Walking in the Land of the Living and the Dead

I have only been with Crossroads for one week, one tiring, sweaty, exhilarating week.  Before setting out on this endeavor, I carried with me expectations of meeting people whom I would classify as pro-life or pro-choice; the pro-life ones I would encourage and inspire, and the pro-choice ones I would engage and hopefully transform.  But I found a different distinction at the crossroads of our nation that I did not expect.

            At breakfast yesterday, our host asked Father Dan, “Father, what is something you have rediscovered on this walk across America?”  Our walking companion did not need any time to think about his answer.  “I have been reminded again and again,” he said, “that Christ did not come to make bad men good, but to make dead men live.”

            This is the great distinction I have seen on the highways and byways of our country.  We cannot merely talk about pro-life people and pro-choice people, or even about the culture of life and the culture of death.  There are the living and the dead.  There are those who have accepted the life which Christ gave to them, those who live it to the fullest, and there are also those who reject him, his life, and his love. 

            Often Catholics and non-Catholics alike will accuse the Church of being outdated, or of having too many rules that have become antiquated in the modern era, especially when it comes to abortion, birth control, and sexuality.  They say that having a life means living independent from any law or rule or community that would try to fix their morality.  But Catholicism does not attempt to improve the behavior of humanity but rather guide humanity in understanding the fullness of perfection to which our behavior can ascend.   Although it may seem at times that rules and requirements make up the large part of the Catholic tradition, what the Catechism expresses are not merely rules but glimpses into what our relationship with God might be like and how we can best attain it.  There is life to be lived that comes to us from God, and he himself has revealed the path that will allow us to live that life to the fullest. With our fallen natures we cannot find the road to life alone in darkness, a darkness perpetuated by a society that would tell us to kill our children and sterilize our relationships.  Our Catholic tradition is the light that breaks into this darkness. It is the fire that purifies the imperfections of our volition and melts the hardness of our hearts.  It ignites life in us such as we have never known before, life that the Father made us for, life that the Son died to give us.

            This is the life that I have rejoiced to see the fullness of in some and lamented to see the lack of in many.  Christ came to make dead men live, and if I am to be the hands and feet of Christ on this walk, I will go forward intending to bring life to those who are dead.

Being Different In Italy

After nearly 24 hours of travel with about as much sleep as one can get on a 10 hour plane ride, everyone in my group wanted sleep and food, preferably the latter first. 

            However, after nearly 24 hours of travel it was Sunday, and the only thing I cared about was getting to Mass.  I anxiously checked my watch every ten minutes as we waited for the last few stragglers at the Catania airport so that we could drive to Taormina.  I asked the concierge at the hotel desk where the nearest Catholic mass was before I asked for my room key.  Luckily some other traveling students helped me locate a nearby Catholic church (I should just say church, there really aren’t any other kinds in Taormina, Italy).  Between my broken Italian and signs posted on the church doors in military time, I realized with profound joy I had made it with almost an hour to spare.

In Brideshead Revisited the falling away Catholic, Sebastian Flyte, attempts to explain many things to his non-Catholic friend Charles Ryder.  Speaking about Catholic people, he says, “They've got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people. They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time. It's quite natural, really, that they should."

            It really is amazing how Catholicism can and should reshape the way that you see everything, the way that you prioritize everything.  Rather than food that nourishes our perishable bodies, we ought to more strongly desire food that nourishes our immortal souls. Sebastian Flyte was perfectly correct in his observation of Catholics.  If you live the faith to the fullest, you will be an anomaly, ordering your life in a way radically different from your companions.  If you truly believe that the God who made the universe and suffered death for your transgressions against him comes down to dwell among us in the form of bread, and if you believe that you can receive this bread and consequently intimacy with him every day, why would you not at least attempt to do so?  

A Return in Transition

           It would be preposterous for me to make any sort of apology for not posting in so long as no one actually reads my blog at the present moment.  The best and most practical thing I can do is to inform what I hope are future readers that I have been away from blogging for some months due to school, work, church, and what is commonly called life. 

            I am home in Texas right now, and Texas for the last few years has seemed always a place of transition and never a destination.  This time I am awaiting travel to Italy for study abroad and then back to the states to embark on a walk halfway across the country for the pro-life movement.  It always happens that once I have visited my family, it seems that my purpose is accomplished and that I shouldn’t remain for much longer.  My focus starts to break down; I feel disconnected from what I perceived to be my life two weeks ago in Auburn; my dedication to prayer begins to wane.  This last is evidence enough for me that this is not where I am meant to be for very long.  Any place that saps strength from my reliance on God is nowhere I want to be.  But thankfully, soon I will be off to Sicily and then to side-of-the-road, U.S.A. both places that now exist only in my imagination, places that are constantly in the future, never getting any closer.  Ultimately though, I will be there, and then I will blog about it.

The Sea of Our Inheritance

I have been wondering in the last several months where God would lead me if I only gave him permission. Between trouble knowing how to reevaluate my friendship with my friend in seminary and discerning a religious vocation myself, I have been left feeling like a child on the floor who can’t make a simple decision. I would figuratively throw my hands up in the air and shout, “I don’t know, Lord! You decide because I can’t!” It wasn’t until recently that I could say that in earnest and He would respond. I prayed more than I ever have that my desires would be re-ordered, that I would lose affection for some and gain it for the Lord. I prayed that he would lead me to my vocation. I asked him to give me the graces to accept his will in all things.

There were many things which kept me from going to the vocational retreat in early January at the Nashville Dominicans. For one, I couldn’t get there beforehand to be interviewed by the vocations director. I would have had to drive alone from Fort Worth to Nashville, a feat I was not looking forward to and neither was my mother. I also had to fill out a second interest form, which in itself was not a big deal, but one of the questions troubled me greatly. It read, “What is the most attractive thing about religious life for you?” I caught myself before I wrote down, “not much, but I think God is calling me to it.” Right away I knew this was the wrong answer. I ought to move with joy into my vocation and the search for it. Distressed, I put the questionnaire away until a day came when I could answer the question.

That being said, I came into this semester wondering how I could let God lead my life. The first thing I did was go to confession. Being in a state of grace has always helped me to hear more clearly God’s will for my life. Daily prayer and going to mass as often as I could brought me a wonderful peace about all that was going on in my life. I realized that this was the point at which I could turn it over to God. When I am in right relationship with him, when I stay within his embrace, I can trust that he will lead my life where it needs to be.

Yesterday I was praying the Luminous mysteries of the rosary as it was Thursday, and Josemaria Escriva surprised me once again. He tells us, “We have to place our trust in our Lord's words: get into the boat, take the oars, hoist the sails and launch out into this sea of the world which Christ gives us as an inheritance.” When I read that, I thought about my life, how I was on the verge of so many great adventures, and here I was in prayer, with the Lord all but telling me to go for it, that he would have all in his infinite hands. This inheritance, this kingdom of God, is something that he wants to give to me and to all of us. “Doesn’t it fill you with joy to work for such a kingdom?” Why, yes it does.