Spiritual GPS
Way before I ever considered becoming a priest, I would ask my parish priest for spiritual advice and guidance. But it wasn’t until I entered the seminary nine years ago that I had my first experience with spiritual direction, which is different from occasionally asking for spiritual advice. A spiritual director is a person whom you meet with on a regular basis to receive guidance along the path of holiness. I remember being excited about having a spiritual director for the first time. But I was initially frustrated with him. Don’t get me wrong, I respected my spiritual director immensely. But every time I asked for guidance on a certain area that I wanted to improve on spiritually, he would point out things about my disposition that I thought was either irrelevant or something I had already addressed.
What is the “VTF”?
A few months ago, Fr. John initiated the Vocation Task Force to minister to the growing number of vocations coming out of our large parish. Sometimes we think of a vocation committee where only a select number of people in the community do the work of encouraging and fostering vocations. That is in fact the responsibility of all members of the Church. And so the Vocation Task Force is designed to give all parishioners the opportunity to fulfill that privilege to cooperate with God’s providence.
Have You Practiced Your Scales?
In middle school and high school, I played in the school orchestra. I still remember in the sixth grade, my parents took me to a music store and bought me a violin, the first, I believe, in my family’s history.
How Many Saints Are From the U.S.?
[These remarks served as the introduction to the one act play, “Damien,” performed by Fr. Richard Wahl on October 11, 2009, the canonization day of St. Damien.]
There are more than ten thousand canonized saints, men and women in heaven whom the Church officially decrees that their lives were so holy and virtuous that we should in our own way, imitate our lives after theirs—more than ten thousand saints, their names are recorded in this book I hold in my hand called the “Roman Martyrology.” And before today, we only had four (by my count) canonized saints from the United States of America: St. Katherine Drexel, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, and St. John Neumann. This morning in Rome, our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI canonized Fr. Damien of Hawaii the fifth saint from the United States of America.
Power & Authority
As a freshman in high school, I hesitate to admit, that I was a little envious of my oldest sister, who at the time was a senior and was vice-president of the National Honor Society. I wanted to be a part of the club because they got to do cool activities like answering the telephones for the Jerry Lewis Telethon and singing Christmas carols at nursing homes, or any number of service projects that got you out of the house so you could hang out with your friends.
And I still remember the wheels of my pre-legal mind squeaking as I tried to come up with a way to get into the club. I helped my sister make signs for their bake sale. I even showed up to volunteer at the early Saturday morning car wash. And when I thought the time was right, I asked my sister if she would use her clout as vice-president to get me in the club. To my surprise, my sister threw the proverbial book at me—citing to the bylaws and Constitution, reminding me that I had to be at least a junior in high school and have the requisite grade point average before I was allowed in.
And the Winner of the Award for Lifetime Achievement Goes to…
Growing up, I used to enjoy watching those award ceremonies on television, like the Oscars and the Emmys. I got caught up in the excitement of guessing who would win, even in those categories that I had no idea about, like Best Foreign Film. But somewhere during the seven years I was in the seminary, I lost my taste for them. I still wanted to know who won for Best Actor or Actress, but I found myself fast-forwarding through the acceptance speeches.
Between Virtue and Vice
I have to confess that it took me the longest time to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”1 On the one hand, I admit, it sounds catchy, and so it’s easy to remember. But on the other hand, I’ll have no chance of applying it to real, everyday experiences it I don’t know what it really means. It seems a little counterintuitive…to have to give something up, just to receive it back.
Well, I think that this lesson is one of the first lessons that everyone here learned…As a baby, we were given toys, like a ball…and we had fun playing with it, throwing the ball up and catching it on its way down. And if you’ve ever tried to take a ball from a child, the child will resist even if you’re trying to take it from him in order to teach him how to play catch. A child has to learn that he has to first give the ball away in order to have the ball thrown back or returned to him. Playing by yourself is fun, but not near as fun as having someone else to play catch with. That is the lesson…that in order to build any type of relationship, you have to give something away.
The Door Through the Invisible Wall that Separates Us From God
Have you ever taken a moment to think about how you pick your friends? We all have friends; some of them are closer to us than others. Friends are the people we rely on, someone we can trust…to help us get out of scrapes or to listen to us complain when the world treats us unfairly.
And I think it’s important that we know how we choose our friends because ultimately, if we’re going to have a relationship with God, a true relationship, one in which we trust God the way we are suppose to, that relationship between God and us has to somehow mature into a kind of friendship.
Are You a Tourist or a Pilgrim?
Have you ever wondered why good people do bad things? (If you’re like me) you might have asked yourself: Why do I gossip when I know that talking about people behind their back damages their reputation and makes me judgmental. Or you might’ve asked, why do I say that I’ll find more time to pray every day and then find myself doing just the opposite, praying less and less? Have you ever notice that our mind tells us what is good for us (“do not gossip,” “make time to pray”) and yet our body sometimes performs the action that is the exact opposite of what we intend to do. Between our mind, that tells us what is good for us, and our body, which sometimes commits what we know to be bad, there must be a missing piece of the puzzle that causes good people to do bad things.
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