Getting in the Christmas Spirit

I am not feeling so great about this Christmas and the silly thing is that it is for the most childish reason.  This year for the first time, we are not exchanging gifts as a family.  We are going to adopt a family.

Part of me really resents this because really we should be giving all year long and not just showering a family at Christmas with things that make us feel better.  My Franciscan fraternity runs a food pantry and feeds the homeless as well.  I want to do more but my family is happy with once a year things.  where did I go wrong?

The other, childish part of me, wants presents under the tree for me.  What about me?  Me, me, me!  Isn't that what Christmas is about.  The silly thing is we gave gifts under $5 and I will still have presents, but not as many.  This is what makes me upset, why do I feel this way?  Why am I so selfish?

Advent Refugee

It struck me today that as I startmy Advent journey along the road to Christmas, that I should keep in mind the refugees seeking a safety and a new home away from war and fear, especially those from Syria.  I think of the Holy Family who were refugees in Egypt seeking refuge from Herod.  I am a refugee in a very small sense from the hatred and indifference in this world.

Oddly enough I think I will find refuge in helping those who seek refuge.

Am I a Christian?

  What does it mean to be a Christian?  Does it mean someone who reads the Bible or someone who lives it?  Of course it has to be both, you can't just live it you have to know what it says but you can't just read it either, it has to be lived.  If we know all it says and that has no impact on our lives what good is the "Good Book"?

  I need to ask myself every day have I lived the teachings of Jesus Christ fully today?  Every day my answer will be no, in some way today I took the easy way out.  Today I was cruel or lazy or worse, indifferent.  I know I will never get it right, I will never give myself as perfectly as He did.  I may make some grand gesture but even then my reasons for doing it wont be pure, or secretly I will be hoping the person I offer it to will decline my offer.

  On the face of it I do a better job of living the Gospel then I do in my heart.  In my heart I want to be seen as being a great Christian, someone other people admire.  I want people to see what I do.  I want people to be impressed with the books I have read the speakers I have listened to.  I want to be seen praying by those who would think better of me for it and not by those who would find it weird.

Practical Relativism isn't Prolife

  Chapters 122 and 123 of the Pope's latest encyclical are profound.  Everything has to be convenient for me.  I will volunteer but only when it is convenient, I will donate to a cause, only when I have money that I don't want for something else I don't need.  I don't want to be inconvenienced saving our planet so instead I will wait and hope someone else does it or they invent someway of doing it that won't mean driving less often.  In the meantime I will just not believe in it.

It is convenient for me to buy a $5 tee shirt so I won't care about the working conditions of the people halfway across the world.  I like cheap food so I won't care about how farmers are effected by GMO crops or how that chicken was treated.  We treat people and living creatures like objects everyday.  How can we be Pro-life if we do this?

Encountering Jesus and Mary

This past Saturday was the anniversary of the death of a man I greatly respected, Dr Ed Shirley, theologian and professor at St Edwards University.  Ed used to tell a story of encountering Jesus and Mary on the bus one day that I always had a hard time with.  Jesus and Mary were homeless people who shared their breakfast with Ed.  On Saturday I had a similar encounter.

I was at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Austin for our regular Secular Franciscan meeting and I was outside with another Secular Franciscan when a man came by in some distress.  I don't know for sure what was wrong and he may have been high or sick.  We were having Mass so I got him a bottle of water and left it for him.  He had laid down and looked like he was sleeping.  I thought about him during Mass and prayed for him.

After Mass I got him some food and put out by the water.  We were praying a Holy Hour and I offered my prayers for him but still felt the need to do something else.  I went outside and pryed near him.  I have done this before but never have I done this and felt such peace.  Normally a battle is set up with whatever daemons are around the person.  After a while someone else walked by and spoke to the man who got up looking refreshed and they talked about the food he had there.  I waited and as I went back inside a woman approached me saying she had a young girl with her who was homeless and pregnant and did I have any food for her as well.  I said yes and got her some.

Our holy hour wasn't done so I went back inside and felt such grace wash over me I cried.  God does come to us in those close to us.

Pope Francis's New Encyclical is wholly Pro-Life

I haven't finished reading it yet but I am far enough through that I wanted to start blogging about it.  I would encourage you to read it yourself and not to rely on what you hear in the media or even on what I write about it.  Parts of it are difficult to unstand so have a dictionary handy.

By far my favite part is paragraphs 63 through 100, the biblical reasoning behind what the Pope is saying.  It is so beautiful and yet reminds us that we are stewards of Gods creation and that God loves all He created.  We are also reminded that we are responsible for all our actions.  Mindless consumerism that hurts someone half way around the world is still our responsibility.

The Pope lays out the case for global warming but the part I like the best is that he says even we are not the total cause for this shift we are still obligated to all we can mitigate the problem.  The polar ice caps are melting and so are the glaciers, we can't deny that.  This will effect people around the world and so we are obligated to do what we can and we can not just sit back and hope that technology will save us.

Even if a technical solution is found we still can't keep going with our materialistic way of living.  We can't insist that people half way around the world work as slaves to give us cheap clothing and cat food.  God obligates us to care for those people as much as we do those in our won country.  That to be Pro-Life means to love and care for all people.

Contemplating Christ as a Mirror

Have you ever been given something to do like read something or teach something and then realize that it was a gift from God?  I had that this month.  I am leading formation this month for those seeking to become Secular Franciscans in our area and the topic was the writings of St Francis ans St Clare and the biographies of the two saints.  Most people will read something like the Little Flowers of St Francis or one of the biographies of him, very few people chose to read any of Clare's writings or the biographies of Clare.

I decided that I would read her letters to St Agnes again, the really inspired me the first time I read them.  This time when I read them I decided to not skip the intros in each letter and to think about how Clare could write such nonsense at the start of her letters and then such beautiful things later.  I think the kinds of things Clare says about herself at the start of her letters, how bad and lowly I am but I would share that out loud with anyone!  I have to hide all that stuff, I can't own it, but she does.  Why do I hide who I am?  I think I even try to hide it from God by dazzling Him with doing things.

Clare asks Agnes to use Christ as her mirror.  I had done that in the past as an exercise to beat myself up.  I looked in the mirror and refused to see Christ in myself.  I pray every day to see Christ in those around me but I refused to see Him in myself.  How can I see Christ in the homeless or my coworker if I can't see him in myself?

So a couple days ago I did just that.  I sat down an gazed at the Beloved and looked for myself in His image.  It was hard, I had to both see that I am unworthy of His love and accept it at the sametime to see any of Him in me.  I know God loves me, and at times I have felt that love, but each time I handed that love back to Him saying, Oh Lord I am not Worthy.  I knew I couldn't earn His love and that I didn't have to but still because I could not love myself I couldn't accept the free unconditional gift of His love and see myself as a person who was worth loving.  Is it easy, no.  I have to continue to gaze in that mirror.

 The best part is I understand other people a bit better now.  The person who refuses to see Their own flaws doesn't do it because they love themselves so much but the exact opposite, they think they have to fight to cover all that up so they might trick others into loving them.   Also I get to share this with  our Franciscans in training, maybe I can convince some of them to try this exercise.  Try it yourself.

I can see now that God both knows and loves me.  He knows me better than I do and loves me much more than I do.  I have to accept both that I am imperfect and loved by God.