Deserves... not demands...

Last week, after music rehearsal for Sunday's Mass I mentioned that the Solemnity of Christ the King is my favorite day in the liturgical year besides the obvious Christmas and Easter. My fellow musicians asked me why and my initial response was because this is the day that we celebrate Christ as King, we give him the praise that he rightly deserves. After I made my theology need comment I walked out and continued to think about this.

After further reflection, I'm realizing why I really like this day, it's not all the pomp and circumstance that our Savior deserves, but I love it because he doesn't ask for it. When he emptied himself to come to earth from his throne in heaven, he didn't do it expecting praise and glory, but rather he did it out of love.
Maybe I like this day so much because I know it's a day where liturgically and musically we get to praise Christ for his kingship and we get to give him honor that he deserves.

But it doesn't end here.

Humility and Love

It’s been a rough few months where I have had to come to terms with all the change going on in my life. The life of a student that I have known for… oh I don’t know… the last 21 years, has come to an end and I have been thrown into the workplace. The independence I’ve know living away from home has dwindled because I now live with my parents again. My spiritual life has been changing and maturing. I have been changing and maturing as an adult and on my spiritual journey. And it all has to do with love.

Superheros and Spirituality

Maybe it's my obsession with fairy tales and theology, which leads me to see theology in any good versus evil story. After seeing The Dark Knight Rises and watching many Smallville episodes, I have also come to see theology in our famed superheros.

I wish I would have been the one to write this out, but since I haven't been writing much of anything lately I will just link to someone else's insights on the relationship between superheros and theology.

Click Me!!!!

Second Chances

I heard a new motto over the weekend: "live like your donor is watching."

This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the opening ceremonies for the Transplant Games of America. Never in my life have I experienced something both wonderfully joyful and full of life, and at the same time with an undertone of loss and sorrow. My brother sums it up pretty succinctly this tweet:

Let your light shine!!

“Know yourselves… He who knows himself knows God… He who knows himself knows all men… He who can love himself, loves all men…” St. Antony

This is a thought that has always spoken to me: Know yourself. It’s nothing new—in fact it’s not even specifically Christian, but it’s a universal truth. Antony, however, makes this claim extend beyond the individual and extends it into the communal. He hits on three points: know self, know God, know others. This is seemingly obvious, but what is less obvious is how all these things can be connect through self-knowledge. I would think that it is simultaneously an interior and exterior knowledge. But how? And what does that mean?

It might be obvious that self-knowledge comes through an interior examination; of course we need to look within ourselves to know ourselves. It requires that we dig deep and acknowledge what we like and confront what we don’t. There’s no skating over our flaws when it comes to knowing ourselves. We love the light, but acknowledge the darkness. This is something that Antony knew well—we are made in the image and likeness of light – of God-  yet because of sin we have traces of darkness—not an opaque darkness, more of a shadow, a dimming. St. Teresa of Avila explains that our soul is an interior castle made out of the purest and finest crystal and at the center of our souls is where God dwells. From this center, from God, beams the brightest light. Yet some people live in a way that light is dimmed, the soul is covered so God’s true light cannot radiate outward from within. And you know when something in your life is amiss. You have a feeling that something is not quite right. This is when self-discovery begins—what in our lives is causing this light to be covered? Are we happy? Is it our hobbies, our actions, our relationship God (lack thereof?), our relationship with others, our relationship with ourselves? By asking these questions and taking a good look at what’s going on interiorly, we can begin to pin down why we act, outwardly, the way we do.