Growing in faith, in fear and trembling

When I, for lack of a better way of saying it, came back to the Catholic faith about 6-7 years ago, it was spurred on in no small part by my atheist wife. I wanted to be in a position to be able to respond to her challenges. In doing so, I have learned a great deal about God, Mary and the One Holy and Apostolic Church. So much so that I have been blessed in assisting my local parish priest in teaching RCIA the last two (2) years.  

In this past year I have come to realize that there was something missing in all this learning, something important. That piece that was missing is a true relationship with God.  I wore this knowledge as sort of an amor. It was something I could grip tightly to protect myself from challenges I imagined would be forthcoming and as a blade to brandish to prove my faith. 

Little did I know how useless and pathetic that was.  I was missing the beauty and life in the trees because I was obsessing over the details of the forest.  It was a loving trusting relationship with God that I did not have.  

This lack of a relationship raised its ugly head in many ways in my life.  It was exhibited daily in my fear over money and worrying how I would manage everything I had on my plate.  It peaked in 2015 when I found myself in counseling and on medicine for anxiety and depression.

It was reading The Marian Option that I came to understand how much love was missing in my life. Please don’t take this to mean I didn’t have people in my life that loved me and that I love. In that area my life was overflowing. But it was the unique motherly love Dr. Gress describes that I didn’t even know I was missing. It was the fatherly Love that is found through Mary that I could have never fathomed. 

So since reading that ground shaking book I have grown in love and trust of both our Blessed Mother and our Lord and Savior. I have internalized and grown in what I already intellectually knew, that I can put my full faith and trust in God. That wherever I am and whatever I am doing is what He wants me to do. As a serious control freak, this not at all easy. 

I would say that my faith on this new level is still fragile in my fallen state. So it is not without fear and trepidation that I take this next leap. This past week Inwatched a documentary on the life of Blessed Solanus Casey (I have provided a link to his cause below). This man grabbed a hold of my imagination like nothing before. I love this man, his humility and simplicity. I saw in him how I can grow in these two sins that cause me much strife. 

It then hit me to pray for his intersession for the miraculous cure for my wife’s paralysis. Praying for this has never entered my mind. This idea gutted me in its audacity and presumption that doing this is God’s Will. It gives me much pause because I am scared to death that my faith will come out of it in shambles if her miraculous cure is not God’s Will. 

I dive headlong into this prayer with blind trust that God will have a  warm and deep body of water at the bottom of this cliff. 

http://www.solanuscasey.org/portal.php

Learning to give Thanks

I find it very easy to get swept away in the world’s rush and hurry, especially this time of year. Commercials on TV, radio and seemingly everywhere are telling Gus about where to get the best deal and what we need to buy to make us and our loved-ones happy. 

I was blessed to have some quiet time this morning to reflect on all I have to be thankful for. This is something I should do every day, not just today. Yesterday I watched a documentary on the life of Blessed Solanus Casey.  Without being conscious of it being the day before Thanksgiving, the one thing I took away most from that film was how he was thankful to our Lord no matter the trial or hardship. Blessed Solanus was graced with the ability to see people’s heart and to see God’s plan for them. He would stress to those who came to him how we have a loving God. 

Being thankful to God for starts with life itself. Second is for his only Begotten Son taking the form of a slave, suffering and dying for our sins. The hardest part of being thankful is learning to be thankful for our crosses. I pray for the grace for all of us to pick up our crosses and praise God for those crosses as it is through them that we purify our souls for the glory of heaven. 

Ugh. Here it is a week since I have made an entry. It has been a stressful week no doubt. My desire to move forward in my spiritual and interior life have seen some progress, and no surprise it occurred because I have been less focused on myself and more focused on how blessed I truly am. 

This week we had a case on a teenager who traveled alone from Guatemala and got caught up when the vehicle he was in (with 10 other people in it) was pulled over. He walked from his home to the boarder and crossed illegally. 

The foster family speaks fluent Spanish, but he doesn’t. He speaks a Mayan dialect and zero English. The foster parent said he walked into the living room and set in the dark because he didn’t know how to turn on a light switch. 

There is something extremely humbling about thinking about the poverty this young man grew up in. Real poverty, not the moving target we use here in the United States. His parents, or at least the person answering the phone at the number an uncle living in Maryland had, claim to not know who he is. 

From what I have been told children in his situation are put out of the home at 12-14 as grown and forced to fend for themselves. And 

I am embarrassed and ashamed of what I consider my big problems to be compared to those persons.  Such grave injustices in this world. We should not turn a blind eye to the real trials in others’ lives. We must continue to focus on our blessings and trust in our Lord and Savior.  

Virgin Mary, window to salvation

I never took a philosophy class in college (I think I remember thinking it was useless and probably a little intimated, if I am being honest).  But you often hear of the old supposed philosophical stumper, “can God create a stone so big that he can’t move it?”

May people poo-poo that question. I think there is an easy answer, yes and he did so - the human race. God created us in his image and likeness and because he is Live, he gave us free will so that he cannot force us to love him back.  

We also have the opposite of that in Mary. God created our Blessed Mother without the stain of original sin. She inturn I would argue could only love God back and showed this love by her fiat. The Immaculate Conception continued to say yes and show her love by suffering with her Son every step of the way to the Cross. 

I like to think of Mary as a window. On the other side of that window is our Lord and Savior. The window is real and has its own qualities.  But you cannot look at the window without seeing what is on the other side. 

“Tremor in the Force” Revisited

Over two years ago I published a post that included the following paragraph:

I have struggled with hope for some time and the last few weeks has been as bad as ever. How can I share my faith and show the beauty of God grace if I suffer from an acute lack of joy and hope? How do I convince anyone that Catholicism is worthwhile if I am always fearful and pessimistic? 

My, have I received many blessings since then. I am startled by how self-centered those sentences are. Even in expressing a desire to spread the good news of Christ, it was “my faith” and “my struggle.”

I was not able to look outside myself for answers or accept that those struggles were a blessing. Even as I type this I can feel the great deceiver trying to pull my mind into sinful thoughts; I must be onto something. 

I remember those days as very dark times. Thankfully, through medication, counseling and prayer I am no longer in that dark place. 

The Holy Ghost has opened my eyes to the things that were holding me back, in my earthly life and my spiritual life. It was that burden, the the burden the great deceiver placed on me as a child when I was powerless to stop him or know better, that prayer is lifting off of me. 

With the intersession of the Immaculate Conception and my guardian angel, I have come to internalize that the shame and fear I have lived with since I was a teen is not apart of God’s will for me. I can now truly exclaim that His burden is easy and His yoke is light. 

I want to share this glorious news with the world. I want each and every person to join me in placing our shame and our fears at the foot of the cross, with the faith that Christ’s death and resurrection has destroyed them. We will sing together a hymn of praise: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of power and might. Heaven and earth are full of your glory, Hosana in the highest. 

Sometimes it seems that the idea that God could love us but allow us pride is a bigger stumbling block to the deepening of my faith than pride itself. God gives us as Hope the burning desire to know and love Him. Yet He simultaneously gives us pride, acting as a like-charged force repelling the Hope. 

Pride tells us that we know better. Pride says God should meet me where I am (which He does) AND on my own terms.

Thankfully God has given us examples to show us how to get around this problem. Namely, he has given us His mother, the Immaculate Conception. It is turning our eyes toward our Blessed Mother that we see Jesus. She serves as a lighthouse in the fog of our lives and as a window through which we see our Redeemer. 

Mary’s fiat is the antidote to the poison of pride. By joining her in her yes to God, we too can walk the narrow path that leads to salvation.  But God offers us the same Grace as he gave that young virgin, we only need to say yes. 

The Beginning

These past 8-9 months have seen the occurrence of a revelation of sorts in my life. It all started when I read a book entitled “The People of fthe Lie.”  I do not recall who it is by, but I should find him and send him a thank you card. 

I have come to realize that events of my childhood have blead into my adulthood and have had a dramatically negative affect. I won’t go so far as to say it was childhood trauma, because that would be over stating what I experienced.  

What I hope to share is how the revelation of this book started a chain reaction that has plotted my life along a more joyful and hope-filled course. 

Mary Blessed Virgin the Immaculate Conception and Undoer of Knots pray for us sinners.