One Year

Today is the one year anniversary of my Confirmation into the Catholic Church. Hallelujah!

I began a long and winding post about how and why I received the Sacrament, but realized, while my story is unique to me in its details, it is not unique to me in its universality. I simply struggled with the same heartbreak and emptiness that we all have. I truly believe that - we are all made with this inner compass which seeks unceasingly for the divine. How we orient that compass as we seek - toward drugs and alcohol, by seeking attention, staying in bad relationships (there's an endless number of ways, really) - is what differs from person to person and, ultimately, determines your level of happiness. You will always seek, but you will never be happy anywhere but in the light of God. That's it.

What surprised me the most was not just how badly I wanted to draw closer to God, but how compliant I was. It was as if I was getting little promptings saying, "Ok, do this - attend this church. Now do this: go to RCIA. And now this..." and I did it. I did willingly, gladly, because all of who I thought I was, was nothing. It did not exist. The real me, whoever that was, was not in my relationship that I had ended, it was not in the person I had loved, it was not in the future I had imagined for myself, or all the millions of little heartbreaks and disappointments I had gathered up around myself. All of that had vanished. The little cocoon of unreality I have been living in was stripped away and I had what felt like nothing left. I was positively limping along, and ran blindly to the church like a child crying to its mother.

So I went to Mass, and I went to RCIA, willingly, obediently, hungrily. It's almost silly to me now - how obvious this all is. When we stop fighting God's will is when everything falls into place. But, you must learn that lesson before you can live it.

I began to see small chinks of light breaking through the blackness as I opened myself up to God. Perhaps then I realized, really, that this was the process of falling in love - truly falling in love - with the thing that was in front of me all along. How unexpected! The Church of my family, the Church I grew up in and turned my back on, just out of ignorance, had all the answers I could have ever needed. The Church that had answers to questions I hadn't even thought of. I began to understand Catholic teaching holistically - from the perspective that God wants us all to be our real, true selves the way He made us, and that this is the same thing as "holiness." To be close to God is to love oneself. That just being is enough because God created us. That we are here to get ourselves and others to Heaven, and that this is an absolute blessing. That God knows us better than we or any other person every will, and that He so greatly desires our happiness. And all of these things, all of them taken together, beat so loudly and wonderfully in my heart because I was just beginning to understand what was truly real.

If you'd like the whole story, I will gladly give it to you. I do not think you need it, though. What you need to know is that opening oneself to God is the easiest thing, the hardest thing, the best thing. I am the same person I was a year ago - but I am so much better, because I am so much more myself. I thank God for giving me a chance to look at my life and to slowly and lovingly draw me out of myself. Matthew Kelly always talks about our mission to become "the best versions of ourselves." That is what being Catholic means; that is holiness, that is sainthood and nirvana.

The God who created Jupiter and the oceans also created you. And you are the most important part of all His creation. Who are you? What is beating in your heart and calling you?  

St. John the Evangelist

Below is adapted from the allocutio I will give tonight on St. John the Evangelist. The reading comes from Ch. 24, The Patrons of the Legion, in Legio Mariae. (The allocutio is the talk given on a portion of the handbook during the weekly Legion of Mary meeting, either by the spiritual director or the president.)

St. John the Evangelist:

·         The disciple whom Jesus loved

·         First, was a model of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

·         Then became the model of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

·         “Pure as an angel”

·         Through St. John, Mary’s motherhood over all men was revealed and explained

·         He was Mary’s priest

I like the idea of “friend saints,” those we befriend and pray to in an effort to emulate their traits or life, and who can help us get closer to the Divine. St. John the Evangelist must be a particularly good friend saint, especially for Legionaries, given his relationship with Mary. Here, Frank Duff describes him in a child-like and tender way, with references to his attributes as a son, angel-like, close to Jesus and his Mother.

He has several titles: St. John the Theologian, St. John the Beloved, St. John the Divine, St. John the Evangelist. His particular trait seems to have always been to remain close to Christ throughout his life – present at the marriage at Cana, present at Gethsemane, present at the crucifixion, and the first of the apostles to reach the tomb at the resurrection.

St. John can inspire in us the same steadfast love for our Lord and his Mother that he showed in his own life. That seems to be the overwhelming mark of his life – not just as someone who wrote a Gospel, but someone who lived in a way symbolic of the life we can all choose, choosing to live your life in a close and personal relationship with Jesus.

Can you imagine what it feels like to be known as Jesus’s beloved? "(Insert your name) the Beloved." And yet, we are all beloved in Jesus’s eyes.  We must never forget this. Perhaps St. John already knew this, and his gift was not just seeking, but accepting Jesus’s love in his life. Would you find it difficult to be called Jesus’s Beloved? Would you feel worthy?

We are all called to be saints. We miss the mark, of course, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t, or can’t, try. St. John shows us that the first step to sainthood is finding Jesus, following Him, staying close, and loving Him with all our hearts. What wonderful things would be in store for us if we truly lived that way! How our worries and despair would fall away in the knowledge that we are Jesus’s beloved, that He is God, and that it is enough. The simplicity of this statement is remarkable, yet John understood it profoundly, and he lived it.

St. John is a friend of the Legion. He is a reminder that we are all called to stay close to Jesus and Mary and that to live this way, one must simply make the choice to do so.

Hello

Let's get right down to it.

I write this post before the website is even finished, before the design is complete, because while I could take weeks to perfect it, the whole purpose is to write. Here, with you, and my thoughts, and with that little fire that keeps me up and wakes me early, asking to be dictated.

What do I love? I love saints, novenas, candles, the Rosary and the Blessed Mother. I love harmony and beauty; Scripture when it moves in your heart; the Memorare and the Magnificat; and how God anticipates every little need in our lives, whether we allow Him to or not. Why do I love these things? Because they bring me closer to the Truth, little by little, over time and inevitably over a lifetime, the way it must be. And what can I do with this? I can do my best, through writing, to capture these beautiful things which I know to be true. By walking around the thing, by exploring and asking, circling closer and closer, perhaps one day I can fully understand. Or at least come kind of near. Will you join me?

No promises on content - could be mostly introspective, could be news articles, could be poetry, could be pictures of my guinea pigs or some pretty strawberries I bought at the store. I'm sure it all has meaning, one way or another.

Thank you for visiting Bright as the Sun. This is just the beginning.