The Bridegroom's Invitation

Yesterday, I was discussing the problems of newlyweds with my seminarian friend. Don’t ask me why, we just were. He said that many new brides complain that their husbands want to have sex much more often than they want to. One of his classes at seminary this year was on marriage and family (to prepare them for the counseling they will have to do as priests) and so he knew a good deal about this apparently widespread issue. He said that in order to avoid this problem, the husband needed to take care of his wife’s emotional needs both throughout the day and during sex, that way she would want to enter into the nuptial act with him willingly. This made sense to me since I know that women are more emotionally oriented than physically oriented, and when our emotional needs are not satisfied, we are not very willing to indulge men in anything else.

Coincidentally, today at mass, Fr. Hart told us in the homily that the celebration of the Eucharist was a nuptial act. At first I was taken aback. No way, I said in my head. Mass cannot be like sex. But then he explained.

Christ is the bridegroom to his bride the church. Sex is the most intimate giving of self that two people can engage in. That is what the sacrifice of the Eucharist is. Christ intimately giving himself to us, his bride the church. That is what a sacrifice is, a total giving of self for another.

As I thought about it more and more, I realized how the more I pray and the more I grow in my spiritual relationship with Christ, the more I enjoy going to mass. As I come to rely more on his guidance and love, I accept his invitation to the mass more and more often. Even when I am at mass, God’s love for me overflows in every aspect of its celebration, and I feel taken care of. Christ offers himself to me in the mass every day, and I have no problem accepting joyfully because, just like a good newlywed husband, he takes care of my emotional needs throughout the day and during this most holy of nuptial acts.

Seminarians on the Watchtower

This past weekend, I spent time with some seminarians from Louisiana. One of them was a very good friend of mine who only entered the seminary this fall. Naturally I was very excited about seeing my friend and meeting the others, and the more my excitement showed in my actions, the more jokes were cracked about stealing men away from seminary. While I laughed along with the others at the time, their comments forced me to think about my motives and actions while they were here.

I looked everywhere for the self-help book entitled “What to do when your best friend goes to seminary and then brings three to your house for the weekend”? You can take my word for it; it doesn’t exist.

I feel that, at my age, single men and women alike are always subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) searching for a spouse. Most of us know that we are called to marriage, and there is a sort of ‘watchman on the tower’ aspect to our daily lives, where we sit in anticipation of his or her coming on the horizon. Every time we meet someone, we squint our eyes and peer into the distance of our future relationship, trying gauge whether or not he or she is the one we have been waiting for. We look for those certain qualities we admire; whether or not he is religious, whether or not she works hard, whether or not he will be committed.

For Catholic girls, seminarians are easy to spot coming over that hill in the distance. Once we know what they are, we attach a whole list of good qualities to them without even having to look too hard. I know that no seminarian is perfect, and not all of them are even as holy as we might think, but simply making the sacrifice to go there to discern giving one’s whole life to God is enough to merit esteem. After all, God would call some of the best men to serve his Church.

In most cases, it is easy for women to simply recognize a seminarian, sigh briefly over the fact that God snagged another good one, and return their eyes to that horizon. The only problem was that this weekend, they were not on the horizon, there were in my apartment. As I said before, I tried to watch my words and actions, and I hope I responded to their presence appropriately. It is also possible that I am blowing this out of proportion. Maybe they are secure enough already in their calling that meeting and spending time with girls their age is not a problem. However, I would guess that this early in their lives at seminary, they may climb that watchtower too every now and then.

A Cross to Bear

Yesterday, I attended a pro-life conference in Macon, Georgia where Students for Life of America staff member Kortney equipped 40 student leaders to maintain effective pro-life clubs on their respective college campuses. Kortney and her husband of six months, Ben, were 5 months pregnant with their first child, a daughter that they had named Sophey. In everything she said, I could see Kortney’s renewed fervor for the pro-life cause because of the child within her. It is enough for most of us to know biologically that a fetus is a human being, but Kortney now knew it in a certain way that was real and tangible. She was joyful in the knowledge that her daughter was alive inside of her, dependent upon her. Every story she told was given new perspective in light of the fact that she knew and loved Sophey. The pro-life movement had changed for her I think. I saw tremendous hope in her life.

Today, I received the news that Kortney and Sophey died in a car accident on the way back to D.C. from the conference late last night.

I know from experience that someone does not have to be close to you for their death to affect you in a significant way. In high school, the family of one of my best friends died in a plane crash. Though I did not know them, witnessing my friend’s complete and continual devastation was enough for me to question many things I thought I knew about life, death, and grief. I did not know Korntey well, though I have been friends with her on Facebook for about a month now and had been exchanging emails with her during the weeks prior to the conference. I spoke with her during a few of the breakout sessions at the conference and got to listen to her give many talks.

It is a curious feeling knowing that you interacted intimately in the last 24 hours with someone who is now dead. I got the call right before going out for a run. I still decided to go out, but I was terribly distracted, watching every car that passed me with a wary eye, knowing that it might be on its way to claim a life. Back at my apartment, I prayed a rosary for the souls of Kortney and Sophey and also for those injured in the car with them. More than anything else, I prayed for her husband Ben.

In my worst nightmares, I have not been in Kortney’s place, but Ben’s. My own death does not loom menacing on the horizon as it does for some others. What gnaws at my mind and heart late at night are the deaths of my family and friends. I am scared of being the survivor. Many of my friends were on road trips this weekend, so immediately after my rosary, I texted them. Some have responded and some have not, and though I know that they are likely all right, the fear remains sharp today under these circumstances.

After I had run, prayed, and texted, I cried. I cried more than I have in a long time, all the while praying that somehow my parents, brother, sister, and friends would remain safe. I thought of Ben, and thinking of his sorrow threatened to overwhelm me. Suddenly I found myself praying for my future husband, someone I do not think I have met yet, someone I am not even sure exists. I begged God that he was safe and that I would get to meet him one day. Ben and Kortney had 6 beautiful months together before God’s will separated them. I know that this is Ben’s cross to bear and that God will bring greater goods out of his faithful carrying of it in the future. But then a horrifying thought struck me. What if my future husband is already dead? What if he died in a car accident just like Kortney? What if he was aborted along with the million other children aborted in 1990? What if that is my cross to bear? To have been made for marriage, but live without knowing him.

I know that whatever happens to me and to my future husband will be God’s will, but the prospect of losing him frightens me still. It may be strange, but I love him now, wherever he may be, and I pray that God keeps him safe.

Savage Drowning

I was standing on an island in the midst of a tumultuous sea. There were men and women drowning in the water all around me, but with every swell of water and crack of thunder, they only cried louder that they did not need to be saved. And because we were being filmed, I had to stay and watch them drown.

I attended the taping of the Auburn episode of the new show Savage University as an audience member. A sex and relationship advice guru, Dan intended to have a question and answer session with a variety of Auburn students not only to offer his advice but also to gauge the dating community at our school. I believe that Auburn has been seriously misrepresented, and I hope that the sampling of students who were at this taping does not truly represent the majority of Auburn students. The questions posed about sex were selfish and just plain offensive to me; questions about how to tell a sexual partner that they were not fulfilling your needs, and how much porn you should watch, and how casual sexual encounters were good per se and could often lead to meaningful, long-term relationships. I cannot even repeat more than half of the questions which were asked because the language and content was so contrary to those things I believe ought to be discussed or acted upon, both privately and publicly.

I must work harder to avoid complacency in the future, for I had grown comfortable in my societal microcosm of tender Catholicism. Dan Savage and his MTV show rudely plucked me from my naivety. The depravity I witnessed was appalling, and yet the crowed thrived on it. The more disgusting the question, the louder the applause. The more heinous the joke, the louder the laughter. I forget that outside of those people I come in contact with daily, there is a community of people who reveled in the free condoms given out at the end of the show. I forget that morality for some people is something they create for themselves, based on nothing more than their whims and appetites. I forget what a hard battle we are fighting.

More than anything, I came out of the taping sad. There is so much more that these people could experience if they strove for virtuous relationships. They toss their pearls to swine and do not realize their loss! I was a minority tonight in the most profound way I have ever experienced. I returned to the cave enlightened only to see my brothers and sisters chained to the wall looking at shadows, begging not to be taken away from the pleasure of looking at the false images. I do not know how to combat such misguided fervor. How does one person on the shore save the thousands drowning in the storm? How does that one even know which way to swim first when they all cry out, with equal ecstasy, that they wish for nothing more than to sink to the very bottom of the sea?

To Answer Descartes

It happened on the bus one morning that I was suddenly and very intensely challenged by Descartes. He took the empty seat next to me and, with much less pomp and circumstance than I would have expected, said “I think, therefore I am.”

It was not so much a question as a declaration which demanded a response in kind.

Clearly since I was having a fictitious conversation with a dead philosopher, I recognized my own ability to think, and more specifically, my ability to reason, a capability which many theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas, take to be our uniquely human function. I know that my reason is a defining characteristic of my humanity, but it does not explain why I am and why I continue to exist in a state where I can think and I can reason. There is nothing I am aware of doing which perpetuates my existence, nothing which is either voluntary or involuntary that I know of which keeps me in this world.

At this point, it must be told that I believe in the existence of God. As He is responsible for the institution of the entirety of creation, He is also responsible for maintaining that creation in existence. God created man out of love; He became incarnate out of love; He died for man’s sins out of love. I exist only as God continues to love me.

I see an interesting parallel to my temporal relationships in this idea of love inextricably tied to being. Sometimes I feel that I am only held in one place, in body, mind and soul, by the love of my family and friends. It is when the love of others is distant or absent that I am forced to reflect upon what love still may exist in that void. I always find God there, though He does not always reveal himself immediately. Is that not what we want most when we feel alone? To know unequivocally that we are loved? There is a security and peace in such knowledge.

And then we are back to knowledge and to thought. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. Descartes was searching for something which he could not doubt, but the only thing he could not doubt was that he was thinking while searching. I see the answer to that search every time I see the host raised on high at the mass. God has revealed himself to me in the Eucharist, and the very sacrifice which gives meaning to the transubstantiation we celebrate in that Eucharist proves to me beyond a doubt that I am loved to a degree which I cannot fathom. Secure in this knowledge, I can move past Descartes' search.

I am loved, therefore I am.