theROCK

Fire in the Belly

If you’re like me, you learned as a child that the Holy Spirit is a dove. This is the traditional symbol for the presence of the Holy Spirit in Scripture and religious art. I held this image for much of my life. The image of a dove isn’t one that I could relate to unlike the images of God the Father and Jesus which are human in nature. As a person who is not a big fan of birds, the Holy Spirit was a distant entity of the Trinity for me. That was until about 2007 when I read the book, "The Shack," by William P. Young. While this is not a theologically accurate book, it is an interesting piece of fiction that made me grapple with the very content that I was teaching my fourth grade students at the time, and my own understanding and appreciation of the Holy Spirit. The concept of the Holy Spirit was prevalent in the religion curriculum as it related to the sacraments of initiation. I needed to spend time with students engaging in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This was the perfect storm for a conversion moment – a compelling novel, new understanding of the Holy Spirit, and moral responsibility to teach the Truth. Working through all that was before me, I developed a deeper, more profound connection and relationship with the Holy Spirit. It is less about the dove and more about the fire. The fire that descended upon the disciples at Pentecost and burned in their bellies to give them the zeal and fortitude to carry out Jesus’s mission for all time. Every morning, I now ask the Holy Spirit to be with me and guide me, to grant me the gifts of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and courage to do what the Lord needs me to do. I can do all things through God, the Holy Spirit, who strengthens me. I have come to appreciate that the Holy Spirit is the power. The Holy Spirit is the force. The Holy Spirit is the energy brought out through love of God and love of Jesus. 

A Matter of Life After Death

It’s been a difficult year health-wise for many of my family members and friends. Regular updates about diagnoses and surgeries, tests and treatment plans has my mind thinking about Life and Death more than usual. A lyric comes to mind from my favorite band Rush: “learning that we’re only immortal . . . for a limited time.”

We live our days one day at a time and don’t like to think about death because the afterlife is a giant question mark of unknowns. As Catholics, we believe quite profoundly in Life AFTER Death. Our souls are destined to exist for eternity.

At a recent staff meeting we discussed an article about the “Nones.” Nones being those who have no affiliation with a formal religion.  Atheism is on the rise, with more Americans rejecting the notion of God entirely, much less that Heaven and Hell are real. Another well-known quote comes to mind: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." ~ Charles Baudelaire

Every one of us likely knows someone (or is that someone) who has experienced first-hand some inexplicable/miraculous event that transcends the corporeal and can best be described as Divine Intervention.   It is a matter of faith to recognize the handprint of God in those moments.  It is a matter of fact that sometimes things happen that defy that which our human minds and science can explain. Miracles are the proof that God is with us.

Jesus’ earthly life and His words through the Gospel accounts assure us that eternal life with HIM is within our reach and that there is a reckoning for those who embrace sin and evil. So for the faithful, we recognize that what we’re doing here on Earth really is about salvation. OUR salvation. But in all honesty, whether a person believes or is a NONE, for every human being ever conceived, eventually life on Earth ends and the souls’ Eternity begins.

God alone is the judge for a soul’s eternal life. We all sin and we must seek Reconciliation. This is how we reconcile our mortal minds with our own mortality. 

Jesus told us directly how to reconcile ourselves with God: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Mt 22:38-40

If  we truly follow these commands, when illness threatens body, soul is still at peace.

The Joy of Easter

How is your Easter going? Are you still celebrating the joy of this season?

Sometime I think we, as a Catholic church, don’t put enough emphasis on the Easter season. The same is true of the Christmas season. We put so much emphasis on the preparation, the repentance, the waiting of the purple seasons. We fill our calendars to the brim with ways to engage Lent, to dive in and dig deep. And then the Day comes – Easter, Christmas – and it’s over and wrapped up like a wedding day. No more programing. No diving in or digging deep together. Just life as usual, as if nothing happened. As if nothing changed. As if we hadn’t changed.

That’s not the way it is supposed to be, right? Lent is not more important than Easter. But the way we engage the two would suggest that it is. We only “do” Lent for the purpose of better “doing” Easter. We practice repentance to allow our hearts and spirits to more fully embrace the fullness of Easter…that is all seven weeks of it. Easter is almost twice as long as Lent. So why do we treat it like it is a single day?

It is the fifth week of the Easter season, but I invite you, challenge you even, to look at how well you are celebrating – or not celebrating – the Resurrection. You have a few more
weeks to go. What is something you can do to reignite the joy of Easter and celebrate Christ’s victory over sin and death? What were the practices you took up for Lent? How have you seen a change in yourself through those practices? How can you carry that transformation forward throughout the Easter season and beyond?