The Ultimate Wedding Singer

How close do you want to be with God?

I guess it depends on where we are in this sometimes amazing, often confusing, maybe mundane or heart-wrenching journey of life. I think in the beginning that question can send a little shiver up the back of our necks. Intimacy with God? Yikes. God is just a Big Person, and we're like little kids in the Principal's office. Intimacy isn't in the vocabulary yet.

As we mature and "find ourselves," maybe we see God differently. But we're afraid that He will take over, take all of me, in the relationship. "Be all demanding and stuff." What about my freedom, my personality, my style? Will there be anything left in me but a bland sort of niceness? Will God just pour "holiness" into the mold of my being while the flavor that is me slowly dissipates?

"Oh, yeah. He used to be so much fun. Then he became.... a Christian."

I think in our American culture, so focused on ME that we forget about the OTHER, the idea of becoming holy somehow feels like an affront to our freedom. In our minds, becoming holy could even connote becoming less human. Closeness with God equates with far-ness from fun.

Now if all we've got is this skewed vision, I would affirm those fears. I didn't want to give in when I first heard the Divine Whisper, slipping through the scenes of Luke Skywalker watching the suns set, or in the mystical melodies of John Williams, or the sculptured and ethereal beauties of the Sistine Chapel. For the above reasons and for more, I was a little nervous about leaping into the arms of this unearthly Love. Does this resonate with anyone?

I think through fear of losing ourselves in a relationship with God, we then fail to really give ourselves fully to anyone. We end up stagnating in a pool of doubt, giving part of hearts but not all, or worse, we go through relationships grasping instead of trusting that love will be given.

In those classic lines from the film The Wedding Singer... We give up on this idea of selfless love. Robbie decides to live footloose and fancy free like Sammy:

Robbie: "That's it, man, starting right now, me and you are going to be free and happy the rest of our lives!"

But then a person gets to wondering if there's more to this highway than just my way.

Sammy: "I'm not happy. I'm miserable."

Robbie: "Wha - what?"

Sammy: "See... I grew up idolizing guys like Fonzie and Vinnie Barbarino because they got a lot of chicks. You know what happened to Fonzie and Vinnie Barbarino?"

Robbie: "Yeah, I read that Fonzie wants to be a director and Barbarino, I think... the mechanical bull movie? I didn't see it yet."

Sammy: "Their shows got canceled. Because no one wants to see a fifty-year-old guy hitting on chicks."

Robbie: "So what are you saying?"

Sammy: "What I'm saying is all I really want is someone to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be all right."

There it is.

Read Scripture. All He wants is to gather us in like a mother hen gathers her chicks. Who made the love we want afterall? Who set it swirling into time and space, tumbling straight into the world from the mystical Heart of the Trinity?

When we're quiet and alone, we can get those deep thoughts. You might come up with an answer that sounds like the one Augustine whispered to himself way back in the 4th century (the human heart never changes). "The deepest desire of my heart is to see another and to be seen by that other person."

So we can let Him in. In fact, if we want to really know love, we must let Him in. And then when we hear a gospel like today's, we can smile:

"The mother of Jesus and his brothers arrived at the house. Standing outside, they sent word to Jesus and called him. A crowd seated around him told him, "Your mother and your brothers and your sisters are outside asking for you." But he said to them in reply, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" And looking around at those seated in the circle he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."
- Mark 3:31-35

Imagine being one of those people gathered around Him, in the dusky twilight of the Judean hills, when those words of Divine Intimacy first fell from His lips... When Love Divine breathed through our biology, and we could touch theology!

Today, I am invited into this circle. I too can sit before Him, in the light of this Face; the face of the man who entered into our human family to lift us up to His Divine Family. That Family is my true home, that Love is my destiny. Come Lord Jesus...

______________________________

Originally posted at The Heart of Things

How Can I Bring God into a Dating Relationship?

What a powerful question, but I feel I should warn you right from the start, that’s dangerous business. Once you let God in there’s no telling where things might end up. In the immortal words of Kip Dynamite, you just might find your “soulmate” and be ridiculously at peace for the rest of your life.

First off, I think we should revisit just what we mean when we speak of the reality of God. I think this is key because the world can often distort the true image of God. The clear waters of our baptism can get a little muddied by our personal sins, and a true image of God can get twisted into something either scary, distant, or always waving a finger at us when we mess up. Is that God?

Let’s go back to the beginning…

Remember when you were five or six and the world was one big Wonder Land? Everything was a gift then, wasn’t it? From a snack to a bike ride to snowflakes. Here’s the thing: we need to see everything still as a gift, as something flowing from the Giver that is meant to bring us joy. This counts for people too. So as you grow older, meet new friends, start dating, the best attitude is to see in everything the gift that God wants to give. A mystic named Caryll Houselander once said “Every ordinary thing in your life is a word of God's love: your home, your work, the clothes you wear, the air you breathe, the food you eat.... the flowers under your feet are the courtesy of God's heart flung down on You! All these things say one thing only: ‘See how I love you.’”

Wow. So who is God? Ultimately the One Whose Love is the seed of all loves! If that’s the case, how could we not have Him as a part, and indeed the heart, of all of our relationships, especially the ones that have the spark of love in them? If we keep God (aka Love) out of our relationships, then what are they based on?

STARTLING NEWS:
All that is Good, True, and Beautiful participates in God. When you see a great movie that moves you, and you talk about it, you’re sharing in God. When you go to visit your boyfriend’s sick grandpa or go to Mass on a Sunday with your girlfriend (great idea), you’re living in God. When you walk in the fields together and you’re struck by the beauty of creation, you are both sharing in the beauty of the Creator. If you’re an honest seeker of the Good, the True and the Beautiful, then you already have God at the heart of your relationships. The next step is naming this, acknowledging Him; not being afraid to admit that He’s the One you want at the heart of your dating. (It’s a great way to clear away superficiality and pettiness, trust me.)

Letting God into our dating is a real adventure. It keeps things real, and wakes us up to the miracle of our uniqueness; the uniqueness of everyone, every shade and texture on this coat of many colors that is the human family. This is not easy, especially for teenagers with the weight of peer pressure bearing down. But we must look into each other's eyes. We must return to that innocence and openness that we had as children, looking, seeing, receiving the gift, not grasping at it. If we see dating as sharing in God’s gifts, then life will become this adventure!

There’s a line at the end of Les Miserables….. “to love another person is to see the face of God.” Wow. Take that one to the dating scene. Make respectful love the first move, not lust, and you’ll find God in the center of that relationship. Let the journey begin!

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.