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Ripples in the Water: Reflections and Updates
I love to write (please remember, love for something speaks nothing of a guy's proficiency in that thing) and so I started this page just to share a series of reflections on youth ministry, faith, culture, the occasional iced cappuccino, and well, all things within the sacramental imagination.
"In the experience of great love, all things that happen are events related to it."
In the presence of the greatest of loves, all things are encompassed within, drawn together, and find their place within this divine romance know as Catholicism. What was always there, always present in the events of our lives, reveals itself to be a person, a presence. In the wake of such a love, all things, like constellations under the horizon of the night sky, suddenly dance brightly against the darkness...Christ enters in and life finally begins.
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I'm reminded of G.K. Chesterton who once responded to the question "what is wrong with the world" with the simple answer "I am." The single greatest problem in the Christian religion is me. It's my sin. Fortunately, Jesus knows this and gives me a new family to help me become more like him. This worldwide family that He started, that has roles, rules, responsibilities, structure, sacraments, saints, and sinners is what he calls the Kingdom of God. It is both visible and invisible, both an organization and a living, breathing, life-giving reality, loved into being by the Father, established in Jesus, and animated by the Holy Spirit. It is called His Body, his Bride, his Church. How can you imagine having a relationship with Jesus without loving what he loves? -
"let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair" - G.K .Chesterton
In the same way, let your "marriage", "acts of service", "prayer life", "relationship", "obedience", "politics", "Mass participation", "Catholicism", "tithing", "growing in virtue", "study of the Summa", "Salvation", etc., be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
Love affairs do not disqualify the roles, rules, responsibilities, visible structure, public and corporate nature of a love affair - it internalizes them, it makes one free from the "law" by writing them on the heart. A man in love fulfills the laws of love not because he simply "has" to, but because he wants to. Commandments become opportunities. Real Christianity is not "either / or" but "both / and". Loving Jesus means fulfilling roles, following rules, accepting responsibilities not out of fear, but out of sheer joy from beginning to end.
I've always thought that Christmas was when we celebrate Christ giving himself to us in the Incarnation...true as it is, I never understood until this year, that Christmas is also when Christ came to receive and not just to give. God becomes man, Mystery collides with History, Spirit takes on Flesh, the King who has everything, who has need of nothing, became weak, vulnerable, and poor so that I would understand his humility and my dignity - God comes to receive which means I have something to give. The world waits for salvation and freedom but Christ was laid in a crib before he could embrace his cross. The world needs a savior, but in our great need He does not come bearing gifts, but comes looking for them.
In the Christmas story, Jesus has nothing to give. He is born in poverty and waits to receive any gift given to him. God became the least of us so that he would need the most from us. He became the least so that everyone of us would have something to give him. His mission is not just to save us from sin, but to save us for a new life, for a new way of living that restores the dignity and responsibility we all have. We are bound to one another and we are called, from the greatest to the least, to give to those who have less.
Wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in the poverty of the manger, the Christmas conspiracy is reclaiming the truth: we are not what we keep, but how we love and how we give. Christmas is about His great humility, and His humility is why Christmas is about our great dignity.
"Worship. Love. Give. Presence."
- Prepare for Christmas. Live Advent.
Thoughts on “How to be in the presence of God and actually be aware of it...”
Since I'm not an expert, I can only give you beginner's advice I've learned from other beginners.
Here are three really easy steps I use.
Stop. Look. Listen.
Here are a few reflections on driving, division of time while driving, posture, proposing and trusting God to answer prayer. Below is a rough estimate of what I did and what I thought traveling 25 hours from Swartz Creek, MI to Pine Island, FL
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