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Author: jeff
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What Are You Zealous About?
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi there. I’ve been thinking a lot about the political drama and anguish that’s been happening in our country these last several months now and thinking about the riots that were taking place in the capitol. And not just that, but the hundreds of thousands- perhaps millions- of people who have shown up at political rallies in recent months and how much enthusiasm they have, how much passion there is, how they will make great sacrifices, drive long distances, spend money, all of these things over politics.
And politics is important. Let’s face it: It’s the business of the people. And some of the issues facing our country are really dramatic, perhaps the most important that have happened in 150 years. And yet, when I talk to people about religion or when I go to church, I find not even a fraction of the enthusiasm for the Faith and the spiritual life and the development of the conscience and the study of the Scriptures. And even in my own family and among my friends, I find this zeal for politics that is not present in the spiritual life.
And I’m not attempting to judge all of the people who care about politics- I certainly am a political follower myself. But really, it’s a question that I’m now asking myself, whether my every moment of concern about the things of the world- whether it’s politics, whether it’s sports, whatever it might be that’s happening- are those things properly ordered to my eternal good? Do I have the same passion and enthusiasm for the things in my spiritual life that I’m in total control over as I do those things in the temporal world that I have no control over? It’s a question that I’m really thinking about, and I hope this meditation is helpful for you, too.
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It’s Time For Me to Decrease
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Hey, gentlemen. I’ve been reading St. John the Baptist’s words lately- like maybe you have this time of year- and how he talked about the need for him to decrease so that Christ could increase. And you know, it occurred to me that this is not just a catchy saying about John the Baptist, he’s not virtue signaling. This is actually a way of life, and it’s one that we are all called to adopt. Our abandonment of our attachment to things of this world, and that includes our own thoughts and our own feelings to the extent that they’re not perfectly in alignment with the will of God.
So, I must grow smaller in my thoughts, in my words, in my prayers, in my conscious thinking about things, my recollection, my memories, my goals, and my planning for the rest of my life. There needs to be less of me in all of that. In fact, I serve as the primary obstacle to grace in my own life. So, in every possible way, I’m obliged to try and grow smaller, to decrease, because just like when you put something- an object- inside of a box or a can, that object takes up space by its very existence. It’s precluding something else from occupying that space. It’s hard to think about for those of us who have probably spent our entire lives saying, “I want to do this. I want to achieve this. I want to accomplish this. I want to be like this when I grow up. I want to be known for this. I want to have children. I want to have grandchildren. I want to be a good husband.”
Well, sometimes those things are properly ordered, but oftentimes they’re not or at least they’re ordered to a lesser good than what God desires for us. I’m committed to trying to live anew, like John the Baptist talked about, becoming lesser so that God can become greater. And by that method, I have the hope of reaching eternal life.
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A Gunman In Church
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Recently here in Nashville, we had a bombing on Christmas day. In fact, you may have heard something about that- a suicide bomb, basically. We still don’t know exactly why. But that bombing took down a lot of communications, and it also put people on edge. They wondered, “Is this the beginning of a round of violence? Is this the beginning of another series of people showing up at churches, and opening fire on people while they’re praying?” And consequently, we’ve had a lot of people start open carrying at church. We’ve had people, of course, concealed carrying.
And as I was at adoration, I was thinking about what would happen if I was there at adoration- oftentimes there’s just two or three of us- and someone broke in and started firing? And I could see myself ducking down for the ground, maybe doing a low crawl to try and get out of there, maybe having to stand up and run for the nearest exit to try to get away from the gunman. And I thought about that. Why would I run? I would be running just on instinct to save my life, to avoid death.
And yet, it occurred to me that most of us- certainly myself- don’t take that same approach to sin. I don’t flee from sin as if it was my life on the line, and yet, it is my life on the line, right? Even that single venial sin starts to form a foundation for other venial sins and eventually for those mortal sins that can destroy the soul.
And that image of running from the gunman in church but failing to flee the near occasion of sin- whether it’s having an extra drink at the end of the night, whether it’s having seconds at the dinner table, whether it’s failing to give of my excess to those who are in need, or failing to live up to the highest plan that God has for me in my life as a husband and father- I’m shirking my responsibilities. I’m fleeing, but not from sin. And that image really stuck with me. It’s given me a lot to think about, and so I wanted to share it with you today. I hope that it’s profoundly beneficial for you as well. God bless.
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I was reading the Magnificat today, and the words hit me in a little bit of a different way than they have in the past. And I was thinking about the pride and the conceit and of the world, and I was thinking about the rich and what the Saints tell us that the purpose of the rich is. And the rich, of course, are here on earth for the aid of the poor- to come to their aid. And the poor are here on the earth for the spiritual salvation of the rich, to give the rich people an opportunity to work out their salvation through their generosity and their benefits and their assistance.
And each of us has been born into a particular place in our life, and most of us probably, that are watching this, are rich by any standard, certainly compared to what the Saints of all time have lived like. And a large portion of the world’s population today are dependent upon those of us that are rich. And Saint Thomas talks about how if we have an extra coat in our closet, we should give that to the poor. If it’s hanging in our closet and we’re not using it, that’s excess that we own that we should give to the poor. Or if we have an excess of food, that should be going to the poor. And I just thought about how my own closet is full of clothes that I don’t wear on a regular basis and haven’t worn in a long time, and that there’s not a single meal that goes by that I don’t at least have access to seconds, you know, a second portion, a helping.
And yet, how rare it is that that would go to the poor, or that the money that provided for that excess could have gone to the poor instead of going into seconds for my family or an extra coat or a second hat or a third pair of gloves or whatever. It’s a high standard, but it’s the standard that Saint Thomas tells us this is the one that we must adhere to for salvation. So, I’m just going to be working on looking for opportunities in my life to take the excess, the things that I don’t really need according to my state in life, and find a way to get those to the poor.
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Boy, that was kind of embarrassing. So, like many of you all, I’ve been spending most of my time working from home lately, and I’ve got a pretty great setup in my basement. It’s kind of like a man cave, but it’s ‘Dad’s office’, right? And I keep it pretty dark down there because I do some filming occasionally, and I like to create a kind of an ambiance for creative thinking, and stays kind of cool in the basement. And I’ve got my primary computer that I do most of my business work on, and then I’ve got my laptop, which is off to the side, that I use when I need to be mobile and stuff. And occasionally when I’m doing my holy hours at home, I’ll even light a candle or two in my office there and sprinkle some holy water around.
Why am I telling you this? Well today, I left the office, and I took my laptop out with me, and I went to go see a friend and a client. And when I walked into his conference room- beautiful, brightly lit, and so forth- and I pulled my laptop out onto the table to set up for our conference, I realized that my laptop was filthy. Not just the outside that had dust and stuff that had accumulated over weeks and months, but as I opened it up, I was looking at it under these really harsh bright lights in the conference room.
The keyboard was dirty. I hadn’t cleaned the keyboard in forever, and you could see the keys that I use all the time with my fingers- they were kind of polished clean, and where I rest my hand is clean. But the rest of it was dirty with dust, accumulated dirt, there was a splotch of something- probably tea or something. But the screen was so dirty on this laptop that in the glare of the lights I couldn’t even see. I could just barely make out, behind all the filth on the screen, what was there.
I was standing there. It was so embarrassing. And then it hit me. I realized that this is like doing an examination of conscience for the first time in a long time or switching up your examination of conscience and trying a different technique or reading one of those old-style examinations of conscience that goes by the sacraments, that goes by the Commandments, and asks, “Have you done this?” or “Have you failed to do this?” And not being in that same routine that you’re accustomed to where you kind of think, “Oh yeah, maybe I committed this venial sin today,” but you’ve probably forgotten a lot of things. And I was standing there, and it was so embarrassing.
But in that moment, Our Lord and my Guardian Angel gave me this opportunity to just be reminded of why we have to measure things, why we have to be so vigorous in our self-examinations; because we get into our own little world that we’ve created around ourselves. In my case, it’s dark downstairs and it’s kind of cool and I don’t take the laptop out of there very often, I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I certainly hadn’t seen it with fresh eyes. It’s kind of like when you have sunglasses or glasses and if you’ve got them up close, you’re looking through them, you’re not looking at them. You can’t see how dirty the lenses are.
And that’s what happens to our souls. That’s what happens when people have a routine, and that’s great, but what if your routine needs to be changed up a little bit? What if the things you’re measuring aren’t all of the things you need to be measuring? What if the things you’re tracking and you’re so proud of aren’t all of the things that you need to be tracking in order to become a saint? That can be kind of embarrassing. That’s where I was today.
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Bearing Accusation Silently
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You know, during Advent, like with Lent, it’s a great time to reflect on our Lord’s life and how it’s an example for us in every way. And you know, it occurred to me that Our Lord would have exemplified this notion of abasement, where you lower yourself to the point where you don’t even defend yourself when people lie about you, when people say things to hurt you or imply things about you, or just outright engage in slander, defamation, and libel.
Our Lord lived His whole life that way. We’re familiar with the examples during His Passion, where he was accused of things, betrayed over and over and over again and never once spoke up to defend Himself from those lies. But He would have lived His entire life like that. And we know what people are like. Kids, for example- surely there were times when He was a child when He was playing with the other kids in the village- whether it was Bethlehem or Nazareth or in Egypt or wherever He was-.and there must have been times when, kids being kids, things happened; a window got knocked out in a nice home or somebody did something, and they pointed the finger at Jesus and blamed Him.
It’s almost certain that He would not have defended Himself unless the circumstances just really required that He speak the truth rather than take the blame. And I was thinking about myself and how difficult it is to take the blame. It’s hard enough when it’s true, but when it’s false, when it’s a lie, there’s something in me- perhaps you all have experienced this too- that someone lies about you and blames you falsely, and it just screams out in you to defend yourself. And gosh, there’s a lot of work there to be done to be willing to take the blame when you’re not guilty.
And this happens in the workplace, it happens in society, it happens online- worst of all, probably, if you’re online, on social media. And it even happens at home, right? It might be that your spouse says something about you that’s not true. Sometimes that happens between spouses, right? “Well, you did this,” or “You said this,” or “You made it sound like this.” And sometimes it’s just not true, and you might feel that defense lawyer begging to come out of you and defend yourself to the very end- every ‘i’ dotted and ‘t’ crossed and so forth. But sometimes, even just on a practical level, not just the spiritual doing it for humility, but on the practical level, sometimes it really is just better to say nothing. And your silence kind of allows that word, that unspoken admission of guilt, to be assumed, and yet it might actually be better for the situation. It might be better for that relationship. And maybe days later, weeks later, months or years later, it could be addressed, and you say, “You know, there was this time…” But in that moment, it might be better to say nothing.
And it’s painful. It’s difficult. It’s hard. But Our Lord has given us the example that it is better, oftentimes, for our soul. And it might just be better for our relationship with other people and the example that we set, especially if you have children. I hope this has been helpful, and I hope you’ll pray for me as I work on this. Thanks.
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Go On Offense Against Self
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Something I’ve been thinking about is the need for us to develop a real horror for venial sin. Most of us have probably spent, at some point in our life, some time trying to fight a mortal sin. And then we get to the point where maybe that mortal sin is no longer a part of our lives, but these habitual venial sins that kind of eat away at us like termites might in your home. And so we really need to make sure that we’re waging a war against that habitual venial sin, the things that we’re just accustomed to confessing all the time. And maybe we don’t respond to them with the violence that we would a mortal sin, and we might even fall into a habit of just confessing them all the time. It’s like, “Oh I always do this,” right? Maybe it’s sins against charity or maybe it’s sins against temperance with food or drink or sloth or whatever the case might be.
And if we really love Our Lord and we want to imitate Him and be like Him, it’s not enough for us just to be on defense against these sins, right? Just trying to avoid sin. That’s a starting point, but it’s not really what we’re called to. After all, the greatest threat to our salvation is ourselves; it’s not the world, it’s not other people, it’s not Satan, it’s ourselves.
So we have to be on offense against ourselves. We have to recognize that that’s the greatest obstacle to our salvation. How do we do that? How do we go from being on defense against venial sins to being on offense against our self and our will and our pride? And the answer- the saints and the Church have given us the answer- is that we need to fast, we need to engage in acts of mortification, and we need to abstain from things. This is why traditionally the Church has taught abstinence on Wednesdays and Fridays, just to reinforce that war against our will and our desires. And of course, we need to do corporal and spiritual works of mercy because by serving others, by doing things for others, putting them first in our mind and in our hearts and in our practices, we are, of course, fighting that temptation in all of us to put ourselves at the center of everything. I hope that this has been helpful to you and will encourage you along the way.
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What Kind of Friend Was Our Lord?
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I’ve been thinking recently and meditating about the life of Our Lord and what He was like every moment, all of those hidden moments in His life. He was a son, He was a cousin, He was a worker- perhaps a stonemason or a contractor. And how he lived every moment as a young man in all of His roles, how He fulfilled His duties in life. And reflecting on that, trying to know Him better, to understand Him, to become more like Him.
I thought about what He would have been like as a friend, and He would have been the perfect friend, the most charitable, kind friend you could ever imagine. And that would have manifested itself in great ways, of course, but also in the simplest of ways. And I ask my guardian angel to help me to identify opportunities to do little acts of charity for the people in my life, principally my spouse and my children; not great big heroic acts of charity that would be noticed, but tiny, simple, little ways that I could grow in charity by doing an act of charity every day. And it was very profound. What I discovered was that throughout the day there were these tiny, little things that I could do that would be unnoticed, probably, but were acts of service for me.
For example, I have a narrow driveway, at one point, and my wife doesn’t like to back up her car up the driveway between the house and the fence. And so one morning, I realized she was preparing to leave, and I went out and got the car for her and backed it up. Now this is, you know, an almost embarrassingly small act of charity, but doing this kind of thing every day- putting something away for a person, picking up an item that you know they’re going to misplace or they’re going to go looking for, or some other small act of charity- helps to form our will and form our body and mind to be more like Christ. I hope this is helpful to you. God bless you.
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Yes, Time Travel is Possible
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Fulton Sheen talked about how for God there are no multitudes, there is no crowd. There’s just you. There’s just me. And thinking about this, I thought that every moment of His life on earth, Our Lord was thinking about me. We know that God the Father in Heaven is omniscient, He’s thinking about us all the time. He knows our thoughts and every moment better than we know our own. He counts the hairs on our head, right? But God become man, Our Lord and Savior on Earth, was also in that divine union thinking about me every moment of His existence. And to the extent that we can give him human emotions, He was loving me, desiring the best for me, planning for me, and so forth.
And of course, that’s kind of an extraordinary thought. I mean, it’s mind-boggling for me even to think about that. That not just when He was dying on the cross, not just during His passion, but in those random unknown secret moments of His life, the 30 years that we don’t have a play-by-play for while He was learning to be a carpenter, while He was in the desert, while He was attending at his foster father’s bedside, He had me on His mind and was loving me. And of course, He has invited us- through this gift of mental prayer through meditation- to join Him in His life on Earth, to be a part of that life, to be there with Him like a best friend not just at the foot of the cross, not just on the way of the cross or in the garden, but in every moment of His life. And He has given us this gift of meditation so that we can join Him in that. We can cross the boundaries of time and space to be with Him, to be His best friend, to love Him, to listen to Him, to learn from Him, to hold His hand as if we were a child, and to spend time with Him in that way right now in this life.
And the extraordinary thing, of course, is that the whole point of creation is that He has created us solely so that we could spend eternity with Him and yet even in this interim journey on earth, He is giving us a means to spend time with Him right now. And that’s extraordinary to me, and it gives a character to our understanding of the Divinity that maybe has been a little bit out of our grasp before- certainly for me. I hope this is helpful.