hope girls
Posted on

Trust in Jesus: 4 Reasons Catholics Are Full of Hope

On the 6th Sunday of Easter, we hear from St. Peter in the second reading. Since it is St. Paul who dominates the writings of the New Testament (outside of the Gospels,) it is good to hear from St. Peter. This section of 1st Peter focuses on hope.

Hope, the Church teaches, is one of the three theological virtues (the others are faith and charity.) Hope is:

… the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

St. Peter makes it clear that hope is a hallmark of a person who follows Christ.

Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame. (1 Pt. 3:15-16)

It’s rather odd that Peter is so focused on “hope,” since the young Church was being persecuted. Peter and the other Apostles were run out of town, imprisoned, brought up on various charges. But they went forward, with great hope.

As modern Christians, we might be tempted to abandon hope. Our world certainly is dismal. Christians are the most persecuted religion across the globe. Violence, culture wars, and just plain old evil seems to be winning the war for souls.

But we have hope. And we need to be able to tell anyone who asks why we are so hopeful. Here are just four reasons:

  1. The first and foremost reason for hope is Christ. We believe (just as we say at most Masses) that Christ became Man, took our sins upon Himself, died and then rose again. As St. John Paul II said, “We are an Easter people, and alleluia is our song.”
  2. We have been promised Heaven. If we love God and do His will, we gain eternal happiness with Him in Heaven. That’s an immense reality, and the source of much hope.
  3. We are not in this alone! Yes, our world is scary and dangerous and sometimes evil, but we are never alone! First, Christ promised He would never leave us along (see John 14.) Further, we have a community of brothers and sisters in Christ to lean on, to help us live better and holier lives, and to pray with and for us.
  4. The sacraments are a source of hope. Because we are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, we live in Christ and He is us. St. Paul says, God chose to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; it is Christ in you, the hope for glory. (Col. 1:27.) In the Eucharist, Christ gives His very Body and Blood; we consume and He dwells in us.

Let us live in such a way that all may see the hope we have as Christians. May our hope gives others hope as well, as we make known Christ Jesus.

career advice
Posted on

Career Advice For Your Spiritual Life

That’s an odd title, isn’t it? What does “career advice” have to do with one’s relationship with God? Quite a bit, as it turns out.

Carey Nieuwhof is a Protestant pastor who writes on a variety of topics: leadership, strategy and team building, and entrepreneurship, for example. He recently wrote a blog piece entitled, 25 Random Pieces of Advice for Leaders in their 20s, 30s, or 40s. While many of these things pertain to one’s job and career, they can also help us in our spiritual life.

For instance, Nieuwhof suggests: Study and practice faithfulness. Study your faith. You don’t have to get a Ph.D. in theology to be a holy person, but you do need to know your Faith. Read the lives of saints. Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (not all at once.) Earnestly study the Bible. As for faithfulness, if you are married, you must remain faithful to your spouse in both thought and action. For those called to religious life, they have vows and a community to which they must remain faithful. All of us must be faithful to our baptismal promises.

Another bit of advice: Be generous when you have no money. Mother Teresa of Kolkata (who will be canonized on September 4 this year) told this story:

One night a man came to our house and told me, “There is a family with eight children. They have not eaten for days.”
I took some food with me and went. When I came to that family, I saw the faces of those little children disfigured by hunger. There was no sorrow or sadness in their faces, just the deep pain of hunger. I gave rice to the mother. She divided the rice in two, and went out, carrying half the rice. When she came back, I asked her, “Where did you go?” She gave me this simple answer, “To my neighbors; they are hungry also!” I was not surprised that she gave-poor people are really very generous. I was surprised that she knew they were hungry. As a rule, when we are suffering, we are so focused on ourselves, we have no time for others.

Being generous is more than just giving money to people. It is about being aware of the needs of others.

Next, Nieuwhof says: Wrestle down your pride. Pride is the father of all the mortal sins. St. John Chrysostom said, “[N]othing so alienates men from the loving kindness of God, and gives them over to the fire of the pit, as the tyranny of pride.” God endows all of us with gifts, and we must give Him the glory for those gifts.

Persevere through the dry season. If you have a strong prayer life, it is almost guaranteed that there will be a time when you feel distant from God. In the Catholic tradition, it is often referred to as the “dark night of the soul,” after the class spiritual writing of St. John of the Cross. For whatever reason, God allows this challenge. Be faithful. Hold fast to God’s promise, even if you don’t feel like doing so.

Nieuwhof also says leaders must be bold. Indeed! If we are to be faithful servants of God, we must be bold in our faith. Think of St. Peter, the man who ran away from Christ when he was most needed, denying he even knew him. That same man was transformed by the Holy Spirit to preach and teach boldly to hostile crowds. St. Joan of Arc boldly led an army because she knew that was what God was calling her to, even though the cost was her life. Bl. Miguel Pro led the Church in Mexico at a time when the government had virtually outlawed all Catholic actions, including the celebration of the Mass. Fr. Pro used disguises, escape paths and his wits to stay one step ahead of the law in order to bring the sacraments to the people He died in front of a firing squad, with his last words being: “Viva Christo Rey!” {“Long live Christ the King!) Yes, be bold. Be joyful, and be bold.

While perseverance in one’s career usually brings about financial gain, our faithfulness to God holds a better promise. St. Paul said it like this:  I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance. (2 Timothy 4:4-8)

crazy for God
Posted on

Crazy For God, Trusting In Christ

One thing many saints have in common is, well, they are a little over the top. One might look at things they’ve done and think, “That’s crazy!” Who in their right mind would sail across an ocean to uncharted territory in order to bring the Gospel to a hostile and dangerous people? What kind of people would joyfully sing on their way to their own execution? And it’s a little weird, isn’t it, to strip down completely naked in a very public place, disavow your wealth and head off to preach the Gospel? Crazy, right?

Indeed, our world thinks such behavior is crazy. As Catholics, however, we don’t belong to this world. We belong to the Kingdom of God. And what might seem totally crazy in this world (like allowing yourself to be nailed to a cross) makes perfect sense in the Kingdom of God. As Catholics, we walk by faith and not by sight.

Justo Gallego knows that people call him crazy. He says that he is just trusting in Christ. For 53 years, he has been nearly single-handedly building a cathedral near Madrid, Spain. Not a little chapel in his backyard: a cathedral.

It’s crazy to abandon your business, and follow a Man who promises to make you fishers of men. It’s crazy to say “yes” to becoming the Mother of the Messiah when an angel visits you. It’s crazy to build an ark, or to care for the poorest in the streets of Calcutta. Remember, though: we are people of the Kingdom of God. Maybe it’s time to show this world what it’s like to trust in God, regardless of how crazy it might make us look.

Here is Justo Gallego’s story:

Bishop Robert Barron
Posted on

Are You A “Beige” Catholic?

Beige is pretty boring. It’s an easy choice for paint. Throw on a pair of beige pants because it won’t clash. But, being a beige Catholic should never be an option, says Bishop Robert Barron.

Catholics in America today need to find ways to engage the culture with truth, and avoid ‘beige Catholicism’ that seeks to be dominated by the culture, Bishop Robert Barron said Thursday.

‘Beige Catholicism,’ the bishop said, is the ‘dominance of the prevailing culture over Catholicism,’ where Catholics are ‘too culturally accommodating’ and ‘excessively apologetic.’

Yesterday was the feast of Ss. Peter and Paul. No one could accuse them of a “beige” faith. No, they were bold. They might have been shaking in their shoes occasionally, but they preached the Gospel with fervor and zeal. In all honesty, no saint is “beige.” The men and women who are the Church’s faith heroes stand tall in the Truth of Christ, even when everyone around them is saying (like Pontius Pilate), “What is truth?”

Bishop Barron says that “beige” Catholicism allows the culture to set the agenda for the Church, rather than having Christians engage the culture with Truth. He, too, used the saints as examples.

Instead, he suggested, ‘the question is not whether the Church ought to engage in a dialogue with the wider culture, but rather, how?’ And for this, the Church can look to the centuries of saints who successfully dialogued with the culture of their day while still proclaiming Jesus Christ, he said, giving examples like St. Paul and St. Augustine.

The saints did not fall into the modern trap of letting particular worldly experiences ‘measure doctrine,’ he said. Rather, they had a Christo-centric dialogue where, as St. Paul wrote in his epistle to the Colossians, ‘in Him [Jesus] all things were created, things visible and invisible’ and ‘He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.’

He goes on to acknowledge that our culture tells us that faith should be a private affair. We are constantly told not to “push our beliefs” on other people. Yet, we cannot live a true life of faith in private, locked in our houses, cowering. No, our faith must be a constant revolution, a radical way of living that speaks to everyone with whom we interact. Bishop Barron points to the example of the papacy of St. John Paul II:

St. John Paul II set an example of this when he praised the Western human rights tradition, Bishop Barron said.

The Pope did not endorse the modern belief of human rights as grounded in ‘desire,’ he explained. Rather, he grounded human rights in ‘every individual’ being ‘a subject of inviolable dignity and worth, and from this identity flow rights and a claim to justice.’

In taking the existing human rights tradition and elevating it, Pope John Paul II was ‘transforming water into wine’ in ‘assimilating a key feature of secular culture into the organic life of the Church,’ Bishop Barron said.

Let us truly examine our faith; are we too timid? Too “beige” when we are “in the world?” We must be willing, like St. Paul in the early Church and St. John Paul II in our own time to truly engage culture and society with the Truth that is Christ Jesus.