Case of the Mondays

Posted on by RRMM

Beating the crap out of the fax machine (or maybe phone) sometimes feels like the right option...

Some days just get you.

Today is one of those days for me.  As I type, I can hear my son, who has been laid down for a nap (due to his non-stop fussiness this ENTIRE.FREAKIN’.DAY), throwing various items out of his crib and across the room.  And, I continue to type.

The phone hasn’t stopped ringing.  E-mails haven’t stopped coming in.  The list of things I need to get done this week keeps growing.  The stress of upcoming life-changes seems to be sitting directly on top of my eyebrows.  Deadlines are bearing down on me.  And, I can’t get the doggone blog homepage to look right. Read More

I’m More Catholic Than You

Posted on by RRMM

“It is dangerous to make everyone go forward by the same road, and worse to measure others by yourself.”  (St. Ignatius of Loyola)


Dear Fellow Good, Practicing Catholics,

Please stop trying to “out-Catholic” others all the time.

I get it, you know the faith really well.  You’ve read some (or maybe many) books and watched some faith-based shows and movies.  You’ve heard some great speakers and been on some highly spiritual retreats.  You’ve had deep encounters with God and maybe have a deep understanding of one thing or another.  Perhaps there’s someone in your family with religious vocation or you are good friends with a priest or a nun.

Maybe you are able to get to daily Mass.  Or have a daily Holy Hour.  Perhaps you serve the Church in some form of ministry.  Possibly you have a deep devotion to Mary or one (or many) of the saints.  Novenas might be a regular form of prayer for you or perhaps you never miss praying your daily rosary.

Uh-oh! I made a joke about holiness...i must not be very Catholic!

You might be an activist who stands outside of Planned Parenthood every Saturday morning to pray for the end of abortions.  Or, maybe you write letters to your congressmen on a regular basis trying to get laws changed.  Maybe you vehemently oppose all things secular or use Facebook as a platform to preach the word of God.

And, every one of those things are good and noble.  But, they don’t make you a “better” Catholic than everyone else.

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I Love You, Accidentally

Posted on by chriskmn

Have you ever accidentally told someone you loved them? I totally have. It usually goes something like this.

“Hey Roger, wha’up bro. Did you see Carp’s no-no last night? Ridiculous. So yeah, get back at me if you are going to Kelly’s tonight. K, Love you.”

Hang up. Wait, did I just tell Roger that I “love” him? I barely know Roger. I mean, he’s a good dude and everything, but I don’t really know him. Plus, I just don’t usually tell my buds that I love them. Wait, maybe I do love him. Crap. Should I say something? Do I need to fix it?

Never try and fix it. Just let it ride. Trying to fix it is like trying to clean food off your shirt with water in the bathroom – it is only going to make the problem bigger.

Today we celebrate a big I LOVE YOU that was no accident – the Annunciation. For some reason I have always felt attached to this moment in the story of the incarnation and have found great joy in artwork depicting this moment. The humble “yes” of Mary, the gentle invitation of the Angel Gabriel, and the cosmic consequences in this peaceful beautiful moment all captured in a few brush strokes. Amazing.

My favorite piece of art depicting the Annunciation painted by the Italian Fra Angelico. Take some time to peek through the painting to see all characters present. Further, I am always moved by the empty room behind Mary, which represents the empty tomb of the resurrection. Great stuff.

I’ve included the painting and the scripture from Luke below so that you could take some time to pray through the scripture and do a little Lectio/Visio Devina on this day celebrating the Incarnation.

The Annuciation by Fra Angelico

26In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, 27to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. 28And coming to her, he said, “Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.” 29But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High,* and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, 33and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” 35And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. 36And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived* a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; 37for nothing will be impossible for God.” 38Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.  Luke 1:26-38

Finding God on Pinterest

Posted on by RRMM

Image

Actually, I HAVE made quite a few of the recipes that I have pinned!

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I love Pinterest.  And, the fact that you know exactly what “Pinterest” is means it has become a culture and internet phenomenon.  I have to give credit to my youngest sister.  She told me about this “website that’s basically virtual bulletin boards” almost a year ago.  It wasn’t a thing then.  It was just a humble little site used to store bookmarked links.  I got a Pinterest board in the fall of last year and it has since exploded like crazy.

I know a lot of people, mostly men, I would guess, don’t get the fascination with it.  Why do people (mostly women) want to spend all day looking at recipes, art projects, home ideas/decorations, clothing, child-rearing ideas, etc.?  How could one possibly spend hours looking at and “pinning” pictures and links, 90% of which we’ll never use? Read More

Good Coffee won’t save your soul – Part 3

Posted on by chriskmn

What do we do when we go to Mass and we “don’t get anything out of it?”Coffee Cup

I think at some point in the Mass as our boredom or frustration mount, we have to make a decision.  Are we going to let something as insignificant as bad coffee get in the way of encountering God?

Sometimes going to Mass is like getting great coffee in a bad cup.

The other day I bought a coffee and didn’t realize that the seal on the bottom of the cup was imperfect. The leaking coffee made huge stains over the front my sweater.  I was hacked off to the point of not being able to enjoy the coffee. Then I considered that there was nothing I could do to change the cup at that moment, so either I could be angry and not enjoy my coffee or I could drink it and enjoy every drop that wasn’t on my shirt.

Even when everything seems to be going wrong at Mass, God is still present. And if God is present, we have an opportunity to find Him. The path to finding God in the midst of the messiness of imperfect Church is a shift in focus from our needs or wants to God’s outpouring of love.  When we move our focus from us to God, the bad coffee matters less and less.  In other words we have to name the coffee as bad, and then get over it.

This is hard.

It is hard to experience God in the midst of poorly done Church. So what do we do? I don’t have a great answer. I wish I did. What I do have are two suggestions for making sure every time we walk out of Mass we know God moved in us. Read More

Morality part 2 – Peer Pressure can be AWESOME

Posted on by joesuperdad

Note: This is part 2 of a 3 part series on helping empower teens to make moral decisions.  The series introduction can be found here, and part 1 can be found here.

As you’re probably aware of by now, I’m a Catholic.  It’s not just a fitting-in sort of label for me, like a 3rd generation 20% Irish-person around St. Patrick’s Day.  (Yeah, I said that.)  My being a Catholic is part of who I am, how I define myself, how I hope to portray myself.  I strive for it to affect literally every part of my life – the fact that I fail constantly is irrelevant here.  As I try to live out my faith and my identity as a Catholic, I am always on the lookout for that community of Catholics to share my life with – friends who share our faith, values and priorities.  I want to know I’m not alone in my challenge, and I can be there to support and lift up others who are trying to navigate the narrow road.  Having a community of Catholic men, women and families around us has been a humongous blessing & help to myself and my wife – and of course it is!

We all know how important friends are to teenagers.  This is the time of life when teens are beginning to break from their family.  They like to believe they are independent, but they are so, so far from real independence from family and parents.  (see part 1 for how important adults are)  A huge part of this break is the friends teens have.  Teens quite often list friends as more important than family.  This may or may not be the case – and that doesn’t really matter for this discussion – the apparent truth of it matters.

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Jesus Beat the Devil with a Big Ugly Stick

Posted on by ymkbird

This middle part of Lent is always the hardest for me.  The strong convictions with which I started on Ash Wednesday have begun to wane.  The new routine of prayer that I’ve tried to establish has been interrupted and intruded upon by my family, my work and my life; I’ve slipped up at least once in my fasting.  I start to wonder if it’s worth it—whether or not I should stick with the resolutions I made at the beginning of the season.  I feel guilty for the ways in which I’ve failed to answer the call to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and I try to convince myself that it’s okay.  After all, I’m a good person, I’m loving to my family (most of the time), I give what I can when I remember to, and I’ve already prayed more than most other people have.

The Scripture reading for today (Thursday for the 3rd Week of Lent) seems perfectly tailored for my Lenten halftime slump.  It’s a reminder of an uncomfortable reality—one that is disturbing for many of us today.

We are often not comfortable with talk about demons or the devil.  Many Catholics believe that the devil is a sort of cosmic balancing power or a theoretical being.  The devil has the advantage over us in that he is an invisible powerful spirit.  One of his greatest tricks is convincing so many of us that he doesn’t even exist, a truly clever tactic. The incident with the demon in today’s gospel prompts a debate between Jesus and the crowd that discusses the forces of evil with disturbing levels of detail: naming demons and even discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the devil’s plan of attack against humanity.

Today’s gospel reading helps me acknowledge where my fading desire and conviction at this point in the Lenten season come from.  Jesus’ reminder that the devil and his demons are very real beings that pose a very real threat help me to recognize my temptations to laziness, de-motivation, and lowering of standards for what they are: attacks from evil against the strides toward holiness that my Lenten resolutions are gaining.  The devil is real—and he certainly does not want me to unite myself with the passion and suffering of the Cross, to improve my relationship with God through increased prayer, to weed out my tendencies toward sin through fasting, or to magnify God’s Love in almsgiving.

I know who is going to win this fight...but what about when Jesus tags me in?

The gospel for today also brings me comfort with Jesus’ reminder that he is stronger than the devil and that if I stand with him, I can overcome any attack.  So, instead of lowering my standards and accepting less, I’m going to try to step up my prayer an extra notch during this time of weakness and ask Christ who still has power over demons (and his angels) to help me be strong in the face of temptation so that I can continue to grow in holiness this Lent.

How well have you been living your Lenten commitment?  In what ways have you been tempted to abandon or modify the challenges you set at the beginning of Lent?  How do you recognize the attack of demons, the devil, or evil in your journey to holiness?

Lean on Me – Morality, Part 1

Posted on by joesuperdad

Note: This is part 1 of a 3 part series on morality in teens – introduction & explanation can be found here.

We want to be independent. Or rather, we think we want to be independent. But in reality, none of us wants true independence – we want others to depend upon us, and we want others to be there for us to depend upon. Though we have this romanticized view of independence, we don’t really want that.

And neither do teens. More than us, probably, they want to feel a part of something – they want to know they’re not going it alone.

More than teens realize, and more than adults know – teens need us. And I don’t mean that we are needed for our money or housing or food or clothing. I’m talking about being that reliable, safe, trustworthy, accountable, old-steady, even-steven sort of partner for a teen.

Teens need at least one adult they can rely upon and trust.

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Spiritual Breathing Room

Posted on by RRMM

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I’ve been reading “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything.”  Yes, I’ve been reading it for awhile.  It’s not that I am a slow reader, it’s just that when I find a few minutes here and there to sit down and read, it’s just that – a FEW minutes.  Anyways, I am, finally, nearing the end of the book (I plan to finish it before Lent is over!).

Yesterday, as I was reading about working, resting, service, etc., I came across an interesting passage from St. Ignatius.  He was speaking to a group of young Jesuits who were so exuberant about their new found desire to serve the Church that they were trying to “out-do” each other with ridiculous religious practices.  Ignatius had this to say:



“Let your service be a reasonable service.  First…God is not really served in the long run, as the horse worn out in the first days does not as a rule finish the journey…Second, gains that are made with this excessive eagerness are not usually kept…Third, there is the danger of being careless about overloading the vessel.  There is danger, of course, in sailing it empty, as it can then be tossed about…But, there is also danger of so overloading it as to cause it to sink.”

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Oversimplified morality – in 3 parts

Posted on by joesuperdad

Working in youth ministry with junior high and high school students over the past I don’t know how many years has given me lots of things.  First, it’s given me an incredible amount of failures.  It’s given me a lot of entertainment and laughs.  It’s given me gray hair.  It’s given me headaches and sleepless nights.  It’s given me countless privileges to walk on a faith journey with a young person.  It’s given me lots of tears, stress, extra hours of prayer, challenges, successes, awesome retreats… ok I could go on.

One other thing is that it has given me a little bit of insight into the heart and ind of a teenager.  I’m not claiming to have all the answers – I’m not claiming to be very smart – I’m claiming that my experience with teens over the last 12 years has given me a little bit of insight with teens.

I hope that isn’t too much of a stretch.

Ok, why all this?  Because, morality. There are so many well-meaning people at our parish, at other parishes, and from who knows where telling me we need to do more things to teach morality to our teens – but it all sounds and feels more like “you need to crack open their heads and brainwash them into thinking this one thing that I think is the end all be all issue and it needs to be this.”

And we do morality nights – on chastity, on obeying God, on pro-life, on stealing, on cheating… etc.  Do I expect a big turnaround in the life of teens based upon these nights?  Heck no.  It can start a discussion or get them thinking, but if convincing others of the truth were as easy as one 90 minute youth night, well, we probably wouldn’t have too many youth nights.

I’ve come up with a bit of a theory here – and it is that teens essentially need 3 things to really be empowered to make good moral choices in their life.  All three of these things are important, none of them is a quick fix, and they all take efforts from the teens, the parents and the Church.

So this, I guess, is a 4 part series – and you’ve just read part one.  Congratulations!  And I realize, this told you nothing more than – Hey, I’m writing a morality series!  Parts 2-4 will come out about every other day for the next week or so – so stick with me.

Again, I’m not claiming this is the end all – be all.  And I’m not claiming that this closes the book on teen morality – this is my discussion starter – based on my experiences loving, being rejected by, listening to, supporting, praying for, praying with and observing teenagers.