The Individual

It might be good to begin with a belief in the innate goodness of the individual. Also, we must accept the idea that all individuals possess insecurities and vulnerabilities. At in minute an individual is capable of kindness and meanness. We live in a thoughtless age, a careless age. It is a time when it is acceptable, sometimes necessarily encouraged to immediately blame an external force instead of examining the internal force. It is easier to accept the secular world misconceptions about sin, than to accept God’s. The secular world creates an illusion of life brimming with unsatisfying pursuits and labels. The secular world presents every vice as a delicacy, to be tasted and enjoyed. The occupation of pleasure often conquers and imprisons common sense, humility, mercy, patience, prudence and love. All that is special and beautiful in life is glossed over, distorted. The secular world binds us to sin when do not take the time to contemplate our actions and reactions properly. Each day we must find new ways to avoid sin. The hazards of life lead us away from God, away from peaceful living, away from goodness, kindness, hope, and love. The secular world provides no distinctions between pleasure and sin. We are encouraged to enjoy all, forget everything other than the pursuit of fun. Saying no to pleasure is not always easy. Recognizing sin is more complicated when society accepts or pretends to tolerate all behavior. Many questions and private conundrums do appear. This is an age of carelessness, an age of thoughtlessness, an age of paradoxes. According to an individual’s disposition and character, ability and inclination, education and training, motivation and mobility, each individual is allowed to choose any course of action within their reach, opportunity, desire. This freedom of choice sometimes leads to mistakes, misconduct, melancholy. Despair sometimes is the handmaiden to bad choices and sin. Throughout our lives we must always remember prayer. Perhaps the greatest gift we can have is the ability to pray to God. Praying with the proper temperament and sincerity, praying with patience and sympathy, praising and thanking God, these can be a foundation which will help each one of us diagnose each sinner whether venial or mortal, tolerated or sanctioned by the secular world. Praying helps us understand the good and bad in life, in the world around us. We are surrounded by noise, surrounded by quacks. We must learn to pray, then to trust our prayers, and finally to trust ourselves. The more we pray the more we pray for things which may surprise as we open our hearts, minds, and souls to the plight of all mankind. Aspire only to be an obedient servant of God, seek goodness and kindness. Allow your prayers to guide you to a peaceful, independent, free life of humility, charity, and mercy.

Pursuit

Prayer allows each one individual to view our lives with dignity and worth. The benefits of prayer affords each of us an opportunity to become closer to God, an opportunity to lower the volume of the secular world and pop culture, an opportunity for silence and reflection on our day to day existence.

Our individual life pursuits should direct us beyond the flesh, beyond simple material gain. As Christians we should always be trying to move closer to God. Our actions should always reflect our love and respect for God. Our interactions with each other should be uplifting, filled with compassion and love. Our intentions should always be to help each other find peace, order, and happiness. This is a difficult task. It will take time and patience to aachieve. But the more we allow ourselves to be loyal and obedient servants of God, the easier it will become. As our reverence and respect for God and his teachings increases so shall our understanding of the true beauty and true dignity of being humble before both God and man. When God occupies our entire being and we are willing to share ourselves completely, this is the highest calling of conduct, an unconditional love and compassion for all mankind. We must remember that all men are equal in God’s eyes.

But not every individual approaches prayer the same way. The journey toward God takes many different circuitous routes. Our individual dispositions influences each pursuit toward goodness, kindness, compassion, mercy. Our individual dispositions provide us with both obstacles to surmount and strengths to employ as we move toward God. The more love we have in our hearts, the more hope we will have in our souls. Our faith will help us become better people, better Christians. The strength of our faith and the purity of our love will help us make the right decisions, follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ. We can create a life of humility, loyalty, and service to God if we desire and if we are willing to work hard in the name of God.

We should allow ourselves to excel in praising God. Our only ambition in life should be to love and to serve the Lord with our complete beings. We should be obedient to his teachings.

Our lives should commemorate all the goodness, kindness, love and other gifts bestowed upon us by God. As individuals we should take time to contemplate our place in the world and our actions. How we live, what we do, what we say can effect the lives of others. As Catholics we must remember to always be priestly in our interactions. Our humility, obedience, and love for God must always be present in our daily actions.
We should strive to evangelize our neighbors not by our rhetoric but by our tenderness and compassion.

Youth

Youth is the time when we learn lessons about love, hope, mercy. Youth is the time when learn lessons about goodness, kindness, faith. Youth is the time when we learn about God. Youth is the time when prayers begin to shape each individual life. How we view the world through the prism of faith and love, tinting all with rainbow colors. Our prayers become a creation of its own, private and tender, where we ask for strength and patience to do good, to be kind; where we sometimes wish for an immediate response from some magic wand; prayer allows us to enter into its realm of the beautiful, the prudent and the magnificent; prayer teaches patience, acceptance, understanding. Within honest and sincere prayer resides heroic love for God, a desire to love all mankind, fairly and unconditionally not desiring anything in return. Over time prayer allows and helps each individual to improve both their thoughts and actions. Prayer does not label anything prosaic. Prayer does not banish anything from our minds. Prayer can be a place where we search for the peaceful, the nourishing, the compassionate. Within youthful prayers, faith encourages us to be brave, to honor God and his commandments, to be heroic for God by pledging our lives to doing his work. Prayer becomes a gateway to loving and serving God.

Today, the secular world presents a kaleidoscope of possibilities of life gradually hypnotizing or numbing the collective minds of our society. Human existence is reduced to commercial slogans seen on television, heard on the radio. The stern realities of life are hidden behind neon lights, crowded restaurants, movies with computer generated special effects. The secular world does not want us to mature. The secular world is afraid of religion. The secular world is afraid of Christians. As Catholics our eyes must remain open to the secular world and our hearts must remain open and filled with prayer. Human existence does have a purpose beyond purchase power, beyond pride. Human existence should encourage each one of to offer prayers to God, thanking him for the gift of life, the gift of faith, the gift of love. The thoughtful Christian realizes that to God we are always youthful and that our prayers will be always youthful. Each day questions will flash in our mind, “How can I serve God?” or “Am I able to do a little more?” or “Is this enough? How can I offer my life to God?” The various choices appear like gates at a busy international airport, announcing distant, foreign destinations in places unknown, unchartered.

Prayer presents different various views of ourselves and our lives. Prayer is a picture of an instance in time. Sometime the same instance is replayed again and again. The triumph of prayer occurs when we are able to see goodness, kindness, mercy, hope, love previously unseen or unfelt within ourselves or others. Prayer is the soldier, the statesman, the diplomat, the physician, and architect of the soul. Prayer leads us to God. Prayer can leads us to avocations and vocations. Prayer reminds us that as individuals each of our actions are important both to ourselves and to the human race. Prayer can help us to act with love and compassion, to provide examples of faithful service to God.

Prayer connects us all as votaries, contributing to comfort and peace for all mankind in our own individual ways as benefactors of God’s love and kindness. Each day we must offer prayers of praise and thanks to God!

Our ambitions should lead us to humility, to being servants of the Lord.

Eucharistic Adoration

As Christians we have an unique responsibility which asks each one of us to know, to love, and to serve God. All of the activities of our imagination, all of our movements should inspire each one of us to search for signs of divinity as individuals and collectively as a member of a community of faithful believers of God. We are Catholic. We must learn how to value that which is capable of enriching our hearts, souls, and minds. Our lives are meant to be dedicated to the love and service of God.

On Monday November 15, after the 5:30 p.m. Mass there will be an hour long Eucharistic Adoration at the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle.

An Old Fashioned Paragraph

As one of those who believe that the spiritual life of an individual is important for nourishing the soul and inspiring the mind to search for ways to be pure and content among its people, I regard popular culture as a dangerous concoction of thoughts and desires presented without wisdom, prudence, or love. The secular world allows pop culture to exist as a supreme inexorable law, of cause and effect, of sequence and ascension. Pop culture attacks our individual spiritual character with all types of transient passions of the flesh. This is a material age, everything is a commodity to be bought and sold, to be used and discarded. This is an age of exhaustion. The secular world encourages our society to be selfish, wasteful. Decadence and extravagance attack our eyes from magazine covers, television screens, computer screens. We are encouraged to forget or downplay spiritual things. The secular world works to create and nurture writers who exist only to spread doubt about the viability of religion, doubt about the reality of God. The mood of our society is addled. The quest for happiness is dangerous. Happiness isn't really tangible, it isn't lasting. A diamond necklace or a Mercedes might be purchased but happiness often only encourages us to want more. The idea of happiness that the secular world mass produces a murky angst. Modern life often appears like a heathen life of excess, of extreme selfishness, of rudeness. Although filled with material items and all types of experiences, modern life can be very empty, a distempered culture of insecurity, self hatred, ignorance, bigotry. Love is casually mentioned, casually discarded in the secular world. Love is neither unconditional nor universal in the secular world. Love is a motivating factor, an argument used to rationalize and justify material purchases and all types of social behavior. Love in the secular world produces neither joy nor hope. In the secular world love is lost within the gridlock of weariness and anxiety. How anxious is modern life! How we fear dirty bombs, serial killers, aging, terrorists, having last year's gadgets. However as Catholics our faith allows each one of us to define our lives as Children of God, our faith allows us to refine our lives based upon humility, charity, and service to God. True goodness and kindness are rare. As Christians our duty is to find a way to share God's exquisite love with ourselves and our neighbors. As Christians our lives should be both a reflection and an expression of God's love. There is a vitality within hope and faith which can help us follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. There is a newness in life when we believe in God and when we share our faith. The golden fleece within our spirit needs to nurtured by prayer, refection, good deeds. The more we love God and share our love of God, the more precious our lives become. We must reject the fashionable wolfish lust, hiding within song lyrics and imported silk shirts. Our love for God must never be placed beneath anything. It must always be the focal point of each day. We must strive to love and serve God each day. We must strive to love our neighbors as we love ourselves each day. Allow your spirit to lead you from the corruption of the secular world. Allow your spirit to show you that the world is still beautiful. Allow your spirit to present the saintly things in modern life. Allow your spirit to show you how to believe in God. Allow your spirit to create your literature of hope, love, mercy, and service

Thought of the Day

Do not allow your mind to forget God (though that is really impossible) or to downgrade God because it is fashionable to do so. Remember that science is not exact. Science creates both its questions and its solutions. The solutions may change with age. Avoid complaining because God did not act in the way that you wanted God to act. Each moment of our lives we are receiving gifts from God. Always be grateful, always give praise to God.

Words Will Lead

We live in a time when the secular world encourages us to have dilettante spirituality, limited to only those hours when we are physically within a church. The secular world does not like religion, tolerates religion only in small dozes, blames all of the worlds problems on religion instead of the men who practice and abuse their faith. It is easier for the secular world to accept the notion of Christians, as merely mystical and spiritual dabblers on Sundays before the football games.

Our challenge as Catholics is to integrate our lives, to follow in the footsteps of Christ. Our lives should encourage others to follow us. As Catholics, each choice we make should reflect our faith, our belief in God. We must find ways to fill our lives with humility, charity, mercy.

Our baptism gives us a direct obligation to God. Our lives have a purpose which we must discover and share. Goodness, kindness, and love can lead us to God. Our faith needs to be nurtured. We must limit our exposure to the secular world, we must learn more about our faith, more about the Saints.

How easy it is for the words to be written and read! How hard it is for the words to be put into practice! Being Catholic is often difficult. Following in Jesus Christ’s footsteps is difficult. There are times when we are going to want to stop. There are times when we are going to be upset by some church doctrine. There will be times when we will be too tired, too frustrated to continue.

But let nothing get in your way. Let nothing interfere with your relationship with God. Remember to pray as much as you can. Learn about your faith, share your ideas about your faith. Share your ideas about hope, love, mercy, compassion. Enjoy your life as a Catholic, always remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Allow that one act of love be your guide as you live your life each day.