Category: Blog Posts

I finally finished reading a book that took me several months to read, partly because it was one of those intellectual books where you read a paragraph or two, and stop and think, What the heck did I just read? But the parts I actually did comprehend were very insightful and thought-provoking. I participated in a small group book study organized by a young-adult’s group I attend, and it focused on relationships — those with our peers, and eventually that with a significant other. Our book referenced numerous times points made in Love & Responsibility written by Karol Wojtla (a.k.a. Pope John Paul II), so I chose to further my study by delving into the genius that is JPII.

While the scope of Wojtlya’s work is largely focused on married persons, I found much of it relevant to simply “loving thy neighbor.” He writes that as a human being, “it is rightly due to the person to be treated as an object of love, and not an object of use” (26). This seems like such a foreign concept in our “culture of use” we live in today; our society encourages individuals to get ahead using any means necessary, including other people. Our valuation of the human person has dropped significantly, hence why we have a whole month dedicated to respecting human life. But the littlest among us oftentimes are the model of love and total faith that we ought to strive for.

In Matthew 18:3-4, Jesus says “Amen I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Children are largely dependent individuals, placing their trust and faith in those who have been charged with their well-being. Hence why Jesus says we should become like these children, and put our faith and trust in him to provide for us. Sometimes as adults though we think that we are above such “childish neediness”, that we are smart enough to handle everything on our own. But I believe that we can learn a lot about being an “object of [God’s] love” that Wojtlya writes about by watching and listening to children such as these.

Always striving to be the “fun” aunt, I had found a craft for my nieces and nephews to do at one of our family parties. This particular craft involved a lot of small pieces of tissue paper, so a few days before the party I began to cut the paper into what I believed were just the right sized and shaped pieces. Two of my nephews came over during this time and of course had to inquire about what I was doing and if they could help. I tried to brush them off because one, scissors and young kids don’t usually end well together, and two, because I didn’t want pieces of paper that weren’t cut “just right”. I eventually relented and let them cut the crooked and misshaped pieces they wanted. As I sat next to them and saw how happy they were to be helping and excited about seeing their pieces going towards the final project, I realized I was wrong. They didn’t care if the pieces they glued to make their stained-glass window were perfect or not; it became more special to them because they put their hard work into it (holding a “big kid” scissors is hard work for a 3-year old!). I believe God feels the same way about each of our efforts to serve him. If He wanted something done perfectly, he would have no problem doing it himself; but it brings him greater joy watching his children put forth an imperfect effort to bring about beautiful results.

I was reminded of this again as I read Bishop Robert Barron’s gospel reflection on the mustard seed in Chapter 13 of Luke’s gospel. Bishop Barron wrote “it is a commonplace of the Bible that God rejoices in our cooperation. He wants us to involve ourselves — through freedom, intelligence, creativity in what he is doing…God could have rebuilt his church, but he wanted St. Francis to get involved [so he said] ‘Francis, rebuild my church’ “

So if you feel like you could never do enough good to please God, remember that he rejoices simply in your willingness to cooperate in his divine purposes.

I experienced another revelation of God’s love for us while attending mass one Sunday. It was my nephew’s very first time being a mass server, and I smiled as he practically ran towards the rectory in excitement. Just for the point of this story, you need to know that I was sitting with my older brother and his newborn daughter while my younger brother was in the back being an usher. As the time to start mass was getting closer, our priest and my nephew came to the back of church for the procession, and it was evident the other scheduled server had not shown up. Now, my younger brother was still of mass-serving age, so he would have been able to help our nephew; but that would have required my older brother to take his place as usher, and I would have had to watch my little sleeping niece (tough gig I know!). Thankfully another server came at the last minute, so we didn’t have to worry about it, but it got me thinking that we all would have jumped in to do our parts to help our nephew because he’s family, he’s one of us.

The same would go for God; we are each his children, a member of his family, so there is no limit to the lengths he would go to help us. How many times does God mention in the Bible about taking care of widows and orphans? Or the phrase that’s mentioned 365 times throughout the Bible: “Be not afraid.” God will be there with us so we need not fear. There are countless examples throughout scripture, such as Deuteronomy 33:12-13 “the beloved of the Lord, he abides in safety beside him; he shelters him all day long” or Joshua 1:9 “I command you: be strong and steadfast! Do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord, your God, is with you wherever you go.”

The Bible is filled with all of the promises God makes to us as his beloved children; there is no limit to his love and mercy. Evidence of this is all around us; even the littlest among us can teach us of God’s perfect love of our imperfect selves.

Happy New Year!

During 2020, the over-zealous introvert that I am took advantage of the curfews and stay at home orders; I have completed a stack of books, along with the occasional cup of coffee or glass of wine. My list of books ranged from St. Augustine to a McDonald’s franchisee who writes of keeping his Catholic-minded principles in today’s business world. This businessman, by the name of John Abbate, wrote in Invest Yourself, that “the true beauty of the Catholic faith can be fully realized only when we utilize our intellect to acquire knowledge to grow in our faith” (5). This is what motivates me every time I select a book, video, podcast, whatever it is that can help to fully realize my Catholic faith. As I have continued my own endeavor to strengthen my relationship with God, I have realized that the more we seek to find God, the more we actually find ourselves. I believe there is a confidence that comes with knowing and truly believing that I am a child of God, and that God created me specifically to be the unique individual that I am. And He has done the exact same for each of you.

As I continue to learn about my Catholic faith and build on the foundation of being a member of God’s church, I have found myself going places and doing things that I once would have said were totally out of my comfort zone. But, the more we find ourselves and the more we open ourselves up to God, the more we can see how He uses us for His divine plans.

2020 left us with a myriad of emotions: from fear to loss, from frustration to disappointment, but also wisdom, hope and perhaps even a deeper amount of faith. For me, 2020 has taught me a lot of hard lessons, which also helped me gain a deeper insight into life in general; for example, finding new ways to console friends or family when being physically present is not an option; or directing me to look to those great saints who have come before us, like St. John Paul II, who have faced numerous hardships themselves. and how they placed total trust in God to help them face their trials.

So, as 2020 has come to a conclusion, it is imperative that we take what this historical year has taught us, and move forward determined to not live with the same tribulations in 2021. The wounds of our world are not going to be mended simply by the turning of the calendar, they can only be reconciled if we turn back to the ultimate healer.

For my long New Year’s weekend this year I did something that was (wait for it) totally out of my comfort zone. Two of my friends and I went to a Catholic young adult conference. Now, while the vocal outbursts and charismatic worship (cue the grown man on the floor rocking back and forth in the fetal position) was an overwhelmingly new experience for me, there was a profound feeling in knowing that all of these individuals, from thirty-one different states even, came together because we all have a desire to seek Jesus. Even further, as young adults, each of us there recognized how our generation and our pleasure-seeking culture today is losing sight of Jesus, even just faith in general, and we are not okay with that. St. John Paul II recognized this issue long before we did when he said that “you are right to be disappointed with hollow entertainment and passing fads, and with aiming at too little in life” (Evert 93). This conference was entitled Empower because it set out to equip us to bring this world back to God.

As one of the leaders said, “If I love the cinnamon roll I had for breakfast, I’m going to tell people about it so they can enjoy it too. The same should go for Jesus.”

I sat there listening to that message and I asked myself why I do not tell others about loving Jesus as much as loving a cinnamon roll, and the main reason I came up with was fear. Fear of what others will think of me “preaching” about my faith. And then I remembered this breakthrough (it was for me at least) conclusion I reached recently: I should not be concerned about what total strangers or people that will not be a part of my life in five years think of me. I should only be concerned about what God thinks of me, because someday I am going to be answering to Him, not to the people I have wasted my time trying to appease and conform to.

One of the best speakers at the conference (at least in my opinion) said that “Jesus is the longest relationship we will have in our lives.” As that statement sank in, I realized that I had a lot of work to do with that relationship. Which is the reason this speaker, whose name is Noah, was speaking on discipleship. He shared with us the three foundations of discipleship: lifestyle, death and love. Lifestyle because he says it is your life, not your knowledge that will transform those around you, death because Jesus said we need to take up our respective crosses and follow Him, which is essentially dying to ourselves (or our preferences), and finally, love, because all things must be done in love. But he also said that in order to accomplish all of this, we must first be in love with the one who first loved us. So, am I willing to risk a little awkwardness in an encounter with someone else to express how much the love of Jesus means in my life? Are you?

To be honest, I was a little apprehensive about just asking my friends to go to this conference with me because I did not want them to think I was some uber-religious fanatic; but I eventually mustered up the courage and I feel that our friendship grew stronger over that weekend. We really opened ourselves up and let Jesus enter into our relationship; we had real conversations that went deeper than our usual catching up conversations of work and social activities. It reminded me that when you open yourself up to allowing God into your life and letting Him direct you for His purposes, great things can happen. Maybe I did not have some mind-blowing breakthrough moment at the conference, but it was worth going because my friends each had a private experience that was meaningful to them, and they were grateful I had asked them to go.

So, here is a challenge for you, and for myself too, that we will go out and take the opportunities that are presented to us to reject the pleasure-seeking, morally inept “norms” that we are surrounded by and proclaim Jesus back into our world. Because, as they told us at the conference, when the church fails, the world fails.

I have struggled writing this entry, and it has taken me more than one draft to get the right words out. At the time of my first draft, the effects of the corona virus pandemic were just beginning to reach Ohio; schools closed, churches closed, my work even eventually closed. It seemed that these minor inconveniences were the only effect the pandemic would have on myself and my family; but soon the ground we were standing on seemed to crumble right underneath us. Both of my dad’s parents somehow contracted the virus, even though they had been abiding by the stay at home orders. The update I was writing in my first draft detailed how my grandma was quarantined and recovering at home while my grandpa was in a hospital a few hours away on a ventilator, but was doing okay.

I could not bring myself to finish that draft because a few days later, my aunt received a call in the middle of the night from the hospital to inform the family that Grandpa’s heart rate had drastically fallen and the doctors expected him to crash at anytime. He made it through that morning and kept hanging on; the following days were rather harrowing, a lump would form in my throat every time the phone rang because it could be THE call. Our families were able to video call into my grandpa’s room to tell him that we loved him, though we were unsure if he could even hear us through the sedation and his coughing and moaning.

But, by the end of that week, my grandpa was still here, still fighting through this awful virus. The doctors then decided to change course and take him out of sedation to see what would happen. The next day, which just happened to be Divine Mercy Sunday, the nurses told us they went into his room and he was sitting up in his bed praying a Hail Mary. Everyone, the doctors, nurses, our family, were just astounded; the doctors had all but given up on my grandpa, but God hadn’t! Now, at the time of this writing, Grandpa is in a nursing home a lot closer to home recovering until he gets a negative Covid test result, then he will be headed home after more than a month!

During those tumultuous days, I kept re-reading a few quotes I had highlighted from the book I had read for this post. I received the book, Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves by Jason Evert, from one of my high school classmates. He gave a talk several months ago, when you could still do such things ;), before he left for a seminary in Colorado. He talked of his love for Pope Saint John Paul II, and he gave out these books so we could discover this great modern-day saint as well.

Prior to reading this book, I did not know much about Pope John Paul II, I was only about ten years old at the time of his death. I was quite astounded reading about his upbringing and his journey to the papacy. By the time Karol was in his early twenties, he had already lost his mother, his only brother, and then his father. He had survived the Nazi occupation of Poland only to succumb to the rule of Communism. I was fascinated to learn that Karol was so well read on the principles of Marxism that the Communists deemed him a threat because he understood their system better than they did. But he only used his gift of intelligence to further God’s kingdom, not for any political ploys.

Karol loved spending time with young people; he was described as an “eternal teenager” by a fellow priest because he was “never happier than when working with young people” (86). He could listen for hours as teenagers or college students would tell him about issues they were facing or ask him questions. He ministered to them in such a way to help them find their answers. He once said that “the more the world deprives young people of what is true, good and beautiful, the more earnestly will they yearn for it” (92). His life work was to lead succeeding generations to the unwavering truth he had found himself: Jesus.

I found it interesting that as a priest, and even as a bishop and cardinal, Karol enjoyed taking groups of young people camping, hiking or skiing, as retreats to minister to them. So great was his love for skiing that, even as pope, he was spotted on the slopes on more than one occasion trying to ski incognito!

One of Pope Saint John Paul’s other loves as described by Evert is that of human love. Though the words that John Paul spoke are from a different time, I believe they are more than fitting to today’s world; “genuine love … is demanding. But it’s beauty lies precisely in the demands it makes” (99). Also, ” we must never forget that only when love between human beings is put to the test can its true value be seen” (105). I think we could all agree that during these Covid-anxiety induced days, we are all being put to the test. But, perhaps it is these very days that we will find precisely the love that the great pope was speaking of. Even after all of the turmoil of his youth, Karol, and later as Pope John Paul, displayed the love and mercy of Jesus Christ, even to people like his would-be assassin. We are still called, especially in trying times such as these, to do the same.

As I pondered these words these past few weeks, I began to see evidence of this love: people who did not personally know my grandpa were praying for his health, family meetings where individuals put their differences and opinions aside to come together for a common goal, even just a gesture as simple as sending a homemade meal. Now, these instances are all on the small scale of my family, my community, but examples like these are happening all over the world right now. Out of the love of our fellow neighbor, we are all putting differences aside and coming together to fight this invisible war. And God-willing, when this is finally over, I believe we will see the beauty of genuine love.

“Let us go forth full of trust in Christ. He will accompany us as we journey toward the goal that He alone knows” (210).