Bourne Identity

My wife and I watched the movie "The Bourne Identity" on Saturday night, it has been about 7 years since I've seen the movie, and I forgot how good the movie was. What gets lost in all the high paced thrills is the important message inherent in the movie., Our Identity. Don't get me wrong, Hollywood is Hollywood, and they have no problem messing up any good story with their misunderstandings about sex, in the movie, Jason Bourne sleeps with a girl he has known for about 48 hours, that really sends all the right messages, (But, hey I'm sure they loved each other?).

That was the only negative caveat. Because the message was powerful. Jason Bourne is a secret agent for the CIA, and he is involved in a failed mission where he is shot and wounded on his head, losing all memory of who he is. He is saved by a fishing boat, and he is literally left trying to reconstruct his life from the middle of the ocean. The first thing he says to the fishing boat captain is, "I don't know who I am", "I don't know where I'm going,". If you can't answer those two questions, life will be very challenging.

Here's where the movie gets really good, he starts seeing that he has all of these incredible powers, but he doesn't understand why, or what it tells him about his identity. There's a great scene where he's in a cafe and tells the girl , "I memorized every license plate in the parking lot, I can run 20 minutes all out with out getting tired," What normal person can do that? Jason Bourne's dilemma is really every humans dilemma, we have these incredible powers, think this through, "we can create a human life from literally nothing," The minds power, the intellects power is almost endless. But what does it tell us? We find ourselves in the middle of nowhere with all of these incredible powers, but we still haven't answered those first two questions, "Who am I", "Where am I going,"

The movie gets even deeper from there, because by ourselves those questions are very difficult to answer, so a girl named Maria helps him find the answers. Art is a beautiful thing, because it can take on meaning for the viewer that the artist did not originally intend. Two major points came to me about this, number 1, the person most suited for helping us answer this question is a girl named Maria, our Lady was the vessel that God used to bring Jesus to the world, and she is still introducing Jesus to souls everyday 2010 years later. We have to go to Mary, and she will take us by the hand to Jesus, the Rosary is as powerful a tool as there is to meet Mary. The second thought that came to me was, how powerful love is to lead us to answer those questions. Every healthy relationship should lead us to those answers, never away from them.

By the way, for me the answer to those questions are, (Who am I)- I'm a child of God, (Where am I going,?) Heaven. For Jason Bourne, all of his powers clearly pointed to a person that was a secret agent, for the Human, these gifts and powers that we all posses lead us to the answer, we must be a child of God the Father, our desire to create, our desire for beauty, our desire for love all point to the same place. Jesus will take us there if we surrender to Him.

Men that love Silence

My kids and I have really fallen in love with fishing this summer. Once you get the bug, its hard to get it out of your system, there are only a few highs quite like catching a fish in life. The moment the fish takes the bait, and your rod gets pulled down, then the fight begins, its pure adrenaline. Plus, the sun and the water, and being with friends, what a gift.

It led me to contemplate why Jesus chose fisherman as his first apostles. Here are a few reflections that I came up with that may help you in the spiritual life;

1.) Trust- In fishing, and also in the life of faith, you do your best, you set the line as well as you can, you get the proper bait for the fish you want, the best lines and tackle, but at the end of the day, you can't see what is happening under the water, you simply do your best, and trust God to provide. This requires trust, humility and simplicity. We can't worry about the results, we can simply do our best, and trust God to take care of it from there. This leads to great peace, because truth be told, if you do your part, the fish come.

2.) People, and Places- Alcoholics Anonymous has the famous saying about staying sober, or all forms of recovery, take care of people, places and things. In fishing, I've noticed that a huge part of success is going to the right spots, and usually when you get there, there's a lot of other good fisherman around. Life is very similar, we all have a desire for happiness, going to the right places is a huge part of this, and most times we find that there's a lot of people of good will all around those places. It strengthens our trust in man's goodness.

3.) Silence- This was the major point that I came away with, we fished at night once, and the common noise you heard was, shhhhhhhhh. Because we all became aware, that silence was the best chance for success in fishing. I envisioned the apostles, all scolding one another, to keep silent, and I pictured these strong men, who all came to love silence, because it was part of their job, the same is true in life, Faith grows in silence, it gives God the chance to speak to our souls. We need to find time to love silence everyday.

As with so many things in life, God makes enjoyable those things we need to live. We have to eat, so it could have been a drudgery to sustain ourselves, but God made eating something to be enjoyable. Which leads me to the last and best part of fishing, which is eating your catch.

“Saving nature’s unborn from Gulf oil disaster,”

The above was a headline from CNN this morning, and I really felt I needed to blog on this, because it moved me in two ways. First, how sad I am for the people and the animals in the gulf, I try to remember them ever day in my prayers, because in times like these its important to remember that God can work a miracle there, so we need to ask Him for one. But second, I tried to think of an instance where our journalist would use the same language for an unborn baby.

The Pro abortion movement has been able to steal language from the Pro-life movement with words like Choice, freedom. When in reality abortion has nothing to do with Choice and Freedom, because only one of the people involved is exercising and choice or freedom. My brother in law made a great point to me last weekend, that abortion as legal, should not even be a discussion, children deserve protection under the law, even from their parents, this is true from the moment they breath their first breath and it should be true from conception to natural death. The state and the individual don't have the right to take a life.

Whenever I mention abortion on this blog, I always feel moved for the women who have had an abortion, because they have been lied to more than anyone by the world. But the good news for them is confession, no priest will judge you, and the healing grace of Christ will heal the wound. I love this quote from my favorite boxer George Foreman, "Forgiveness is the thread that holds the whole world together," Its the thing we all need the most in the world, for ourselves and others.

The Joy of Confession

I had a great experience of Confession last week, with a Jesuit no less. Which for people that know me, the Jesuits are a little too liberal for my liking, but the beauty of all the sacraments are that they don't depend on the ideology or the worthiness or unworthiness of the person ministering the sacrament, God is ultimately the author. If God is the author of the Sacraments, then its important to listen, even if you have differing views on the world than that particular priest. This time there was two extremely important lessons, #1. From St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, if you really look closely at all sin, at the heart of the sin is usually ingratitude. Take gossip for example, if we were more gratitude for our lives and the beauty all around, we wouldn't waste time with the futility of gossip. Dishonesty, if we were grateful for our lives, we wouldn't seek to manipulate the world in anyway. Unchastity, jealousy, fear, etc, etc. So many times it points back to ingratitude.

So my advice in Confession was, "focus on gratitude for everything," and #2, this priest related a story of a bishop at a confirmation, who for the question period, asked the kids to list their fears, and 1 by 1, the kids listed their fears, (afraid of the dark, afraid of heights, afraid of suffering, etc, etc.) The list grew and grew, to the point where the parents were twitching in their seats. But finally the Bishop stopped everyone, and said, "there's a lot to be afraid of in the world, and that is why God has given us the Holy Spirit, so ask the Holy Spirit to come into the home of your heart, and watch your fears get evicted,"

Two great pieces of advice for the summer- Gratitude for everything, and allowing the Holy Spirit to remove all our fears,"