.png)
"Man can counterfeit everything in himself except a clean conscience." When we were stationed at Tyndall AFB, one of my husband's favorite things to do was to rent a boat for visitors. Whenever we would cruise around the bay, I'd be fine. However, if you got me out onto the open ocean, it was within minutes that I would feel nauseous. One day, my husband and I went out with my sister and her then boyfriend. My sister and I immediately started feeling sick and my husband said, "Stand up, look at the horizon, and smile." If you can imagine it, there we were standing stick straight, holding onto the boat, staring off into the distance with stupid fake smiles on our face. But, the fake smiles worked, we started to feel better. I get motion sickness pretty easily and whenever I'm feeling bad, my husband tells me to smile or force a laugh. It's ridiculous, but it works. I can fake it until I make it when it comes to motion sickness. Yesterday, in my OCIA class, I was telling the catechumens about my first confession. Being raised Protestant, I didn't have Confession at my disposal and I thought it was stupid anyway. I could just "talk to Jesus in my head and ask Him to forgive my sins." I never did this, but that was my argument. Plus, Jesus covered all my sins already, so what was the point really in confessing anything. AND to add to that, I wasn't *that* bad, so I didn't really have that much to confess, or so I thought. I faked a lot of happiness and goodness in my life and a lot of people were convinced. I could not convince myself, though. You cannot fake a clean conscience on the inside. Eventually, it will eat you up. You cannot fake it until you make it with regards to a clean conscience. I could trick my brain with fake smiles so that I wouldn't feel motion sickness. But, I could not trick my soul with fake smiles so that I wouldn't "feel" my unclean conscience. There was something I needed to do to clean my conscience and that was to go to Confession. "Conscience brings to man rewards of happiness or of pain: rewards of vivid life or--of death." --Dirk Coster A clean conscience rewards of happiness, Catholic Pilgrims. Have a blessed Monday.
Continue ReadingThis is a Nazareth kitty. I'm from a small town just outside the Kansas City area. My mom used to work for the city and, consequently, everyone knew who I was. I was very familiar to a lot of people and, to many, I still am. It's always a bit hard to go back to your hometown once you've started out on your journey. People in town just see you as who you once were or how they once knew you. This is comforting on the one hand because you'll always feel you belong. However, it is hard for them to see you as a person that has grown and changed. For them, you will always just be the person before you left town. That's what they are familiar with. Today, in our Gospel reading from Luke, we hear, "He came to Nazareth, where He had grown up." We know from other verses that people in Nazareth didn't take to Jesus coming back and being different than when He was young and lived among them. He was just Jesus, the carpenter's son. That was who was familiar to them. In their minds, He needed to just stay in that lane--just the "ordinary" Nazareth guy. Because Jesus was familiar to them, they had a hard time accepting His authority, His mission. Sometimes, I fear that we are like the townspeople of Nazareth. Jesus becomes just a pal, someone we know, someone we can hang with, you know...the familiar guy. When He becomes familiar in that way, we start to not see Him as the authority in our lives, and as Our King, Our Lord, and Our Savior. For some, familiarity breeds contempt. It did with many of the townspeople in Nazareth. It does with many of us today. We are familiar with Jesus, but we don't really want Him to have too much influence. We don't want to listen to Him too closely. If He tries to guide our lives in a direction we don't want to go, we tell Him how it's gonna be. If we hear anything from the Gospel that doesn't fit our worldview, we get mad and upset. It's not enough to just be familiar with Jesus. We need to know Him, seek Him, revere Him, and be in awe of Him. We can never say, "Oh, Jesus, yeah, I know that guy." Instead, Catholic Pilgrims, let us say with the Apostle Thomas, "Jesus, my Lord and my God." Have a blessed Sunday.
Continue ReadingHappy Friday, Catholic Pilgrims. Tis the season for executive orders and so, what would be the executive orders I would sign IMMEDIATELY if I were President? 1. All vats of hard-boiled eggs soaking in their egg juice at hotel breakfasts would be banned. No more sulfur bombs allowed. 2. Any Christmas song by a former Beatles member would be stripped from the catalog of available Christmas songs and sent to the vault where all bad music goes to die. 3. Turkey as a national Thanksgiving meat would cease. 4. Any man who wants to grow a mustache must submit documentation explaining why they want a mustache and provide their wife/girlfriend with an example photo of what he would look like with one. She will review it and decide if it is allowed. She has full veto power. 5. All college football conferences will have numbers in their names that reflect the actual number of teams in the conference. However, as the numbers seem to change each year, I strongly recommend picking a conference name with no number or geographical location. 6. Dressing rooms across the land must remove all bad lighting and all fun-house mirrors. Nobody wants to look like death-warmed over when trying to buy new clothes. We need to look alive and the mirrors should reflect actual size. Any businesses found not in compliance will be run out of town by a pitch-fork mob. 7. Any object that requires placement in a bag (tent, sleeping bad, outdoor chairs, cots, etc) must have a bag that doesn't require people to wrestle with it on the ground to get said object back in the bag. It is time to add more fabric to the bag and I will see to it that Americans everywhere are free from this plight. 8. Kansas City barbecue will be recognized as the Nation's best barbecue and I will hear no more from those on the east coast. 9. Federal agents will be sent to all homes to confiscate the box-o-cords that every man has stashed somewhere. The 1994 Compaq desktop monitor cord is not longer needed. 10. Any person found to be a Bills' fan just for this upcoming weekend will be sent to federal prison for fraud. My goal, Catholic Pilgrims, will be to make life better for all Americans!
Continue Reading.png)
.png)
.png)