Month: January 2024

I watched a couple of NFL games a few weekends ago, beginning with the Jaguars. They were getting blown out so I skipped ahead to half time. They were still getting blown out, so I skipped to the 4^th quarter and ended up watching them come back to get in position to win the game with a field goal. As I watched the kicker for Jacksonville get ready to kick the game winning kick, I noticed he was clutching his necklace – which looked like a crucifix or a cross, I couldn’t tell. What was interesting was that after he kicked the game winner, his team mates carried him around on their shoulders. As they were doing this he grabbed the necklace and took it off his head and was holding it up for everyone to see.

Then I watched the Giants vs Vikings game and after the game was over they panned to the Giants coach walking over to the Vikings coach. The Giants coach was wearing what appeared to be a crucifix with some type of medal on each side of the it.

The NFL is not known for its outright Christianity or even support of Christianity. But many of the coaches and players are Christians, and I am sure many are quite devoted.

Don’t let them tell you that there aren’t devoted Christians in the world. There are plenty.

“The girl pounding her typewriter may be pounding for nothing but dollars’ sake and wishing she could stop. The Poor Clare sweeping the monastery cloisters is doing it for God’s sake and prefers sweeping, at that particular hour, to any other occupation in the world.”

Mother Mary Francis

Let’s say that you’re a housekeeper cleaning the rooms of a cheap motel. It is not glamorous or easy, but you do good work. You’re working there to feed your family. Or you’re a nurse changing sheets at the nursing home. Or maybe you have the easiest job in the world. It is not what you do that is important, what matters is the love you have in your heart when you do it. So says Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. in her book, A Right to Be Merry: “This is another of the marvels of living in obedience. No one is ever doing anything more important than you are, if you are obeying. A broom, a pen, a needle are all the same to God. The obedience of the hand that plies them and the love in the heart of the nun who holds them are what make an eternal difference to God, to the nuns, and to all the world.”

Later in the book she adds: “As with writing, so with all else. Work is done simply and without consideration for the comparative dignity of varying tasks or enterprises. Such comparisons could never be anything but specious for cloistered nuns, whose work has a common dignity in that it is done with a common love and for one Lover.”

So don’t worry about moving up the ladder, or getting a great job or position at a prestigious company. Just worry with doing well what you’re supposed to be working on, on what you’re working on right now.

Fr Isaac Mary Relyea talks about the duty parents have to properly catechize their children. I’ve never thought about it before but out of all the people on earth, God entrusted to you your child’s soul, and He wants you to teach them about Him. Fr. Relyea says it better:

God gives you – married couples – the gift to procreate. To bring life into the world. And He gives you that child – that son or daughter and says “Here, I’m entrusting this greatest treasure, which is worth more than all the material things in the world, are nothing compared to one soul, that soul is worth so much that My Son shed, not only one drop of His blood, all of His blood.” That’s a big responsibility that you parents have. That’s why children, this isn’t going to just happen on its own. That’s why you have to start forming them in the school of the saints.

Many say that you can’t judge the actions of others. But if someone is committing sin, it is charitable to correct them (certainly at the proper time, out of charity and love, and within your state in life), as Father Isaac Mary Relyea says in his first podcast (he is speaking here about people in sinful relationships):

“Correct these people, out of charity. If you love someone you will the highest good for them – that they get to Heaven. And if you love someone therefore you want them to get to Heaven, you’re not going to lead them into sin and you’re not going to condone their sins.”

“Living completely for God. Little by little chiseling away those things that you’re attached too.” Friar Anthony

I’m trying to slow down my sugar intake dramatically. On most days, I drink 3-4 cups of coffee with each cup having 60-70 grams of sugar in it. That doesn’t include the amount of creamer I drink with each cup also. So I’m cutting that down and today was the first day. I drank 1 cup of coffee with 50 grams of sugar in it. I notice no change in my demeanor except I feel more sluggish right now – 4pm – than usual. I think I drink this coffee and sugar concoction out of habit, mindlessly drinking as I work. But I have to chisel away these things…for my health…but mainly because I am attached to them.

I recently was reminded of the great saying, “Health is wealth.” And it is true, to a degree. But health is in second place to the ultimate and true wealth which is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Read about the great saints throughout history and their lives attest to that. Many of them lived hard and difficult lives – oftentimes by choice. Eating little, sleeping on the ground or on a plank of wood. To this day I think that most if not all Franciscan monks sleep on bags of straw. They wake up in the middle of the night (appx 12:30am) to pray.

So to many of the saints health was irrelevant, they didn’t strive for it at all. They did everything for our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Francis of Assisi apologized to his body before he died, for all the torment he put it through.

I try to read two “Saints of the Day” (on the Laudate App) each morning. Seeing when they were born and when they died, not many make it to 60 years old. I think the aforementioned St. Francis lived to be 44.

So what to do? Look at each day as a great blessing, truly a day to worship God and do His work. Your time is short. Momento mori, ‘remember you must die’. Your health will fail, it will come faster than you think. You must live rightly right now. There is no time to wait. All the things that so many people of the world are focused on are irrelevant, they are but “strings which tie us to this world.” So get rid of your attachments, like for me, sugar. “Living completely for God. Little by little chiseling away those things that you’re attached too.”