Corpus Christi

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity flows into today’s celebration of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The Church, in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, leads us from the mystery of God’s sublime unity in three equal divine persons toward meditation on that union, now expressed in the Holy Eucharist. Our communion today is in the same Body and Blood of Christ that he promised to share with his followers so many years ago. Jesus is not merely a man, for we know him to be fully united with God. He demonstrates his humanity by uniting himself fully with us in the Eucharist. The unity that we have in Jesus Christ calls us to give everything and receive even more in the world to come.

As Jesus is offering himself, the hearts of his Jewish hearers were filled with protest. How can this man give us his flesh to eat? It was impossible to understand the meaning of the Eucharist without faith, and faith could only be founded upon the resurrection. We are learning how to live and never die just as Jesus says. His death means life for us. In the Eucharist, we commemorate the death of Christ, but are led into an ever greater share of his life that surpasses all death. It is necessary for each Christian to discover this life and the living of it. Our Blessed Lord unites his life with the act of our living so that the Church would have an undivided life.

As Jesus introduces his teaching about the Eucharist, the ancient memory of manna in the desert comes to the minds of his hearers. The food that God gave instructed the people in addition to feeding them. By allowing Israel to undergo the pangs of hunger, the Lord intended his instruction to permeate the entire being of his newly claimed people. Man does not live on bread alone but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. The Lord wanted to know whether his people were intent on following him with all that they had. The life of God’s people is determined by the will of the one who gives them life.

Man does not live by bread alone. By taking up our symbol of bread, God has added his own word of life to what appears ordinary to us. Bread is meant to be shared just as the life of Jesus is meant to be shared. Jesus is the Word made flesh and the true bread sent from the Father. While the desert was hard for the Egyptians, the bread God gave was a reminder that they were not alone, because their life was not only from bread. The life of Israel came from God.

I cannot deny that these are difficult days, and especially for the Church. Loneliness is a very common thing amongst us these days that ironically seems to unite us. Jesus accompanies us through conditions that are even more difficult, dry and barren that the desert traversed by Israel. While trials come to us at every hour of our Christian life, the Eucharist encourages each person to remain united with the living one.

The scandal of the Eucharist was not an outright rejection of divine assistance, but more a realization that death seemed to make the Eucharist an impossibility. Jesus allowed his hearers to be scandalized or tripped up by his words for the sake of the faithful who wanted to know the truth. The truth for us is that in addition to worshipping Christ in the Eucharist and receiving the sacrament of his body and blood, we are also surrounded by countless stumbling blocks of a lesser sort. For much less, people do abandon Jesus Christ and his Church. The sublime unity that Jesus offers us by means of the Church and the sacrament is lost on people again and again.

It has always been very fitting to speak and right about the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. The Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ is fully and really present under the accidents of bread and wine. In other words, the sacred species are not bread or wine any longer. This is Jesus’ choice to be humbly and substantially united to us through an abiding sacrament.

At the level of being, that is reality itself, Jesus is uniting himself to believers. Through the faith that God the Father implants in our hearts, we are joined to the Body of Christ in communion. The Holy Spirit and He alone makes Eucharist joyful. Life is meant to be lived for this communion with God and one another. This is the life Jesus promises to the one who feeds on him. Though he cannot be harmed in the Eucharist, Jesus is united to us more fully than ever, even as we ourselves are harmed by the many vicissitudes of life.

As people abandoned the gift that they did not know, so to people abandon the Catholic Church for trivial and superficial reasons. When compared to the love of God in Jesus Christ, the serious sins that separate people from God melt away with a genuine conversion of heart. Christian faith for us means commitment to the Eucharist in spite of all that comes. We want to remain always united to our God no matter who ignores this union. Union with God makes our problems seem quite insignificant.

Remember then that Jesus was willing to make himself insignificant for love of you and I in the Church. He made the doctrine of his most abiding gift in this world seem unimportant. Christ wished for the faithful to discover the union of man with God here and now in unsuspecting moments, in the midst of lives that seem ordinary. Christ knew that his faith could only stay alive in us if it became somewhat ordinary, akin to what we call food.

To this humble king, reigning from the cross and the tabernacle of our Church, we rightly give adoration and praise. The praises we utter this day fade in time, but they are heard in eternity. Our worship appears to us to be quite finite, even though it is the very best each of us can do. I have learned so much by worshipping with you each Sunday. Today, our prayers are rising and our love is growing. I pray that my love for you and yours for me would always be united in an eternal embrace of love.

May the Trinity we do not see draw us more perfectly together in the Eucharist this day.

Pentecost Vigil Homily

I took this from the vigil readings, option for Ezekiel's dry bones.

 

    The words and ministry of the prophet Ezekiel are a profound demonstration of God's goal in sending the Holy Spirit. How would we know of the life in our midst if it were not for the Spirit of God? How else would the Hebrew people have known of God's intention to raise the dead, if it hadn't been for Ezekiel's vision of the dry bones? Ezekiel saw those bones. How dry they were! The Lord then commanded Ezekiel to prophesy. So the same Spirit that led the prophet also was the Spirit entering into the dry bones and bringing forth life from them again.

 

    The story of the dry bones takes place in two stages. First, Ezekiel prophesies the physical regeneration of the human person. He sees sinew, flesh and skin covering the bodies so that they are like bodies suspended. Clearly, the flesh is not enough to make a person alive. The Hebrews believed that the breath that coincides with life in the body is no less than God's gift. This represents a less scientific view of the human body than we have. At the same time, this Gospel demonstrates two ways that we are also regenerated for this life and the next. Jesus seals the gift of his salvation permanently by granting us life in the Holy Spirit.

 

    As dramatic a picture as Ezekiel gives us of flesh returning to dry bones, the image is not foreign to us. Death is one thing we can universally agree about in the way that we complain. The bones, though lifeless, seem to be a partner in dialogue with God through Ezekiel. While not very articulate, the bones perfectly communicate the futility of death, especially since our faith unites the identity of a real person with those bones. Though living, we can also experience futility and symbolically relate it to death. All of the ways that we are not fully alive seem to reveal our succumbing early and often to the pallor of death.

 

    Yet all the while God says, I will do this for you, O my people and my Spirit will live within you. How will we know that God is doing this?

 

    We know well enough when we are getting our own lives together. Like any one of you, I know a little bit about trying to improve my life in place where previously I had found failure. It takes a bit of work to make yourself better than before. So many times it began with a complaint of mine. I was able to look at my life and see where I felt that I was not yet fully alive. This is like Ezekiel reporting that the bones of the fallen are so dry. While we cannot command flesh to return to dry bones, our lives are subject to a restoration. Without also being aware of it, the Lord restores life to us. We do not see constantly that God is hard at work. While we work, we benefit from the grace of God.

 

    The Spirit moves where it wills. While we cannot know the thoughts of God purely, Paul reminds us that we do long for knowledge of God's ineffable work. We would like our spirit to be revived interiorly with God's Spirit. I know that having lived only a little while, I already feel tired and stretched. Anyone who tries to live for God experiences this longing. We groan in expectation for the redemption of our bodies. We have hope for something much more than we can ever accomplish in our finite capacity, but we do not see it perfectly. The desires of our hearts are just beginning to be revealed in the living of this life.

 

    Who then unlocks the desires of our hearts? None other than Jesus Christ our Lord, for Paul says, that there is one who both searches our hearts and also knows the intention of the Holy Spirit. He intercedes for us according to God's will.

 

    Christ would not search our hearts for nothing. He would not have become man, knowing everything about us humans from within, without bringing his work to fulfillment. Therefore he says, "Rivers of living water will flow from within him who believes in me." Our hearts will be ever increased in the Spirit just as the water flowing from a river.

    

    How then shall we know that there are rivers of water flowing? An experience of the Holy Spirit is often thought to be like the overpowering surge of a flood, a powerful river bursting its dams. It is interesting that Jesus promises us a river flowing from within. A river flowing in this way would be consistent and true, but it would also be drawn from a source deep inside. Like a spring in the ground whose origin seems to be small, so the river of living water in us flows from inner recesses of our hearts. Though the divine origin of the Spirit is great and mighty, the place where the Spirit encounters our spirit is inward and secret to even to us an certainly to the world.

 

    How shall we then really know that the Holy Spirit is alive in our hearts? Jesus came to search out the desires of our hearts. He goes to the bottom of it all. He does not merely judge our actions by how they appear, but he looks for our intention to know and love God as the foundation of our lives. Where there is faith, living water begins to flow. The Holy Spirit then accompanies us through life. In every situation of life our desires and intentions are converted by the power of the Holy Spirit into deeper love. Wherever our desires and faith in Jesus Christ meet, there the Spirit of God is at work.

 

    God creates us anew, making us his sons and daughters in Jesus Christ. This depends on the Holy Spirit. How do we know that we are being created anew? It is when we look at all of life and see an uncreated love guiding us and pouring himself out continually. The water has flowed and continues to flow without end. As God's favors collect in our lives, we are more firmly convinced of the infinite capacity of the giver to give.

    

    How do we know that we are even worthy of this love? Faith expands and dimishes the possibility for disbelief. As our capacity to accept God's love for us approaches infinity, we can finally believe that no situation we face in this life is outside of God's love. No matter how difficult this can seem, God's love will accompany us and never abandon his faithful ones in the Holy Spirit.

The Olden Days

Third Sunday of Easter 2011 Year A

    How shall the Word of the Lord be proved true in the lives of his faithful ones? The proof of our God's victory over sin and death comes in ways that we do not easily see. As we hear the Word of God today, the hopes of past years burn up in our hearts again. Were not our hearts burning within us as he opened the scriptures to us? Christ transforms our old desires into hope for eternal life.

    We often think about what life must have been like in the old days. The resurrection reveals the transcendent in our earthly days. It is in our very heart and soul to desire the kingdom to come. The disappointment of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus was based on the expectation that Jesus Christ raised during his earthly life. Instead of bringing the kingdom around in visible form, the king of kings surrendered his life to God and to his persecutors. Jesus seemed to have failed and left his closest friends confused.     

    The risen Lord stays out of the way as he walks with them. Jesus is able to be fully present in their lives by helping them to examine the whole history of Israel in the scriptures. Every line of scripture speaks about how the Messiah had to suffer and so enter into his glory. This is not simply a cause and effect. A mere temporal reversal of suffering into glory does not show the depth of the presence of Jesus Christ in the Spirit. He is in every suffering and difficult moment of these present times.

    How is Christ revealed today in your trials and suffering? We are living in times when the Son of God is revealed fully through faith. In his first letter to the Church, St. Peter explains how the Son of God was known before the foundation of the world. He is at the foundation of everything that matters to us. Every word that the Son of Man speaks is full of rich life for us. Every moment of life is redeemed in the Blood of Jesus Christ, that a drop of this sacred life more precious than gold would not be wasted.

    These days that pass swiftly are pregnant with the life of the Son of God. So then when we suffer, let us no longer look to find fault with anyone or anything. Avoid any easy cures that prop life up on so many crutches, as easily abandoned as they are taken up. It is so easy for us to forget the intimacy of Christ with the human heart. Our moments of doubt and weakness can each be transformed in their time into a spiritual flourishing of Christ's promises. The structure that upholds every unfulfilled desire has as its reverse a beautiful Temple for God to dwell.

    The life of king David is another notable example of this tension. Even in his day, he longed to see the people dwell in peace under one God and king. David nearly attained it. Nevertheless, David's reign, like his life were filled with gritty personal hardships. He learned through the prophets and priests of Israel that the meaning of his life was always caught up in the mystery of God's intimate love for him. This is why he could confide his mortal life into the care of God. David witnessed from afar that there must be one whose desire for life is even greater than his own. Christ's desire for human life to flourish extended even to his enemies. In him, we see life shining through these days and not the corruption of death.

    In looking back, we would very much like to believe that our times are different. History has a direction to it and longs to reach its culmination. This can be seen in modern times in the many revolutions, social, and political movements that demand lasting change. Many things also stay the same even as some others change. We trust God that the wearisome parts of life, the things that we cannot control, are also for God's glory. Ultimately, it has to be Christ who is the Lord of history. We cannot suppose that any time of man's own making can be more filled with grace than any other. It is the same Holy Spirit that guides the world toward fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

    What are the things that God loves the most? Christ is just as much interested in the little things as in the bright glory of the last day. Jesus loves the simple joy of being with men and women in their good traits and their foibles. He has a passionate desire for human life to be lived to the full. If these days are still the old days, it is because there are still solid gold nuggets left in the mineshafts of life.

    For example, yesterday was a difficult day for me. The limits of my energy and ability have been hitting me lately with a sense of fatigue. I would love to be able to do all the things that I dream about doing. As I was praying and participating in the ordination last night, I was impressed by the size of the crowd. I started to realize that the life of the Church still has a long history ahead of it. Where I have expected fulfillment in my lifetime is really only a seed. Through effort and the faithfulness of prayer and love, this will contribute even more to a greater fulfillment in ages to come.

    What symbolized the truth in my mind was actually a four year old girl with curls and a nostalgic dress that could have been from the fifties. To see this little person in living color confirmed the vision: These are the old days. The truth is growing each day in the church so the victory of Christ will be even clearer in the life span of young ones like that little girl.

    Our Eucharist reminds us that our olden days are still breaking into new life. Christ was going on to the next town, even as the day of resurrection grew long. His disciples called the traveler into the inn with them where they would spend the night and seek relief from their weariness of soul and body. Christ was finally revealed in the thing that he loves the most. Jesus Christ loves to sit down and share a meal. Christ is as close as the things that matter most, where each of us can find meaning in daily life. May our lives break forth again into the eternal desire even of the hills.

Pseudo-liturgy definition

Pseudo-liturgy is when prayers are written ad hoc by those with little theological training and imposed upon a Catholic liturgical structure in order to merely lend legitimacy to very ordinary and unliturgical realities. Pseudo-liturgical collect:

Oh, God the winds of winter frighten us. Do not let us grow cold and weary in our hearts and protect us from the long shadows of darkness. We ask this all in your name. Amen.

This sort of prayer suggests a human person that is not open to revelation. The existence of God is lost alongside the existence of wind, shadows, trees, winter, and any other items of the imagination. I am eager to read more of the collects of the new translation of the missal. These prayers promise to address God in reverent and suppliant language. I am not saying that the current translation is anything like the mess I just composed. I do however think that our language about God has been lacking in the reverence needed to teach people about his holiness, omnipotent love, and his absolute oneness. Such language, with good teaching, could keep Catholics from skipping quickly over the God parts of their prayers and filling the vacuum with their own emotions. May pseudo-liturgies cease and devotion begin anew.

Marriage homily

Today you begin a new journey of love. Realize that marriage celebrates what is new. God has revealed himself to you in Jesus Christ, I pray that he continues to be with you both in every day of your marriage. Love calls out to you to follow. Nobody is abandoned who God loves and chooses. Release your hold on your old life. By turning to the Lord with all your heart and all your mind, you obey his great commandment to love him and to love one another.

These are noble thoughts indeed. You have chosen this Gospel today, in which Christ invites you to recognize love as the greatest commandment. The commandment closest to the heart of God is not a prohibition, but an invitation and a gift. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. Jesus would not have to remind us of this if it weren’t for the fact that we often do not love him with all of our heart, and our soul and our mind. In mind alone, we wander from the pure intention to thank and love God hundreds of times a day. The totality of this commandment is what makes it so great. This, by the way, is what makes our faith so full of hope and life. While he reminds us of our frequent diversions, Jesus also compels us by his very life to believe that all moments of our lives swell with the majesty of the divine. God is present in an undying way, living in the midst of you.

This Gospel reading is truly valuable for the sacrament of marriage. As a Gospel in miniature, you can turn to this proclamation frequently for inspiration and daily help. Love the Lord your God with all your being. Pray this Gospel often during your day. Plant the desire to love God with everything you have as a cornerstone in your lives. By doing this, you will never lack for inspiration. This commandment is great because it truly represents Jesus himself. Christ, while being divine, enjoyed a complete human nature. He had a full human body, soul, heart and mind. With these, Christ gave perfect witness to the human sense of the divine love that the Father and Son share in heaven. God’s own love is manifested in the life of Jesus Christ and all those whom he calls to live in him.

Therefore, do not be discouraged when you fall short of the greatest commandment in some way. It is the greatest and we surely are not so. God helps us to follow through on our deepest desires. If you want to love God with all your heart, and soul, and mind, the Lord will actively help you and teach you. He is always present, ready to work through any event or person or thing in your life. From God’s perspective, we will always have things to discover about him and about love. Paul reminds us that love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous, pompous, inflated, rude, or seeking its own interests. It is not quick tempered, nor does it brood over injury or rejoice over wrongdoing.

We cannot act out of love when we commit these sins against it. This reading also challenges us to have a heart of love. We are to bear all things, hope all things, endure all things, and believe all things. Remember then that loves presence in your relationship as husband and wife is not defined by its absence in your behavior. If you should take on any unloving characteristics, turn to the God of love who ratifies all of the desires of your heart and more. We are not to simply add up good and bad in such a way that we measure our own success or love. God calls us believe in his love as the foundation of our own.

Marriage calls you back to the creator himself. He made you male and female for the purpose of bringing new life into this world through you. Already God renews you and enriches you as man and woman. In trusting in one another and in him, you experience your own life in a new and fundamentally different way. The measure of you love is in the way you exchange your noble and good gifts with one another. Marriage is not an addition of yours and hers. It isn’t even a multiplication. It is both of those things at times. In another way, marriage is like adding another dimension to everything. Even in the ordinary tasks of life, God now says to you, “It is good!” and indeed you discover that it is. What was normal before can become good. Every simple moment of life can now become an opportunity to love your spouse even more. I pray and beg then that you keep the dimension of church and sacrament alive in you. Today, the horizon of God’s loving commandment is set. Rise up then to meet it.

Post-liberal post

I have no desire to retract anything from my last post, but I have been asked to clarify what I mean by liberal. Liberal is a term that has gone through a long history. I did not specifically mean that my religious development was directly stunted by Catholics who are at variance with the orthodox doctrines of our church. Liberalism as I define it is simply the state of affairs that we now have. For many people, God has no real value in daily life. I like this quote from the Catholic encyclopedia,

"By proclaiming man's absolute autonomy in the intellectual, moral and social order, Liberalism denies, at least practically, God and supernatural religion. If carried out logically, it leads even to a theoretical denial of God, by putting deified mankind in place of God."

Without very explicit instruction on how to pray and how to lead a spiritual life, we are all subject to this liberal environment. We unknowingly are taught to continue seeking ourselves. God is pushed to the margins. No one is required to be an atheist to actually live like one in practice. The new atheists are just coming out to challenge people to finally admit their godlessness.

Would I like a more staunchly Catholic country, and some noble king to assure the godly order of public affairs? No! We cannot hope for history to turn backwards. In many ways, I sympathize with the original charter of liberalism. Free and magnanimous thought is not something that I fear, because I more heartily trust that a free mind will all the more freely turn to God.

The problem with relying on liberalism as a label for anything one hopes to accomplish in Church, is that it has become liberalism falsely so-called. When God is actively excluded from our public debate, I must confess that freedom is not accomplished in thought or in deed. When the guidance of the Holy Spirit is excluded as the prime mover in the hierarchy and teachings of the Church, I confess that my mind is not free to fully grasp their riches and wisdom.

In this sense, I would say that serious religious Catholics are not true liberals or even true conservatives. Matters of doctrine must be approached catechetically. There must be an eye to conversion, not only on an intellectual level, but the goal of catechesis is the conversion of hearts to trust more fully in God's providence for the Church as a whole and for me in particular. The right to disagree is softened by the Holy Spirit into a real freedom to learn. That is the post-liberal phase that most American Catholics are now in. To adapt a verse of scripture, he who has learned much loves much.

Liberal Protestantism was not thoroughly evil. We gained many treasured insights into scripture through the historical-critical method. Yet some went too far in their quest for the historical, even ruling out the divine inspiration of the scriptures. That is the danger of hard-core liberalism today. God's unique role in the church has been sorely neglected. Why else would there be all these vain attempts to define God in so many new and different ways? Sacred breeze of new life... enough of that. At some point, we simply believe that what the Church promises us, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is what we can have through faith.

Now, I have been asked to un-label myself as a conservative, too. Whether that would be disingenuous is for others to decide. I will say that I had a staunch conservative phase at the beginning of my seminary career. Problem was is that I knew far to0 little about what I was trying to conserve. I found myself in one parish assignment disagreeing with a couple of nice sisters over what candles might be appropriate for the altar. When we too quickly condemn something, we fail to understand it, and unknowingly lend an idea some sort of power. I could have driven people to become a sect of the hippie altar candles (joking).

Sometimes I page through old Catholic books to find that they were written to keep Catholics from ever wanting to wander from Christ's sheep-fold. That's a very good thing. There is so much understanding in those old volumes from 1850-1965. That kind of resourcement of Catholic knowledge contributes to a mature orthodoxy. Some want to use the word conservative, but I think that just doesn't do enough justice to those who actually want a full theological understanding of Catholicism. It is another label. When I think of conservatism, I don't immediately juxtapose that term with someone who loves the liturgy of the extraordinary form of the Mass. My image of conservatism is more like my old reaction to militantly defend my image of the Church while at the same time remaining deeply ignorant myself and all the while hurting others.

I do not like the legacy of either liberal or conservative colored name badges. I think that I would be post-conservative as well. I desire to not only be orthodox in teaching all that the church teaches, but I would like to make that message accessible to more and more people of any inclination. Would it be possible to write a fully Catholic book from a non-Catholic's perspective? I don't know that I have seen one. Can we speak to the world on its own terms, or do we require a great assent of faith before anyone can learn much about Catholicism?

The key to a balanced, mature Catholicism is always a love for scripture and the church. In these we discern the Holy Spirit working all things out for our good.

Thank God I am not a liberal

I just want to vent, O, internet world. The title says it all. It is God alone to be thanked and praised forever and ever that I am a Catholic Christian priest of Jesus Christ. Otherwise I would be have been swept into the great mass of unbelief long ago. As a child of thirty years today, I will tell you who I really am today.

Thanks be to God for the misery that he allowed me to undergo. Thanks be to God for the innate sense of the hell rising up all around me. May Christ be praised for the courage to believe that I was made for something more!

Praise Jesus Christ for the Catholic friends who welcomed me in my searching. Thank you God for the people who first challenged my notion that abortion was a compassionate response to the plight of young pregnant women. Thank you God for those who calmly told me that premarital sexual intercourse is wrong and that man and woman should not live together before marrying. I don't know why I accepted all of these liberal teaching as a very young man out of high school, but they seemed to be things I took completely for granted. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for dispelling the fog of liberal dogmatism. Thank you for opening my mind in the beginning.

Thank you, Jesus, for not letting any other lights attract me as your own light of life did. From the first moment that I saw it, truth entered my mind. Before Christ, there was no truth there. Once he came into full view his truth entered as well. I could not counteract his truth with arguments of my own making. Thank you, Jesus Christ, for drawing me toward you in prayer and in your holy word. You held me close when my mind could not fathom your truth. When I questioned, you communicated everything to me as though I were trustworthy. As your confidant and you mine, you helped me to align my life with you laws one step at a time. Thank you for not letting the fear, shame, and pain of my past life win out, O Christ. For you alone have the words of everlasting life, and I would gladly look like an ignorant fool one thousand times a day than lose you.

Thank, Jesus Christ, for drawing me to you in the Holy Eucharist. Thank you for the daily sacrifice of the Mass, ever living and true God! Thank you for confession, where again I finally became a new creation as I was created to be. Thank you for loving me more each day. Finally Lord, when you were ready, you made me a creature that could really love you back. You forgave my debt so that I can love you more. Thank you for calling my relentlessly to your holy priesthood, my Jesus, and for the steadfastness with which you have continued to call, even as I truly became aware of all the reasons that I was unfit. Thank you Lord for giving humility to me and to all of your priests. For in the end we have nothing but you. Thank you for your people who we are called to serve. Thank you for teaching us about the souls that we encounter and allowing us to share in that healing, teaching, and apostolic live that you once showed to us. Thank you Jesus Christ for being a real person at the beginning and the end of all that we do.

Thank you Blessed Mother of God for your undying vision of your Son that you manage to see in us. You, Mary are the comfort of a priests life and the easy yoke that we take unto eternal life. Thank you Holy Mother Church for binding and loosing. Without you, know one in this "liberal world could make any good thing stick to me. Nor could anyone loosen any of the tragedies that constantly befall us in this dark valley. Thank you Saints for you witness to the very end. You show us how to live and how to die for him who is forever raised.

So for this great story that is my life, I lost the liberalism that permeated me. I gave up the inconclusive data of my life. Prior to Christ's sweetness, thoughts about myself dominated my existence. Why and from what natural cause can possibly stem this constant questioning of self? For what reason did I look to other creatures simply to believe that I could survive my life? Was I not as real as everything else? Was I conditioned incorrectly to so refuse to become like my surroundings? Ah misfit and restless soul, was there every a gift that you did not in someway reject prior to the gift of God himself?

I thank God that I am not a liberal. I am skeptical of the world and its wisdom so as to be more and more trusting of God's world and God's wisdom. Notice by world, I do not mean the natural world by the spirit of the age that seeks to dominate the meaning of my life and yours. By worldly wisdom, I do not mean scientific knowledge of the natural world nor the human sciences of our visible nature, but the so-called wisdom that has currency only because it seems to be new or unheard of. We all to easily adopt thinking that seems so correct without making a lick of common sense.

By believing in all that we see with our eyes we all the more fully distrust the God who loves us. We distrust the one happiness that we can actually aspire to that won't ultimately fail.