There was a reading that I heard at Mass one Sunday when I was in high school, and for whatever reason, it really stuck with me. The verse says, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” I didn’t necessarily know what I liked about this verse, or why it struck a chord with me, but it’s a verse I still find myself reflecting on every so often.
This verse is found in the Book of Revelation (chapter 3, verses 15 and 16), a fact that I did not realize until I was looking up the reference for this blog entry. I find it a touch ironic that this tiny verse, that I have been chewing on for years, comes from the Book that I find the most confusing in Scripture. It seems sort of appropriate, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t have articulated it this way when I was a teenager, but I think what I liked about this verse was that it resonated with my personality (and that of many teenagers that I knew then and know now). As a teenager I genuinely cannot remember feeling neutral about things; I cannot remember a single time that I thought either way something ended up would be fine. I always had an opinion, I always had a question, I always wanted to fight against perceived injustice and corruption. I think that this verse for me affirmed my nature. As a teen I don’t remember ever feeling like I was supposed to ask questions about my faith or struggle with doubts and fears. There were the things you were told to believe and it was not ours to question why. If you wanted to go to heaven, you believed what you were taught and if you didn’t you were certainly going to hell. This verse, though, made it seem that even if you disagreed with what you were being taught, that was better than being neutral and not caring. There are other examples of this phenomenon in scripture, of course. Job, for example, asks God throughout the entire narrative why He would allow something so terrible to befall him. His friends say that Job must have done something wrong and angered God, but Job argues and continues to ask God for an answer. We see Jacob wrestle with God (and then be renamed Israel which literally means ‘he struggles with God’) and the Lord blesses him for that struggle. We see Abraham argue with God, bargaining for the lives of people in Sodom and Gomorrah. Peter (and similarly other disciples) argue with Jesus throughout the Gospels and Jesus continues to teach them, to love them, and bless them. The answer that we shouldn’t ask questions and it’s “not ours to wonder why” was never a very satisfying answer, in my humble opinion, because it didn’t teach me anything. When we look at the story of the Prodigal son, we see a child that turned against his father in every conceivable way. In fact, in those times saying “Give me my inheritance” was the same as saying “you are dead to me.” Still, we learn that the love of God extends past the ways we may hurt and reject him. Even if we give him the “cold” shoulder he loves us and welcomes us back. And we see that both of the sons, the one who was cold and the one who was hot in a manner of speaking, are loved by the Father and welcomed into the kingdom. In short, the point is this, God wants us to ask questions. God wants us to seek answers, to seek truth because He knows that when we are seeking the truth and asking questions it will lead us to Him in the end. This year at EDGE, that is our goal; to ask the hard questions, to seek the Lord, to make room to wonder and struggle because it is through the questions and the struggle that we come to know the Lord. This week I invite you to allow yourself to ask questions. I invite you to honestly and sincerely invite the Lord in and ask Him the hard questions. May God bless you this week. Peace, Michaela
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3/6/2020 0 Comments Forgiveness Is Hard As a child, I was an exceptional grudge holder. When someone hurt my feelings and I was (justly) upset I carried that hurt with me and used it to build a wall around my heart and justify why I didn’t trust people. I wrote the narrative in my head about what people were like based on the ways that people hurt me, or offended me, or angered me. In most of those cases, my initial hurt/resentment/anger was justified. No one would have begrudged me my initial reaction, the problem came when I decided to hold onto that hurt and to nurse it.
Father gave a really great homily just a few weeks ago about this topic when we had the gospel reading where Jesus tells the crowd that those who have anger in their hearts toward their brother have already committed murder in their hearts. Yikes. Father clarified that this passage wasn’t suggesting that being angry when something unjust happens is wrong. We can’t choose our emotional responses to things. But just like we believe that love is a conscious choice (we choose to will the good of the other above ourselves) the type of anger Jesus is talking about is a conscious choice. In this case, we are choosing to hold onto our anger, choosing to nurse it, and add fuel to the fire. And goodness that is easy! At least for me, it is super simple to wallow in that hurt, to wear it like a badge of honor; if there is anyone born with a martyr complex, that person is me. Forgiveness is hard. Letting go of something that has hurt us is hard. When my new testament teacher defined the word “love” as willing the good of the other above yourself I remember feeling like loving my neighbor had just gotten a whole lot easier. When I didn’t have to feel the warm-fuzzies about someone to love them and I just had to want what was best for them, I thought that was something I could do because even when I don’t like someone, I can still will what is best for them. But then you read a passage like that and suddenly being a follower of Jesus gets a lot harder again. But, as is always the case with Jesus, there is immense wisdom in that concept. I’m going to be a nerd again, but there’s an iconic scene in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlett” where Sherlock Holmes reveals to John Watson that he doesn’t know that the earth revolves around the sun. In the BBC adaptation of the Detective’s adventures, the same is true and when John teases him about this fact the detective shouts, “What does it matter if the earth goes round the sun or round and round the garden like a teddy bear?” he goes on to tell John that he only has so much room in his brain, so why would he fill his mind with things that don’t matter? The point Sherlock is trying to make is that we, as human beings, have a finite amount of room in our brains to store things. The point Jesus is trying to make is the same; human beings have a finite amount of room in our consciousness to store things. There is a lot of space and a lot of energy taken up by holding grudges, by holding onto hurts that someone causes you. They take up a lot of emotional real estate and they skew the way we perceive relationships and other people’s intentions. Jesus knows that we have a limited capacity for our emotions and when you let things fester inside of you it boils over into every other aspect of your life and before you know it you have become a prisoner of that hurt, bitterness, resentment, etc. Maybe you are wondering what this has to do with last week’s lesson, knowing that we were talking about the Sacrament of Reconciliation this week. Obviously, God is not like us in that He isn’t holding grudges against us (even though He would probably be justified in doing so) so why am I talking about our relationships with one another instead of our relationship with him? The goal of Reconciliation is first to reconcile us to God, but it is also to set us free from the power of sin. (One of my favorite blogs I’ve ever written was the one I wrote about Reconciliation last year about the power to overcome sin, check it out here if you’re interested.) There is power in forgiveness. We’ve seen it in our own trips to the confessional, but there is also power in forgiving others; that power sets us free from the hold of bitterness and anger. Oh, and there’s that whole line that we say every time we pray the Our Father, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In Matthew 5:21-24 (where he tells us that if we are angry at a brother we have already committed murder in our hearts) Jesus tells us “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.” When we come to reconciliation we are receiving a gift, but we are also offering God our heart once again. One of my favorite passages (1John 4:16) says, “God is love and those who live in love live in God and God lives in them.” In being reconciled to God again we are inviting him to come and live within us, to give us power over sin. If we are not willing to let go of our hurt and anger, how can we expect God (who is love) to live in us? We have a limited capacity for feelings, God wants us to be free to live in him instead of in the hurt we’ve wrapped ourselves in. Before we can be reconciled with God, we have to let go of the things that are binding us to the things that are not of God, be it sin or resentment. This week I invite you to not only examine your conscience for the ways that you’ve sinned but to also look at the ways that hurt and resentment have set up camp in your heart. Who do you need to forgive this week? May the love of the Lord guide you always. Blessings, Michaela 1/17/2020 0 Comments Dark TImes Sometimes when I watch the news or spend too much time on social media, I despair for the world that we are living in. I look at all of the bad things, all of the terrible, horrifying things that are happening around the world and even here in our own backyard and I cannot understand how we've gotten here. I cannot understand how we live in a world filled with such hatred and violence, a world full of lies and corruption, of people in power who only care for themselves and not for the people they govern. I read news articles and I know this is not the way that we are supposed to live and I feel very small and helpless against all of the horror and despair raging through the world.
And what are we supposed to do? How can we hope to combat all of the evil in the world? I am just one person, you are just one person, and what sort of power can we possibly hold against all of the darkness that surrounds us? As we've seen the wildfires spread in Australia, the massive volcanic eruption in the Philippines, and the earthquakes in Puerto Rico in the past few weeks, I've seen a plethora of posts on facebook stating things like "Mother Nature is not very happy with the way we're treating the earth and this is the consequence" and even a few that replace "Mother Nature" with "God". And everytime I see one of those posts I can't help but remember the story of when Elijah wanted to meet God in the book of Kings. (The reference is 1Kings 19:11-12) "Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper." I don't remember when I first heard this passage, but I know I must have heard it at some point when I was a child because it has come into my head as a reference many times in my teen and young adult years. I have always reflected on this passage in a metaphorical sense, that God is not the cause of chaos happening around us, he's not in the fireworks of life but as I reflect on this passage in light of all that is happening in the world, I think it is true now in a literal sense as well. God is not in the fires, the floods, the earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. As I read and watch news about the corruption in the political realm and see things about the imminence of war, wars that will be fought not by the leaders that have caused such a thing but by young men and women who wish to serve and protect their country, I cannot help but think of Samuel when the Israelites asked for a king so they could be like other nations. God warns them that they will not like having a king, that they will be taxed, that their children will be sent to war, that their sons and daughters will be forced to do labor that will keep the king and his court comfortable. Still, the Israelites demand a king (1Samuel 8). Now as I read friends posts about their struggles to pay their taxes, to afford health insurance (and then medical procedures), as I see friends joining the military and their families' fear that they will be sent into a war; I can't help but think this is just what the Lord warned about when his people wanted to serve a king (or a government) that is not Him. I am reminded that just as God was not in all of the natural disasters that moved past the cavern Elijah was in, neither was he in the kings that ruled over the people of Israel. It seems as I look around at the world I am reminded of scripture passages that tell me of where God is not. Yet, I am reminded of Jesus' first address to the people when he began his ministry. His words, "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand." follow me in daily life, we know that his teaching was meant to tell us that the Kingdom of God (heaven) was not just some place up in the clouds that we would go to when we die, but a kingdom that was supposed to be here now. But how? Jesus sends his disciples to heal the sick, to cast out demons, to raise the dead, and heal the leper. St. Paul has the answer for this as well, he tells us in many of his various letters that we are the Body of Christ; it is our job to heal, to teach, to exhort, to prophecy, to speak wisdom. And indeed, we were given similar commandments through Moses; Commandments 1-5 teach us what our relationship with God should look like and Commandments 6-10 teach us about what our relationships with other should look like. Jesus quotes Moses saying the greatest commandment is, "To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself." As I have said, probably too many times at this point, I was an avid reader as a child and the wisdom in books has in many ways seeped into my consciousness. I find myself often hearing the words of Gandalf, or of Dumbledore, or of some other selfless hero when I am feeling fearful about the state of our world. I find myself, as Frodo did, saying something to the effect of "I wish none of this had ever happened" only to have the words of Gandalf replying, "So do all who live to see such times but it is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time given to us." Words such as those speak to something inside of me, reminding me that while I may not be able to change the political culture of the world, I may not be able to stop the natural disasters happening around the world, or stop what media calls the "impending" wars, I can do my part. I can speak life, I can help heal old wounds that plague minds and hearts, I can speak hope and joy to the broken hearted; "I can laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who weep." It is as John says in the first chapter of his Gospel: "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it." Starting where I am and serving those around me with love is enough. Opening my heart to hear what God is calling me to do and taking baby steps in faith is enough. I am reminded to focus on what God is telling me I can do rather than all of the things the world is telling me I cannot do. And I truly believe that if each of us can be faithful to the small things God calls us to, we can become that bit of the Kingdom of God that is at hand and step by step we can fight back the darkness. This week, I pray that you are not discouraged by the ways that the world is sick and in need of healing and I pray that your heart is open to receiving God's call for where you can bring His light and his love to those around you. May you be blessed abundantly with his peace and his love. Blessings, Michaela 10/31/2019 0 Comments Nails In Our Souls This week, we learned about the three parts of the Communion of Saints. The first, and probably most obvious part is the Saints in Heaven. Second, is the “Church Militant” which is the church here on earth. And the third part is the “Church Suffering” in purgatory.
The concept of purgatory seemed pretty terrible to me as a teen. It sort of seemed like double jeopardy, in a way, because when you sin on earth you suffer the consequences of that sin. Even when we go to confession and are absolved of our sins and reconnected to God, there is still the natural consequence of those sins. Our sinfulness causes fissures in relationships with God, with one another, with creation, and with ourselves; in short, there are wounds caused by sinning that don’t just disappear by going to confession. Our relationship with God can be repaired, but relationships aren’t as easily mended with human beings; careless words, prideful actions, insensitivity, violence, and so many other ways we can sin against one another leave trauma behind that can’t be removed no matter how much we wish it could. Our sins against creation; our littering, our waste, our disregard for what can help creation thrive leaves a lasting impression that cannot be undone with the words ‘I’m sorry.’ And the sins we commit leave a mark on our own selves as well in a variety of ways that we don’t always even see. Then, after living with the natural consequence of our sin and our fallen ways, we go to purgatory where we are literally called the “Church Suffering” as we are purified from the sins we committed here on earth. It seemed to me that we’d already suffered for those sins, so why did we have to suffer again? Why couldn’t we just go into heaven where sin lived no more, every tear would be wiped from our eyes, and we could be with God in perfect love for eternity? It would be some years later before I heard a good explanation that didn’t make purgatory seem like punishment stacked on punishment and last year, Father Jack Long gave an exceptional homily about heaven and hell, coincidentally for all souls day that made a lot of sense as well. (You can read my blog in which I reflected on heaven and hell and Father Jack’s homily here.) But there was a metaphor presented in a video we watched at Edge on Wednesday that I think hit the nail right on the head. Imagine that your soul is a white wall. Every time you sin, there’s a nail driven into that wall. Now, the good news is that when you go to confession those nails are pulled out of the wall but as anyone who’s pulled nails out of something, there are holes left behind. Those holes are the result of sin, they are the wounds we carry with us. Purgatory is taking plaster to those holes, filling them in, and smoothing everything out so the wall is just as it was when it was new. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, the part of the Communion of Saints that we are currently a part of is the Church Militant. Now, this terminology isn’t always everyone’s favorite depiction of the church, our former Director of Faith Formation used to tell stories to the Confirmandi about how, when she was Confirmed, the bishop used to hit you on the cheek and tell you that you were a soldier for Christ. Needless to say, it wasn’t her favorite metaphor for who we become as Confirmed Catholics. But I think this title makes more sense when we think about it in terms of where we are headed. We are not necessarily called to pick up arms and go out and fight physical battles but we are all called to fight spiritual battles. We are all called to fight against Satan, against temptation, against sin. And just like in any war, there are wounds and there is trauma; soldiers don’t come out of war unscathed. In purgatory, we are healed of those wounds, we are made perfect again for heaven. Just as the Saints in heaven help us to fight our war by role modeling what living a life for God is like and by interceding on our behalf, we as the Church Militant have the opportunity to intercede for those in purgatory. Our prayers and intercessions help those in purgatory to heal and be made perfect for heaven. So, as All Saints’ and All Souls’ day approach, I invite you to pray for your deceased loved ones and to intercede on their behalf and I encourage you to ask the Saints’ for their intercessions as you fight your own battles and as you strive toward heaven. 10/21/2019 0 Comments The mortifying ordeal of being knownOkay, so this is maybe (probably) a weird place to start a blog about the retreat we just had on Wednesday, but stick with me because I think it will make sense in the end. I'm not sure how familiar most of you are with the concept of memes let alone whether or not you are familiar with memes that are popular at the moment, but to summarize memes very briefly, they are pictures, videos, gifs, etc. that people take and change the context of slightly by changing the words or image so it comes to mean something else. (As a side note, interestingly the word "meme" is derived from the greek word mimeme meaning to imitate, which is very appropriate.) Over the summer, there was one meme that became very popular that took a quote from a New York Times Article about anxiety, the words were: "To experience the rewards of being loved, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known." (don't ask me how they found this article written in 2013 to quote, but there it is) and people inserted these words on all sorts of images. (There are many that I have found hilarious, but the one I've included here for reference doesn't require an understanding of meme culture to grasp.) This particular quote was made into literally dozens of memes that spanned across different fandoms, different social media outlets, and different cultural references; it became one of the most universally accepted quotes on a meme no matter where it was being posted or who it was referencing. I couldn't help but start to think this reflects something deeper in teen/young adult culture; that there must be a deeper, spiritual truth as that's the only way it could possibly be so universally accepted. My thoughts, simply put, are that these particular words are true and speak to each person's deep desire to be loved. I've written a couple of blogs before about the innate desire to be loved, but this meme summarizes exactly why this desire is so hard; in order to be loved, we must allow ourselves to be known. And not only known as we like to be (i.e. the many facades we wear, the way we market ourselves, the careful way we speak and represent ourselves) but in the many ways we do not like to be known (i.e. in our exhaustion, or our frustration, our despair, or even in the things we are total nerds about). We want people to see us in the ways that we have carefully curated our personality to be seen. This idea is so true that it's one of the most popular tropes in literature and in movies; how often do we learn that a character has a dark secret hidden in their past, a secret that causes a great deal of tension in the story, and they are certain that because of that secret they can't be truly loved? Inevitably the conclusion is that they just have to tell the secret (let the other person really know them) and then they are, in fact, loved. But, if we know this is true (if we see it in literature, in real life, and even in memes on the internet) why is it so hard to just be honest with each other? Why do we feel the need to hide? Believe it or not, this intrinsic shame and desire to hide ourselves stems all the way back to the beginning of time. Literally! Way back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and decided they should cover themselves in fig leaves and hide themselves from God. In the moment they ate the fruit our concept of time began (as suddenly humans had an expiration date) and so did our concept of shame. Logically, the shame made no sense; God literally knew everything about Adam and Eve, he knew they'd eaten the fruit, he knew the worst things about them but they still tried to hide those things. And we have been doing the same with God and with one another ever since. So perhaps a better question is, if our inclination since the dawn of time has been to hide, why do we still so desperately seek love? In the end, this answer is simple, too, God created us by love, for love. He created Adam and Eve in the beginning, he created them out of love for them, so that He could love them, and they could love Him (and one another) in return. We were created the same way, it's written this way in the book of Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." God knew us and loved us before we were put in our mother's wombs, He created us because He loved us so that we could love Him in return; it's why Moses gives the commandment in Deuteronomy that Jesus repeats in the New Testament "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself." This mission isn't accomplishable in the hearts of humankind, it's not possible for us to resist temptation on our own, not possible for us to love God and each other freely in the way we were created to do. The Old Testament (and our own lives) have showed us time after time that we were unable to keep our covenants with God. In short, on our own, there was no hope of reaching our hearts desire to be loved, but Jesus came and made it possible. Through Jesus sacrifice, through His great love for us, we are able to love and be loved in return. Long story short, we are able to submit to the humiliating ordeal of being known because, through Jesus, we know that we will experience the eternal rewards of being loved. It seems like it has been ingrained in us to see the word “Hierarchy” as something negative. To associate the word “Hierarchy” with words like “Injustice,” “Division,” “Tierney,” “Caste system,” etc. Perhaps without it being explicitly stated, I was taught that the word hierarchy had to do with separation, with people being placed over other people, and with inequality. So it was no easy task for my high school brain to comprehend that the church has what is literally called a hierarchy. In the hierarchy, we have the pope, then the cardinals, then the bishops, then the priests, then deacons. And then we have the laity, who we have somehow (incorrectly) understood as less than the men who make up the hierarchy.
This understanding of the hierarchy is a topic that I’ve had a lot of cause to think about and turn over in my head sometimes in formal ways and sometimes in less formal ways. I have written before about my parents, and about my dad in particular (who was blessed with three daughters) and told us over and over throughout the course of our lives that we were able to do anything that boys could do. As such, I remember quite distinctly as an 8-year-old, when my grandmother told me that only boys became priests, firmly telling her that I would be the first woman priest. Fast-forward to high school (when I started to grow into the independent, feminist teenager that my parents had created with their love and support) I had several friends in high school who were Catholic in the sense that they’d been Baptized, received First Communion and First Reconciliation, and Confirmation in the church but only attended Mass for Christmas and Easter services. When I asked the mother of one such friend her about the tattoo of a frog on her ankle; she told me that the frog was a reminder of her faith (a reminder to Fully Rely On God) and we started to talk about God and faith. Eventually, I asked her, if her faith was a big enough part of her life for her to get something tattooed on her body as a reminder, why they only came to Mass on Christmas and Easter? Her answer bore a striking resemblance to the claim I made as an 8-year-old; she told me that they stopped attending Mass every Sunday when her second daughter was a toddler because she looked at her two already strong and independent girls in the pew beside her and she looked at the leaders of our church (both locally and globally) and they were all men. And more than that, there was no future in which her daughters would have any power in this structure and that just wasn't the lesson she wanted to teach them about themselves. Move ahead a little further to my undergrad program at a Christian (not Catholic) college, I’ve mentioned before that I learned a lot of Catholic Theology merely as a way to combat people telling me that my church was wrong. In many settings (including my Biblical Studies and Theology courses as well as among my friend groups), the topic of women’s role in church came up repeatedly; comments about Catholics being stuck in the dark ages were common, as were comments about Catholics being anti women’s rights and sexist, among other things. Fast forward even further to my graduate studies at St. John’s University (a Catholic University this time) and the question of women's roles in the church is still being heavily debated amongst my peers and professors (with various degrees in Theology). In short, it seems that no matter where you go, there are people who struggle with the concept of hierarchy in the church want to debate this structure. All this being said, I think we have been steered off track (for a myriad of reasons, including valid things like abuse of power and cultural and political climate) because we, as a culture, do not have a proper understanding of the intention behind a hierarchical structure. I wrote a blog last year (you can read it here if you’d like) that talked about a similar construct. In short, it was about the fact that Jesus is given the title of "King" but is nothing like what we’d expect when we think of Kings. When we think of Kings we think of tyrants, of people who put their needs before the needs of the people, we think of someone who is above others. But for Jesus, this is not so, Jesus (who is literally God) came to the earth to serve (see Matthew 20:28). He healed the sick, washed the feet of his disciples, preached about the Kingdom of God, reached out to those who were the epitome of what one might call unworthy. Jesus showed us that having power wasn’t about what you could do for yourself but about what you could do for others. In this same sense, we do not interpret the Hierarchy of the church correctly; the hierarchy of the church is not meant to mirror the hierarchy on earth. The Hierarchy is meant to simply help us to understand what our jobs are in the church family no one job is more “important” than another. At the risk of oversimplifying things, while the pope looks after the whole of the church, the bishops look after dioceses, and the priests look after a particular parish, the laity have the job of looking after everyone else. We come to our church buildings to gather as a community, to receive the sacraments, to hear the word of God but we as the church are sent out to use our Baptismal calling of “Priest, Prophet, and King” to do the same for the world around us. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit given to us at Baptism, we are called to be Priest and help to reconcile the lost and broken to God, called to be Prophet and proclaim the good news that the Kingdom of God is here, and called to be King and serve in the way that Jesus served us. In the end, the hierarchy is meant to do one thing, and one thing alone, to fulfil God's mission from the beginning of time and bring His people into communion with him and communion with one another. This week, I pray that you will experience God's call on your life as Priest, Prophet, and King and be shown new ways that the Lord is calling you to help bring people into communion with him and each other. 10/3/2019 0 Comments Of Planks and courage Imagine being the disciples after Jesus death. It must have been scary, right? First, the disciples literally saw Jesus taken away from them by an angry mob, they watched him (the pinnacle of an innocent man) accused of crimes and then convicted, then they saw Jesus (the Messiah, God Himself) nailed to a cross and killed. I can only imagine that nothing would make sense after that. How do you make sense of all of the miracles? How do you make sense of your own religious leaders putting God to death? Combine this with the fact that the disciples were really young (all teenagers except for Peter) and is it any wonder that they went into hiding?
The disciples had a completely rational, a completely human reaction to Jesus' death. They were afraid and everything that they thought was true, was suddenly turned on its head. The disciples (and Jewish people in general) had an archetype for what the Messiah was supposed to look like and what he was supposed to do; being publicly humiliated and crucified did not fit that description. What's more is that at the time just having associated with a criminal (especially to the degree that the disciples did) meant that you were likely to be accused of their crimes and suffer in a similar manner. (It's part of the reason none of the 12 went to claim Jesus' body from the cross- if you did that, it was highly likely that you'd be accused of the same crimes.) They were afraid of being persecuted, of being convicted of crimes they hadn't committed, and they were confused; so they did what humans do when they are afraid; they hid. They tucked themselves into a room and only went out occasionally when they needed things to survive. The good news is that Jesus visited them there and he visited the disciples on the road to Emmaus to bring them back to Jerusalem. He told them that He had risen from the dead and He was going to make a place for them in heaven. Still, the disciples hid. They were still afraid, still wondering what would come next. It makes sense, then, that the only thing that could change their reaction would be God. When Jesus came to the disciples on Pentecost, he "breathed" on them and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit. (As an interesting side note, the same word for breath, "Ruach" is the word used for Holy Spirit in Scripture.) Suddenly, the disciples who had spend so much time afraid and hiding in the dark were changed people. They went out and they preached the Gospel message; they bravely told of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection and willing went to prison, were willingly beaten and falsely accused, and went willingly to their own death in the name of Jesus. The only thing that changed these people from the fearful to brave in an instant is the Holy Spirit. But what does this have to do with us? In terms of time and distance, we are fairly far removed from that cross on Calvary 2000 years ago and we have the advantage of our history which helps us avoid the confusion the disciples had; we know that Jesus won in the end and we know that he gave us the gift of the Holy Spirit. And while we certainly face persecution in a way, the fears we have of persecution aren't the same as the fears that the disciples would have faced. Nonetheless, the Holy Spirit wants to move and work in us in the same ways. The Holy Spirit's desire is to move in us in the same way he moved in the disciples. He desires to transform the world around us by first transforming us. The Holy Spirit gives us all of the strength and courage that we need to be able to face the world and go out sharing the good news. The challenges that we face today might not be the same as the challenges that the disciples faced (although, at their core, they may not be so different either) but the Holy Spirit wants to help us navigate them in the same way. 2Timothy 1:7 says it this way, "For the Lord did not give you a Spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self control." The disciples at Pentecost are given the same gift that we are given in Baptism and in Confirmation; the gift that enables us to act in the world as Jesus would. The Holy Spirit desires to radically change our hearts and lives from the inside out and given half a chance, he'll do exactly that. I think it's easy to look around our world today and see all of the ways that it is broken and flawed. It's easy to say the world needs more peace, more love, better politicians, more kindness, more care for the environment, and a thousand other things (and you'd be right). But what I think is harder it to look at ourselves and see the ways that we are broken and flawed; it is harder to see the things that we need to help us grow and be better. I think this is what is at the heart of what Jesus says in Matthew 7:5 when he says "You hypocrite. First remove the plank from your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's." He isn't saying that we are so much worse than our brother (because if everyone applies this to themselves, then everyone has a plank in their own eye) but he is saying that the thing blocking our own vision is the bigger problem. The only way we can become self aware enough to recognize the plank in our own eye and have the strength to remove it is through the Holy Spirit. So, in the same way that the disciples began working, it is only in changing ourselves that we can go into a world so desperately in need of change; it is only in changing our own heart and vision that we are not seen as hypocrites as we try to right the wrongs around us. This week, I challenge you to ask the Holy Spirit to show you the ways he wants to clear your vision and change your heart and I invite you to open yourself up to his cleansing, empowering love. Peace, Michaela 9/26/2019 0 Comments Through thee alone I told the teens at Edge this week that I am super excited for this year of Edge and it's not just because Edge is literally one of my favorite things about my job (although, it is) it's because this year the part of the Trinity that we are focusing on is the Holy Spirit. I think the Holy Spirit is one of the most underrated parts of our faith and I love to talk about the Holy Spirit, if I was only allowed to study one thing about faith, it would be the Holy Spirit, hands down. In short, the Holy Spirit is my jam. (So please forgive me as I nerd out about the Holy Spirit in the next several blogs.)
There's this fantastic hymn called "Come Holy Ghost." It's a classic and you've probably sung it dozens of times in church throughout your life. It has great wisdom to impart about the Holy Spirit, calling him comforter, creator, giver of grace, giver of aid, font of life, fire of love; it affirms him as coequal with the Father and the Son. But there's this great line that always gives me goosebumps when I hear it; it says, "Oh, Holy Ghost through thee alone know we the Father and the Son." Just think about that phrase for a minute. Through thee alone know we the Father and the Son. This song posits that the way we come to know that Father and the Son is through the Holy Spirit. And it makes sense, doesn't it? Jesus tells us in Scripture (see Matthew 14 and John 16) that He is going away where we will no longer be able to see him, but he is calling the Holy Spirit to our sides. He is sending us the one who will never leave us and who will teach us all things about Jesus and God the Father, who will teach us all truth, and who will ultimately teach us about our very selves. To me, this begs the question, when was the last time we called out to the Holy Spirit in prayer? At our Edge Session this week I asked the group to raise their hand if they had ever prayed to the Holy Spirit, several of my catechists raised their hands but that was it. How bizarre is it that our first instinct is not to pray to the part of the Trinity that is literally always with us, the part that we have asked to make his home inside of us, the part that we are gifted in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation? And I'm no different when I start praying my instinct is not to address the Holy Spirit first. My first inclination when I am praying in front of a group or when I am praying by myself at night is to address God the Father. In moments of panic, my first instinct is to call on the Lord Jesus (my mantra always seems to be exactly that, 'Lord Jesus help me,' because when I am panicked I can think of nothing else to say). And while there is certainly nothing wrong with praying to God the Father or to Jesus (and there in a lot about Trinitarian Theology that suggests that when you pray to one you are praying to all three) I still wonder why the Holy Spirit is not the first thought I have for who to pray to. What I believe it boils down to is that I was never really taught to pray to the Holy Spirit or really aware of the Holy Spirit's presence in a tangible way until college when I made friends with some Non-Denominational Christians and found a couple of mentors who were part of the Charismatic renewal in the Catholic church back in the 70's. To my friends and to my mentors, the Holy Spirit was more than a symbol, he was more than fire, more than the cleansing waters of Baptism, more than a dove descending from the clouds (all of those things are true, and they were good answers to the question we posed on Wednesday about what came to mind when we thought of the Holy Spirit). But to them, the Holy Spirit was as real (or perhaps more so in a way) as God the Father and as Jesus because they sought to hear Him and sought to know him. I learned the simple (but remarkably powerful prayer) "Come Holy Spirit" from those people. Every time I pray those three little words I am absolutely astounded by the results. When I say the words "Come Holy Spirit" I can physically feel something settle over me; there is a tangible release to the worries and stress that I am holding onto. If I call on the Holy Spirit before a talk or before a conversation about faith, I am always surprised by the words that come out of my mouth, they are rarely what I had planned but are often exactly what was needed. I could give you dozens of stories about times when the Holy Spirit has reached out and touched me, has changed me, has instructed me (and I'd be glad to sit down and chat over coffee if you're interested in hearing them) but what it boils down to is this, when you open your heart to the Holy Spirit and invite Him in you do not know what will happen. There is a reason we associate the Holy Spirit with fire, and water, and wind; and it's not just about the Sacraments and scripture references. It is because, like fire, water, and wind, there is an element to those things that we cannot control. Fire can burn down structures and forests, water can cause floods and wash everything away, wind can whip through and tear things down. So, too, can the Holy Spirit in our lives. Opening our hearts and inviting the Holy Spirit to come in wreaks havoc on our plans, it tears down our pride and our prejudices, it washes away our unrighteousness, and leaves us vulnerable, without all of the walls we have built up. But it leaves us standing as God has made us to be; an instrument of His love for humankind, a being capable of relationship with him and with one another because when the Holy Spirit enters our hearts he removes the things that stand in the way of relationship. I pray that the Lord blesses you this week and challenge you to pray the words "Come Holy Spirit" and open your heart (even if it's only just a little) to allow him to enter in and move through you. I guarantee you will be amazed by the way He will touch you this week. Peace, Michaela 4/24/2019 0 Comments Salvation today I was given the opportunity last year to sponsor someone going through the RCIA at OLP and the thing that struck me over and over was the desire to have seen salvation the way she had. I was overcome with the desire to experience sacraments for the first time as an adult who could understand their value and was filled with the desire to be seeing the saving power of Jesus as a revelation. I was a cradle Catholic. I was baptized as an infant and raised in the Catholic church. My mother took us to church every Sunday, we went to Sunday school and youth group, we received all of the sacraments. Church has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I grew up knowing the words to songs like "This Little Light of Mine" and "Jesus Loves Me" by heart, I'd memorized stories and Bible verses, I was an Altar server, a Eucharistic Minister, a Cantor, a Lector; as a teen I was a catechist, even. I grew up knowing about the cross, accepting Jesus' death and resurrection like a foregone conclusion. In short, for me, there was no wonder at salvation, no amazement at Grace.
I often think this must be the same for many Catholics, for many of the teens who attend our Edge sessions on Wednesday Nights, even. The wonder at salvation is perhaps hard to find when it is told to you like a bedtime story, like the adventures that happen in places like Narnia and Hogwarts, because there is sacrifice there, too, and loss, and redemption. There is wonder in those stories, too, something to aspire toward, but in the end (no matter how deeply they may affect us) they are fictitious. Aslan didn't sacrifice himself on the altar for me, Harry Potter didn't walk off into the woods to face Voldemort on his own for me, Gandalf didn't fall into the depths of Moria from the endless stair to save my life. As I've mentioned before, stories has a profound impact on me as a child and in the formation of my person, but regrettably, as a child it seemed that the story of Jesus' life was just that: a story. The difference, though, is that Jesus did sacrifice himself for me, and nothing could have prepared me for the way that truth would hit me as a teen/young adult. There's this great verse in Romans (5:20) in which Paul says, "Where sin increases, Grace increases even more." It was definitely not a verse that I read as a child and gleaned anything life-changing from, but as an adult, I think this verse speaks much more profoundly. There was a time in my life when I listened to the story of the Prodigal Son and saw myself in the older son (which, even then, was not the son I wanted to be) and I think the truth of salvation and God's grace didn't make sense to me until I could hear the story and see myself as the younger son. God's grace doesn't make sense until there is a reason that you need that grace. I am grateful that my "rock bottom" was an internal rock bottom rather than my life spiralling out of control, but it was still a place that I desperately needed saving from. The place where God picked me up and showed me grace was in the midst of a dark depression, in a place where I'd isolated myself from the world around me, and where I struggled immensely with my feelings. Grace in that place came in the form of God himself entering my heart and saving me from myself. In that place of darkness, the Lord of Light came into my heart and showed me a way out. In that place of isolation and profound loneliness, the Comforter came and wrapped His loving arms around me and held me tight. From that place, Salvation was no longer just about a cross on Calvary 2000 years ago; Salvation was right there in the darkness and desolation of my own soul. Salvation wasn't just about someday going to heaven to be with God (although it is about that, too) Salvation was about God being with me here and now. That is the beauty of salvation; not that the gap between us and God has been closed for us when we die, but that the gap between us and God has been closed for us today and everyday that we turn to him. The only trouble is that I do not think this can be taught, not really. I don't think that the understanding of salvation, of God's love for us, can be conveyed through mere words; it is something that must be experienced. So, this is what we try to have happen at Edge; we teach theology and an understanding of scripture (because someday, those things will come in handy) but more than that, we hope and pray that teens meet Jesus here. We pray that the story of Salvation might become more than a "story" and that it might become a relationship. This week, I pray that you encounter Jesus' the risen Lord who sent His Holy Spirit to be with us always and who is doing the work of salvation inside of us even now. Peace, Michaela 3/13/2019 0 Comments Written On Your HeartCan you say the Ten Commandments in order?
If you answered yes, you’re in better shape than my catechists and I are in; if you answered no, well, at least you are in good company. When I was a kid, I thought there were a lot of rules. Rules for home, rules for friends’ houses, rules for restaurants, rules for church, rules for school, rules for the grocery store. Basically everywhere I went there were rules for me to follow and bars for me to meet. I was, for the most part, a well behaved child (a bit spacey because I was lost in my imagination, but polite enough) but I couldn’t wait until I was an adult and could “do whatever I wanted.” Needless to say, the older I got the more rules there seemed to be. Suddenly there were rules about things as mundane as which colors you can wear together and which colors you can wear between May and September. There were rules about how you can express your opinions. There were rules about how to drive your car. Rules to learn for workplaces. Rules to learn for interacting with adults. Rules about how you talk to your friends and acquaintances about religion and life choices. And many of those rules were harder because they were never explicitly stated, they were just something you had to ascertain from context clues. The older I got the more I longed for the simplicity of the rules from childhood. I think it’s easy for the Commandments to feel like this. It’s easy to feel like the ten commandments are just ten more rules that it’s hard to understand the point of. That’s certainly how I felt about them as a teen and when I started Undergrad. When you add in all of the purity laws from the old testament in the Pentateuch I just wonder how any of the rules we’re supposed to follow can be kept straight. And then you get to the New Testament and you read about the Pharisees, who worked really hard at keeping God’s commandments. You read story after story where Jesus tells the Pharisees that they’ve gotten it all wrong; the entirety of Matthew Chapter 28 is Jesus saying they are hypocrites; in Chapter 23 he calls them a brood of vipers; he rebukes them for telling him he can’t heal a man on the Sabbath (Mark 3 or Luke 13). These men dedicated their lives to following the paths of the Lord, to learning His ways but Jesus says they have it all wrong and they don’t understand the heart of God. Fortunately for us, we are told that the laws are not written on stone, but rather on our hearts because we were given the gift of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul says it this way in Hebrews 10:15-17: The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” What a beautiful promise this is for us. What an amazing gift for us. Unlike the Jewish people of Jesus’ time, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit moving in our hearts, guiding us and helping us to make the right decisions. What a gift, that God's laws unlike those of men, give freedom to live in joy and peace. This week, I invite you to spend extra time in prayer with the Lord, asking the Holy Spirit to give you a heart willing to receive His wisdom. Peace, Michaela 2/27/2019 1 Comment Why Go To Confession? So this looks like the obligatory Catholic Confession Blog but I hope that this might speak something new to you.
My grandma lived with us when I was growing up and while my sisters and I were baptized into the Catholic church as infants and raised in the Catholic church, my grandma was Methodist and didn’t become Catholic until I was in middle school. For the most part, I think growing up with her sharing her faith with us was a very good thing. It gave us a larger, more ecumenical view of the church as a whole. There were things that helped connect me to God in different ways than my upbringing in the Catholic church. For instance, she often told us that her mother (my great grandmother) rarely attended church on Sundays; she would go out into our woods (I grew up on 70 acres of land with lots of woods and creeks) and she would pray outside and she knew God was with her there. I completely understand that feeling; when I go to Florida to visit my great uncle, I wake up early and go to the ocean to watch the sunrise. When I walk on the beach in the quiet, early morning light, I know that God is there walking with me and I feel an immense sort of peace. But there was one thing that my grandma said that I always thought I agreed with until just a few years ago. Even after becoming Catholic, my grandma didn’t really appreciate the sacrament of reconciliation. She used to say that she confessed her sins directly to God and knew that God had forgiven her. While we believe that’s true, and we believe that God has forgiven you before you step into the confessional, there’s more to going to Confession than that. So why go to confession? We believe there is a grace bestowed on us in the sacrament of Reconciliation. Father talked to our Edge kids about how it helps to heal us of pride. Studies have shown that there are hormones released in our brains when we confess to another person that give us a feeling of relief and joy, surely God put those in our heads for a reason, right? But I also believe that Confession has the ability to break the power of sin in our lives. Let me explain what I mean by that. I think often when we hear the words “break the power of sin” we think of it helping us not to sin in that particular way again. In some ways this is true. I had a New Testament teacher in undergrad who used to talk about “strongholds.” He would say that when we sin, there is a part of our being that has become a “stronghold for the devil.” Meaning that once you’ve sinned in a particular way it is easier for the powers of evil to convince you that sinning in that way isn’t so bad. For example, if you tell a harmless white lie and there are no repercussions for it, the next time you might be tempted to lie it’s that much easier to do it. In naming that sin when we go to confession, we break the power over it because we are recognizing that it is, in fact, wrong. In this way, the sin is put in its proper place. But I believe the power of sin is even greater than that. Yes, I do agree with what my new testament teacher talked about, I believe that once you’ve opened that door it is a lot harder to close it and it’s a lot harder not to listen to the lies and justifications that we can hear. But I believe the power of sin is shame. When we sin, we are inherently ashamed of that fact. We hide our sins from other people and guard them like our most important secret. We don’t tell people about them, and if you’re anything like me, when someone discovers that sin it feels like the world is coming to an early end; or at the very least, that you wish it would. Confession and reconciliation, I believe, is the cure for that shame. When I was 21 years old, I went to Confession for the first time in about 5 years. Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, what sorts of things could a 21 year-old really have gotten up to in need of confession? The answer: Plenty of things. I went and I just talked at the priest for what seemed like a long time, but in reality, was probably no more than ten minutes. And I do mean that I talked at him. I didn’t even give him a moment to respond as I poured my guts out, my palms were sweating, my stomach was rolling, and my heart was basically doing a complicated tap routine in my chest. When I finished my confession the priest just looked at me for a long moment and said, “You’ve been carrying that around for a while, huh?” I got choked up at that and I nodded, eyes stinging. He said to me, “You’ve been beating yourself up about those things, I can see it in your eyes and hear it in your voice, that’s penance enough. Let go of them.” He sent me on my way telling me to say three Hail Mary’s to ask the Blessed Mother to guide me. It wasn’t until a couple of months later, though, that I realized the impact this had on me. I was talking to several acquaintances in my apartment on campus one night and one of the girls was in a pretty dark place and she couldn’t find God anywhere. I’ll never quite understand how it happened, but suddenly I was talking about those sins I’d confessed months before. I was talking about the pain they’d caused, the hopelessness, the feelings of unworthiness and bitterness. I talked about the shame and the way that shame of sin had isolated me from other people in a way I hadn’t understood. But the part that matters was that I could talk about grace. I could talk about the way that God had freed me from those sins. I could talk about forgiveness. I could talk about how God had forgiven me and taught me to forgive myself (which is still a work in progress, but that’s neither here nor there). Going to confession had broken the power of sin over my life in that it allowed me to be honest about struggling, too. Because, let’s be real, we all struggle. No one has it all together, and confession allowed me to admit that and thus carry the gift of healing and reconciliation to someone else. This has been true every time I have gone to confession since. No matter what sin I am struggling with confessing it out loud to the priest allows me to go out after without the guilt and shame so that I can share my struggle and my journey with others. Sin loses its power over me and I am able to speak the truth of that experience to other people; thus I am able to enter into closer communion with those people. I am able to freely say I have made mistakes, I have sinned, and even through that God still loves me. Through that, the Holy Spirit still abides with me and speaks comfort to my heart. In confession, I am able to more fully unite myself to the physical body of Christ made manifest in the people around me. That is the power of reconciliation with God. Unsurprisingly, St Paul elucidates it better than I can, in 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 he says this: Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ,as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. So, if you haven’t already been to Confession this Lenten season I invite you to do so and I pray it will be as freeing for you as it has been for me. Peace, Michaela 2/7/2019 0 Comments The Still, Small Voice God is good. God’s love for us in unconditional; he loves us immensely and with a love that we can’t conceive.
This is what we’ve always been told, isn’t it? That's what, in our best moments, we know is true, isn’t it? But what about the moments that are not our best moments? What about the moments when senseless tragedy strikes? When loved ones die? What about when we sit down and watch the news and see the terrible things happening in the world all around us? If you are anything like me, you’ve probably asked God and/or the people around you how these two things can both be true. How can it be true that there is a God who loves each of us unconditionally and who is always good but so much pain and destruction exists in the world? These are the questions we talked about on Wednesday night at our Edge session. I had a profound encounter with Jesus when I was in high school. I’ve talked before about the retreat I went on when I was a freshman and how the Lord met me there and opened my heart to Him and how transformational that was for me. But the thing about retreats and about encountering Jesus is that it changes you and it forces you to confront things in the world that had been blindly happening around you. When I came back to my high school after the retreat and I was so in love with Jesus and with that experience. Retreats give you this talk at the end called "Coming Down From the Mountain" and it's geared toward helping you reacclimate to the world you'd left. It, admittedly, didn't do me much good as I hadn't realized how much I'd changed over the course of three days. Naturally I wanted to tell everyone about it. I wanted people to go on a retreat too, I wanted people to know that God was real and that he was here, I wanted to share the inexplicable feeling of joy and love that filled my heart to bursting. Oddly enough, though, people didn’t want that. My friends didn’t want to go on a retreat, they didn’t really want to hear about what I’d experienced there, and when they did listen they couldn’t understand the experience I had. It was where I learned a lesson that I would later hear echoed in the sentiments of St. Francis: “Preach the Gospel at all times and if necessary use words.” I lived with as much compassion, empathy, and integrity as I could muster and waited for openings to talk about my faith. High school, for me at least, was this place where all sorts of things could exist at the same time. I had friends who tried out different religions monthly (one month Buddhism, then Christianity, then Daoism, then Hinduism, then nothing in particular). It was the most interesting time in my life because people were so curious and so passionate about the things they were trying out. This was also exciting because those were the people who always wanted to talk about my faith, too. But the questions they always asked, were ones like “If God loves us then why do people suffer?” “If God loves us and listens to our prayers, then why are there people praying in Africa and still starving to death?” or (worst of all) “If there is a God, why would he let my dad die?” As a teenager, I didn’t have a good answer to these questions. I mean, sure, there’s the answer that we suffer as a natural consequence of sin; but then what about the people who are blatantly sinful but live lives of joy and prosperity? And how does that answer satisfy the question of people starving in third world countries and dying from diseases that we have vaccines for? How does that answer the question of my friend whose dad lost his battle to prostate cancer? Surely an entire country isn’t being punished by God because of sinfulness. Surely her father didn’t get prostate cancer because he sinned. It never felt like I had a good answer and honestly, the older I got, the harder it was to find them. The truth is that we live in a fallen world. We live in a world where we have free will and where other people have free will, but more than that I believe that Satan is very real and present here. I believe the Satan that destroyed everything around Job (that made him lose his family, lose his home, lose everything he had) is still here today. Can God stop him? Of course, God can do anything, He broke the power of sin and death over us and allows us to join the life of His Son. So why doesn’t he stop it? I believe that scripture holds the answer to this question as well, “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God will live forever” (1John 2:17). “And He will wipe every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away (Revelation 21:4). The entire Chapter of Romans 8 expresses the same sentiment; the old things will pass away when we come to live with God. As Jedd expressed on Wednesday, the old things that have caused us so much pain here in this present moment will be gone. We are joined with Christ in His suffering when we suffer, and we will join Christ in life after death where suffering doesn't exist. There have been moments in my life that were so painful that I thought I would never get through them. There have been moments when my heart was so broken and battered that I wondered how it could ever beat again. There have been moments when I wondered how I was meant to go on, how I could possibly keep going. The thing about those moments, though, is that they were just that: moments. They were fleeting. They have faded away to the point that they might stir a vague sting in my heart when I think about them, but they aren’t crippling. How much truer will this be in heaven? I think of my 14-year-old self, so in love with Jesus. I think of how when I encountered Him all of my fears and worries, all of my feelings of inadequacy, all of my insecurities melted away to nothing. I think of the day to day now when the Holy Spirit enters my heart, all of those things are washed away and I am left with peace beyond the world, with a feeling of love so all-encompassing that the challenges and the stress fade to nothing. God is good and God is love. It’s like Elijah says, God was not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, nor the storm but in the still, small voice. This week, I pray that you’ll find time to pause in the midst of your storms, floods, and fires, to hear the still, small voice speaking love to you. I pray that you will find the peace that transcends all earthly understanding and come that much closer to God and to heaven. Peace, Michaela 1/24/2019 0 Comments stand back It's funny, the way that God works.
Through the diocese, I was assigned a Youth Ministry Mentor at the beginning of the year. She's fantastic and is such a great resource for me and has so much wisdom to share. Now, I don't want you to get the wrong impression from what I’m about to say; I love my job, I couldn't imagine a better job than the one I am doing now, but the point of having a mentor is to talk about what is challenging in your ministry role and get a different perspective. So a few months ago, shortly after I posted this blog, I was talking to her about the challenges I was facing in my ministry. I talked about struggling with that "fierce independence" I wrote about, about the stress that comes with event planning, about the balance I can't seem to master of caring deeply about what I do but not holding it so tightly that God has no room to work, etc. She was sympathetic, to say the least, and offered anecdotes and advice from her own life, but then she told me to look up The Litany of Humility and to consider giving a try praying it. As any person being mentored would, I assured her that I'd look it up when I got home and go from there. When I was in high school the movie Evan Almighty came out. Now, I literally haven't watched this movie since I was in high school so I'm not sure how solid the theology is and am not recommending it by any means. I can't remember the characters names, I can't remember the setting, I can't remember most of the people who acted in it. In fact, I can't even remember the plot. All I really remember is that Morgan Freeman played God and he has this scene where he's talking to Evan's wife about praying. I remember he tells her that when people pray for patience, he gives them the opportunity to be patient. To my seventeen-year-old self, this made perfect sense. I'd never prayed for patience before watching this movie and after that movie I was certainly never tempted to. (In fact, although the Lord has given me many opportunities to practice patience, I still have never prayed for it.) It's funny, the things that form your consciousness and your perception of God when you're a teen, things that you don't realize (or at least that I didn't) but this was something that definitely shaped the way I prayed. And so, when my mentor suggested I think about praying The Litany of Humility, the thought of praying for patience slipped into my mind. I don't want to say that I dismissed her wisdom out of hand, but it was definitely something that I told myself I would "do later." Later, as it turned out, wouldn't be as long as I might have imagined. As I said at the beginning of this post, God seems to love irony (or foreshadowing, at the very least) and when there is something He wants me to do, there is never a doubt in my mind that I will end up doing exactly that. So, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me when, as I was reading over the lesson plan for this week and getting things prepped, that the prayer they suggested we pray together was, in fact, The Litany of Humility. I couldn’t help but laugh (and shake my head) at God as I read the prayer and thought to myself, what a challenge it was to pray. Click here to read it. The first sentence that you pray had me reeling- and it was just one sentence. “From the desire of being loved, deliver me, Jesus.” I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again; it is an innate human desire to be loved, I truly believe this. And, speaking for myself, it is something that I crave deeply; to be known and be loved. There is nothing more precious to me than the people who have loved me when I “deserved” it but especially when I most certainly did not. Then you go down a few more lines and it says, “From the desire to be praised, deliver me, Jesus.” I don’t know if you are familiar with the five love languages or not, but “words of affirmation” is tied with “physical touch” as my favorite way to have love communicated with me. It makes me inordinately happy when people tell me I did a good job at something, or that they appreciate me. This again was something that my mind rebelled against. There are several other things that cause my heart to balk a bit as I read them, but I started to think to myself, well it wants me to be delivered from the desire of those things, it doesn’t necessarily want you to pray that those things don’t happen. But then you go to the second half and read, “Jesus grant me the grace to desire: That others may be chosen and I set aside... That others may be praised and I unnoticed... That others may be preferred to me in everything…” This is not an easy prayer to pray and there is no way my brain can rationalize that message into anything it is not. It is blatantly asking me to pray that I would want to not be loved, or told that I was doing a good job, or chosen for special things. So, I started to really think about this prayer and it occurred to me just how many times I had said the word “I” when I was thinking about it. While I was struggling with my ability to pray this prayer, all I was thinking about was myself which, coincidentally, is the entire reason I ought to have prayed this prayer in the first place. It’s easy, for me at least, in today’s world and culture to get preoccupied with myself. There are all sorts of things that I try to do well at, that I work really hard at, and that I often feel I deserve to be recognized for in one way or another. But in all of these things, I am not (and should not be) the point. Jesus is the point. And when you think about Jesus, don’t all of these things that this prayer suggests praying sound just like Him? Jesus didn’t ask to be loved, or celebrated, or consulted, or approved of. He wasn’t afraid of being despised, or wronged, or wrongly accused, or humiliated. Jesus (the One who created the universe) knelt at the disciples’ feet and washed them. Jesus endured humiliation and suffering on the cross, he was wrongly accused and he didn’t even offer a defense. Jesus, who is God, allowed all of these things to happen. He took His eyes off of what was happening to him and looked to God the Father to see what was important. I realized then that this is what the Litany of Humility is all about. It is about taking my eyes off of myself long enough to see what is really happening in this world, to be amazed by God’s grace and His love, and to remind myself about the things that actually matter. It is impossible (and I do not use this word lightly) to show the proper respect and reverence to God when we are focused on ourselves. It is impossible to stand in wonder of the God of the universe when we are so focused on the tiny world we have created. He is so much bigger than we give him credit for. My challenge for you this week is the same challenge I gave myself (and your middle schoolers). I invite you to read and pray through the Litany of Humility and stop to think and pray about which parts are hard to say yes to and why that may be. I invite you to draw close to the Lord in awe and reverence and pray that He reveals himself to you in a new way this week. Peace, Michaela 1/17/2019 0 Comments The disciples had it so easy I don't know about you, but when I think about the disciples, I can't help but feel a little bit jealous of them. I mean, Jesus was right there. They didn't have to wonder about things, they could just go ahead and ask Him (His answers might be cryptic, but still). They didn't have to wonder if he was legit, they were with him all of the time, they could see Him performing miracles and hear the voice of God saying "This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased." But more than that, they got to hang out with the creator of the universe. Like, just imagine not being able to sleep one night and going to sit and look up at the stars with the one who made them. Imagine getting to just be with the person who loves you unconditionally, who loves you so much that He won't let even the power of death and sin separate you. Imagine being loved that much by someone who you could see, and hear, and touch. Even thinking about it gives me goosebumps. Is it any wonder that people like Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany (the sister of Martha and Lazarus) just want to sit at Jesus' feet in awe? I would too!
At the Mass, we encounter Jesus in three places. Your kids (and everyone I’ve ever posed this question to) get two of them right off the bat. The first is the Eucharist. We believe that those wafers and wine are transformed into the physical Body and Blood of Christ. The second that everyone guesses right off the bat is in the Liturgy of the Word (the readings). Jesus is called “the word” multiple times in Scripture (See John, Chapter 1) and we believe that in listening to the Scripture reading we are encountering Jesus’ voice. But the third is the place where we always get tripped up when we ask this question. The third place is in each other. Why, I have often wondered, is this the place that gets forgotten? Why is this the place we have the hardest time recognizing, or at least knowing on an intellectual level, that Jesus is present in at Mass? I’ve reflected on this a fair amount since the first time I posed the questions (last year to some of the Middle School students at OLP School). The answer, I think, is that we do not have a full grasp of the theology of the Incarnation and what that means in our lives. For many, the incarnation (at its core) is understood this way: Jesus came down from heaven to be born in human form. That human form walked the earth for 30 years, then He suffered and died to save us from our sins. Then He ascended into Heaven. And that, in a nutshell, is it.Those things are all true, but the incarnation is bigger than that. The truth of the incarnation is that God became man but when He ascended into heaven, He didn’t just go home to heaven and leave us here. He stayed with us. Through the gift of the Eucharist and the working of the Holy Spirit in each of us, we become the Body of Jesus; in other words, Christ is incarnate in us. The New Testament sort of beats us over the head with this message; read Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, 1 Peter, Ephesians, Colossians, Thesolonians, or Hebrews- you’ll find what it means to be the Body of Christ in each of those books. Being the Body of Christ means speaking words of encouragement and kindness, it means speaking to people in words they can understand, it means healing, it means guiding and teaching, it means serving, it means loving; in short, it means using the varied gifts God has given each of us for the edification of one another. Mass is the ultimate form of worship, it is where we come to experience His perfect sacrifice of love, where we come to hear his voice, and where we come to stand face to face with Him. Mass is the point from which everything in our lives should flow because it is here that we are gifted with the things we need to fulfill our missions every day. It is here that we receive the grace to go out and fight the good fight. Mass is where Christ becomes incarnate in us and thus is able to reach out and touch the world, to be present to people in the same way that He was present to His disciples and the world around Him 2000 years ago. I’d like to leave you with the words of Teresa of Avila and I pray they both challenge and bless you this week: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” Peace, Michaela 12/6/2018 0 Comments How the Grinch Stole Advent I love everything about Christmas-time. I love decorating, I love baking, I love sending people cards, I love giving people presents, I love parties, I love prayer time welcoming Jesus into my heart, I love devotionals about Mary. I love this time of year. But if I'm being honest, it seems borderline impossible to manage all (or even most) of those things in this season. And then when I do manage to squeeze them in I don't feel the joy I thought I might when I started them. Suddenly, baking cookies becomes about the hour of time I will spend cleaning up after I've done all the baking and frosting. Sending cards becomes a harried scribble and a cramped hand. Buying presents means trudging out in the cold, through throngs of people, to buy something that the person probably doesn't even need or really want. Parties are filled with equally busy people who would probably rather come any other time than the month of December. And don't get me started on prayer life in December. In December, my prayer life (rather than being drawn out and reflective) is rushed and weary; it's less "welcome, Lord Jesus, thank you for entering into my heart. Teach me to love you better." and more, "Lord Jesus, I am happy you're coming, truly, but I have another 50 things to do today and about ten minutes to do them. Please make a miracle happen."
The Jim Carrey version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" is admittedly my least favorite version (I do recommend the version with Benedict Cumberbatch that just came out, however) but I appreciate Cindy Lou Who from that version of this Dr. Seuss classic. I was ten years old when this movie came out, and her doubts and questions about what Christmas is really about spoke to me at that age. There's a song she sings "Where Are You Christmas?" that I find myself singing (in my head, if not out loud) year after year as I drag myself through the month of December, trying to muster up every ounce of Christmas cheer I can. Because this season is supposed to be filled with joy, isn't it? This season is supposed to be filled with excitement and busyness, right? We don't know why the Grinch hates Christmas (perhaps his heart is too small) but I have another thought. I can't help but remember the busy-ness of the pictures in the book and the scenes in the movies. Whos are playing instruments, whos are playing with toys, there are long tables packed with food and whos, and the "Noise, Noise, NOISE!" (I remember that line quite distinctly from when I was a child.) And maybe it's my inner introvert showing, but that depiction doesn't seem entirely inaccurate when I contemplate my Advent and Christmas season. Maybe the Grinch isn't entirely wrong about the busy-ness and the loudness, maybe he's not entirely wrong about the presents and the exorbitant amounts of food. Like Cindy Lou in the Carrey adaptation of the Grinch, I can't help but wonder if we are packing our Advent season and Christmas season full of presents, and parties, and shopping, and baking, (The Noise, Noise, NOISE) and all manner of things to fill the void. To find the piece of the Advent season that will bring us the joy and genuine excitement we had in this month as children. When I think about the Grinch coming to steal Christmas and all of it's trappings, there's a tiny part of me that feels like that would be a relief. Maybe the Grinch in my story is me. So what changes? How does the Advent season go from a time that feels like pure joy when you're a child, full of excitement and anticipation, to a season that has me questioning my sanity and wondering when I'll find time to do normal things again? There's a passage in Luke (10:38-42) in which Jesus visits the home of Mary and Martha, Martha goes to the kitchen to work and prepare food, while Mary sits at Jesus' feet. This doesn't seem quite fair to Martha (and I am inclined to agree) so she asks Him to tell Mary to help her, but Jesus rebuffs Martha instead, saying "You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed- or indeed only one." I had a priest once who gave a homily in which he told us that there were times in our lives when we would be Martha and when we would be Mary. He told us both were good things to be, both had important roles, but I'm not going to lie to you when I say that I would way rather be Mary. I want to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to him speak, I want to rest my weary head and just be in Jesus' presence. I want to choose the better part, I want to choose the only thing we have need of. I think this story, too, is a picture of Advent for me. I want to choose to sit and give myself over to Jesus, but I'm too busy with all of the preparations. I also think this is why for children, Christmas is so magical. Children aren't concerned with all of the things that make Christmas busy; they're just excited about the gifts they are going to receive. In a very real way, that's exactly what Advent is about. Advent is being excited for the gift we are receiving at Christmas, not the presents wrapped under the tree, but God Himself. Advent is looking forward to receiving the person who loves us most in this world. Now, if I were reading this post, I would probably be rolling my eyes by this point and saying, "That is all well and good, but what do you expect me to do, Michaela? Not buy my kids presents this year and tell them I'm being like Mary?" No, I do not recommend that, to be clear. What I do recommend, however, is not seeking the "Christmas spirit" in all of the things associated with Christmas (like the decorations, the cookies, presents, etc.). It's a lesson in the Grinch that makes more sense for adults than it does for children, I think. The grinch reflects that Christmas "came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags," and that's the truth for us, too. Christmas can come and go and without really touching us if we are focused on the ribbons, boxes, or bags. Instead, I invite you to take a deep breath when things get to be too much. I invite you to remember that the things we are worried about (the decorations, presents, and cookies) are all good things but they are not the one thing we are in need of. Every time you start to feel frazzled and worried like Martha, I invite you to close your eyes and imagine that you get to sit at the feet of Jesus, even if it's just for a moment. Preparing our hearts for the Lord isn't like preparing for your in-laws. Preparing your heart for Jesus is knowing we have nothing we can offer Him, and letting Him in to the messiness just the same. This week, I pray that you will experience the joy of anticipation that characterises the Advent season. Peace, Michaela 11/30/2018 0 Comments The Ties That Bind As a person whose job it is to coordinate a faith formation program, I spend a fair amount of time reflecting on my own experiences of religious education growing up. As some of you may recall, I was a fairly quiet and introverted child (it's a shock now, I know, but it's true!) and while I feel a certain vague fondness for Sunday school classes, there isn't a whole lot that I remember from them (as I spent a good deal of time lost inside my own head). As far as theology or faith practices go, this is true for my teen years as well. If you asked me to tell you what I learned in Sunday school or youth group concerning theology or faith tradition, I'm not sure I would have been able to tell you.
As a side note, once I went to undergrad (at a Christian -not Catholic- college) I would discover that there was a lot of theology kicking around in the back of my mind. I'd discover that I knew the Bible way better than a lot of my peers (even if I couldn't quote the reference of the book, chapter, and verse, the stories were still there). I found a lot of things that I had just taken for granted and it had never occurred to me that other Christians might not agree with (like our teachings about Saints and Mary, or the Eucharist) but these things aren't the point of this blog. The point is, if you'd asked me as a high school what I'd learned at Sunday school and in Youth Group, or at the conventions and retreats my parents sent me to, I probably would have said something like this: We are supposed to love and serve people like Jesus loved and served people. Here's why. I had a profound encounter with the Holy Spirit on the first retreat I ever went on as a teen. On this retreat, my heart was blown wide open and filled with the love and peace of God. I've never cried as much as I cried that weekend (and I cry a lot) I wept for sadness, I wept for joy, I wept because people around me were feeling emotions too big to contain themselves. The retreat was a "Paschal Mystery Retreat" which basically means it focuses on Jesus' passion, death, and resurrection as a means of breaking open your own life. I didn't really remember that this was true until several months later on Holy Thursday. I distinctly remember sitting in the choir loft at my home parish and hearing the story of Jesus washing the disciples' feet (which I'd literally heard dozens of times by this point) and just being completely overwhelmed by it as though it was the first time I'd ever heard it. I wept as I listened to the story and was again overwhelmed by God's love for us. I remember that our priest gave a particularly uninspiring homily after that reading, but it didn't matter because Jesus had spoken to me that day. It changed my life. Suddenly I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. I knew exactly who I was supposed to be. Maybe not in terms of a career or in terms of who I would become, but those things didn't seem to matter anymore either, because Jesus was real and he was present in me. I knew then that I had to just go out and love people everywhere I went. And that was the theology I stuck with. That was the scripture I based my entire teenage life around. I was not perfect at it, far from it in fact, but it grounded me in a profound way as a teen. I was (and am) a very emotional being and it's easy for me to get swept up in other people's emotions and swept up in my own. For me, this concept was a way to check myself. It was (and sometimes still is) a way for me to bring my emotions up short and focus on what really matters. For me, this scripture represented who Jesus really was and who I was called to be. So, what does this have to do with our Family Night that focused on the Theological virtues? And why am I telling you that what I took away from my "faith formation" had little to do with the classes my parents sent me to? For two reasons, first because I hope you can see the ties between this story and the virtue of love and charity but more importantly, to say that we never really know what is going to speak to teens (or to any of us). The Lord works in all sorts of ways, through all sorts of means, which is why Edge is formatted the way it is. I hope you noticed on Wednesday night that Edge isn't structured like a class with lecturing; Edge is games and fellowship, it's the sharing of stories (along with theology), and it's giving teens a chance to talk to each other (and the Core Team) about what those principles actually mean in everyday life. My hope is not only that we are teaching lofty theology (which I believe we are) but that we are teaching grounding theology that will help your teens be rooted in faith, rooted in virtues. It's hard to be a Catholic. It's hard as an adult and I think it's even harder as a teenager, but I hope in sharing faith the way the Edge Core Team does, we are able to make it a little easier. Or, at the very least, show that it is worthwhile. At the beginning of the year, I met with the Edge Core Team members individually and asked them questions about their personal "theology" so to speak. Then we met as a group and I asked each person to share a story about their faith journey, a place where God met them. I was struck in meetings and as we went around the table by how different each of our journeys have been, and yet how similar. The ties that bind this Core Team to their belief in God are faith, hope, and charity in some of the darkest, most desperate moments of our lives. Each one of us has different grounding principles. Each one of us has more to learn about theology and about God. But each one of us has met God in a tangible way, and each of us longs for your teens to encounter Him too. We pray that they are meeting Him here and that they come away with ties that bind them to Christ. Thank you for joining us for an Edge session! May the virtues bestowed on you in your baptism have cause to flourish this week. Peace, Michaela 11/16/2018 2 Comments lift up your hearts Our culture is inundated with messages about the importance our hearts. Think of pretty much any Disney movie you've ever watched; themes run from 'Let your heart be your guide,' to 'Be true to your heart,' to 'a dream is a wish your heart makes.' Think about the kind of commercials we see, you know the ones I mean- you're watching a commercial about a puppy with a little boy, then the scene shifts and the dog is a little older and the boy's a teenager, it shifts again and the boy is a young adult and the dog is greying around the muzzle and clearly has arthritis. The young man puts the dog on the leash and brings him out to the car where the dog happily sits in the front seat with him. Meanwhile, you're left sniffling and pretending you've got a hunk of dust in your eye. What's this commercial trying to sell you? A car. I can say with complete honesty that when I think about buying a car, I want to buy a Subaru.
We like to think that we are really great rational thinkers. We like to believe that the decisions we make are thought out with great care but research shows this is not really the case. Neuroscientists and Psychologists agree that when it comes to decision making, we aren't making decisions with our heads at all; we are making them with our hearts (even when we think the opposite is true). There is a lot of wisdom in this sentiment. Our metaphorical hearts are the center for our emotions, the center for our decision making, the place out of which comes love and hate, joy and anger. It's why scripture mentions the heart over and over, encouraging us to keep our hearts fixed on the Lord, telling us to love the Lord with our whole heart, and cautioning us to guard our hearts. The word "heart" comes up over 725 times in the Bible- that's a lot! (For comparison's sake, the word "love" only appears just over 680 times in scripture.) So, by this point you are probably wondering to yourself where I'm headed with this; you're probably asking 'wasn't this week's session about liturgy?' And you're right, it was, so let me tell you why I am writing about the heart. We offer a lot of things when we come to Mass, you know this. The first, most obvious, thing we offer is money during 'offer'tory. We offer the gifts of bread and wine for the Eucharist. Some of you might even say you offer praise and worship in prayer and in song; we offer our gifts and talents, we offer our words and thoughts. Mass is a constant dialogue between the Lord and us, it is a reminder of the sacrifice He made and it's our 'sacrifice' we offer in return. There's this great passage in Hebrews chapter 10 that is basically summed up like this: In the Old Testament, the Israelite Priests offered "blood" (animals) sacrifices to atone for sins and reunite themselves to God. But in the Letter to the Hebrews Paul tells us that God takes no pleasure in that sort of sacrifice, rather Jesus (the Lamb of God, the unblemished sacrifice) was offered once for the forgiveness of all. No longer do we have priests who offer sacrifices for us and commandments on stone tablets, rather we have the one perfect sacrifice in Jesus and the commands of the Lord written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit. He goes on to tell us that we should offer a fitting sacrifice of praise. I could write a lot of things that I find beautiful at Mass, but I want to stay focused on our hearts. There is a part of the Mass that gets me every single time I go. After Father gets everything laid out for Communion he says "Pray brothers and sisters that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the Father Almighty." we reply "May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of His name, for our good and the good of all His holy church." He says a little prayer in response, then the priest says these words: "Lift up your hearts." We respond with, "We lift them up to the Lord." This part speaks to me every single time I hear it and it has since I was a kid. I think it's always stood out to me because it implies that our hearts are part of the sacrifice (with the bread and the wine) that we are making to the Lord. In this moment in Mass, I am always overcome by the profound challenge it is for me when I stop to think about what exactly those words mean. It's a challenge because when I say that I am lifting my heart up to the Lord, I am in essence saying that I want Him to transform my heart in the way He transforms those little wafers into his body and that red wine into His blood. When I say that I am lifting up my heart, I am saying that I am giving Him my emotions. I'm giving Him my passions, I'm giving Him my anger, I'm giving Him my joy, my pain, my desires, my sorrows, and everything in between. In giving Him my heart and thus my emotions, I am essentially giving up any illusion I had of control over my life. It is this moment in Mass, when I am offering up my heart, that I find myself completely overwhelmed by what it feels like to surrender my will to the One who made all of heaven and earth. There is almost invariably a struggle as a tiny corner of my mind says, "well not this part, this part is mine." There's inevitably a little (or big) part of my heart and emotions that think, "I've got this, there's no need for God there." but the truth is that those are always the places I most need to surrender to God. I think the word "surrender" has gotten a bad rap. I hear that word and I picture wars, I picture people holding up a white flag, and giving up a claim to something they've fought desperately for. When I hear the word surrender what I see is people losing. In a way, that is true of surrendering to God, too. In a way, I am giving up something (or a lot of somethings). I am giving up my autonomy, I am giving up my stubbornness, I am giving up pride. When I surrender to God, I am giving up a lot of things that make me who I am on a day to day basis. But here's the key: I am not just losing something when I surrender, I am gaining something. When I surrender my heart to God, I am overcome with a peace the world cannot give, I am overcome with love and forgiveness (for myself and for others). When I surrender my heart, it doesn't feel like I am losing something because God doesn't take it and keep my offering for himself. He takes my heart, just as he takes the bread and wine, and he transforms it before giving it back to me, still my heart but somehow more. This is the beauty of liturgy for me, this is the beauty of Mass. When we fully enter into liturgy, with our whole heart (not just our body, heart-lessly going through the motions) we come in contact with the Lord and we leave changed. When we surrender, we receive more than we can possibly comprehend. This week, I pray that you will enter into the liturgy and come away with something that speaks to you on a new level. I pray that you will have a powerful experience of the God who literally died to experience communion with you. May God bless your week and bless your holiday. Peace, Michaela I want to start by asking you to imagine a few different moments in your lives. Start by remembering a moment when you felt like no one loved you. Remember a time when you felt in the core of your being that you were unworthy and undeserving of being loved. Imagine the feeling of that darkness and isolation. When I imagine some of those moments in my life I am filled with a sense of dread and hopelessness settles like a rock in my stomach.
Now, I want you to imagine the opposite. Remember a time that you felt completely loved in your life. Close your eyes and go to that moment, a moment when you felt completely ensconced in love. A moment when you knew that you were loved, treasured, cared for. When you knew without a doubt, even if it was just for a moment, that you were exactly who you were meant to be and knew that you were good enough just as you are. Imagining that moment makes my heart feel fuller, fills the pit of my stomach with warmth, and brings a smile to the corners of my lips. I don’t know what your church was like growing up, but when I was growing up, my perception was that God was like a judge, counting my every little sin and waiting to dole out punishment accordingly. It seemed to me that the God I was taught about in church was sitting somewhere (up in the clouds) on a throne, watching me fail to live up to the standard preached on Sundays. And that’s the truth, isn’t it? God is watching us fail to live up to His perfect standard every day. The truth is that we can never measure up to the standards of God. We can never fully obey every commandment, never rid our mortal hearts completely of jealousy or malice, never love everyone we meet wholly and unconditionally. It’s just our fallen nature and our fallen world, we can only strive after these things, work toward these things, pray that God will help us be these things. As a teen, my perception of God was that He wanted me to be good but instead of watching me be good, He was watching me make mistakes and struggle. When I was in undergrad, I used to bring my Bible to breakfast with me. I’d go to the dining hall early when I knew no one I knew would be there because it was the only time I’d have alone to pray and focus in solely on God all day. I used to sit down with my breakfast and say a little prayer and let my Bible open to a random page. It was one of those mornings that I stumbled across 1John 4:16 which says: God is love. Whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in them. It took my breath away. I remember sitting in the dining hall, tears prickling my eyes because that verse hit me like a freight train. It was a revelation, which seems silly considering I’d grown up in the church, but it was, nonetheless. I was enraptured with the idea that God is love because it doesn’t only tell us what He is, but also what he is not. There is a famous passage, 1Corinthians 13:4-8, that tells us what love is and what love is not. It tells us love is not jealous, pompous, inflated, or rude; love is not a seeker of it’s own interests. Love is not quick-tempered, it doesn’t brood over injury, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing. Paul tells us Love is patient and kind, it rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails. In all of those sentences, replace the word “love” with the word “God.” God is patient, God is kind. God bears all things. God hopes all things. God endures all things. God never fails. On All Souls Day I had the pleasure of hearing Father Jack Long preach at daily Mass. (Which is not to say that it’s not a pleasure to hear Father Ellis at daily Mass every other day; it is, and I learn a lot from his homilies.) Father Jack said something really beautiful that morning that I have thought a lot about since. First, he defined heaven as being in the presence of God’s love; hell he defined as the absence of God’s love. He further said heaven, purgatory, and hell are not places (like we imagine them to be, with either flames or fluffy white clouds); they are states of being (so rather than saying someone is in purgatory, they are in the state of purgatory.). He elaborated, saying that some people don’t believe in hell, but he does. He knows hell is real because he reads the newspaper each day. Hell is the absence of God’s love and when we look around the world today, it’s clear how absent God’s love is from our own lives and from the lives of those around the world. I confess this whole thing was a challenge for me to wrap my mind around and while some part of me recognized this as a profoundly beautiful sentiment, I didn't understand why. I’ve turned that bit over and over in my mind and heart; I've thought about all of the evil in the world, all of the places where God’s love is not present, and I think I’ve found the reason that this part of his homily (which was a harsh reminder of the reality we live in) stuck with me. It’s because there is Good News in this. Stick with me! The Good News is that while the absence of God’s love on earth is certainly a pervasive problem, the opposite is also true. God’s love (heaven) is present on earth. This is, in essence, the Gospel. Jesus doesn’t tell us that the “Kingdom of God is somewhere far away,” he says “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” In the Lord’s prayer he doesn’t say “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done when everyone dies and comes to heaven.” He says “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What is God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven? Jesus tells us: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. And love your neighbor as yourself.” God is love and His will is love. Now, I don’t know about you, but to me, it still seems impossible to live up to the will of God. (Maybe even more than it did when it was the ten commandments ringing in my mind.) How can I hope to live up to that “greatest” commandment? I find comfort in what Jesus says when even Peter, who walked with Jesus and listened to Jesus teaching, who was the rock upon which our church was built, asks Jesus “who then can be saved?” and Jesus replies, “For man this is impossible.” In my head when I read this, I imagine a pregnant pause, I imagine the hearts of the disciples sinking in despair, but then He says, “But with God all things are possible.” There is the Good News again. The truth is that it is impossible for us to live up to God’s standard. It is impossible to ever be good enough to earn heaven. But the Good News is that through the unbounded love of God, heaven is possible. Remind yourself again of that most perfect moment in your life, that moment when you felt loved unconditionally. That moment is a tiny glimpse of heaven here on earth. The Gospel is that we are given the gift of an eternity in God’s love, thus our mission is to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Our mission is to seek to bring God’s unconditional love to the places that need it most, to let people experience the “state” of heaven as surely as we experience the “state” of hell. This week, I pray that you may find joy in the knowledge of God’s unconditional, unbounded love for you and in turn that you may carry that love to new places so desperately in need of it. Blessings, Michaela 10/31/2018 1 Comment "How lucky i am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."- Winnie the Pooh There was a point in my childhood when I got really irrationally worried about death. Not about my death, somehow that has never really concerned me, but about the death of my parents, and my sisters, and my other family. I can remember lying in bed awake at night and my heart would start pounding and I would feel so panicked I couldn't breathe, all at the thought of someone I loved dying.
Needless to say, I tackled this fear in much the same way I tackled most of my fears and anxieties as a child, I buried myself in books and in my imagination. In short, I wasn't dealing directly with it at all. However, there is an awful lot of death in children's books; in Harry Potter (my favorite series of books both growing up and as an adult) there are at least a dozen deaths of characters you've come to love. There's death in The Redwall books by Brian Jacques, death in Lord of the Rings, death in Where the Red Fern Grows and Old Yeller; I could go on, but the truth is there are few books I remember reading at that time in my life that didn't feature character death. Strange as it may sound, I mourned those characters as a child. I wept for their death, felt the ache of loss, but I learned how to move on. The anxiety about people whom I loved dying essentially ceased. In spite of this, when my Great Aunt Joan, with whom I was very close, passed away I didn't handle it very well. I mourned her death for a really long time and there wasn't much that seemed to ease the burden of mourning. There were a couple of things that did help, though. My Aunt Joan was very wise, and one thing she told me when I was young was if there was someone I didn't like, I should pray for them, not that God would change them, but that I could see who it was God had created them to be (and thus love them, too). Whenever I did that, I would think of my aunt Joan and I would hear her voice in my ear and I'd start to pray. It reminded me of her, of the way she lived her life, the person she was and I felt better knowing that a piece of who she was, was still alive and present in this world because of me. Secondly, the church I grew up in had the custom of inviting people to say the names of their loved ones out loud when we were praying the prayers of the faithful. I was surprised one week, months after her death, when I heard a voice say, "Joan Coyle." One of the girls I went to school with said my aunt's name during the prayers of the faithful and that really touched me. This girl, who I wasn't even really friends with, remembered her name and felt it was important to pray for her. It meant a lot to me then, even if I didn't quite understand why. I would learn much later that the church has theology surrounding both of those things. In praying and in emulating my aunt Joan, I was experiencing what it feels like to be part of the Communion of Saints. In essence, we believe that all of the faithful, whether on earth, in purgatory, or in heaven are united through the Eucharist. It was, as Sirius Black suggests in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, that "the ones who love us never truly leave us." The church teaches that offering Mass is the most powerful way to pray for a person's soul, and while that Mass wasn't specifically offered for her, there was a moment in which the entire community was praying for her. Again, in this, I was experiencing what it means to be part of the communion of Saints, part of the Body of Christ. Through prayer, through Mass, and through the communion of Saints, I am able to echo the sentiments of Tolkien in The Return of the King when he writes, "His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom." In this month of November, when we are asked in a particular way to remember and pray for our loved ones who have died, I pray that you too may find comfort in the Communion of the Saints, in our community's prayer, and in the wisdom that's been hard earned through grief. I invite you to find time to pray with your family this month for your loved ones who have died, to offer one another comfort, and to pray for our loved ones that we may see them again in heaven. Peace, Michaela 10/25/2018 1 Comment Why did he choose those disciples?When you imagine Jesus calling the disciples, what do you picture? For much of my life, I imagined Jesus approaching a couple of 35-year-old men out on a boat fishing and asking them to come follow Him. I imagined that the tax collector, Matthew, looked much like the man whom my parents took their taxes to, middle-aged and balding. And from the religious art casually shown to me as a child in books and in our bulletin I believed that "middle-aged" men might be a generous age bracket; Peter is often depicted with grey hair and a beard, from those images, old men might be a better description. Last night, in her talk Leah told the kids that Jesus called sinners, He called fishermen, and tax collectors, a zealot, and even a teenager. When she said that, I was reminded of something my New Testament professor told us in my undergrad program: It is likely that all of the disciples, with the exception of Peter, were teenagers. Where is that in the Bible? you may be asking, and rightly so, because it is never explicitly stated. However, there are several indicators in scripture, in the tradition of our church, and in the context of their time. I don't want to make this post too long, but if you're curious about why I say this send me an email or give me a call and we'll chat. So, why is their age important? To point out that the people Jesus chose to follow Him were not what we might imagine and we can learn something about Jesus by knowing why he picked them. So, why would Jesus have chosen teens, not much older than some of the eighth graders in our program, to be his followers? Why would he have chosen teenagers to be the people to carry out His mission, to build His church, to bring about the Kingdom of God? People much more qualified than I am have probably given really fantastic answers to this question, but in my humble opinion, I think it's firstly because teenagers are naturally seekers. Teenagers are naturally inclined to challenge and to question. Maybe this hasn't always seemed like a positive thing (if you are a parent or teacher of teens). It's hard to be challenged and to be fought with, it's exhausting to try to reason with someone who just wants to keep asking you why something is. But I think this is exactly why Jesus chose them to be His disciples. Jesus wanted people who had questions because it means that they are actively looking for God. Secondly, I think Jesus wanted teens to be His disciples because teenagers are passionate, because they are emotional. It's simply a matter of biology, between the hormones and the frontal cortex development that is happening in that stage of life, teens are full of emotions. Maybe this doesn't seem like such a great thing either, if you are living with a teen whose emotions seem to be running rampant; making them impulsive and moody, making them angry or sad. But I believe that this, too, is a reason that Jesus chose them. In Revelation (3:15-16) Jesus says "I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot... So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." Teens are rarely lukewarm (it seems to me, at least). They may be wrong (or they may be right) but they are passionate and they are willing to fight for what they believe. The last thing I'd like to comment on about teens is their hunger for love and for affirmation. In teaching and in parish life, I am always struck by how desperately teens want to be loved, by how important it is for them to be seen and to be heard. I wouldn't necessarily say we grow out of that desire to be loved, but it seems that adults learn to cope with not having that desire filled. Why does their desire to be loved make them the perfect candidates for his disciples? Because God is Love (John 4:16). He is the perfect fulfillment of that longing to be loved and to be known. Of course someone who is love would want to be surrounded by people who need that and are eager to receive that. Then once he has filled them up with that love, He can send them out to share it with others. He does that within the Gospels by sending them into towns and He also commissions them to build a church that functions that way when he ascends into heaven. So, why did I write about teens this week? In part, I chose this topic to tell you the kind of people we are hoping your children are learning to be in our program. I hope that your children become challengers and seekers, become passionate and emotional, and become people who long for the love of God (some of them already seem to be) and through that, I pray they come to know Jesus. I also hope if you are struggling with your teen at home that you can see some of those things as qualities that Jesus would choose in a disciple and feel a bit of hope. But more importantly, I chose this topic because it challenged me this week. It challenged me to look at my life and see if I am the type of person Jesus would choose to be His disciple today. Have I stopped seeking Him? Have I stopped asking questions with no easy answer? Am I passive about the things happening in the world around me? Am I still longing for the love of God or have I tried to fill that with something else? While I have grown in some ways in my faith life, I have also regressed in other ways (especially looking at those characteristics above). There are things in each of those areas that I am praying God will give me an openness to. I won't bore you with the details of my self-reflection, but I invite you this week to take some time and reflect on you faith journey with Christ. May the Lord bless you this week, may He meet you where you are and may you, with your whole heart, respond 'yes' to His call to follow Him. Peace, Michaela 10/18/2018 1 Comment Dying, Living, ProclaimingWe had a beautiful night last night. I was moved by your children's prayerfulness, by their willingness to engage in the evening, and by their open hearts. We played games, listened to talks, reflected and journaled, went to Mass, had a candle-lit vigil, and so much more. Our evening was filled with laughter, joy, prayer, and life. We also heard stories of death. We heard stories of ways that sin can hurt us and reflected on where there might be sin hurting us in our own lives. We talked about how "dying" to the parts of us that are sinful and pulling us away from Christ can lead us to new life. And then we talked about how we are called to be heroes in everyday life, and what God is asking us to do with our lives. As I prepared for my talk (about how the Paschal Mystery works in my life; about sinning, suffering, and rising to new life) I reflected that more often than not (in my life, at least) it seems I'm drawn away from God, not by huge, glaring sins that are clearly SINS (like murder or adultery) but by a sin I can only name as a fierce independence. There's nothing wrong with being independent, certainly. I grew up on a farm and my parents raised me telling me that I could become anything I dreamed of being, telling me that I was strong enough, I was smart enough, I was good enough. It's A+ parenting, truly; I have amazing parents. But I've lived my whole life telling myself those things are true; telling myself that when things are hard, I don't need to ask for help, I just have to push through. I tell myself that I am capable of anything I set my mind too, that I can do everything at the same time; I can juggle a schedule and make it through everything on my plate. I've justified my way into all sorts of things, all sorts of situations, with nothing but good intentions, saying this is for the kingdom of God. I've said to myself I can do it all. But the truth is that I can't. Not even close. I cannot tell you the number of times I have started something (often with prayerful consideration) and then I've attacked it. I've worked and I've worked at it, and then I work a little more. I push myself and stretch myself as thin as I possibly can and I find myself stressed, and grumpy, and tired. I get to that point and I just drop. I drop to my knees and I realize that I have been pushing and striving and running a race that I say and believe is for God, without God being in it. It's not to say that God doesn't want me there, it's not to say that He doesn't have plans for me, and it's not to say God was not in the picture. But it is to say that I didn't enter the race with God as my Master, nor even as a partner. And then, late in the game when things are desperate, I start praying. I ask God to show up in my ministry, in my friendships, in my life, and He does. Just like that. Inevitably, He shows up and things get easier, new ways to accomplish things show up, my schedule clears, I find the right words, and my soul can take a deep breath (finally). Without fail, God shows up for me and I am left standing there speechless, in awe of the things He can accomplish if I just stand back for a minute and listen. And I find myself wondering what would have happened if I'd managed to listen along every step of the way. How many struggles could I have saved myself? How many frustrations would have disappeared or been abated? How much more would that project have felt like God's work? How much more joy and peace could I have had? I asked the Edge participants last night to write something they wanted to die to so they could rise to new life with Christ. I told them that even though I wasn't going to ask them to share what they wanted to die to, I would share with them what I was writing on my piece of paper to leave at the foot of the cross. I wrote that I wanted to die to my pride and my independence. I wanted to die to feeling like I have to do everything on my own; feeling like I have to be good enough, and smart enough, and strong enough. The story I told them was from when I was in high school and my first year of college (almost 7 years ago, at this point) but I still struggle with the same sin that keeps me from being as close to God as I want to be. I still struggle to let go of my illusion of control and to just let God. If I'm being honest (and I'm doing my best to be) it seems like this is something a lot of adults struggle with. Is it any wonder Jesus says people with childlike faith will inherit the Kingdom of heaven? For children, believing isn't as hard. God is there, He is good, He loves me, He'll take care of me. Somewhere along the way, we start thinking we have to take care of ourselves. And maybe that's because in a sense we do. We grow up and we move out, suddenly we have a job, we have kids, we have people who depend on us, we have responsibilities and we forget that there is someone who still wants to take care of us. We forget that God never stopped being our loving father who wants to dote on His beloved child, He never stopped wanting to help us and wanting to see us succeed. Maybe you aren't like me. Maybe you pray every step of the way and you know God's got this. Maybe there's something else in your life that is holding you back from the closeness of God. Whatever it is in your life, I invite you to pray and to die to it. I invite you to stop suffering and struggling, let it go and live in the freedom of loving Father who wants you to have life. I pray that God blesses your week and that He gives you an open heart to experience His love in a new way this week. Peace, Michaela Last night at Edge, we were blessed to have Jedd from our Core Team lead us in our session. He tackled some big challenges last night, answered some hard (but beautiful) questions from your children, and helped them to look more deeply into the mysteries of our faith. We talked a lot last night about obedience, and about the people who have said yes to God; like Mary and like Jesus. In small groups, we reflected on where God was calling us to say "yes" to Him in our lives. Now, as Catholic adults, I'm sure you've also spent time thinking about and praying about where God wants you to say yes to Him, so I want to offer an extension of this line of reflection. I invite you to go read the Magnificat found in Luke 1:46-55 when you start reflecting. After reading the Magnificat, I allowed myself to imagine what it would be like if an angel came to me and told me I was pregnant, and honestly, my response would probably be nothing like her's. My inclination is to believe that my initial response would be anxiety (probably bordering on panic). But that's not the case for Mary, the angel tells her this and she says the modern day equivalent of, "Cool, bro. Let's do it." and then goes to her cousin's house. Once she gets to her cousin's house she is so happy about what God is doing that she sings a song (seriously. The Bible says she literally sings a song, like this is a Disney movie). Now I, by nature and by training, am a singer- I sing all of the time, I have two degrees in music- but I am going to go ahead and guess that in this situation, my first instinct would not be to sing a song. But not only does Mary sing a song, in this song she calls herself blessed. And I can see why she would feel that way, but my honest thought is that I would be so worried about what was going to happen to me and how the challenges I was about to face would affect my life that I sincerely doubt I would call myself blessed. So, this week in preparing for and talking about Mary's fiat, I was challenged to look at the attitude with which I say yes to God. Jesus tells a parable in Matthew (21:28-31) where a son is asked to do something by his father and he tells him that he won't do it. In the end, though, he has a change of heart and he does it anyway. Perhaps it is me projecting my own experience with my parents on this story, but it calls to mind times when my parents would ask me to do something I had no interest in doing. At first, I would refuse but eventually, I too would have a change of heart and I'd come around (most of the time at least). I've taken great comfort in that parable, because I imagine that the brother who does what he is asked is still probably not thrilled about it, but he does it anyway and Jesus says he's the one who will enter the kingdom of God. Mary's response to God challenges that view for me. It is not enough to simply say 'yes' to God and go about doing His will as though it is some favor to Him. Rather, from Mary's response, I feel we are called to find joy in the fact that we have been called to something hard. We are called to find delight in what the Lord is doing to and through us. We are challenged to remember that in our initiation into the Church, we are called to do Christ's saving work and in that we are all blessed. We are blessed to be part of this Holy family, blessed to be called children of God, and blessed to be sent forth to do His work. May we, following the example of Mary, our patroness, always be cheerful in our giving and our doing. I pray the Lord will bless you with abundant peace and joy this week. 10/5/2018 0 Comments Long Live the king When we receive the sacrament of baptism, we are baptized "Priest, Prophet, and King." That sounds really great, but what does it actually mean? It's a big question, too big for one night, certainly, so on Wednesday we settled for taking a small piece and starting to think about it. What does it mean to be King? To answer that we had to answer some other questions first: What kind of a King is Jesus? And then: What is our relationship to Him?
We had a lot of fun, we played games and there was a lot of laughter, but we also had some great conversation reflecting on Jesus' Kingship and the many names the authors of the Bible have given Him. In revelation he is called "King of Kings," "King of the Ages," "Prince of Peace," "Wonder Counselor;" in the Gospels he is called "King of the Jews," "Light of the World;" in Psalms, "King of Glory." I could go on, but I'm sure you don't need me to. Neither did your middle schoolers. We compared what a King is in our imagination to who Jesus is; we found that even though Jesus has all of those titles saying He's a King, He's not much like the things we imagine when we think of a King. He wasn't what the Jewish people imagined while they waited for a Messiah either. As I was preparing for this session, it occurred to me that while it is certainly true that Jesus is King, I more often give Him other titles. For me, Jesus is Comforter, Encourager, Protector, Provider, Leader, and Healer, to name a few. Jesus is my best friend and He is my constant support. He pushes me to do things I could never have imagined I would do. In my trials and in my (many) failures He is there to pick me up, brush me off, and tell me to try again. In times that I feel I can never measure up, He is there to tell me I am a beloved child of God. When I am heartbroken, when I am lost, when the world is unfair and unkind, Jesus heals and comforts, He covers the wounds of this world with Love. In all things, Jesus is my ever present help and companion. My reflections on my relationship with Jesus were similar to the reflections your children had on their relationships with Jesus; it gave us another hint about what it means to be a King. In the Gospels Jesus tells us in a variety of ways what it means to be a King. He speaks about service and about humility in several different places and in several different ways, but in my humble opinion He says it best in John 13:12-15. After washing the disciples' feet He says this: "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set an example that you should do as I have done for you." We are the Body of Christ, we are baptized 'Priest, Prophet, and King.' We've heard those words 1000 times, we sing songs about them, we tell stories about them, we've listened to our fair share of homilies about them. But how different might our world be if we truly believed them? How different would our world be if we lived them out? For me, the challenge this Edge session set is to live out my baptismal call to be a 'King' more fully. I was challenged to look at the way I described Jesus, the one true King, and see if I am living like the sort of King that He is. Am I the words I used to describe Jesus? Am I an encourager? A comforter? A healer? The challenge from this Edge session is to serve as Jesus served His disciples and to serve as He is serving us still. On Wednesday I invited the Edge Participants to pray the words, "Jesus, I invite you to be the King of my heart" for the rest of the week whenever they pray. I challenged them to allow Jesus to guide their hearts, to direct their loves and passions so that they can be the type of King that Jesus is. I invite you to do the same. May the Lord bless you with His abundant love and peace this week. |