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...