New article & radio spots

Well, happy new year, folks! We endured a lot of change in 2020 and it is clear 2021 - and, I guess, beyond - will be no different.

In any case, I will continue to remember, as so many people have said - God is always in control, and all that happens is part of his plan. This sounds trite and kind of hard to swallow, I know. Cold comfort for people at risk of losing their job, becoming homeless, losing loved ones to illness, seeing children suffer from lack of social interaction, worried about the direction of the country, and on and on.

I will add to that, a reminder to remember that God “knows what he is about,” as St. John Henry Newman said, and also that he is unendingly capable of bringing good from bad. And, these things often happen on his timeline - not ours. Someone reminded me recently that many of the Old Testament prophets prophesied things that occurred hundreds - or maybe thousands? - of years later. So in other words, in the spiritual life, perhaps instant gratification is just simply not a thing. We’ve got to wait, hold fast, and keep praying, because all prayers matter in the end. I truly believe there are no wasted, unheard prayers.

In any case, I have several things to share with you: one, my latest article at Catholic Stand: 2021: The Year of St. Joseph. If you do not have a devotion to St. Joseph, I highly recommend and encourage it!

Recent appearances on the radio:

Dec. 23 discussing details of the Christmas season, which, if you do not know, did not end until January 10! Listen here and my portion starts right at the beginning.

January 5 discussing new year’s resolutions and how to keep them (mostly). Mostly I wanted to talk about setting spiritual resolutions. Listen here and it begins at about minute 24.

January 20 discussing the year of St. Joseph, and some thoughts on inauguration and keeping faith and hope alive. I feel like I am unofficially becoming Morning Air’s DC correspondent (I’m not). Listen here and my portion starts at the beginning (or if you really wanted to be fussy, you could start at 1:15).

So anyway - do not despair. Keep doing the next right thing, which includes praying. Make St. Joseph the patron of your year. Have joy in your heart. Continue to stand for what you believe in. Leave the rest in Christ’s hands.

Prayer for Inauguration Day

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The Benedictine Sisters of Virginia sent the above. I have thought many times over the course of the pandemic that I think the world continues to turn due to the hidden prayers of women living in religious communities.

I have several updates for you, including a new article and the audio of three of my most recent radio interviews, and will share that in the next post.

For now, let’s pray about the next four years, and for our nation, and for God’s mercy, always.

Reflections on waiting at the end of Advent

Today is the 23rd, which means we’ve got just a couple days of Advent left. How has yours been?

This year in particular I thought about waiting. In the past I have focused more on the mystery of Jesus’s coming, or Mary as and Advent “figure,” but this year it just came to the surface that it was time to look at my own relationship with waiting.

Some thoughts:

High-level - the entirety of the Christian life is about waiting. To me, that is one of those things Catholics say and you kind of have to think, “Uh-huh,” and not really get what it means (similarly, to me, as the phrase that suffering can be “offered up” - took me a long time to get what that means).

But it’s about waiting because, well, Jesus will return one day. So we wait.

However, waiting is hard, if you’re an impatient person.

So over the past few weeks I have used that as an opportunity to prayerfully ask myself a few questions:

How do I experience waiting?

Do I see that time as a gift? Or a punishment?

Do I believe patience is a virtue, or an excuse?

This entire year has been one of waiting, as I have reflected before. Yes, in some instances it was more about outright cancellation; your child’s graduation will never happen, properly, in the real world; the vacation you had to cancel is a goner; your favorite bluegrass and barbecue festival may not even happen next year. And so we wait for life to return to “normal,” for politicians to lift restrictions, for other politicians to determine whether Americans are worth a bailout, to see whether one will be evicted and the lights turned off. My goodness.

So, waiting - it becomes about trust. God’s time, as I was reminded by a friend recently, is massive - it is cosmic, universal, and expansive. Sometimes in the old Testament, the prophecies the prophets made didn’t come true for hundreds or thousands of years. We aren’t used to that; time happens rapidly now. Yesterday’s news may as well be last month’s news. There is always something else.

While our culture may have changed, and our own, personal relationship to time has sped up, God’s has not. If he will deliver us, he will do it - but it will be on his time. And that does not mean it counts any less; it just means we have to - you guessed it - wait.

God makes us promises. He does not forget or abandon those promises. So we see waiting is about trust. That is the season we are in; at another time it will be something else.

Has this Advent helped me learn to wait a little better? It is possible. It has certainly helped me let go a bit more.

Which leads me to my last thought: patience is a virtue, but so is hope. It is one thing to wait, and it is another to wait in hope.