"I Will Give you Shepherds"

When I was discerning, one of the documents I came across was a post-synodal exhortation (try saying that three times fast!) called "Pastores Dabo Vobis" which translates to "I will give you shepherds" and is a reference to Jeremiah 3:15. The hopefulness of that quote is that God will never leave us without a shepherd to wander through the desert without end. A shepherd is someone charged with the loving care of his flock. Jesus used the image of the shepherd to tell beautiful parables about His abiding care for each individual child of God. Before He ascended to Heaven there to remain until His second coming, He gave us Pastors, or Shepherds to continue to guide His fledgling Church through the desert of this world. How grateful I am that God hasn't left it all up to me to find my way to Heaven, but has given me earthly guides to inspired and lead me along the little way of Christ.

As Catholics, our Shepherds are the priests, Bishops and most of all the Pope. The Pope, through constant prayer, consultation with scholars and Bishops, and the study of the Scriptures and Apostolic Tradition, guides us as our chief earthly Shepherd and works to preserve the rich depths of our faith as it has been handed down. He is charged with praying for all of us, but also to remind us always to hold strong to our faith. Our most recent Pope, Benedict XVI, used his papacy as an opportunity to guide us like a good Shepherd, point us always to Christ. One of his greatest contributions to Christian thought was his series called Jesus of Nazareth. He never pointed to himself, except to point out his own frailty, and used all his strength to point always us to Christ who redeems us. John Paul II used his papacy as well to point us to the love of Christ, reminding us always "Do not be afraid!" as we sought to come into closer relationship with Jesus. These men, so seemingly against the culture and irrelevant according to modern media, have been doing the only thing necessary to win our love: Fearlessly preaching the Gospel, with authenticity and truth. Neither of these two great men bent under the weight of increasing societal pressure to modify, tweak, or change the essential doctrine whose sole purpose is to keep us in right relationship with God and draw us up into relationship with Jesus. Both of them saw that the whims of culture change like shifting sand racked by a windstorm of popular opinion. The Church of Christ was built on a rock, not on the sand.

So as we live through this time where we have no earthly shepherd, we turn to God in patience and anxiety to see who will be our new earthly shepherd, our new Peter. When John Paul II passed away, it felt so easy and smooth as then Cardinal Ratzinger took the tiller on the barque and guided us all through the early days of Sede vacante. When they announced "Habemus Papam!" and his kind face came out to wave in disbelief at his flock, I felt reassured. The Holy Spirit was with us, taking care of us, giving us a shepherd after God's own heart. Right now, there are many good men who could take up the tiller and steady the boat, but no one man stands out to me the clear choice. I'm sure the Cardinals are lying in bed right now pondering the same question, but with a greater weight than I. Our new Pope is more than likely among them. Is he lying in his bed with the fear and doubt of Peter, but also the faith to say that he will take up the duty of feeding Christ's flock when he faces the Cross of the papacy soon to be presented to him? As all Catholics cling together on our boat, rocked by the wild storms on all sides, I'm sure even the man who will be our Peter is wondering if the Lord is asleep in the boat. But truly the Lord is not asleep. In these days He lets us steer the boat, but entrusts us with a man to take the tiller and keep our course between the rocks steady and secure, following the route the Lord charted for us nearly 2000 years ago. I trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Cardinals to see and elect the man God has chosen, a man who will turn from his own desires and his fear, to take up the staff and get to the work of strengthening and feeding Christ's weary flock. God will give us a new shepherd, a shepherd after His own heart.

Community in the Body of Christ

As we move forward in the Evangelization and Re-Evangelization of all people, part of the focus has been to change the focus of our Church's activities from filling an hour (or less) to fulfilling the hunger of the soul. For too long we have depended on a Christian culture to fill our pews, but once people were there all too often we simply filled their hour without filling their hearts. Our religious education programs came to the young with great intentions and trutful doctrine, but rarely achieved the level of evangelization possible as the hearts they reached out to were not fertile soil. Now we are left with several generations of people who barely know the basic fundamentals of their faith, have never experienced Christ in their lives, and who have no qualms ignoring the ethical and moral code of the Church.

With so many Catholic either only attending on Easter and Christmas (plus weddings, funerals and baptisms), we don't have time to preach even the most basic message of the Gospel, let alone the richness of its implications. Without the miracle of the Eucharist in the context of our beautiful and rich Sunday liturgy,  how can we expect our flock's hearts to be a fertile soil in which to plant the seeds of truth? The competing message from society, not to mention the 24/7 news media is present every moment of the day. As a Church we're lucky if we see people for an hour once a week. If know we are seeing people once a week or even once a month, the Mass is our only chance to reach out to people. At my parish, the level of care and devotion putting into making the Mass rich and engaging without sacrificing the dignity of the liturgy is impressive and worthy of praise. Our pastor gives incredible homilies, full of passion and truth, but does so in a way that engages both the churched and the un-churched. Every weekend I get the pleasure of being challenged by his clear and truthful message. He doesn't pander to anyone. He tells it like it is but in such a way that it gives his message more traction in the hearts of even the most obstinate. Besides the pastor, we are blessed with passionate ministry leaders who represent the best of our love of tradition while using a fresh voice to express it. A fine example is our 9am music ministry. We have a praise and worship band who sing authentic praise the God, but without the shallowness we sometimes experience from that style. They are as comfortable leading us in English as they are in Latin and Greek, singing a new song along with the songs gifted us by our millenia old tradition. By the time we reach the true pinnacle of the Mass, the Eucharist, our hearts are expanded, ready to be stretched and challenged even more by the real presence of Christ in His Body and Blood. As a faithful lover of the weekday Mass at our parish, whose austerity can be excused as it feeds the hunger of those who crave to always be near to the Eucharist and to be ever consumed by Christ as they consume Him, I can say in all honesty that even our beautiful weekday Mass can't compare to our Sunday celebration. For me, weekday Mass is there to sustain me, whereas Sunday Mass is there to fill me to overflowing, to build me up, to form me, and to bring me close to the full community of the Church universal. On Sunday, unlike any other day of the week, the worldwide Church joins together in harmony with the eternal celebration of Heaven. From our earthly perspective, it is the one day of the week that the Body of Christ is the most complete as the most of us are together through the Eucharist at once. It is the day that I feel the closest to my earthly and my Heavenly family. I feel the enormity of the faithful as I become my small part in the Body of Christ. I am drawn beyond my own weak personal faith into an experience of Heaven, which will be an eternal communion of the faithful.

I think the first answer to our problem of drawing people closer to Christ would be to first draw them closer to His Church. It is impossible to ignore the presence of Christ in His Body when we give our hearts over to Him at the Sunday Mass. A people who have their hunger fed at Sunday Mass become a people open to being formed by the Spirit to accept the full truth of the Gospel. While God speaks to us always in the silence of our hearts, He becomes present in the community of the faithful, through our presence and through His Most Holy Eucharist. We approach Him as individuals, but He draws us into Him and gives us Himself through our community. The authentic message of Christ is not to self-determine our beliefs in a vacuum, but to be attentive to the truths He has already revealed with clarity through the Gospel. He undeniably calls us to community, as we are reminded that "Wherever two or three of you are gathered in My name, I am there". Once our hearts become seeped in the unique joy and love we find through our community, then we will crave to know more and better the God who we meet at Mass. All the education and knowledge in the world will fail to fill us if we aren't first set ablaze with a passion for God and His Church, but once we have that passion, we will forever crave to know Him more and to love Him more.

Lent With Kids

For 5 long years I've struggled with how to do Lent with kids. I didn't want to confuse or overburden them with the idea of fasting when they were so young and didn't fully understand. I felt like I would simply be taking something away, without them being able to gain the spiritual fruits of their sacrifices. After watching them travel through Advent this time I realized I was looking at things all wrong. During Advent we treated that time of preparation as a gift and the kids ate it up. Instead of waking up one day and having it be Christmas, we had some build-up. While presents were a big deal in their minds, it was such a joy to see them make a space in their hearts for the Christ-child. When the congregation rang out the words of the Angels, "Glory to God in the highest!", the kids, after an entire Advent of preparing, were so full of joy I'm sure they out sang (or out shouted??) the choir.

So why can't we do that with Lent? Why can't we use these 40 days of Lent to make that space in their hearts a little bigger, a little deeper, a little broader? I remember last year on Good Friday we took the kids up to reverence the Cross. The three oldest had so much tenderness for Jesus. They asked me when we got back in the pew if we were kissing Jesus to make His boo-boos all better. My daughter, after I explained the crucifix was an image to remind us of how much Jesus loves us, said she wishes she could hug Jesus and kiss all His boo-boos better for real. They have hearts of such deep compassion and love for Christ, even if they don't understand all the theological realities yet.

After some discussion and prayer with my husband, we came upon an obvious idea for a fast for the kids, and honestly for me too. We decided to propose to the kids that they give up TV Monday to Saturday during Lent. It didn't take long for the three oldest, our real TV fiends, to jump on the idea. We had experimented with keeping the TV off a few weeks ago without anyone getting killed or even maimed. Because of that recent experience they knew that no TV didn't mean no fun. It meant more time to ask Mommy 2 million question, do art projects, lots of music and games, and play using their imagination in freedom instead of being weighed down by suggested concepts from their favourite shows. In addition to having the TV off, I'm going to make sure we take part of each day to pray together and to talk about what Easter is all about so that when we reach Easter Sunday they'll sing with their loudest voice their thanks and praise to Jesus, their friend and saviour. That will be a gift worth every moment of sacrifice and extra preparation I can muster for them. I'm sure there are days when I'm be tempted to let them tune in and tune out, but hopefully I'll be able to pray through it and instead tune them into the Spirit that is whispering mercy and hope in their tiny hearts.

My husband and I, besides giving up some of the usual suspects (fast food being a sore spot for our bodies, souls and budget), will be adding on special time for prayer together as a couple. We hope to join a novena for Pope Benedict XVI as he passes quietly into a life of prayer and contemplation, and for his successor, who will be passing from relative anonymity to become a faithful shepherd to over a billion Catholics. We also hope to complete a dedication to Christ through the Blessed Virgin Mary. My sincere hope is that our meagre efforts will bring us closer as a couple and a family, and that we will find ourselves closer to Christ as we weep at the foot of the Cross, wait in vigil by the tomb, and celebrate again the Resurrection. Tonight, let the imposition of the ashes on our foreheads be a reminder that we owe our life and breath to God, and let it be the beginning of our journey as a family to come closer to the heart of Christ.