Dear Lord,
Thank you for this period of my life, and for this place you've brought me to. A year ago this would have been unthinkable, and I could not have handled it. You, however, have cultivated me and brought me to a place which I could not have dreamed.
I was called to service, and I thought I was being called to helping the poor, the homeless. The call to service was strong. However, the opportunity you placed before me was to run the Knights of Columbus Cor program for my council. And I said yes.
It's not what I was thinking in terms of work, and it's definitely a lot more responsibility than my original desire would have given me. It has been taking a lot of time, and is causing me a lot of stress. Yet, I'm bearing it. I could not have a year ago. Thank you. For all of this.
Lord, I'm at what feels like an infliction point. I thank you for buying me another two weeks to formulate a better plan, and prepare for it.
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To be a man is indeed a blessing! It is awesome! But the blessing and the awesomeness aren't because manliness makes us cool, it's because manhood is an incredible burden God has bestowed on us, and he uses that burden to give us a bit of guidance on how to follow him. To give us opportunities to serve him. Manhood is our path to God, and we probably ought to strap in. Our meetings aren't meant to be a celebration of manhood. They're meant to be a call to arms, to up our game, and to be the men Christ wants us to be. They're places we can come together to bond as men that we may lighten the heavy load our lives as men will assuredly be. They're meant to be invigorating and challenging. We will sometimes walk away from these meetings unsettled. Jesus wants us to follow him. Simple to say, hard to do. What's that look like for us? How does one follow Christ, as a man, in our current environment, and most importantly in each one of our lives?
It's likely there will be very few clear answers given to us during our time together. At least not for the group at large. There are probably a few clear answers for each individual on what to do, and what to change that will come to each person as we progress. But if you want clarity, go to the 10 Commandments. This class will be focusing less on the 10 commandments, and more on the Beatitudes. Living the Beatitudes is a much harder row to hoe, a tougher path to follow. I don't know about you, but I don't find it particularly hard not to murder, or to cheat on my wife with your wife. Sure, I slip on the 10 commandments, but the greatest commandment is love. That's a much more subtle and difficult way of living. And the best guide we have in order to live that commandment are the Beatitudes.
We won't always focus explicitly on the Beatitudes, but they underlie everything we're going to talk about. Why? Because that's what Chris told us to do. Not pop culture, not Western or American tradition, nor, dare I say, what our political in-groups tell us, regardless of which side of the aisle they're on, not a romanticized version of how a man should be that many of us hold in our hearts and our minds. But the tender, tough, meek, clement, courageous, forgiving, compassionate, table kicking, but tax-collector-collecting, self-sacrificing version of us Christ exemplified and described. To me, it's easy not to covet your wife, but hard to love my in-laws. Yet that's precisely what Christ is telling me to do. He's not telling us to be victims of abuse, but he is telling us to forgive, forget, and move forward without bitterness, and with joy and lightness in our hearts. Moving forward without bitterness, or anger, and in love is the action. The saints often said it's not as much about what we do as it is how we do it. Christ is telling us to look past the facade, and look into the heart of our fellow humans. See Christ in their hearts, regardless of what they look like, or even how they act. Christ is in each one of us, even the people we dislike, or fear the most.
We're going to work on seeing Christ in others. We're actually going to work on seeing God in all things. We're going to work toward seeing the blessings in our lives which we may not have seen as blessings before. God is all around us pouring his grace into you and your lives at all times and everywhere. We do not deserve His Grace or His Mercy, which we'll also learn about. But he gives it to us anyway, because he loves us. He wants us to spend eternity with him. We're not simply called to believe in Christ and then all things are good. No no....that's not our brand of Christianity. Christ calls us to follow Him. That's a taller order. That means to not only believe, but to trust Him, to entrust our lives to Him, and to try to live up to His example, and His deepest desires for us. To be His servants to help us manifest His kingdom on earth. And he gives us all the help we need in order to do that. But.....do we see it? Hear it? Are we listening? He's talking. And we'll also spend time learning to hear Him.
Jesus promised that we would have peace and joy if we took on His burden, which he promised would be easy and light. He did not say your life would be easy though, only that doing His will would be easy......in the face of great hardship at times. He promised that you could be peaceful and joyful, while also going through hell on his behalf. [clarify what He really meant]. He didn't promise you wealth, luxury or ease as a reward for your virtue. No no....that's not our brand of Christianity. He promised you peace and joy as your reward for carrying His burden, even if that means you lay your head on a rolled up pair of blue jeans in your hovel at night. [find scripture to support this, and to refute other parts of scripture which say you'll be rewarded, and wealthy, etc.].
Much of what we're going to learn about and work on isn't unique to men. In fact, most of it isn't. But it's all necessary to becoming the men Christ is calling us to be.
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A lot of us know a lot about God, but we don't necessarily know God. If I were the foremost historian on George Washington. Knew every single thing about him, down to his preferred pipe tobacco blend on Wednesday evening, would I know George Washington? If I've never met you, never talked with you, never lived besides you, worked beside you, argued with you even....would I know you?
These meetings are meant to take us beyond knowledge about God, to knowing God. Obviously we won't be achieving all of these things during the duration of just the first wave of these meetings. These are things which can take years and year depending on where we're starting. But this isn't about knowing what the Beatitudes mean, but about living the Beatitudes. Folding them into ourselves so that they become a part of who we are.
And on that note, we know as Catholics that the greatest commandment is love, and that love is a theological virtue. And being a theological virtue means it's not something we can really increase and cultivate in ourselves by ourselves. So God is literally commanding us to do what's impossible for us to do.
So does this mean God is setting us up for failure? [look around, point gently]
Of course not. Our God is a loving God and longs for our love. He knows our weakness and he meets us in that weakness. He doesn't so much perfect our deficiencies as he incorporates our unique existence, warts and all, into his divine plan. He uses all of us, good and bad, to bring about his Kingdom. You are but the ass Jesus rides into Jerusalem. Nothing more, and nothing less. But to do that willingly and knowingly is the most honorable thing.
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Another thing I'd like to help some of us get past. One of the most interesting and awesome things about the catholic faith is how much there is to learn. It's beautiful. It's fascinating. It's uplifting. It's a whole bunch of other good adjectives.
One of the most common pitfalls of the catholic faith is how much they're use to learn. The body of knowledge is so vast and there is such a plenitude of content available at the click of a button that we often feel compelled to consume more of it than we can actually do anything with. And sometimes we get lulled into thinking that vast knowledge is holiness. That it somehow stands in for living our faith.
What if I made the claim that I think you all probably already have enough head knowledge to get to heaven? How much would that make you want to not come back next time because you would think I was a spiritual quack? Well I claim that, and I claim it wholeheartedly. We are on earth to know, love and serve God. Not simply to know about God, but to know God. To have an intimate, ever deepening relationship with Him where we learn to be evermore sensitive to his will word, and docile to his will.
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Some of you guys may not find the 10 commandments so easy. Some of you may be struggling with sin. Or with addiction. Or with serious temptation. Some of you may even be questioning your identity. Your sexual orientation, or even your sex. This place. This place is still for you. Why? Because God meets us where we are. All of us are called to a loving relationship with God. Even while we struggle with sin, with temptation, with confusion. In the it is during this time God most longs for the. Even at the moment we are committing sin, God is already longing for us. He wants us to stop pushing him away. He sees us and is moved to compassion when we are at our lowest, our most sinful and when we're the most ashamed. It is only in our weakness that God can be merciful. The greater the sinner, the greater God wants to impart his mercy. If God only loved us after we were good enough he'd never love any of us. We'd all be doomed for we are all sinners. Jesus's sacrifice doesn't make us good enough, it wipes away our debt. It makes heaven possible. True? God mercy makes us good enough. We aren't worthy of God's love. God loves us therefore we are worthy. God's love caused us to exist, God's love sustains us, God's love is the only thing that makes us worthy and the only thing worth our time. Yes, there is much we have to do in our daily lives which seems mundane. Trivial. Not worth God's time. But every task and every millisecond should be executed and used for the glory of God.
I can't say that nobody will be a saint after they get through the first few months of our training here, because God will do whatever he wants. But if I were to say that I wouldn't lose any sleep. What we want to achieve here is exposure to what might be a new type of spirituality for many of you. A tried and true type of spirituality. A working man's spirituality that's built cathedrals, started universities, and gotten plenty of men (and women) to heaven. A practical spirituality. It's practitioners are what St. Ignatius called contemplatives in the world. We want to incorporate this spirituality into everything we do and into every moment of our lives. None of us will be masters, but my goal is that we all realize how parched we are for the living water, and how desperately we need God at all moments. That we at least begin to see God in our daily lives, and perhaps.....perhaps....even start hearing him.
Gentlemen, welcome to Cor. If you do this right, this will probably make your life harder, but infinitely more beautiful. It will be a life well lived, and a life you didn't know you wanted.That's not my promise to you, that's God's promise to you.