Seeking Wisdom

Link to Daily Readings “So be ye perfect, just as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” A tall order to say the least. Quite impossible to be sure. But I think this is the idea. I think part of what Jesus is trying to communicate in this command is not only that he understands how difficult our task is, but that he wants us to understand that it is not possible for us to achieve it on our own. Many people are capable of pure, perfect acts. A moment of divine unselfishness that will likely sing in the memory of the person they helped as an example of Christ on earth. To string two together, without stopping to think about how good of a person I am? Now that’s quite a bit more difficult. Once we get into the span of ten minutes, one hour, the prospect becomes quite hopeless. To think of living a perfect day is quite laughable. That’s one thing I always thought was interesting about striving for moral perfection. We truly do have the ability, just not the endurance. It’s as tho

Link to Daily Readings Lately, once in a blue moon, I’ll anticipate the daily readings for the next day. By this I mean that some core message of Friday’s readings will flash before my mind sometime Thursday and help me come to some decision or make some determination. This happened yesterday with “You have heard… You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you everyone who lusts after a woman has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Not only is this a good passage to convince yourself that fantasizing is not permissible it’s also incredibly interesting as it represents the enormous departure Jesus makes from the Old Testament in a way that makes following him both infinitely easier, indeed possible, and much more stringent. In the Old Testament there is little mention of intention or feelings, we are simply instructed to do the right thing and so long as we control ourselves we will be considered holy. Now through the performance of right actions many people are

Link to Daily Readings [The previous section was a personal bit about how I was finding my willpower and motivation waning lately, while simultaneously feeling more stressed.] I think it started in winter workouts but continued and to a greater degree in Spring Ball. Before that, I was very self-directed. I got up two and a half hours before I had to and did things I deemed important. Every day I had to decide whether I wanted to go to class, workout, write, or do anything that I decided was important. Once I started having mandatory activities, I think once anyone starts having mandatory activities as a large part of their day, it can start changing your perception of work. If you’re free to do as much or as little work as you want, you may be ambitious and choose to do quite a bit and feel quite good about it. Every time you complete a task you get enough encouragement from that accomplishment to move on to the next. Not only do you have the freedom to stop or go on, and thu

Link to Daily Readings Optimistic. Something I would say that I am, usually. Something I would nearly always say I admired. Is it what Christ calls us to be? Another distinction, as there can be no good work done except through Christ, are we to consider ourselves masters of our own fate? Or know that we are not, yet continue to act as though we do? St. Augustine is obviously wiser than me and he summed it up as: “Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” Now this is a kind of benign self-deception. We know in our hearts that it will only happen for us if it is God’s will, but we pretend to have some influence in our own lives, as it seems commonsense that we should only get what we work for. To be otherwise would violate the cause and effect universe we see, a universe that God created and respects. Though it may not seem to others, it somewhat seems to me that this is a nearly irreligious thought. To suppose that we are the master

Link to Daily Readings There was a bit in Mere Christianity that I realized I agreed with consciously, but did not abide by. That is this idea that any change we make in ourselves is really the Holy Spirit through us, which I think is perfectly reasonable. Surely I have a little bit more independent habit forming ability than a dog, but it makes sense to me that my spiritual self would not be subject to my corporeal actions. It’s as though my going to Mass is not what’s going to bring me closer to God, it’s the petition of wanting change and inviting the Holy Spirit that would allow Him to effect the change he sees fit. That doesn’t mean that Mass isn’t important, indeed it may be one of the best ways to invite Him in, seeing as I receive Communion while I’m there. I’m quite glad it is this way too, for I’d imagine spiritual changes are a good deal more difficult to effect, and murkier to see the consequences of before they actually happen. I’ve made some poor choices with my bod

Link to Daily Readings There might be sort of a double whammy there in terms of avoiding pride. I don’t think I’ve reached it because people very rarely say I’m exceptionally faithful but I’d imagine it’s a challenge every saint has faced. Once one has actually wrestled with the initial pride of simply being, the self-adulation inherent in everyone, that person may start to achieve great things through the virtues and gifts God has given them. Then this person reaches some different status of personhood in the eyes of their peers, every friend of theirs will likely still consider them their peer, but will think that they too are truly exceptional from all others in the group. Less commonly, the friend will elevate the seemingly exceptional person without placing themselves in that category. Perhaps more commonly than either of those, depending on what kind of people you’ve lived with and their ages, friends will begin to notice petty flaws in the seemingly exceptional person, in

"Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it." Link to Daily Readings Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. How often are we grateful for not only the presence of the Gospel in our lives, but all the things we have the privilege of experiencing. How blessed are we to see what we see. To hear what we hear. There is this notion of the fulfillment of a longing in Jesus’s coming. Prophets, sages, kings, and all manner of holy people have been looking forward, for all of history and everywhere, to this moment, this man. There has been this palpable hole in the human existence, in the human experience for as long as we can remember. Ancient peoples could feel this, and guessed at what might fill it, what came was greater and stranger than any of them anticipated. I’ll focus on the ways He is greater than what they anticipa

Link to Daily Readings I think what the story of Eleazar demonstrates are two very related points. One being that this thing, this religion, this faith, should be the most important thing in our life, indeed more important than our insignificant earthly life. The second thing I see is that it is not only what we do that matters, but what others see. I’m going to dive into the second one first.  The immediate danger I see here is hypocrisy, if one should fail to live up to the standards one claims in public, or pride, whereby when we do succeed we count it as personal strength. I think it’s useful to play off Jesus’s imperative to pray in secret and do good in secret. “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”  We seem kind of stuck here between two places. There is the call to evangelization (through example, martyrdom, proselytizing) but this endeavor brings with it many spiritual dangers. Simply by drawing other people’s attenti

Link to Daily Readings My first workout session went well, as did my second other than the fact that I hurt my hamstring at the very beginning of the morning running. I’m hoping it either feels better by this afternoon or it won’t matter this afternoon, which seems like a possibility considering it’s supposed to be a lifting day. When I first hurt it I had a little bit of despair run through me, I finished fourth in that race when I could have easily finished second had I not had to slow down because of my leg. Oh well, it doesn’t seem like they’re planning on cutting anyone the first week, especially if they’re well behaved and attend everything they’re supposed to attend, so I won’t be too worried about it. It did remind me that I’m not in control however, at a time when I think I was falling back into my old thought pattern of a powerful me. Maybe that was the purpose, a slight twinge, an inconsequential injury just to slow me down for a couple days, to remind me that I need t

Link to Daily Readings I think I might have actually believed it when I was saying “let Thy will be done” last night. It was a very refreshing moment, it took all the weight of the world off my shoulders. To detach from the outcome and know that whatever will be, will be, is so freeing. I don’t feel the same pressure to do well anymore, I feel pressure to do my best, but that doesn’t make me nervous. Surrendering my will is my goal because it is the most liberating thing that I can see happening to me. A while ago I think I got a glimpse of it when considering my vocation. Now, if a vocation is whatever you feel called to do, whatever truly satisfies you in and of itself, then I’m in a tough spot. I like doing a lot of different things, I’m talented at a lot of different things, and a lot of those areas overlap. The decision would be pretty hard for me to make. It’s a decision I’ll still have to make and it will be hard, but less so in the right frame of mind. It will be a le

            Why did God give us free will? Because free will is necessarily for love. How? If I say I love my mother because she’ll beat me if I don’t, that’d be considered disingenuous. But I am acting of free will. There is the threat of coercion, but I’m still making a choice to do the thing because my aversion to saying I love her is less than my aversion to a beating. Isn’t Hell the worst beating that could possibly exist? It’s defined as the end-all, be-all of punishment. Nothing could possibly hurt more, for longer, than Hell. But what makes Hell hurt? Hell is sometimes referred to as a place of fire, gnashing of teeth. I’ll try to stick to what Jesus says, because he would probably know better than anyone else. But he’s also prone to speak in metaphors, he probably means something more like Hell burns us like fire and is far more frustrating than anything we’ve ever experienced, hence the gnashing. How does he say we get there? In the parable of the banquet

I thought I had decided a long time ago to give my life over to Christ but I’m realizing now how untrue that was. I dedicated myself to resolving certain issues within myself, but not through Him, just for Him. In retrospect, this is completely idiotic. What can I do for God? What can I do for anyone or anything without going through Him? I think I have a great deal of fear about losing my life, so much so that I was lying to myself, saying I had really given it up when I hadn’t. So long as I hold onto my petty vices, my prides, so long as I guard those things that I say are part of myself but which I know are not part of who he wants me to be, I can’t move forward at all. That’s been the most frustrating part, I can’t change anything about myself without changing everything. I can’t be a little more charitable, but remain committed to my unchastity. The same self-control I’ll develop through chastity will help make me charitable. Furthermore, chastity will make me see everyon