Running for Them

This might be premature, but I find it interesting that what has motivated me to take up running is teaching.  More specifically, my students.  "Take up running" means I've gone for four runs in the past week.  It could all fall apart very soon (definitely has happened before), but I think this might be here to stay for the time being.

A couple weeks ago I came to a realization: I don't sacrifice for my students.  They come up in my prayers and I hope the best for them.  However, I don't often find myself tangibly offering things up for them, other than allowing them to keep living after a particularly trying class period.

I've realized this lack of sacrifice before.  This time I was compelled to do something about it.  Running is something good for me and good for them.  I find myself thinking about them as I run and offering up my labored breaths for them.

Yet the more I run (think: slow jog), the more reasons I find to keep doing it.  I've run twice through my neighborhood and while I don't like it as much, I think I might keep it up because it gives a new perspective and new prayer intentions.  I run past a home and I hear the muffled sound of a man and woman arguing.  Or I run around a bend and see two kids in front of a house, a larger pre-teen girl slapping the head of a smaller pre-teen boy.  The girl looks belligerent and the boy has his defenses up but is angry.  She glances at me and there are no more blows while I run by the house.

I find myself praying for peace as I meander the streets of my neighborhood.  This little heart inexplicably finds itself aching for situations I will never know about, fights I will never see, hurtful words I will never hear, but that are happening in these places so near to me.  I prayed for peace to flow through these houses.  For homes to be places of peace, not places where we take up arms against our flesh and blood.  For parents to show their children how to love.  For people to experience the love and peace of Christ that I have experienced.

It is not that much, and I should in all rights probably be doing far more.  But for now, I am running for my students.  For their addictions, depression, relationships, struggles, and hearts.  When I nearly convince myself to not go for a planned run, I remember them and realize I'm not doing it for me, but for them.  And it makes me run.

Love Stories Through the Generations

I grew up hearing the love stories of my parents and grandparents.  My parents knew of each other throughout their youth, since they were both from two large families in the same town, with many of their siblings being in the same grades.  When my mom was trying to avoid a young man who was interested in her, she chose to sit with my dad at a graduation reception.  That event turned into dates (my dad saying my mom begged him and my mom saying that my dad asked for a date) and eventually a relationship, with a breakup to ensure my mom had found the right man.  She had.

My paternal grandparents met in a "romantic" meat-packing plant.  After a couple dates, my grandpa proposed and six months later they were married.  They were together for over sixty years, until my grandmother passed away from lung cancer.  My maternal grandparents met at a dance and my grandma's brother asked my grandpa to drive her home.  The rest seemed to be history--marriage shortly followed and a brood of children. Over sixty years later and they are still married, my grandpa cracking jokes and my grandma still thinking he isn't funny.

My mom and grandmas all got married fairly young.  At times, it is easy for me to begin to do the calculations.  "If I was my mother.....I would be married, with a toddler and another baby due in a couple months."  These thoughts aren't really comforting, nor are they intended to be.  Instead, they instill a sense of urgency, a feeling that I am missing out.  It's the all-too-dreaded ticking of the biological clock.  It is enough to make me panic, even as others around me are saying, "You're young, you have plenty of time."

The other day I came to a greater realization of life.  At times a relationship and marriage dominate much of my thoughts and desires.  But marriage is only a means to an end.  If the goal is Heaven, marriage is meant to get me there.  Life is meant to be spent striving for spiritual perfection and Heaven.  That mission is one that relates to me now.  No, I don't have a beau or a marriage to invest in.  Yet if God knows everything, He must have intended this time to be used for something other than just waiting for my life to start, because it has clearly already begun.

Someday I hope to have a story of how I met my husband.  Inevitably, it will be different than my mother's story.  Yet I've been blessed to have experiences and adventures that my mother did not have.  Even as I desire a life of wedded bliss, I strive to embrace my present state in life so that I will be prepared for the next state and for the next life.

The Love of a Father

“To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak.  I have become all things to all, to save at least some.  All this I do for the sake of the gospel, so that I too may have a share in it.”  
1 Corinthians 9:22-23

Be all things to all people.  That is a tall order.  An impossible order, I suppose.  There will always be a way that you fall short or don’t live the way someone expects or wants you to live.  Yet I saw this “all things to all” being lived out in a beautiful way.

We celebrated a large Mass with all of the Catholic students of our diocese.  In the thirty minutes following Mass, I watched the eager crowds of children gradually disperse.  While they waited, I watched my parish priest as he made his rounds.  He stopped by the section where students from his previous parish were seated.  A large group of them began to wave excitedly.  To them, he was a star and they were excited to see him again after his absence.  After a few minutes of talking to students and teachers, he migrated to his current parish and greeted the children.  I kept waiting for him to walk away, but he didn't.  One-by-one as the students left their rows to go to the bus, he greeted them.  Some wanted a high-five, others wanted a hug, and some simply waved.

It was beautiful to watch them each pass under his fatherly gaze, often accompanied by a pat on the head or shoulder and always a smile.  This is not the first time I have been amazed by his fatherly care.  During his homilies at Mass, it is easy to get that sense that he is our spiritual father.  Yet the way he lives it out does not remain simply spiritual.  It is not just in prayers and sacrifices that he seeks to be our father.  Rather, he greets the people of his parish and goes to their homes.  His heart is filled with a tender fatherly love for his children, some of them biologically older then him.

My experience with priests has led to me to harbor a deep love for them.  While I would not relate to all of them in a fatherly way, I have found many who are living out the call to encounter people where they are “for the sake of the gospel” in order to “have a share in it” also.  The priest who instructed my summers of Totus Tuus also lived out the role of a father.  We were primarily young college students and he laughed with us, taught us, and loved us.  At the end of the first summer, he thanked us for “calling out the fatherhood” in him. 

For all of the things that the secular media says about the institution of the priesthood and all the ways it seeks to change it, I am inspired to continually meet young, holy priests (or not-young, holy priests) who have sacrificed having their own families so as to welcome an entire parish as a family.  Regardless of your upbringing and family background, in the beauty of the Catholic Church, everyone has a father who reveals to us, in part, the person of God the Father.

No Greater Love Meditation

No Greater Love

My hands are clenched, uselessly grasping at the stones and dust beneath them.  My face is buried in my arms, tears streaming down, body trembling.  I do not feel the sharp rocks that I kneel on or the beating sun rays on my cloaked back.  I feel only anguish and sorrow.  The tears are all wept and I remain crouched, afraid to look up and see.  Everything seems to happen quickly but the moment drags on in agony.

            “I thirst.”  My heart clenches at the sound of His voice.  It is both loving and tortured.  Although dreading the sight, I slowly raise my head.  He is looking at me, peering into my eyes, reading my soul.  I feel terror at all He can see there—my sins, my shortcomings, my foolishness.  Yet His eyes remain soft and tender despite the overall appearance of pain around Him.  I glance to the ground where my hands are unconsciously reaching into the dust, sifting through pebbles.  When I return my gaze to Him, He is still studying me.

            “I thirst.”  My lip trembles uncontrollably and a tear courses down my cheek, over the dust of the day’s trials.  He looks as though He wanted to caress the tear away but His hands were unable to reach.  A man reaches up a sponge on a hyssop branch with wine on it.  He tastes it but turns back to me.  In His eyes I can see He was not satisfied.

            ‘What do You thirst for?’ I pondered to myself.  His eyes pierce my heart.

            ‘I thirst for you, my beloved.’  I am taken back.  His lips are dry from no water and heavy exertions, His back bleeding from whips, His hands and feet pierced by nails.

            ‘You thirst for me?’  I ask silently, willing Him to hear me.

            ‘Yes, I thirst for your love.  I desire to be loved completely by you.  Will you not give it?’ His eyes are pleading.

            ‘What can it mean to You?  I am so little.”  He looks away briefly, but returns His gaze, His eyes brimming with tears.

            ‘It means everything, little one.’  Weeping, I close my eyes.

            ‘Yes.  You have all my love.’  Opening my eyes, I see the joy in His. 

            “It is finished.”

            ‘Hardly, it is just beginning.’  He looks approvingly at me.  I press my face into my arms again, weeping.  When I quiet, I sit up and lovingly gaze at my Eucharistic Jesus, crucified in a monstrance for love of me.

If I do not love....

Perhaps this will simply reveal my vast flaws as a Christian, but teaching seems to highlight difficulties that I never noticed before.  I know that it is difficult to love others.  I've done Totus Tuus, I've been a part of a family, I've done mission trips, and I've driven on the interstate.  Love is difficult. 

Teaching high school has brought a whole new aspect to the "Love is difficult" mantra.  I find myself unable to love firmly.  While I don't enjoy it, I can be tough and strict with my students.  And when I want to (sometimes when I don't want to), I can be a push-over and let them get away with things.  What I have yet to perfect (after an entire 6 months of teaching) is the art of loving firmly.  To maintain order and get things accomplished while yet being kind and loving. 

If we are speaking of a battle of the wills, I can fight them to the death.  But (luckily) I realized fairly early on that it would be in my best interest to not make my entire profession into a battle of wills.  So I have to decide when to be stubborn and when to give a little.  That is still a matter that is difficult to master.  Yet regardless of that battle, I need to be charitable.  I need to be Christian.  I teach high school students and at times I can feel myself desiring to play at their level.  My feelings are hurt when they fall asleep in class, do homework for another class, roll their eyes, dismiss my ideas, and attempt to cast doubt on every aspect of the faith.  Instead of being mature, I want to roll my eyes back at them and spit out a couple perfectly formed sarcastic retorts. 

If Christ taught the Gospel of love it would seem that I should be quite proficient in it, seeing as I am teaching about Christ.  But teaching has revealed to me all sorts of weaknesses that I didn't know I had or that I had thought were sufficiently concealed.  How would this be my mission field if I didn't begin to see my failings and question why God placed me where He did?  I have had to remind myself several times (I should do this more, perhaps) that while God could have placed someone in my position with more knowledge and skill, He placed me here for some reason.  There is some way that He wants me to grow from this experience.  Growth hurts, it is painful.  Yet the reward is far sweeter due to the bitterness and pain.  I think of intelligent people I know (priests, nuns, lay people) and I question why I have been given the task of instructing the youth in the faith.  There are so many who could do such a better job.  Maybe this is largely the task for my sanctity, as well as their sanctity.

If teaching is my mission field, then I need to reveal Christ to them primarily through my personal Gospel of Love.  How can I convince them of the radical love of Christ if they don't experience love from me?  Ah, the mission field!  I find myself dreaming of returning to "my" Honduras--a place I grew and loved.  But the Lord blessed me in those mission trips and made them so beautiful and easy.  Now He is sending His little daughter into the "grown-up" missionary field of a high school.  The commitment is longer, the results seem less tangible, and the people I am ministering to don't realize it/aren't thankful.  Quite a change from Hondurans eager to welcome us and sacrifice food and rooms for us.  But the Lord has this beautiful way of easing us into things.  He will give us sweetness and then bitterness to test our motives. 

So I go into this mission field with a heart deficient in love yet deeply desiring to excel in it.  What would a mission be without challenges?  Perhaps life is a constant learning how to love--whether it is God or neighbor.  We fail but we continue to try.  Because we were made for, by, and in Love.  Since we have received much we must go and give that to others.  Starting with that which is nearest to our hearts, which hurts the most to give when we know it may be rejected.  This battle is where I can learn to be most like Christ--being willing to love even when pushed away, rejected, crucified.  As St. Paul Miki and companions died heroically for the faith, so I am called to be martyred daily for my faith.  Impossible on my own.  But I know a great Teacher who can show me how. 

We love, because He first loved us. ~ 1 John 4:19

 St. Paul Miki and Companions, pray for us!

Sacrificial Love

The headlines and news broadcasts are filled with images of the families and friends of those affected in Newtown, CT.  This is one of those instances when the media and technology is both a grace and a curse.  How wonderful to know that people around the nation and world are joining together in prayer for a community most people have never been to or even heard about prior to this past Friday.  Yet the images and constant replaying of the stories leads one to wonder if this is all done truly out of compassion or perhaps out of a desire to have a big news story and our insatiable desire for excitement.  When is a breaking news story shared because of a desire to enlighten others and when is it the desire to be the first to hit the airwaves with the shocking news?  I wonder at times if we aren't simply living from one drama to the next. 

I saw this not to downplay or dismiss the losses felt by those in Newtown, but simply to re-evaluate our constant desire to know more about it.  I, too, have watched news fragments on the Internet and desired to weep over what was being shown.  There is something about the death of the innocent that evokes strong feelings within each person.  It is a greater sense of injustice, a greater wrong has been perpetrated.  The grief we feel would be of a different caliber had the victims all been adults.  But when we see the ages of 6 and 7, we rightly feel that justice was not done.  Every time something like this happens, I internally link it back to abortion.  Not because I want to diminish the tragedy and say, "Something bad happens every day, get over it."  Far from it.  I desire to simply say, "Yes, this is a tragedy.  But there is another tragedy that doesn't get the news coverage, that doesn't get the recognition it deserves because it is considered to be a 'hot button' issue and that people have conflicting feelings about it.  Or because it is a choice.  That is a tragedy that we should all be weeping over."  The death of the innocent does evoke a heartache in us that speaks to our very desire to defend that which is weak and vulnerable.  Rightfully so.  But let us not forget the accepted deaths that occur daily.  Let not familiarity breed apathy.  We hear about abortion and so we are accustomed to the horrors of it.  Yes, it is bad, but could it truly ever be stopped?  I don't think that is the important issue, really.  Each parent would greatly desire one more of those children to be spared, even if the child was not their own.  As such, I desire for each child that is being carried into the abortion clinic to be spared, to be carried out once again, living in the womb of his mother.

As a teacher, I find it especially touching to hear the stories of the teachers who sacrificed their lives or put themselves in harms way for the sake of their students.  It makes me wonder if I would have the same resolve.  My students had asked me about the morality of a very hypothetical situation over a month ago.  I had been telling them that it was wrong for the biblical Saul to commit suicide and that while we can never judge the fate of one who committed suicide, that the act is always intrinsically wrong.  Being sophomores, they wanted to find a circumstance in which it would be acceptable.  Who better to put on the stake then their teacher?  So the situation went as follows: say a person came in with a gun and said that either I killed myself or he would kill all of my students.  They looked at me, thinking that they had stumped me. 

"Which one would you pick?  Would you sacrifice yourself for us or would you just watch us all be killed?"

They thought I had to choose one of their options.  I was firmly convinced that there were other ways that they had not thought of.  So I presented my "game plan" to them, should this event ever actually take place in real life.  I said that I would throw myself at the man--knowing that I would die--but that when I did that, all of the men in the classroom were to jump up and charge him also.  They seemed a little surprised by my response, and while I wasn't, I was left wondering if this was really a matter to be discussed with my students.  A while after I heard about the Newtown murders, I re-thought what I had told them and decided that I wouldn't really alter anything I had said.  The vastly hypothetical situation seemed a little less out there and closer to home.  I thought about how I would be shaking and terrified, but I prayed that God would give me the necessary strength, should something like this actually happen.

Perhaps this is inappropriate to put in a post that also speaks about Newtown, but I don't think it is.  I often refer to my students as "my kids" even though I know they aren't really kids, but they do feel in a way like they are mine.  They may never know the affection I harbor for them, even the ones that also drive me up the wall.  For the most part, I can never tell them I love them, because they would never take it as seriously or as deeply as I mean it.  They are each too deep to know in such a short amount of time, yet I feel like I know quite a bit about them, simply from their behavior and class work. 

From the fragments of this blog, perhaps what can be redeemed is this fact: that the ultimate sacrifice is never made without smaller, seemingly insignificant sacrifices made prior to it.  The sacrifices would largely be chalked up to "my job" by most of my students and those around me.  But I think there is something deeper involved.  I do not claim to be the best teacher or the most sacrificial.  Yet I think that despite the incongruent images, spending two hours to make bon-bons for my seniors, staying in my classroom until the sun has gone down again, listening to their stories and ramblings, grading their countless assignments, and taking them in prayer to nearly every Mass I've been to since I got the job--all of these will be the tiny sacrifices that make it possible for me to make the "ultimate sacrifice" should it be required of me.  Sacrifices like these and the ones many other teachers make will generally not gain the headline on the newspaper, but they are what makes it possible for one to lay down one's life for a friend. 

May God grant peace to those who have died, peace to those who survive, and peace in our hearts and the entire world.  May He also grant us the grace to sacrifice, regardless of the personal cost.