Unveiling the Light

There are no three day weekends on the horizon, many credit cards are tapped out, new junk has been stored away with the old junk and the weeks seem to be longer. This can only mean one thing. The holidays are over and its back to the day to day world we must learn to live in. Hopefully we have made some realizations over the Christmas season and now face our once mundane life with a new and improved outlook. If not, well, there is always Easter!

It is too easy to fall back into the old routine and let time go by. New Year’s resolutions are soon forgotten, our rededication to our faith fades away, and each day becomes like the next, a perpetual version of the movie, “Ground Hog Day,� but with our happy ending no where in sight. Meanwhile life passes by and young twenties soon become mid thirties, and then late forties. Senior citizenship comes quickly and the Golden Years won’t last forever. Where does the time go? How do we make the changes we seek?

The first step to making a change in our lives must be to slow it down. It is too easy to become caught up in the frantic cycle of life. Job pressures, needing to pay off bills, activities for the kids, long commutes, and endless chores mean that the days click by. A great many Americans often forego their vacations because they feel so harried. Others retire and find themselves busier than ever. To change this vicious cycle we need to make small, daily decisions. We need time to contemplate our actions and values so that we can adjust our life style.

The first decisions will probably need to involve spending. Where can it be cut back? Do we really need those new clothes? Can the car last a few more years to avoid payments and perhaps lower insurance costs? Do we need to stretch ourselves so thin to make the mortgage payments on a large house or can we get by with a smaller place? What good are these luxuries if our life is a steady blur? Instead of life passing by without our being able to affect it, why not cut back on expenditures so we do not feel so pressured?

Kids should feel to be a part of the family by contributing to its well being. With older children and teenagers in the house, some safety lessons can allow them to participate in the yard work. They should at minimum be made responsible for keeping their rooms and play areas clean and there is nothing wrong with assigning household chores to every member of the family. Receiving things freely does not build character. Participating in the success of a family does. If their efforts free the parents to spend more time with them, they will be doubly blessed.

Work can be addictive, especially if we feel we are in competition with all our co-workers. Companies thrive on this competition but also appreciate competent and steady work. Learning to work with other co-workers in a cooperative manner can help and taking the time to do the work right the first time can make you more productive. The main thing is to know your limits and set your priorities correctly. The priority is for the job to serve the family. It does not do so if you are not able to be with them. Avoid the late nights and never bring work home. Be good and competent but workaholics are not really virtuous. Eventually the unbalanced life will affect work performance negatively. Unhappy and unfulfilled workers are not good workers.

Hobbies should also be looked at carefully. Is the time spent on the hobby time spent away from your spouse or loved ones? Is it too much time? Are you frozen in front of the TV or napping on the couch when your time and effort could be making improvements in the household and family relations? Free time should be used to the best effect possible. We all need time to rest and unwind but need to guard against sloth. It can become easy to tune out the world with hobbies or television so as to avoid problems, rather than spending the time constructively to solve them. In the long run the constructive efforts will make your life easier.

It all comes down to trusting God and making family, community, and personal life a priority. We should be able to enjoy life today, not be working to achieve things so that we can enjoy it sometime in the future. That future may never arrive. Your spouse needs your attention now. You need to grow in life together to avoid growing apart separately. Your children especially need you now! They will grow old too quickly and if you don’t develop a healthy relationship with them at a young age and maintain that relationship, you will hardly know them when they enter the teenage years. If you have neither of these blessings, then your personal life needs to be fulfilling in your friends, relatives and work in the community.

Change is not easy but it is possible. With faith in Christ it can be done, when we realize that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves and that we are not alone. Not only do we need to allow God to work in our lives but we need to share it with those around us. Together we build on each others’ strengths and cover our weaknesses while alone we are vulnerable and can fail to thrive. Life is short and it happens now. We don’t get to go back and do it again and nobody gets out of here alive. But if we live a good life, loving God, loving others, and loving ourselves, then the end of this life will lead to everlasting life that does last forever.

That is my advice. The rest is up to you. Make this the year that you find the real value of life and live out that value. God has blessed you with this chance and, with your prayers and trust; God will bless you to make the best of it.

Posted by Fr Steven Foppiano at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well here we are in 2007. We made it into another year. As long as I can remember, for at least 40+ years, I have been hearing about the end of the world. In grammar school my classmates and I practiced the “duck and cover� drill as we expected the Cuban Missile Crisis to cause the Cold War to go very hot. In high school I read about over population and how it would cause a world wide civil war of “haves� against “haves not� that would eventually ruin civilization. Throughout my life I have been told that “Global Cooling� or “Global Warming� would cause the weather to change so drastically that by (name your date) we would suffer a great catastrophe. Those dates keep passing by.

Of course throughout all of this a variety of preachers and denominations have predicted the end times. They look to the various wars, disease, revolutions and other troubles in the war and declare that it follows the pattern put forth by the bible and that the end is very near. These dates, when given, come and go. Even when not given it is the norm that these predictors die of old age before ever seeing the end of the world they so gleefully looked forward to. They have been with us always and will always remain with us. They will continue to ignore history and declare that things have never been so bad.

So why are we still here? Why am still here? Certainly when I graduated high school in 1974 I never imagined myself sitting at a computer in 2007 to write about the times in which we live. I certainly never considered that I would be doing it as pastor of a Catholic Church, having enjoyed several careers before landing at my destined place in life. Life if full of surprises! I am surprised at where I find myself at this time and I believe this old world full of people has surprised many who thought they knew better than everyone else.

Too many people in this world think that we are it, that we are the highest form of life this planet has or will see, and they are deeply disappointed in us. We do not meet their expectations of perfection. We do not always agree with them. We are messy. We leave behind traces of who we are and we continue to act as if there is hope for the future. So they whine and predict and tell us we are killing ourselves. They explain to us how we should change our lives and are frustrated when we don’t jump at the opportunity to take advantage of their wisdom. Of course, they exempt themselves from the actions and burdens they wish on us. They feel they are here to lead, not do.

I have learned on my journey to this point in life that those who claim to be part of the “intelligentsia,� are usually the least educated and least qualified among us. If you have to declare your superiority, you are not. A large ego and a way to communicate to others, does not make you worthy of leadership and should not guarantee you a following. Humankind is not the poor species many describe. We may be silly at times as individuals but, taken as a whole, we are remarkably resilient, hopeful, creative, and future oriented. We have missed many chances to cause our own demise and have grasped and run with many opportunities to better ourselves, even at great risk to our lives.

We are not just a species which has evolved from the lowest of life forms. Whatever your belief, neither evolution or creationism, nor other variations of how we came to be, can explain who we are. We will not find the answer in our genes and not in our minds. We can study history for hints, but the answer will not be found there. Science and philosophy, nor even religion itself will give us the final answer.

Some may be surprised that I exempt religion as well in the above list. But the fact is, religion can lead us to the Truth, but it cannot give it to us. The truth of who we are lies in our being Children of God. That is not the result of evolution or creationism. It is the result of Jesus Christ. He did not come to impress us and Lord over us. He lowered himself to join us and live among us and to serve us in His ministry and sacrifice.

We can be told about Jesus and we can study the scriptures. We can worship in Church and even receive the Sacraments. These are good things, and they lead us to the truth, but they are not the Truth. Socrates found the Truth well before our Savior came into the world. He was a great philosopher but it was not just his mind that brought him the truth. One does not die for a reasoned conclusion. His conclusion was confirmed elsewhere.

The Truth is found in only one place and that is the human heart. It is the heart that cannot be defined. Not a muscle beating to push blood through our veins, but the heart of whom we are as human beings. When we hear the Truth, that we are not a biological accident but a creation of the divine being and that God has made us part of His family; this rings true to our very being. Call it our heart, our soul, or just being human; when we set aside our agendas and prejudices and simply open ourselves to hear the Gospel, which is the truth of our salvation in Christ Jesus; that is when we know.

It is in such circumstances that we come to understand something that is beyond reason, beyond instinct, beyond faith and belief. It just feels like the Truth. We know it in the heart of who we are. Yes, there is a God and yes, He is a loving God and yes, we are blessed by this God to have become His children. We are not an accident. We will not pass quietly from this world and we are not just another species. We are children of God and as such there is always hope, always a future and always a reason to bring out the best in one another.

Let us take a resolution in this New Year. Let us resolve to understand who we are and to live in the knowledge of that Truth. Let us resolve to be good stewards of the gifts God has granted us, including the gifts of life, of nature, and of each other. Let us resolve to not live as animals with only instinct and genes to lead us but to LIVE as the Children of God that we are. God loves us. We need to live in that love and share it with others as well as ourselves. We need to live in hope and to seek out that hope in our actions of charity, ministry, brotherhood and sisterhood. Then we will truly have a Happy New Year and once again prove the prophets of doom wrong.
Happy New Year everyone!

Father Steven Foppiano

Posted by Fr Steven Foppiano at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)