Finding ways each day: To be people of hope

		Notes from the  Vicar General  Msgr. Paul J. Swain

We live in a time of instant reactions and expectations.

Statements made by leaders in church and government are immediately analyzed by predictable pundits and are subject to quick judgment of correctness through polling.

Legitimate differences of opinion in community or within families are characterized as divisive or personal put downs, as if paper peace is more important than thoughtful discussion.

As a result there is an unsettledness that can affect our spiritual lives and can wear us down under the weight of expectations and the exhaustion from anxiety.

Christians ought to be people of hope; upbeat even in these turbulent times because we know that ultimately God will prevail.

Yet so often we can become, as one saint described some of us, sour-faced Christians. Woe is me and everything around me.

It ought not to be so. In order to bring some perspective to the whirling world, we need to take time to reflect on all that is happening and then trust in God. There are many ways that can help us remain upbeat and trusting.

To overcome anxiety

Each day we can identify one blessing, a gift from God that is unique to us. It might be a person, an experience, a moment of music, a part of creation. There is so much beauty around us, even in March, if we would only notice it. Each day is itself a gift. That genius anonymous wrote: Look at the bright side, no matter how old you are, you are younger than you will ever be again.

Sickness and accidents remind us of how fragile life can be. May we see each day as a gift to be used well for the glory of God.

Each day we can reflect on something wonderful that has happened at some point in our lives that we did not anticipate and that changed us forever. One of our human tendencies is to try to plan out how things should go. Prudence suggests that we do so, while always being open to God's way.

When we let go of trying to control, God's grace moves in beautiful though unexpected ways. For me one such moment was the discovery of the power and presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. For this gift to be followed by the call to priesthood, which allows me the privilege of being Christ's instrument, is awesome and humbling.

Each day we can remind ourselves of something that makes us smile. Anonymous also wrote: it takes 34 muscles to frown and only 13 to smile. Why make the extra effort?

Trust in God's will and God's way

Each day we can remember a saint whose example inspires us. Someone described saints as ordinary people living ordinary lives in the ordinary Christian way.

The reason they seem extraordinary is that so few of us live Christian lives so fully. Those who inspire us can be those known to all, such as Blessed Mother Teresa. Or they can be those quiet saints around us who live their faith and carry their crosses so beautifully. The Blessed Mother is the most profound example for us all.

Each day we can take time to pray, to reflect, to rest in God. It is important to take some time, even if a little, to remind ourselves that our loving and merciful God is with us and that we need him.

When we do not see God as the focus of our lives we turn in on ourselves. When we pray, we can lift our vision from the moment to the transcendent which can bring peace and perspective.

As the season of Lent moves toward Holy Week and Easter, may we do what we can each day to assure that as Catholic Christians we are people of hope who witness our trust in God's will and God's way.

Agony in the Garden: The place to stay awake

Third in a seven-part Lenten series.

		The Garden of Gethsemane  The Place of Transformation Fr. Ronald Rolheiser

As Jesus and his disciples enter the Garden of Gethsemane, he tells them: "Stay awake, watch!" The implication is that they're about to learn something, a lesson is to be taught.

But, as we know, they didn't stay awake, they fell asleep, not because the hour was late and they were tired after a long day, or even because of the wine they'd drunk at the supper.

They fell asleep, Luke says, "out of sheer sorrow." They fell asleep because they were disconsolate, disappointed, confused, depressed. And, because of that sleep, they missed the lesson they were supposed to learn from watching Jesus in his prayer. What was that lesson?

Necessary connection

Jesus, himself, explains it three days later on the road to Emmaus when, in speaking of his suffering and death, he asks: "Wasn't it necessary?" What the disciples were supposed to see and grasp in the Garden of Gethsemane was the intrinsic connection between suffering and transformation and the necessity, in that process, of being willing to carry tension, disappointment, and unfairness without giving in to despair, bitterness, recrimination, and the urge to give back in kind.

Falling asleep

We fall asleep out of sorrow whenever we become so confused and overwhelmed by some kind of disappointment that we begin to act out of hostility rather than love, paranoia rather than trust, despair rather than hope. We fall asleep out of sorrow whenever we sell short what's highest in us because of the bitterness of the moment.

And this is one of the perennial temptations we have in life - to fall asleep out of sorrow. Most times when we give in to weakness or commit sin we do so not out of malice or bad intent, but out of despair.

For example: A number of times, I have had friends who gave themselves over to periods of sexual promiscuity even though they knew better. They weren't so naive or rationalizing to believe for a minute that what they were doing was either life-giving or morally right.

So why did they do it? Flat-out loneliness, inchoate depression, practical despair. They were asleep out of sheer sorrow. Unspoken in their actions were these words: "Given my life, my practical situation, that's the best I can hope for. I'll take second-best, even fifth-best, because for me there can be no first-best." Their action was simply compensatory.

The same often holds true, too, when we give into bitterness, anger, jealousy, hostility, and the urge to give back in kind. Why are we sometimes so petty? Why are we sometimes less than the gracious, understanding, and forgiving persons we would like to be? Simply put, we're biting in order not to be bitten. Some deep disappointment has rendered us asleep to what's highest inside of our own selves and some depression has rendered us powerless to our own goodness.

Staying awake

It's not easy to stay awake to the lesson Jesus was trying to teach in the Garden of Gethsemane.

• Whenever we feel so weak and overcome by disappointment that we give into actions that we know are not good for us, but seem to be the best we can do given our practical situation, we have fallen asleep out of sorrow, just as the disciples did in the Garden of Gethsemane.

• Whenever the unfairness of life so embitters us that we cannot resist the urge to give back in kind, anger for anger, recrimination for recrimination, pettiness for pettiness, we have fallen asleep out of sorrow, just as the disciples did in the Garden of Gethsemane.

• Whenever the complexity of life so confuses us that we no longer feel any obligation to take care of anyone beyond ourselves, but only want to protect ourselves, to hide, and to find a secure place of shelter, we have fallen asleep out of sorrow, just as the disciples did in the Garden of Gethsemane.

• Whenever we feel so overwhelmed by the fact that God seems silent, withdrawn, and unwilling to intervene and clean up the world that we can no longer imagine the existence of God, we have fallen asleep out of sorrow, just as the disciples did in the Garden of Gethsemane.

• Whenever we feel like a minority of one, so alone, little, and despairing before the powers of chaos and darkness that we believe that Christ is no longer Lord of this world, we have fallen asleep out of sorrow, just as the disciples did in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Don't give in to despair

We're all familiar with the popular song, "Help Me Make It Through the Night." Its chorus gives us, in effect, a dictionary description of practical despair: "I don't care what's right or wrong; I don't try to understand, let the devil take tomorrow because tonight I need a friend."

That's exactly the kind of sorrow that overwhelmed the disciples in Gethsemane and drugged them into sleep, numbing them both to what Jesus wanted them to see there and to what was highest inside of their own ideals.

Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher, and award-winning author of several books on spirituality. He currently serves in Toronto and Rome as the general councilor for Canada for his religious order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

True grit: Of Catholic faith

		The Catholic  Difference  George Weigel

What do Chartres Cathedral and St. Mary's Church in Greenville, S.C., have in common? Or the Sistine Chapel and Chesterton's favorite pub? Or Baltimore's "Old Cathedral" and John Henry Newman's rooms in the Birmingham Oratory?

They're all places where you can experience the truth of Catholicism in a tangible way - places where you can feel "the faith once delivered to the saints" [Jude 3]. They're also some of the tour stops I take my readers to visit in Letters to a Young Catholic, just published by Basic Books.

Being Catholic today

There are lots of ways you can answer a young person's question, "What does it mean to be a Catholic today?" I decided to take my readers on a global tour of the Catholic world - or at least those parts of the world that have made a deep impression on my understanding of the Church, its teaching, its people, and its way of life.

Catholicism, I try to suggest, is a very gritty business: it's about things we can touch and taste and feel and smell, just as much as it's about ideas and arguments.

Going to intensely Catholic places reminds us of that. And by "intensely Catholic places," I don't mean just churches, cathedrals, and shrines. I mean pubs and bedrooms, graveyards and libraries, monastic cells and concert halls - places that are "borders" between the ordinary and the extraordinary.

Way of seeing world

Catholicism is a way of seeing the world. Flannery O'Connor, whose Georgia farm is one of the first stops on my tour, knew this; that's why her wonderful letters are called The Habit of Being.

As Miss O'Connor's stories graphically illustrate, Catholic faith helps us to experience the world as the dramatic arena of creation, sin, redemption, and sanctification. Catholic faith helps us see the world in technicolor.

In the Catholic way of looking at things, everyone is of consequence and nothing is a mere coincidence because the world and its story have been redeemed by Christ. That's the "Catholic difference." And it's a sensibility, not just a set of propositions.

Christ-centered

It's a way of seeing things that frankly challenges the dumbing-down that surrounds us. You count, I count, stuff counts, it all counts; why? Because history is really His-story (to borrow from Peter Kreeft): it's Christ's story, because Christ is the center, the axis, on which "history" turns. It's supercharged with that fullness of truth and love that can only come from Truth itself and Love itself - that can only come from God.

The Church exists to tell the world its true story, to propose a way of looking at things that invites us into the heart of the human drama, God's radical love for the world he created. Catholicism helps us grow through our lesser loves into the richest love of all: love for God in Christ.

Modern culture teaches us that stuff doesn't count, that everything is plastic. Catholicism teaches us that the world is sacramental - that it's through the gritty stuff of this world that we meet God's saving grace. Letters to a Young Catholic, a celebration of Catholic true grit, is an invitation to live in the real world.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.