This week at LovingTheChurch.com, The Divine Mercy: A Practical Application for Fathers.
In this post, I reflection on the message of Divine Mercy and how it can be practically applied to fatherhood.
Remember this coming Sunday is Divine Mercy Sunday.
May God bless you and keep you.
I wanted to share with everyone a wonderful opportunity I’ve been given to collaborate with LovingTheChurch.com.
LovingTheChurch.com focuses on how faith engages culture.
Loving the Church in Brief…
Commentary on Life, Culture & Faith. Thoughts on Family, Being a Good Father & Mother. Dialogue with the Great Minds of Our Heritage. A Resource for Prayer, Spiritual Life & Holiness…
I hope each of you will take the time to visit LovingTheChurch.com. It is a great site and a wonderful resource for growing in our love and knowledge of the Catholic Faith.
Here is a link to my first post – Children & Sharing: Thoughts from a Father
Patience.
That mysterious, elusive word.
Just when I think I’ve got a little, real life comes crashing through.
It normally goes something like this…
I wish I could tell you that this is a rare occurrence but it isn’t. In fact, with both my wife and I working from home it actually happens more frequently than I’d like to admit.
HOWEVER – We are working on it…consciously.
I know that I must set a good example for my children. I know I need to practice patience. I know that patience is a fruit of the Spirit, a ‘perfection that the Holy Spirit forms in [me] as a first fruit of eternal glory’ (CCC 1832). I know that patience is an attribute of charity (1 Cor 13:4).
Yet all this knowledge seems to avail me little in the heat of the moment. Why is that? Aristotle is quoted as having said:
Patience is bitter, but it’s fruit is sweet.
Maybe that’s explains why it can be so hard. Bitterness. It’s a hard pill to swallow.
I want things to go the way I think they should go.
I want others to behave the way I think they should behave.
I think “out of control” situations and “perceived” misbehavior demands a response.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen insists that it does, but under certain conditions.
Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is “timing” it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way.
I guess it comes back to what Mom repeatedly told me as a kid – Two wrongs don’t make a right.
It’s okay for me to take a minute before responding to any situation or person. I have to check my motives, my disposition.
Is it the right time to respond?
Is the motivation for my response based on the right principle(s)?
By responding now, am I acting in the right way?
This criteria works…whether I’m stuck behind a truck going 20 miles an hour or my kids are going berserk.
The rightness of my timing, my reasons, and my action really does matter. St. Paul admonishing the Romans said:
For [God] will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life… – Rom 2:6-7
It is for this reason that I must be in business of trying. Everything is at stake.
Dear God, please help me to faithfully practice patience.
May God bless you and keep you.
Why do we become anxious?
What exactly is anxiety?
These are questions worth pondering.
Wikipedia offers this:
Anxiety is a psychological and physiological state characterized by somatic, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral components. The root meaning of the word anxiety is ‘to vex or trouble’; in either the absence or presence of psychological stress, anxiety can create feelings of fear, worry, uneasiness and dread. Anxiety is considered to be a normal reaction to stress…
So, to a certain extent, anxiety is normal, right? At least, that’s what modern psychology tells us.
As a Catholic, i.e. a follower of Jesus Christ, I find it necessary to bounce things like this off Him. Jesus has this to say about anxiety:
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, `What shall we eat?’ or `What shall we drink?’ or `What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.”Matt 6:25-34 (RSV)
Wow! So Jesus is telling us not to be anxious about: (1) our lives, (2) what we’re to eat, (3) what we’re to drink, (4) our bodies, (5) what we’re to wear, (6) tomorrow.
First, implementing Jesus’ message here takes a lot of faith and I think that’s His point. In the preceding passage Jesus says:
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Matt 6:24
If I serve God and am devoted to Him why wouldn’t I trust Him? Well, for starters, I’m human and a sinner. My faith-life experience is kind of like a T-shirt I heard about:
They say I have ADHD, can you believe it? OH LOOK A BALLOON!
I think I’m serving God, that I trust in Him completely…then the car breaks down, I lose a job, a family member gets sick or dies, I don’t get something I thought I needed…
Would the real Joe please step forward! That’s right…I press forward with my will. I feel like I need to be in control or like the sky is falling.
I’m getting better at reminding myself that feelings aren’t facts, that I’m not in charge, that I need a Savior, but I certainly don’t live any of these principles perfectly. Like the boy’s father in Mark’s Gospel I pray:
“I believe; help my unbelief!” Mark 9:24
Our Lord points to this crisis of faith in Matt 6:30, when He uses the phrase men of little faith. Yeah, that’s me.
So could there be more? Could something help my weak faith?
Dr. Scott Hahn, in his book First Comes Love, states:
We need not search far for other reassurances. Take, for example, the hope we have by God’s grace. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for,” says Heb 11:1. Yet I believe that hope is the most neglected of the three theological virtues. Many Catholics find themselves burdened with a faith that is devoid of hope. Often, they disdain hope because they have wrong ideas about what it is. Perhaps they’ve confused it with mere “wishful thinking” – “I hope I win the lottery! I hope my team wins the World Series.”
Some hopes are unlikely, and some are impossible. But some hopes are quite reasonable. When I hope to see my friend Dan, who lives across the country. I call my travel agent. I get on a plane…And I have good grounds to hope that I’ll see my friend.
In faith, we have more assurance, and more realistic assurance, that we’ll get what we hope for-more reasons than I have when I step on that plane. We have God’s oath…“So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of His purpose, He interposed with an oath….We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul… (Heb 6:17,19)
…”Yeah, that’s all well and good,” you might say,…”What’s in this for me?”
It’s all in there for you, because God has sworn an oath to you. Remember, the Latin word for “oath” is sacramentum-“sacrament.” God has given you oath after oath, sacrament after sacrament, so that you’d never be afraid, never be anxious, never doubt His fatherly care. (pgs. 169=170)
So the answer lies in the hope I receive in the sacraments. It’s not a matter of if God will take care of me and meet my needs, He does take care of me, He does meet my real needs.
In Baptism, Confirmation, and, in an on-going way, in Confession, He clothes me in His Grace and Mercy; in Holy Communion, He feeds and refreshes me, spiritually and physically; in the Anointing of the Sick, He attends to my body as well as my soul; and in Matrimony (Holy Orders for others), He provides direction for my life.
Lastly, the answer lies in LOVE. When I love, when I get out of myself, I find that I’m not as anxious about my wants and needs. I become soulish, not selfish. It’s not all about me.
Mother Teresa once said:
“Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”
I have to love in the present moment, in the now. It is what lasts. With St. Paul, I remind myself, that faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
So when I get anxious I must remember the words of Jesus, echoed through the centuries in the lives of His saints. I’ll close with another Mother Teresa saying,
“Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you. All things pass. God does not change. Patience achieves everything.”
Words to remember.
A final note: This post in no way is meant to minimize the suffering of those who have been diagnosed with clinical anxiety. My heart goes out to them and, if anything, maybe this reflection will serve as a form of self-therapy in addition to the treatment they are already receiving.
May God bless you and keep you.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta once said:
God doesn’t require us to succeed; he only requires that you try.
It is so easy to become discouraged when we repeatedly fail, when we seem completely unable to do the things we know we need to do.
To give into discouragement is to live without hope. It is for this reason that we must be in the business of trying.
Toby Mac has a great song, Get Back Up, in which he sings:
We lose our way, we get back up again
It’s never too late to get back up again
And one day you gonna’ shine again
You may be knocked down, but not out forever.
For me, this has to be my mantra. The grace of Jesus Christ is always available to me. Yet, wounded as I am by original sin, it remains a struggle…a battle.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church on original sin and baptism has this to say:
405 Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin – an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence”. Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.
The Church, in her Spirit-guided wisdom, draws our attention to the summon[s]..to spiritual battle. We have to stay engaged, through grace, in the struggle. The growth of virtue in our lives requires this. The Catechism affirms this truth:
1810 Human virtues acquired by education, by deliberate acts and by a perseverance ever-renewed in repeated efforts are purified and elevated by divine grace. With God’s help, they forge character and give facility in the practice of the good. The virtuous man is happy to practice them.
1811 It is not easy for man, wounded by sin, to maintain moral balance. Christ’s gift of salvation offers us the grace necessary to persevere in the pursuit of the virtues. Everyone should always ask for this grace of light and strength, frequent the sacraments, cooperate with the Holy Spirit, and follow his calls to love what is good and shun evil.
So let us today be about the business of trying; asking for grace, frequenting the sacraments (especially Reconciliation and the Eucharist), and cooperating with the Holy Spirit.
With Toby Mac and the Catholic Church let us continually remind ourselves that when we lose our way, we get back up again.
Average "Catholic" Joe 