Today’s post is the second in a three-part series (see the bullet list, below).

• No forced feelings
• No forced faith
• No false starts

No forced feelings:  The first post in this series points out that the Catholic Christian does not rely on feelings, but rather, on the fact of Christ’s atonement. The merit of His death for us is made ours by grace through faith, the benefits of which are lovingly conveyed in the Sacraments.

No forced faith:  This second post reminds us that true conversion never rests on forced faith. Just as one should not rely on feelings, one cannot rely on forced faith. “Forced faith” is an oxymoron—two contradictory terms, employed simultaneously. True faith is the willing response of the heart, prompted by God’s Holy Spirit, not something we prompt in ourselves.

Do you have true faith—or are you relying on self-prompted (forced) faith more akin to an empty hope.  ”Oh, I have faith.” “Faith in what?” must be the corresponding question. Faith without content is no more than a fleeting wish; a hope that there may be something more to life, without knowledge of where, or in Whom, to find it.

This is why Holy Scripture declares, “Faith is the realization of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith in faith is circular; a dog chasing its tail. True faith is based on objective knowledge, accompanied by the realization that knowledge is true. That personal realization is evidence of God’s work in our lives.

God at work prompting faith!  ”He is a God fully functioning,” as Paul Claudel writes in A Poet Before the Cross.¹ That is Christianity Richly!

¹ See “The Reality of It All,” footnote number one, for more on Claudel’s grace-filled meditation.

Re-starting regular posts to one’s blog is not unlike re-starting our walk with Christ. When we fall, the tendency is to stay down; to quit; to give it up, because the effort was difficult.

September and October were difficult months, in terms of schedule, for my family and me. We had numerous travel obligations (California, Washington DC), as well as a major renovation going on that affected our living quarters and home office. Regardless how frequently I thought about Christianity Richly—the richness of God’s mercy often prompted those thoughts—the opportunities to post were limited.

Zechariah 4:10 cautions us against those who are scornful of small beginnings. That has some application, perhaps, to re-starting regular posts to this blog.  Today is my day of small beginnings. But the principle applies much more broadly.  Don’t make the mistake of “despising the day of small things,” as another English translation renders the verse. Don’t despise the day of small things in your life, nor be scornful of small beginnings in the lives of others.

Some time ago I read a quotation for which I did not note the source (if a reader of Christianity Richly knows the source, I’d be grateful), but I penned the quotation at the top of my prayer journal:  “The Saints arrived at their destination one day at a time.” God is faithful to support us in striving for Christlikeness; for holiness.  ”The One who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

Do today’s activities seem inconsequential to you?  Does the next step you need to take toward holiness seem ordinary—almost too small or too mechanical to be worth making the effort? Never!  Remember the torrential rain, after Elijah’s victory over the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:44-45) began from a cloud “as small as a man’s hand.”

So, let’s get up.  Get going!  Let none of us be scornful of small beginnings; the day of small things. May God shower upon us the will, the strength, and the encouragement to move forward; to take the next step, even if it is a small one, in our Christian lives. Together, let’s begin again.

Our society values newness—new cars, new places to visit, new restaurants in which to eat. Sometimes it appears we even value novelty as much as newness:  the bizarre, unusual, and strikingly different.  Not surprisingly, then, we also see people and organizations resorting to the new and novel to renew their lives:  a new home (or a new spouse) will make me happier; a new job will be more satisfying; a new leader will restore our company to its former glory; a new program or worship style will propel our congregation toward greater “success.”

Yet God’s ways are not our ways.  In the wisdom of God and the riches of Christ’s holy Catholic Church, the old, the familiar, and the repeated play a significant role. “Why?” we wonder. “That seems so contrary to keeping things interesting; to keeping people engaged.”

One of the great riches of The Liturgy of the Hours is repeating the Invitatory Psalm morning by morning.  Psalms 95, along with 100, 67, and 24 are the Invitatory Psalms, used to set the stage for morning prayer and praise.  Any of them might be chosen to illustrate, but look at the glorious structure of Psalm 95, consisting of both worship (95:1-7) and warning (95:8-11)—encouragement and invitation to worship, yes, but also the solemn warning we need daily: “They do not know my ways.” God does not say we do not know about His ways. Rather, He says we do know know them. For to truly know His ways is to know Him, and to do what pleases Him. What new or novel thought would improve upon being reminded of this daily?

One of the keys to becoming a steady, productive Christian is to return repeatedly to the sources of wisdom and life God has provided in His Word. Liturgy, whether in praying the Hours or in the Mass, compels us to do this.  In doing so, we give the Holy Spirit an opportunity to show us the ever new, in the “old” and familiar.

Boring? Tedious? Dull? No. Praying The Liturgy of the Hours is one of the best possible ways we can invite the Holy Spirit to lead us to the living waters Christ proposed to the woman at the well (John 4:10-11); one of the best ways for your walk with Christ to remain ever new . . . eternally.

Be faithful about heeding God’s admonition: “Be still and know that I am God.”¹ Give Him the time daily that will allow Him to open those streams of living water—bringing new hope, new perspective, and new life eternally. That is Christianity Richly!

¹ Psalm 46:10/11

If we are truly Christian, we have to believe the Love Story.  If we do, it will make all the difference in our lives. The challenge is that too often we simply know the story—as an abstraction, not as God’s living, breathing, passionate love for us.

The Love Story is the theme of scripture.  Yes, I realize some well-meaning but incomplete theologies stress that God is love (meaning forgiving and tolerant) but we need not bother ourselves about doctrine and holiness.  That is not the kind of story we need to believe.

The Love Story will make a difference in our lives.  It will make a difference because God ordained it to be so.  That difference will stem from is His incredible, unbelievable (except that He said it) delight in us.  ”The Lord’s portion is His people.”¹ This theme stretches from creation to coming of Christ and the culmination of time.  He freely created us.  He created us in His image!  He tends and shephereds us.  He repeatedly forgives and restores us.  He came—he actually became one of us.  ”The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”²

“But,” we think, “us . . . as the Lord’s portion? How can that be? Who would see us as anything but a collection of problems?”  We think these things about ourselves because we live in a world that is only partly redeemed and restored. We have experienced being unloved. Many of us don’t even love ourselves.  We see our faults first, and are blinded to the fact that God loves us.

Today, please remember:

The Lord’s portion is his people (Deuteronomy 32:9)

Fear not . . . you are of more value than many sparrows (Matthew 10:31)

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16)

His banner over me was [and is] love (Song 2:4)

Believe the Love Story. Live it. Respond in love and increasing holiness. “For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:11). Christianity Richly!

¹  Deuteronomy 32:9
² John 1:14

Let the sons of the Church, the children of the new people, rejoice in Christ, their King.

—Hesychius, from Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours
(Preface to Psalm 149, Sunday Morning Prayer, Week I, p.710)

“Sons of the Church.” What a glorious phrase! One year ago on July 27, 2008, I was received into the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church by Fr. Jay Scott Newman at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Greenville, SC. ”Let the sons of the Church rejoice in Christ.” How could it be otherwise? After three years of study and prayer, promise became reality: So now in His eyes I have become one to be welcomed (Song 8:10b NAB).

“Sons of the Church.” I, through the greatness of your love, have access to Your house (Psalm 5:7/8, The Grail Translation). Access to the communion of saints; access to reverent, transcendent worship; access to the Sacraments—particularly confession and the Sacrament of Penance and, most of all, Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist (John 6). How? By grace alone. All by God’s grace (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Recently, I read a deeply moving article by Robert Miola in First Things. He describes his oldest daughter’s final vows upon entering religious life:

She makes “an oblation to God of all my being . . . in order to be a concrete imprint which the Holy Spirit leaves in history that all men may discover the attraction and longing for the divine beauty.

Dear God! I am still so far from being the imprint that I want to be; that You have called me to be. Yet, by grace, You have welcomed me and given me access to Your house. May I be the handiwork You created me to be, ever advancing in the good works which You prepared in advance for me to do (Ephesians 2:10).

Deo gratias!

God uses us—men and women—with our failings, as well as our virtues.

What an encouragement!  I was reminded of this while reading Frank Sheed’s, Catholic Evidence Training Outlines.  This book can be difficult to find, but is worth searching out. AbeBooks.com will often turn up a copy.

In his outlines Sheed points out the extraordinary nature of the Four Evangelists (pp. 48-49), Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, with all their strengths and weaknesses. Ambition, cowardice, divine calling, courage—all of this and more can be seen in their lives. The same is true of other Old and New Testament men and women.

This should be encouraging when the lives of prominent men and women show the effects of the Fall; the consequences of being so desperately human.  But we—and they—can rise above that in Christ, God be thanked!  When we fall, we have God’s promise: “I will restore David’s fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be” (Amos 9:11).   We have the Sacraments and the riches of confession and absolution. We can then claim, with the Psalmist: “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord” (Psalm 118:17).

We err if we think of biblical figures as mythical.  We also err if we see them as mystical—real enough, but chronicled primarily as types and illustrations. No! See them in their flesh and blood. Feel their desires! Walk in their shoes. Know, as Saint Paul declares, that their lives are chronicled in the scriptures because “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (italics mine, Romans 15:4).¹

Hope.  Hope in God.  Look up, stand up, and get going!  That is Christianity Richly!

¹ For this line of thought about how we see men and women in scripture, I am indebted to Bible Characters from the Old and New Testaments, by Alexander Whyte (his chapter on Samson). I acquired this book before entering the Church. As as a minister in the Free Church of Scotland in the late 19th century, Whyte was not sympathetic toward Catholics. But his mediations on biblical figures are vivid and often helpful.

Good fiction illuminates life—showing us reality from a vantage point outside ourselves. Some years ago a friend suggested Orson Scott Card’s science fiction work, Ender’s Game. I don’t often read science fiction, but respect for my friend encouraged me to take a look.

The protagonist of the book is a boy named Ender Wiggin, who is being trained to lead the human race in battle against an invasion of insect-like creatures. Ender’s training is accomplished through what appear to be a series of games, albeit increasingly difficult, very demanding games. But don’t be put off by the plot summary, which makes the book sound like “the synopsis for a grade-Z, made for television” movie, as a reviewer for the New York Times wrote.

The novel can be interpreted in various ways, and has been. But the overwhelmingly clear point—even reading the book as a simple narrative—is Ender’s utter exhaustion. At each level, the difficulty of the game increases and there is no one to whom Ender can turn for help.  He is opposed by other boys and driven endlessly by the battle school commander.

Exhaustion. Every task gets harder and there is no one who can help. Have you had those feelings? Most of us have, despite the fact we serve a loving God; despite our Savior telling us we should cast all our worries upon Him because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7); despite the gift of the Holy Spirit, Who is called the Comforter, Helper, or Advocate, depending on which English translation one reads.

What does this have to do with Ignatius?  The chapters on spiritual desolation, in Fr. Timothy Gallagher’s The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living, perfectly describe Ender’s exhaustion, as well as circumstances in which many of us find ourselves. Marked by “disquietude and discouragement,” we feel “totally slothful, tepid,” overcome by a “heaviness that instills sadness and depletes energy for living.”¹ Gallagher, a skilled retreat leader, points out that even if these feelings have a physical or psychological (i.e., nonspiritual) cause, “nonspiritual desolation is frequently a springboard for spiritual desolation.”²

This brief post can’t include all the wonderful helps to overcoming spiritual desolation that Fr. Gallagher draws from Ignatius’ “Rules,” but two points are important:  first, God gives spiritual consolation; the enemy imposes spiritual desolation.  Second, “thoughts that arise from spiritual consolation are to be accepted; those that come from spiritual desolation are to be rejected.”³

Today I woke up feeling like Ender. Graced guidance from St. Ignatius and Fr. Gallagher’s book changed my day. If you are struggling, remember that you are not alone! There is Someone to help. God loves you; Fr. Gallagher’s book can help you.

St. Ignatius, pray for us. Trinitarian love, descend upon us in the power of the Holy Spirit. Community of saints, embrace us. Christianity Richly!

¹ Gallagher, p. 60
² p. 61
³ p. 70

There is no more beautiful chapter in Scripture than John 17. Christ’s high priestly prayer is among the summits of the New Testament. It tells us about Christ’s earthly work; about His love for us; about His relationship with The Father; about intra-Trinitarian love Itself. And in this prayer, three times in just eleven verses we encounter the phrase, “That they may be one” (John 17:11-22). What could this mean?

Yes, unbiblical ecumenism exists. So it is easy to justify fragmentation between denominations by imagining one’s own grasp of the truth demands separation from those less skilled exegetically. One can even argue that the true church is invisible and unity really does exist among true believers. But we can’t escape Jesus’ words in John 13:35, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

All men shall know we are Christ’s disciples? Men and women who are not yet reconciled to God have a difficult time seeing an “invisible church”—a phrase sometimes used to explain away the visible lack of unity. Instead, they see hundreds of contentious denominations. Each one (as with the fable about the blind men describing an elephant) is clinging to a partial element of the fullness of Truth.

“One body, and one Spirit . . . One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:3-6)  This is the metric against which the Church is measured: unity, real unity—not some imagined, “invisible” fellowship.

From a positive perspective, what does unity mean? Unity means I am part of a Church that is in India, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas—with indigenous bishops and priests—and has been there for centuries. “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

The Catholic Church has always gone; it has always taught; it has always baptized—starting in what we call the Middle East today (Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, and elsewhere) and continuing on to Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The Catholic Church was there. The Catholic Church is there. It maintains a common Liturgy, so if I am there—whether in Sydney, Sao Paulo, or Köln—local believers and I will rejoice in our unity while worshipping one God and Father of all.

With no harshness intended, protestant fragmentation is not biblical. In Ephesians, Paul writes the words quoted above, “Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). Peter writes, “love one another with a pure heart fervently” (1 Peter 1:22).

How then, have we ended up with more versions of the “truth” in the 21st century than that of the believers Paul rebuked in 1 Corinthians 1:11-12? “Some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, ‘I follow Paul’; another, ‘I follow Apollos’; another, ‘I follow Cephas’; still another, ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided?”

Is Christ divided? “God forbid!” as Saint Paul so often wrote. By God’s grace, we follow one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Think hard about Christian unity, particularly if you have not yet come to see the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church as Christ’s Church.

If you have, then give thanks for His Church. What a Church; what a biblical Church.

Certainty. History. Unity. Authority. Liturgy. Christianity Richly!

My wife has two degrees in history, including a Masters in Church History.  Her background prompted me to take Church history seriously.  But even before we met, something just didn’t ring right about “real” Christianity going underground in the first century, only to reemerge fifteen centuries later. Protestant denominations differ on what happened. I was taught a particularly Anabaptist view while growing up. But even then, to ignore entire centuries of saints—who served Christ, built Western civilization, and frequently showed their faith through martyrdom—seemed out of kilter with reality.

Catholic writer Scott Hahn, a former PCA minister (Presbyterian Church in America), attributes a large part of his becoming Catholic to the history of the Church, and especially to the Church Fathers. The Fathers, as the Catholic Encyclopedia says, are “the parents at whose knee the Church of today was taught her belief.”  And the immediate successors to the Apostles have continued to be just that, for twenty centuries now.

For most of us, talking about centuries is a bit of a stretch. I once worked for a CEO who amazed all of us who worked for him by professing he wanted to build a business that would last 300 years. Many of us silently thought, “Who today would be crazy enough to imagine an organization enduring 300 years?”

The Catholic Church has endured 2,000 years. It has no equivalent. It has outlasted rulers, nations, empires, ancient universities, corporations, and yes, even the Church’s least-noble Popes and contemporary scandals. Despite wheat and weeds sown together (Matthew 13:24-30), the Church has endured. Why shouldn’t it? Christ promised, “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18-20).

The Church stands, just as Christ said it would. It has both His promise and Presence: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20). Having been received into that Church, I can rejoice in the communion of saints. By God’s grace I stand in an unbroken line of men and women, on earth and in eternity, who worship God; who pray for each other; who profess “I believe in . . . the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life of everlasting” (conclusion of The Apostles’ Creed).

In Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II, George Weigel admonishes readers to respect “the ecumenism of time” (p. 134) and to reverence the rich history of the Church. Might we even say, The Church of History?  “Surrounded by such a great cloud of witness,” we place ourselves in their line, “looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

What a joy and privilege to be received into the Church that Jesus Christ promised cannot fail—and will not be overcome.  The Church of history is also the Church of today, and of tomorrow and eternity.  Truly, this is Christianity Richly!

Let’s say you are fishing offshore, near a small island along Florida’s west coast. You’re in a tidal inlet, where water levels vary significantly from high to low tide. Things are going well. You may have let out a bit too much line on your anchor. But you’re within sight of shore. In fact, you’re close enough that people in condos onshore are watching with binoculars.

“That’s odd,” you think.  At almost the same time, you realize that—in your preoccupation with good fishing—your boat has drifted so far from the island that you are stuck on a sandbar.  Aside from the embarrassment, and the damage you’ll cause to your equipment if you try to move before high tide, you aren’t going anywhere.  

My family and I actually watched this happen.  What’s the point?  The parallels between what happened to this poor guy and his boat, and our spiritual lives, are just too clear to ignore.  

This is exactly what happens when we drift as Christians. We give ourselves a little too much line.  We aren’t alert and watchful.  We may become so engrossed in what we are doing in the present, that we give too little thought to the consequences, or to eternity.

All of this is one more reason to give thanks for the Sacraments, particularly the Sacrament of Penance.  Before we receive The Eucharist at any time, we should examine ourselves, of course.  But to make a good confession, we must pay attention to any drift. Even my Baptist friend (see this post) recognized Confession and Penance as a clear moment of accountability.

The Sacraments.  Christianity Richly!

I no longer walk out of worship services.  

“That’s an odd thing to say,” you might think—and rightly, if you are a well-catechized Catholic.  The sacraments are objective.  The sacraments act ex opere operato, “by the very fact of the action’s being performed” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶ 1128). But that was new for me.  Before I was accepted into the Church, I spent decades functioning as a good protestant, a one-man worship judge and jury:

• The pastor just began his sermon with a statement that raises questions about his orthodoxy.  I’m outta here.
• The pulpit has been replaced with a drum set and a platform full of guitar amplifiers. I’m outta here.
• The music turns out to be yet another “Kumbaya” group of 40-somethings, their inspiration drawn from the least common denominator of a musically undistinguished genre.  I’m outta here.

Understanding that the sacraments work because Christ Himself is at work in them was quite a step (especially for someone raised on Gilbert Tennent‘s sermon, “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry”). Realizing that Christ is made present in The Eucharist—not in the style of music, the depth of the homily, or the quality of the architecture—imposed a humbling I needed. After all, I wanted “church” to be perfect . . . just like me.

That said, a vital role remains for right worship.  When we see the consequences of inadequate catechesis (a partial answer to John Norton’s question here, at OSV.com), what are we to say? Might we say it is quite possible that part of the catechesis we owe our families, our friends, city, state, and nation, must be “caught and not taught?”  

That was the point of  Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi. The parish George Weigel describes certainly is not the only parish in the world he could describe in that way. The pastor there would be the first to say that! But while never wanting to speak harshly—how could I, when I was received into the Church so generously?—I have visited parishes where it was not clear why we were assembled except for God’s gracious action (ex opere operato).

Let’s show the world Christianity Richly, by living what the Church teaches; by worshipping as we believe. That is how values are caught, as well as taught. Parishes are made up of men, women, and young people longing for lives of significance.  Will they see an opportunity to live such lives, by the ways we show our love for God? Through our lives of prayer? In our service to others? By our readiness to give? In our ability to transcend circumstances? Through our heroic virtue and consistent integrity?

What kind of Christianity will people “catch” from you?  From me?  

What will the John Norton of the next generation be able to write about them?

Spent the last several days mostly in bed with some sort of respiratory issue. Sickness is never fun, but it does provide time to read.  Since the number of books at my bedside (yours, too?) always exceeds the time available to read them, I took this opportunity to do some catching up.

John W. O’Malley’s What Happened at Vatican II was mentioned in a previous post and I promised to return to it.  O’Malley’s book includes so much that is helpful, it requires a post of its own.  But don’t miss this book.  O’Malley offers a balanced account of the Council’s work.  He avoids emotionally charged terms like “conservative” or “progressive,” preferring simply “majority” and “minority.”  Yet a clear and wonderfully heartening picture of the Council’s work emerges, accomplishing his stated goals: To provide a brief, readable account that (1) summarizes the events of the Council, (2) puts the issues that emerged into context, and (3) suggests some keys—a hermeneutic—for grasping what the Council accomplished (p.1, from the “Introduction”).

O’Malley’s book was a pleasant contrast to The Rule of Benedict, by David Gibson.  Gibson is among those who are less than pleased with the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  At various points accusing Benedict of an “inherently pessimistic outlook” (p.166) and “radically rereading” Vatican II (p.324), Gibson’s account ends up giving the impression of a long-harbored polemic, rather than any sort of carefully considered look at the Holy Father and his work—whether at Vatican II or since.

Finally, I’ve not yet finished Eamon Duffy’s, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580, but have found much profitable even in the book’s early pages.  I am indebted to Fr. Benedict Kiely (Blessed Sacrament Church in Stowe, VT), for pointing out this book during his lecture, “The Witness of the English Martyrs.” Duffy’s focus on the faith of the laity, his emphasis on the importance of the communal, and his understanding of symbol and liturgy all offer great insight for our times—which was, in fact, the point of Fr. Kiely’s good lecture.

Enough, for now.  I miss being here at Christianity Richly when I am away for more than a day.  With apologies for the lapse over this past week, I hope to see you again soon—and regularly—in the days to come.