Obedience, Poverty, Chastity

Too often we accept from the world a sense of the vows that is negative in which they are only about renunciation and not having something. On the contrary, if they are to be lived well, either as values that animate any Christian life or as the public vows of religious consecration, obedience, poverty, and chastity need to be active forces in our daily spiritual practice. As one of the brothers likes to tell novices, "If something is a value for us, then we look for ways to put it into practice."

Here are some examples of looking for opportunity from my own reflection over the years:

Obedience. Today I will do my best to work honestly and diligently in what tasks the Holy Spirit puts before me through legitimate authority or religious duty, even if it isn't what I want to be doing or doesn't suit my idea of my vocation or "what I'm about." If my superiors seem irrational or unfair or worse, I will joyfully thank God for the grace of sharing one of the ordinary sufferings of poor people everywhere. I will notice the things in me which are idiosyncratic or peculiar, and I will take care not to impose these on others through whatever power I might have. I will remember what's going on in the lives of others and be sure to ask them how things are going. I will grasp opportunities to turn conversations away from myself and toward the concerns, trials, and joys of others. I will pray gratefully when I am given the grace of being mocked, excluded, or condemned for the unwillingness to accept the moral absurdities and tragedies of our world, like abortion, war, and same-sex "marriage." I will pray with even more gratitude when God gives me the grace of being labeled, excluded, and despised by my own brother and sister Christians for the unwillingness to accept liturgical abuses or disregard for the Rule.

Poverty. I will do little, symbolic things today to remind myself that I am a poor man. I will take the ugliest apple from the basket instead of the prettiest. I won't drive when I can take the bus or the subway, and I won't take the bus when I can walk. I will be grateful when someone asks to borrow something I don't want to give him. I will pray for the people who suffer in the manufacture of my clothing and my food. I will try to forever reduce my impact on the earth by ruthlessly examining my choices as a consumer.

Chastity. I will be forever vigilant against treating those who might be naturally attractive, charming, or interesting any better than those I find boring, shallow, or even repulsive. In fact, I will make an effort to treat everybody as if they were the most interesting and beautiful person in the world, because this is how God sees them. I will be grateful when my own little jealousies and internal acts of possessiveness are thwarted. I will keep my eyes from the desperate dullness of a pornographic culture. I will notice and take every opportunity to build up the self-esteem and confidence of children, especially girls. I will thank God for the natural affection that is in me as a revelation of the creative power of the loving God, but I will make good use of the traditional practices of custody of the eyes and guard of the heart, so that what is natural and good by creation is not turned selfish by concupiscence and deordination.

Baptism Stats

I don't know why, but I love figuring out stuff like this. One of my classmates calls me a "church nerd."

Of all those I have baptized thus far as a cleric of the Roman rite:

boys: 52%
girls :48%

Have a biblical or saint's first name: 43%*
Have a biblical or saint's name somewhere among their given names: 71%
Have no biblical or saint's name at all: 14%

Apart from surname,
have three given names: 12%
have two given names: 81%
have one given name: 7%

Most popular names:

For girls, Madison (15%)
For boys, Matthew (14%)


*I'm judging this in the most expansive sense, i.e. accepting as saint's or biblical names all versions, derivatives and cross-language drifters, like Jesús or Joshua for Jesus, Grace (a very New Testament word), Christine in it's various spellings, Sean for John, Marie, Mariah, etc.

Defensive Devotion

We have common rosary twice a week in our parish, and almost every night in May and October. For the folks who are devoted in this way, the rosary is an active devotion. For me it's different. Over the years the rosary has become for a defensive devotion.

I'll explain what I mean. It started before I was in religious life when I worked as a direct caregiver in a group home for physically and mentally disabled adults. The shifts were typically ten or twelve hours, and there were no naturally occurring breaks. So, in order to get much needed breaks, everybody smoked. Having to have a cigarette provided a means to get out of the house and take a breather--so to speak--away from the chaos.

So I joined in for a while, but eventually I didn't want to smoke anymore. It wasn't too hard for me to let go of the smoking, but I still needed an excuse to take a break from work. I was talking to my spiritual director about it and he asked me how many of these smoking breaks occurred during a shift. When I responded that there were about five or so, he suggested that instead of smoking, I pray a decade of the rosary. His advice worked well, and I began to pray the rosary in five or six parts over the course of the ten hour shift.

This is what I mean by defensive devotion: the use of a devotional spiritual practice to avoid doing something else which we don't really want to do. I've kept up the general idea of this practice over the years. Nowadays I pray my rosary little by little when I am going from here to there in the course of daily work. There's a lot of little walks that you make during the day as a parish priest, such as the sacristy, the funeral home, and the bank. Often I use this time to do my proximate preparation for preaching, deciding exactly how I intend to deliver what I want to say, but if it happens that negative, anxious, or unhelpful thoughts enter my mind, or temptations to sin arise during the relative mental idleness of these travels, that's when I reach for wherever I left off in my rosary.

Call it a weapon in the spiritual combat, if you will. For me, I like to call it defensive devotion.

Atheists

There's an interesting article in the New York Times this morning about atheists who are organizing themselves to find the support of community and to advance their agenda.

Whenever I read something like this, I'm always led into a reflection by how little I am offended as a committed theist and religionist. Why doesn't it bother me? Shouldn't committed atheists offend me? Why don't they?

First, it seems to me that the reasoned and thoughtful atheist is not the real atheistic enemy of faith and religion. The real atheistic danger to faith in God is the practical atheist; the person who may say they believe in God but for whom God makes no practical difference in their life. In fact, I think that the committed atheist is much closer to the theist than the person who may observe a religion on the surface but for whom God has no dynamic place in their heart and mind. The professed atheist is at least trying to be true to his conscience and the reasoning being God created him to be, while the practical atheist fails to truly face the searing and subtle question of God at all. In this they risk breaking the commandment that prohibits the vain use of God's name, and because they are "neither cold nor hot," they can expect to be "spit out." (Revelation 3:15-16)

Second, as I have said here many times, it's hard for me to blame people for not believing in God. This is because it is my experience that most people have been taught--or have somehow absorbed--a concept of God which isn't very believable for a thoughtful adult. The God they think someone wants them to believe in is closer to Santa Claus, Papa Smurf, or the Great Pumpkin than it is to the original Mystery whom we name as Unbegotten Source, Word, and Spirit.

Third, I have a sort of a practical connection with these professed atheists in their desire for the ruthless application of the separation of church and state. Perhaps they want it so that civil society can be protected from religion, while I want it the other way around: so that the faith can be protected from the world and from the numbing lowest common denominator of our American "civil religion."

Check out the article here.

Breaking Even (Almost)

A parish community can make a rough estimate of its relative growth or diminishment by comparing baptisms and funerals. If more are baptized into the church militant than leave for the church expectant or triumphant, the community is growing, and vice versa.

As of today, just in my particular ministry, I'm the closest I've ever been to breaking even. In 23 months as parochical vicar:

42 baptisms

44 funerals

Risen Into Our Midst

When the risen Lord appears to the disciples, he can be touched and even eats with them. He is not a ghost or simply a spirit. But he also does not seem to be bound by space or time; he appears in locked rooms and vanishes from sight. Sound odd? It shouldn't; this same mysterious Presence of the Lord remains with us in the Eucharist. My homily for this weekend is posted here.

The Old "3 and 3"

Sometimes it's just overwhelming to realize how much the Holy Spirit arranges for what we need spiritually at a given time.

I became a Catholic back in college, in between sophomore and junior year. I was baptized on a Saturday afternoon toward the end of the summer. By the following Saturday, I knew it was already time for my first confession! The little parish near campus had a fairly typical confession schedule: Saturday afternoon, 4-4:30. From that day forward, I went to confession every Saturday afternoon and then returned to campus for the vigil Mass.

I was surprised to discover that no matter what I said in confession, the old priest always delivered the same counsel and penance, which I heard so many weeks in a row I can still reproduce it now:

Thank God for having made a good confession, and tell Jesus that you love him. For your penance say three Our Fathers and three Haily Marys. Now, make a good Act of Contrition.

Perhaps my confessions were all more or less similar, though I know that some were much graver and more complex than others. But no matter what I said, I always got the same thing. I can only guess that maybe that's what he said for every confession.

But here's where I'm amazed by Providence: As a priest, I woudn't want to think of saying something so brief and generic to a penitent, much less the same penitent twice. But as a nervous and somewhat scrupulous neophtye, this was just what I needed. I was put at ease so that I could examine my conscience without worry, and I became more free in what sins I would admit because I had no fear of having the priest confirm my feeling that I was off to such a bad start as a Catholic.

I laugh a little about this now that I am a priest myself; it doesn't take much time in the confessional before nothing much shocks you anymore, and you soon realize that original sin is quite unoriginal in its various derivatives.

But recalling my own early experience from time to time reminds me that not every penitent needs a lot of counsel. For some, the last thing they need is more religious input. As a young priest, you always want to make that amazing "surgical strike" in penitential counsel, but sometimes you also need to let go of this ambition too. Some penitents just need a calm and reassuring word, and a renewing connection to the God who delights to see us leave the unreality of sin behind.