And In His Word Is My Trust

Wow, so summer break is getting off to a weird/turbulent/less than optimal start. No job yet, I'm missing Mass/Adoration/Confession/my friends, and today one of my best friends from high school got married. I've talked about this friend before, how she got back together with her abusive marine ex-boyfriend (now husband) when she found out she was pregnant with their child. Well, today they tied the knot in a little civil ceremony which I and our little group of high school friends attended.....

And to think this post could have gotten any more negative, dear me. That was originally going to be the beginning of what would  no doubt have been a supremely depressing blog entry, but after waking up this morning in an unusually good mood (except for all the cat hair on my laptop :) I decided to scrap it, but keep the title. I'm realizing lately that I complain an awful lot, and for about as much as I tell people to offer it up when they're having problems, I so rarely take my own sage advice. Now don't go thinking I've got a swollen head, because I know from when I have offered up my problems what a good remedy it is. It doesn't solve the problems, certainly, but I find that I bear them much more patiently when I do than when I just complain to people about them, and to be sure, I have had a few problems recently. However, as brilliantly as always, I'm ignoring myself and others giving that same good advice to offer my problems up to God, and throwing myself a pity party. Well today I'm not. Today I resolve to offer up whatever ails me in any way.

One of my friends is a fantastic reminder of this, if only because he tells me to offer it up to get back at me for all the times I snottily told him to do so. Oftentimes, if I complain to him, I get told in his best imitation of me to offer it up. This same friend also has an admirable and sometimes amusing love of the Psalms, which has prodded me to flip through them occasionally to see what it is that he loves so much about them. Though his favorite is Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd..."), it is here that our tastes diverge, because my favorite is Psalm 130 ("Out of the depths I call to you, Lord..."). It is a piece in John Rutter's Requiem which I sang in high school, and since taking a look at it through the eyes of faith this past year, my appreciation of the Scripture and the piece has increased manifold.

Through reading and rereading the psalm, I've noticed not only John Rutter's fantastic sensibilities as a composer, but how he uses the music to emphasize the most important parts of the message. He starts the piece with an eerie cello solo, which stretches for six bars and leads into "Out of the deep  have I called unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice". Then follows a strangely foreboding "O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint" crescendoing through "If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss: O Lord, who may abide it?" as the men pull back to a soft echo of "O Lord, who may abide it?". Suddenly there is a marked increase in volume for "For there is mercy with thee, therefore shalt thou be feared" which again crescendos through "I look for the Lord, my soul doth wait for Him". At that point is a most glorious crescendo into the crux of the entire piece, and indeed, the 130th Psalm. Starting somewhere between mezzo forte and forte and moving to fortissimo in one phrase, we hear "And in His word is my trust". Next is a quiet "My soul fleeeth (flee-eth) unto the Lord, before the morning watch, I say, before the morning watch" which again crescendos to a (marginally) less glorious "O Israel trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy. And with Him is plenteous redemption, and He shall redeem Israel from all his sins". Finally, a very soft "Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice" is sung, before the voices quietly fade and the eerie cello starts its solo again.

Though there is much I would like to say about the piece, for now I only want to concentrate on the parts I've called "glorious", because I feel they are most important to this post. There is a reason that Mr. Rutter causes the choir to swell into "And in His word is my trust" and "And with Him is plenteous redemption, and He shall redeem Israel from all his sins", and that is that they are the most important phrases in the psalm. It's not that the other parts are necessarily unimportant, but that those are the most important parts of the psalm's message, i.e., trust in God and His redemption of men. And, getting more to the point today, that is why offering it up (for me, at least) is so crucial to do.

Most of the time, I find myself complaining rather than offering up my problems because complaining is easy, and offering it up means trusting God to take care of the problems in His own time and His own way. Trust is something most people have trouble with, but something we ought to be doing much more of than we do now, especially trusting in God. The redemption bit fits in here because people often don't trust that God will or even can redeem them, but in the psalm, the author does not mean "Israel" as we know it when he says "Israel". It's a metaphor for God's people. At the time, perhaps it meant the Chosen People, the Jews, but through Christ's Passion the pool of chosen people has extended to everyone. Ever.

So, today (and hopefully the rest of this summer) is about offering it up, because that means I'm trusting God, and by trusting God I'm letting Him take care of things the way He intended for them to be taken care of. And no relationship can exist without trust, and if there's no relationship with God, how can He redeem the person who rejects Him? In short, Not complaining---> Offering it up---> Trusting God---> Relationship with God---> Redemption---> Happy Christina. More or less.  :)

Fight the Good Fight (But Not Only of Faith)

For the past year or so, my parents and I have been engaged in what you might call a battle of wills over me going out and finding a job during the summer. Last summer, it didn't happen, and this upset them a great deal. It ended up upsetting me as well, because I then had to take a job that often felt more like scraping a cheese grater against my head than a task for which I was earning a better wage than most people with actual hourly jobs. Well this year has been significantly different, since school ended almost a month earlier, which freed me up to go job hunting at a time when many places near me need to hire people. I still consider the job search tedious, but today I discovered another added benefit of this search: greater spiritual strength.

I've never liked having to drive all over town to every store and walk in and ask the same question with the same, saccharine smile and tone: "Hi, are you currently accepting applications?" And for three days in a row, it's bored me to tears as it did last year and the year before, and the year before that. However, as I was in between horrendously long (no, seriously) internet applications because so few people do paper, I encountered a huge spiritual problem: I bumped into a forum on modesty where the moderator and her commenters were arguing about pornography.

Don't get me wrong here, I believe that porn is 100% wrong in all its forms, but in my past life (as recently as nine months ago) this was a big problem for me, and its specter continued to haunt me throughout this school year. I know that the main reason it even became a problem was that I've had my own laptop since middle school, and I've spent increasing amounts of time home alone with my usage completely unmonitored. And I know that even just for half an hour today, being home alone with my school computer provided an enormous temptation to which it would have been only too easy to give in. Coupled with the fact that I've been trying to keep up a regular prayer life in lieu of being able to go to Mass each day and Adoration and Confession each week, I've been getting a little bit despondent though I refuse to give in to temptation and start sinning the same way I was less than a year ago.

And this is why I need a job. Or rather, why I need to keep searching for a job. Yes, I really do detest driving around all day and asking the same tedious question to which an increasing number of answers are beginning to resemble "No, sorry, we're not interested in hiring anyone right now", but if I don't, sin creeps in and gets to work. The saying goes that an idle mind is the devil's playground, and having only to work fifteen hours a week for the last two summers, I know from experience just how much the devil likes to play and how little he likes to give up his old haunts. This is why I need a job. Not only do I like routine, but having a job will force me to establish one, and allow me to integrate as much prayer as I want into it, thus enabling me to fight the devil in his favorite form of temptation.

Saint Paul wrote in his first letter to Timothy in 6:12: "Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses" (NRSV). This verse is great for me, considering its direct application to this past school year. I did indeed confess to many witnesses in word and deed just how deeply I was immersed in my faith, and how much more deeply I wished to be immersed in it. I knew going into this summer that God was going to call me to be strong spiritually and emotionally, but I had no idea that He would use quotidian tedium to show me that I wouldn't just be trying to maintain momentum, I would be called to fight the good fight in a whole new way.

I'm hoping to finally be able to hit my first daily Mass in almost a week (le gasp!) tomorrow, as well as go in for my first job interview at a store that really, really seemed to need employees. I know that if I'm going to stay strong, pure, and out of trouble with my parents, I'm going to have to fight the good fight by getting up early, doing my hair, my make up, and driving across town for the fourth consecutive day. But at least now I know that when I hear the devil whisper five more minutes bright and early tomorrow morning, I'll get right up and dash for the shower and a quick shout out to St. Joseph for this job, so I can truly begin to fight the good fight and take hold of the eternal life to which I was called and for which I made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

Homecoming 2011

Just yesterday I returned home from school for the summer after completing my first year of college. It has been an exciting, frightening and tremendous year for me, and I wouldn't change a thing. Well, maybe the chemistry grade, but I digress. I knew it was going to be difficult to come home after a year at school in a vastly more exciting place than the one I come from, but also because of what the transition would mean for my faith. I would be leaving a place where I was surrounded by dozens of faithful Catholics who encouraged me to grow in holiness to a place where very few people at all would understand or support what was happening in my faith life.

In particular, I knew that my home life would become very difficult because my parents have taken the transition the hardest. This probably sounds strange, given that I've mentioned having a couple of fallings-out with friends from home, but they didn't have to remain friends with me, which they didn't. My parents are annoyed by my new-found adherence to the Church that my faith has brought me, but they certainly weren't willing to kick me out over it, so they're going to live with it for the summer. This is in no way saying that I'm going to flaunt any of this faith, because I'm not. That would be extremely foolish and would only serve to make the existing issues worse.

It certainly didn't help matters that today was my little cousin's First Holy Communion. My mother and I have gotten into a few tense spots already, and it was not going to help matters any that our family was going to see my cousin's mother and grandmother, neither of whom any of them like remotely. It also didn't help matters that I was the first person to interact with his mother after the Mass was over, since as a little boy with only one cousin (who had been away for the past eight months), I was the first person he wanted to see. So I walked over to hug my cousin and congratulate him on what he had just accomplished, and the great blessing he had just received, and when I was done, I happened to turn toward his mother.

You may have guessed from the way I referred to her that my cousin's mother is divorced from my uncle, and as I have already said, my family does not like her at all. But as she greeted me, I could tell that she was nervous, although she was perfectly kind in inquiring how I was and how my first year of college had gone, and I was moved for her because I couldn't imagine what would cause a forty-six year old woman to be afraid or nervous around a nineteen year old girl. It was funny how at that moment, I could not feel any ill will toward her, and nor did I want to. I smiled at her and told I was fine, the year had gone well, and asked how she was. I could instantly feel her loosen up, and I felt bad for her, because even though I know what transpired between her and my uncle, I also know the cruelty and ridicule she has faced at the hands of my family trying to protect my uncle, the youngest member of that generation.

I heard later all the things that were said about her, and I almost wanted to stand up and ask my relatives to give her a break because it's not as if her life is tremendously easier than my uncle's is. I know I can't say that to my family, but I couldn't and still can't help wanting to pray for her because I remember feeling so moved that she seemed so frightened of me, the only other child in the family (who could do her no harm).

This incident has proven to me that although my family and I still love each other very much, there is a widening gulf between us which I suppose it was naive of me not to expect. I want to see them experience conversion and an encounter with Christ so much, but I'm beginning to notice that I (unfortunately, but also somewhat fortunately I guess) am not the one called to be Christ to them. Somebody else will have that job, but I'm seeing that God is calling me to show Him to other people, people to whom I would not even expect God to show Himself, like my cousin's mother. So tonight I pray for my family and the people who show them Christ, but also for my cousin's mother in whom I saw Christ today.

If I thought it would mean anything at all, I would reach out and thank her as kindly as possible for showing me the face of God.