, don't get me wrong - my symptoms were limited to some moderate distension, a bit of gas (sorry), and some very mild cramps. Nothing that can't be run through, but the sort of symptoms that tend to demoralize.

As I ran, it got darker and darker. My halfway point was also the starting point (I was doing two laps on a there-and-back course) and as I approached it, I realized that it was 8:15 p.m. and just plain dark, and I was only halfway done. Now a debate began to rage in my head: to bail out and call the run a make-up for one of the 7-8 mile tempo runs I'd skipped while trying to adjust to my new academic career, or push through and finish the sixteen miles? The distension and other symptoms were subsiding, but could always return. The darkness would certainly get darker, and then the trail (safe from bandits, I think) would become a bit dangerous because of physical obstacles. "WUSS!" something inside of me shouted. "Isn't it be better to dig in, push on, and develop my fortitude - moral, emotional, physical perseverance?" something else asked plaintively. Prudence? What would prudence say? The debate raged and raged, absorbing my thoughts and began to steal away my enjoyment of the run, and even my peace.

Now, prudence, far from being prudery, is the virtue by which one knows the most important good, and the best way to achieve it, and by corollary, how to prioritize other lesser goods beneath it. It is the most practical natural virtue, so I said a quick prayer for some, tried to clear my mind, and thought. The purpose of this run is to get into better shape to prepare me for my marathon. If I injure myself in a pothole, that won't happen. More importantly, this marathon isn't the most important thing: I still had some Syriac homework to do, and class in the morning; if I ran for another hour, and was consequently whacked physically, those things would be shot - and they are more important than the marathon or the workout. While my stomach didn't feel lousy, it didn't feel great, either. Tomorrow I could run without the Spanish rice and chicken. Feeling like a wuss isn't pleasant, but it isn't as important as these considerations: (1) school/work, (2) safety, (3) marathon performance. In fact, if I was doing this just to feel good about myself, then damaging my career and injuring my body would be counterproductive, and one of those was certain to happen, and the other one increasingly likely. OK... so at the eight-mile mark I stopped running, walked back to my car, drove home, ate my dinner of leftovers, and did my Syriac homework.

Last night, with the day planned out better, I drove back to the C & O Canal Trail and did the sixteen mile run. All of it. I stopped for a minute or so a couple times in order to stretch out better, and overall enjoyed the run. My average pace was about 8:27 min/mile if memory serves. My roommate ran the first 12 with me, and then met me at my finish mark, water bottle in hand. I've never been so flush with gratitude in my whole life. We went home and had dinner, a pit stop at McDonald's for milkshakes and 7-11 for a big bag of ice were our only distractions. After eating dinner and icing my leg joints for 45 minutes or so, I went to bed. Today, my legs are tired, but limber, and I feel fine.

So what I learned about being a Christian by not running the sixteen miles the first time around was this: when we are in the throws of a struggle, our decision-making process can become very convoluted. Virtue and vice become jumbled, and the right path gets lost from sight as surely as when I was running in the dark. Our emotions rise up in a great rebellious assault, and our minds get clouded as we begin to rationalize. Telling rationalizations from true and good reasons becomes nightmarishly difficult. I think I made the right call to give up my run the first night, but it was hard to make the call. Likewise, when fighting temptations to sin, it can be very difficult to figure out the right thing to do. It is best in life, as it would have been in my run, to make a sound decision before getting into the thick of things, and then to just hold the course against all comers - trusting that our first decision, made in the calm, clear daylight, will turn out to have been the right one.

The Jesuits recommend a frequent spiritual exercise called the Examen, in which we look over a block of time past and block of time to come, in the calm recollection of a prayerful heart, resolve to do better, and practically speaking how we will do so, anticipating obstacles, and making prudent decisions before all hell breaks loose in our psyche. C. S. Lewis identifies this phenomenon of good-decision-stuck-to-even-when-it-becomes-hard-later as the basic, natural, human sort of faith, faithfulness, fidelity. It's what married couples and religious do when they make their vows - only, those choices are so monumental that merely human faith is insufficient, and for fulfillment of those choices grace from God is needed.

That's the lesson: make good decisions before decision-making gets difficult; then when the hard times come and all hell assaults our resolve, we need only pray for the grace of fidelity to our good decision.

And yeah, sixteen miles IS the longest run I've ever, ever done in my entire life. Not too shabby, if I say so myself. Marine Corps Marathon, here I come!

St. John Vianney vs. Hananiah

Feast of St. John Vianney
Priest (Aug 4)

Ok, so St. John Vianney (1786-1859) didn't actually beat up Hananiah (oh, let's say 650 BC to 588 BC, give or take). But his spirit sure did; or rather, we should say that Jeremiah, who outdid Hananiah, lived on in spirit in the person of St. John Vianney.

The Babylonians had attacked Jerusalem and taken some of her leadership into captivity. They replaced the king of Judah with their own man, who took the name Zedekiah. Zedekiah turned out to be not so much a puppet as they had hoped, and decided to rebel against the Babylonians; to do so, he would recruit the help of the Egyptians. Hananiah and some of the other court "prophets" were happy to be yes-men and encouraged Zedekiah. Jeremiah, on the other hand, told them all flat out that it was the will of God that they should be humbled a while longer, that they should not ally with the Egyptians because the Egyptians' help never turned out well. He repeated until he was blue in the face that Judah's new found national pride was opposed by the will of God. To make his point, he strapped onto himself a wooden yoke, like a farmer would use to harness a pair of oxen. Sure enough, the Babylonians come back with a vengeance and lay seige to the Holy City.

Today's first Mass reading (Jer 28:1-17; Ps 119:29, 43, 79, 80, 95, 102; Mt 14:22-36) picks up at this point. Hananiah, the mealy-mouthed so-called prophet smashes the yoke from Jeremiah and proclaims that in like manner God Himself will lift the seige and save the city. Jeremiah goes and fetches an iron yoke and straps it to himself: Judah, you are on the wrong course! Repent! Trust God, not the Egyptians! He turns his wrath on Hananiah and tell him that because he has falsely spoken on behalf of the Lord, he will not live to see the year's end. Sure enough, Hananiah died within a few months. Within a few more months, in the year 587 BC, Jerusalem is taken by the Babylonians, her entire leadership deported, Zedekiah's eyes were put out and his sons murdered by the Babylonian general, and the city was laid waste and her population dispersed.

About 2400 years separate St. John Vianney from the time of the holy prophet Jeremiah and the false prophet Hananiah, but the same perennial battle was underway and is underway still. On one hand, the sunny optimists of progress continually tell us that all is well, that by our own efforts and on our own terms, we can make the world a better place. They call opponents pessimistic, unpatriotic, narrowminded, backwards, and worse. The only problems they see are in their opponents' unwillingness to trust them.

St. John Vianney spoke out against the merry laxity of his day, in which religious observance was mechanical and infrequent. He spoke out against the immorality that lax observance protected. He spoke out even against people, when they encouraged that immorality. His homilies were not nice, and people did not like to hear what he had to say. "So gloomy, this new priest," one can almost here people saying as they left church after Sunday Mass. Importantly, St. John Vianney did not merely speak out against these evils, but he lived out against them. His whole life was a testimony to goodness, virtue, prayer, devotion, service, and joy.

But then something began to happen. People began to respond. By the time he died, Ars, the little village where he was pastor, had been transformed into a thriving spiritual center, laden with apostolic works and saturated in the prayer of its few hundred residents and tens of thousands of visitors.

In our time, there are numerous false prophets leading our people down paths of evil, insisting that all would be well if only Christians would shut up. Whenever anyone is hurt along these roads of evil, these false prophets insist that all is really well, and getting better. We must show them wrong by speaking truth lovingly, and by living love truthfully.

St. John Vianney and Holy Jeremiah, pray for us.

Personality Map

Ok, so one of my roommates, Kaz, and I go back and forth about the usefulness of different personality inventories. I think he would agree that I tend to be the more skeptical of us. Beyond that, he tends to favor the broader categories of the Four Temperament typing, whereas I tend to go for the more fine-tuned Myer-Briggs personality typing. He seems to think the tests more directly useful for revealing something of your personality to yourself; I tend to think they produce lists of adjectives which may apply, or not, and which you can use to do something of a self-inventory. Anyhow, today I stumbled upon and took this one while running some tests at work that left me a little downtime. It's called your Personal DNA and it produces a nice quilt-like map, or else a kind of thermometer-on-LSD, either of which graphically describes your personality. Another cool feature is that your friends can describe you and then you can see their opinions of you, and they can see your opinion of yourself. I've put my "personality map" on the righthand sidebar of this page. It's kinda fun, and kinda revealing, and kinda obtuse - like me, and probably like a lot of my friends. No offense, guys.

Coincidentally, I am not sure which label this post should go under, so I just threw down a bunch that didn't seem entirely unrelated.

Elijah and the Prophets of Baal

The 1st Mass reading proper to today's season (Wed after the 10th Sunday of Ordinary Time) was suppressed in favor of the Feast of St. Barnabas. The suppressed reading (1 Kngs 18:20-39) is one of my favorites, so I am going to post it below, with a few words to follow.

So Ahab sent to all the Israelites and had the prophets assemble on Mount Carmel. Elijah appealed to all the people and said, "How long will you straddle the issue? If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him." The people, however, did not answer him. So Elijah said to the people, "I am the only surviving prophet of the LORD, and there are four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal. Give us two young bulls. Let them choose one, cut it into pieces, and place it on the wood, but start no fire. I shall prepare the other and place it on the wood, but shall start no fire. You shall call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the LORD. The God who answers with fire is God."

All the people answered, "Agreed!"

Elijah then said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one young bull and prepare it first, for there are more of you. Call upon your gods, but do not start the fire."

Taking the young bull that was turned over to them, they prepared it and called on Baal from morning to noon, saying, "Answer us, Baal!" But there was no sound, and no one answering. And they hopped around the altar they had prepared.

When it was noon, Elijah taunted them: "Call louder, for he is a god and may be meditating, or may have retired, or may be on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened." They called out louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until blood gushed over them. Noon passed and they remained in a prophetic state until the time for offering sacrifice. But there was not a sound; no one answered, and no one was listening.

Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come here to me." When they had done so, he repaired the altar of the LORD which had been destroyed. He took twelve stones, for the number of tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the LORD had said, "Your name shall be Israel." He built an altar in honor of the LORD with the stones, and made a trench around the altar large enough for two seahs of grain. When he had arranged the wood, he cut up the young bull and laid it on the wood. "Fill four jars with water," he said, "and pour it over the holocaust and over the wood." "Do it again," he said, and they did it again. "Do it a third time," he said, and they did it a third time. The water flowed around the altar, and the trench was filled with the water. At the time for offering sacrifice, the prophet Elijah came forward and said, "LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things by your command. Answer me, LORD! Answer me, that this people may know that you, LORD, are God and that you have brought them back to their senses."

The LORD'S fire came down and consumed the holocaust, wood, stones, and dust, and it lapped up the water in the trench. Seeing this, all the people fell prostrate and said, "The LORD is God! The LORD is God!"

Ok. A few thoughts:

1. Prophecy is not speaking the future, but speaking on behalf of God. The prophets of Ba'al claimed to speak on behalf of God, and in fact, they recognized Ba'al as the one and only God (kind of). But their 'god' was not the same as the One True God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who called himself Yahweh. Yahweh means "I am," and refers to the absolute necessity and eternity of God - He is the one and only thing that necessarily, must exist, and always has and always will exist. It is the same God that revealed himself to Abraham and to Moses and in love made lavish promises to them.

2. "Ba'al" on the other hand means "master," and refers to that demons desire for us, to master and dominate us through stealth or force. If not the same being that deceived Adam and Eve in the garden, to whom unredeemed Man has ever since been in bondage, the two beings are clearly closely related.

3. Discernment is the art of distinguishing what comes from God, and what does not. In this account we are given a model from discernment. No matter how hard the false prophets shouted, hopped, and gashed themselves with knives, the darn sacrifice wouldn't burn: there was no one to hear them. Their works, prayers, etc., were all futile because they were not from God and to God.

4. The Christian life might be seen as a sort of preparing oneself, or letting the Church prepare us, to be a living sacrifice. We must carefully discern the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives to conform ourselves to the will of God. Firstly me must learn to avoid sin. We must learn to fulfill the obligations of our state in life. We must allow our mixed motivations to be purged. Ultimately we must grow to let all our acts originate, be permeated by, and aim at love. As we are conformed to Christ, the Holy Spirit will descend on us like fire from on high and set us ablaze, but, like the Burning Bush that spoke to Moses, we will not be destroyed by what consumes us.

5. In the process, we will increasingly radiate God's love and show His people and the world the right way to follow the Lord.

My Cup Runneth Over... But Not Yet

For a while now, I have felt that God was not calling me to a very apostolic life, but rather to more of an inward-looking life, almost heremetical while still keeping up with all the day-to-day things of life in the world. Lately though, I've begun to feel as if that's changing. An ice thawing on the surface, or a fire smouldering in the middle. It's hard to say. Different seasons give different activities.

I'd like to help develop the young adult community in my area.

I'd like to help with youth ministry in my parish.

I'd like to spend more time with the very poor.

I'd like to produce brochures and pamphlets to aid the faithful.

I'd like to...

I'd like to be so full of the love of God that it would run and even splash over in a hundred directions. But there are still other things to be done, it seems. First things first. That's prudence in a nutshell. Obstacles need to be cleared away. Any attempt at apostolate that springs from our own desires, much moreso from our own ideas, is bound to sputter and run out of gas - if it even gets that far.

But what could waylay or obstruct an apostolate born out of the will of God, known to us because of the close conformity of our will to His, and powered by His Holy Spirit? More and more I think that he might have some great plan, or some little plan, for me, for someone else, for whomever - but not yet. There are times of life when we must wait.

The seed isn't wasting time by waiting through the winter. I say that because a wise friend of mine once said that a vocation is like a plant in that it needs time to grow inside of us. The same is true, it seems, whether the call spans the scope of one's life, or simply affects the use of one's free time for the next few months. The little seedling is God's loving call to us bundled together with our loving response. If it is of God, in any event, the call won't go away. Right now I feel something stirring in me. Could it be a seedling trying to sprout forth? But there are still rocks and maybe thorns in the way. I'm working at clearing them away for God as fast as I can. Well, really, it's probably him working to clear them away as fast as I will let Him. In any event, it happens during prayer. Lots of prayer.

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my will.
All that I have and am You have given to me,
and I surrender it now to be governed entirely by Your will.
Your grace and Your love are wealth enough for me.
Grant me these, Lord, and I shall ask for nothing more.

Fork in the Road

So I am at a crossroads in life, or at least am approaching one, and one that will probably more or less give shape to the day-to-day for much of the rest of my life. I am trying to weigh two possible career choices that I have seriously considered... there may be others that I have inadvertently neglected. What the moves would be is incidental to this piece.

What catches my interest now is that almost everyone I know thinks they know exactly what I should do. It helps that they mostly agree with each other. In fact, they all agree with each other, except for two close family members, who alone seem to dissent.

Happily the crossroads isn't yet encountered - not for a few more months, and even then I'll have the option of putting off the thing, of sitting at the intersection for a while and watching the traffic go by. I bring the thing to prayer, and our Lord, without having yet given me confidence in any particular path, gives me confidence and peace in Him. "Lord, tell me now," I yearn, "what I should do to please you, to be happy, to serve my neighbors." And He responds, "Patience. Have patience. I know - that's enough for now."

So I wait, sort of in a holding pattern. When I have grace to let go, to wait on the Lord, it is not so unpleasant.

Blessing the Pigs

Today's Mass readings (Monday of the 4th Wk of Ord Time; 2 Sm 15:13-14, 30; 16:5-13; Ps 3; Mk 5:1-20) include one of my very favorite passages of the Bible. I first heard the Gospel reading preached very well some four years ago at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, at a daily Mass. First, I'll recap the priest's brief but brilliant homily, and then I'll write a bit about why I feel the reading has been so powerful in my life.

The priest first pointed out that Gerasa, the town afflicted by the possessed man, was either a town of Jews or of Gentiles, but it was in the Gentile regions just outside the Holy Land. The town's location isolated it. Whether Jews or Gentiles, their economy had notably incorporated swineherding - an activity forbad among the Jews. Even to touch a pig rendered a man unclean and outcast. The town's economic activities isolated it. Moreover, the road into the town from the water was blocked by the man possessed by the legion of demons. His terrifying activity had rendered the town further isolated. Supernatural forces isolated it.

Jesus comes into town and, as an act of mercy, exorcises the man, whose many demons who ask to be sent into the pigs rather than Hell. Jesus grants their request, and the maddened pigs stampede into the sea, drowning themselves. Their terrified swineherd tells the whole town what had happened. The locals then meet Jesus, and ask Him to leave. They were happy to have the road into their town opened again, but not at the cost of parting with their sinful occupations, not at the cost of overturning their way of life. They wanted to get the blessing without their lives being changed.

The priest then preached that God will not bless us with whatever blessing unless we are willing to change our lives to accomodate it. A prayer like, "Lord, help me with my finances," must be accompanied by a willingness to give up frivolous and selfish spending, and probably even a willingness to tithe, to render to God what is God's. If we want to receive God's blessing, it is only fair that we should be willing to part ways with whatever separates us from him, with whatever sin. God will bless us, and the blessing entails removing our swine from us. God will not bless the pigs.

In my own life the passage has been particularly meaningful because of my desire to be a priest. The man possessed by the legion of Jesus desired to join the ranks of Jesus' apostles and traveling disciples, and in a rare refusal, Jesus told the man the he should rather stay among his own people and tell them what the Lord had done for him. These people who wanted to forget God, and who would be tempted just to get new swine and pretend the whole thing had never happened, needed a living reminder. While I was in the seminary, Jesus began, or continued, to work a good deal of healing and conversion in my life - chasing out demons and swine. When leaving the seminary, confident only that I was doing what Jesus wanted me to do, this passage came to be important for me personally. It is the hope of every Christian that we will, by God's grace, be able to discern and exercise our share in the apostolate, in works of mercy, in reconciliation of divisions, in proclaiming the Gospel. It requires a great deal of humility to set aside the manner in which we would like to do it, and to trust Jesus that he has in store a role more valuable, more meaningful, more important for us. We must obey Him as a father, in an act of loving self-sacrifice, loving death-to-self, and hoping that He who makes the seed fall, will grant it an increase.

Holy Man of Gerasa, pray for us.

Affairs Before God

"Do not make a decision without holding

yourself back to consider the affair from

the perspective of God,"

St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way #266.

Waiting for the Summer

Earlier today, a coworker complained about the weather and I chimed in, "I know. I really, really hate the winter. I just hate it." A moment later I felt a pang of guilt. Do I really hate part of what God has created?

Today's daytime prayer, from the Liturgy of the Hours, includes Psalm 74. The psalm is a harrowing lament in which the Psalmist cries out to God for mercy as enemies are destroying his entire civilization. The Psalmist recounts to God all the various atrocities crashing upon His people. Toward the middle of the second half, the Psalmist pauses, as if to remind himself more than to remind God, "Yours is the day and yours is the night. It was you who appointed the light and the sun: it was you who fixed the bounds of the earth: you who made both summer and winter."

With further reflection, and speaking with a friend over lunch, it occurs to me that this time in life is turning out to be a real period of waiting. Waiting for God to act is never easy. That's why we so rarely do it, I think. The Israelites were watching their civilization be torn down all around them by violent invaders; I am only flummoxed by the bureaucracy of the graduate school I hope to attend. The Israelites were desperately hoping for salvation; I am only waiting to hear about a career move, or a living situation. The Israelites were being murdered and plundered in their own streets; I am only receiving a premium increase on my car insurance. In perspective, my situation isn't so bad as theirs, but I think the same basic lesson applies.

This time is appointed by God for His purposes in my life. It might feel like my life is stuck and going nowhere, but many seeds lay dormant in the winter that sprout in the spring. Provided one has taken all the steps and undertaken all the actions that one prudently can, all that is left to do is to wait. I'll do well to remember that God made the wintertimes of life as well. Maybe it's best to curl up by a fire, dig into prayer, and wait for the wintertimes of life to pass.

Our Lady of the Snows, pray for us.

Meditation on the Falls

So over the weekend I went to one of my favorite spots to get out and away, to think and pray, to read and have a private little picnic: Great Falls National Park in Potomac, Maryland. It's just a few minutes from my house and it's easy to do for just a couple hours. It needn't take even a full afternoon. This time, while hiking on the Billy Goat Trail (which is pretty rocky and craggy, right along the river) I stopped for lunch, and then hiked back to the C & O Canal Trail, where I walked a few miles up to the Great Falls overlook. Staring at the raging waters, I was taken with them. They are not as big and majestic as Niagra Falls, to be sure - not by a longshot. But they are homely and they are ours. And whoever jumped in or was dropped into them would certainly be destroyed. The Great Falls are a lot like reality in that way. Our own little corner of reality is homely and we can take it for granted. It is beautiful, though, and if you take it seriously, will be fulfilling. If you treat reality, real life, the world, like a game for your own amusement by your own rules - you will almost certainly end by killing somebody.

Another thing I noted was that after all the turmoil of the Falls, further downstream, things turn more or less placid again. Life is like that. Things get hard sometimes. Real hard. You think they will break you. But you hang on, ask Someone for help, and in the end, he leads you to rest by still waters. There, you can eat your ham sandwich and read your book in a bit of peace for a while. So to speak. Eventually, we hope, He will lead us into an everlasting rest. But in the meantime, hold on tight. It'll probably be a wild ride.

I think a large part of the Christian life, at least for me, is about learning to trust God and go with the flow - to let Him steer the ship. By that I mean both to prioritize my decisions based on my best estimate of His will, and also to remember that whatever happens, He's still God and ultimately, He's still calling the shots. Since He's smarter than me and loves me more than I love myself, that's not an entirely bad thing. It's just bad for the ego. Or it may be good, depending how you look at it.

On Zeal and Patience

I will probably be sued for copying such a large portion of a text, but this must be done, come what may. It is from Dietrich von Hildebrand's Transformation in Christ, which has been the lionshare of my spiritual reading since mid-Spring 2007. This portion is taken from chapter 12, entitled, "Holy Patience."

The rapidity of our immediate response may sometimes differ in our inward dedication and our outward actions.

A keen distinction must be made between our inward dedication to God and to His kingdom in ourselves and in others, and our action proper (on ourselves and on others). The call of God once perceived, our response cannot follow quickly enough. We should immediately and unconditionally respond to the sequere me [Lat., "Follow me"], giving ourselves to God without demur or reserve as did Mary: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word." All hesitation here would be a perilous error.

But this unhampered inward dedication to God does not by itself involve the performance of all single acts which it entails in a general and essential sense. Particularly does this caution apply to extrinsic and public action, that is, the works of the apostolate.

Certain saints – among them, as we have seen, St. Francis and St. Anthony the Hermit – immediately drew the full consequences from their conversion. But this is a great privilege of grace. Our sense of discretion must enlighten us about whether we may take the decisive step with its full implications at once, or had better remain for a period in inward maturing. There exists a danger of skipping over necessary stages.

Sometimes it also happens that a sincere but not so highly privileged Christian, instead of awaiting a more unmistakable and concrete call of God, overreaches himself in a kind of natural enthusiasm and anticipates certain acts fraught with grave obligations, without being able to posit them with a true inward decisiveness. Many converts immediately want to enter a religious Order, though they lack actual vocation and have not measured the whole significance of such an enhanced dedication to God.

The Church knows this danger; that is why she requires an adequate interval of inner maturing for all great steps in a religious life. Unless a particular and rare grace makes up for it, man needs an appropriate space of time for all deep and great things.

The attitudes deep things require cannot, in general, attain their complete validity and reality except after a period of organic development, whose length varies greatly according to each case. For every deep, fateful word there is a fullness of time in which alone it can be legitimately and fruitfully spoken. Anticipate it hastily by acting without discretion, and your utterance will be shadowy, devoid of maturity, and invalid. Again, let the “destined hour” pass unused, and you will no longer be able to speak that word except in an empty and purely formal fashion.

It is touching to read how the chamberlain in the Acts of the Apostles hastens to be baptized by the deacon Philip; for him, thanks to a special grace of God, the destined hour – the fullness of time – was at hand there and then. But the Church by no means modeled her general practice in admitting converts upon these cases, recorded in apostolic times, of an instantaneous and definitive conversion.

On the contrary, in the first centuries she imposed on the catechumens a long course of preparation through the successive stages of which they had to pass before being admitted to Baptism. Even today, every adult baptism must be preceded by a certain period of instructions and maturing. As regards the preparation for monastic life, the Church only allows the taking of temporary vows at first; final vows require a preparatory stage. Nor does she admit a definitive private vow of virginity without an antecedent temporary one. Thus, in forming these decisive resolutions concerning our inner and personal life, too, we must exercise holy patience, and accord time the significance in human affairs with which God has invested it…

Notwithstanding all our zeal, then, we must observe the obligation of patience even as workers in the vineyard of the Lord. With careful discretion we must try to perceive the striking of God’s own hour for our work to start in His vineyard rather than insist, in a spirit of natural enthusiasm and impatience, on determining it by ourselves. Suppose we are animated by a glowing zeal: if, at the same time, we have patience, we may be infallibly sure that we no longer live by our nature but by a supernatural principle of life.

A buddy of mine, a close friend, after spending a week visiting a fairly austere Franciscan order, hoping to find his vocation there, remarked to me, "I might have a vocation to join them; but I think a vocation needs time to grow inside of you." Wise man, my friend.

Whither, Lord?

In my heart, I feel a desire to go off someplace: to a monastery or into the wilderness; I also feel a desire to plunge into the heart of the world, and to be with my family and closest friends. These desires come from sources as conflicted as the desires are conflicted: fear and guilt, longing and love, trust and joy. With these are jumbled together our encounters and day-to-day experiences as we seek to follow Our Blessed Lord. The work of discernment, I am coming to discern, is bringing these motivations, experiences, and desires to Jesus in prayer, and asking Him to help us identify them for what they are, and sort through them, and then to understand which are worthy of a Christian.