Praying and Running

All of the talk lately about evolution/creation and the framing of the debate as either faith or reason once again makes me glad to be Catholic where these debates have long ago been put to rest. Science in general is not the domain of the atheist. In fact paragraph 159 from the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes it plain that there is no reason for the Christian to ever fear science. (Emphasis mine) 159 Faith and science: "Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth." "Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge, provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God . The...

 Sometimes it is good to sit back and evaluate your life, where you are and where you want to be and when you get there will it really be all that you thought it would be?. We seem to spend an awful lot of time chasing happiness. What makes you happy? What is it that will finally satisfy you? Do you know? I can remember just out of high school thinking if I could just find a job where I made $300.00 a week I wouldn't ever need any more than that. I got that job and I remember thinking if I could just get that full time job that paid $12.00 an hour and offered health insurance I would be set. I got that job and began searching for a way to just make $40,000 a year. The pattern continues through out my life. I reach what I thought was the goal and a new goal appears. I could recite a similar pattern with things. If I only had this car or that phone or this television life would be grand! It feels like it is never-ending because it is never-ending. Money and things never bring conte...

Each person enumerating the things they are thankful for; It's a tradition around many Thanksgiving day tables. We do it in our family too. The responses always range from humorous, to the cliche, to the heartfelt. All fine and good. It is part of Thanksgiving dinner after all. As I began thinking about it this year, a line that we sing in the Gloria at Mass kept coming back to me. "We give thanks for your great Glory." What is this "great Glory" we give thanks for? I started allowing this question to run around in my mind and I remembered somewhere reading or hearing that God's Glory is His Creation. You know existence, the world, the universe, "all things visible and invisible", you and I incuded. To help answer this question and expand on the idea of being thankful for God's "great Glory" I turned to the story of creation in the Bible and to the section in the Catechism on creation for further study. The bible points out tha...

We are coming to a close on the year of the catechism that I have posted about a few times. It has been very enlightening and coming on the heels of the year of the Bible I have learned more about our faith than I even dared to imagine and gained a ton of perspective through these exercises. One thing that I have found that is evident through reading the entire Bible and the Catechism (what amounts to the catholic guide to the faith) is that there is no foundation for some of the political stereotypes that have evolved in the church. To the contrary, the authentic teachings of the Church transcend the American political landscape. You know what I am talking about. We have Catholics that are conservative and we have Catholics that are liberal. There are others, I am sure but these are the ones I see the most and it seems that the people who fall into these stereotypes allow their American political views to shape their faith. It seems to ...

One great thing about being  Catholic is there are a whole lot of cool words that you get to use. One of my favorites is doxology. The word doxology alone just sounds really neat. But doxology is itself also something pretty awesome when you think about it. After all, doxology is a hymn of praise usually directed toward the Holy Trinity and usually affirming the infinite quality of God. Catholics will recognize a few standard doxologies like the "Glory be" and the "Through him, with him, and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever." that the priest prays before the Great Amen of the Eucharistic Prayer during Mass. But why do I think that doxologies are so great? As we learn from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 45, "Man is made to live in communion with God in whom he finds happiness".  Heaven is where we will be in communion with God fully. Heaven then, is what man was ma...

At the beginning of this year the priests at our parish challenged us to "read the Catechism in a year." Much like their challenge that we "Read the Bible in a year" the previous year, I have found this practice to yield much fruit. Many times I have finished a paragraph or a section and thought to myself "where has this book been all my life?" Tonight as I was reading through part 4 "The Revelation of Prayer" Section 1 "Christian Prayer" and paragraph 2729 in particular struck me and provided a "where has this book been all of my life?" moment. "The habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction. It can affect words and their meaning in vocal prayer; it can concern, more profoundly, him to whom we are praying, in vocal prayer (liturgical or personal), meditation, and contemplative prayer. To set about hunting down distractions would be to fall into their trap, when all that is necessary is to turn back to our heart: fo...