Each time we celebrate the Sacrament of the Eucharist, we stand before the true body and blood of Our Lord. This great mystery should fill us all with awe. Yet sometimes we become complacent, just going through the motions. We receive Holy Communion without any extraordinary sense of the powerful mystery in which we share. To avoid taking these heavenly gifts for granted, I often meditate on a number of themes during the Liturgy of the Eucharist. One theme in particular that helps me feel more spiritually involved, is a meditation on the precious blood that has been shed for us.

Blood can offer very powerful imagery. Blood is necessary for life. Without it, we cannot exist. To shed blood is very painful. It can be downright gruesome – especially the way in which Christ shed His blood for us. The agony and suffering inflicted by scourging Him, crowning Him with thorns, forcing Him to carry His own cross, and ultimately killing him by nailing him to a cross is truly horrifying. The blood and water flowing from His innocent and precious side are a very graphic representation of the way that Jesus gave himself for us completely.

If we are injured in some way that causes us to lose blood, the blood of another can be given to us to keep us alive. In the same way, the blood which Christ willingly shed for us is life giving. This heavenly blood offers us true sacramental grace, and can be life changing if we let it. It can become like a very powerful transfusion of grace in our lives.

Mass comes from the Latin word, missa. In Latin, the words, Ite Missa est, signified the end of the Mass, or the dismissal. The people were sent forth, much in the same way that Jesus sent His Apostles forth. This is a good reminder to us all that the grace we receive during the Sacrament of the Eucharist is not meant to be kept to ourselves. We are called to use this grace to glorify God and spread His message to others. While all may not be well equipped to preach His gospel through confrontational means or by intellectual debate, all of us can work to unite our wills more fully with the will of God. By living with the grace and peace of Christ, we can convert souls by our actions. During the Mass, we are dismissed with a commission to do just this.

I’m not sure why I keep doing this, but I have a painful habit of worrying about and trying to orchestrate the future. I’ve heard it stated (and maybe even mentioned it here before) that worry is a lack of faith. Still, I often try to get all of my ducks in a row, then rearrange them, then line them up in reverse alphabetical order, then…you get the idea.

It’s difficult to have peace when I fail to be in the moment. If I can slow my mind down long enough, I always realize how great my life is, how much God loves me, and how joyful I am to be a Catholic convert. One day, I hope that I will learn to find this peaceful state more quickly, before I lose two or three hours of sleep worrying about things that are beyond my control!

Truly, God does have a plan for me, and it is much better than what I could ever plan for myself. I have to continue discerning his will and deepening my conversion. More faith in God and his plan will result in less worry and more sleep for me.

Have you ever wondered, why bread and wine?  In order to be physically with us forever, Christ instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper.  He knew that his time with us was drawing to a close, and that we would need him with us — physically — for all time.  So he chose to make himself present to us through the Sacrament of the Eucharist — through bread and wine.

Of all the things Jesus could have chosen, he selected bread and wine.  Though there are certainly practical reasons for these choices — bread and wine were readily available to people of all classes — there has to be more to it than just practicality.

Think of the primary ingredients to bread and wine, wheat and grapes.  In their raw form, they are simple and unimpressive, yet complete and whole.  Each is certainly useful as is, without any modifications.  But when the wheat becomes bread, it becomes so much more than just wheat.  And when the grapes become wine, they take on a completely different nature, capable of bringing great cheer.

And what do these raw ingredients have to endure to become new?  The wheat is pulverized, smashed, and nearly destroyed.  The grapes are stomped and crushed — they give up all of themselves.   Both of these ingredients are completely destroyed before they rise to new life.  Christ, the innocent Son of God, was scourged, beaten, forced to carry the implement of his death, and finally crucified — but he rose again to become something even greater than we could have ever expected.  He delivers new life to us all.

Do you suppose that bread and wine were chosen only because they were practical and convenient?

I am a very competitive person.  To be entirely honest, I absolutely hate losing – at anything – to anyone.  I have always thought this to be a worthy personality trait.  After all, competition inspires people to achieve greatness, right?

Recently at Mass, the priest said that we should avoid comparing ourselves with others.  He said that doing so could be odious.  I confess that I had to Google the word odious.  It means hateful, horrible, loathsome, detestable, etc. – a pretty harsh word.  This reflection has stuck with me ever since.

Competition is really all about comparing ourselves with others.  Does this mean that my competitive spirit is odious?  I have come to the not-so-firm conclusion that maybe it is.

Just as with everything else, I think it is important for me to question my motives.  If I am competing with others for the sake of beating them so that I can wallow in the splendor of my own accomplishments, then I think this pride is ugly, hurtful, and potentially odious.

Comparison with others for the sake of admiring and striving toward their virtue has obvious merit.  But comparison that seeks to identify and be critical of another can be very contemptible.  This type of comparison is more of a judgment.  We are sizing another up to see how closely they resemble our ideals.  This variety of arrogant judgment doesn’t respect the differences between us.

We are all given certain unique gifts from God.  He calls us all to serve Him and glorify Him in different ways.  One calling is no greater than another.  Competition and comparison for the sake of realizing one’s potential and growing in the spiritual life brings glory to God, and is certainly a worthy personality trait.  Competition for the sake of winning and glorifying ourselves is ugly, sometimes hurtful, and even odious.

Our dog passed away last night.  She was nearly 11 years old, and was a big part of our family for her entire life.  Now that it has been a few hours, I feel some unusual emotions that I wanted to write about.  I say unusual because they caught me off guard.  I don’t feel the way that I expected to feel when this inevitable and sorrowful event occurred.

I was close to my dog.  She was definitely man’s best friend.  We went on hikes together, camped together, and since she was a retriever we played a lot of fetch together.  Naturally, I was devastated to lose her.  But sadness was only the first emotion to kick in.  Unlike events like this in the past where I spent most of the day and perhaps even the following few days experiencing horrendous grief, this time I turned to God almost immediately.

I immediately gave thanks to God for the long and healthy life that our pet shared with us.  I thanked him for taking her suddenly, in her sleep, without excessive suffering.  I thanked God for all the wonderful times that we shared together, and for the opportunity to teach our kids the inevitable reality of death here on Earth.  I asked him to bring our family healing.

What a difference my faith makes.  During terrible times like this, and even worse — the death of my father two years ago, I have turned to God and he has quickly brought me comfort.  I have grieved normally, but then I have been able to move on and see the greater good from each situation.  When my father died, I was able to rejoice at the healing that we both felt from the reconciliation that had occurred just months before, and I have since been able to enjoy the family that his passing has helped to reunite.  Now that our dear dog, Sadie, is gone — though I still feel sadness — I feel tremendous gratitude for all that she brought to our family.  Many families never know this blessing.  I can feel peace in knowing that we have been able to share the joy of pets with our children, and teach them good animal husbandry along the way.

Truly, my faith in God has brought me peace.  Blessed be God forever.

I am finally starting to make the connection between prayer and happiness.  This is probably very obvious to most, but I seem to be a very slow learner when it comes to life lessons such as this.  Recently, I have forced myself to meet a consistent prayer schedule – whether I feel like it, or not. 

I have written before on my belief that love is an action, not a feeling.  If I truly love God – which is the greatest commandment – then I need to show it.  Obviously this means living a life of virtue, but it also means that I need to regularly seek God in prayer.

Sometimes I feel a tremendous connection with the Lord and I am eager to pray.  I want to share with Him, praise Him, and show Him gratitude.  More often though, I am busy doing the things that bring me worldly pleasure.  I have trouble settling my mind down enough to even consider prayer.  I develop a “what’s in it for me” attitude.  At times like these, I tend to abandon prayer.  When this happens, my life always takes a turn for the worse.  I abandon God and my life gets worse.  Imagine that.

To try and combat this nonsensical and destructive pattern, I have been forcing myself to wake each morning allowing plenty of time for prayer.  When I get home from work each day, I make prayer my first priority.  And before I go to bed each night, I make sure to speak with God.  Since I’m often tired or distracted, my mind tends to wander.  To compensate for this tendency, I have been praying the Divine Office, sometimes known as the Liturgy of the Hours.
So far, this has been working well for me.  I have heard it said that it takes 21 days to form a new habit.  I’ll let you know if I stick with this one.  It’s certainly a worthy cause!

Well, it’s Holy Saturday — the last day of Lent.  I thought that I would try to summarize this year’s Lenten experience.

I have a tendency to expect too much from Lent.  It always comes during such a difficult season for me.  Where I live, we have normally endured five or six months of gray skies and rain by this time of year.  It’s very easy to become a little depressed and self absorbed.  I always look forward to Lent though because it brings me out of that winter funk and manges to lift my spirits.  Unfortunately, I often set goals that I’m not spiritually disciplined enough to keep.  While Lent always helps me grow closer to God to some degree, it usually feels like I’m returning to God rather than moving up to another level on the spiritual ladder — which is my ultimate goal.

For me to grow closer to God, I need to better embrace prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.  This Lent, I made a committment to get back on track spiritually by sacrificing computer time in favor of prayer.  I resolved to limit my home computer time to ten minutes per day, while including the Rosary each day with the time that I saved.  In addition, I committed to reducing my espresso stand trips to once per week, while donating the saved money to a charity.

Well, I pretty much failed miserably.  The first week or two went fairly well, but then I started to focus my thoughts on some job-related stress.  I had recently applied for a new position with my existing employer, and I just spent far too much time worrying about what would happen if I didn’t get that position.  For some reason, I don’t have the ability to focus on myself and on God simultaneously.  This is probably the case for most of us.  Gradually — okay, rapidly — I abandoned my Lenten objectives.  There isn’t one of them that I faithfully kept.  As a result, I began to slip into some old sinful behavior.

Fortunately, I had a good confession a couple of weeks ago.  I was able to rally and have a very strong Holy Week.  I didn’t return to my original resolutions, but I did manage to include about 45 minutes of prayer each day.  As a result, I feel renewed — ready to greet our Risen Savior.

This past 40 days, I certainly didn’t meet my expectations — not by a long shot.  It looks like I have a lot of work to do in order to gain the spiritual discipline that I truly desire.  Not all is lost, however.  While I did fall short of my goals, I did manage to return to Christ — thanks be to God!  I feel renewed and ready to take on the world.  Oh, and on another positive note, I start my new position in about a week.  God is so good.