Categories
Meditation

A Gunman In Church

TRANSCRIPT:

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.

Categories
Meditation

You May Be Looking, But Are You Seeing?

TRANSCRIPT:

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.

Categories
Meditation

Go On Offense Against Self

TRANSCRIPT:

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.