theROCK

Take a Step Toward Sainthood

Sometimes when I hear stories of the Saints, especially those who have stories of heroic martyrdoms, I can feel discouraged, because I wonder how on earth I could ever live a life of that much virtue or a life of holiness that I could courageously die for my faith or suffer through chronic pain or emotional sufferings without complaining.  

Recently, a friend started to tell me the story of one of her favorite Saints, St. Cecilia, who was a second century martyr, and I was prepared to be overwhelmingly discouraged by her story. However, instead of telling the whole story, this friend shared with me one moment of the story that she had been meditating on. Because it was just one moment of the story, I found myself saying, “I can imitate that virtue in her! That one thing is not too hard for me today!” 

Sometimes prayer feels overwhelming too; there are so many hurting people in our lives, Scripture can be confusing, or maybe we don’t know where to start with the Lord.  

Today, the Lord’s invitation to Peter and Andrew is simple: “Come after me.” He doesn’t expect them to have it all figured out. He just invites them to take a step as they begin to follow him. St. Cecilia, when asked her name as she stood on trial for her faith, was able to respond: “my name is Cecilia, but my more beautiful name is that of Christian.” She probably did not have the courage to say those words on her first day of following the Lord, but little by little as she took one step at a time, she came to know the Lord and the great gift of her faith. Don’t be afraid to take one or two steps this week. The Lord is good and just wants to love you!  

Choose Life

While in graduate school, I spent a year serving as a crisis pregnancy counselor at a Christian organization that seeks to provide women and couples with the resources necessary to choose life. I had always been anti-abortion, so I saw this as an opportunity to do hands-on pro-life work. What I experienced will forever change the way I understand what it means to be “pro-life.”

I’m not really sure what I was expecting to encounter when I agreed to the opportunity, but whatever it was, the actual experience was a completely different reality. I encountered women who lived with abusive husbands, but were dependent on them for financial support or had other children with these men that they had to consider. I encountered men and women who had been laid off from work and were unable to find gainful employment to support this new child. Families whose jobs didn’t provide medical coverage so they couldn’t even afford prenatal care, let alone the exorbitant cost of child birth. Teen mothers who were kicked out of their homes when their parents found out they were pregnant. Women whose husbands walked out on them when they found out, and left them to face the pregnancy alone. I walked these women and couples through the process of procuring government assistance and saw, time and again, how it failed to meet their needs, how it provided only a fraction of what it would take to raise their child to maturity, how the abundant requirements for assistance disqualified people who desperately needed help. For all that the center did to provide aid, most of this assistance only lasted until the age of two.

It is because of this experience that I came to understand the totality of the Christian call to be pro-life. It was in walking with these women and seeing the enormity of what they faced that I realized how much work needs to be done, starting with birth and every single day after. It was there that I realized I couldn’t simply pat myself on the back for changing a mother’s mind; I then had to do the even harder work of electing leaders, supporting policies, and donating to charities that would continue to give her and her child the assistance they needed.

So today, on Respect Life Sunday, let us of course pray for an end to abortion, pray for all of the children we have lost to abortion, and all those we still stand to lose. But let us also be sure to remember those parents who feel like they don’t have any other option. Let us pray for them and pray for the creation of a society that makes it possible for every family to unequivocally choose life.

Anger vs. Patience

I am finding myself angry these days. I don’t normally make it a practice to be angry as it is, in my mind, a wasted emotion. Good rarely comes of it. However, I am angry. When I have a moment, I try to get at the core of what is angering me. I think it is the enormity of speculation surrounding us. Speculation that is taken as fact. Speculation leads to gossip and rumor. I find these things very dangerous for a person’s psyche and mental and emotional well-being. There is very little right now that is making sense to me; fact is blurred, logic has been lost, contradiction is the norm. I try to stay the course – essentially lowering my head and moving forward with what facts are in place –and do what I need to do. Speculation is driving me nuts! I am hanging on to what isn’t changing to keep me sane and to stay grounded. My heart hurts. My head hurts. I’ve had enough of this change.

While I could just stop there and wallow in my own pity, I’m not going to. Anger is a vice. It’s corresponding virtue is patience. I am, we are, being called to virtue. Patience just happens to be one of the virtues that is hard for me. I want things done yesterday. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense why this situation is angering me. I want to get on with it, and I can’t. I need to have patience. Patience with God’s plan. Patience with God’s time. This all leads back to the
concept of total surrender. Just when you think you are there, you are not there. I went to one of my spiritual sages, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, to put myself back in check. I found this nugget:

To surrender to God means that we offer him our will, our reason, our life. We do this in pure faith, even if our soul is in darkness. Truly, trials and sufferings are the surest test of blind surrender. Surrender is also a sign of our true love for God and for souls. If we really love others, we must be ready to take their place, to take their sins upon ourselves and to expiate them through penance and continual mortification. We must be living holocausts for those
souls who are most in need.