arise.

JMJ
AMDG

my lover speaks, he says to me, arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come! for see the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. --songs 2:10

When Lent ends and it's Easter; when the weather grows warmer and we sing Alleluia, I have a hard time adjusting to being joyful. I overload on chocolate and sing Alleluia, but if feels wrong--for some reason, it's hard or me to remember that being joyful--being happy, even-- is a good thing.

It's somehow hard to believe that it's actually spring again--that the leaves on the trees are real, actually real, that it will continue to get warm again.

i took this picture!

I struggle to accept the fact that God isn't trying to make me miserable all the time. I hear suffering is a gift, and my anxious mind translates that to, despair is inevitable and if I am happy it means I am doing something wrong.

But my God says to me--arise. Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one. Arise from the darkness of sin and brokenness, arise from the things that keep you from sleeping at night, arise and leave it all behind because the winter is past, the rains are over and gone.

There is darkness in this world. There's a lot of it. There's people starving and dying on roadsides, and there is war and homelessness and malnutrition. There is pornography and abortion and children whose bruises match their parents' hands. There is rape and self-harm and suicide. There are girls who stare in the mirror and don't know that they are beautiful. There are people falling and falling over again because they don't know any other way to live.

But arise. The winter is past, the rains are over and gone. There is a lot of darkness, but He's taken care of it. He died so that you wouldn't have to bear it alone.

And so I think it's okay for me to be happy.

There's a lot that I struggle to let go of--past hurt and pain and the memories of people who have genuinely wronged me, whether it was intentional or not.

But my lover speaks, He says to me, arise. 

And it still hurts, but maybe not quite as much.


arise.

***
also arise has stopped looking like a real word after writing this, but that's whatever. God bless.

the strength to do what is right

JMJ

AMDG

This is more or less the short talk I gave at my parish's Confirmation retreat last week. Except neater and better thought out because I'm not holding a microphone and standing in front of a bunch of people.

***

I was confirmed five years ago, and I was a little bit of a disaster. As I walked up the steps to the altar, all I could think was "please God, don't make me speak in tongues or do anything crazy."

Since the point of Confirmation is to bring us to God and allow us to do His will more clearly, this fear and reluctance was not the best attitude to have.

So I was confirmed, and life went on.

I've always been Catholic, always knew about Jesus, but it took me a long time to start letting God into my life. I was afraid that He'd ask me to do something too big for me, something that would crush me and make me miserable.

Eventually, I realized that I was miserable; that I do need God, and so I started letting Him love me and accepting His gifts for what they are.

The thing about gifts is that you don't have to like them. We probably all have the weird sweater from our grandmother, or its equivalent, and it sits balled up in the back of a closet or drawer. We also have received things we love, things we take delight in.

The thing about gifts is you get a choice whether or not to use them.

It's the same with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. At your confirmation, you are given all these gifts. 

And basically what I did was toss them all in a corner like "nope, maybe later." I was afraid. I was afraid of what God might want of me if I handed everything over to Him. I was afraid I wouldn't be strong enough.

That is absolutely not true. 

At confirmation, you are given seven gifts. One of these is fortitude, which is the strength to live out the Faith. It's the strength to stand up for what is right even when no one else is, and it's also the strength to trust God even when nothing seems like it will work and everything looks pointless. It's the guts to do whatever God may be calling you to and the heart to carry that out.

At confirmation, you get superpowers. Now, Captain America--he's got superpowers. He's got super-strength, sort of like fortitude. Now, he could choose not to be heroic. He could choose to just be a super-buff guy who lives in somebody's basement and plays video games and eats Cheetos all day, but he doesn't, and it would be stupid if he did. He has the strength to save people, and so he does.

And you--at confirmation, you are given the strength to live for God, to bring Him glory in a way no one else has done before. 

He will give you the fortitude to face whatever it is you end up facing on this earth. 

All you have to do is let Him help you.

free-range evangelization

JMJ
AMDG

Recently, I skinned my knee. My family and I were leaving church, and I was carrying my youngest brother pick-a-back, and he said "run" and the parking lot was empty, so I started running and got about ten feet before I tripped over my shoes and went sprawling with sixty pounds of brother driving me into the ground. I ripped up my awesome blue tights and my knee and wound up with a nasty scab that was yellow in some places and red in others and sometimes oozed stuff and eventually cracked off/was picked off while watching Downton Abbey. Now it's a patch of weird looking pinkish-purple skin and doesn't hurt any more but it's still weird.

(my brother, by the way, used me as a cushion and didn't get a mark on him.)

I work as a lifeguard and wear shorts when I guard, so my knee is on display for whomever comes in. Several of the regulars asked what happened to me, especially because I had it all wound up in an ace bandage. Band-aids and joints go together about the same as open wounds and gross pool decks. So, I told them each the story about how I tripped over my own feet in a parking lot. One guy, a man I hadn't seen before, asked if it was at the Y that I'd done it, and I said no, it was at church. And he asked me where I go to church and I told him. And then he talked about how it was good to see that I went to church, because it's really just awful how many people don't believe in God and I said yeah, it's really sad, and then he asked if I would pray for him, and I said sure. And then he said he'd pray for me, and asked my name, and as he started to paddle down the length of the pool he called out that he was praying for me right then.

And I don't know if he'll ever set foot in a Catholic church. I don't know if he will remember me talking about being Catholic. I don't know if he will ever wonder more about the church I call home and ask questions.

I know that it was an encounter that touched my heart. I don't know if it touched his, but I'd like to think so.

Because the point of evangelization, the point of the gospel, the very heart of it all, isn't winning debates. It's loving, and it's proclaiming the good news. It's having the guts to say "yeah, I go to church,", and it's not laughing at that joke and it's making the sign of the Cross in public and yeah, sometimes arguments and counter-arguments are necessary.

But you are not the point. When we die, there will be no scorecard of how many theological smackdowns you smote that co-worker with. There will be no awards due to how many people you fricking schooled on the Real Presence or the Virgin Birth or the papacy.

Even thought that's easier, isn't it?

It's easier to get angry and it's easier to set it up as a legal debate and it's easier to make it all a head game, but human beings have hearts and before any of that, we have to love and we have to be presented with things in a natural, human way if we are to really learn them and care about them.

And I think a lot of us think that you need to go to a far off place to evangelize, or have a theology degree. We think you need to be a confrontational person, or a really nice person.

Nope.

There is evangelization by means of the soap-box, by means of scholarly papers, but more important, I think, is the kind that comes slowly and naturally.

There is the messy kind, the human kind, the kind that comes in answering questions about that funny brown necklace you wear; the kind that comes in mentioning Mass when someone asks what you did over the weekend, The kind that comes of saying "I'm sorry to hear that," and then saying "I'll pray for you," and then actually praying. The kind that comes when you live life the way Jesus did and let the consequences of that come as they may.

And it's hard. It's very hard, but maybe it shouldn't be. Because it's like telling someone you got accepted to that school, or you're getting married, or you got that promotion, or he asked you out, or that meeting went way better than you expected, or you were able to get free ice cream; except it's so much better than that, because ice cream and acceptance letters won't last forever, but He will, and His love for you will.

Ask Him to let you see Him in the ordinary. Live like He is your best friend, the sort of person whose name comes up in casual conversation. Because even skinned knees can be an evangelization.