The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

The Matrix was a film trilogy that captivated many (including me!) a few years back, by tapping into the deepest questions we have as humans: Why are we here? Is there more than just this life? What is the Truth of our origins? Where can I find it?

Unfortunately, as the series moved forward, it became a tangled cacophony of too many philosophies and theologies. In the end, it was just another brand of gnosticism wrapped in shiny 20th century special effects (oh but what sweet special effects!)

Despite the philosophical fogginess in these films, there were some incredible "teaching" moments. One of my favorites happens in the initial conversation between Neo (the Chosen One who slowly discovers his purpose) and Morpheus (the sage character who leads Neo out of the darkness of deception).

Morpheus: ... Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind - driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Neo: The Matrix?

Morpheus: Do you want to know what it is? (Neo nods his head.)

Morpheus: The Matrix is everywhere, it is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, or when go to church or when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison for your mind. (long pause, sighs) Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. (In his left hand, Morpheus shows a blue pill.)

Morpheus: You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. (A red pill is shown in his other hand) You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. (Long pause; Neo begins to reach for the red pill) Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more. (Neo takes the red pill and swallows it with a glass of water)

Glimmers of the Truth on the silver screen? No doubt.Isn't there, for all of us, an inherent sense of something being "off" in the world, in our own hearts, in our relationships. Something we can't seem to name exactly... but we know it's there...

"But you feel it. You felt it your entire life."

We should ask ourselves "Is this how it's always been? Should we ever expect Something More?"

"Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born inside a prison...."

Original Sin. The break in our origins as persons made to give but given in to grasp at the gifts and promises God wants to give us. But our culture is constantly tossing the wool over our eyes, filtering values, watering down truth, trying to erase our memories of that Original Grace, that Garden, that peace and love that runs deeper than lust. In the words of Pope John Paul II, it's the "heritage of our hearts" and it has real "salvific power." In other words, it can save us. It can liberate us from the prison of sin. But it's not in a pill we can take, or a program we can attend, or even in a self-help section at the bookstore. It pours out freely from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.

But it is the self that must seek the help, must look up, look out of the stony place in the heart and beg for the chisel and the hammer that can break us and set us free.So we do have to make a choice. And therein lies our greatest power, our deepest identity. We are free to choose. And here is the other favorite scene of mine, taken from the final installment of the Matrix Trilogy; there is an epic battle at the film's conclusion where Neo must face Agent Smith and defeat him. Neo is beaten down, nearly destroyed and seemingly the odds are against him. Smith stands over him in what looks like the moment that will end all things.

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more that your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose... You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

What will we choose today in the many encounters we'll experience? Will we reach out of the prison of the self, the lens of lust and grasping and egocentricity that we've been told is the only reality? Or will we dig deeper into that heritage of our hearts, that Original Innocence God created us in? Will we choose to reach up and out and into the Other? Into the New Grace that streams down from the Cross?He has the power to take us out of ourselves.... finally. Do we believe?

"Remember -- all I am offering is the truth, nothing more."

Answering Your Questions

Dear Young Women and Men,

An official HELLO from the blogosphere to all who shared in our forum on Catholic Dating and Sexual Morality for Teens this week at the Archdiocesan Office Center. As one of the "older" crowd who shared that day, I have to say it was a GOOD day. Good to hear from you, good to be with you. There was a real spirit of openness and honesty that I believe helped all of us grow, and that's the goal... closer to each other and to an understanding of what God's plan for us really looks like.

This blog is meant to serve as an open and creative communicator for us all; a two way street where we can keep up the talk and help others in the walk of living the truth of Love. So, post a comment, a thought, a burning question and we will unpack it, talk about it, and try to offer some solid answers based on our experiences, straight from our hearts and the heart of what we believe as Catholics.

NOW the stinky news.... due to the nature of open blogs like this one, we will need to moderate the comments. Who knows who might pop in unannounced and splash some trash in here? So don't be surprised if your comments don't show right off the bat. We'll be posting them as soon as we read and answer them!

In the meantime, we've got a few posts up for your reading pleasure and some great websites over to the right >

Peace and Prayers, and stay tuned!

Bill Donaghy

"I wanna know what love is.... I want you to show me!"

- Foreigner

PS - Let us know what can make this tool the best it can be!

Refresher Points on the TOB Talk

- We are a unity of body and soul, bodies that eat and sleep, play and work in this world.

- And yet we are immortal; we will live forever!

- We are different from the animals! We alone have FREEDOM to choose good from evil.

- We also have the power to LOVE.

- Our spirits reflect something of the mystery of God who is Pure Spirit.

- However, our bodies also reflect something of the great mystery of God in the world.

- That great mystery is the amazing call to love as God loves, lived out in our bodies!

- We must become a GIFT of pure love to others if we are to truly find out who we are!

In the Beginning.... God's Original Plan

God's original plan for us is one of union and communion, not division and disruption. But sin has weighed us down; our bodies and our souls are often at war. We all have such deep wounds, and twisted truths that the culture has been cramming down our throats our whole lives.

But it doesn't have to be this way! Grace gives us the upper hand. Openness to Grace transforms heart and mind and, in a certain sense, restores us to our origins. Grace teaches us the truth about our bodies: that they are meant to be shining sacraments that house the Divine Mystery!

What's that? Listen to Pope John Paul's thought:

"So in man created in the image of God there was revealed, in a way, the very sacramentality of creation, the sacramentality of the world."

Huh?

Back to School: A sacrament is a visible sign given to us by Christ to communicate grace (His very life). There are 7 capital "S" sacraments, but we could also say there's a whole host of little "s" sacraments; visible signs that inwardly speak to us of God. I bet you could think of a half a dozen right now.

The human body, and the call of man and woman to be one flesh, is the primordial sacrament!

Pope John Paul II spent the first 5 years of his calling as Pope to teach this truth to the world, a world still ravaged (like today) by the confusion and disorder of the sexual revolution. From 1979 through 1984, John Paul gave 129 short talks from Rome on the meaning of the body, marital intimacy, and the call of man and woman to become one flesh! Have you ever heard of this teaching? Sadly, many have not. It's called the Theology of the Body.

Spiritual Filet Mignon (chew slowly)

"The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible what is invisible; the spiritual and divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden in God since time immemorial." (Pope John Paul II, Feb. 1980)

What is that mystery hidden in God that the body reveals? It is His very own LIFE.

God Himself, the Catechism tells us, is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and He has destined us to share in that exchange! We are destined to be drawn up into the very heart of God!! To enter into the Great Dance!! And God wanted this mystery to be so clear to us that He stamped it's image right into our bodies, by creating them male and female. Think about it: Man gives himself to woman, woman receives man and from their union a Third person soon emerges. In a tiny, earthy, sacramental way, three persons make one family, one family as three persons. Coincidence? I don't think so!

This is crazy. This is beyond our wildest dreams. Have you ever heard of this? Is your image of God that of an old man with a beard sitting on a cloud? Has the image of Heaven you've grown up with ever felt, well, kinda boring? A little disconnected from the life you experience here and now? Pope John Paul II taught us in this Theology of the Body that the closest image we can fathom here and now of God and Heaven is by the image of the marital embrace of husband and wife and all the joys they experience through that embrace.

Whoa.

Now this is the best analogy we can have, he says, but at the same time, all analogies that we can conceive of in our human experience still fall infinitely short of the transcendent reality of Who God is. But the best analogy we can have is this embrace.

Again, I say... wow.

This Bliss, the resurrection of our bodies and their ultimate union with our souls and our total union with God in a heavenly marriage, is foreshadowed and already happening in the Holy Eucharist. This is where we can become, really, one flesh with Jesus! This is why he called Himself the Bridegroom! Marriage as we experience it here below is a foretaste of the Heavenly Marriage. The Eucharist is a foretaste of Heaven! And we are called to become walking tabernacles that tell the world this truth of our deepest identity and our ultimate destiny!

Whew.... let's take this to prayer. Let's be still. This is nuts. This is Catholicism!

Find a quiet corner and ponder this Mystery. Take a soda break, go for a walk. Better still, make some time today to sit before Jesus in a silent church, bring Him the twisted truths you've grown up with, open up your heart to this Divine Doctor of your body and soul and say "awe."

- originally from the Heart of Things

It's All About the Body and This Fancy Latin Phrase

Caro cardo salutis - these three words contain the whole of the gospel, the whole of salvation history and the entire plan of God! They are from Tertullian, written in the year 208, and they translate as saying the flesh is the hinge of salvation.

Hold up... wass'at? The flesh? The body? This weak, fragile, and faltering thing that needs so much care and attention. THIS is the hinge of salvation? We're accustomed to hearing that the soul is what's saved, and that the very act of saving is a spiritual thing. What's the body got to do with it?

"A body you have prepared for me," says Psalm 40, and echoed in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews. In the fullness of time the Infinite, All Knowing, All Powerful Word descended into time and space and took on our flesh. And so the body became a theology - a Word of God. The Word of God!

But why? Why should the flesh be the hinge of salvation? Why couldn't God just say all's well. "I forgive you, come on home."?

Because we are our bodies! And we need saving. Our bodies are not like bags holding us, or decorations dressing the soul, like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Our bodies are not like pieces of luggage that allow us to carry our souls around, and once we reach Heaven we can empty out the suitcase.

We are our bodies!

We are embodied spirits, or ensouled flesh... a harmony, a unity of the material and the spiritual, unique in all creation! And when our First Father and Mother sinned in the Garden of Eden, the shockwaves of that act of disobedience rippled throughout the material world as well as the spiritual. We needed the Word to become Flesh, the Obedient One to come into our time and space - to walk and breathe and sweat and suffer for us who are so often disobedient. In His Body, He takes the bullet for us, dies, sleeps, wakes and rises again! We are saved in and through His Body. A real Body! So the flesh is truly the hinge of salvation, on which the door to Life swings open wide that was once shut tight.

- this first appeared on the Heart of Things

What's the Theology of the Body?

There's quite a buzz these days in certain circles about a so-called Theology of the Body. So what is it? Well, in 60 seconds or less, the TOB is a biblical reflection on what it means to be human, male and female. Where do we come from and where are we going? It looks at the two greatest questions we can ask; "Who am I? And Who is God?"

The starting point for getting to the answers is us! Real men and women, guys and girls, in the midst of all our desires and experiences and relationships. The key in this study lies in a whole vision of the human body; not just as a biological organism, but as a theological reality.

What is it about us that makes us so restless in this world, different from the animals, always hungry, always searching for More? The TOB looks at love as a lead into the answer. It says that in our call to communion with each other as man and woman, in human love, there is something of the Divine, something touching on the Infinite. All human love is a sign, an icon, a pointer to Something Beyond ourselves.... and that's pretty dang exciting.

If you're reading this and feel suddenly like a little kid watching the stars (the way I did when I first heard this teaching) allow me to continue by saying that God has stamped right in our bodies a mystery that reveals Who He is! This is crazy! You see, a man is called to be a gift, in his very body, for the woman. And the woman is called to receive this gift right in her very body as woman. And this beautiful coming together of husband and wife creates new life! And the union, as beautiful, powerful, and wonderful as it can be, is really just the first sparks of the Love that we are made for beyond this world.

The Church says that in the joys of their love, God gives spouses a foretaste of the joys of Heaven.

Did you ever hear that one in Sunday School? That's right from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.