Stop Looking and Start Believing

Elijah will indeed come and restore all things
but I tell you that Elijah has already come –Matthew 9:11

Today’s blog entry will be very brief.  First and foremost, I wish to offer my prayers for the children and people killed yesterday in Newtown, CT.  May the Lord lovingly receive their souls and may He grant us his mercy to cope and recover from this tragedy. 

I spend a considerable amount of time looking for signs and signals.  I tend to be very stationary and do not move unless provoked by rational thought and compelling evidence.  So when it comes to matters of faith, I am still stationary and do not move unless compelled to do so.  My conversion to Catholicism came during a High School retreat in 2001.  I was very new to the faith and was almost completely unfamiliar with anything Catholic.  However, I had an experience in adoration that altered my course of life.  Looking back on these 11 years, I see that the initial conversion was not a life-altering conversion because it was so brief.  

However, it is not insignificant because it called me to repentance and into full communion with the Church.  The encounter, with what I know now, with Christ moved me to become a believer in Christ.  What it did not do was magically heal me of many wounds I had been carrying to that point.  My darker moments in my life were yet to come.  I feel those confessions may have to wait for another blog entry.  Needless to say, some habits may have changed with an encounter with the Lord but some long held behaviors did not.  I still would look for signs and wonders to remind me that God was present in my life.  I did not believe deeply in God because my memory of the retreat would fade and I required a renewal of sorts. 

That renewal would not come.  However, the faith remained though it vacillated often between radical Catholic and nominal Catholic.  The faith inspired me to start to participate in some events and to do some charity.  I began to give back in catechesis and youth ministry.  During deployments, I also had ministries where I participated in as well.  These did not have the power of the Holy Spirit in my first conversion but they had the grace to continually renew me in my faith.  These little events became the signs and wonders because I participated in the life of the Church. 

The life of the Church is the participation we are called to.  The Church is a sacrament for us to receive grace.  It is a visible sign instituted by Christ to give grace.  We can also give to the Church of ourselves to help others to help bring God to others.  Just as the people in Jesus’ time were looking for Elijah to come, we too are looking for our own Elijahs in our lives.  And the response from Christ is the same to them as to us:  Elijah has already come.  Stop looking and start believing.  

Service to the Lord and Service

Wisdom is vindicated by her works-Matthew 11:19

For most of the year 2010, I was deployed in Afghanistan in the Kandahar region.  Amongst my fellow soldiers, my faith was known and for the most part respected.  A few days before we were to leave Joint Base Lewis-McChord to head to Afghanistan, the Battalion was given a 4-day pass where most took to Seattle to engage in whatever they thought they would only be able to do for these 4 days.  As a result of a couple of intermingling situations, I decided that I would spend my 4 days with nuns at a convent in Lacey, Washington.  They offered me a price that was far greater than what I could afford in Seattle and it also catered to my perception that I should take a mini retreat just before my deployment. 

This context is to help to make sense of some of the faith-based initiatives that happened while deployed.  The first was an ardent defense of prayer when it first came under attack in country from one my soldiers.  He accused me of not doing my job because I was always in my bible or praying.  I simply let him vent his frustrations and pulled him aside and offered a few gentle, but strong, words to remind him of a few things.  I reminded him that he does not chastise me in any way because I had earned my Sergeant’s stripes and reminded him of his status as a private.  I also encouraged him to take up any issues with my faith with the squad leader and platoon sergeant.  With this, he came to understand my history with permission to pray often and also saw that I did not act as other leaders by not punishing him for his perception of my works.  I listened to him, addressed his issues, and offered him alternatives to my guidance if he so chose.  Ultimately, he would leave the service after this tour.  But, to this day, he goes out of his way to greet me whenever he sees me in common places.  (He works in restaurants and I like to dine out).  This is a tremendous affirmation of the unorthodox leadership skills I presented on deployment. 

In a move that would enrage organized atheists from coast to coast, I approached two of my soldiers and asked them if they would give up some of their free (relatively) time to construct an altar for the make-shift chapel we had.  They jumped at the opportunity to use their freshly minted training in carpentry.  The post Chaplain used his personal money to have some stain and polyurethane shipped over to complete the altar we had created.  In deference to my soldiers and our gift to the base, the Chaplain allowed me to preside over a Catholic Liturgy of the Word service as the first use of the altar.  The Chaplain was protestant and a good man.  As an aside, I liked to lead Liturgy of the Word services on Sundays to cater to the Catholics in the unit.  However, my leadership offered this to the post and soon I was preaching to all the Catholics on the post.  Since many of the workers on post were of Filipino descent, I had anywhere from 20-40 on any given Sunday.  I would offer them Starbursts candy to give something to take as we could not have the Eucharist.  Starbursts can never even come close to the Eucharist, but it is a gift they can take.  This Catholic offering of the Word in an organized manner continued to happen for several months and at several base camps that I would eventually find assignment. 

The final initiative was not my own.  A soldier moved by some inward stirring and wrestling with the Holy Spirit approached me after one Sunday Service and declared that he wanted to be Catholic.  So I began a rudimentary Catechesis program at the base camp for this soldier.  Often, I would end up preaching about things in these Catechesis Sessions.  One in particular was so Spirit-led that people who were walking past the “chapel”, stopped, came in and sat down.  Included in this were the Chaplain and his assistant.  I preached on the passion and death of the Lord.  I had to talk about this because Christianity is based on the saving love of Christ in his death. 

Many of these things felt like folly.  I have always felt unworthy to do the work of Christ but I am constantly reminded of the simple question ‘If not me, then who?’  The readings for December 14, 2012 speak to this in anticipation during this season of Advent.  The Prophet Isaiah offers a reflection on obedience.  Though short, the Church gives us this reading to invite our reflection on the Gospel.  The prophet tells us that God will “teach [us] what is for [our] good.”  We are not alone and we are not without shepherds and guides.  The people of Israel in antiquity and the people of the Church today seem to be coalescing in their patterns of behavior and thought processes.  The Church comes together with the leaders of many faith traditions and speak heavily to, as the Prophet stated, “hearken[ing] to [his] commandments.”  Most people today understand that the Church is defending itself on multiple fronts to mitigate the secular attempts to discredit and eliminate the faith.  Governments are directly passing accords and laws in affront to religious belief, faith tradition and in contravention of the norms of practice.  People are bombarded by the media blitz to undermine morality.  The Church speaks out with the new evangelization.  Catholics come home.  Let us return to the Lord. 

And the Gospel affirms this message.  Jesus is speaking to the crowds in Galilee but he is speaking to us very clearly.  “To what shall I compare this generation?  It is like children who sit in marketplaces and call to one another… wisdom is vindicated by her works.”  He is addressing the people who have called him and John the Baptist crazy and out of sorts with the status quo.  And Jesus retorts with absoluteness and reminds the people that wisdom is proved by works.  John called the people to repentance and Jesus healed and taught.  He drew the people to himself and continues to draw us today. 

To conclude this lengthy reflection, let us remember that our works show our wisdom.  It would seem prudent to do works of charity and faith so that we can glorify the Lord by our lives.  In doing the Lord’s will and bringing our praise to him, the ancillary effect should be the improved state of the people around us.  And certainly we should not do charity to appease the Lord but because love of neighbor, love of enemy, is the love of the Lord.  Let love in…

Making the Case for Sainthood

There has been none greater than John the Baptist;

yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.-Matthew 11:11

Imagine if the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints (Congregatio de Causis Sanctorum) approached me and you and all the faithful and asked for us to make our own case(s) for sainthood.  Let’s ignore for the sake of the argument that we are not talking about canonization but the actual case for our own sainthood.  The Prefect has literally asked us to make our case for whether or not we should find ourselves in heaven with Jesus.  How should we react? Let us begin this reflection with Mass readings.

The readings for December 13, 2012 (the feast of St Lucy) give us strength and encourage us to pursue a faithful life.  The Prophet Isaiah gives us some interesting images.  First, the image is that the Lord, our God, grasps our right hand.  There are immediately two interpretations that come to my mind.  The first thought, and more likely, is that God is pointing to my need to repent because we are on his left.  The left is a position of subordination and the right is a position of honor, traditionally.  Our 21^st century Catholic Christian understanding can help us to accept this because Jesus tells us that he is seated at the right hand of the Father.  The second thought is a much more provocative reflection.  God freely chooses to stand at our right hand because we graciously honor him in our lives AND because God exalts our freedom to choose to have him stand at our right hand.  This reflection leads me to believe that Jesus’ humble nature is prefigured by Isaiah in this passage even though the passage is about the greatness and strength of God.  Immediately following this thoughtful introduction the Prophet tells us to “fear not, O worm Jacob, O maggot Israel; I will help you, says the LORD.”  These images of the worm and the maggot certainly help us to realize just what God thought of the people of Israel, and of us today.  Together with the grace of God we can accept that though we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we rest in the hope that with a humble heart and a contrite spirit that the Lord will be true to his word that we will help us.  The entire passage from Isaiah is filled with hope and grace but I reflect on one more line from this passage.  The Lord tells us that he “will make of [us] a threshing sledge, sharp, new, and double-edged, to thresh the mountains and crush them, to make the hills like chaff.”  In spite of our fallen nature and in overlooking our sinfulness, God recognizes the penitent ones in his flock.  And the ones who embrace God will be renewed, strengthened and will be able to overcome major obstacles in their lives.  If we are penitent and God bestows upon us his grace, what are the mountains in our lives that we can crush?  Trust in the Lord to overcome pride, greed, lust, gluttony, anger and all other mountains in our lives.  Make them like chaff to be discarded on the winds. 

The Gospel passage offers some interesting reflections for us as well.  Jesus gets the attention of his disciples and those who are listening to his words by stating a publicly held sentiment that there has been none greater than John the Baptist.  Then he moves forward with his message by pointing out that the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist.  This certainly had to stir some controversy.  If the least is better than the widely accepted living saint at the time, then what hope is there for the rest of the people of that time?  My conjecture is that Jesus speaks to purgatory when he makes this statement.  There is truth to the nature of heaven and how only the pure in heart can see God.  The Lord then tells us that the violent are taking the Kingdom of heaven by force.  The Kingdom of heaven here could be metaphorically our own world and Jesus is essentially telling us to be on guard for our own faith so that the secular world does not take faith from us.  What we have here is an implied task from the Lord to fight for our faith and religious freedom.  If the Kingdom of heaven is under siege by violence, her defense is our defense.  By virtue of our baptism, we have a vested interested in our own faith life which is part of the community of faith and is part of the communion we have with God.  The greatest risk during this siege is our own salvation. 

This returns to our case for sainthood.  Even though we are unworthy sinners who have fallen what we have been called to be, we are redeemed only by the grace of God.  We can find comfort in the Holy Mass.  The priest says during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, in prayer, asking God to “look not on our sins but on the faith your Church.”  God has called us to bear fruit and live in a manner which allows him to work through us to witness to the Kingdom of God in our lives.  So in all humility and all honesty, we should be making our case for our own sainthood.  It is just that when making that case, it should never appear as though that is what we are doing.

Risking It All For God

For nothing will be impossible for God."
Mary said, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.
May it be done to me according to your word.-Luke 1:37-38

Every day I take some sort of risk.  I get up in the morning and risk the walk down the stairs to get on with the start of my day.  My house has a lot of construction projects going on so there is a piece here and piece there.  One false step and I will stub my toe on something.  Or I get in my car to go to work or to Mass and risk the drive.  I have to be careful of what I do and what others do around me to avoid an accident.  Risk is everywhere. 

On some level, trusting in God is a risk.  I risk my freedom to believe whatever I want and risk my choice to either follow God or to turn away.  I know that faith in God is my natural response to a loving creator who wants me to risk it all for him.  God is my hope and shelter in this world and I find my hope and comfort in the Lord, who in the Gospel reading for the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, tells us that nothing is impossible for him.  The perfect example of faith, our Holy mother Mary, shows us that the best response is that we become the servants of the Lord and that we should let God show us according to his word. 

The reading from Zechariah offers a great opportunity for reflection.  “Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD on that day, and they shall be his people.”  I believe that God will make us his holy people if we accept the Gospel call to let it be as His word dictates for us.  God has assured us salvation through the action of Christ in his death and resurrection.  He only asks us to follow him.  So what makes this so difficult?  I know for me personally, I find it so difficult to reconcile my own past which is painfully loaded with sin. 

Each day, I must repent and take up my cross.  This cross should make me remember that I must make a significant internal conversion each day to pray and act in a manner that would befit a man of God.  Remembering that God chose me for this life and that I should not fall into complacency, I have to re-commit myself to giving my entire day and life to Christ.  I must pray for the people around me and to pray for myself.  Often I get wrapped up in selfish things that are not of God and this is mostly pride.  I should remember that I should be selfless and do for others more than I do for myself.  Charity is not a number assigned to my bank account but rather an action, an outward action where I call to mind service for others.  The service I give should be a gift and not a line item I check off for some reward or accolade.  God calls me to give more because he has given me the ability to give more of myself. 

Just because I have been given much does not excuse me from the obligation and responsibility to what I have been given.  I have been charged in my baptism with living a holy life in service to the Lord.  And my life is called upon by the Lord to be willing to perfected so as to achieve salvation when the Lord comes to judge the living and the dead.  And my meditation today on the readings for December 12, 2012 is see where I have fallen short of my Lord’s expectations and to seek his love and mercy so that I can offer more faithful and more perfect service.  This I should do for the Glory of God and not for the glory of Brandon Nye. 

This meditation comes to find fruit in the gift of humility.  I find it very difficult to live in a humble way so as not to alienate the people around me with arrogance and pride.  To me, much has been given so I should reasonably expect that much should accounted for.  So for today, I pray most earnestly for an embrace to truth and re-dedication to my baptismal promise to seek the Lord in my life and hear the call he has given me.  To do this, I must silence my heart and listen when he calls my name.  I must be a servant of the Lord, may it be done to me according to His word.

Prepare the Way of the Lord: Love Thine Enemies

If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,

will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills

and go in search of the stray?

And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it

than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.

In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father

that one of these little ones be lost."  Matthew 18:12-14

As part of my reflection on the readings for December 11, 2012, I have a confession to make.  I am addicted to twitter and Facebook.  I am also addicted to reading stories involving faith reported by mainstream media.  I then love to read the comments posted on those stories.  There is absolutely no surprise for me in what I read.  I will almost always find comments that extremely critical of religion and Christianity.  Some comments are incredibly vicious and needlessly mean.  One in particular is an opinion posted in CNN’s Belief Blog, “MyTake:  No pressure, Mr. President.”  The article is by Eric Metaxas speaking about loving your enemy and how the President at the National Prayer Breakfast embraced some of these ideals and turned around to allow his campaign to introduce some controversial campaign tactics.  I am not here to critique this article or its content, save one idea.  Eric Metaxas hit the nail on the head when he said that: “I talked specifically about the idea of loving our enemies. I said this was the test of real faith.”

As this is the season of Advent, we reflect and contemplate on the coming of the Lord and how we ought to order our lives.  Our readings today give us great clarity into the love of God, the Father, and how he will come and look for us, the lost.  In the first reading, from the Prophet, Isaiah, we hear that we can be comforted; that our guilt has been extinguished by God.  The interesting thing here is the nature of the love of God.  We believe that when Jesus Christ died on cross, he bore all the sins of humanity.  In the words of the Prophet, the expiation borne of the sins of Jerusalem was doubled by the hand of the Lord.  The Prophet tells us that, in a sense, God has taken our sin and then some more.  This lends to the mystery of what kind of Love would trade heaven’s throne for a cross?  This love is a great meditation for advent as we reflect on the grace given by the salvation earned through saving act of Christ.  And we hear in Advent, prepare the way of the Lord.  We prepare the way of the Lord by listening to God and hearing how we are to live out in our lives the call to which each of us receives uniquely from God.  The second half of preparing for the Lord is to take what we hear and act upon it in our lives.  Hearing the word of the Lord is not good enough; accepting the word of the Lord is not good enough.  What matters is having our outward actions reflect the internal movements of our souls.  We must strive to act in a way which brings glory to the Lord. 

Today’s gospel reading is from the Gospel according to St Matthew.  Jesus offers a parable a about the depth of the love of God.  The parable tells us that out of love for one sheep, a shepherd will leave all the others to find one that goes astray.  The shepherd rejoices more for the one who was lost than the others who stayed.  The Lord rejoices over us who turn and return to the Lord.  Because the Lord tells us that it is not the Father’s will that we should be lost, we can rejoice that God continues to seek us out and call us to conversion. 

It is this constancy from the Lord that makes me mourn the commentary on many articles I read online.  It also provides me with a great hope for the world because the Lord does not stop seeking us out.  The love of God is made manifest through the Mass in the sacramental body and blood of Christ.  We also experience God, knowingly and unknowingly, when we choose to act in love.  The awesomeness of God, for me, is that the people who appear most destructive with regard to faith and religion, in choosing to love, actually participate in the life of God.  The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, that “He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us.”  Love is a response to love, which we as Christians accept as God.  It is my hope and consolation that as those who ridicule my faith and yours, one day find as they love the people in their lives come to realize that God does exist and that they come to love God as they realize the love of God in their own lives. 

In the most concrete way, we can demonstrate how we order our lives and how well we have prepared the way of the Lord by how we love our enemies.  It is not difficult to love those we don’t know nor is it difficult to love the people we love.  The great challenge to loving neighbor as self comes when that person has declared us to be the enemy.  We must respond to the abyss of evil and hatred with an overwhelming abyss of love.

The First Advent Reflection of the Year

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Welcome to the first blog post of the season of Advent in 2013.  Cogitata Sanctatis began as a musing; a place to put things to paper that linger in my mind long after the day has ended or more distractedly, long after I have stopped paying close attention in one of many staff meetings.  The not paying attention is a sin I must vehemently work on.  I sometimes feel as though my participation in the blog is a reflection of my personal faith life.  When the blog entries slow down, my faith life seems to stall or stagnate.  When the entries pick up, my faith life is booming with growth.  Today, I find myself needing to add entries to the blog.  Best part is that I don’t expect a single soul to read this, but it is out there. 

The readings for daily Mass today tell a story.  The story is about things that will come.  The prophet Isaiah is calling the people to repentance but he is doing so with veiled language.  The image he shows to the people is one that is dressed with joy.  He says that they will sing in the land of Judah because the Lord will protect in his city the people who believe.  This is followed with a more detailed description of what will happen to those who don’t repent, which is where the call to repentance finds its strength.  The prophet tells us that the ones in high places will be brought down, crushed and trampled by the needy and the poor.  Just who are the ones in high places?  Let us wait to that question.

The psalmist bridges the prophet and our Gospel message.  The psalm connects us and prepares us for the message we have for today but first telling us that ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’  We are given a reminder to trust in the Lord because he is the one who grants prosperity and can give life.  The psalms are more than just songs and hymns to be sung in a Church.  They offer keen insight into the message of the Church in the daily readings.  They can also speak to us directly by helping us to take in the gospel meaning in our lives.  And definitely, blessed is he who comes in the name of Lord. 

And now onto today’s gospel:  The writer of the Gospel of Saint Matthew gives us a glimpse into one of Jesus’ favorite teaching methods—the analogy.  Let’s not try to discount this because we are taking a 21^st century look at a 1^st century thought.  We have the luxury of 2000 years of critical thought.  But what is it that Jesus wants us to hear, today.  Jesus tells us that salvation is for those who do the will of the father.  This is new theology for the Jewish people.  Jesus speaks of the Father but still has not been fully revealed as the Son.  So, in order to not complete alienate these people who are following him for no other reason than he performs miracles, he speaks to them analogously to help them understand the radical new things he will bring.  Jesus opens his analogy by saying that the person who hears and acts on what Jesus says is like the man who builds on rock.  So Jesus talks about the house on sand and how it was destroyed.  The people would have certainly picked up on this idea because they lived in a region where sand and wind and floods were not abnormal occurrences.  Most of the ordinary people would have either lived in mud brick house or were workers in rich people’s houses.  Thus the central theme of being grounded in faith with a strong foundation would not have been out of the ordinary. 

So where does this take us today?  The Church calls us in this time of Advent to prepare our hearts and recommit ourselves to Jesus and our faith.  We are not called to be Sunday Christians or Christmas-only Catholics but to live as though we are firmly rooted in our faith and able to withstand to handle what the world will bring us.  Today, Christ calls us to live more courageously and more virtuously as we encounter a world more hostile to Christian charity.  So let us reflect today on what Jesus tells us to do.  He tells us that it is not enough to hear his words and call his name.  We must act on his words and allow him to work through us, in complete docility, to bear great fruit in the world.