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Hello, fellow pilgrims! My name is Amy Thomas. In 2009, I converted to Catholicism and I started writing to share the Faith. I’m a military spouse and my lifestyle has afforded me the opportunity to travel all over, exploring Catholic places. I have since expanded my writing to include a podcast and videos. My goal is to travel with fellow pilgrims and help them to discover the richness of the Catholic Church and grow closer to Christ. If interested in having me speak at your event or ask me a question, please click below.
In preparation for Season Five of my podcast "Journeying with the Saints," I reached out to the different shrines in the US associated with St. Frances Cabrini. I got to chat on the phone with the executive director of the St. Francis Cabrini Shrine in NY. I loved hearing from Julia about Mother Cabrini. During our conversation, she said something that really struck me. "Mother Cabrini saw difficulty at the start of a mission as a good sign, because it meant the work had been sealed with the Cross." You wanna hear Saint talk? That's it for you, right there. That mentality of hers sliced through me like a knife. All around us--ALL AROUND US--we are told that if something is difficult or hard, if barriers are put up in your way, abandon ship because God obviously doesn't want you to do it. If He did, it would be an easy path. This is a lie. I've been whining about having to be stationed in the desert again and how hard that is and how it isn't super, big fun for me. Yet, Saints welcome challenges and sufferings. If you are experiencing hardship and difficulties in your mission or vocation, it's been sealed with the Cross. I mean, what kind of talk is that? It's utterly stunning to me and so very inspiring. We have this notion in our heads that Christianity is supposed to be this comfortable, easy path just because we believe in Christ. But, when at any point was Christ's life easy? It wasn't. It just wasn't. Yet, He carried on because the mission was too great to not see it through. The suffering was redemptive for us all and He loved us that much to not give up even though it was hard. We've been talking about living out virtue and how our culture has twisted virtue into self-serving, dressed-up vices. All of what is served up to us is meant to be easy, comfortable, and shallow. Yet, we have Saints that are saying, "Bring on the sacrifices and suffering because that means this mission has been sealed with the Cross of Christ." That is love, my fellow Pilgrims. That is an attitude I aspire to and hope to emulate, because anything else is just self-serving rubbish. Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Thursday.
Continue ReadingSo, yesterday, I talked about how the little thing I read in a very old book caused my husband and I to engage in some deep conversations. I wrote about one aspect of the quote that we discovered in those conversations yesterday, which was...lively, shall we say. Today, I want to talk about the other thing we discovered and alluded to at the end of my post yesterday. We discovered that what has happened is that the culture has selected a virtue, twisted it, and then slapped modern framing on it to make it not sound so bad. For example: Original Virtue: Temperance The Vice: Self-indulgence, neglect of responsibilities Modern Framing--Self-Care, "Take care of number one." Original Virtue: Dignity--seeing yourself as a child of God The Vice: Narcissism, selfishness Modern Framing--Self-Love, Justifies prioritizing one's desire over community, but this is fine because 'you do you." Original Virtue: Prudence with regards time and effort The Vice: Selfishness, isolation, lack of generosity Modern Framing: "Protecting my peace." I could go on and on, but you get the point. The thing that struck me and my husband was how these all boiled down to focus on the self and as we know in our society, the more that we have focused on ourselves, the more unhappy, more depressed, and more anxious we have become. The culture tries to pass off the modern framing so that it looks like a virtue, but my husband said, "If the virtue doesn't have a sacrifice attached to it or a focus on others, it's not a real virtue. It's self-serving and virtues are never self-serving." Like the quote said yesterday, dressing things up in "beautiful false names" will only make us prisoners. We must always strive to look outside of ourselves and seek to bring light and love to others by living out the virtues. Only then, Catholic Pilgrims, can we find true joy and the peace that only Christ can give. Live the faith boldly and travel well this Wednesday.
Continue ReadingI was reading through a very old book that I was recently gifted that has just one or two sentences on a page. I read: "Nineteenth century man became all the more irrevocably the prisoner of his own life-sorrows through the beautiful false names with which he labeled them." I sat with this a very long time. Later that night, I asked my husband what he thought and could he think of any life-sorrows that have been given "beautiful names" in order to make them seem good. It became a bit of a thought experiment for us. I could think of one right off the top of my head: Selfishness has become self-care. Now, this isn't to say that taking care of yourself is wrong. We should take care of ourselves because our bodies are good and neglecting them can cause us to not be able to do God's will. However, our culture has taken vices that cause sorrow, dressed them up in a new name that is hard to argue with, and then encouraged people to engage in them. What happens then? You become a prisoner. My husband said, "Anytime you take something bad and try to make it sound virtuous, it always is a move towards self-centeredness. The focus becomes entirely on you and ultimately that makes us miserable. That's why you become a prisoner. Together, we thought of a few more things that have been dressed up with "beautiful names." Abortion--health care. Abortion already is a euphemism, but it is now being referred to as the double euphemism of "health care." Laziness--"protection from burnout" "work-life balance" Narcissism--self-love Isolation--"protecting my peace" Lies--"your truth, my truth" On the surface, all these phrases or "beautiful names" seem good. Initially, it's hard to argue with them. But, when you scratch just beneath the surface you'll see that they all come back to the self. There is something else that my husband and I discovered while thinking through the original quote. I'll talk about that tomorrow. Until then, live the faith boldly and travel well, Catholic Pilgrims.
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