Holiness...

St. Francis of Assisi gave up everything he had to become a beggar for the poor. Sts. Peter and Paul died for their faith. Sts. Felicity and Perpetua sang on the way to their execution. Blessed Theresa of Calcutta loved so much that she put up with the stench and deformities of the sick and homeless people on the streets of India. Pope John Paul II evangelized to the world teaching them to respect their bodies, have devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, and bring young people to the faith. 

What do all these great men and women have in common? They were all very holy. With benchmarks like this, sometimes I find myself thinking, "There is no chance someone like me can make it to Heaven." Looking at how holy these people were and then looking at how unholy I can be is almost a little depressing. I doubt that I will ever beg for a meal for the poor, die for my faith, help sick and dying homeless people, or evangelize to the world. How do I stand a chance of achieving holiness when I am so far from it? The answer may be written in plain text in a book written by C. S. Lewis called Mere Christianity. 

In this book Lewis states that being holy is very hard, but there is a method that the average man or woman can use to grow in holiness. This method is to approach every decision in your life and try to think how a truly holy person would make this decision. What would St. Francis do? What about Mother Theresa? Would John Paul do that? Or the ever popular, What would Jesus do? Asking yourself this and making the decision will be a good start, but Lewis takes it a step farther. He says to take this logic and apply it to your life completely. In other words, act holy all the time. If you are constantly acting holy, you will begin to form a habit and holiness does entail a love for God, so by acting holy, you will form a habit of loving God. By completely loving him and "acting" holy, soon you will begin to grown in real holiness. 

So while I will never be as holy as the Saints I mentioned at the beginning, it is important to remember that a big part of the reason the Catholic Church formally recognizes these great men and women is to give us an example to live by. A standard to strive for. A goal in life. By imitating these great examples, we may never be as holy as they are, but we may achieve a degree of holiness that is impossible for us to reach on our own.

But now I'm back to my mission: striving for true holiness...

What are you here for?

What is your purpose? Do you have a mission statement? Are you on a mission from God?

As I listened to Fr. Carapi the other day on the local Catholic radio station, he asked these questions. He went further to talk about what your purpose should be. His point was that God put us all here for a purpose (similar to the theme of my Blog, I guess). However, he took it a bit further. Your purpose should be to become a Saint.

Thinking about that, I wonder what does it take to become a Saint? I'm not talking about playing for an NFL team in New Orleans, I'm talking a Saint! Well, most of us will probably never have our name listed in a Vatican Press Release, but it doesn't take that to be a Saint. To put it bluntly, when you die, you will either spend ETERNITY in Heaven as a Saint or... well, we all know the alternative. You may have to spend some time in Purgatory, but eventually all souls in Purgatory will make it to Heaven. 

So basically, we have a choice: You are here to become a Saint or You are here to go to hell. No third option. No "I'm better than that person". No "Well I don't really believe all that..." No "Why do I have to confess to a priest, God knows I'm sorry." If you have sinned mortally (a serious sin that you knew was wrong and yet did it anyway) and you have not confessed and repented of said sin, you will spend eternity not as a Saint, but being tormented in a place that I don't even want to imagine.

So with all decisions and daily actions, remember why God put you here - to become a Saint - and remember the consequence of not becoming a Saint... As Fr. Corapi says:

In the end, forever, you and I will be in Heaven or Hell. Period.

And now, I'm back to my mission of trying to become a Saint...

But Mom...

After my post on Build a Mom, I heard a little blip that made me think. It was talking about the Wedding at Cana. As usual, it got me to thinking:

Mary goes up to Jesus and says, "Hey, they're out of wine."

Jesus responds (paraphrased), "But Mom, its not time for that yet..." 

She doesn't argue, she just knows. This points out to me a few things.

1. Mary must know Jesus' power. This shows that she knows He is God.
2. Mary knows that Jesus will obey - no arguement, just keeping the 4th commandment. She doesn't argue back, she just knows.
3. She doesn't even have to ask, "Can you do something about it?" Kind of like that old addage, "If I say jump, you say 'How high?'" Jesus doesn't ask what he should do, but He knows, showing just how obedient he was.

Just a few thoughts about how a good child should behave and how this mother trusted her Son so much and knew that she had raised Him to respond as He did.

And now, I'm back to my mission...

Build a mom...

There is a store down at the mall called "Build-a-Bear Workshop". This store allows you to go in and create your own teddy bear. You can pick a body, tall or short, fat or thin, almost any color of the rainbow. You then can choose what clothing or accessories to add to this new bear. Finally, you can give it a name and you have your perfect bear.

 

What if we had the opportunity to design people, specifically our mother? (I’ll get to my point in just a second, but bear with me.) Would you choose a mother who was involved in your life or one who just sat back and watched? Would you choose a mother who told you what not to do or one who let you make your own mistakes? Would your mother be religious or “not really care about all that religious stuff”? Would she have a stern voice or a sweet one? What would she look like? Would she be a Botox and plastic surgery 50 year old who looks 25? Or would she allow herself to age naturally and not worry about her makeup? Would

 she gossip? Would she always be just, even if it hurt you? What options would you choose?

 

The point behind this rant is that years ago there was a Guy who did create His own Mother. How did he do it? Well, she was very involved in His whole life. She would teach Him right and wrong, even though He already knew. She was very devout and stayed away from sin.  She probably had a sweet and innocent voice and was probably pretty, but down to earth. She was probably an average build for the time and didn’t concern herself with makeup and looking good, however always made herself presentable. She refrained from gossip and bad talk while always being just. She didn’t care about the ways of the world and didn’t let others persuade her. After a recent talk I heard by Fr. Corapi where he mentioned this topic, it got me thinking about how Jesus created His Mother and this is how He made her. Unable to dwell in the presence of sin, He made her clean in all ways, free from sin.  God made His Mother perfect in all ways.

 

This perfect Mother is intimidating to many women now. How could they be like Mary? She was perfect and her ONE child didn’t ever sin! How can they compare to her with multiple imperfect children? It is very important to remember that while we are to strive to model our lives after the Saints, that there is a chance that we will never live up to what they did, however it is important to try. As C.S. Lewis said:

Aim at Heaven, and you will get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you will get neither.

 

So we strive to be like Mary, Jesus, and the Saints and as we work hard to do this, we only hope that we might reach Purgatory so that we may someday join Jesus in Heaven.

And now, I'm back to my mission...

 

True Humility...

On my mission, I find it necessary to always do conditioning. While physical conditioning is important, the kind I do is a little different. I need to find ways to grow my muscles, but the most important ones are spiritual muscles. One of the ways I do this is by listening to amazing Homilies and speeches done by God’s chosen Priests. I then take this new bit of information and work out with it letting God tell me what else He might have in store for me.

On this, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Fr. Christopher Kubat was giving the Homily and mentioned a point that, while it was only one sentence in a 5-10 minute Homily, struck me and really caused me to think. What he said was “St. Joseph learned humility by witnessing the greatest example of humility ever – when the creator of Heaven and Earth, the maker of man, the exalted God became Himself subject to a man.”

This got me to thinking – how truly humbling to know that you can snap your fingers and wipe a man out of existence, yet you humble yourself so much that when he says, “Can you do that for me?” you respond with “Yes, sir”. Jesus was never disobedient, that would have broken the 4^th commandment and we know the He was without sin. So therefore, He always had to listen to Joseph. Joseph, knowing that He was the foster father of God-made-man, knowing that Jesus must obey him could have ordered Jesus to do so many things, and yet, he saw this ultimate example of humility and learned from it. 

I struggle each day to remember to be humble and to avoid pride. I ask this humble man, who learned from the best, to help me to be truly humble. No other person could possibly under

stand true humility as well as St. Joseph, and so when we need help with this tremendous virtue, we should turn to the guy who learned it so well.

Saint Joseph the Worker, pray for us!

And now, I’m back to my mission!