jesus

Imitating Heaven by Creating a Joyful Family Life

Joy is an elusive feeling missing in many of our lives. Perhaps many of us are not joyful because we do not make finding it a priority. We tend think joy is something that just happens to some and not to others. But joy is something that requires our active participation in many small but often challenging ways. Joy starts within the home. Father Ed Broom wrote an article about 10 ways to vitalize the Catholic family which I think has a lot to do with finding joy. The TL;DR summary of a joyful family is:

Family prayer
The father as head of the family
Forgiveness
Saying “I’m sorry”
Servant attitude
Gratitude
Take a break from gadgets
Listen
Celebrate
Marian Consecration

When I look at these ten points as a whole, I get the idea that a vitalized family is a joyous family. It is one centered around building each other up, acknowledging when we mess up, forgiving, and moving on.

We all know the saying that money does not buy happiness. But that does not stop many of us from trying. I’m not just talking about extravagant or needless purchases either. We all want what’s best for our spouse and our children and often plunk down a lot of money trying to achieve that. We spend a lot for organized sports and activities, days out having fulfilling experiences, and nice family meals out. But all that stuff and activities can also drown out true quality time that produces joy.

Modern “family time.” Where’s the joy emoji?

True family happiness is not something that comes through a Disney cruise or Hawaiian vacation. It comes from much smaller but probably more costly actions. It means taking the time to listen to your kid stumble through a joke he heard at school. It means having some silly time with a toddler even when there is housework to be done. It means just stopping and asking how your kids’ day went. It means setting aside time to listen to your spouse talk about the day.

Life is busy. And we so often get bogged down in doing what is immediately necessary. We need to wake the kids up, we need to finish breakfast, we need to get to school, we need to drive to baseball practice, we need to get started on homework, we need to clean the house, we need to… And so our days become a checklist of tasks where the joy and happiness are jettisoned for the sake of efficiency. We may not even feel unhappy because everything runs so smoothly. But we miss out on that feeling of joy because we are so busy running our families like a business that we don’t take the time enjoying being a family.

Joy is an important aspect of the Catholic faith and yet is one that is too often forgotten. We forget about the joy amongst the talk of fasting, penance, sin, and dogma. What we fail to understand is that the rules, fasting, and penance make way for joy because they tear down our natural human resistance to God’s grace and pave the way to ultimate joy in His Kingdom of Heaven. You cannot experience joy with a soul burdened by sin. Like someone shedding weight and feeling better through intense exercise, we need to shed the weight of sin through prayer and fasting to truly feel that joy that God intends for us.

When I pray the First Glorious Mystery of the Rosary, Jesus’ Resurrection, I remember that the Catholic Church is first and foremost a joyful Church. Without Jesus’ resurrection, the Church would be based on little more than a philosophy of a man who lived thousands of years ago. But with the resurrection, we celebrate with Jesus who conquered death as He said He would to His disciples. Jesus is alive and present in our lives today helping us achieve that joy of having a close relationship with God our Father. His resurrection proved that our lives do not end with the challenges and suffering of this world. It does not end at all because He desires all of us to find true joy in His Heavenly Kingdom.

Circling back to the original topic of joy and family. We should all try to make our family life an imitation of the joy we desire for ourselves in Heaven. Maybe, if we give others in our family a small taste of joy, they will desire that true joy that God gives that much more. And while our family life may never replicate Heaven, I think we can all agree that a pale imitation of Heaven is much better than an imitation of Hell. If you are looking to spread joy in this world, start with the people who share your roof.

One Trick to Start Your Day Right

Now that my son has started kindergarten, my family’s leisurely mornings are a thing of the past. We now have to wake up early and help get our son fed, dressed, packed, and out the door before the opening school bell. Like race horses at the starting gate, when that alarm clock rings in the morning we need to be off at a full gallop to get everything done.

My week day routine is not unique. Many people start their day ten steps behind and are in a constant rush. And among the snooze alarm pushing and coffee chugging, something very important is often missed. And this one action might determine whether you have a good or bad day. Here’s a clue, it’s not checking your Facebook and Twitter feeds the instant you get up. Long time RosaryMeds readers can probably already guess where I’m going. Morning prayer may be the difference between a good day or an off day.

When we skip morning prayer, we so often go through our day not realizing that we are fighting a battle with our hands tied behind our back. We are like soldiers going off to battle with no weapon and no protection wondering why everything is so hard and miserable. This is because we did not include Jesus in our day by praying to Him or asking our Holy Mother or the saints for their help and intercession.

In his book, Live Today Well, Fr. Thomas Dailey writes about the importance and benefits of starting your day focused on God from the instant you open your eyes.

Beyond an existential awareness, the practice of directing our minds to God corresponds to and facilitates a positive psychology. Experience shows that the mood with which we begin the day tends to color the entire day. What Francis de Sales understood is that starting the day with God in mind leads to keeping God in mind throughout the day.

All of this is intended to turn our morning routine into a sacred one. Routines play a key role in human life. Able to be done without our giving them much thought, they are comfortable, and often comforting, acts. Psychologically, even if not consciously, they represent a way of exercising a modicum of control over the chaos of our surroundings. Our habits lead us to do the same thing over and over again each morning; were we to deviate from this habitual routine, we would probably think something was “off ” or just not right.

The Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary (The Finding of Jesus in the Temple) exemplifies this common human weakness to leave God out of our everyday lives. In this rosary mystery, Mary and Joseph assumed Jesus was with them in the caravan leaving Jerusalem. When they finally discovered that he was missing, they started to panic and searched for Jesus for three days in sorrow.

How does this rosary mystery explain our daily routine? Mary and Joseph’s assumption and lack of attention led to three days of worry, anxiety, and sorrow. I feel like many of us do this as well when we fail to start our day in prayer. When we don’t actively keep Jesus visible in our lives, from the moment we wake up to the moment we close our eyes, we bring unneeded anxiety and sorrow because we take our attention away from the one who can help us find true happiness. Jesus wants nothing more than to help us and carry some of our burdens. But we have to come to Him and ask. Rember Luke’s Gospel:

Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Luke 10:28-30).

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Here’s my challenge to you. Get up 10 minutes earlier than normal. Spend that 10 minutes in prayer. You don’t have to get out of bed but I do encourage you to sit up to avoid falling back asleep. I bet your body can handle 10 minutes less sleep and your mind and soul will benefit from an extra 10 minutes of prayer.

The Power of Regular Rosary Prayer

In my work as a software developer, I often run into “walls” when trying to solve difficult problems. Most of the time I get through these blockages by just writing snippets of code no matter how ugly they may seem. But it helps me see the problem and the solution more clearly and provides me something I can shape into a beautiful, optimized solution. Getting to the desired solution is not a straight shot where I code everything perfectly the first time. It is a series of making wrong decisions and correcting them. I call it thinking with my keyboard.

Remember, no one sees your first draft (unless you started the day before the deadline)

Our happiness in life is a lot like the challenges I face when writing software. It’s not always easy to find happiness. It almost seems like life is a rigged game where being happy is something that is always just out of reach at best and an impossibility at worst. In his article, When you Can’t Hear God, Keep Talking to Him, Dave Zuleger sums up the futility we often feel when we try to find happiness:

We know that our trials will produce a faith that is tested, refined, and full of glorified joy (1 Peter 1:6–7). We know deep realities that can create deep hope beneath even the deepest pain. Except sometimes we don’t.

Sometimes we preach these truths to ourselves and our hearts aren’t moved at all. We groan, and wish that life was so different than it is (Romans 8:23). We pray and pray and pray, and things only seem to get more overwhelming and more difficult. Sometimes our hearts simply ache with the pain of broken dreams, broken relationships, broken bodies, and broken sinfulness.

Have you had that experience? Hope doesn’t come. Happiness doesn’t flood your heart. The clouds of depression don’t blow away. Overwhelming struggles simply overwhelm you more. Relationships are not restored.

He concludes that we need to continue to pray and lay out concerns and worries in front of God. It is in continual prayer that we often hear God. Like a software engineer needing to just write code to figure out the solution, we often need to just pray and meditate on different things to eventually hear what God is trying to tell us.

This is why praying rosary mysteries daily is such a great form of meditation. Every day is an opportunity to reflect on the life of Jesus and the Catholic faith through the rosary mysteries and ask for Mary’s help in making sense of it all. We have to explore our faith through prayer so that we can better understand God’s response.

It may seem doubly painful to dwell on our problems in prayer. After all, who wants to recall their pain and suffering on a regular basis? But through the rosary mysteries, we can see that pain through the lens of our faith, not through the lens of our secular world which offers very little in terms of answers and solutions. You can’t find the true solution to your problems by avoiding laying them before God in prayer.

Look at Jesus in the First Sorrowful Mystery of the rosary in the garden of Gesthemene. He was going through immense agony over his upcoming arrest and crucifixion. But Jesus did not hide that pain away in an attempt to appear tough or unphased. He had no issue bringing his concerns and fears before God in prayer saying “Father if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The agony in the garden of Gesthemene perfectly highlights what we are to do when life has is down — pray, pray, pray, and pray some more!

To end on a lighter note, here’s a quotation attributed to St. Francis de Sales for you to you think about. You could easily substitute the word busy with sad, worried, or any other word that describes your situation:

Every one of us needs half an hour of prayer a day, except when we are busy – then we need an hour.

Honor Mary by Asking for Her Help

In his article, Prayer takes Practice, Fr. Ed Broom lays out five ways to improve your prayer life. For the TL;DR crowd, the summary is:

Conviction — Have faith that prayer is actually important
Confession — Mend your relationship with God whenever you sin
Set a time and place to pray — Routine helps you pray consistently
Mass and holy communion — Mass and the Eucharist are the greatest prayers in the world
Seek our Lady of the Rosary — Pray the rosary to bring about peace

I want to focus on that last point — seeking out our Lady of the Rosary (naturally, this is a rosary prayer blog after all). On Aug 22nd, we celebrate the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary which we pray in the Fifth Glorious Mystery of the rosary. When we pray the rosary we are in essence “crowning” our Heavenly Queen. Mary wants nothing more than for us for to have a close relationship with her son, Jesus Christ. We honor and crown her whenever we show faith and conviction that our relationship with Jesus matters to us.

But having conviction and faith is not easy. Think about it. You may brood for days over a friend’s disagreeable Facebook post. You can get into a funk at work or at home when it seems like nothing is going smoothly. Many of us get tied up in knots over our finances. But how much time and energy do we devote to thinking about the state of our relationship with Jesus? Do we put more energy into worrying about Facebook posts than finding time to go to Confession? Do we spend hours on our hobbies and minutes in prayer?

If you feel like you are falling short in improving your prayer life, I suggest starting with the fifth point on that list. Pick up a rosary and earnestly tell Mary that you need her help. Tell her you need the courage to go to Confession. Tell her you need help to be more engaged at Mass. Tell her you need help praying on a more regular schedule. Tell her you need more faith and conviction that prayer actually means something. Praying the rosary will make all the other items on that list easier to accomplish.

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You crown Mary through the rosary when you earnestly say, “I need your help!” Speaking as a parent, I feel honored when my kids need my help no matter how trivial the matter. I’m lucky that my kids are young because it will feel odd when the day comes when they no longer need my help. Mary isn’t satisfied with the title of a queen but with nothing to do. She wants us to come to her with all our worries and problems so she can help us.

And let’s face it, we all need Mary’s help because having a perfect relationship with Jesus is nearly impossible because of the active attempts by Satan to derail us and our own weakness towards sin. But God knows this challenge and doesn’t leave us in a hopeless situation. He gave us a Heavenly Queen in Mary and the means for her to help us through the rosary. Honor Jesus by honoring Mary by asking for her help through rosary prayer.

Modernity and the Secularization of Reason

How the Rosary Helps Us Overcome Obstacles

I don’t watch a lot of television. However, when I find a few minutes and don’t feel like doing anything serious, I enjoy watching American Ninja Warrior. It’s a show where athletes run through an obstacle course trying to complete increasingly more rigorous feats. Most people fail to complete the entire course. But those that do are ecstatic because they overcame the temptation to quit even when they were fatigued and were entertaining thoughts that they didn’t have the ability to complete the course.

The same conflict between completing a goal or giving up because the obstacles seem too great appears in many of our spiritual lives. Many of us have a hard time mustering up enough energy to make it through an entire rosary chaplet or Bible reading. We all want to do God’s will and form a deep relationship with Him through prayer. And yet, despite all that we desire, we let trivial obstacles like a television show, website, or video game distract or derail us from doing what we know is good.

Saint Peter highlights what happens when we let obstacles overpower us and distract us from God’s will. In the Gospel, St. Matthew wrote about Jesus walking on the water in a terrible storm. Peter also tried walking on the water and was initially successful but then was overcome by fear and doubt and sank (Matthew 14:22-36).

Does Saint Peter’s story sound a lot like yours when it comes to prayer and doing God‘s Will? I can’t count the number of times I’ve said, “This time I’m going to stick to a rigid prayer schedule.” Or I read a book about the importance and benefits of prayer and get all excited initially only to be overcome by distractions. Like Saint Peter walking on water, instead of staying focused on my relationship with Jesus Christ I get distracted by the world around me.

But when we make an effort to pray and act according to God’s will, we actually act in a way that is doubly pleasing to God. Rev. P.J. Michel explains in his book, Temptations:

On this principle, when you observe the law of God and do His will in a way that is displeasing to nature, you acquire a double claim to reward: first, you have obeyed, and secondly, you have obeyed with difficulty and against resistance and combat. The sacrifice you have made of the natural inclination that solicited and impelled you is rewarded here by new graces and hereafter by an increase of eternal glory and happiness.

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What does the rosary teach us about praying through distractions and temptations? You can probably pick any of the Sorrowful Mysteries and see Jesus’ example of doing God’s will despite the pain and suffering. But that’s too easy of an example for regular RosaryMeds readers! I want to look at the First Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation. Here we have Mary being asked to be the Mother of God. At first, she focuses on all the earthly limitations of such a request. “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” she asked (Luke 1:34). But Mary didn’t let all those concerns distract her from accepting the burden and the honor God wanted to bestow on her.

Now jump to the Fifth Glorious Mystery, Mary’s Coronation in Heaven. Going back to the passage from Temptations, when you do God’s will in the face of difficulty, you increase your eternal glory and happiness. What better example is there than seeing Mary crowned Queen of Heaven? She followed God’s will even when that meant seeing her son rejected and crucified.

When you don’t feel like you have the time or energy to pray the rosary, look to Mary’s example of the grace God gives you when you make the effort to pray and do God’s will despite the difficulty. It may be hard, but the reward dwarfs the inconvenience.

How the Rosary Improves Your Soul’s Health

I know I’ve talked about living a spiritually healthy lifestyle in previous posts. It looks like I’m not the only one who believes in the importance of practicing good spiritual hygiene. I came across a post on spiritual healthy living on Catholic Exchange the other day which espouses many of the same themes I’ve pushed on my site. The TL;DR summary of living a spiritually healthy lifestyle is:

Avoid gossip and gossipers
Dress properly
Avoid bad company
Avoid impure images
Think before you act
Consume electronic media responsibly
Don’t be a couch potato
Constantly exercise your mind
Avoid gluttony
Avoid contrary views of Mary

I find it interesting how much time and energy people generally spend on their physical health. After all, collectively we spend billions on diets, rare and exotic “superfoods,” supplements, and all sorts of workout programs to obtain those six-pack abs. We also spend a lot of time exercising our minds (see #8) with all sorts of creative hobbies, DIY projects, reading books and articles, and watching informative videos. And while we muster up the energy to power through our daily workouts and gulp down kale smoothies, we begrudging go to Mass once a week and fly through our daily prayers. We so often see the value of eating well and exercising our mind and body but fail to see the much greater value of exercising our soul.

Hey Hulk, maybe it’s time you cut back on the kale and spinich and pick up a rosary.

My go-to Rosary mystery that reminds me to live a spiritually healthy lifestyle is the Fifth Joyful Mystery — The Finding of Jesus in the Temple. It reminds us how easily we can forget about Jesus in our lives and the state of our relationship with him. Mary and Joseph incorrectly assumed he was with the caravan leaving Jerusalem. And so we often have a tendency to assume we have a close relationship with Jesus even when we don’t actively work on it. And while Jesus will always be there to “share the yoke” (see last Sunday’s Gospel), he also is patient and doesn’t force his assistance on us. We have to make the effort to work on our relationship with Jesus.

Let’s look at this another way. I’m sure many of us have co-workers, friends, spouses, or family members we occasionally take for granted. Yes, we may value them or love them, but maybe we don’t let them know how important they are to us. We just assume they will always be there filling the role we’ve come to expect and depend on. It’s not until they get tired and get upset with us that we realize how we’ve taken our relationship with them for granted. Maybe a kind word or small token of appreciation was all that was needed to maintain that valued relationship.

Our relationship with Jesus is similar to our relationship with people. We can so often just take our faith for granted that we do not make any effort to improve upon it. Jesus actually asks relatively little of us compared to what he is willing to offer. But we have to remember that we are in a reciprocal relationship with Jesus and want to maintain that relationship if we are to get any benefit from it.

Looking at the ten tips for living a spiritually healthy lifestyle from Catholic Exchange is a good place to start. Many of us maintain todo lists, either physical or mental, of exercises to perform, daily tasks to complete, and foods to eat and avoid. But perhaps it would be wise to keep a list of the daily spiritual tasks and goals we need to consciously work on. If you’ve been coasting spiritually then perhaps it is time to take a more active interest in your soul’s health. Maybe you’ll find that you’re already quite fit or maybe you’ll find that you’re really on spiritual life support. Either way, you’ll never improve your relationship with Jesus unless you analyze it periodically and correct those weak spots.

Take a look at that list. What dimensions of your soul’s health do you need to work on? When you pray the rosary (hopefully daily), ask Mary to help you work out those weak spots in your spiritual health. She’ll be more than happy to help.

Replaying Our Faith Through the Eucharist

I’m in the process of digitizing old home movies originally recorded on videotape. What I find so interesting is the amount of footage my parents recorded for each event. I have tapes with two hours of footage of a school talent show where I or one of my siblings was on stage for only five minutes. I guess my mom really wanted to capture the feeling of the event and not just have five minutes of footage in a vacuum with little or no context.

I think we can all understand my mom wanting to capture every detail of an event. After all, people upload 300 hours of video to YouTube every minute! Thousands of posts are made to Facebook every second. And everyone is an instant shutterbug with their phones. I bet much of this is to not only record the actual physical events in our lives but also try to capture the associated feelings. And yet many times, these recordings fail to truly capture the true emotion of an event and upon replay they just come out flat.

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But what about our faith? Is it possible to capture our Catholic Faith in a manner that does not lose any of its fidelity when replayed? In his homily on the Feast of Corpus Cristi, Pope Francis talked about how the Body and Blood of Christ is a remembrance of our faith. The Catholic News Agency reported:

“This is why the Eucharistic commemoration does us so much good: it is not an abstract, cold and superficial memory, but a living remembrance that comforts us with God’s love.”

Francis explained that when we receive the Eucharist, our hearts have the opportunity to become overwhelmed with the certainty of Christ’s love for us, the Eucharist giving us a memory that is grateful, free, and patient.

We can see the Eucharist as Jesus’ way of capturing the essence of the Catholic Faith to be replayed every time we celebrate it at Mass. The Eucharist does what no camera and video recording can do, no matter how high the memory and resolution — it captures the entirety of God’s love for us. When Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he wasn’t just telling that to his apostles in the room. Jesus was saying that all Christians, present and future, must remember that the Eucharist embodies all of his teachings and love.

3rd quarter of 16th century (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But much like a forgotten videotape in a cardboard moving box in a warehouse, what good is the Eucharist if we don’t receive it? You never give yourself the opportunity to replay and feel the essence of Jesus’ teachings or God’s love for you. Don’t get me wrong, you can learn these things at a cerebral level by reading the Bible and listening to homilies. But that’s not the type of memory you recall when you receive the Eucharist. The memories replayed through the Eucharist are often only understood by your soul in a way you can’t easily describe because God’s love is beyond the human capacity to describe it. But just because you can’t describe it doesn’t mean you don’t receive its benefits.

To fully receive the memories of faith in the Eucharist your soul must be in a worthy state. That means receiving it with no mortal sins, having prepared by fasting, and appreciating the solemnity of the Eucharistic feast. Otherwise, you are like a broken video player unable to replay the captured memories. Or at best, it comes out so distorted and degraded that your soul can’t understand it.

When you pray the Fifth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary, remember how powerful a gift the Eucharist is. It is not something to be received lightly but it is something we should be receiving regularly. We need to slow down and remember that our faith is built on the Eucharist. If we don’t slow down, what good is the Eucharist having on our soul? As Pope Francis reminded us:

Our lives are such a whirl of people and events that we no longer retain memories. But this leaves us at risk of only living on the surface of things and never going deeper, he said, “without the broader vision that reminds us who we are and where we are going.”

“This is why the Eucharistic commemoration does us so much good: it is not an abstract, cold and superficial memory, but a living remembrance that comforts us with God’s love.”

How to Recover After a Disappointing Lent

We’re now in the middle of the Easter Octave and Lent 2017 is in the history books. Maybe you didn’t have the most spiritual Lent this year. Maybe you didn’t give something up or cheated a bit. Maybe you didn’t receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, didn’t fast, or didn’t commit yourself to prayer. Some of you may not have acted any differently during Lent than any other time of the year.

In the wake of a disappointing Lenten season, it’s easy to throw your hands into the air and say, “well, better luck next year. That’s when I’ll really take Lent seriously.” With that attitude, you basically turn Lent into some sort of spiritual open enrollment period where, if you miss it, you have to wait an entire year before you can make changes to your spiritual behavior. Granted, I haven’t read the entire Bible (yet) but I don’t think God specified a time window on when you can convert and invest in a deeper relationship with Him.

I also hope there isn’t a three month wait list to receive God’s grace.

What can you do now that Lent is over? Easter is a celebration that lasts for 50 days. What better way to celebrate than committing yourself to increased prayer, fasting, and receiving the sacraments. Like Jesus’ parable of the wedding feast, we want to come dressed to this glorious Easter celebration “dressed” appropriately. That means with a soul cleansed of sin and a humble spirit of conversion. Sure, we may not have used all 40 days of Lent to adequately prepare, but getting prepared now and arriving a little late to the party is better than missing the party completely. Better late than never, right?

On the flip side, maybe you had a great Lent which is turning into a great Easter. And while we may ease up a bit on the fasting and sacrifice, we shouldn’t do a complete 180 and undo those gains by sinning, not praying, and ignoring our faith. Hopefully, what you did during Lent will have a lasting impression. For example, I gave up snacking for Lent. But just because Lent is over, it doesn’t mean I’m going to become a glutton (although I may have gone overboard on the donuts last Sunday). While I may not be as steadfast as I was during Lent, I think I will continue to abstain from snacking at least two days a week.

Remember, it will all still be there tomorrow. Stay strong and resist temptation.

After Jesus’ death, many people thought they could back to their “old” lives and basically wrote off Jesus as someone who had some interesting ideas but died tragically. Saint Peter momentarily went back to fishing. Jesus’ disciples started leaving Jerusalem to pick up where they left off. We too may have that feeling that now that Easter Sunday has passed, it’s time we return to our “normal” lives. But Jesus’ resurrection actually created a new normal and permanently altered human kind‘s relationship with God. Similarly, each Lent and Easter, we should be creating a new normal for ourselves as well; always pushing ourselves to form a deeper relationship with God. Let’s not make the same mistake Jesus’ disciples made treating Jesus as a passing fad. Instead, prolong the spirit of the Resurrection and make your relationship with Him something you work on every day for the rest of your life.

What the Rosary Teaches Us About Spiritual Persistence

As a father of two boys, I can sympathize with those who face the never ending battle of trying to keep a clean house. No sooner have I vacuumed the floor that one of my boys starts jumping on the sofa and knocks down a leftover bowl of cereal. Or I just finish cleaning a room and they dump a bin of legos on the floor and start building. On Catholic Exchange, Sam Guzman relates the experience of keeping a clean house to keeping a clean soul in his article:

At any rate, I’ve noticed that, just as a clean house quickly descends into disorder and must be constantly cleaned, so also our souls need constant care and upkeep. We must always be beginning to put them in order again.

There are days when our children have made such a mess of things that cleaning up seems a hopeless task. My wife and I look at each other and don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Yet, we begin again.

In this life, holiness is found in beginning again and again. It is constant examination and conversion and regeneration of heart. Holiness if found in repentance. And repentance is not merely feeling sorry that you sinned. It is rather a re-turning to God—a thousand times a day if necessary.

My kids’ room 5 minutes after cleaning it

I call this never ending practice of conversion spiritual persistence. Spiritual persistence is continuing to pray and have faith in God’s plan even when it seems fruitless. When I pray the rosary and ask God for help building my spiritual persistence I meditate on Jesus carrying the cross in The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery. Jesus was literally beaten down carrying the cross with no hope for relief. Each time he fell down and got back up, he only had more cruelty and torture to look forward to. And yet, Jesus got back up and began walking again towards his crucifixion.

I think we all have moments when we ask ourselves, “what’s the point?” Why should I suffer for doing the right thing instead of taking ethical or moral shortcuts? Why should I fast? Why should I go to Sunday Mass? Why should I go to Confession? What good will these do since I’ll just go about sinning again in the future anyway?

Sometimes we can see our faith more as a cross than a blessing. We too often focus on what we give up or the effort required and not the benefits. Part of the challenge is that the sacrifice we feel immediately while the joy and grace are often delayed or is so subtle we don’t feel it. As an analogy to keeping a clean house, we so often tend to dread the steps needed to make a house clean that it often overshadows the joy of having a clean house.

This is where meditating on the fourth sorrowful mystery of the rosary becomes important. It puts all these perceived inconveniences into perspective. Jesus endured far worse doing his father’s will. If Jesus saw the importance of his Passion, we should ask God to help us see the importance of trying to live a spiritually healthy lifestyle. We may not always like housework, but we understand the importance of maintaining a clean house. And we may not always enjoy the obligations our faith puts on us, but we pray the rosary to understand why it is so important that we follow God’s plan.

As we near the end of Lent, many of us probably feel beaten down and tired. We may be tired of fasting, abstaining from meat, the increased prayer, etc. But instead of focusing on pain, let’s ask God to help us see the joy that comes from these Lenten practices. The joy that comes from letting go of some of our worldly pleasures and replacing them with God’s grace. The joy in understanding that we will one day find true happiness in Heaven due to our spiritual persistence in this lifetime.

And Jesus Wept…

We are coming down the home stretch of this Lenten season. Like a movie, the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is hitting its climax as Jesus’ miracles get larger and more public but so does the ire of the Jewish authorities. It, of course, culminates with Jesus’ crucifixion and then resurrection. Similar to how the readings are hitting their crescendo, so too should our observance of Lent. It’s time to pick up the praying, fasting, receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and just putting our faith front and center in our lives.

This upcoming Sunday’s Gospel is the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I want to focus on one specific verse. It’s a short, three-word sentence — “And Jesus wept (John 11:35).” It is easy to overlook the significance of this sentence when you know what Jesus is about to do. In fact, this sentence does not seem to make a lot of sense. If Jesus was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, why did he weep? Naturally, the other people wept because they did not know Jesus was going to raise Lazarus. But why would Jesus, someone who healed and raised others from dead, weep when he knew that Lazarus’ state was only temporary?

English: Picture of the And Jesus Wept statue ... — English: Picture of the And Jesus Wept statue that stands next to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jesus’ weeping ties him to our shared humanity with him. It is so easy to see Jesus’ divinity in the accounts of him healing others, performing miracles, and resurrecting from the dead. On top of that, we have the Catholic Church and it’s billion+ members in all its grandeur. But after 2000 years we tend to forget that Jesus was also human. He shared all the same emotions as us except the tendency to sin. Even when he knew that he was going to raise Lazarus, his weeping told people that he sympathized with them and understood their grief. He did not distance himself but instead drew us closer to God by making himself more relatable.

When we pray the rosary, we should remember Jesus’ humanity in addition to his divinity. Remember that despite all the miracles he performed, Jesus was one of us. He showed grief at the death of a loved one. He showed fear in the Garden of Gesthemene before being arrested and crucified. He showed anger when he threw the merchants out of the temple or the countless times he chastised Peter. Even going back to the story of Lazarus, the Gospel says that Jesus was “perturbed” by everyone’s lack of faith. Yes, it seems like Jesus wasn’t immune from frustration.

Jesus asks a lot of us. He asks us to live for the Kingdom of Heaven and convert by turning away from our sinful or earthly ways. Like a defiant teenager rebelling against his parents, we may tell Jesus, “Easy for you to say! You’re perfect! You just don’t understand what it’s like to be me!” But Jesus replies, “I understand perfectly. Remember, I know what it is like to be human. I shared the same feelings and emotions. And I ask these things of you because I know what it is like to be you. I’m not some distant God who does not know the human condition for I experienced it personally.”

You think you have it tough, try healing a man on the Sabbath!

Fasting, praying, reading the Bible, and confessing sins are all difficult during Lent. And in general, living a spiritual life can be difficult. But the Church calls us to this life not because it expects us to fail. The Church does not call us to a holy life that is completely beyond our ability to grasp. The Church follows Jesus’ teachings born out of his experience being human and knowing what we are capable of.

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