Betting Big with Someone Else's Money

     Gambling with someone else's money is very nerve-wracking. One time I went to casino with some of my friends and had the misfortune of forgetting to put extra money in my wallet. All I had was three one dollar bills! I was all prepared to spend the evening as a spectator and cheerleader for the rest of our group, but one of my friends, perhaps tired of my peering over his shoulder as he played, pulled $20 out of his pocket and told me to go win some money and give him back his investment when the night was over. Easier said then done!

     I barely played at all that evening, for fear of losing what my friend had loaned me. I played more cautiously than usual and by the end of the night, I had a mere $8 to return to my friend. Of course, I returned the rest to him the next time I saw him. But the point is, I feared losing that night because the money was not mine, and I lost in large part due to my trepidation.

      My experience reminds me, albeit imperfectly, to the Lord's "Parable of the Talents". (Mt 25:14-29) To briefly summarize, a master lends talents (units of Roman currency) to three servants. To one he gives 5, to another 2, and to the last just 1. While the master is away, the servants with 5 and 2 talents each traded with others and were able to secure double their original amounts. Upon returning, the master is well pleased with these two for their shrewd investments. When he confronts the one to which he had given one, however, he is dismayed and angered to find that the servant, out of fear, had chosen to simply bury the talent and wait to return it to his master. He takes the talent back and sends the servant away in disgrace.

      Today, we all have our share of "talents" or abilities. If we believe in God, then we ought to realize that none of these are of our own merit, but rather gifts given for us to cultivate. For reasons known only to God, not all have equal talents. Yet we all have been loaned at least something with which to "gamble" in this life. During my time here in Costa Rica, I've had the pleasure of getting to know a great group of students who have tremendous abilities, tremendous gifts. Some have a passion for social justice, others for the environment and its safe-keeping for future generations to enjoy. Some our eloquent speakers, others powerful writers. Some are amazingly honest and forthright, others jovial and abundantly kind-hearted. All of us have some quality which God has never given to anyone else in the history of creation. As He spoke to the prophet Jeremiah, I know the plans I have for you...plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jer 29:11) These plans will not go unfulfilled, unless we choose not to invest our talents wisely, to gamble with them on the faith that belief in God's revealed Word entails.

      There is a temptation always to hold back and save something of what we have been given for later. There is a desire to use our abilities to benefits ourselves and not others. But this is not God's will. As the record-breaking runner Steve Prefontaine said, to give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. As we see in the parable, the person who gives less than his or her best is liable to lose what he or she does have, like a mother who does not care for the child placed under her care is liable to have that child taken away. The Lord does not keep the pearls of His goodness amongst the swine of the Earth, so to speak.

     Jesus asks us to trust Him when He tells us to "bet big" with the gift His Father has rendered to us. To our jaded sensibilities, this seems extremely foolish. What if we are wrong? What if we end up losing? Yet we are called to go beyond our mere reason and have faith in what we cannot see clearly. If we do so, we will come to find that the game is fixed for our benefit. God who loaned us the money has an inside man, His Son Jesus, who has been counting the cards and knows we are due for a blackjack. The old gambler's adage has never been truer than it is when betting on God: It ain't gamblin' if you know you're gonna win!

Easter People

     This past week, I've done a lot of thinking about the future of religion liberty in the United States. It certainly appears now that the Obama Administration is fully ready to transform the country's two century-plus tradition of freedom of religion into a sort of constricted freedom to worship. For many, the difference seems fairly benign. But for those of us who acknowledge God's dominion and at least partially comprehend what that implies and requires, the change is simply unacceptable. The President would like to limit religion in this country to the free practice of our "rituals"--Mass, Baptism, Marriage (for now), etc--but not allow us to bring our faith and consciences into our public lives. He seems to fail to realize that we cannot capitulate his desires because our religion goes beyond what we do in our churches, our synagogues, our mosques; it is who we are, not what we do occasionally.

     As Christians, we have been specifically charged with the task of evangelizing and declaring our creed. Jesus' last words to His disciples (us) were: go therefore and make disciples of all nations. (Mt 28:19) As one can plainly see, this puts Christians in direct opposition with the President. Something has to give, and as the Church has shown in its 2,000 year history, it will not be us.

     The President is symptomatic or a larger societal problem. Just yesterday, the student government at Tufts University, outside Boston, voted to withdraw recognition of the student group Tufts Christian Fellowship. Their reasoning is that the group violates the school's non-discrimination policy because it requires its leaders be Christian! The claim would be comical if it wasn't so absurdly anti-religious. What would occur if the group was an African-american student association instead: would they force the group to allow a white supremacist be on its board?

      Make no mistake: religion is under assault by our government and by a large portion of our society. For myself, at least, there is a tendency to always view these types of battles in a positive light. After all, if God is for us, who can be against us? (Rom 8:31) However, we can often forget that this does not at all guarantee that things will get better here in the United States, or for us in our Earthly lives, or for anyone anytime soon. We must remember that this world is passing away, and we very well might and very likely will see far worse days between now and its end. That is not to say that Christians are not obliged to try to convert hearts. What it does mean is we need to be chiefly focused on continual process of converting our own. We must be increasingly on guard to see that the delusions of the world--its pride, namely--do not come fester inside our souls, rotting our morality. We must remember the truth that Saint Augustine relayed: we are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

     What does it mean to be "Easter people"? It means to know the love that God has for us. More accurately, it is knowledge of the love God is. For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16) Dear readers, that is TRUTH. It is something the world cannot offer and simultaneously it is really all Christianity has to offer. What more is there? God so loves the world--this world that so despises Him-- that He will sacrifice Himself to make us partakers in His Divine nature for all eternity. If we believe and understand that, we cannot help but love God in return and seek to do His will.

On Poverty: In Nicaragua and Costa Rica

     This past weekend, some friends and I went to San Juan del Sur, a very touristy town in Nicaragua on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. The hostel we stayed at about 45 minutes from the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border, if you're driving very fast down a highway in the bed of a pickup truck while the resulting wind makes your eyes drier then Ben Stein's while simultaneously permanently damaging your hearing in your right ear (I would be completely deaf is I did not have the foresight to sit on the opposite side on the return trip, thus exposing my already damaged ear to more wind; you can't go deaf twice, as they say in Nicaragua!!!).

      It was immediately obvious, despite this town possessing a higher population of foreigner residents than the average Nicaraguan city, that we were in a place of greater poverty than we usually experience in our neighborhoods. The building (houses especially) were just a bit older and a bit more shoddily constructed, even by Central American standards. The presence of street hawkers selling sunglasses and iPhone covers mostly to wealthy tourists was more conspicuous, even to the point of them entering into restaurants and attempting to make sales (the restaurants did not seem to care).

     While I enjoyed my weekend, I couldn't help but be keenly aware of the tremendously different experience I was having in comparison to that hawker five feet aware. Even beyond the obvious reality that I was a tourist and he a resident--that this was my getaway while this is sum total of his existence--it struck me how different our two days cohabiting San Juan were spent. While I spent over $100 on nice meals, a "booze cruise" and various other luxuries, I suspect my fellow human selling his sunglasses has never had $100 to his name. While I retired at night to an adequate if not exactly plush bed, it is not out of the realm of possibility that he might live in a small shack on the floor or perhaps somewhere on the beach. If not he, than certainly some of his countrymen face this sad reality.

     I hadn't expected to notice the poverty so acutely this past weekend. In an ironic twist, I had asked a friend if she had a book that I could borrow to read on the bus and beach, and she lent me George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. The novel chronicles the time Orwell spent as an early adult penniless in those two great European cities. He speaks of actually spending nights on the street spent sleeping on benches and days spent hungry for lack of money. He talks about how a life of poverty ruins people, rendering their bodies ravaged from malnutrition, their minds weakened from monotony and their wills crushed by the boredom of having nothing for which to strive. In comparison, my life of relative comfort feels like not just an unworthy privilege, but more like a crime against those that have so little. The tough words of Saint Basil the Great come to mind, and never seemed truer to me than now: The bread in your box belongs to the hungry; the cloak in your closet belongs to the naked; the shoes you do not wear belong to the barefoot; the money in your vault belongs to the destitute.

     Even beyond my material wealth, I also have the freedom from worrying about the day-to-day concerns of poverty. I drove through a very low-income area in Costa Rica this afternoon, where the houses are made out of wood and the streets are littered with trash because public services such as garbage receptacles and pickup are inconsistent or non-existence. It was not any worse than sights I have seen in Guatemala or even southeastern Washington, D.C. Yet, in light of my weekend in Nicaragua, I was more aware of what I was passing through. In the midst of such unwarranted suffering, my petty complaints throughout the course of a day are downright offensive. Things like waiting in line for lunch an extra few minutes or being charged an extra buck for a roundabout taxi ride do not seem like valid things over which to get worked up. The stress of an additional homework assignment or appointment would be comical if it wasn't the case that some people have stress about finding food for their children.

     I am not under the allusion that I will never treat myself to another product that I don't absolutely need to survive or that I will cease to ever complain about minor inconveniences again. However, I do feel it is worth trying and being mindful of the great blessings with which I have been given. If we wish to see any change in the world, it must begin with ourselves.

Reasons for Hope

     While many today are basking in the glow of President Obama's reelection, those who value the importance of life and religious liberty may feel a bit demoralized. I know I do. I didn't really expect to, quite frankly. I had suspected an Obama victory and had come to terms with it. What I did not anticipate or realize was the degree to which our country's Godless, "progressive" left-turn would be made manifest to me. I saw it in state referendums that legalized same-sex marriage. I saw it in states that legalized the recreational (not just medicinal) use and cultivation of marijuana. I saw it in a number of Facebook posts from people of the self-proclaimed "Christian left", who had the audacity to thank God for this pro-abortion President's reelection for another four years. Another four years that, by the President's own admission to none other than (cue irony!) Tsar Putin, will give him "more flexibility" to pursue his goal of moving America "forward".

      It is this talk from Christians than saddens, perplexes and even angers me the most. How does one maintain the cognitive dissonance necessary to say they follow the teachings of Christ and simultaneously support a President who wants to make it easier for women to get abortions, and will appoint Federal judges who will follow suit in their legal rulings? These Christians are simply following the model put forth by such warped Catholics as Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who treat their proclaimed faith just as Obama would like faith to become: a hobby on par with knitting or playing bridge every Tuesday afternoon.

     The Church has failed to get Catholics to grasp that their Catholicism cannot just be something they do; it must be who they are. That should also apply to any authentically Christian denomination. Perhaps the best summarization on this subject that I have read comes from Aidan Nichols, O.P. He writes, "In the powerful yet soft secularising totalitarianism of distinctively modern culture, our greatest enemy is the Church's own internal secularisation which, when it occurs, does so through the largely unconscious adoption of the ideas and practices of seemingly benign adversaries." I am much more sympathetic towards atheists who are pro-choice, for same-sex marriage and the like. They support such methods, I believe, out of what they think are good motives--women's rights, equality, etc. Without the Lord as their guide, how are they expected to understand why each life is so important (it is created in God's own image) or why marriage can only be between a man and a women (it is a sacrament created by the Creator)?

     What is disturbing is the degree to which the modern Christian is willing to choose which teachings they find valuable and which they find too hard or unpopular to support. They are willing to actively support the oppression and destruction of their own faith, and then thank the Lord for doing it! To be such a Christian is not to follow Christ. In fact, I would venture to say that the perverted theology they subscribe to is more idol worship than God worship.

     With that said, I remain hopeful for two reasons. The first is that now it has been made painstakingly clear to any devout Christian what they are up against going forward. For decades this nation has not taken God seriously. Perhaps now we can come to terms with being the minority, the persecuted and the scorned. We ought to move towards reinforcing the faith of lapsed Christians. This culture war will only be fought one soul at a time, not through any one politician. We need to spend more time standing up for our religious liberty. The President has already laid the groundwork to erode that right. He has given us a choice: minister to the sick in Catholic hospitals and educate the people of God in Catholic universities OR respect your conscience in refusing to pay for abortifacient drugs...you can no longer do both. If we lose this right, we will not get it back. The road only gets more perilous if we do not put a stop to it now.

      The second reason for my hope is that we Christians know the ending of the story. This period of turmoil for people of faith is only a page in the great book of existence God has written. For as dark as times may seem--and they may very well get darker in the near future--the truth of Christ's victory over these forces of evil and suffering and death is absolute and final. If we "finish the race" as Saint Paul instructs, we will win the prize of eternal life with God. The Church has been through persecutions of greater magnitude in Roman times. Yet while Rome is a pile of ruins, the Church continues to protect the revealed mystery of God's love for humanity. And long after the United States is laid to waste, the Church will still be standing, because it is not beholden to the foolishness of men and women but rather the wisdom of God.

      This is no time for indecision or indifference--two other characteristics en vogue in the United States today. Like in any war, this one for our soul will require us to choose a side. We know the ultimate winner. The question is, will we be on His side?

On Love

     In today's Gospel reading, Jesus gives the "The Law of Love". In fact, the first half of the rule was not new; Jesus simply quoted the words of Moses from the Book of Deuteronomy: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deu 6:4-5) 

     How can we love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength if by God's very nature we cannot fully understand the identity of our Creator? In our human relations, we keep love as one of our most closely guarded emotions. We are hesitant to love anyone unless we know them really well already. With God, we must be prepared to do just the opposite: if we are to have any chance of knowing God, we must first love God.

      I actually think this type of love is easier to understand in the Spanish language than it is in English. In Spanish, the verb used to express love for someone (not something) is querer. In most circumstances this verb means to want or desire something. So, in a sense, the primary way to express love for someone in Spanish is to do nothing less than to say te quiero ("I want/desire you"). So it is with God! We must first have a desire for God. Only then can we love God. We must search for God before we can love God because God is pure love itself. All earthly love is merely partial in comparison that pours forth from the very One which created us, who willed our very existence into Being. No human love can compare to the love of the Father, who bears with our shortcomings and our distancing from Him, never ceasing to offer us mercy and forgiveness the moment we turn back.

     That is not to say we ought to turn our backs on human love. Jesus expanded and completed the Judaic law with the instruction to love our neighbor as ourself. The love people encounter in this life is a gift from God and should be treated with respect and full devotion. In so doing, we come to glorify God by our love for another, always and everywhere desiring that more perfect love that is only to be found in the next world with God.

Twenty One and Counting

     Yesterday I turned twenty-one years old. One of the vivid memories I have from my childhood is sitting in front of the TV in my living room on my seventh birthday, watching some show on Nickelodeon. A new show started and, in the top right-hand corner of the screen was the rating "Y-7". I remember feeling so proud and so old that I could now "legally" watch such "mature" cartoons! In light of this, it is a bit of a shock to think that moment was 14 years (and a day) ago. Now, I've eclipsed every legal age restriction...next stop my AARP membership!!!

     I also could not help but think of my own mortality yesterday. My birthday always coincides with All Souls' Day in the Catholic Church. My faith is always quick to point out that we must constantly be vigilant and prepared to make an account of our lives to the Lord, who can summon us at any time.

     My own life has confirmed this truth. In my childhood, I had the misfortunate of my uncle and father both passing away suddenly. Both were shy of 50 years old. Sometimes I try to imagine what they were doing some day when they were in their 20s and, unbeknownst to them, their life had just reached its midpoint. I suspect they probably felt, as I often do, invincible and unconcerned with the brevity of life. They probably felt assured, if not entitled, to another 50 or 60 years; time to travel, time to play with their children, their future grandchildren, to enjoy retirement and the like. If they would have known that they would be granted less than half of that time, what would they have done differently? What would they have deemed more important to get done, not as important to waste their precious time? What arrangements would they have made for preparing their souls to meet their Maker?

     Lest you think I spent my entire birthday reflecting on such a morbid subject, I had a wonderful day spent with some tremendous friends whom I have only had the pleasuring of knowing for two months. I turned 21 in a beautiful foreign country, one in which I never thought I'd have the ability to visit, let alone spend 4 months in to study what interests me. I awoke early in the morning to register for spring classes at my home university in Washington, DC. I signed up for a class about the role of food in society, being taught by an Iron Chef and with celebrity guest lecturers. God has blessed me with the ability to do great things, to meet great people, to spread His great message of salvation. And I guess that's the point of this reflection: to simply say that I feel I've been given a lifetime's worth of blessings in a little more than two decades.

     I have no idea why God chose to give me these opportunities. When I reflect on how many people are more worthy of my educational opportunities, who could take more advantage of my travel experiences, I feel almost embarrassed that I frequently takes these gifts for granted. One of my favorite passages to meditate on comes from the Book of Psalms: What shall I render to the Lord for all His bounty to me? (Ps 116:12) I've been reflecting on that question for at least a year, and the bet answer I've come up with is simply: whatever He asks. On that note, I'll leave you for today with this prayer from Saint Ignatius of Loyola:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all that I have and possess. You have given all to me; to you, O Lord, now I return it; all is yours dispose of me wholly according to your Will. Give me only your love and your grace, for this is enough for me.

Unshakeable Hope

     In the Catholic Church, today is a Holy Day of Obligation, which means that the faithful must attend Mass. The purpose of today in the Church is to commemorate all the Saints who have served God so heroically throughout history. Their lives, many of which ended in the sacrifice of their blood for their faith, serve as inspiration for all us sinners who live with the desire to do good but a weakness of will that often leads us to sin and despair.

     Before and after the Mass, I spent some quiet time reflecting in front of the Blessed Sacrament, which is Jesus truly present in the Eucharist. I was particularly struck by my own insignificance in the midst of the God and Creator of all. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, himself on the road to being declared a Saint, said that, measuring ourselves by the infinite, we ought to be absolutely convinced of our nothingness.

     Often, I feel there's a impassable chasm between what I ought to do and what I do each day. The words of Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans rings true: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil which I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. (Rom 7:15,17-21) This is not some average guy saying this, but a Saint! If a Saint struggles with this same battle against sin as we do, then it can be very easy to lose hope for ourselves.

      But it's important to recall that Saint Paul was not always...well...Saint Paul. He started his life as Saul, a persecutor of the early Church. He took part in killing some of the early martyrs such as Saint Stephen. How then did he convert his life? Only through the grace of God! For I believe he stood at the edge of that same chasm that we all face. Neither Saint Paul nor you nor I can cross into a life of holiness by ourselves. The only bridge sturdy enough to support the hefty weight of our sinful baggage is the Cross of Jesus. Through Christ, all things our possible. As Saint Paul puts it: There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. For good has done what the law, weakened by flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. (Rom 8:1-3)

     In God's Kingdom of Saints, there is room both for a martyr and the man who stoned him. That is not a message of despair, but one of unshakeable hope, if only we are willing to acknowledge our weakness and dependence on God's mercy. As another future Saint, Blessed Pope John Paul II, said, "We are not the sum of weakness and failures. We are the sum of our Father's love for us." Perhaps the secret of the Saints is this: they understand that alone there are nothing, but with God there is nothing they cannot conquer, even sin and death!