And Now to Write

It is easy to forget the heavy silence that had existed between the first Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  To limit the sorrows and adoration of the Passion to Friday and focus on the upcoming resurrection after Friday's service.  In doing so, we inadvertently skip over the fact that God let Jesus lay in the tomb for a full day and a half.  For a day and a half, God was utterly silent.  For a day and a half, darkness appeared to have won.  We often meditate on Christ dying, but rarely sit with Christ's death.   In response, I wanted to write a reflection of both.  I'll be drawing from three different sources whose links can be found at the bottom of this post. Sitting in the Silence What had I done before the silence?  My God sweat blood out of anxiety and anguish knowing one of his own would soon betray him.  That I, a trusted friend, decided maybe  $90, $200,  or  $3,000 was worth ending his transformative min...

Everyone have a part of themselves they would rather keep to themselves.  That part that's referred to as your "dark side."  In that corner of our hearts, we keep those memories of times we've failed others or ourselves, those faults that define the chasm between who we are and who we want to be, those desires that we know are not good.  We keep these things in that corner with a determination to keep anyone from finding them.  Maybe we hope that if they stay there long enough, we won't be able to find them either.  We tell ourselves that these things are unlovable and will in turn keep us from being loved. We decide these parts of ourselves are the darkness.  Perhaps we believe that whatever touches them will be stained by their darkness.  So, they need to be kept in hiding to protect others from being hurt by our own pain and failings.  Or maybe we believe that no one would want to be near such darkness.  That once it is discovered, those...

In my senior year of high school, my AP English teacher had our class fill out a personal inventory. It's filled with various questions about life experiences, how you approach the world, and creative hypotheticals.  Every once in a while, I return to that series of questions and answer them all again to see what's changed and what has stayed the same despite multiple years passing.  Looking it over again, a question about irrational fears made led me to ponder another question: "What is your biggest fear?"  Thinking back to previous conversations I've had, I know I would have often responded, "Somehow missing my life's purpose." Being a Christian, I believe God has given me this specific life at this specific point in time for a reason.  The trick is trying to figure out and live out that reason.  For some, God placed a very strong desire in their heart early on, making it fairly clear the path they should take.  I do not consider myself one of th...

As I mentioned last time , when I think of Christian unity in action right now, I think of bringing people to accept Christ as their Savior and growing where we have common ground.  However, I also mentioned my growing awareness of denominational differences.  I have heard from various places that denominations shouldn't/don't matter, but that ignores why they exist.  Different denominations have different ideas of what truth is.  They have different responses to tradition and Bible passages, even so far as not accepting passages from Daniel and Esther and relegating other books to an appendix, if they are included at all.  There are different definitions and approaches to central concepts like grace, sacraments, and justification.  Our differences matter. I love my Protestant brothers and sisters and have learned much from them, but I still believe the Catholic Church is where fullness of grace and truth are found.  Protestant denominations have b...

In my last blog , I had mentioned having "Catholic" and "daughter of God" bubbles in my identity Venn Diagram - the former living inside the latter.  Having both bubbles is important to me because my family and many of my religious experiences are interdenominational.  However, my struggle within the Venn Diagram project, and a good chunk of my life, was determining how I treat those two aspects of my identity in relation to each other.  What it looks like to claim the identity of "Catholic Christian" versus simply "Catholic."  During high school, I started by trying to understand what it means to be a Christian.  In undergrad, my pursuit shifted to me deepening my understanding of Catholicism.  It was during this time that I also became aware of divisions I had been blind to most of my life. It was within this journey that I volunteered to talk at the Christian Unity Prayer Service being held by my Newman Center and the University Lutheran C...

These past couple of weeks, I've been reflecting on the questions I asked in my last blog post.   And this week, my questions to answer were "What do I treat as my primary identity?  Why?  How does it manifest?"  I knew this series would take a lot of introspection to answer.  Thankfully, an activity in one of my classes jump-started the process for me. As a "get to know you" exercise, all of us in my Translational Evidence and Theory for Practice class were asked to draw and share a pie chart of who we are.  I'm a pretty visual person, so I liked the concept of the exercise; however, it had a flaw.  It doesn't take having a math degree to know that all the "slices" of the pie chart have to add up to 100% and that there cannot be overlap between said slices.  If you give Jack and Diane two slices of pie, you don't tell Diane that some of Jack's pie is also hers and Jack that some of Diane's pie is also his.  They will give you w...

Around this time of year, it's pretty common to hear people talk about their New Year's resolutions.  What they are, how they've already fallen short but are trying again, how long they think the resolutions will actually last, etc.  And then there's the group of people who boycott New Year's resolutions because of how they rarely make it past the one month mark.  I guess you could say I'm half-boycotter and half-resolutionist (sure, that can be a word).  Instead of choosing a goal like "exercise five times a week" or "wake up at 6:30 every morning," I choose a word to focus on for the year.  For example, the first year I did this I chose "humility" with the intent of growing in that virtue.  This year, my word is "everything." I know, it's an odd choice that sounds extremely vague.  The idea came to me while reading and reflecting on an Advent devotional centered on Mary.  While the devotional definitely emphasized...