7 Quick Takes Friday

1)  Please pray for my daughter-in-law, whose father has terminal cancer.  She is pregnant with her first child and is going to name the baby after him. It breaks my heart that she has to go through this at all, much less at such a young age and when she is becoming a mother.

Our Lady of Sorrows, watch over her.

2)  I've been struggling with feelings of depression and burn-out.  I'm going to be looking for a local NAMI group to join.  I wish there were a CHADD group nearby.

3)  Yesterday was the feast of St. Benedict.  I am especially attracted to his idea of stability.  Life isn't always smooth sailing, in spite of promises by some televangelists and advertisers.  Stability is one of the cornerstones of love. It is what makes us stick by someone through think and through thin.

4) I've been doing some preliminary research on ADD and it is amazing what I'm finding.  Factors that may contribute to causality include premature birth and maternal smoking, both of which apply to me (and my mother respectively) Along with distractability, ADD symptoms can include impulsivity (which, if involving food, can lead to weight gain) and slow processing.  So much is making sense.

5)  The pastor where I go to daily Mass often preaches on the importance of focusing  more on living out our Christian lives and less on the outward "trappings" of Christianity and Catholicism. This is hitting me where I live right now.  I think, if a person or group's focus is too much on outward signs of piety, it can lead to a kind of "shunning" (either overt or covert) of those perceived to be on the "outside" of the group.  We need to keep a close watch on ourselves if we find ourselves thinking that someone is not a "true" Catholic just because they don't happen to have a particular devotion that we favor.  I don't think approved devotions should be suppressed, but, in my opinion too much "official" focus on them can lead to marginalization of parishioners whose spirituality does not include those particular devotions.

6)  In spite of my support for getting rid of the HHS mandate (or putting in place a *real* conscience clause), I *am* in favor of universal health care in one form or another.  I think many Catholics are cutting off their noses to spite their faces when they tow the Republican Party line insisting that people without healthcare are lazy and evil.  We are morally obligated, as a society, I think, (and the bishops do too) to make sure everyone is cared for.  We need to stop the partisan politics and start caring for each other.  If we are innately suspicious of the Church's teachings on social justice, we are not in line with the Church.

7)  I really think that focus away from active love is what is killing our parishes and our faith. We need to not only set a good example of what Christians are, but we need to literally do what Jesus did--help, love and heal others.   We need to be counter-cultural, and right now kindness is the most counter-cultural thing we can do as Christians.

Techology and Saint Benedict

Well, I'm back. My break from the world of technology was very eye opening. The internet now is what television once was--a medium capable of sucking the life right out of life. As people have very rightly pointed out to me, the difference is that the internet is rife with knowledge--and knowledge that we can, in some senses, control. True, but it is also full of potential past times that are addicting and can easily cause the better part of a day to go up in electronic smoke.

The solution is, as always, the difficult one. Balance a la St. Benedict. Ora et Labora. Prayer and work. Sigh. Even before the internet (or tv, or books) people were crying out for a balance in life that would allow them to see God in the midst of everyday drugery. St. Benedict's solution was not to pile on extreme outside mortifications, but to allow the Lord to speak through the every day. A bit like St. Therese's "Little Way". Let the daily grind point you to Heaven. Offer up the little annoyances, and fulfill your state in life as a way to give tribute to the God who created you.

Saint Benedict--a Saint for Our Times

Today, on the feast of Saint Benedict, I want to talk a bit about the Benedictine vows of obedience, conversion and stability.

Obedience
Obedience, is, perhaps, not so unusual a vow to take in religious life. It is, really, the vow we all take as Catholics--to be part of a Church that has a hierarchy that we believe was put there by God. Rather than mindless adherence, obedience requires intelligent study of the precepts of the way of life one has professed to follow. Only then, can the true beauty of the structure come forth. Only then, can true growth take place.

Conversion
Conversion of life is another vow that seems to be almost a given in spiritual life. It is something that is presupposed in religion. Of course one is to be converted! But, how many times do we find ourselves going through the motions of our faith without any instinct towards actual change? How many times do we try to find spiritual loopholes so that we can continue to live our comfortable lives? How often do we berate others for not crossing every t and dotting every i, when we ourselves are far from Christ-like?

Jesus' life on earth was not about exhorting people to put more and more layers of religious practice onto themselves or others in order to be saved. In fact, he spoke against that very thing. His message was one of true inner conversion--acting from the real love of God which surrounds us, to change ourselves and the world. So, we are to continually seek out conversion of life.

Stability
The final Benedictine vow is truly unique, and that is one of stability. This is a truly counter cultural concept today. Stability. Sticking it out. Hanging in there. If we truly lived the other 2 vows, we would find stability much easier, I think. If obedience to a legitimate authority and true conversion of life are our goals, then we will find true stability will come fairly naturally.

We live in a truly throw away society today. We buy cheaply made products from countries with questionable human rights records merely to assuage our hunger for continual change. We have become a society where serial pseudo-marriages are the norm; sexual relationships of convenience that are thrown away as easily as the expensive technological toys that we end up paying for long after they no longer work or have bored us.

Saint Benedict saw the flaws in the society of the late Roman Empire of his own time. He realized how difficult it was becoming to live anything close to a Christian life in such a society. He decided that the values that were intrinsic within Christianity had to be lived, somewhat apart from the society in which he found himself, in order to work at all. So he separated himself from the way of the world, founded monasticism and preserved the crumbling Western Civilization that was fast disappearing. By living apart from the corruption of the world around him, his monks preserved literature, music, and indeed democracy in an age of tyranny.

On this feast of Saint Benedict, let us pray for the grace and strength to follow his example and be truly converted to Christ.

Hat tip to Fr. Dwight Longnecker for his informative article on St. Benedict--Benedict the Balanced.