Just Shine On

I recently went to the movies with a friend to watch the third chapter of the John Wick series. Having already seen the first one, and then quickly spark-noted the second, I knew to expect an extravagant amount of violence and death (of which I will not get into the ethics of). What I didn’t expect though, was a deeper problem of the heart, displayed by the main character. Read the rest of this entry »

Eucharistic Adoration, Seek 2019 Day #3, 9:15 PM

“You don’t give your heart in pieces.”

You gave all of Yourself for us; Your life, Your death, Your tears, Your body, Your blood. Your very heart. You held nothing back from us. Why then, do we find it so hard to give of ourselves, back to You, when we have nothing if not for You? You are everything we have, and are, and You make Yourself known to us moment to moment; yet we proclaim You a mystery even still. We do not comprehend. We cannot. Is it because we chose not to? Does faith remedy this? Or are we to soothe our souls to be content in the unknowing?

I have sought You. I have hid from You, as if I could keep myself from the very One who knows me best; the Creator of my soul. I doubt, but without You I have nothing and am nothing. If You showed us Your face we would give everything we had to offer. Instead, we choose to be Judas, Thomas, and Peter by turn, unwilling to commit. Unwilling to see. Unwilling to offer back what has been granted to us. We are restless, and yet refuse rest, regardless. We choose fear over peace and still think we can handle everything all on our own.

“The Lord measures our perfection neither by the multitude nor the magnitude of our deeds, but by the manner in which we perform them.”
~St. John of the Cross

Little things. Done with great love. How many saints have approached their journey towards Christ and holiness of life in this way? I would say the majority of them. In the course of their individual lives, many of them did indeed accomplish big things too. But it must be acknowledged that there were most likely many smaller actions that led to those big things, and smaller things that followed. We will never know how many actions remain undocumented. But more than anything else, this understanding is what the saints are known for: the manner in which they acted.

This is not to say that they lived perfect lives. Rather, many of them led lives that were imperfect just like ours. But they became known by reflecting the love of Christ to those around them, their actions held an impact.

As I write this post, it is August 15, 2018.

Today is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Mother. Today was a Holy Day of Obligation, and I went to the 8 AM Mass, just minutes after reading the report from the Pennsylvania Grand Jury and the reactions of people, Catholic and not, from across the globe.

This report, which covers the heinous crimes by the clergy, (of which an estimated 90% were from prior to the 1990’s) comes on the tail of the scandals in Argentina and Australia. A bit more personal to me, an investigation has also been launched against the major seminary in my own diocese, after an extremely damning piece on the conduct of some who have attended, was published by an ex-seminarian whom was one of my first JSO Instagram followers.

Considering everything that has been going on, and all the attention the Church has been getting from the major news media, it is safe to say that I, among many others, are beside ourselves, with a storm of incredibly difficult emotions.

I feel sick about the children who have been failed, their innocence destroyed and lost. I am angry about the coverups done to save face. I feel powerless to help clean up any of this mess and promote healing. I feel betrayed because the Church that I have fought for and defended for so long, is now being smeared by the hundreds of men who were unfaithful to the vows that they made. This goes beyond the breaking of promises though. This is pure evil, and it is unfathomable to me that this is the current face of the Catholic Church, especially since we know that our teachings hold us to the highest of standards when it comes to sexual conduct.

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Back in December, as I was sitting in the Abbey Church one night, I wrote this poem titled “All That I Am”. I was feeling an incredible sense of peace in that moment. Whenever I feel like I need to recenter my focus for my life, I read my poem to get myself back into that mindset and remember the most important purpose for my life.

All That I Am

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“In failing to confess Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You.”
~St. Augustine

St. Augustine, one of the great Doctors of the Church, knows the meaning of his words above better than anyone. After 31 year of life, filled with sin and lacking God, he finally chose to confess his sins and he converted to Catholic-Christianity. One of his great works is “The Confessions of Saint Augustine”, an autobiography written with philosophical/theological tones of musing, from which this quote comes from. In simple words, St. Augustine points out an important truth.

The ability to make a good confession is a Read the rest of this entry »

Every Christian hopes for one thing when they die: life eternal with God. We all want God to look at us, describe the ways in which we pleased Him, and say to us, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

 I wrote this poem as a reflection of just that. Read the rest of this entry »

Last spring, I got into a conversation with a friend of mine about my favorite places to go relax on campus.

I told him that I loved to climb up onto the roof of one of the dugouts on campus, and look at the stars. I explained that it was dark on that particular field, away from campus lights and all the people. It was quiet and you could hear trees whisper. He then asked me a question that made me feel a little vulnerable:

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“You knew, but I did not, what the outcome would be. But my madness with myself was part of the process of recovering health, and in the agony of death I was coming to life. I was aware how ill I was, unaware how well I was soon to be.”
~St. Augustine

Sometimes when we are going through a tough time, it’s really easy to let the feeling consume us. We convince ourselves that we were so much happier before and that we will never be the same person again. We unknowingly wreak havoc upon ourselves mentally and emotionally, and sometimes it affects us Read the rest of this entry »

“Crown Him the Lord of life.”

I came across this phrase in one of my devotional books, shortly after Easter. The obvious meaning of the phrase “Lord of life”, was shown in the line that followed, which said, “Who triumphed o’er the grave, and rose victorious in the strife, for those He came to save.”

Clearly, that’s the meaning that was supposed to be taken from the phrase, but I took another interpretation from Read the rest of this entry »