For people without faith in God or an afterlife, which, it bears keeping in the for of our minds, are a higher percentage of society than we've had in over a thousand years, COVID-19 is terrifying. It is oblivion lurking in every breathed or sneezed or coughed water droplet.

It is said there are no atheists in fox holes. We are all in a fox hole. Society at large is now, globally, more keenly aware that this mortal coil ends in death, and that death may be anywhere and everywhere.

What difference, faith?

The person who knows, without question, the truth that this mortal coil is but the fallen world and death's veal is simply the beginning of eternity, the things of this world, including life in this world, are transitory. Life, with faith, is not a zero sum game of take what you can, protect what you have because there are no eternal consequences, no eternal hope, no hope at all, of any kind, because ... oblivion. Life with faith is free to love one another as Jesus has loved us. Kindness, generosity, no fear. Yes, there is a virus, yes, we want to live to continue to do what God put us on this good green earth to do, yes we love one another, oddly, by social distancing right now and pray that will end soon, but we are free. For, should I die, whatever the cause, I know this is not the end, but merely the beginning. Faith puts the virus in its place, as it did the plaque, and all other strife in this fallen world for over two-thousand years.

If you are in the fox hole and wondering about this whole faith thing, ask. Seek. Knock. It will be given to you.

May God startle you with joy!

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Gifts of multi-generational living

There are many, perhaps forgotten, gifts of multi-generational living.

• Economies of scale. It is far more economically efficient to have multiple generations living together. Multiple wage-earners, multiple homemakers, one roof. Child care, shopping, meal prep, and shared costs of home rent/ownership/maintenance benefit everyone.

• Wisdom. Often, though not always, wisdom is gained with age. It depends on the level of humility along the way. Where wisdom is gained with age, that wisdom can be passed on, almost by osmosis, by living together, recreating together, sharing meals, talking, sharing labors of home life. Of course, lack of wisdom and humility, on the part of one or more parties, can make shared living untenable, so that must be prayerfully considered.

Challenges of multi-generational living

• Caring for elderly relatives can be challenging. There may be options for home care assistance, but this is likely challenged by COVID-19. It is important to have some idea what you're getting into and what help is available through insurance plans.

• Pride. As referenced in “wisdom” above, lack of humility leads to a lack of wisdom and an abundance of pride, in whatever flavor is particular to that individual. Combining multiple generations of pride under one roof, or even one substantially strong version of it, can be untenable and a detriment to everyone. Tips that can help: humility, humility, humility. Humility always offers a path forward, and we can only make one choice at a time, and, however sad it may be, only for ourselves. Choose the humble choice and you will help everyone move forward. Grin.

• Reconciliation. Living together means bumping into each other, which sometimes causes strife. Where strife, sin. Where sin, the call to reconciliation. A future post will explore this more, but in essence, study the steps of the sacrament of Reconciliation in the Church and apply them, non-sacramentally, to seeking forgiveness from loved ones. Tips that can help: humility, humility, humility. Grin.

COVID-19 is going to reshape society in it's wake, whatever the wake looks like, in ways we will need to wait to see, but it makes sense that more people will return, of necessity, to multi-generational living. Find comfort in knowing that for most of human history, multi-generational living was normative. Breaking families apart by generation is a modern contrivance.

May God startle you with joy!

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Think about the hours of exposure your kids have to moral and formative teaching from others outside the Catholic Church. Public school system? 8 hours a day. Shows and movies and social media and video games and books? 4-8 hours a day by some measures. How many hours do you talk with them about faith and morals in a given day? A given week?

Now, all of a sudden, families are thrown together close to full time, and conversations about when life begins, how many genders there are, climate change, just be you, and you can be anything may collide with a new awareness in parent's minds that what their kids understand is different than Truth. It may be time to step up as your children's primary educators.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church lays out the right and responsibility of parents to educate their children this way:

The fecundity of conjugal love cannot be reduced solely to the procreation of children, but must extend to their moral education and their spiritual formation. “The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute.” The right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable.

—Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶2221.

“Just be you” vs. “You be just”

Streaming entertainment is popular as people seek to relieve boredom of being at home. Yet much of that content spreads the belief system of the heresy of personal “truth,” in which a person is only limited by who they imagine themselves to be and how stubbornly they proclaim it against all nay sayers. Put simply, the cultural phrase is, “just be you;” the Catholic response is, “you be just.”

The idea of the heresy of personal “truth” is that there is no truth higher than personal truth. What is personal truth? Whatever you want it to be. Whatever your heart desires. Or, in our Catholic understanding, whatever our inner sinner dupes us into thinking we desire. Personal “truth” is a denial of God, of actual truth, and actually proves itself false by imposing a truth higher than personal truth (itself).

Enter justice: right relationship between God, self, others, and nature. These four aspects of justice, also known as right relationship, love, and mercy, are revealed in Genesis in the description of the Garden of Eden. God makes us as who we are, life is a sacred gift, we have an eternal soul, and we don't get to choose who God makes us to be; we do get to choose what we will do with our life, and those choices will lead either to eternal death or eternal life.

No screens except when we watch and discuss as a family

Try this radical step: No screens except what we watch and discuss as a family. Pick whatever shows or movies you desire, but discuss this simple question: if the characters had lived morally, upholding the seven heavenly virtues instead of falling for the seven deadly sins, how would the story have been different?

Heavenly Virtue v. Deadly Sin

Every deadly sin has a heavenly virtue, that willfully chosen, defeats the sin every time. But to willfully choose virtue requires faith, for we humans are unable to choose God's will over our fallen will on our own. Here's the guide:

• Pride (vanity) – Humility vanquishes Pride (selfishness)
• Chastity vanquishes Lust
• Temperance (self restraint) vanquishes Gluttony
• Charity vanquishes Greed
• Diligence, perseverance vanquishes Sloth
• Forgiveness, composure vanquishes Wrath, anger
• Kindness, admiration vanquishes Envy, jealousy

If, as you talk these virtues and sins over, you begin to wonder a few things, the Saints through the ages have revealed that:

• Each virtue contains all others, so if you get really good at one, you become really good at them all.
• Humility is the gateway virtue, the ironically greatest of all virtues, the precursor to each virtue, for without humility, none of the others is possible.
• Similarly, pride is the gateway sin, and all sin is willful, prideful defiance against God.

Bonus round conversation: What is Church Teaching on this anyway?

What is Church teaching on a given topic or idea in the show or movie? For example, characters engage in sex outside of marriage. Gay marriage is often presented as normal, and anything short of celebrating this is hate. Murder is celebrated, sociopathy viewed as neutral instead of an evil. Various and sundry moral dilemmas that are the fodder of drama. What is Church teaching on these topics and why? The Catholic Catechism is a great place to start if you aren't sure. Ask your priest or deacon as well. And...

Prayerfully consider starting or joining a Halo in your parish.

The time will fly by and you will begin growing new muscles as a parent, that you didn't even know you needed. Grin.

May God startle you with joy!

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• “Unprecedented” is being used at globally unprecedented levels.
• Being so unprecedented means no one knows much of anything, because, how could they. This virus is unprecedented. This near simultaneous global shut down is unprecedented.
• We, all of us, each of us, are soldiers on the front line. Some more obviously than others, but with 80-85% of infected people showing no symptoms whatsoever, we are all on the front lines.
• Soldiers obey orders and fight for the man next to them. That's what we are each doing. I, for one, have a lot of questions. There is much I do not understand. But wars are won because soldiers obey orders from their general, and our political leaders are our general. But now is not the time to ask questions, because no matter who asks the questions, no one knows the answer, and this is the course we are taking, so, we follow our leader(s) and reserve the questions for when we are standing outside the far end of the tunnel, in the flowery meadow basking in the sun.
• Faith matters. Fear of a virus that, before the internet may have passed as a vigorous flu season, is feeding sin, a virus that infects 100% of humans and, without Christ the cure, has an eternal death rate of 100%.
• Saints travel in bunches, and these times call for living saints. Create and join a halo, even by video chat, and run toward Christ together!
• Read as a family instead of screentime. Here is a series of modern Catholic parables I pivoted to have address the current challenges of faith and virus, on Shepherds and Halos.
• Fear itself is not a sin, but fear fuels our mistrust that God is God and we are we.
• Fear not! God is God. God so desires deep, abiding, eternal relationship with us that he made this whole universe this way just to be with us and give us the opportunity to choose Him and say “Yes!” to the cure of His Son Jesus our Christ.
• Christ is with us always. Yes, many of us around the world are not able to attend Mass and feel a deepening hunger for something that seemed routine. Saint Augustine fasted from the Eucharist in his last days, so his hunger for Christ might deepen. May our hunger for Jesus deepen, even as we enter into spiritual communion with Jesus in watching Mass from home.
• Be the hands and feet of Christ for your brothers and sisters in the trenches next to you by serving them and their needs, and be amazed by how much it launches you forward.

May God startle you with joy!

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Saint Padre Pio required women dress approprietly for Mass or he booted them out. Saint Pope John Paul II wrote the Theology of the Body, which intigrates science and theology to reveal the amazing beauty God gives us in our bodies and in marriage, and in sexuality lovingly expressed in marriage — hot, steamy, monogamous marriage — and the very many ways we in the fallen world fall for immodesty, lust, selfishness, promiscuity, and other carnal expressions of short-term, empty delights at the expense of vastly superior delights that lead to eternal and even far greater delights.

Women don’t want to be objectified, but then present themselves as objects by flaunting their curves and then get angry when both men and women call them on it.

Why do I bring this up now? Is it because most women have fallen for the bizarre belief that to be empowered and exercise they must dawn bodysuits that used to be considered lingerie? No. I have learned to tip my hat at them and strive to uphold their dignity and defend their modesty though they do not. I still have to get past the first glimpse, every time though. Should I have to? Maybe. This is the fallen world, and as a man that is part of my challenge in today’s society. No. I bring this up because a mother, having attended Mass at Notre Dame, found the bodysuits distracting and realized what they must do to distract her sons and pleaded with the young women on campus to consider a modicum of modesty by wearing jeans instead, and is being excoriated for it ... being accused of underming the very women she is striving to help become who God created them to be, defending their Theology of the Body. Some young women responded with “Leggings Pride Day.” Pride: one of the seven deadly sins. There’s your hint, folks. This, at a Catholic (ostensably) University. Oh, how much better we can to do! Modesty, chastity, contentment, and other virtues seem, in society at large, to be becoming #vanishingcommonarts.

Women, examine your conscience. Why do you wear skin tight clothing? It isn’t really to empower you or to allow you to exercise. In nearly every case, men wear clothing that is not skin tight to do the same thing. Consider that you wear skin tight out of a desire to be noticed, seen, valued. That Catholic mother of young men is exactly right, it is vainglory that has you wearing skin tights. Please, value yourself more than that. You will be more comfortable moving about the world, have more confidence, and upholding your and others’ dignity as you do.

Search Theology of the Body, read up on it. Be amazed at the wonders God reserves for those who cherish, guard, and defend the gifts He gives us, saving them for their proper place of expression: between one man and one woman become one flesh for life, united by God in Holy Matrimony. The delights of marriage humble and obediently lived are not only abundant and wondrous here and now, along with challenging and sorrowful, joyous, and more, but lived well, husband and wife run toward Christ and the salvation He offers together, hand in hand. Nothing is more delightful and grand than deep, abiding, eternal union with God, and for most of us, marriage is our path toward holiness.

May God startle you with joy!

Update: two days after posting this, “Like Mother Like Daughter” posted this (note, it’s April 1st). Despite the joke day, the sardonic message is clear. There are women (in addition to my wife and daughters, who helped me learn to see this clearly through the clutter of our modern age) who see this far more clearly than I do.

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I am the lowly servant of the Lord, appointed by my bishop to the blessed ministry of praying for our Church, a calling given each of us in our own way. This is a time of painful clarity and a call for examination of conscience and penance. Like St. Peter, the waves of fear swallow us and bash our most holy Church. I see my own failings as shepherd. Though we may not have individually committed them, we each bear responsibility for the sins that occur in the body of Christ. There is deep sin from within the body of Christ. Our corporate betrayal of the Good Shepherd cries to heaven condemning our sinful abuse of earthly power and falling for pride, sloth, and cowardice instead of wielding God’s loving authority with those entrusted to us.

“The deeper crisis that must be addressed is the license for sin to have a home in individuals at every level of the Church. There is a certain comfort level with sin that has come to pervade our teaching, our preaching, our decision making, and our way of living ... St. Thomas Aquinas said that hatred of wickedness actually belongs to the virtue of charity ... It is an act of love to hate sin and to call others to turn away from sin. There must be no room left, no refuge for sin” (Bishop Robert Morline, Madison, WI, August 18, 2018, speaking about the clergy sex abuse scandals).

What does it mean that Christ appointed me as head of house, shepherd of not only my soul but my wife and children as well? How much greater the challenge and bewilderment for a priest with a flock of hundreds or thousands! A bishop, whose flock is all those shepherds plus hundreds of thousands or millions of people in all walks of life!

What have we forgotten as a Church about how to shepherd? What has Christ revealed that we’ve yet to fully understand? How do we reclaim and discover this lost science of shepherding the soul?

Pope Francis, in his August 20, 2018 letter, has called all faithful to prayer and fasting as penance:

“The only way that we have to respond to this evil that has darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task regarding all of us as the People of God.”

In the authority given me by Jesus our Christ as shepherd of my beloved wife, who reveals Christ to me daily, and our beloved children, who love me despite my failings, I proclaim that on this coming Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, November 25th, 2018, our family will begin a year and a day of reconciliation, penance, prayer, study, and formation about each of our calls to shepherd our soul and those souls Christ entrusts to our care, loving them as Christ loves his Church. We will engage in daily prayer and reading on shepherding from Christ’s full revelation in the Holy Gospels, Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the lives and writings of our Saints, that we may reclaim the just authority we have abdicated. The authority that has been given us by Jesus our Christ as shepherds to wield his power of the keys over sin, which our sin has tarnished and rusted, in daily life and the lives of all within my flock. We will prayerfully engage in daily acts of corporal discipline, as God calls us, reflective of our humbly donning spiritual sackcloth and ashes.

Each member of the body of Christ is shepherd of their soul and of those entrusted to them by Christ (family, parish, etc.). I invite all shepherds — indeed all faithful, as we each are shepherd of our own free will — to join our family in a year and a day of penance to reclaim our authority as shepherds. May Jesus our Christ grant us the humility, strength, fortitude, wisdom, and most of all love in living out this prayer for shepherding in our Church as we complete this reconciliation, penance, prayer, study, and acts of corporal discipline for our good and the good of all who run this race of faith with us. In the embrace of Blessed Virgin Mary our Mother, who reveals the way to the Father, through her son, by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

With wild abandon in Jesus our Risen Christ,

Deacon Patrick

Our Lady of the Shepherd

Immaculate, Sorrowful Heart of Mary, who let the sorrows of all the fallen world’s sin, heaped upon your most holy Son pierce your heart, petition your son on my behalf, that he may grant me humble courage to allow my slight sorrows to pierce my heart and open it to a love as deep and boundless as yours.

May he grant that with this deepend love I may humbly see sin where there is strife in myself, and following the example of your son our Good Shepherd, in those I shepherd and those who are obsticles to answering your call, and seek to correct it with love, bearing into the world your son’t most healing balm of peace.

— Amen.

What is Corporal Discipline?

Corporal discipline is the bodily dedication to holiness. Among the often lost traditions of corporal discipline are: head coverings for women, hats for men, fasting on Fridays, time limited vows of silence, additional chores and labors, among other practices.

How can I and my flock study shepherding?

• Daily reading and prayer and discussion of the daily Gospel and the second reading of the Office of Readings are a powerful way to discover Jesus’ revelation on shepherding. Disciplines of praying the rosary, the angelus, or the chaplet of divine mercy, and other prayers of daily devotion are great ways to reflect on what we’ve read and studied throughout the day in family life and deepen how we live our faith daily.
• Start or join a Halo.

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