Practice our Catholic Faith, on our journey to Heaven

Some of you might wonder….why in the world is Mark meditating on Reconciliation? I’m glad you asked. In my role as Spiritual Director for our parish’s Men’s CRHP team, we just hit formation session eight…Reconciliation (see? full circle!). Here are my thoughts.

First, please understand – I am a convert. As such, I think I tend to have a slightly different take on some things. All Converts do, I find. Reconciliation is one of the Four (Five?) Reasons I Joined The Church. The others being Eucharist, Apostolic Succession and beeswax candles (ehh…no. Faith and Reason Together). All of my young adult life I had asked other Christians, “how do I know I am forgiven?” The myriad of answers astounded me. “Believe and receive” was the most popular, follwed with, “you just KNOW”. Umm…OK. So, when I first went to Confession, and the priest (in persona Christe) said, “your sins are forgiven,” I almost jumped for joy! Imagine! I finally KNEW!! Why? Christ told me HIMSELF!! I skipped home that day, it was so liberating!!

This begs the question then…why don’t I hit Reconciliation weekly? After all, we hit the Eucharist weekly, some of us more often than that. For me, it’s all about being honest with myself, brutally honest. If I go and confess sins, that means I have to admit, to myself and to one other, that I’m not perfect, I’m a sinner. I’m not the great guy I think I really am. Deep down, yeah, I love my wife, but….wow…some of the people I see…well…they look REALLY good! Or…I have to admit that…deep down…I think maybe I’m better than someone else. That’s heavy. I have to face up to the ugliness I hide within myself, and nobody likes to do that. But the whole time I’m thinking, “you know, I really do NOT want to face all this” the Spirit is saying, “face it, admit it, and move on…all will be well…trust me”.

It’s liberating.

To know that I can go to Christ, tell Him, “Ummm…yeah…about last week…” and to hear Him reply, “I know. I was there. I forgive you. Now go, strive to do better.” That’s HUGE.

My brother had the same reaction, although I’d imagine he’s now like me and doesn’t go to Reconciliation as often as he’d like. We allow the urgent to overtake the important.

I think this week I’ll go and confess. It’s really been way too long. I challenge the rest of the team to pray, think, meditate and consider going to Reconciliation too. I’ll go Friday, in uniform, to Holy Trinity in downtown Evansville, then to Mass. I know I need it.

This Sunday. It’s been years since I’ve had the opportunity to share my own story, so I’m pretty excited about it. So I’m going through songs to use, and stumbled on this one. Enjoy!

%{color:blue}We in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
We in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong
So we follow God’s own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable, come be a fool as well%

One evening, Kim (Mrs 3200) and I were driving home after a weekend of preparing a house to sell. I made the statement that, “I refuse to believe that Holy Mother the Church, which has existed for over 2000 years, would take the stance that sex is just for procreating.” Now, I’m a convert, so making audacious, uninformed statements like this are easy for me. Kim, a “cradle” Catholic put up some fight, but decided to agree to disagree. Naturally, I hit the Catechism that night and showed her where the Church does indeed say sex is for fun too (my paraphrase). Then it started…I was also working with the Newman Center (OK, directing it) at Wabash College. I mentioned this to them, and one of them hinted at Theology of the Body. So, I started to research, hit Amazon, ordered (and read) a book or two and it was on. Really, it’s so much more than just great sex within a marriage. Yeah, that’s the surfacey stuff, but it’s really a ton more mystical. The difficult part of this is to paint a picture of really how deep and rich this is, without going into all the details. Plus, Christopher West does a much, much better job. It’s as rich and as full as the rest of Catholic tradition, wraps up a ton of existing beliefs and really brings a lot of things full circle. In a word, it’s amazing!

Writing about running today has reminded me of several things (things to write, not like, to add to the lists, but I could…). Last night, my wife looked at me, after I had complained about something that wasn’t working for me and said, “The role of victim isn’t something that fits you.” Wow, that hit hard. But she’s right – if I choose to not run, I get to be a victim. If I choose to not pray, or BE Catholic, I get to be a victim. It seems like a tough choice at the time – wake up and run, or make some time and pray, or take a minute and pray for someone else – but is it really all that difficult? What’s the payoff if I don’t do those things? I get to be out of shape, I get to blame someone else, and I get to be…a victim. But what if I make the choice and take the action? I get to be a Mensch. I get to be myself, without the victim taking up time. I don’t have to make excuses for stuff I didn’t do. I feel a new Thing coming on.