Suffering

One of the great loves in my life is the horror genre. Horror films, books, horror themed amusement park rides and attractions. The welcome mat into our house is a skull and crossbones, and our salt and pepper shakers are skulls as well. 

I love the feeling of being scared, and on a deeper level with every new horror flick I watch, or new short story I read, there’s a layer of nostalgia.  Even though growing up my parents were very strict with our media intake, it always seemed to relax when a movie flashed on the screen starting Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, or Christopher Lee.

Friday night I watched Pascal Laugier’s 2008 film Martyrs. It was…unsettling to say the least. I first read about the film on a list of the most underrated horror films ever, and then again on a separate list of the horror films you’ll wish you’d never watched. 

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

The movie focuses on two girls who have been friends from adolescence shared in a girls home. One of the girls, Lucie, has trouble connecting with other people due to a trauma experienced in her childhood, though nobody really believes her retell get of what happened. She says she was systematically abused, physically and mentally, by unknown assailants for unknown reasons. 

When she grows up, she tracks down a family whom she believes is responsible for her suffering, and brutally murders them in revenge. Her friend, Anna, is an unwilling accomplice in the murder, but due to insinuated romantic feelings Anna has for Lucie, helps in cleaning up and disposal of the bodies, though Anna doubts that Lucie was well enough in the head to have targeted the correct people. Even Anna doubts Lucie’s story. 

Long movie short, Lucie kills herself as the result of guilt for her escaping as a child and leaving another girl behind in the hands of her tormentors, and Anna discovers that Lucie was indeed the victim of horrors as a child and that the family Lucie killed was indeed responsible for her abuse, but motives are much more sinister. 

Lucie was, and now Anna is, the victim of an organization that seeks knowledge about the afterlife. They accomplish this by kidnapping women (it is explained that women are more receptive), and submit them to ritualistic tortures because they believe that in such pain and suffering, one is given a glimpse into the next world and can report back if there is indeed an afterlife or not. Thus far, the organization has only created “victims” in the search for what they call “Martyrs.”

Overall, the movie was pretty good. The last 40 minutes dragged on and became very repetitive, but the final two minutes left a fantastic ending, open to many interpretations, which I feel is directly related to the viewers own beliefs about the afterlife, when the leader of the organization puts the barrel of a gun in her mouth and tells her next-in-command to “keep doubting.”

The thing that stuck with me most about the movie was the perversion and extreme take on the concept of suffering. As a Catholic, I believe that suffering is necessary in life, and that in taking up one’s cross you share in the Passion of Christ. The perversion of that in the movie comes from causing and using someone else’s suffering to answer your own questions about the unknown and Eternal, in forcing someone else to take up their cross and ignoring yours. 

Suffering is a fact of life. Each of us suffer to an extent, and certainly some suffer more than others. After watching the movie, I talked to my wife to sort out some of the ideas I gathered, because she is so much smarter than me and helps me focus my own thoughts into something much more clear and concise. I walked away from the film asking, crazy murderous organizations aside, at what point are you accepting the suffering that God has allowed you to experience, in the hopes that it draws you closer to Him, and at what point are you engaging in masochistic, self-flagellation?

The Catechism states that in illness and pain, “it can henceforth configure us to Him and unite us with His redemptive Passion.” Surely, in suffering we become more Christ-like, we experience a sample of what He endured to save mankind from our sins. 

But the way in which we suffer varies. Honestly, the ways in which I suffer in life are nothing compared to those who live in other countries, who worry about the immediate effects of war, famine, and disease. Not to say that my suffering, or your suffering, doesn’t bring us closer in our own ways to our Savior, but what sufferings do we allow, and what sufferings do we fight against? 

The suffering of being afflicted with a disease, like my mother with MS, or the sufferings of being in a physically abusive relationship. 

I would like to say that in the case of disease, that is a cross you take up, but you still fight against its progress. And in an abusive relationship, that is the kind of suffering you do not put up with. But I am not naive enough to believe that everyone agrees with me. There are people who believe that you deserve the suffering, the symptoms, and the slow death of a disease, as well as you must put up with the suffering of abuse. 

Christ says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” (Mt 11:29). Despite popular belief from some circles, God would NOT give you more than you can handle. If He did, that would mean that He is knowingly setting out to make you fail. Instead it is your interpretation and belief of what you think you can handle, versus what God knows you can. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,” (Jer 1:5). God knows you better than you know yourself. He would not give you suffering that you would collapse under if you hold strong to His Word. That is not to say that the suffering is easy, and there aren’t times you feel you can’t take it anymore, that you can’t take another step or that you can’t take another breath. But do not let yourself fall to despair under the weight of your cross, for your cross was made for you, and only you, to carry for the Glory of God, and He would not abandon you to more than what you could carry. 

What you think you could handle is less than what you can when with a humble heart you take up Christ’s yoke. 

No Exceptions

One of my college roommates and I went to high school together. It was (or is, as the school still stands today) a Catholic school, and as you may be able to guess, both he and I came from Catholic families.

Late one night after a few too many drinks, our conversation turned to religion, as late night conversations lubricated with alcohol usually turn to the philosophical and existential. I had already fallen away and returned to the Church, but as we talked he let me know that he felt he was falling further away from his own faith. Having been there before, quite recently, I did my best to council my friend, but in the end there is only so much you can do to help when one is battling against despair. That in itself is a personal war.

The main thing I gathered is that he felt there was a sin in his past, that though he went to Confession for, that remained unforgiven. He did not tell me what it was, and I did not press him, but he said that even though he knew the priest had said the words of absolution, he “knew” that God had not forgiven him for this transgression.

We lost touch after I moved out, and to be honest we did not leave on the best of terms. Not because we no longer shared the same faith, but because we were moving in different directions with our lives. But had I been then where I am now with the knowledge and faith I do today, I may have been better council. Though if I could go back, maybe if someday I see him again, I could say this:

There is nothing, nothing at all that you could do, that you have done, or that you will do, that cannot be forgiven if you ask for it. There is not one sin that our Lord, out of his infinite love for us all, did not go willingly to His Death on the cross for.

With His final breath, Christ did not say, “Except for that one.”

He said,

“Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

The only thing that would separate us from God’s forgiveness is our own stubbornness, our own refusal to accept His love and mercy.

Our own despair that we are not good enough.

And that is the greatest trick of the Devil, because we are. Each one of us is worthy of God’s love and kindness. We just have to ask.

Your Personal Relationship

One of the most frequent protests I’ve heard from Protestant co-workers and friends against the Catholic Church is that they feel it doesn’t emphasize enough a personal relationship with God, that they feel certain aspects, like the Sacrament of Confession, puts a barrier up between them and God.

I must stress that I am not ragging on my Protestant brothers and sisters, but instead using this as a jumping off point.

I understand where they are coming from. Being a part of a large parish, with very little one-on-one time with your priest or deacon, can make you feel like a number, instead of an individual. I myself am guilty of that from time to time.

A few years ago right after I got married, my wife and I wanted to become more active in our parish. She became a lector, someone who reads the scripture to the congregation, and I became an altar server. We got to know some of the other volunteers, one of them a sweet old lady about 90 years old, who is a cantor, or the one who leads the singing of hymns during the celebration.

This lady is the real deal too, full blown operatic singing at Mass. She gives voice lessons outside of Church.

One morning I was up on the altar, in between readings when the Responsorial Psalm is sung. Now being up on the altar in front of the entire congregation, I did my best to stay in a contemplative, almost meditative state. But this morning I watched as the cantor crossed the altar to the lectern. As she passed the tabernacle, she genuflected, but when she stood up she gazed longingly at the crucifix above and I saw her mouth, “I love you, Lord.”

In that moment I felt incredibly embarrassed. My cheeks flushed and I averted my gaze. I was uncomfortable because I felt I had intruded on an incredibly intimate moment, that I peeked behind the veil of this woman’s relationship with Christ.

The more involved and the more I grow in my faith, the more I understand about certain functions of the Catholic Church itself. The Church has a responsibility to lead the parish in communal prayer. It has a responsibility to gather the Body of Christ together in the celebration of our Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection. In that regard, the Church has to be focused on a more macro level.

But the Church has so many opportunities for us to develop our own personal relationships. Adoration, Benediction, even being open during the day so that you can just sit and pray if the need arises. Most importantly, every Sunday we as Catholics get to receive our Lord and Savior in the Eucharist. We get to physically imbibe Him. How much more personal, how much more intimate can you get?

The challenge is what are you doing to deepen your individual relationship with God? Are you taking advantage of those services the Church provides, are you taking the proper amount of time out of the day for prayer? For Catholics, Mass is only one hour a week. What are you doing with all the hours after that to take the reigns and strengthen your own relationship with Christ.

Because let me tell you, there is a 90 year old woman who has a deeper relationship with Christ than I do. Her love for Him is so focused, so powerful that it transcends the communal setting of the Mass. Her love for Him is truly inspiring to make me want to build a better relationship with Him.

Christ is reaching out to each of us on a personal level, but he can only reach halfway. It’s up to each of us, individually, to reach back.

The Illusion of Faith

“Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
-Matthew 17:20

Apart from my family, faith, and economics, physical fitness is incredibly important to me.

I love watching strongmen competitions. Apart from witnessing the absolute peak of human strength, what I love most about the competitions themselves is that they are so objective, and not subjective. What I mean is, the contestants aren’t judged on their physique, how “manly” they look, or how much of a comic book caricature they have made themselves out to be. They are judged on how many times they can dead lift two Ford Pintos, or how fast they can pull a train car for a fixed distance.

“Sorry, Sven from Sweden, you did a great job pressing that log over your head 9 times, but Olafur from Iceland did it 12 times.”

It separates true strength, from the illusion of strength; the guys in the gym who spend more time talking about their Paleo diet, or asking you, “Yo, how much do you bench,” than actually working to increase their own lifts.

I find that it parallels faith closely, the idea of true faith, versus the illusion of faith.

True faith won’t ask you, “Hey bro, how many hours of adoration did you go to?” True faith won’t sing the loudest so that others can hear how well they know the hymns, or receive the Eucharist it be seen engaging in the Sacrament. True faith won’t talk about not casting the first stone out of one side of their mouth, while condemning our brothers and sisters of different religions, creeds, and sexual orientations out of the other.

True faith doesn’t talk about what a good Christian does, true faith does Christ’s work.

I firmly believe the biggest threat to Christianity today is not Islam, secularism, or relativism. The biggest threat to Christians today are Christians ourselves. When we focus too much on projecting an illusion of our faith, rather than acting out our faith.

A few months ago I was at a men’s conference at my church, and we had an hour for reflection. I went down to the Truckee river and watched the water flow. I mused to myself that if I had true faith, I mean real true faith, I could walk out into the surface if the water like St Peter and not plunge below the surface. But I didn’t dare test it, because I know that I have a long way to go to have true faith. Like true strength, true faith is a journey. It’s not something that is miraculously granted overnight. It’s something you work on every minute, every hour, every day. It’s waking up in the morning with the purposeful intent, with a prayer on your lips, surrendering yourself, abandoning your whole being to God’s will.

The illusion of strength will ask how much you can lift, bro. True strength will walk over to the bar and lift.

The illusion of faith will talk about a love for Christ. True faith will show it.

Are You The First Or The Last?

“Am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous? Thus the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
– Matthew 20:15-16

This morning’s gospel reading was accompanied with an unusually short homily by our priest. He is a remarkably intelligent man, albeit known in our parish for not being a man of few words. His homilies, though theologically enlightening and profoundly insightful, are usually incredibly long.

This morning however, it was only three sentences.

The gospel reading today focuses on the parable of the vineyard workers, in which the owner of a vineyard hires workers in the morning for a day of work at the “usual daily wage.” The owner then goes out periodically throughout the rest of the day, and hires more workers. But as the day grows shorter and each subsequently hired laborer works a short shift, at the end of the day all the workers are paid equally, those who worked the full day, and the one who worked for only an hour. The laborers from the morning expected to be paid more than the others, and were incensed by the fact they received an equal wage, to which the vineyard owner responds with the quote from above.

Our priest explained that in his years of reading this passage, he too always felt a sense of injustice with the way the first laborers received their payment. But after studying the semantics of the passage and the rhetoric of what is said, he said he finally understood why; because he identified with the first worker, and not the last.

The metaphor of the passage is pretty clear: God, as the owner of the vineyard, calls each of us, the laborers, to a life of His works, at the end of which we will receive our reward, His Grace.

With that understanding of the parable and reading it through our narrowly human understanding, it can be easy to feel that sense of injustice. Those of us who have been lived a Christian life for, well, most or all of our lives, will receive the same reward as those who convert only at the end.

For that matter, the same reward as those who potentially live a life of evil, but repent at the final hour and accept Christ.

How is that fair? How is that just?

But what if we are looking at it wrong? As humans we judge things based on our sense of justice and injustice, and our own sense of time. But we must understand that our time is not God’s. We liken ourselves to the first workers and judge those who come later as the last, but what if, in the grand scheme of the world, we are laborers called last?

Are we now so quick to speak of injustice?

In the end, God’s Grace is God’s to give. Not mine, and not yours. Therefore it is God’s right to reward, or to withhold, as He deems in accordance with His Will. This is a fundamental tenant of Christianity; the abandonment of yourself to God’s Will, and one that I understand as being a barrier for many to embrace the Christian faith. You either get it, or you don’t. You accept that God is God and all that comes with it, or you don’t.

If we are the laborers called last, how blessed are we?

A Full Ration

When I talked to my dad a few years ago about starting my own family, getting married and having kids, as young as I was (and still am), he was incredibly supportive. I remember taking him out to a Mexican restaurant to get him loaded up on some hot, greasy goodness before he had to listen to his 21 year old son tell him he was going to propose to his girlfriend.

My parents have always been incredibly open and honest with me. It’s one of the things I respect the most about them; no matter what my question was, no matter how old I was, they treated me like an adult.

One of the things I remember most about our conversation that night happened as we were leaving the restaurant. My dad was reminiscing on being a younger man and having me and my brother, and how time goes by. One day you’re holding your own child who can’t even walk, and seemingly the next day they are telling you about their plans of having their own children.

My dad said, “You know, I got my full ration of hugs and kisses when you and your brother were little, but what I wouldn’t give for just one more day of it.”

My wife and I are pretty big nerds. Yesterday we decided that the best way to spend our afternoon was to take turns reading our daughter stories. My wife, being the literary dork/genius read Coleridge’s “Christabel,” and when my turn came I tried to frighten them with some HP Lovecraft. After we put Verokina down to bed, we then proceeded to binge watch Doctor Who for a couple of hours.

So after half a day of supernatural poetry, stories of cosmic horror, and time travel, I had some pretty wild dreams…

Our daughter Veronika is 19 months old, and my wife is currently pregnant, due in January with another little girl. In my dream, we were all in the kitchen, my wife standing next to me. Veronika looked about 4 years old in the dream, and her little sister was about 2. I was holding a third baby, a little boy who looked like he was just born, and I felt this illimitable joy.

Then out of nowhere this celestial creature shows up, and in the blink of an eye everything changes. PI was still in the kitchen with my wife, but suddenly Veronika was 18, packing her bags and getting ready to move out. Her little sister was 16 and pretending that my wife and I didn’t exist, and my dream son was a young teenager. My wife looked older, as I imagine I did as well, and all that joy I felt was replaced with an immeasurable sorrow.

I felt slighted. I felt robbed that this alien came in and so suddenly made us older in no time at all. I grabbed the creature and I started yelling at it, pleading and sobbing, “Give me back that time! Just give me back those years you took!”

When I woke up, I saw my wife sleeping soundly, still 5 months pregnant with our second baby. I sneaked down the hall and poked my head into Ronnie’s room and found her curled up in a little ball, still 19 months old.

I was relieved. Happy that my young family is still young, hopeful and excited about the days to come with them. But at the same time I felt a bittersweet tug in my guy that reminded me that one day, save for the interstellar traveler, that scene from my dream will be a reality. My daughters will grow up and move out. If my wife and I have a third child, they too will grow older and all my children, God willing, will have their own families.

It’s funny, when my dad told what he would give for one more day, I understood the words he said, but this morning upon waking, I understood their meaning.

So today, I got my full ration of hugs and kisses from my little girl. And I pray that all you other parents out there got yours as well.

Why Would God Want To Talk To You?

Years ago, when I was 19, I was in a very unhappy, unhealthy relationship with an equally unhappy person.

I won’t go into much detail, but amongst other moral compromises I made, I had stopped going to church regularly, and overall my relationship with God deteriorated. I stopped praying, seeking His guidance, really I just pushed Him as far away as possible, without outright denying His existence or blaspheming against Him.

My father used to teach Confirmation at our old parish, and at the beginning of Lent they would pass out little nails with the point ground down. Just a little keepsake to carry around with you, to keep your mind focused that the whole point of the Easter season is the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. My father knew that I wasn’t going to church, and he brought me one of the nails, a small gesture to let me know that he was thinking of me, concerned for my well being and spiritual direction.

Now this is that part where is gets unusual. I swear, the moment he dropped the nail into my hand, I could feel it scorch the flesh of my palm, as if the nail were white hot and threatened to burn right through down to the bone. I dropped the nail to the floor, and when I picked it back up I found it to be a regular temperature. No heat, save for the warmth of being in my father’s pocket on the way home.

The event shook me, and I started to reflect on the decisions I was making and the way in which I had been living the months prior. That night, I was with my girlfriend and I recounted what had happened. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I reflected on the activities we were engaged in, out lack of a solid faith, and the general unstable, unhappy state of our relationship.

And it was incredibly unstable. Jealous, vindictive, seeds of distrust sewn through every aspect of our courtship.

I suggested that we start going to church. I thought that what had happened was indeed a sign from God, a reminder that Christ used to be the center of my life, and that I had selfishly rejected Him. I said that I thought God was trying to talk to me.

I remember exactly what she said. She looked me in the eyes, her own full of disgust, and said, “Why would God want to talk to you?”

And like that, the feeling I carried around, the beginning glimmer of hope that what was wrong could be changed, was stripped away. Humiliated, emasculated, I dropped the subject and did not bring it up again.

I don’t blame my ex. Though she was hateful and full of spite, I did nothing. Though I recognized the evils in what she said, I was not strong enough in my faith, or confident enough in myself, at the time to separate from her.

Her words had such an effect on me because she said what I feared deep down. After all I had done, after all the sins and times I had fallen from the path He wanted me to walk, why would God want to talk to me? Why would a perfect being want to converse, to degrade Himself by spending precious time on an imperfect boy?

Because no matter how much we sin, no matter how many times we turn away, to paraphrase Saint Therese of Lisieux, all that we could do is but a drop of water compared to the raging fire of His mercy. All you have to do is ask.

We are each created in His Likeness and Image. In speaking to Jeremiah, The Lord says, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” (Jer 1:5). There is an intimacy, a love between Creator and creation that can never, not ever be destroyed.

I had a Humanities professor in college who would take the time out of every lecture to tell us that we are not unique. That none of us were special, that none of us were profound or different. Now, he was trying to spread a militantly anti-theistic, Communist doctrine, but it doesn’t hold up. If you really take a step back, each one of us is unique. Each one of us may not do “great” things, we may not all be revolutionaries, or inventors, theologians or scientists, but there is only one you. There is only one you, born to your parents, who looks like you, had your temperament, who will have the unique experiences you do. You may share similarities with others, but your life, the one you will live, will not be exactly like anyone else’s.

God wants to talk to you because He formed you. Because in being made by His hands you are unique, you are special, you are worth his time to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven.

Because you are a miracle.

Although he is not a Christian, in his graphic novel Watchmen, Alan Moore perfectly sums up this idea when he writes:

“Thermo-dynamic miracles…Events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold…in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter…and of that union, of the thousand million children competing…it was you, only you, that emerged.”

God wants to talk to you. There is no question about that.

The question is, are you listening? And if you hear Him, will you respond?

The Eucharist

So in honor of Fathers Day, I thought it fitting to share my experience with the greatest gift out Heavenly Father has given us.

I was born Catholic, baptized at birth, but my family didn’t start going to church regularly until my brother and I were in a Catholic elementary school, and if I’m being entirely honest, it was my brothers constant nagging of my parents was the catalyst that got us to go.

As Catholics, the high point of the Mass is the Eucharist, in which the priest, acting the role of Christ at the last supper, transforms mere bread and wine into the most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus. We call it transubstantiation, and while it retains the physical properties of the bread and wine, through the power of the Holy Spirit we believe it becomes His Real Presence. Because we believe it to be truly the Body and Blood of our Savior, the Eucharist is treated with the utmost respect and care. In fact, etiquette dictates that the one in Communion must consume the Host in view of the Eucharistic minister to ensure it is not being taken away and then later disgraced. After the transubstantiation, any of the leftover Host not consumed is stored in the tabernacle at the back of the altar. It must continue to be protected and cared for until it is consumed, because it had ceased to be ordinary and is now the true, physical presence of Christ.

I promise there is a point to that, and I wasn’t trying to show off.

In the Church, you aren’t allowed to receive the Eucharist until your First Communion, which for most youth brought up in the church is around the second grade. The same went for me, but it wasn’t until I was 17 that I truly understood, and most importantly appreciated, what the Eucharist is.

When my brother’s turn came for First Communion, we hatched a plot. Since we both knew that it was not proper for anyone not having gone through First Communion to openly receive the Sacrament, we made an agreement when he started preparation that he would save some of the Host for me. We had seen the wafers before, and they were all imprinted with a cross. We figured it would be easy for him to break the Host into four pieces, and save one of the portions for me. I remember watching him and his class process out of the church, and then running outside to meet with him. When I finally found him, I was smiling eagerly, awaiting my prize. But he just shook his head, and told me he couldn’t do it, that it wasn’t okay.

I was mad. He tried to calm me down, but I was so angry with him that he could be so selfish to abandon our plan. He was the selfish one in my childish logic for not sharing the Eucharist, because at that point, I just didn’t understand.

Our parish in Northern California where we lived at the time was relatively small. My family always went to the 7:30am Mass every Sunday, which was usually celebrated by the parish priest, an old Irishman, Fr Healey. He was very devout, looking back on it almost uptight and stuffy, but nonetheless had a burning passion for his faith, despite his outward conservatism. And I remember that passion came through in one homily in particular, that he gave annually during the Feast of Corpus Christi, in which he would lament, amidst shouts and tears, the disrespectful manner he would see some members of the congregation treat the Eucharist. He would weep that after Mass he would sometimes find half chewed, spit out pieces of the Eucharist in the pews, and that some of his flock were the perpetrators of such in dignified treatments of the Sacrament.

I would listen year after year, and though I saw the pain, the horror he felt and recognized his love for the Eucharist, I still didn’t understand.

Even when I grew up and started taking more of my faith and development into my own hands, I never truly understood the Eucharist. I knew it was holy, that it was one of the defining things that makes Catholics separate from other Christians, but even at 16 if you had asked me, I wouldn’t have been able to give a satisfactory answer.

Because I just didn’t understand. Not would I for another year.

When I was 16, I started volunteering at my church in Reno where my family had moved. I was a part of the youth band, and kind of a youth advisor to other kids going through the sacrament of Confirmation. A year later after I turned 17, I was asked to be a youth leader on a retreat to the Steubenville West conference in Tucson, Az. Eager to get away from my parents for the summer, and excited to spend time with my friends, I gladly accepted. The conference was fun, a lot of talks from Catholic Apologists, daily mass and nightly worship. On the last night of the conference, however, the local bishop held a special session of Adoration.

Most Catholics might find this hard to believe, but until that point in my life, I had never heard of Adoration before. I didn’t know what it was, or that it was something the Church did. Adoration is when the consecrated Host is displayed in a monstrance for us to, literally, sit in the presence of, pray, and adore. A monstrance is a vessel for the Eucharist to be stored and transported in, and are beautifully designed, there are really no two that are alike.

Like I said earlier, the Host that is not consumed is protected and stored away in a tabernacle at the altar. A consecrated Host is not something that just sits out in a church. But during Adoration, the true Body if Christ is put on display for all to see and worship.

It was at that first Adoration that it finally clicked. I was talking to my wife before I wrote this, trying to find the exact words as to why it happened then. And as is usually the case with wives because they are the smarter of the two, she said, “It’s because for the first time, you saw the Eucharist how it should be seen; in all His glory.”

Something so simple, that is now something so powerful. I always knew the Eucharist was important to us as Catholics, but I finally understood, I finally appreciated it. Knowing the full glory in the Eucharist, seeing Him beautifully presented like the King He is, makes it all that more precious now when He is presented to me every Sunday in a manner in unbefitting a king, in a simple cup, looking as simple as a plain piece of unleavened bread.

I think now, as a father, one of the most thrilling and awesome moments of the mass is when my wife and I receive the Eucharist together, knowing that when Veronika was growing in her belly, and now that my wife is pregnant again that as our second child grows, and with each of our future babies, that because my wife receives the Host, my children in utero are fed and nourished with the Body of Christ as well.

Happy Fathers Day to all fathers, grandfathers, godfathers, stepfathers, and to all men whom someone calls father. May God keep you safe, and bless you the way He has me.

If America Should Fall

“And tomorrow America just might fall apart. Tomorrow, tell me where will you wake up?” -Against Me!, “8 Full Hours of Sleep”

I don’t think I’ll make many friends with this post, but I feel full of angst tonight. I feel I must preface this again with the, “I am not an anarchist” statement, though I’ve never found being called one quite as insulting as those accusing me have meant for it to be.

My parish priest is one of the most fiercely, and dauntingly, intelligent men I’ve ever met. A few years ago at a parish event I mentioned the comic book Watchmen, and the following Sunday, he gave me The Girard Reader and expected me to be able to explain how Alan Moore used his characters to provide a case study for Rene Girard’s scapegoat theory.

One of my favorite homily’s of his was also the shortest I’ve heard him give. In it, he postulated that if America were to fall tomorrow, as Catholics, what would that matter?

Now, I was already undergoing a world altering political and ideological shift internally, so that question seemed to come at the most opportune time.

Through truth be told, I also enjoyed watching all of the uptight conservatives in the congregation shifting uncomfortably as their priest stood at the pulpit, openly acknowledging the collapse of the American empire. The point was that as Catholics, we shouldn’t be focused on the kingdom our world leaders are trying to build on this earth. We are directed towards the Eternal, to a different kingdom altogether.

If tomorrow America were to fall, I would not care, for my kingdom does not lie here. My devotion is not to a country, my allegiance is not pledged to a flag. America did not suffer and die for my sins. No nation did for anyone’s.

I’m already of the mindset that all flags burn the same color. My heart yearns for something more that a country, my heart burns with a fire for the Holy Spirit.

If America were to fall, tomorrow, I would like to wake up with the Father.

My Wife the Superhero

So it may be weird to post something completely unrelated on Easter, but whatever, this is my blog and I’ll do what I feel, and I’ll post my Easter blog later.

So Veronika has started daycare at the beginning of March. She loves it, and she gets to finally interact with other babies (my wife and I don’t know any other couples with children Ronnie’s age). We’d known this was coming, so my wife and I had been preparing for the emotional strain of leaving our daughter in the hands of strangers.

The one thing we forgot to prepare ourselves for was the sicknesses that came with daycare. So far, Ronnie has had the stomach flu, a cold, and freaking pink eye! We were able to keep that contained just to her, but she shared the stomach flu with us and knocked my wife and I out for a few days.

Then two weeks ago, my wife got tonsillitis, and she was bed ridden for a good five days. During that time I had to take the lead on the day to day house and baby duties.

When Ronnie was first born, my wife and I decided that she would stay home to raise our daughter. Now I know that raising a baby is a full time job in itself. I knew it would be stressful on my wife, and how the daily functioning, cleaning, and other house chores would fall on her, and she didn’t mind because she got to spend all day with our beautiful baby. I was always quick to defend her when my coworkers would make jokes that she would sit around all day watching TV, doing nothing. I always knew that she had made a huge sacrifice to walk away from a job she loved to make sure that Ronnie spent her first year with her mommy.

I always knew, but until she was bed ridden, I didn’t understand. When my wife was out sick, all of her jobs became mine. The cooking, the cleaning, taking care of Veronika. I knew it was difficult, but I never truly appreciated all that my wife did this past year to keep our baby alive, healthy, happy, and our house running.

I feel guilty the times I took for granted all she did to make sure that when I came home from work, the house looked nice, that each night I went to sleep in a bed that had been made that morning, that I ate a wonderful meal cooked earlier in the day on clean dishes she had washed.

All that, while making sure my daughter was clothed, bathed, fed, and loved.

It’s no secret that my wife is incredible. I’ve known since the moment I met her how extraordinary she is. I’ve never doubted her, but playing single dad for a week really brought that appreciation and admiration for her to a deeper level.

I feel I may start to ramble if I go on much longer, so I guess I’ll end with this: our marriage is a partnership. I’m blessed to have such a strong woman to support and strengthen me.

I only hope that I do the same for her.