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Greener Grass

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One of the greatest and unexpected reasons I am a priest today came about when I was sitting in my formator’s office telling him I was thinking of leaving the seminary. My first year of college seminary was not as easy as I had hoped and I found myself struggling quite early on in my discernment. By the time the semester was well under way, I already was considering leaving the seminary. I felt spiritually dry. I remember telling the priest all of the things I had left behind for seminary and my desire to go back to them.

The priest listened intently and patiently as I went down the list of reasons why I should leave. When I finished he leaned forward in his chair and said, “You know Tim, the grass is always greener on the other side, and at times we want to leave our ugly looking grass and move. But sometimes, we just need to water our own grass.”

Sometimes we just need to water our own grass. It’s a simple lesson, yet it was a lesson that kept me in seminary and eventually a priest. I began to focus on what was causing my spiritual grass to die and what care it needed. It took some time, but eventually, I became quite happy and content with how green my own grass had become. 

Sometimes we get so caught up in looking around us that we neglect to water and care for ourselves. As we become focused on what we do not have, what we actually have begins to suffer. We then want to give up and move on to newer and better things. It becomes a vicious cycle. The more we look outward the more our grass dies until we eventually move on to greener grass. 

We all have times when we wish we could be elsewhere or further along than we are, especially in our faith. The temptation can be to move on to others things and give up. Let’s try a different approach. For as much as the grass looks greener on the other side, sometimes we just need to water our own grass.

Tags: faith

Change My Heart

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When one gets hurt and injured, we instinctively flee to someone, or somewhere, to find comfort and solace -  a haven, if you will. Once there, one of two outcomes will likely occur: we are comforted because we received the care that was needed, or we seek someone/somewhere else because it did not do it well enough. For the previous, if too much care is given, we may find ourselves developing almost an "Allegory of the Cave" mindset (from Plato), meaning that even though we know there is something more out there (such as pain or suffering once we leave the comforting place), we choose to stay here because it is only safe and comforting. This, however, would breed ignorance to everything else surrounding us, depriving us of a more real life of experiences, or the ability to connect with others in a deeper way. That being said, the other outcome here does not exactly bear great fruit either: jumping from person to person or place to place just to avoid having to hear or experience something we are trying to avoid, which stunts us from being able to grow emotionally or spiritually as well.

During a recent Sustaining the Mission seminar, one presenter talked about how we are afraid to be vulnerable or accept feedback that challenges us to grow more deeply. This got me thinking about an old song that we would hear at home growing up. Now, you'll have to pardon me here in not remembering fully the name or lyrics of the song, but one verse in particular stuck out: "Change my heart, O God!" 

For me, this always meant that we are asking God to change us, making our hearts more true, and changing us into His own image. Finding that haven that we seek for the hardest of times, in God. But God also reveals unto us hard truths that we must be willing to accept and to allow the change that we may pray for to actually take place; it is one thing to simply ask for the change of one's heart to happen, but to actually act upon it and allow that change to take place requires work and dedication. It is from this concerted effort and work that we can find a footing in the raging waters of life knowing faithfully that God will, indeed, change our hearts...but only when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and work to keep ourselves from falling back into our own personal caves. 

A New Way of Living

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Todays gospel passage, Matthew 5:20-37 is a long and tough one. At first, it doesn’t really make much sense. What do you mean Jesus, when you say, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away,” and “Until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place?” Jesus is serious about sin, but he is also serious about how much he loves us. His plan from the beginning of time was to go to the cross in our place.

Religious leaders often confronted Jesus about the law to see what he had to say. Most Jews had a perception that he would get rid of the law, because Jesus did not scrupulously follow those traditions. Jesus was creating a new order – a new way of living that was to be the way of the Kingdom of God. This new way of living is not “fair” like the old covenant law. It is very unfair. This is because Jesus’ love is very unfair. He took the law a step further. In a way, he is saying, “because I have shown you self-sacrificial love, you must also do the same.” His love is unfair. We don’t deserve it. In the same way, we must also choose the cross. He’s talking about living righteously – offering one’s total self on behalf of others. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. We talked
about this a lot on retreat.

I pray that you accept this high calling and do not take it lightly. Because Jesus gave everything of himself for us, we are also called to do so for the sake of others and for the Kingdom that we long for.

Posted by Samantha Taylor
Tags: love, law

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