Christianity - its personal.

It's personal.

That is the single most defining feature of Catholicism, of Christianity in general, really. It's personal. It's about Christ. It's about him. Period.

I'll tell you a revelation, of sorts, I had while praying during the mass a few weeks back. I was on the kneeler, and the Priest held up the host - and it just all sort of synthasized there before me, one of the biggest aHA moments I've had in a while. Here was a man ordained to act in the PERSON of Christ, standing below a crucifix with a depiction of the human Christ just above his head, and another one at the front of the alter. In his hands he held the full body, blood, soul and divinity of Christ - there was a painting of a smiling Christ behind him. And before that consecration, we had all prayed, communicating with Christ, and before that, we had all sung a hymn called "Be Christ for one another", and before that we'd read a story about actual words that Christ said during his time of walking on two feet the earth.

Christ. Christ. Christ. Christ.

Who the heck is this guy? Why's he so important? While other religions of the world center around rigorous disciplines of worldly detachment, or give concise rules for submitting to God (how to pray, what to eat, how to live our lives), offer a mystical world-view that makes us feel fuzzy or amounts to, basically, an intricate library of wisdom, Christianity is just about some guy, really.

Think about it. If all of the world religious leaders got together for a chat, Mohummad would come with his Quran, Buddha would come with a little blanket, a bunch of pagan shamans would come with a Cauldron and a book of spells, a whole parade of Hindu sages would come with a vastly diverse collection of stories and myths, Confusius and Lao Tse would both come with books of their proverbs and sayings.

When it came time to present their ideas, Muhummad would explain his ideas for submission, of how we need to give our lives to God, particularly through the mandated pillars which he demands for his faithful. Buddha would talk about how we need to detach ourselves from everything worldly. Pagans would talk about using magic to take control of our lives. Hindus would talk about how we need to come to wipe ourselves of notions of ourselves through hours of meditation on their web of stories and belief in their "I AM HE" theology. Confuscious and Lao Tse would maybe talk about approaching the world with more contentment and humility, acquired through their philsophy and wisdom.

Jesus would go last of all, and he would just shrug and say, I'm just looking for friends.

It's seriously that beautifully simple in Christianity. Of course we have theology, we have rituals, we have social teaching, we definitely should spend hours in prayer, and while we wouldn't call it magic, explicitly, there is certainly something magical about living a life of Christian faith, and participating in the mass is definitely a mystical experience. And we have plently of wisdom to offer as well.

But the end is never any of these of the former paragraph. In fact, everything which the other religions focus on - submission, wisdom, detachment, theology - have places in Christianity, but only insomuch as they help us come to closer friendship with Christ.

Friendship is the beginning, the middle, and the end of our faith.

Of course, to be a bit more theologically sound, friendship is an analogy. Not a perfect one, but a fairly sound one. Christ is more than a friend. Our relationship with God is more than a relationship. It's everything. It's an organic union that we were designed for. But as humans, its preferable to think of it as friendship, because it is, when you get down to it, all about the loving bond between us and another human being - a human being who just so happens to be the Lord, creator, and source of all life in this universe.

What this means for me today is that when my goals within my Christian journey vary from coming closer to Christ, to becoming a better friend of him and to him, things are going to go off track. My entire worldview becomes disordered. If I look at my ministries as a means of aspiratious progress, not as a means to come closer to Christ, they will be cut off from their source. If I discern in order that I may find peace, purely, and not to find the way of life which Christ most seeks to live with me in, then I am completely cut off from the purpose of my vocation. And if service for me becomes a source of pride and accomplishment and not a means of bringing others into this family of God so that we can all be together in a great communion of love and harmony, service for me becomes empty as well.

May our lives be ordered to the love of Christ, singularly and comprehensively.
May this worldview, of being a friend of Jesus,
encompass all of our daily lives.
May we see clearly how our Christian disciplines are wholly designed
to strengthen our friendship with Christ.

Jesus, by my companion, please.
Knock loudly, and persistently, at the door of my soul,
for I am often too lazy and distracted to let you in.
Help me to respond to your invitations for deeper communion than we have today.
And may we look upon each other with love,
on this very sacred day.

What about the Dark Side?

What About the Dark Side?

It sort of seems that I’ve hit a lead here with my writing that I continually come back to – the Star Wars Analogy. I keep feeling like there’s a lot to it, and it has taken a role in my prayer life, so I want to examine it further here. I want to use the symbol of Star Wars to better understand my faith, since Star Wars is so tiny, yet thorough in the world that it has created and its many fan fiction authors have given incredible life in the great collection of Star Wars books. Catholicism, on the other hand, is so big – of course it is incredibly thorough at the same time, but it seems like at least where I’m at now, I have a better grasp of the Star Wars galaxy than I do of the Catholic galaxy. I’ve been reading Star Wars books since I was 7 – Catholic books since I was 18. I pray that in examining this analogy, as I have a deal already here, I’ll be able to better grasp the parallels, and also contrast those areas where the two do not line up.

One contrast I’d like to say right off the bat, which I realized starkly this morning in meditation, is that in Star Wars the emphasis for those religious devoted to “the force” is always on mission first, mysticism, second. They are literally always concerned with doing something. Gotta go stop this bad guy, fight the sith, stop this disease, relieve people caught in some natural disaster. Jedi are extremely mission oriented. By this sense, they are all full time missionaries. The vocation of a Jedi Knight is to be obedient to the Jedi Council and go on whatever week, month or year long missions the council asks them to go on. Padawans learn all about the tenants of their faith, first, then they set out with a Master to undergo further training in the field, helping them with their Missions, until they become a full fledged knight themselves and take on their own padawans. They are expected to stay in line with their religions teachings, of course, and meditation and connection with the Force is a must for what they do. But that’s just the thing; once the Jedi undergo their missions, the Force is a means to accomplish good. It’s not so much undertaken for the sake of itself as it is for some other end.

To live in the Church of God is different than this, fundamentally, by a swap of the priorities. I was listing out the top three tenants of my personal spirituality to God this morning, in a discernment exercise, and I found undoubtedly that the top priority of my spiritual life is to be organically unified with Jesus as a part of his mystical body, to live in intimate love with him, and as it is hand-in-hand, to live in communion of course with his body made manifest today, the Catholic Church under his chosen Vicar, Francis. While I put union with Jesus as a mystical lover and communion with Jesus’s body as an institution in the same sentence, because the two acts really swirl around each other and are in essence the same end, they do require different acts of will to pursue and so I listed them as the first two tenants, rather than the first one. I listed mystical union with Jesus as a lover first, then communion with the Church second, not because the second is an afterthought, but because the later does require the former personal relationship to be a genuine communion. Third, I listed mission: fighting against the forces of evil with God and the Angels, as a member of the army of Light, to bring souls into the Light for which we were created. This war of darkness and light is as well two-fold. It has two fronts, but is one war – the humanitarian war and the mystical war. Satan puts people through terrible living conditions – hunger, sickness, war, depression, in order to ‘ruin the soil’ that the seed of the Kingdom will have a hard time growing. The first front of the war, therefore, is to satisfy the direct effects of Satan’s evil by helping humanitarian problems, that the soil might be pruned for them to accept Jesus as their lover and savior.

These three tenants lead to an important question – why is it so important that we accept Jesus as our personal lover, and then that we help others do the same? Well, because it is for this union – with God – that mankind was created. In our infancy, we had this unity. We were born with it. Satan, leading us astray, robbed us of original holiness, of original light, and since then we have been born to original sin, to darkness. In original sin, we are all born incomplete. Jesus restores our completeness. This restoration to holiness is the center of all religious pursuits, and the priorities above certainly stem from it. The reason that this personal restoration is of more importance than the restoration of others is because, well, this war has many battlefields – it takes place in every single soul. If our grand mission is to raise the flag of God over every battlefield, than the battlefield of our own soul is certainly the one that we are most responsible for. In this way, it is not selfish to think of ourselves first – it is responsible, as well as a total bliss, to achieve our soul’s purpose. Only when God is truly our greatest love can we spread that love to others.

Now then, the next comparison to be made – what about the dark side? In Star Wars, those persons adept to using the force are distinguished either by alignment to the light side or the dark side of the force. This is, indeed, a very central point to all Star Wars books – some people use the force for good, some, for evil. The force itself is described as having a light and dark side – wise characters often remark that the force is not good, the force is not bad, and people choose to use whatever halves of it that they do, embracing either the light or dark aspects of the force.

In this regard, the analogy fuddles. It reminds us of Zoorastrian Theology more than Catholic Theology, where there is a good and bad diety fighting it out in an eternal war. In Catholic Theology, God is all light – he has no dark side at all. Those with friendship with God don’t choose to either use that friendship for good or evil.

Let’s zoom back in on Star Wars. Let’s get a good look at what the dark and light side’s are, as defined by their two biggest representatives: the Jedi and the Sith, and their respective codes.

The Jedi Code:

There is no emotion, there is peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.There is no passion, there is serenity.There is no chaos, there is harmony.There is no death, there is the Force.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

The Sith Code:

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.

So the jedi code is all about finding peace. Not being too caught up by feelings. Seeking joy in what is, pursuing what is through study, recognizing the harmony in the universe and not despairing at the transcience of death.

  

 The Sith code is all about living in the temporal. Habitually seeking those fleeting feelings of the flesh for added strength, to be used for vain pursuits of conquest and power, to vehemently resist all ‘chains’ of self discipline.

           

In short, the Jedi Code repeats and repeats, there is more than what is readily apparent. The Sith Code says that no, there is nothing more, get as most as you can out of this world of flesh.

            By this perspective, the contrast between the dark and light sides of the force, in our real world, is easily grasped. However, the force must not be thought of so much as a metaphor for God as a metaphor for life. This is, after all, how it is more often described throughout the novels – the force of life itself.

            

Those who are aligned with the light side of the force are aligned with the light of God – the true substance of reality, the more beyond our tangible grasp, the love, the peace, the harmony. Those aligned with the dark side of force shun the light of God. They prefer the darkness, to not see that there is more than what can be readily experienced by the flesh. They pursue the feelings of the flesh, as well as vain pursuits, prideful games of supremacy, and seek to have no restraints over their love of fleshy sins.

            

It would seem that Jediism is best represented then, in our world, by the Catholic Church, the called forth communion of followers of the Light. The dark side does not have an institution, so much, but a cultural leaning of people who buy into the lies of Satan, the former lightbearer made hideously black by his own gutting of himself of the light of God, which was once his great beauty.

            

As Catholics, then, a huge opponent that we face in fighting for the Army of Light is those followers of the dark side of life, those real-life siths, who unknowingly or otherwise serve the purposes of Satan by following greed and desires. By greedily robbing from the poor by industry or otherwise, contributing to a sex crazed society that destroys women’s self worth, or contributing to other evils that create humanitarian disasters that make it harder for those affected to accept God and fulfill their human purpose.

            

We must also always recognize the siths in us. None of us are purely beings of light, nor are any of us completely devoid of life, either. We must allow the light – the spirit – to grow, and the dark to shrink, by God’s great grace. And as a needed complement to this internal quest, we must also take up our lightsaber of love and fight the evil in this world all around. 

Shedding Light on the Priesthood

My spiritual director often reminds me that I often see the world in ideals, and I need to remember that it there's a lot more grit than my idealistic notions seem to see. I would say that he is certainly right; everything has smudges, nothing is perfect. Yet I do have a tendency to overlook smudges so that I can be completely enraptured and taken away by the beauty of an ideal theology or perspective of something in this world. I enjoy the experience of awe thoroughly, especially after most of my life seeing everything as bland, barren in rationality, through cynical eyes that painted everything gray.

Idealism, to me, isn't blindness. Rather, truly, it allows us to see, to understand. An understanding of the common formulas can help us understand the world of motion, even while those formulas operate in a perfect world with a very limited number of variables, and our true world has an infinite number of variables. The real world is those formuals of physics put to life, which inherently means they will see great manifestations in the real world due to countless variables, but at the core of all physical movement, the pure and simple laws of physics still stand strong.

Likewise with idealism, especially in theology, and in this post, in the priesthood, we can see an absolutely beautiful demonstration of what, theologically speaking, the Priest of God is. We can understand at the core in a very pure way what they are called to do. What their mission is. What happens to them during ordination. What their role is in the Church, in the economy of salvation (of which I prefer the image 'The War of Darkness and Light'), in their communities, etc. But then, as my SD reminds me, we must know that these ideals are a starting point. In practicality, countless variables are thrown on top of this core, creating the actual priesthood we see today, the actual practical ministry that today's priests do carry out in the world today. Yet the ideals still stand at the core, and at the purpose of this priesthood. The idealistic, theological priesthood could be understood as the mystical ministry of the priest, while the practical, day to day life which priests live, can be understood as the practical ministry of the priest. The two are, of course, organically bound - the mystical ministry is the DNA of the priest's ordained soul, while the practical ministry is the visible product of this DNA, the ministry which we can explicitly see.

Priests are, foremost, sacraments. As I always remind my catechism class, sacraments exist because God is awesome. Because he knows our needs (for example, communion with him and each other, forgiveness, the everpresent aid of the Holy Spirit, rebirth, etc) and he also knows that we struggle to grasp the invisible dispensations of these graces, he has given as sacraments to tangible, touchable, tastable graces. For communion with and in his body, we eat his body. For the everpresent aid of the Holy Spirit, we are annointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit. For the rebirth of our souls in Him, he gives us baptism. For forgiveness? Well, lets talk about that one, which will help us with the others, too.

Without an understanding of what the Priest is, the sacrament of reconciliation hardly seems tangible at all. In it, we tell the priest our sins, say we're sorry, he tells us we are forgiven, gives us a blessing and we go home. Why couldn't we do that on our own? Why couldn't we just read a scriptural passage that guarentees God's mercy and forgiveness? Why did we need to go to a priest just so he could say the same thing? A largely lacking understanding of what the priest is has caused confessional attendance to plummet, and it is certainly the reason Christian denominations without the valid priesthood have found confession virtually pointless - because it is virtually pointless, without a valid priesthood.

Let's take a step back. I said that priests are sacraments, by the understanding that a sacrament is a grace of God made visible and tangible, touchable or tasteable. It is the grace of God reassured not only to our intellectual minds, but also to the great and beautiful characteristic of us that we are flesh, not just spirit, that we are body, not just mind. Sacraments are graces for the flesh and spirit, they are divine gifts specially made to be both abstract and tangible, all at once, just as Jesus was God and man, all at once as well.

A definition of grace, simply put, is a free gift of God.

Let us recall as young children, around Christmas time, when our parents valiantly fought the challenging battle of teaching us the true meaning of Christmas. One thing that my mother and father often reminded me is that the greatest gift of Christmas is the gift that God gave to us: Jesus.

Jesus, then, is the ultimate grace to mankind. He is the ultimate grace because He is the fountain of all graces; forgiveness, communion, and the lasting help of the Holy Spirit are all free gifts given by Him. They were in the year 33 AD, they were in the year 300 AD, 1300 AD, 2013 AD, and will be in the year 3013 (God willing the present order yet persists).

Jesus is the fountain of all graces to mankind, today. Yet we cannot see Jesus doing this. Jesus is the one who forgives us, yet we cannot hear him smile and tell us it is all okay. Jesus is the one who sends the Holy Spirit to us to be our paraclete, yet we cannot hear Him sending the Spirit forth. Though he was born, and all Christians today fully accept that Christ was made fully man, fully smelly, fully hairy, fully real and touchable, today, he is not. In the person of Jesus 2000 years ago, the Word of God was ultimately manifested as the ultimate tangibility of God. Yet it is not blasphemy to say that a man who literally walked among us 2000 years ago is not so tangible anymore. Indeed, it is inherrent that the person of Jesus has become abstract to us today. This is evident secular jabs at Christ, oftenly poking fun at how abstactly godly we depict him to be, when we forget the fact that He is a man, a brother, one of the guys.

Jesus's abstactness is also evident in the lack of genuinely personal experiences with him that we have. Perhaps we can recall occasions when we were just totally swept off of our feet by an intimate encounter with Christ; for me, anyways, these powerful moments of intimacy are certainly not daily occurences. While I have great moments of peace in prayer with God more regularly, those very real and intimate moments of encountering the presence of God, so fully, are sparse and completely treasured when I am blessed to receive them. Yet if Jesus were a man who I literally followed, walking with him everyday, surely I would have these experiences more often, because if I literally experienced Him dispensing his graces to me daily, how could I not tangibly feel him doing so?

Where abstactness surrounds God's grace, he gives us sacraments, because he is awesome. The fact of our seperation from Jesus's earthly ministry by near 2000 years makes the grace of the person of Christ abstract. Thus, the priesthood.

The priesthood is a sacrament in that by the ordination of a priest, men are given the grace to act in the person of Christ. En persona Christi. The necessity of a person to become through ordination a sacrament of Christ's person during the liturgy is necessairy for all of the reasons highlighted above. The liturgical sacraments of the Church: baptism, reconciliation, communion, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, and annointing of the sick are all graces given to us directly by Jesus Christ. Yet we can't see Jesus giving us these sacraments with our eyes. So Priests are annointed to take upon His person in the liturgical dispensation of these graces through sacraments.

The bread which is consecrated into the body of Christ is always done so by Christ himself, as he did during the Last Supper. For this reason, when the Priest consecrates the bread, he does not do it as Father Bill, Father Andrew, or Father Jim - he does it in the person of Jesus Christ. And in the person of Jesus Christ, the words of Jesus are spoken through his mouth, "Take, eat, this is my body, given for you."

In reconciliation, the Priest says, "I absolve you of your sins." Again, this is not the person of the priest talking - it is the person of Jesus Christ, through the priests mouth, which by ordination the Priest has been transformed so that could Christ could act through.

Priest's are not perfect, they certainly themselves are not Christ. But in the liturgy, they act in the person of Christ. The graces which Christ dispenses through them are not corrupted by the sins their imperfections, because their priesthood is for that very dispensation of grace to the people that they serve.

Priest's are people that we can see, hug, laugh with, share a meal with, and simply be with. Priests can be "one of the guys". With an understanding that by their ordination, a priest's entire life is made to be a sacrament, so that the person of Christ might be visible and tangible to us all, despite a priests personal flaws, we can experience Christ's person tangibly through them in laughing and sharing meals. What otherwise would have only been abstract is made visible and and tangible to us by their ministry. This is that Christ is a person, and he is with us.

Making this person visible is the very purpose of the priesthood. This is one of the core reasons why priests are male; Christ is male. The person (and linked personality) of a male cannot be made visible through a female. Of course, this is dependent upon an understanding that male and females were created equally in the image of God, but by their gender differences, inherently and intuitively to express God in different ways. Jesus was a man, and so His person in his maleness was meant to express God as a male; if his priests are to express his person, then they must be male too.

In the Orthodox Church, priests are obliged to grow a beard, because Christ had a beard. Perhaps we are reminded of Talledegan Nights, when Grandpa Chip offered us an insight into his Christian wisdom, saying, "He was a man, he had a beard!" This tradition isn't present in the Roman Rite because we don't want to muddle the significance of Christ's personality as being masculine, and not feminine, with the merely external facial hair decisions he made. This might confuse people into believing that a priests role as a sacrament of Christ's person is merely a roll of acting the part. We know from experience in youth drama productions that females can do very well in portraying male characters and taking upon themselves their masculine personalities. The priesthood is more than acting; it is a fundamental transformation, a complete grace given through ordination by which a priest is mysteriously united to Christ's person. In the liturgy, the priest doesn't pretend to be Christ; Christ is made present through Him in a tangible, and real way.

However, if it is helpful for orthodox parishioners to recongise the tangible presence of the person of Christ in their priests by his beard, then all the more power to them.

Aligned then with the person of Christ, the ministry of a priest can take many different forms, all aligned with the beautiful ministry which Christ on earth took up. The vast number of priests allow them to specialize in different aspects of Christ's ministry; some to education, some to leadership, some to healing, some to prophecy, all, to the dispensation of grace, as Christ always did, and the priests do daily through sacraments.

But the common core of the priesthood, the ministry which they all share, is to make one thing abundantly clear to all of us. As they fill our communities, and we shake their hand, and we invite them over for dinner, and we laugh and are with them, we may know at the same time that the person which they act in, the person of Jesus Christ, is with us as well. By the priesthood, emmanuel is made an ever constant truth not just in an abstract way, but in a tangible way as well.

We Are All Wrapped Up In This Mystery

I am greatly in love with symbols. I love to think about the great mysteries through analogies, using intuitive, easy and fun to grasp images to help understand the images which are much more complex to understand. My former post titled Catholic Jedi is a good example of this. Lately the idea of us Catholics being very similar to Jedi has been on my mind a lot...and I was blown away today, meditating on it, of indeed how much more we are. As Fr. Richard Rohr often says, we must not ever get too caught up in our images, remembering that God and his mysteries will always surpass them - hence, the word mystery.

I've been reading a Star Wars book, and much of my discernment has been guided by it. I've been searching, for my life, something translates within Catholicism directly to the Jedi order. This has been a challenge. For a few days I've found this translation in a Missionary Order called Pime. Then for a few days, rather, in a Lay Missionary Order whose name I forgot. Then, after that, I started to think about becoming a member of the Knights of Columbus, as that has a lot of parallels.

As usually, when I struggle to make a decision, and nothing really feels perfect, I get pretty stressed out. So I spent a night looking at all different volunteer corps within the Catholic Church to find one that would best satisfy my SciFi fantasies. This might seem like an odd method of discerning the Lord's call for my life, but as my spiritual director told me, God knows that I love symbols, and so that is certainly a way he chooses to speak to me. So I took that to the extreme.

But this morning, in meditation, trying to figure this all out, I was sort of complaining that the Church was so big, had so many people, so many diverse orders...it was really bogging down my Jedi analogy, which is just one, simple order.

Then it was like...oh yeah, duh. That's a good thing. The Church is better than the Jedi order. It's way bigger. It does way more good work because it is so darn diverse; instead of having just one mission, of direct service to the Republic and fighting those who oppose it, the Church has so many diverse mission fields in which it serves its grand purpose; building up the Kingdom of God. (see my post about the Kingdom of God, of which I wrote that it is, among many great things, an awareness that God is already King.) In this way, the many different people in this body, this earthly institution, can serve our unique missions in unique ways so that together we can all do everything.

In the Church, each one of us folks called forth to divinity has a life of mystery and ministry before us, with all the wonder and good which the Jedi do. It's up to us to figure out what it is. But I think that it has a lot less to do with figuring out than it does with just pursuing God and sanctifying who we already are to his Kingdom.

All of us in this Called Forth, eklasia, Church, are wrapped up in this mystery. We are called to be Jedi. Just a really cool sort of Jedi that includes 1/6th of all human beings. One where we can all contribute to the war of good vs. evil in the ways in which we are all individually called to; in communities, in foreign nations, in our backyards, in soup kitchens, in hospitals, in prisons, on the streets, in the classroom, in the office, in the forest...anywhere.

All darkness, all evil, all sadness, all hate, all war...all things wrong in the world...these are all manifestations of the great war between good and evil spilling over into our world. When we bring light to a dark place, bring love where there is hate, joy where their is sadness, companionship where there is loneliness, peace where their are desensions and war - food where there are hungry, water where there are thirsty, clothes where there are naked, we are fighting against the evil that has spilled over into our world. We are serving God in the war that has fallen from the heavens and taken its battles to our hearts, to our lives. Satan tries to do anything he can to distract us from the reality that God is King, often by giving us all sorts of material trials as many nations currently undergo, or even many cities with crippling poverty and failing infrastructure. By contributing our funds and compassion to these people Satan's weapons are aimed at, we fight to destroy Satan's tactics and nourish the soil for the Kingdom of God to grow.

Love is our weapon. What does Love lead me to do? In the face of a dark world, what does the voice of love say? What does my sword and my lightsaber hum to defeat? In what way does the Lord of Lords ask me to fight against the darkness of Satan's wrath?

We all have a ministry, a mission, and a purpose in this fight. We are all wrapped up in this mystery. God puts in each of our hearts the grace of love, our lightsaber, so that we can use it to fight evil where it reigns. To fight loneliness with companionship. Hunger with food. Ignorance with enlightenment. Despair with Hope. Atheism and Agnosticism with the truth of God.

We must be great humanitarians then, if not in vocation and career, than in our everyday in the ways God calls us to be. We must observe darkness, wrongness with the world, with the fuller perspective of why it is really there; it is a spillover battleground we live in from the war between darkness and light. We must understand our efforts in this war as being direct contributions to God's cause, the cause of light, and we need to make those suffering aware of this reality as well; that suffering is a result of the fall of man, Satan's foothold in our world and our lives, and that healing and compassion is found in new birth in baptism and new life in Christ.

We must all know that the great victory in this war has already been won on Cavalry, on the Cross that surpasses time and place as the deciding salvation of all men, that perfectly redeems us and unifies us with him.

All we must do now, as those Called Forth to divinity and salvation, is make the world aware. Aware that salvation is there for anyone in Christ. Aware that divinity is there for anyone in Christ, to be rescued from darkness, from Satan's grip, from death.  Aware that God is King, which equates membership in the Kingdom of God.

The orders inside of the Catholic Church are too narrow to translate to the Jedi Order, and the Church itself is too vast. This is because analogies only take us too far.

Yet for the sake of my symbol driven mind, it is more so than a direct translation that all Catholics indeed are called to be Jedi; yet the orders which we are called to are beautifully unique and much more perfectly suited to our individual persons and strengths.

We are a mystical army of love, of sorts, with many different specialities, divisions and corps. We all have a mission and ministry within this army that is perfectly suited for us.

Yet our unity and brotherhood is truly worldwide...universal, and Catholic, big c and small.

What is this Kingdom of God?

With a pair of wide eyes, I asked my spiritual director this week while in the midst of one of our greatest discussions: What do you imagine the Kingdom of God will be like? I mean, I know it'll be awesome; God will finally be in charge of everything. But what sort of political structure do you think God will put in place once his Kingdom comes? 

My very wise Director, or Jedi Master, as I sometimes think of him, just smiled to me and shook his head. 

God already is in charge, he said. When the Kingdom of God comes, that just means we're all finally going to realize it. 

The wonder of the Kingdom of God isn't that God's going to land on earth and institute some utopian sort of government that will make everything awesome and perfect. The wonder is that the temptations will be gone, our bodies will be glorified just like our souls have been through baptism, and we will all everyday be aware that God is King. 

Of course, God is King today. God was King yesterday. God will always be King, now and forever, Amen. His Kingship wont become more glorious than it is right now, ever, because God does not change, nor does his glory fluctuate with passing centuries, with ages of doubt, through eras of trial. But we will finally have an awareness of it that won't fluctuate with our doubts and trials. 

When the Kingdom of God comes - when all men of this earth are made plainly aware that He is King, and that His kingship is sooo good - there will be no more need of a government, of a police force, of written laws, of a judicial system. We will all live exuberantly in full awareness of God; we will all live in such complete and full love for Him, beholding his beautiful face, and beholding His face in all places where it is (in each person, in all life) we will love all creation as well. 

In Isaiah 11, the prophet spoke about wolves and lambs, lions and calfs, and leopards and goats laying down together before a running stream, no longer consuming each other for strength, but all grazing off the living land for food when this blessed kingdom comes. Our very sinful inclinations to seek emotional strength through others weakness will be gone. Our very sinful natures, and the sinful nature of the world, will be fundamentally corrected on this blessed day. 

When the army of evil is defeated, and the demons who tempt us away from God are no more - there will be no more such thing as sin. No more disordered desires. No more feelings or actions of hate towards are neighbors. Only love and charity for all, and desires directed towards the goodness of God, the goodness which we were created for. The goodness which is our purpose. The goodness that fills us up. 

One of the most beautiful visions from the Book of Revelation is that there will be no more need of the Sun, nor will there be day or night, because God will be our light, and he will be with us always. 

The sun to us today is a physical guarenteer of light, of sight. It guides us. It gives us food, and thus, our strength. It warms us. It is a fairly universal statement that in this present state of the world, we need this sun for protection and life. 

God knows this. He put the sun there. Now think about today's political structures.

To us today, as we struggle with sin that leads us to commit evil deeds, government is a guarenteer of law and order and relative peace compared to a world where sin reigned unchecked and supreme. The government creates education systems to guide us. They help strengthen our material needs through various programs and interactions, however their ideologies determine to do so. While we might not always agree with our government's ideologies, is it not fairly safe to say that we are safer with it than without it? A world without government would put us at a far greater risk to the chaos of unchecked crime, would it not? In the present state of the universe, we need government.

God knows this. He put our government there. Its our safeguard for order in a world where men are inclined to sin. 

But a day is coming when we won't need government. When we will all be aware.

Now here's perhaps the most important part. Since Christ's coming, we have all been urged to work towards this awareness today. Governmental laws forbid by punishment crimes of stealing, murder, etc...yet there are many, thanks to the pursuit of holiness, the building of friendship with God, who do not need the threat of punishment to refrain them from these infractions. Rather, their love for God is plenty the motivation. Their awareness of His goodness and the fact that he is king. 

In this world of sin, we are all born to disordered desires, of many, many messed up kinds. But in becoming holy, becoming God's lover, these disordered desires through grace begin to dissapear. And through this holiness, we begin to realize more and more, and every moment, that God indeed is King. 

We say that Christians are resident aliens of this world. We live here, and we love our countries - for much the reasons listed above - yet all the same, if an enlightened Christian were to be asked who is his king, the answer would be indoubtedly, God. 

In baptism, through grace, we are made citizens of the Kingdom of God. We accept God as our King. If we were baptized infants, than our parents made a promise to make us aware from the first moments that our minds could comprehend that God is our King; thus, in either scenarios, infant or older, the awareness of God's dominion ought to be the same. Yet it is in all of our journey's beyond baptism that this awareness becomes a living awareness, not just an abstract belief.

Before meditating upon the written words above from my Spiritual Director, I had often considered the fruits of baptism to be two-fold - spiritual resurrection in Christ, and formal membership into the Roman Catholic Church, specifically in a Roman Catholic Parish. I had often considered the later fruit to be a lesser benefit to the former. Now I realize they are won. 

The spiritual resurrection in Christ, the soul's redemption, is manifested in the formal membership of the Church. This doesn't mean that the membership in the Church is a symbol of residency in God's kingdom; it means that residency in God's kingdom has been made tangible, real, physical in membership in the Church, because God fully understands are hard headedness and that we need Him to make all this abstract stuff more visible. 

Praise Him!

Praise Him for the Church. Praise Him for naming Peter his vicar, for giving the dispensation of grace over to men to perform on earth. Praise Him that through the Spirit's mystical dwelling in the Church, we can know that Christ and the Church are one, as St. Joan of Arc famously said - and we can know that in following the Church and having true membership in it, we are truly members of the Kingdom of God, on earth, in the form that it takes today in a world in transition. For truly, who is our Pope but the legate for God?

The Church's head is Christ. We are a nation not of blood or land, but of awareness that He is King, and a common pursuit to know him more. 

We are a nation, today, have always been and always will be, whose only King is God. 

We follow men chosen by God with the purpose to help us become more aware of our King, of what he wants in our lives (through spiritual direction and homilies) and in our societies (through statements from our Bishops, the councils). 

And we follow and love our Pope, for the reason that he guides all of our Church to the truest worship of Christ, God, our King. 

The growth of the Kingdom of God is synanomous with the growth of the institutional and (at the same time) mystical Church, for it is in the Church that the Kingdom comes into our hearts.

I don't much know what the Kingdom of God will look like in fulfillment, when the Satan and his minions all are cast away. But I do know what that Kingdom looks like today, and I am proud to call myself a mystical member of it, as well as a formal member of it, as a Roman Catholic in good standing and a parishioner of our Lady of the Woods of the Arch Diocese of Detroit. And I love the men that God has chosen as Priests, and Bishops, and the Popes who have guided us all, to come to know Him more.

For knowing Him is the greatest joy. Praise God for what he has built on this earth, upon Peter the stone, so that I could so easily and tangibly come to know the Lord - and come to know that He is King!

Catholic Jedi

Since I was 7 years old, I've been captivated by Star Wars. What first caught my attention, most likely, was the flashing lights and cool lightsabers, and the beeps, and blasters, etc, etc. But quickly into my ipper elementary and middle school years, I realized through the wonderfully expanisive collection of Star Wars novels that indeed, an entirely galaxy of depth existed beneath the flashing lightsabers and cool special effects of the epic films.

In the series of novels, most to my liking between the 1st and 3rd movies, I was swept away by the great tradition of the Jedi order. I loved their mental and physical discipline, devotion to fighting evil, their connection with the deeper force beneath all life, and their school of practical wisdom for everyday life.

I liked how they were entwined with the sci-fi politics of the republic; they were not concerned with running the government, but they knew that their wisdom and intuneness with the force gave them the responsibility to offer the senators and chancellors wisdom and help.

I loved the uniquely intimate relationship between the young padawans and their teachers, and also of the coherence of all the Jedi order in their system of younglings, padawans, jedi knights, jedi masters, and then those who held the most wisdom and led all as members of the high jedi council.

And it all just seemed so fun and exciting, saving the galaxy from the dark sentients who always had greedly plots to destroy the balance of peace.

Recently, I discovered how very much my Catholic faith resembles the Jedi order. And even more recently, I've discovered that, more accurately, the Jedi order resembles my Catholic faith. In each of the ways that the Jedi world has always captivated me, I will show how the Catholic faith holds just as much; in our world.

The tradition of Roman Catholicism is near 2,000 years old, and completely stuffed with incredible wisdom that even an entire life of study would not be able to contain.

The mental and physical discipline urged to be prayed for and practiced to refrain from sin and fight temptation is immense, and truly, we can only gain it through supernatural means; and so many of us have, as Peter did, walked on water through faith, and gained these very impossible traits of discipline. In a world where succumbing to all sorts of temptation is accepted as normal or healthy and often encouraged, the radical call to discipline truly characterizes the Catholic faith.

In our society today, Catholic organizations make up undoubtedly the greatest force for global good. Everyday we fight hunger, thirst, nutrition, ignorance, and we daily call the world to peace when dark greedy sentients fight horrible wars.

The very central purpose of Catholicism is unity with the one whose body the Church is a sacrament of: Jesus. And the spirit of Jesus is thus our common spirit, and it is this spirit that is the force beneath all life. Yet this spirit is more than just a force; he is a father, a brother, a teacher, a shepherd, and a very best friend to all who answer His call. Here is where Catholicism clearly supercedes the world of Star Wars; while their force is very cool and powerful, our God is not only powerful, but cloaked in unchanging unconditional love, and always beholding us with acceptance and a smile.

While the Jedi gather in their Temple to hear the sometimes abstract mantras related to their daily living through the proverbs of the great Jedi teachers, we Catholics gather in our different Church buildings to hear the Scriptures opened to us by the Pastors who relate the abstracts to our daily lives. And in these Church buildings, the Pastors God gives us speak to us from their pulpits with the sincere love of the shepherd, and all in our buildings is there a community of love.

The Church's role in politics is not by any means a bigots grab for power; it comes from the responsibility that we have, bearing the awesome tradition that we do, to share what we can see due to our organic connection to God the Son. It would be irresponsibility not to advocate what we see, as the Spirit has helped us to see, what is best for human society as a whole.

The uniquely intimate relationship between the young padawans and their masters is something that is certainly available to all Catholics, young and old. I really believe that it is through frequent visits to the confessional that priests can offer us the advice that we need for our daily lives, and also become the mentors that we need in our spiritual lives. As well as the intimacy we can have with our confessors, the great tradition of finding a spiritual director certainly offers us all a unique intimacy with an ordained, endowed Priest, transformed as a representative of Christ for us, for exactly this universal need.

The coherence of the Jedi order was certainly through its hierarchy, and the Jedi's all in humility understood that certain additional graces of wisdom were gathered through much study, prayer, and simply days of life. This same sort of idea, though more uniquely personal for each man ordained, is the idea behind the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Through the college of Bishops, beneath the endowed and very graced men of the Magisterium, the Holy Spirit offers us all direction through men who have lived their entire lives in intimacy with Him. How do we know they're fit for the job? They were chosen by men that were. How do we know those men were fit to pick? The same reason. This goes back and back to the apostles, who were picked by...yep, Jesus Christ himself. This is the idea of Apostolic Succession, and there's a reason its important; it keeps the massive billion member Church all of one faith, beneath one Pope, beneath the God who ordained and endowed Him with the grace to lead.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't need the hierarchy. Can any say that we live in such a world? Certainly Christians wouldn't, it goes against our most core belief. And for all the Christian sects who have attempted to establish themselves devoid of hierarchy, thousands of further sects have ended up the result; the teachings that we believe need to come from men of supernatural grace and wisdom, or else we all falsely come up with our own stuff, and unqualified people take to the pulpit and preach Christianity that is more theirs than Christ's.

This is not to say that the teachings of the Magisterium should not become our own. We must own these truths in our very own heart, not just submit to them. We must come to know for ourselves their beauty. Likewise it is necessairy to have an intensely personal relationship with Christ in our very own hearts as well. But for wisdom and guidance, we should rather look to those servants of God, those children of God, who have walked with God far longer than have we than we should try to muddle through it on our own. We are one body, afterall; those endowed with knowledge are given it for their own nourishment and also so they can teach it to the Church (us all).

Let us be taught. Let us draw closer to the force, to living and loving Father God! Let us be humble and thankful for the very grace-filled and wise Magisterium (college of Bishops) of the Church.

Finally, there is nothing more exciting than living as a Catholic; living atop millenia of tradition of serving God, in union -friendship- with Him and with all of our brothers and sisters of faith, helping him to fight armies of darkness in our world through prayer and fasting and charitable works.

The Jedi only carry lightsabers because they are needed to fight the Sith; the fallen Jedi who are consumed by fleshy passions and desires and let them govern their lives.

We Catholics have no need for lightsabers as we set out to fight the wicked demons who through pride prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. What we need, instead, is ever renewed and refreshed pools of love inside of us, and mercy every to dispense to the poor souls torchered by darkness and hate. With prayer we find our strength, and with love and mercy we set the world free.

The Bridge to More

There is more to this world then we see by eyes of flesh; not all that is real can be touched or tangibly observed. Perhaps this idea has grown a bit stale. Perhaps hearing it earns agreement, but no spark, no click.

The reason why it can't click in the brain is because its a statement that is literally saying, there is more to our reality than what the brain can comprehend! Thoughts come from the senses. We know what is observed, and to a certain extent, we can think abstractly beyond our own observations by synthesizing an accumulated human body of observations that people have had before us.

Yet beyond all sensual observation, there is more. There are things which are mysteries to the mind, and are treasures to man beyond the mind's grasp, in the heart.

It isn't in thinking that we come to this awareness, thinking and thinking and thinking: that gets us so far, but eventually it reaches a reset point, where it ends up running in circles, or coming loose again like a water bottle that you screw tighter and tighter and tighter, until it jumps the groves and becomes completely loose again.

Awareness of the more is in experiencing it. This takes, as it is called, a leap of faith. You can't much experience the more if you doubt there is a more, such doubt closes your self off to the more of our reality.

And the thing about the more is that it is so infinite, there is an eternal ocean of moreness to be experienced; whether we've never experienced more or we've experienced more 1000 times, there is always more to be experienced.

Yet its hard. We like concrete more than air; we feel safer on a highway than in an airplane, though studies tell us it should be the other way around. Likewise, we feel safer following set rules than simply seeking friendship with God, and we prefer trusting in our own good works; where we volunteer, how often, how much we pray, for our salvation than the invisible power of God's love for us though continually scripture tells us it should be the other way around.

Praise God for understanding our struggles to grasp the more beyond what flesh can see. Praise God for entering so tangibly the universe of physicality, of observability, so to build tangible bridges between this universe and the wondrously vast uni-uni-uni-verse of more.

Praise God in the person Jesus, for entering our universe most fully and completely as an utterly complete human being.

And the mystery beyond our mind's comprehension; the glorious ascension and glorification of that body, wherewith the father has called all mankind to union in that body.

And praise God once more, for making flesh the means into that body; for miraculously transforming bread into Jesus's body, that those called by God (all of us) might eat that bread and thus through means of our universe transcend this universe into the More, into the body of Christ.

The Body of Christ...another mystery, an invisible, transcendent union of souls in the More beyond this universe.

Praise God once more! For this union is hard to grasp, and so he has established the Church, a manifestation of this grand invisible union which is very real, very tangible, in our physical world.

But even the act of the Eucharist, Christ's established physical bridge to union with him, is hard to grasp. How can this bread be made into Jesus's body?

The answer is that God enacts this transubstantiation, for our good of course. But God's invisible. How hard to grasp! But praise God, for appointing Priests and Bishops on earth to be given the great charge to bring forth this miracle for us to see enacted tangibly before us, to be able to witness through the priests outstretched hands the bread become so, so much more.

In the Church, through Communion, all men are made one with Christ and all saints and angels in this union. Where one of us suffers, we all suffer. And we can suffer for each other in this union; where one of us fasts, someone suffering persecution in Iraq can be relieved that suffering which we for them endure.

This leads into the next mystery. How can we say that God has called all men into the Son's body? Wouldn't such be to invite all men into the divine family of the Trinity? There are some pretty lousy people in this world; surely the Father doesn't want all of them for sons.

Yes, he does. Every single sinner, from Osama Bin Laden to Vladmir Putin, to you, to Koney, to me, to Adolf Hitler.

But...but...membership in the Divine Family, the More of all Mores, the King of Kings!!! How can all these sinners...uh, including me, I guess, be allowed to enter into this utter joy? They...uh, we...don't deserve it.

Exactly. We all deserve to die. None of us deserve eternal life, especially eternal life as a member of the Divine Family, the Trinity.

We all deserve to die??? No, that's not enough. Looking at those sinners listed...uh, me included, we deserve to be whipped, beaten, ridiculed, kicked, humiliated...and more.

Yes. You might say we deserve to have a crown of thorns thrust on our head and be crucified, too. Jesus knew that the Father would call all the world, gentiles and Jews, into his body. So in advance, he took upon his body the grueling, excruciating punishment which we all individually deserve, so that once we each personally entered into him, the Father would see us organically in him, and see his wounds as punishment for our personal sins.

In this way, Jesus personally saves each of us by his death on that cross.

Our life is in union with God through Christ. Praise God for building us this Bridge.

Through Christ, and through sweet Communion, do we find the More which we all seek amidst our mundane lives.