Category: What Satan Hates

7 Takes: Other Than Bacon

If you’d gotten the impression I’ve spent the last two weeks with no other thoughts than bacon . . . that would be a reasonable guess.  Since it’s Friday, I’ll be sociable and make a list of seven.

1. At AmazingCatechists.com, I wrote yesterday about how to evaluate your Christian Formation situation using the Great Commandment.  It’s a fleshing-out of this comment I left at William O’Leary‘s combox:

Couldn’t agree more. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your *mind*, and all your strength.

Which means the more your mind is capable of, the more it needs to study the faith. If you don’t love Jesus, you’ll love something else. If you don’t worship Him, you’ll worship something else. If you don’t work for Him, you’ll work for something else. –> And if you don’t use your powers of reason to know and understand Him . . . that blank space in your brain will be filled with something else.

We’re made to know God, and know Him fully. No other way to be happy.

-me.

2. At CWG today, I tossed up a couple links on writing competence and the new evangelization.  Something we struggle with at the writer’s guild is that fine line between “encouragement” and “enabling”.  If we had a narrower focus, like “only literary fiction”, or “only professional authors with trade-published credentials”, it wouldn’t be so difficult.  But since we represent all faithful-to-the-Magesterium Catholic writers, from aspiring amateurs on up, every genre . . . it’s a bumbly boat.

I like the bumbly boat, of course, since it’s the only one that’ll let me in.

3. Is it a cult, or just weird and stupid? Fr. L. posted an excellent article on the traits that characterize cult-like behaviors.

Readers here will be assured, having reviewed the criteria, that I am in no danger of becoming a cult leader.  Whew.

4. Sometimes I wonder whether what I wrote somewhere else is really of interest to readers here, and whether I should post a link. The other month when some people were freaking out because Pope Francis Is Not Pope Benedict, I posted some thought at AC.  Naturally I linked it all back to catechesis, since I didn’t want Lisa M. kicking me off her blog.  And because it was relevant.

I re-read my post and thought it wasn’t that bad.  So you could go look, if you wanted.

5.  A non-bacon recipe: Venison stroganoff. So good you can eat the leftovers cold for breakfast. What to do:

  1. Use the recipe for beef stroganoff from the Joy of Cooking.
  2. Skip the beef step.  Toss your hunk of venison roast in the crockpot with a little liquid (water is a liquid), cook on low all day.  Take it out and chop it up.
  3. Start up the Joy recipe.
  4. Crazy Innovation: Add parsnips — yes parsnips!  Peel and shred them (you have to shred the onion anyway), and toss them in after the onion but before the mushrooms, and let them saute a bit before you put in the mushrooms.
  5. When the mushroom mixture is all cooked up, toss in your diced venison, then the white whine wine, and then the sour cream.  I’m sure it’s possible to use too much sour cream, but I don’t have any proof.
  6. You’ll be serving this over rice — oh wait, most people do noodles, but actually rice tastes better. Yes, I said that.
  7. Regardless of what you put your stroganoff over — or nothing at all, if you’re having it cold in the morning for breakfast — you’ll want to make gravy with the venison drippings.  Chunk of butter in the bottom of saucepan, melt it, dump in a bit of flour and mix like a crazy person, and when it’s a nice pasty-paste, pour in the cooking liquid from the venison, mix it up.  (Immersion blender is your friend.)  That’s it. Best gravy in the world, easy-peasy.

6. I know.  It’s not deer season.  Too bad.  Ask your friends to open up their freezer to you.

7.  I had a long train of thought (hanging out laundry), and ended up with this thought: If there one thing — and only one thing — I could ask bishops and priests to do over the next year towards the reform of the Church, it would be this:

Make the Catholic Faith the Non-Negotiable Minimum Standard for Those in Ministry

People freak out when you do this.

So I completely get that it’s an unpleasant task, and clergy want to be all pastoral, and all that.  And to be clear: I want the pews packed — packed — with tax-collectors and other sinners.  That’s what not what I’m talking about.  I’m speaking only to those in ministry.  The DRE who tells the confirmandi that gay marriage is AOK.  (Didn’t happen at my parish, whew.) That kind of stuff.

And that’s something only those in authority can actually enforce. We lay folk can do all kinds of helpful things to make up for a pastor who can’t read a contract, or doesn’t know how to hire a good plumber, or whose fingers freeze when it comes to dialing 9-1-1 . . . but we the laity can’t really do a whole lot when the hierarchy decides to be indifferent to the practice and teaching of the faith.

So that’s my new one thing.  I figured out it’s the source of my chronic grumpiness about these or those other little hot-button topics.  So I’m resolving to at least keep my temper-tantrums focused on the real issue.

Meanwhile, since what comes around goes around . . .  What do you think is the one thing clergy wish laypeople would do?

Why I’m Catholic, abridged version

Over at the borg, we’ve been instructed to explain why the borg is best why we believe as we do. After much deleting to get it nearly inside the 200-word limit, I posted mine at the Happy Catholic Bookshelf.

We’ll do the even more abridged version here: Because it’s true. 

And with that, I wish you a lovely Triduum, and I’m going to slowly unplug and start getting ready for a few days of peaceful silence family time observing the holy days.

Monday Thoughts: The Good Life

1. Study Shows Catechesis Helps, But Not Quite Enough

Here’s a nice article from the National Catholic Register about the differences of opinion on Church doctrine and social issues among Catholic who attend Mass, and those who don’t. That’s not how they describe the article, but it is one thing the study demonstrates. The good news:  Catholics who say they go to Mass every Sunday are also much more likely to say they agree with the Church on counter-cultural issues.  The bad news: Depending on the hot-button topic, between 1/3 and 1/2 of Catholics attending Mass weekly dissent from Church teaching.

(In contrast, this isn’t, say, the good-natured non-Catholic spouse who comes to Mass as a kindness to the Catholic spouse.  These adults who both claim to be Catholic, AND claim to attend Mass every Sunday.)

So.  In the pews next to you on Sunday, think of the three people you shake hands with during the Sign of Peace.  If yours is a typical parish described by this study, you can assume you’ve shaken hands with at least one person who does not in fact believe and accept the Catholic faith.

Thinking of traveling to the far corners of the earth to evangelize?  Your parish pews are mission territory.

2.

In choosing best friends, if you can find one whose besetting sins are utterly different from your own . . . golden.  Just golden.

3.

A Sunday well-spent is truly a foretaste of Heaven.  More coming later. Partly in response to this post.

4.

I read and thoroughly enjoyed The King’s Gambit by John McNichol.  My Amazon review is up, and when I get around to it, I’ll post something longer here at the blog. As always on my Catholic-genre youth fiction reviews, let us remember to ask ourselves: Do my tastes run to Thomas Hardy, or Hardy Boys?  I’m firmly in the latter camp.  I like my adult beverages some combination of bitter, dry, and rarefied; I like my fiction just the opposite.

5.

I can’t remember what else.  Have a great week.  Happy Conclave-Watching!

Book Review: Forming Intentional Disciples

Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Disciples by Sherry A. Weddell  – Our Sunday Visitor, 2012

There’s been a recurring conversation in my combox discussions over the past year, and I goes like this:

Jennifer: blah blah blah something about catechesis, evangelization, salvation of human souls, etc.

Smart Person: You need to read Forming Intentional Disciples.

So I stalked the review-book list at The Catholic Company, and quick pounced as soon as the title appeared.  Grabbed it!

Part 1: The Church Has a Problem

It’s easy to shrug off the call for evangelization and discipleship by saying, “Oh, we already do that.”  We have a men’s club.  We have religious ed.  Everybody’s happy, all are welcome, Jesus shows up for every Mass – but sure, I’ve heard other parishes are in trouble.  Mine’s fine.

Maybe so.  But Weddell opens the book with extensive and detailed evidence that no, things are not fine.  She defines the scope of the problem both statistically – how many Catholics in the pews don’t even believe in a personal God? – and qualitatively.  Here are the few of the seven “It is NORMAL” statements her parish’s Nameless Lay Group, a group of laymen gathered together to help each other grow in the faith, had to write out for themselves by way of reassurance:

. . .

#2. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be excited Christian activists.

#3. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to be knowledgeable about their faith, the Scriptures, the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church, and the history of the Church.

. . .

#6. It is NORMAL for lay Catholics to have the fellowship of other committed lay Catholics available to them, to encourage, nurture, and discern as they attempt to follow Jesus.

#7. It is NORMAL for the local parish to function consciously as a house of formation for lay Catholics, which enables and empowers lay Catholics to do #1-6 above.

[Emphasis in the original]

Is this true around your parish?  It should be. Many Catholics don’t even believe in this as an ideal, and Weddell gives some poignant stories of how that pervasive mentality — of viewing holiness as a sort of sideline hobby for the ultra-pious — results in ridiculous contradictions.

She also works through all the objections to intentional discipleship, and demonstrates that yes, it is essential that we practice, at the parish level, the conscientious spiritual mentoring of all parishioners.  This can’t be something we relegate to lay associations and solo study.  This can’t be something we assume we don’t need to implement.  We can’t tell ourselves that because no one has asked for this, all must be well.

Part 2: There Are Things You Can Do To Solve This Problem.

The second half of the book opens by explaining the five steps towards conversion — recognizing that no one can be a disciple of Jesus without first coming to faith in Him.  The five steps Weddell outlines, and these should make sense to anyone who’s been involved in evangelization, are:

  1. Trust.  You have to overcome your suspicions about the faith, and at have some kind of trustworthy connection with the Church.  You won’t join what you can’t trust.
  2. Curiosity.  This is a general interest in the faith — a willingness to learn something about it, the way one might casually go look up facts on Wikipedia about some random topic, without making a decision to do any more than go satisfy an intellectual whim.
  3. Openess.  This is the transition from, “Oh I’m willing to learn a thing or two,” to, “It is possible that the Catholic faith is correct.  I’m willing to accept this faith if it turns out to be true.”
  4. Seeking.  The individual moves from an intellectual acceptance of the possibility, to an inner drive to know God personally.  Seeking versus openness is the difference between, “Oh, sure, evolution might be true,” to “I must know whether it is true, and I will look into the matter until I come to a conclusion.”
  5. Conversion.  This is when one becomes a disciple — the search is over, and now there’s a life of faith to be lived.

Weddell points out that seeking and conversion can be considered together as one continuous process.  How do these stages fit into discipleship?  In the detailed exploration of each of these stages, the book explores pitfalls and opportunities for the parish, and how these experiences can and should be lived out in the life of the Church.

In a final section, the book explores the “What next?”  What do we do with new disciples?  What structures does the parish need to have in place in order to disciple its members?  A significant emphasis is placed on helping new believers — who may be longtime Catholics, or not — to discern their spiritual gifts, and then to find a place in the parish to use those gifts.

Here, as throughout the text, Weddell reminds us we aren’t dealing merely with good management practices or effective processes, but with the active participation of the Holy Spirit in the life of each person.  It is easy to get distracted by methods, and forget that the supernatural — a personal God choosing to act in our lives — is at the heart of Christian discipleship.

Who should read the book?

Gosh, everyone, I guess.   It’s written for parish leadership, and is suitable for anyone who wants to take an active part in Christian life.  It would be foolish to think that somehow the nuts and bolts of evangelization and discipleship are only for church staff, or heads of ministries.  Certainly I don’t think you can claim to have an adult faith if you neither know nor care about these matters — though if you doubt Catholics need concern themselves with this “evangelical” stuff, the book is particularly for you. For some few who’ve been raised to spiritual maturity in the right time and place, you may already have a mastery of the topic; but for most of us Catholics, we’re weak at this and can use all the help we can get.

The reading level is educated-adult — if you can read this blog, and make sense of the usual topics here, you’re good to go.  The tone is conversational, and the writing is enjoyable and full of interesting anecdotes that impart useful information.  If I have a single complaint, it’s that I wish the book were bigger and longer, and treated the how-to’s of discipleship with more exhaustive detail.

Summary: Excellent book, long-needed.  I recommend it widely, but my copy is staying in my hands.

Disclosure boilerplate: This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company.  The Catholic Company is the best resource for gifts for every Sacrament celebration, such as First Communion gifts and Baptism gifts, as well as a great selection of limited-time Year of Faith gifts and resources.  Not boilerplate: As everyone knows, my reviews are honest.  And yes, I do make a point of picking good books for my review selections, because I have no patience for bad ones.

Mid-Month Updates

No Children Left In Ditch.

We made it to Naples and back with exactly the same number and kind of children with which we set out.  Thank you St. John Bosco, whom I did ask for assistance from time to time.  St. Augustine, by the way, is completely awesome.

UPDATED to clarify: Both the saint and the city in Florida are awesome.  Where they each rank within the category of People, Places, and Things Called “St. Augustine” I leave to the reader’s discretion.

Bookstore Management Tip:  Consider not charging admission to your retail venue.

At Castillo de San Marcos, you have to buy admission before you get into the fort, where the bookstore is located.  (This did not stop me from buying books, but not everyone feels the same way about books as I do.  Also, we were going to see the fort anyway.)

In contrast, the Pirate Museum has its gift shop built into its entryway.  Which is handy for parents who do not want to pay admission to the museum, but feel pretty lucky to get off with just looking at the Pirate Merchandise and buying one small pirate book for the trip home.

On the other hand, if early-modern marauders attempt a raid on the seashell-identification books at San Marcos, there are three lines of defense to keep them at bay.

Digital Devices = Road Trip Fever

What with recorded books, DVD’s, and iPods, twenty hours in the car was really quite peaceful.  Causing me to come up with the ridiculous, husband-exasperating plan of going to the national March for Life next week.  Friends with ulterior motives are aiding and abetting.  So I think we’ll go.

And look at this:  Pro-Life Feminist Hot Chocolate. It’s a super-bonus . . . and I get a glimpse of the reportedly lovely and delightful Helen Alvaré, and the kids get hot chocolate?  See, if that doesn’t convince you of the worthiness of the pro-life cause, I don’t know what does.

A Missal.

I’m beside myself with excitement, because MTF slipped a shiny new super-gorgeous Daily Roman Missal in with the other review book I was expecting (Introduction to Catholicism).  You’ll recall I had to glue the old one’s cover back together.  But I’ve been virtuously resisting shelling out for a new edition, even though every time I hear the elegant, poetic lines of the new Mass translation, I’m dying to get my own copy.

The new book is about twenty-time awesomer than I had guessed, because the new edition is beefed up with a pile of handy tables and indexes and bits of mini-catechism. So soon very soon I’ll have a post up at AC reviewing the new Missal, and explaining why exactly my old one needed to be glued back together, because I always, always, shove it into my bag on the way to religious ed, because if you have that one book, you can teach the Catholic faith to anybody at all, ever, no matter what weird scheduling surprises come your way when you arrive at class.

Virtue.

I did not make a single pun on the word Missal in those previous paragraphs.  We’ll just mark that down on in the big white space where my virtues are tallied.  I am the picture of self-restraint.  The St. Therese of resisting bad puns.  Or something.

Science.

The irony is not lost on me. I wrote this great column on winter snow-n-ice appropriate science activities for CatholicMom.com, then promptly spent a week lounging on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.  And swimming.  Outdoors.

This photo taken a different, icier year. And yes, the power was out. For a week. I did not like it. I prefer the beach.

So here’s my experiment: I’m going to write a column for NE (due this week, runs next week), and I think the topic is “Things You Can Do To Evangelize When You Think You Can’t Evangelize”.  Will this cause me to suddenly have many opportunities to evangelize?

You Might Be An Accountant If . . .

You’re goofing off browsing the Mid-Atlantic Congress catechetical conference page (which you are not planning to attend), and you notice all these financial management sessions:

Are you not dying to attend?  I am.  Seriously.  Has anyone sat in on any presentations from these speakers (John Eriksen, Peter Denio, or Dennis Corcoran), and have an opinion on how good the workshops will be?  For all Darwin doubts the use of an MBA, I begin to think that pastoral associates are the one class of people who might could benefit from such a course of study.  Some reputable seminary ought to make a joint MA/MBA program.

Oh That Homeschooling Book

I printed out the whole giant nasty sprawling draft, stuck it in a binder, and it’s waiting for me attack it with my tin of magic markers. So I’m making progress. Slowly.

 

Castello San Marcos:By National Park Service (http://www.nps.gov) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Fortnight of Freedom June 21st – July 4th

Check out the many events around the country planned for the Fortnight of Freedom June 21st to July 4th.

Over at the Catholic Writers Guild blog, I just queued up a good troll-baiting guest post (Not mine! For once I’m mostly innocent!) to go live first thing in the morning.  And I gave our regularly-scheduled bloggers a private talking-to about how EASY it is to write on this topic.  So we’ll see how they do.

I’m going to keep this post sticky for the next two weeks, so if you post something on the theme of freedom, or have an on-topic link you’d like to share, feel free to put it in this combox.

Parochial Loneliness

Pray for Allie Hathaway, then click the picture for more quick takes at ConversionDiary.com

1.

Sarah Reinhard wrote about being welcoming over at New Evangelizers the other day. Posts like hers always make me cry.  The reason is because if I who should feel totally at home in a Catholic parish feel so utterly isolated . . . how on earth does everyone else feel?

2.

Yeah.  I just said that.

3.

It’s not about the people.  To a man my fellow parishioners, and everyone I’ve met in my diocese and anywhere I’ve traveled (except that one cranky priest one time, but come on, everybody has bad days) — everyone is really very nice.  Kind, caring people.  No complaints.  None.

Still, it’s lonely.

4.

And it isn’t a strictly Catholic problem.  I’ve had multiple Evangelical friends — and if Catholics are a little shy and reserved, trust me, Evangelicals are not — I’ve had a number of non-Catholic friends wander from congregation to congregation in search of companionship.  Someone to notice them.  To care about them.  To view them as something other than a potential nursery worker, or those people you smile at in the pews but really if they fell into a crevasse tomorrow, no one would much realize.

5.

Part of the problem is geographic.  I see church people on Sunday, but the rest of the week we retreat to our different neighborhoods spread throughout the city.  I can distinctly remember the last time I ran into an acquaintance from church outside of Mass — it was several months ago, at Publix — and interestingly, the time before that was maybe six months prior, same lady, at the library.  But they just moved to Seattle, so that’s over.  Oh wait — and I ran into the dad of one of my students at McDonald’s this winter — I had turned to look because I was struck at how polite he was, the way he spoke to the counter lady.

Part of it is structural.  Our parish has five masses in a weekend — if someone’s missing, for all you know they just slept in an hour, or decided they like the 8:00 AM organist better.  You might see an announcement in the parish bulletin if someone’s dead or nearly dead, if the next of kin notified the parish office. For all I know, I run into fellow parishioners everywhere, and never even know it, because we aren’t at the same Mass.

Part of it is architectural. You want to say to hello someone after Mass, but they slip out the other door.  I used to go down to coffee and donuts, but the room is acoustically alive — too loud and you can’t hear anyone, so conversation is strained.

–> Something my parish does right: We have a fabulous playground right next to the church building.  So the parents of young children do have a natural way to meet up and chat after Mass.  Which I love, and have made many friends that way.

Part of it is economic.  I keep befriending people who move away.  I’m sure it’s not me.  Sometimes I when I introduce myself to someone, I feel like saying, “Are you going to move or drop dead* in the next two years?  Because I’d sure like some friends that stick around.”

Part of it is personality and state of life.  I’m an introvert. I want one-on-one conversations about substantial topics.  Just throwing us all into the gym for a giant spaghetti supper or pancake breakfast, and calling it parish-togetherness because we’re all in the same room?  No thanks.  But I’m not at a stage in my life when it’s easy to get out for a small-group bible study, or meet someone for coffee, or pick up the phone and talk for ten minutes without having to break up three fights and answer seven urgent questions, two of which really were urgent, and one of which involved the dog throwing up.

6.

Loneliness is no reason to leave the Church.  It’s not a social club. It’s a place to worship the one true God, to prepare your soul for Heaven, to gear yourself up for serving others here on earth.  The little Christs come to serve, not to be served.

And this is why I’m such a thorn in everyone’s flesh about solid theology programs.  Because my goodness, I don’t care how wonderful your youth program is, or how great your ladies’ monthly luncheon is at making lonely widows feel at home, sooner or later as a Catholic you’re going to be in the pit.  You’ll be the odd person out, the one nobody remembers to call, the one for whom there is no parish ministry that fits your life and your abilities.

Faith formation can’t be all about relationships and togetherness, or there’s no reason to stick around when the group doesn’t meet spec.  If there’s one question religious ed needs to answer, it is: “Why should I bother coming to Mass when my parish is horrible?”

[My parish is not horrible.  Far from it.  I am usually so happy to be home after having to go visit some other place.  Like the church with the horrid dentist-office decor, or the one with the oppressively low ceilings, or the one with no vacant seats up front . . . but I do kinda like the neon lights in the ceiling that change to match the colors of the liturgical season, out at my Dad’s parish in Las Vegas . . . though their traffic pattern for the communion line is inscrutable.]

7.

Solutions, anyone?

I do feel an amazing kinship with the lady I always see at adoration and who I run into other places around the parish, even though we rarely get to talk to each other, but you can just tell she’s your friend, and she has masses said for everyone including my grandfather when he died, even though she’d never met or even heard of him before it was listed in the parish bulletin.  Most of the time it is enough to just see familiar people, to have that sense of home, even if you don’t really know them.

But sometimes you want more.  Real live friends that you see outside of Mass.

I know the playground-after-Mass method works.  And I’ve made friends teaching religious ed, volunteering is good that way.  Haunting the local Catholic bookstore will make you at least be friends with the owner there (they go to another parish). Slowly, slowly, we build up friendships with other families through trying to set up dinner together this week, a park date that week . . . but it’s long work, and we’re all so busy, and our lives so separate that every get-together has to be planned, and often the effort evaporates when some small thing throws a wrench in the works.

***

Anyhow, all that to say, that if we aren’t welcoming to our members — really welcoming, not just smile-smile handshake-handshake — how exactly are we perceived by outsiders?  As with catechesis, so with relationships: The new evangelization starts in the pews.

*Pleasantly few people I know actually drop dead after meeting me.  God bless modern medicine.

On Death and Grief

Of course you’ll pray for Allie Hathaway. And click for more quick takes at conversiondiary.com.

I spoke with a longtime friend yesterday – a grown man, forty-something, never sheltered, long acquainted with death and suffering, life and hard work, and also kind, intelligent, and spiritually pulled together.  He was distraught.  His mom had died.

1. Death is not natural.  People who say “death is natural” are full of baloney.  It is normal, in that it happens to most everybody.  But it isn’t natural.  We aren’t made for death.  We are made for eternal life.  Every death is an insult to our very nature.  A tearing apart of something that was never meant to be torn.

2. We never love as well as we would like.  It impossible.  There are too many people to love, and we are so limited by time and space and our own human weakness.  It is physically impossible to call enough, to hug enough, to help enough, to smile enough — it cannot be done.  When someone we love dies, it will nearly always come at a time when we wish we could have done more.

3. The rupture of death leaves raw, open ends.  We humans are created to live in time.  Living in time means change and growth and processes that start now and end later.  Death interrupts.  We were about to call, going to visit, starting to forgive, just remembering the birthday we forgot . . . when death leaps in and steals the chance to finish the work we had started, however imperfectly, however incompletely.  It is impossible, because it is contrary to our very nature as creatures living in time, to live each day, each minute, with every work finished, every relationship complete.

4. Agonizing over the work left undone is a shoddy plot device.  In cheap fiction, lazy writers build drama around the “if-only’s”, as if there were some merit in pretending to have super-human powers, and then flagellating yourself for failing to use them.  Yes, examine your conscience.  Yes, repent.  Yes, move forward.  Yes, start anew.  But don’t build a shrine to your own imperfection.

5. You can miss the sinner without missing the sin.  Humans — loveable, loved, wonderfully complex, maddenly flawed — can be so, so, obnoxious.  And sometimes much worse.  It is possible, normal, to grieve the loss of a parent or close kinsman who was a brutal, oppressive tyrant.  But for many of us, by the grace of God, the one we love was only very annoying, and not all the time.  We would defend to the death the honor of someone who, in life, we studiously avoided at crucial moments.

It is okay to both weep openly for the loss of a relative, and also be relieved you can now post your vacation pictures on Facebook without being asked, “Why didn’t you invite me?  And what’s wrong with Dayton for a family vacation?  Pick up the phone!”

6.  Distance changes grief.  When you are the one bearing the exhausting physical and emotional work of caring for, or overseeing the care of, the dying person, day after never ending day, death is different.  When you are immersed in the horrifying physical agony of your loved one’s never ending suffering, death is different.  It comes as a release.  At least she can be happy now.  At least he is free of his affliction.

When you are far away, or when death comes too soon and too suddenly, you do not love less. But you grieve differently.  You are not the one crushed in the winepress, begging for mercy however terrible.  You are the one who is hungry for more of the life you remember, the part of life that still feels possible, because you have not been flooded with misery until all hope has been washed from your imagination.

These are two sides of the same hope.  When life offers nothing, we finally set our sights on eternal life.  When we find ourselves hating the taunt of eternal life, because we still have some shred of joy here on earth?  It is a testament to reality.  We are not made for death and separation.  We are not meant to have to imagine a world of happiness, we are meant to live in it.

7. Jesus wept.  If anyone was certain of Heaven, Jesus was.  If anyone, on the day Lazarus died, had reason to hope, it was our Lord.  He held in his hands the power to raise Lazarus to earthly life and to eternal life, and he knew he would do both.  It is not a mark of insufficient faith if we mourn the death of someone we love. It is not short-sightedness, or an unhealthy attachment to earthly pleasure, if we are troubled at the end of life on earth.  There is no special merit in putting on a big smile and singing happy-clappy songs, as if the mark of true faith were an inability to feel pain.  Do we hope? Yes.  Is joy inadmissible in the face of death?  By no means.

To be a carpenter is one way to live out the calling to be fully human in our work.  Making sure there’s enough wine for the wedding is one way to be fully human in our concern for others.  They are not the only ways.  But they are important models. Left to our own flights of fancy, we might decide building houses or throwing parties was somehow too earthly to be a spiritual work.  We might admire the way this great theologian or that austere hermit set aside all earthly concerns and seemed to live only for heaven, and suspect that those whose lives were more immersed in earthly realities are the second-rate Christians.  As if to be fully human is to fail to notice the very earth on which humans were placed from the beginning.

Not so, says He who gave us this world.  I made it good.  Every rip, every flaw, every sorrow that mars a once-perfect world?  Our Lord grieves.  We are not alone.