Lawn Chair Catechism, Week 10: Steamrollers

Despite my inability to actually write up a post each week, I am reading along. I have gotten a bit behind here and there but not so much that I couldn't easily catch up. I have to say, this book is perfect for someone like me. The chapters are relatively short and it's an easy read. It's packed full of great information, but presented in an easy to follow way.

That being said, I really wanted to write a post last week but simply ran out of time. Last week's chapter was on the sacraments of initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist). It really had me reflecting on the importance of these sacraments and especially on witnessing my own children's baptisms. I've still not shared pictures from either Baptism, and I have some really nice ones. I may still. One day.

But let's move on to the healing sacraments: Penance and Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick.

I have a love-hate relationship with the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. My first one was in the second grade. For my second, I was in my mid-twenties, probably around 26 or 27 at the time. That's a long time to go without the graces of this sacrament. I remember how wonderful it was to finally go again. I had gotten to a point where I understood the importance of Reconciliation and knew that I needed to go again (after many years of poor catechesis followed by years away from the Church) and wanted to go, but was scared to take that next step. I ended up at a retreat and knew that was my time. I remember being a ball of nerves prior to going in and then feeling amazingly light when I walked out. I totally felt like a new person.

I thought of this when Paprocki says "that at our deepest core, we are unable to sustain ourselves." In other words, we need God's graces to survive in this world. I certainly felt this that day that I went to the sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time in 20 years. We are all sinners and we need Reconciliation to help us grow as Christians. We need to physically voice our sins and hear that we are forgiven. We are physical beings so it only makes sense that we engage all our senses in seeking God's forgiveness.

I'm still not very good about going to this sacrament, but at least I've gotten a bit better. It always takes me a while to get up the gumption to go, but once I'm there I'm always grateful that I made myself do it. It's been harder since I've had little children in my life. I'm pleased to say that my church is adding times for Reconciliation on Sundays, right before and right after the Mass that we usually attend. It's just once a month, but hey, better than nothing and it's very doable for both myself and my husband. I'm already planning on going at one of the next opportunities I have. Can't wait!

I love, too, how this is one of the sacraments of healing. I think we often forget that our soul needs healing as well. Even more reason to not take this sacrament for granted. We need to take advantage of the availability of it and try to go on a regular basis. And I'm talking to myself here too. As I said at the beginning of this reflection, I have a love-hate relationship with this sacrament. It's so hard to make myself go, and yet the wonderful feeling of forgiveness is unbeatable.

The Church needs to see a resurgence in people taking advantage of the sacrament of Reconciliation. Can you imagine how strong the Church would be if more people were receiving the graces of Reconciliation on a regular basis?

This post is being linked up to the Lawn Chair Catechism series on CatholicMom.com. Go check out the post for Week 10 HERE for discussion questions and more discussion and reflection on both the sacraments of Penance and Reconciliation and the Anointing of the Sick.

Lawn Chair Catechism, Week 6: Union Workers

I gave myself a challenge this summer to read along with CatholicMom.com the book A Well-Built Faith and to blog about it. I knew it would be hard to squeeze in the time to not only read but to also write a blog post each week. And since this is week 6 and it's only my 3rd post, I'm obviously not quite meeting the challenge. But here we are once again, I'm not giving up! So on to our Law Chair Catechism discussion:

This chapter was chock full of information! Full to the brim! I don't even know where to start, so it's good that we have access to the leader's guide with some helpful discussion questions. The first two questions really get to the heart of what I took away from this chapter. I'll just touch on each of those.

What does it mean to say that spirituality is not just a slice of the pie that represents our life, but is the whole pie?

There is an exercise in this chapter where Paprocki lists several things that make up our daily life (work/school, eating, sleeping, play, family, exercise, spirituality, etc.) and asks the reader to create a pie chart in which you show what percentage of your time is spent on each of these things. I've done something similar to this before in leadership/management classes or workshops and in a "Seven Habits," Steve Covey seminar I did once. I was tempted to do it again because it is always an eye opener, but I ended up skipping it. I knew what it would reveal and it wouldn't have been pretty.

What I wasn't expecting was for Paprocki to then tell us that the spirituality component shouldn't be just one small (likely embarrassingly small) slice of the pie, but it should encompass the whole pie. Everything we do should revolve around our spirituality.

Reminds me of when St. Paul tells us to pray without ceasing.

Then I read this question and I thought about recent events. Hold onto your hats, I'm delving into current events:

The Hobby Lobby, Supreme Court lawsuit that came out this week is all a result of people who are trying to live and breath their spirituality. Their religion, their faith, their spirituality has infused itself so much into their daily lives that it influences their work life as well. It is commendable.

It is so easy to check our religion at the door, to keep it to that one hour on Sundays and not bring it home with us. But then we are nothing but frauds. We need to remember always that we are sons and daughters of God. We need to be charitable and loving to all those we come in contact with so that they wonder what makes us so special. We need to let our Catholic faith influence how we do our business, raise our families, and interact with our everyone we meet in our lives. We need to consider what our faith teaches us when we vote for public officials and people to represent us on every level of government.

That is freaking hard! Yes, we are going to fail. But we need to keep trying ("Always we begin again" as St. Benedict says). We should set aside time throughout our days to stop what we are doing and spend even just a few moments in prayer. We should make our work a prayer, whether your work is filing sales reports, cleaning the house, working at a retail store, going to school, changing diapers, running a business, whatever it is offer it up as a prayer.

This is something that will be a difficult challenge for me. But I think (I hope) I'm up for it.

What's the difference between belonging to the Church and being the Church?

It's so easy to think of church in terms of the parish we attend each week. That's the "church" where we know people, where we give our money, and where we spend time each week. We may know intellectually that our one parish is part of a much bigger, universal, world-wide Church, but it's often hard to completely grasp what that means. We don't see it, especially if we live in an area with only one Catholic Church.

I think for me, as I came back into the Church fully, I got a sense of the world-wide Church on a smaller scale by being a member of the Cathedral parish in my diocese. Between that and some involvement I had for a short time on the diocesan level I was able to expand my horizons some and see the Church as a bigger body than just my one parish. Of course, the Church (with a capitol C) is 100+ times bigger than that. But the point is, I, all of us, don't just belong to a parish or belong to the Church, we are the Church.

There would be no Church without the people, you and I, in it. Reminds me of the song that goes "We are all one body ..." (which I realize is based on Scripture, but the song is what popped into my head first). Jesus came to save and he left us a Church so that we could all be one. He didn't leave us a building, he left us a leader. We just celebrated the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul this past Sunday. Jesus called Peter the "rock" upon which He would build His Church. Peter was just a man, a poor fisherman, but he became the leader of the Apostles and the foundation upon which the Church was built.

How interesting that it was a person. We are all people and together we make up the one body that is the Church. When I think of it that way I really begin to see how much bigger the Church is then just the millions (billions?) of people on this earth who are members of the Catholic faith. Do you see it, too? It's the communion of saints!

The communion of saints: all those who have been received into Heaven, all those who are being cleansed in Purgatory, and all of us here on earth, still fighting the good fight. All of us together, saints in heaven and saints-in-the-making on earth are members of the Church. We ARE the Church.

How cool is that?

For more discussion on Chapter 6 of A Well-Built Faith: A Catholic's Guide to Knowing and Sharing What We Believe by Joe Paprocki, go visit the Week 6 discussion at CatholicMom.com.

Lawn Chair Catechism, Week 3: Who's the Boss?

When I saw the title of this week's chapter I immediately thought of the old TV show "Who's the Boss?" It was one of my favorite shows as a kid, but I never could decide who really was the boss.

There's no question who the boss is here. It's God! This chapter is all about authority: who has it, who is it passed on to, and what it means for us today. Many things struck me about this chapter, including the idea that Tradition (with a capital "T") is one with Scripture, the two cannot be separated. Also, that Tradition is the passing on of Church teaching, NOT just acts of doing something the same way over and over again, i.e., "we've always done it that way."

Since returning to the Catholic faith over a decade ago and learning more about the faith in the process, I was taught the difference between Big-T Tradition and small-t tradition. However, I hadn't actually associated Tradition with the Magisterium in quite the way that is presented in this book. Reading through this chapter I had kind of a "duh!" moment. If Tradition is the passing down of the Church's teachings to subsequent generations, than it is obvious that the Magisterium is the keeper of Tradition, guided by the Holy Spirit. In the same way, we wouldn't have Holy Scripture if it weren't for Tradition. It's not like the question of the chicken and the egg. In this case we know that Tradition came first and Scripture second.

Oh how that would shock our Protestant brothers and sisters! But I digress ...

This question from the leader's guide goes along well with my thoughts from this chapter:

What advantage does having a Magisterium--an official teaching office--give to the Catholic Church?

This is one of the reasons I love the Catholic Church. In my few years away from the Church, I never felt drawn to other faith traditions (small-t tradition, by the way). I didn't consciously leave the Church, it was more of a slow falling away in the busyness of going to college and being out on my own for the first time and never really internalizing the importance of my faith. I believed in God, but didn't see the importance of attending a service on a weekly basis. I had occasion during my college years and early 20s to go Mass and I did, but never felt the need to make it a habit. I also attended services at other churches, but that usually had more to do with circumstances (peer influence or music gigs on Easter or other special days) than it did with me "checking out" a different faith.

Once I was on the path to reconnecting with the Catholic Church and re-learning my faith, I truly came to understand why the Catholic Church makes the claims that it does. And once I understood the history of the Church, the oral traditions of the early Church that led to the compilation of the Bible a few centuries after Christ, and how the whole hierarchy thing works, the concept of the Magisterium fell into place.

The keeper of Tradition has to come from somewhere!! Scripture and interpreting Scripture--there has to be an authoritative source. If not, then what? If there is no ONE interpretation of Scripture than every single person can have their own interpretations and then everyone is right and no one is wrong. That just can't work!! Not with humans, no way. I've seen enough of human nature to know that God would never just leave it up to each of us to form our own interpretations of Scripture. 

And this idea of an authoritative source feeds into my librarian brain really well. Maybe that's why I accepted it so easily. In any case, it made sense and I knew that only the Catholic Church could be the One True Church. Why? Because of the Magisterium.

The advantage of the Magisterium? It makes the Catholic Church an authoritative source. It creates a unity in the teachings of the Church such that everyone (all 1 billion plus Catholics in the world) are all on the same page. It gives us a place to turn for understanding Scripture. It unites us and puts us all on the same page. From the richest Catholics to the poorest Catholics, we all have the same teachings, interpretations of Scripture, and understanding of Tradition.

Now when I listen to my priest give a homily or I attend a Bible Study discussion, I know (hopefully) that I am being taught through the lens of the Catholic Magisterium, guided by the Holy Spirit. There is no room for one individual's interpretation of Scripture, that only creates chaos.

I guess I would also say that another advantage of the Magisterium is that it adds a level of comfort for those of us in the pews. It's nice to know that no matter where I go, which Catholic church I attend, the teachings are the same.

For more discussion on this chapter of A Well-Built Faith by Joe Paprocki, check out today's edition of Lawn Chair Catechism on CatholicMom.com.

Lawn Chair Catechism, Week 1: Part 1, Chapter 1

This summer I am challenging myself to read and keep up with the Lawn Chair Catechism book being discussed over at CatholicMom.com. The book this summer is A Well-Built Faith: A Catholic's Guide to Knowing and Sharing What We Believe by Joe Paprocki.

If you want to join in, the complete schedule is at the Lawn Chair Catechism page and includes a link to the Leader's Guide (where the weekly discussion questions can be found). It's not too late if you want to join in. Just get the book and start reading and jump in whenever you can.

So here we go:

My first thought, when I saw the acronym H.E.L.P., I got worried. It often takes me a while to remember what an acronym stands for, especially when it's not just one word for each initial, as is the case with this one. But, just one chapter in and I think I'm getting the hang of it. Maybe! I'm sure I'll be flipping back to the Introduction throughout my reading of the book to constantly refresh my memory.

But I like the idea of it:
H = Holding onto the faith (the Creed)
E = Expressing the faith (sacraments)
L = Living the faith (Catholic morality)
P = Praying the faith (prayer)

By the end of the book, I may have this well ingrained in my head. Let's hope!

Tonight, before I got around to reading this first chapter, I was nursing the baby in his room before putting him to bed. As I rocked in the glider and he ate I realized that I did not bring my iPod Touch up with me as I usually do. I got over the initial disappointment rather quickly as I came to the realization that this was a perfect time for some prayer time with God. A good time to speak with him and try to listen as well.

It was hard at first. Unfortunately I don't do this often enough. I hate to admit that, but what better time for a little honesty, right? So I found myself contemplating the intellectual knowledge of God versus the emotional or "heart knowledge" of God. I always feel like I understand things on an intellectual level and I accept them on that level, but that I lack in the area of pure emotional love for God.

Imagine my surprise when I started reading and got to the part where Paprocki discusses ideas versus beliefs. It was all right there! To believe requires both head and heart. The head part is easy for me; the heart part I find a little tougher. I often find myself asking God, "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief."

In the little of this book I have read so far, I think it will speak well to my thirst for head knowledge. On the other hand, I can see that it will likely help foster my desire for my heart to swell with a greater belief in our beautiful faith, too. It's there now, it's just not as balanced as it should be.

This first chapter establishes what the four pillars of the Catholic Church are. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into each pillar and the richness found within each.

To wrap this up, this section from the Introduction chapter speaks to me strongly and gets to the heart of my own need to balance things:

"God is actively present in our lives, shaping us into the person that reflects his divine image. Learning about our faith is not simply an intellectual exercise. It is a movement of the heart. St. Anselm taught that theology can be thought of as 'faith seeking understanding.'" (pg. xiv)

This reminds me that I am right where God wants me to be. I may be more drawn to learning about the faith on an intellectual level, but God will use that to help shape me to accept more and more with my heart. It strikes me in a powerful way. It makes me wonder what all God has in store for me!

How exciting!!

This post is linked up to Part 1: The Creed and Chapter 1: Laying a Firm Foundation {Lawn Chair Catechism} at CatholicMom.com. Come on over and check out the discussion.