Awake, my soul!

"Awake O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light." Ephesians 5:14

We as a society are sleeping. I have realized this more and more as of late. We have used things like science, reason, technology, and all sorts of distractions to put our souls to sleep. We are constantly distracting ourselves from life. We are always connected to something. We are constantly distracting ourselves with our computers, ipods, kindles, etc. We are missing out on so much of what life has to offer. We are missing out on what it means to be human. Just the other day I saw some dad at the park with his little boy. The boy was playing and being funny and cute, but the dad was only paying attention to phone while texting. It was sad to see him missing out on his son.

I was recently at a talk and I got to listen to one of the Vatican’s astrologers, Br. Guy Consolmagno S.J. speak. He is a brilliant man with several degrees from MIT. He spoke a lot about religion and science, and how we cannot have science without religion. He spoke against materialism that we find today in Physicists who try to explain how the universe works in order to explain away God. Br. Guy commented that is the material universe is all that there is, it is meaningless. And if it is meaningless, than what is the point to studying it with science? This is a great point, however it caused me to think about the human experience, and how asleep we are that we don’t even notice the bigger reality.

We, as human beings, are the only creatures that have science. We are the only beings who have philosophy or art. Have you ever seen an animal stop and appreciate a sunset? Or have you known a tree to ask “who am I and how do I fit in to the bigger picture?” How about any other creature that explores? The reason that humans are the only creatures to look out and the universe and ask what is the meaning of everything? Is because that is the very thing that makes us human!

And so, the irony of it all is that scientists will try and use reason to explain how the entire universe works and come up with an answer disproving God, but the fact that he even asks the question PROVES that there is a God. Human beings, all of us, seek something more. We aren’t content with what is around us. We wonder why we are here, and what it means. Every human being gets hungry. When that happens we know that we need food. The fact that we are born with the desire for food and nourishment means that food and nourishment must exist. Otherwise why would we all be created with this desire? Likewise every human at some point or another has a desire for something bigger than themselves, something bigger than this world. The fact that we are all made with this desire for God proves that He exists; otherwise why would we be made with a desire for Him?

The irony to me behind all of this is that we negate the human experience with all of these distractions. We have scientists so focused on proving that God doesn’t exist and all the while they are driven by this question deep down inside that points to His existence. Chris Stefanick spoke at a conference to some teens recently and said, “People are always looking at the mountains and the stars and then asking ‘God, why don’t you revel yourself to me?’” Chris then wagered that God would answer, “Do you miss…everything?” Science can explain where mountains and stars come from, but that can’t explain that feeling you get in your soul when you notice how beautiful they are. Science can’t explain why it is only humans that appreciate and seek beauty. Science can’t explain why it is only humans who do science, and why doing science in the first place is what makes us human. We all just need to wake up to those experiences all around us and we will see more perfectly what God has for each and every one of us. We will wake up to what it truly means to be human.

“Awake, my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn!” Psalm 57:8

The plain, the ordinary, and the EPIC

So this morning I arrived in my office to find a link that my brother posted on my facebook wall. It was a link to the Theme from Mighty Ducks D3. He wrote, “Two things. 1) This brings back some of the happiest memories of my life. 2) I still have no idea why I'm not doing musical composition with my life. Think of Bombay walking down the hall at the end of D3 and tell me your day wasn't just made.” I love my brother so much. I know that he put that on my wall because he was listening to the song and it evoked in him deep and epic emotions about music, life, passion, and purpose and he wanted to share that with me because he knew that I would understand exactly what he meant. And I did. Completely. I wasn’t quite expecting my morning to start this way. Here I was at 8am going through my morning routine, and I stopped for a few minutes to listen to this music and reminisce about the many memories and feelings it brings up and I found myself tearing up in my office. Good thing I was alone! 

A few minutes later, I was walking across the parish campus to go to 8:30 Mass just like everyday. I paused a moment to see the morning sun light up the Rocky Mountains and then continued on into Church. As I sat in the Church reflecting on the readings, trying to prepare my heart, and waiting quietly for the Mass to begin, I had the song from Mighty Ducks still stuck in my head. I kept thinking about all the raw emotion and inspiration I had just felt while sitting in my office only minutes before! 

There is something to be said about passion, about the deep desires of our hearts. In the Gospel of John, Christ tells us that He came that we would have life abundantly- meaning full to the point of overflowing. (cf. John 10:10). There is something about good music that moves me and makes me come alive. Music, to me, can express and evoke feelings that no picture, painting, sculpture, landscape, or words ever could. And lately in my own personal life and prayer life I have been chasing after these things that make me come alive. One of my favorite quotes from is from St. Irenaeus who said, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” All over scripture we read that God made us for His glory. He made us to live life to the full; to come alive. To fully live out the abundant life that God wants for us, to bring Him glory, we need to understand these desires of our hearts; we need to figure out what it means to be FULLY ALIVE. In the spirit of that, I plan on going sky diving this month. It is something that I have always wanted to do and it makes me come alive, so I am going to go for it! 

Back to this morning pre-Mass: so there I was and I was getting ready for the Mass, and I thought about all the epic things in life from good music, to snowboarding the Rockies, to jumping out of a plane, and how they make me come alive and give me that rush. Then I thought what is more epic that the Mass? This is where we come into real contact with the God of the universe. This is where we experience our very purpose for living! Why then, I thought, is it so hard to enter into Mass sometimes? Why can’t Mass be played up like skydiving or extreme sports? We should have epic music and a gong at every Mass so that we can enter in to the sheer epic-ness! “Why don’t we do that?” I thought. But as I sat in the silence and reflected on Mass, it all hit me. It is the simplicity and the sometimes silence of Mass that makes it epic. It is the sacramental aspect of all of life that is epic.

The fundamental truth upon which all of Scripture opens is that God created and it is good. All of creation then, including us is created as good. Our desires, our humanity is good. This probably the biggest difference between Catholic theology and all other Christian theology: we celebrate creation. It is the sacraments, and the Eucharist in particular, that point us to this truth. We use oil, water, salt, bread and wine; all created things in the sacraments. These simple created things point us to the Divine, and remind us that all of creation is good. And it is through these simple pieces of creation that God chooses to meet us. He encounters us in the simple. That is what is so truly radical! God elevates the natural to the supernatural. That is what makes the Incarnation so profound! God himself took on flesh. He became a human and as a result elevated all humanity to sheer epic-ness itself. He teaches us what It means to be alive; what it means to be human. And in the Eucharist, in humility, God comes down quietly, without an epic soundtrack, and meets us in the most intimate way under the signs of simple bread and wine. That is why the Mass is structured the way it is. We pray out loud, we sing, we stand, sit, kneel, we look at statues and stained glass, we smell the incense, we hear the Scriptures proclaimed. We worship with all of our senses, because we are both body and soul. 

This is what epic is. God shows us how to live life abundantly. He shows us what it means to be fully alive and it isn’t some big ordeal or showy event. It is in the simple things every single day. So often we feel like we can’t see God or we can’t hear Him when we pray. We spend all of our time looking for some Divine bill-board to make it obvious to us, and we expect some epic encounter. However, God chooses to come to us in a simple way. We learn that living life to the full, in an epic way, isn’t about traveling the world to ridiculous spots and then doing something dangerous for an adrenaline rush. Living life to the full is living life in relationship with God. The Catechism states it beautifully, “man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God,” (CCC 44). Life then, is not a series of grand moments, but a daily adventure. On the surface it can seem boring, quiet, and routine; but if we understand redemption, we understand that God chooses to meet us there in plain, ordinary things every day. And then those plain, ordinary things come alive and point us to the supernatural. Suddenly, plain and ordinary become epic.