Over the weekend I managed to greatly offend and even hurt someone that I never intended to offend at all. I did so by recalling something that happened several years ago as what I thought would be a light-hearted and funny joke-a moment of levity. I didn't even necessarily think the original incident (as I remember it) was a bad thing at all. I remembered it as somewhat ironic and, yes, a bit funny-at least to me.
Well, as it turned out, the person to whom I addressed what I thought was a piece of old humor had different memories of the day in question (hence, my decision not to argue the point about what actually happened-I quickly made the call not to wake further sleeping dogs that may lay by the rivers of time), and was obviously greatly bothered by what I had said.
As is often the case when I screw up, it was Nicole who called my attention to the offense that I had created, and I might not have ever known had she not done so. I apologized to the person who I had so deeply offended, but I felt absolutely awful about it, and I take the blame entirely for what happened. I still feel terribly about it, but I also know that-short of the invention of time machines-I can't undo what I had done to begin with, I can only seek forgiveness for it. I am confident in the Lord's forgiveness, as I always am, but I also pray that the person who I hurt-whatever my intentions might have been at the time-will find it in their heart to forgive me.
Nicole pointed out to me: "I know you, and I know you were joking, and I understand your sense of humor [I appreciate irony and often find humor and see irony in things that others may not, a trait my wife appreciates], but [the person in question] does not. You have to apologize, you came across in a way you never intended, and the words were yours."
She was right, of course, and I knew it...
The whole incident caused me to once again take a very deep lesson in humility. It also reminded me of the words accredited to Solomon in Proverbs 23:21:
Those who guard mouth and tongue
guard themselves from trouble.
I did not, as the writer would say, guard myself from trouble. I will not only let this serve as a kind of divine warning to me, but let it be a lesson to my brother Aspirants and all who are discerning a vocation: The world is watching us, and they see our successes and they mark our shortcomings. Our lips can serve to bless others, but also to harm them without intent...we all have to be careful, and like St. Paul, I will count myself as chief among sinners, especially in this regard.
Of all of the readings from the Divine Office or from the Mass for Ash Wednesday, 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2 has always been my favorite:
Brothers and sisters:
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.
Working together, then,
we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
For he says:
In an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.
Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.
Today we are reminded of our own mortality, that as we feel the ashes placed upon our foreheads we are either told "remember you are dust, and to the dust you shall return" or "turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel." We are always being called, whatever the season of the year, to do just that, but Lent reminds us that fidelity to the Gospel and to, dare we say, Gospel values, is our first call as disciples of Jesus Christ. It is a time each of us are asked by the Church to, through our actions and especially in a spirit of penance and with childlike faith, fast remembering those who cannot eat, deny ourselves some of our creature comforts remembering those who are deprived, to give of our time and treasure and talents in the best way that we can remembering that our Church, our community, and even people in other parts of the world need us. Perhaps most important of our Lenten disciplines ought to be an increased life of prayer. We are all sinners, but we are striving to be saints, and it is through prayer that we can truly orient our lives in God's direction and put God first in our personal life, our homes, our work and public life, and even our social life.
Many of our Protestant brothers and sisters speak of the need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You won't find that phrase in scripture, of course, but we know there is something legitimate to it theologically. For some people, they have come to believe that they develop this personal relationship by responding to a call by a preacher or a minister to come forward, but a one-time shot isn't how that relationship is developed. The only way that a person can truly develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ-that is, to know him more intimately and fully as we would our friend or brother, is through a deepening life of prayer, and Lent may be the best time to make the changes we need to in order to make our prayer life a better one in order that we can deepen our relationship with Jesus. He certainly wants that, because we can't even begin to fathom the depth of His love for us or, as the old hymn tells us, the wideness of His mercy.
I can tell you that deaconate formation has certainly brought me into a deeper relationship with Christ, with His Mother, with the communion of saints than I have ever had before. I know that is part of the formation process, to bring us closer to Christ and into a deeper union with Him as we explore and discern our vocation, and whether we are being called to Sacrament of Holy Orders. Jesus and His Mother don't just want men on a journey of Aspirancy to the deaconate to come into a deeper relationship with them and a closer union with Christ, we are all called to that deep relationship, and as part of that, to a deeper unity as the Body of Christ.
Let us commit this Lent to a life of prayer for deeper unity of the Church and a deeper relationship with Christ through the Eucharist and through His Church.
While doing some research for our forthcoming paper in deaconate formation yesterday, I happened upon the front page of New Advent, where I happened to find a link to an article in the National Catholic Register about Catholics who have taken a cue from the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses and are taking the Truth of Holy Mother Church door-to-door:
“On our first day out, at the first house we knocked, we spoke with an 80-something-year-old Lutheran and his wife who was a former Catholic,” said Cruze.
“After introducing ourselves, he said, Catholics, huh?! We’ve had Jehovah’s, the Mormon boys and even Assemblies of God. We ain’t never had any Catholics here before. Where ya been?” recalled Rosenthal.
“We go door-to-door to plant seeds,” added Rosenthal. “To give others who may not otherwise have been given the invitation to come to Mass and to explore the richness and beauty that we enjoy in the Catholic faith. We hope that sooner or later they will choose the fullness of Christianity — in the Catholic Church.”
A similar effort took place in Colorado. Lyn Rooney helped create a pilot door-to-door effort at her parish, St. Francis of Assisi in Colorado Springs, Colo. The effort was the outgrowth of an apologetics group Rooney has been a part of for eight years.
“A Jehovah’s Witness had come to my door,” said Rooney. “We talked for about an hour, and I spoke about the Catholic faith. In the end the Jehovah’s Witness said, ‘If this is really the Church that Jesus founded, why aren’t you out doing what we’re doing?’ That was compelling.”
Certainly, going door-to-door is often ridiculed as an ineffecive way of evangelizing. After all, how many times have we been caught right in the middle of our daily routines by tha pesky Mormon or Jehovah's Witness at the door? Yet, many times when you talk to fallen away Catholics, one of the chief complaints that is heard is that they never hear from anyone that they would otherwise go to church with, or they were new to a neighborhood and no one from the nearest parish paid them a visit. The worst stories I have heard have been of those who were sick or homebound and no one paid them a visit or brought Our Lord to them in the Holy Eucharist. Those kinds of situations not only happen, but they are all too common, and were so well before HIPPA became the law of the land.
Of course there are parishes and Church orgaizations that have great outreach programs, but every parish should have those kinds of programs, and not just for those who come asking or needing our physical help, but for those who need our spiritual help. Many times people just need to know we are here and that we are praying for them. Someone may need a ride to Sunday Mass who otherwise wouldn't be able to go, or want to participate in a parish activity but they need a helping hand to do so.
And then there are the unchurched...
We tend to believe that since we live in the "Bible Belt" that most people have a place of worship or a set of firm religious beliefs, but we are potentially losing an entire young generation of potential converts because of this false assumption. Increasingly, younger people are far less likely to embrace the faith of their parents, and some in our midst were raised with no practicing religious faith at all-we as a Church need to reach out to the current generation and let them know we are here, especially in this part of the country.
I don't think that a door-to-door approach is good in every case or among all people, but it may surprise those who participate in this kind of outreach just how many people are hungry for the truth if only someone would take the time to share it.
I don't normally share my political column here because this blog is meant as a way to share my experience in Aspirancy to the deaconate, not to talk about political things. However, today's column is worth posting here because the subject matter should be important to every Catholic.
I have returned from a wonderful weekend at deaconate formation. It was wonderful because we explored the topics of Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and the parousia in great depth. I must admit that one of the books we had been required to read, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life by a certain Joseph Ratzinger certainly got my wheels turning in ways that I didn't expect, and I had to confront some controversial ideas about the nature of the soul (ideas which I was at least somewhat familiar with, but which I was surprised to learn that our present Pope seriously wrestled with over the years), and some new-to-me theology and theological ideas about the nature of Heaven, and what Heaven is-even what we're going to be doing when we get to Heaven. I didn't find this to be a bad thing, I fully recognize that Aspirancy to the deaconate means that I am going to have to confront theological ideas which are unfamiliar to me, and I am going to have to learn either to accept or refute them as the appropriate case may be, and even (where the Church might say to) integrate them into the thinking side of my own faith and the way that I teach others. That doesn't mean, however, that everything is easy to swallow on the first take, and that is how I would describe some of the eschatological ideas we're learning about-things that will take time to digest.
We also had our first exam this afternoon. Now, let the reader understand, I do not think I failed the exam. However, there are times when you take an exam and you come away knowing that you didn't bomb it, but you also didn't do as well as you could have done, and that seems to have been the case with today's exam for me. Despite having written the answers in my notes about 30 minutes before the exam, I drew a blank on most of St. Thomas Aquinas' five ways to prove the existence of God...literally, my mind blanked out, I should have remembered more than just the Unmoved Mover. Later, while discussing the exam with another of my Brother Aspirants (this one from my own Deanery) on the way home, I figured out that I flowed on one of my essay answers with an idea which, while not completely incorrect, was also not right where the question at hand was concerned, so I expect to be called on the carpet for that. The essay isn't ruined, but it didn't say what it should have said-one of my statements in it was simply not correct. One of my Brothers was kind enough to pay me a compliment this weekend-he said that he wished that he were as well-read as I am and that he had the time to read. I responded to him that while I am well-read in some areas (as with most people, I am well-read in the topics I like and am familiar with), I am not well-read in others, it depends on the topic. Well, the experience of this exam has showed me that I need to read better, and reread content more, and if that means that in order to have time to do that I am going to have to read less non-formation or non-theological material during the process of formation, so be it-a deacon cannot teach or preach what he himself does not grasp, and so I need to commit myself to being better-prepared in the future. In addition to this I would ask for readers' continued prayers, because I continually need them.
Despite my difficulties with the exam, I would not have traded this weekend for anything in the world. Robert Feduccia (who leaves us clueless as to why he is not Deacon Robert!) didn't just blow my mind and everyone else's with his teaching about the Blessed Trinity and Heaven, but I came away with an even deeper love for Our Blessed Mother after this weekend. We had to read Redemtoris Materfor this class, but it was the discussion of the theological reasons, rooted in the Trinity, for our veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Catholics that was the topic I just never wanted to quit on...I wanted more and more. Many of our Protestant Brothers and Sisters wouldn't ever consider denying the divinity of Christ, but do they do so in an implicit and unintentional way when they fail to accept Mary as the Mother of God? The Council of Ephesus said that Christ is God, and so Mary is truly the Mother of God.
Robert wrote this song with Sarah Hart which Oregon Catholic Press calls an Advent Hymn, but I think it is even deeper than that. It is about our hope in the parousia, in the Second Coming of Our Lord-it really touched me, because this is what the study of eschatology is really all about-the world is in darkness, but Christ will not only end that darkness and bring all things to completion, but He will unite us with Him for all eternity. I might grapple with what I am discovering about Heaven, but I came away from this weekend really wanting to go there.
I am once again compelled to apologize for my lack of an entry in this space. There have breen many times over the last month when I had wished I could just put down what I was doing and make an entry here. I do hope that readers will forgive my intermittancy.
Nevertheless, I do try. One of the reasons that I haven't been able to post as much as I would like here is that my spare time is immersed in the academic study and scripture study side of formation. Fortunately for us, our next expected paper isn't due this weekend, but (unless the due date changes, which I am told that might actually happen) it will be due by e-mail in about two weeks-I want to be sure and have it done on time. At my last entry, I hadn't had occassion to begin my paper, and I can tell you that life got in the way. Meetings were called that I was not expecting, obligations presented themselves at times when I did not expect them to do so, and when you are told by your secular superiors "can you do this..." you really would rather not tell them no. However, I have had time to start it since then, and unless the flow of the paper changes between now and the due date, I'd say I am probably about half-way done, so I am pleased with that.
I am about to leave for formation as I write this. Last weekend, I was plessed to participate, along with the other two Aspirants in our deanery, in our first Deanery Formation Workshop. These workshops are really going to be a blessing, I believe. Not only did I come away with a better grasp of the material, but I met some of the other great Deacons in our Deanery.
More on that as I have time...for now, I am off to Lenoir City for Formation. As always, prayers are appreciated.
