Faithful and Successful

Curtis Martin, the founder of Focus, which is a Catholic outreach group to college students, which has been enormously successful in a very short period of time over the past 10 years. He gave a talk in Philadelphia over the weekend, where he pointed out two things that really struck me. First, he said many Catholics misunderstand Mother Teresa's famous quote, "We are called to be faithful not successful," That is true, if we are called to choose, we should always choose Faithfulness. We should always choose to be faithful to God, to our vocation, etc., before we choose success. But in a normal life, we should seek both. In fact Psalm 118 says, "O Lord grant us salvation, O Lord grant us success." So many Catholics fear going for success in the world, because they have a mistaken view of humility. We should seek both, Faithfulness and Success. The more we expand ourselves, the more we will become the best version of ourselves, and if you don't believe that God wants you to become the best version of yourself, than you probably have a mistaken view of not only humility, but of God. He created us with infinite love and infinite wonder, its ok to seek out success, as long as we stay faithful in the process.
The other point he made that really stuck with me, was to use our gift of Creativity. Think about how creative God is, look at the ocean, the sky, the mountains, the human person and you have to be struck by how creative God is. We are made in God's image and Likeness, therefore our potential for creativity is boundless. All we have to do is ask!

Finding the Divine in EVERY person

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY I watched with great amazement at the singing of Susan Boyle on the show Britain's got talent. The song is perfect, and the story is even better. Here is a women that is almost 48 years old, never married and never kissed, out of work with a learning disability. What this teaches us is never to be cynical, but to look for Jesus in every single person. So many times during the gospels over the last few weeks, the disciples don't recognize Jesus in their midst, and their downhearted because of it. But He is right there walking by there side. I always believe this, that Jesus is with me. But rarely do I look for him in others. Something else dawned on me about looking for Jesus in others, that it was exciting to try and find Him in the poor and downcast, to look for the spark of the Divine in the Susan Boyle's of the world, everyone loves the story of the music prodigy that is discovered homeless. But this is only 1/2 the lesson (a very important 1/2), the other 1/2 is finding Jesus in our enemies, in the people in our lives who we dislike, or find troubling and annoying. Mother Teresa's favorite vers from Scripture was, "as you did to the least of my brothers, you did to me," whenever she would hear someone say "you did for me," she would correct them, because there was such an enormous difference between doing something for Jesus, and actually doing something to Him.
That's the goal, to look for Jesus present in everyone we meet, and living out what that means, not gossiping against people, not looking down on others, not judging others, but being excited about finding the spark of the Divine in those around us. There's a story about a preacher that was dejected about the troubles in the world, and complained to his pastor, asking why God never did anything about these problems, and the pastor said, "He has, He created you," When God formed each of us, He had the love, excitement and mystery in His heart about what our life would mean to the world. Here's to hoping that we never lose hope about our own dreams, and we constantly look for the greatness present in the lives of others;

Easter Joy

I wanted to post on the Joy of Easter, but I have to say that watching the Master's yesterday almost derailed this post, because the end was so exciting. Even my sister asked me, if I was going to Blog on Angel Cabrera's win, here's the deal quickly because I want to get back to some Easter Joy. The thing that struck me, was Angel Cabrera was completely out of the match stuck behind a tree on his first shot, it was so bad that everyone I was watching with basically accepted that it was down to 2 golfers. But he didn't quit, its a great lesson, the famous quote, "don't give up 5 minutes before a miracle happens," is so true. Life can turn on a dime, and with God in our life, we should live with hope, expecting the best. To many people believe that life can turn on a dime alright, but their anticipating the worst. What does that get you? Anyway, he's behind a tree, and 5 minutes later after a ball bounces off a tree into the fairway, he's the Master's Champion.

Back to the reason for this Post, Easter Joy. I didn't do a very good job with Lent to be honest, but something very good came of my failure, I am starting to realize that I can't even give up chewing gum with out God's help. We need a savior, and as Psalm 91 says, the more we live in the Shelter of God's care, the happier we will be. So even failure can help us along our path to God, if we let it teach us the right lessons, that we need God in all things. Something I missed about Lent that is very important, Joy is perfectly compatible with sacrifice and even suffering, Joy should be a huge part of Lent. Jesus goes out of his way to point out that when we fast, we should take extra care of our appearance, He even advises us to comb our hair and wash our faces. When we are sacrificing for others, which is what all our sacrifices should be about, then Joy should be front and center. I really missed that this Lent. But the Joy of Easter is so big, that it over-flows for 8 days, we don't have to fear sin and death, because Jesus has defeated both. That's what Joy is really all about, its living with a faith, that there is nothing in our life that is bigger than God. No sin that can not be forgiven, no problem that can not be solved, with God all things are possible.

St. Thomas Aquinas and the Economy

There's always a tendency that people have when things are going well, to believe that it will never end, and there's always a tendency to believe that when things are going poorly, that it will never end. There's no logic in either space, really smart economists during the residential boom, truly believed that residential home values would continue double digit gains every year. This is totally illogical, ridiculous even. Then I heard a quote from Ron Paul two weeks ago, that we were headed for a 15 year economic depression, the problem would not be if he had the facts to support this, the problem was he has been predicting this for the past 40 years! Both sides are totally illogical.

Here's where St. Thomas Aquinas can help us, he often taught that, "A is A", we have to deal with reality as it is, not with false optimism, and not with false pessimism. We live our life constantly saying I wish I didn't have this kind of debt, I wish I never purchased this house, I wish I never took this job, if only I did this, if only I didn't do that. We are so much better off, focusing on what is real, and then creating postitive actions to deal with our problems. Problems and challenges are a part of every man's life, and we can either whine about them endlessly, or look for the opportunities in every challenge. This economic downturn is frought with opportunities, not only for economic gain, but opportunities to show virtue in the face of trial, so as to be a light to others. Its really our choice, and it starts today!