Growing Taller in Spiritual Gravity

The song "Feel It All" by Chance Pena was unlikely written about his relationship with God, however, it was written about mine. The key lyrical line is "You're my ceiling and I've grown too tall." So what am I feeling? All of what?

I am feeling all the weight of Goodness. This is for me what spiritual gravity is--the weight of goodness that allows me to stand tall, yet is often unbearable because I cannot stand alone. This is the ceiling for which God calls me to constantly seek. A ceiling that calls me to grow ever taller, always taller. The taller I grow the more I feel all the weight of God's Goodness. His goodness is too much for me. Not because I am unworthy, the exact opposite. God knows I am worthy. I believe that I am worthy because He walks with me, never leaving my side, always holding me up. His Goodness is my cross to bear.

At first thought, I told myself how could this even be? This makes no sense. What a paradox. The spiritual gravity of Goodness is what allows me to stand yet as the gravity increases, I experience a weight too unbearable to stand on my own. This is why grace is required.

Imagine trying to stand on a planet with ten times the gravity of Earth? No one could stand without some kind of assistance such as a technological modification. Well, if I am to bear this weight of spiritual gravity that comes with Heaven, then I must feel it all, all the Goodness of God, and bear the weight of that Cross.

This is my vocation, as what many friends have called me, "the perfect husband." This is the unique name for me of "feeling it all." This is that weight of this expectation, my spiritual gravity, my cross of Goodness that God has given me to carry. The Beauty of this Goodness is that as husband I require my wife. By definition I must have a companion, I require a partner (again), but not just anyone. My unique vocation is a lifelong partnership with another of the other sex who is my complement. This is God's plan for marriage, the reality of the sacramental nature of marital unity, and His plan for my vocation, again.

I have my own cross as well as her cross, and the cross of our family together. The weight of spiritual gravity has quadrupled, and yet I continue to stand taller, taller for her child, taller for her, taller for myself, and taller for God.

Everyday, every hour, every minute, and every moment I feel it all, all of the gravity, and I continue to grow taller thanks be to God.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Evidence of Our Fallen Nature

Psychologists call it "negative bias." That is, we tend to focus on the negatives in life or our attention finds easiest to dwell on the negative. This is clear evidence to me that we have a fallen nature in need of redemption. We know we need the good but we tend to focus on the negative. And many of us take a lifetime working on doing good and avoiding evil. Life is indeed difficult. 

Saint Paul writes to the Christian community in Rome about our fallen nature and negative bias like this:

"The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if [I] do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand" (Romans 7:18-21).

This whole negative bias becomes even more evident when experiencing the death of a loved one. Grief nevers ends because the love of the one lost is never gone. Love remains because authentic love is eternal.

[Let us pause here with an interlude to illustrate the point. ]

How blind am I, O Lord!

Narrow is my vision

For your power is beyond

Even my imagination. 

Arrogance and ignorance are my strengths

When I consider your ways, O Lord.

Pain takes over, and

Grace must overcome.

In grief, I proclaimed

You caused her death

When I cried, "How could you let this happen! Why Lord? O why?

As if Your plan for her and I

Could be thwarted by Death!

Death has no victory over You.

But it had conquered me in that moment, not her.

Your power moves beyond Death

As my power was consumed in Death.

The plan for her and I is always Yours, even beyond Death.

Your plan for her and I never ceased to be

Yet blinded by Death even before she left me

To be eternally Yours.

Continue to work in me, O Lord

Beyond this Death!

Let your plan for her and I remain in me as I remain in You.

Let your plan move beyond Death into another her for me.

Let me remain in You as I was in her and shall be for another her.

Together then we remain in one another beyond Death and into Eternal Life.

[Now we return to our reflection on grief and our fallen nature.]

In our earthly, fallen existence, love manifests in grief because the doing good (focusing on the positive and good memories) is not readily at hand. Memories of what is lost and thoughts of what can never be are the negative biases we easily hold onto. And that to me is evidence of our fallen nature.

Yet as Saint Paul and countless other saints remind us: God is good. Redemption is at hand. Grace is abundant. And Victory over Death is Christ's and for those who follow Him.

Grief is not evil, nor a sinful act. Grief however is a sign of our fallen nature AND a sign of redemption if we place our grief with Christ's grief. Yes, Jesus grieved not because He is fallen but because He loved. Christ shows us the way through grief and out of negative bias; out of sin and death and into grace and eternal life. Just as Jesus was baptized though without sin, Jesus too grieved though without a fallen nature. He is the Way of Redemption. 

Christ shows us how grief can be sacramental, a sign of redemption. If we place our sufferings with those of Christ's, then our tears are joined with His. United with Christ, our cleansing tears become sacramental, a loving sign of redeeming grace. Our tears of a grace-filled grief heal our fallen nature according to the Law of Love. In that darkness of death, we are transformed by the Light of Life. Grief may remain in the shadows, but love eternal bonds us to hope everlasting. 

This is why Catholics pray for the faithful departed. We pray to remain with those departed yet destined for Heaven. We pray as part of the Communion of Saints here on Earth and with those in Heaven. We believe grief united with grace brings hope of redemption and eventually eternal life with God and the saints.

Life after Death

In the Wrath of Kahn, perhaps the greatest Star Trek film of the franchise, James T. Kirk (now Admiral Kirk) enters the new Enterprise for the first time. Kirk is greeted by Captain Spock and responds with a notable quip, "Yes, we've been through death and life together." This reference to the movie's opening scene of the Kobyashi Maru test has been for me a kergymatic inspiration of recent.

Is this not the primary kergyma of the Gospel? That each of us has in one way or another been through death and life together, in Christ.

Is this not our shared reality? We all have been thru life and death together, even a child knows this from the feelings of loss and abandonment. Such for a child is an experience of death. And the loving embrace or uplifting smile of a caregiver is an experience of life, even if just an instance or glimmer.

We need to acknowledge more often that our shared experiences of the Gospel is that "we have been through death and life together." For in Christ we have access to the New Eden. In Christ, we experience a rebirth from death, a true Genesis experience, not made of human innovation but made of divine salvation. Christ saves us from death, that is, He gifts us the freedom to live eternally. And here on Earth, we are graced with a taste or glimpse of that abundant life.

Going much deeper into my personal experience, I experienced the death of my first wife after 25 years together. Yet by God's grace, I was able to experience again the joy of life with my wife and her adopted son. Overwhelmed by God's love for me, I am experiencing the abundance of joy in a new way that I could never have imaged.

Life after death is a strange experience when you remain living in our fallen yet redeemed corporeal reality. I am alive after experiencing the death of my spouse. The death of a spouse is the closest one can experience his or her own death, if you believe and have lived a marriage in which the two become one, as I have.

I am no longer who I was, yet that part of me who does remain has been forever formed by who I was because of having been her husband. I became the man I am today because of her being in my life. Because she and I became one flesh. She more than any other person beside myself made me the man I am today. Furthermore, I am still influenced by her because I know she still lives, not just in the memories of those who knew her and loved her. She remains in my life because she is with God, and God is with me, and I in them. We are in communion.

So life after death is possible because of God and His grace that dwells within us and among us, bringing us together from death to life.

Womb of the Spirit

A reflection upon John 3:1-15

Just as a child of flesh enters into this world through the womb of Woman, so too a child of spirit enters into the Church through the womb of the Spirit. 

The child of flesh and the child of spirit is the one same child of God, a person of body and soul, birthed and baptized. This is why every baptismal font must remind us of the womb of Woman AND the womb of the Spirit. For life in the spirit begins through being born through the womb of the Spirit just as life in the flesh begins through being born through the womb of Woman. 

The Spirit is the spirit of Life and Mary, woman of Woman, is the Mother of the Church. For Mary in her perfect faith said yes to God's plan of Salvation. Like no other person and according to divine providence, Mary was born of flesh and born of spirit from her beginning. Thus we believe in her immaculate conception because she from conception is full of grace. Mary truly is the New Eve, the Woman of Creation, who brought forth the Son of God into this world for the Salvation of all, just as the Church is called forth to do. 

The Church looks to Mary, Mother of the Church, on how to bring forth new life in the Spirit, but not because of human efforts. The Church can bring forth life in the Spirit only because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which makes us, the Church, the Temple of God. To see the actions of the Church as anything but of feminine origin denies her life-giving mission. The Church is Mother because she is that vessel through whom all who are just of flesh are born again in the Spirit. This is why the Church recognizes a person as a child of God only after baptism. For Christ himself said that only those born of both water and Spirit may enter the kingdom of God (see John 3:5).

The Son of Man is the One who gives us the Way for every child of God to be fully human, that is full of grace. Mary was simply the first fully human according to God's plan, the New Eve.

Though the Son of Man is first the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is fully human and fully divine, is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He was sent by the Father to give us the Spirit, through whom all children become of God, that is, become fully who are to be, full of grace according to His plan. 

May we all cherish the womb of Woman so we may cherish the womb of the Spirit. In the Womb, may all be born and baptized in the one Spirit. 

Left Undone

We are all probably familiar with the maxim, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." 

I do believe that the evil in the world is often the good left undone. This is of our own doing, of course. We should never blame some twisted serpent tempting us to do what we know is wrong or don't do what we know is right. We do know the difference between good and evil, we just continually seek to be that sole arbiter and source of truth. Thus we continue to have the moral relativistic mess we live in. Again, all of this is of our own doing and will be our undoing, if we do not accept the truth of who God created us to become.

There are too many sins of commission to list in the history of us. We can confess away our sins of the past. Yet if we remain repeat offenders, then we ought not be surprised by our culture--a culture of consumption instead of generosity, a culture of me instead of we, a culture of death instead of life. 

But what of those sins we ignore or deny? What of our sins of omission and of the good left undone?

In the Episcopal Church, there is a beautiful line in their Prayer of Confession:

"Most merciful God,

we confess that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed,

by what we have done,

and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you with our whole heart;

we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

have mercy on us and forgive us;

that we may delight in your will,

and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your Name. Amen."

"By what we have done, and by what we have left undone" echoes its inherited Catholic teaching on the sins of commission and the sins of omission. Yet I wonder how many Catholics, Anglicans, and Episcopalians, let alone other Christians, give serious attention to the good we leave undone.

In my line of work, we are highly sensitive to parental fatigue, especially the anxiety from all of the decisions parents face. We tell ourselves, How can we handle any more, let alone all the good left undone? There is just too much, right?

Wrong. The more we allow good to be undone, the more troubling decisions we will continue to face, and the more anxiety, stress, and fatigue awaits us in our future. This is not about making more decisions. This is about always making the right decisions when the good is before us. The good begs of us not to be left undone. We know this to be true because God gave even those who do not believe, a conscience and free will. The good is always there to be done. 

This will not be easy. Life is difficult. Whoever told you otherwise, lied or left that good truth untold. You are likely to be persecuted at some point or feel the weight of your cross as a result of repeatedly doing the good. That burden you feel is the good waiting to be done. 

Pope Benedict XVI reminds us, "Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched" (Spe salvi 33). The Pope continues to teach about God increasing our desire to receive God. The Pope is teaching us that grace is necessary, that is, God's presence in our lives is required to do good in this world, and prayer is a primary means to purify and prepare our hearts to stretch and be filled by He who frees us from the "illusion of innocence" and from the "numbness of my conscience."

Prayer enables us to be "ministers of hope" in which we witness to the world the goodness of God, despite the evil, sin, and pain that clearly exists. We leave the good left undone because we believe our hearts are full, which is a lie we tell ourselves to excuse us from the good left undone. Our hearts are never full because God created us to be filled, to be ever filled by His grace, which is boundless.

God created you and I preciously, that is, precisely for His grace. Only by our cooperation with God will the good be done. That is why we pray, "Thy will be done." We pray for God's will be done through us. We pray to stretch our hearts so that no good is left undone.

Encourage one another to always becoming ministers of hope, the hope that comes from believing. We are called in faith to trust that our hearts continue to be stretched. To believe that we continue to be filled with the everlasting love of God so that good always be done, according to His will.

Our Lady of Untier of Knots, pray for us.

The Cold January

January is cold.

Why must I wake up?

The air is dry.

The wind cuts thru to my bones.

I am blinded by the diffused light.

Why must I wake up?

January is cold.

Why must I wake up?

The warmth of this bed keeps me lying where I am.

My stiff body doesn't want to move.

Why must I wake up?

January is cold.

Why must I wake up?

I want to stay here, dreaming of Summers past.

Here remembering you with me, when we were together. 

Here is where I belong.

Yet here is no more.

Why must I wake up?

January is cold.