Cruise Control: Good For Your Car, Not For Your Marriage

Cruise control is a great invention.  Think about all the advantages: you don’t have to worry about slowing down when you spot a cop shooting radar, you save money on gas by increasing fuel efficiency, and—with your foot hovering over the brake as you drive—you are more prepared to react to a changing situation on the highway.  Yes, cruise control is a great idea for a car, but not for a marriage.

After you’ve been married for a while there is a tendency to put the relationship on “cruise control.”  We think, “Now that I‘m married, I can focus on other parts of my life.”  This may take the form of job immersion and advancement, making sure the bills are paid, or all the stuff that the kids are involved in.  Like driving in cruise control, it is critical that we still pay attention to the road ahead of us, and not be distracted by the sights and sounds of life around us.

If you have been in cruise control for a while in your marriage, Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to get back on track.  Here are some ideas to get you started.

1. Pray Together Every Day.  One of best ways not to cruise through your marriage is to pray together—even if just for a few minutes—every day.  Prayer is both the gift of grace and a response that takes effort on our part.  Jesus promises us, “All that you ask in prayer, believe that you will receive it, and it shall be yours” (John 14:13).  God knows what we need in our married lives as husbands and wives, and He grants those prayers that will help unite our wills to His.  Persistence in prayer is critical because we don’t serve a “fast food” God.  God the Father answers our prayers in His time and the timing of God is always perfect.  Persistence in prayer—in seeking and knocking at the door of His divine providence—is necessary if God is to truly be the heart and soul of married life.

2. Utilize the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Our faith as married couples should encourage us to seek God’s mercy and forgiveness: to come before Him and say, like King David, “My offenses, truly I know them.  My sin is always before me, against you, you alone have I sinned.  What is evil in your sight, I have done.”  Armed with the weapons of prayer and fasting we rend our hearts, turning back to our gracious and merciful God who restores us to life.

God’s love is so immense, His power so limitless, and His embrace so tender and intimate that Love Himself brings forth life.  God has created us as husbands and wives in His image and likeness, and He has written His law of love and life into our very being.  God invites us through His only Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to draw deeply from the wellspring of salvation.  He calls us to works of mercy to show that we love Him as much as He loves us.  Seeking forgiveness from God is the gateway to seeking forgiveness from your spouse.

3. Talk Openly About Money & Finances.  I’ll be honest: when my wife and I discuss financial issues, I will often say, “Since I’m paying for this, this and this, I should make the decisions.”  Quite frankly, I am guilty of not always taking into account the many sacrifices my wife has made over the years in our marriage and recognizing her equal contribution in the decision-making process.

Turn off the cruise control by talking about your finances regularly and openly: how you both view money and how it should be spent. Most importantly, listen to your spouse!  Don’t get into bad habits: make some money ground rules that determine spending limits.  Establish a realistic budget and stick to it.  Be disciplined and learn to live within your means.  You need to work together and remember that you are a team when dealing with finances, and that compromise is sometimes necessary.

4.  Go on a Date Night At Least Once a Month.  It is so important to find quality time just for the two of you.  I know couples that have been married for over thirty years and are now divorced because the cruise control was on for way too long. It is essential that you and your spouse spend time talking about the ebb and flow of your relationship as it moves through time; how the two of you are growing and changing over the course of your marriage.  It will be difficult not to talk about the kids, so do that first and spend the rest of the time talking about your marriage.  Dinner and a movie once a month is a small investment that will pay big dividends down the road!

On the highway of life, marriage is much more like a winding road consisting of many twists and turns than a straightaway.  On life’s road, cruise control simply won’t work.  Instead, spouses must navigate together and develop a spirituality within their marriage that attests to the truth that God is love, and that He calls all husbands and wives to live in personal, loving communion with Him.  This will not always be easy.  It will take work!  Married couples should take solace, however, in the fact that they have God’s grace (much better than cruise control!) to help them through the most difficult times and the toughest challenges.  With the Divine GPS in control of our married lives we will never lose our way, for union with God forever in heaven is our ultimate destination and goal.

©2012 Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers

New Year’s Resolutions … From a Mother’s Perspective

On this first day of the New Year, at a time when we remember the past with a sense of thankfulness (or relief!) and look forward to the future with renewed joy and hope, the Church, in her wisdom, draws our attention to Mary, the Blessed Mother of God and the perfect symbol of our relationship with Christ—past, present, and future.

When you love someone with all your heart, with the depths of your soul and with all your being, when you love someone with a love that is selfless and pure, you are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of the other.  This is what the Father has done for us through the Blessed Virgin Mary: God has given us the gift of Himself in and through His Word, Jesus Christ, someone who would give his life so that we may have life in Him.

God has shown both the depth of his love and his abiding respect for the dignity of our human nature by becoming one of us.  By becoming enfleshed in the womb of Mary, God wants us to know that He understands what it’s like to live in the depths of poverty.  God wants us know that He understands what it’s like to experience great sadness and humiliation, unbelievable pain and suffering, and even the darkness of death itself.  God wants us to know we are not alone and shows us through the Blessed Mother that when we humble ourselves before our Loving God, open our hearts to His holy will, and devote ourselves completely to discipleship in Christ, then we too, by Mary’s perfect example of what it means to be fully human, can share in the divine life of the Trinity and participate in God’s saving plan for the destiny of all humanity.

Both men and women are made in God’s image and likeness (see Genesis 1:26-27) but, as Pope John Paul the Great stated so beautifully, women are more capable than men of paying attention to another person and that the man—even though he shares in the parenting relationship—always remains “outside” the process of pregnancy and the baby’s birth and in many ways he has to learn his own fatherhood from the mother (see Mulieris Dignitatem, 18).  It is in Mary’s fiat, in her “Yes” to the gift of motherhood—to the gift of life in cooperation with the Holy Spirit—that makes possible the sincere gift of fatherhood in Christ (see Ephesians 5:22-32).

A man, in his way of imaging God, points to God’s “otherness” and transcendence, whereas a woman, in her way of imaging God, points to God’s immanence and “withinness” since motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life as it develops in a woman’s womb.  In general, a woman’s sexual and personal identity are more interior, intimately linked to her being and “bodiliness,” whereas a man’s sexual and personal identity are more exterior, more closely associated with his actions and how he understands himself in relation to the external world.

The relationship, then, of “motherhood” in God is analogously related to the interior “withinness” of the Divine Persons, the intimate relationship and exchange of love and life between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The Blessed Virgin Mary participated in an intimate, life-giving relationship with God in an interior, bodily way that only a woman could.  In becoming one with the child in her womb, she became one with God Himself.  Like the Mother of God, the Church herself becomes “pregnant” with the Word Made Flesh each time we receive Jesus Christ Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.

“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).  Having received the Eucharist, how do we give birth to God’s love and truth through this great gift of His Son?  How well do we bear the labor pains of ridicule from a society that mocks us because of our Catholic faith?  How do we give life and meaning to our faith amidst a culture of sin and death?  Mary shows us the way.  The Blessed Mother not only gave birth to God in her body but also through her example of quiet prayerfulness, deep humility, patient obedience, unwavering trust and enduring love.  She is, in a real sense, Mother of the Church and epitomizes for her sons and daughters the virtues we must make part of our own lives if we are to become the persons who God created us to be.

Therefore, it is with the heart and mind of the Virgin Mary, in completed obedience to the Father’s will, that we make resolutions for the New Year.  This way of thinking and being goes beyond resolving to lose weight, getting a new job, or going back to school (which are all very good things!)  The deeper question is: How is my life going to be a blessing to Christ this year?  Here are six suggestions:

1. Get to know Jesus more intimately: Read the Gospels for 15 minutes a day every day this year.

2. Spend personal time with Jesus: Spend one hour per week in the classroom of silence, that is, in Eucharistic Adoration.

3. Help Jesus with His work in the Church: Increase tithing by 5%.

4. Overcome the power of sin in your life: Monthly Reconciliation; daily Rosary; prayer and fasting!

5. Promote and foster vocations: Are we encouraging our children to consider vocations to the priesthood and religious life?  The most important question we can ask is not, “What do you want to be when you grow-up?” but rather “How did God speak to you today?” or “How did God use you today?”  By creating a prayerful atmosphere at home where we display holy objects and pictures, and actually pray with our children, we encourage them to cooperate with the grace of the Holy Spirit they have received in Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist.

6. Understand the teachings of Christ more deeply: Take time to learn what the Church teaches and why.  To assist you in making a deeper connection between the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and your every day life, I have written an e-book (along with a brand new CD and DVD) entitled, The Mass in Sacred Scripture.

The Mass in Sacred Scripture was inspired by the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy and its desire that “the treasures of the bible be opened up more lavishly, so that richer fare may be provided for the faithful at the table of God’s word” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 51).  The Mass in Sacred Scripture walks the reader through a brief history of the liturgical changes at Vatican II that led to the 2010 Roman Missal revision in English, provides the approved English text of the Roman Missal alongside the Scripture passages from which the Mass texts were derived, and shows the intimate connection between the Mass and the Bible.  The book ends with a short question and answer section designed to root what happens at Mass within the fertile soil of our every day lived experience.  The Mass in Sacred Scripture clearly shows that, without a doubt, the Catholic Church fosters great reverence and respect for the Word of God, and recognizes the vital role Sacred Scripture plays in the lives of the Church and her children.

How is my life going to be a blessing to Christ this year?  In short, by becoming more like Mary, “the woman through whom was born the Son and who acquired divine sonship for us by His suffering.  But because we are God’s sons and daughters, ‘God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls Abba! (Father!)’  If we did not have the Spirit and the attitude of the Son, we would not be children of the Father.  It is this Spirit who permits us to shout to the Father gratefully and enthusiastically: ‘Yes, you really are our Father.’

“But let us not forget that this Spirit was first sent to the Mother and overshadowed her.  […]  Her rejoicing at this event, a joy that never ceases throughout the history of the Church, rings forth in Mary’s Magnificat: ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior’” (Light of the Word, 32).

Mary’s prayer of praise is exactly how we can be a blessing to the Lord this year.

©2012 Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers

Finding God This Christmas

Where do we find God?  On that very first Christmas night, the shepherds, while tending their sheep in the cold and the dark, “are addressed by an angel who shines upon them with the blinding glory of God” (von Balthasar, You Crown the Year with Your Goodness, p.275) and they are filled with fear.  Our encounter with God happens very much the same way: the God of glory who created us and who shares His life with us continually seeks us out in order to establish an everlasting bond of life-giving love.  Although there is never a moment when God doesn’t reach out to touch us with His loving embrace, we are often so caught-up in the affairs of our busy lives that we hardly even notice or have time for God at all.  But like the shepherds, it is during the times that we least expect—when dad has a sudden heart attack; when your wife is diagnosed with breast cancer; when your sixteen year-old daughter becomes pregnant; when you lose your job and have no idea how to support your family—it is during the cold, dark, and fearful periods of our lives that we turn to Jesus Christ, the Son of God laid to rest in a manger, who leads us through the valley of tears, who guides us in the way of peace, who has been patiently waiting for us our entire lives to answer His call to love.

Where do we find God?  When I held my oldest daughter Claire in my arms for the first time on the day she was born; when I came face-to-face with the reality that this new life was totally dependent upon Colleen and me for her happiness and well being—for her very life, a life that I helped to create—I was completely overwhelmed with feelings of unconditional love and incredible joy.  For the first time in my life, I had just an inkling, a glimpse, of what God’s love must be like and that God loves me infinitely more than I could ever love my child.  Tonight, God comes to us as a child.  “The Child who is named ‘Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace’ is born for every man and woman.  He brings with him the answers [to the meaning of life, answers] which can calm our fears and reinvigorate our hope. … Like the shepherds, we too on this wonderful night cannot fail to experience the desire to share with others the joy of our encounter with this ‘child wrapped in swaddling clothes’, in whom the saving power [of God and the everlasting love] of the Almighty is revealed” (Pope John Paul II, 24 December 2001).  On this holy night, we marvel at the greatness of Christ’s littleness, of the coming of Christ as man in order to raise us to the heights of His divinity! (cf. Minute Meditations from the Popes, p.182).

Where do we find God?  As I delivered Christmas food boxes to our neighbors in need last weekend, I felt somewhat saddened at the conditions I found as I entered those homes.  I saw families making the best of what little they had.  I saw that the food I was bringing might be the only full meal they would eat for the entire week.  I saw the joy on the faces of children who made sure that they said a heartfelt, “Thank you!,” and all I could do was smile and say, “You’re welcome, Merry Christmas,” as I left to go to the next house.  I knew that on Christmas day I would be warm, well fed, and surrounded by family and friends.  Santa would bring lots of presents and we would “make the rounds” to several Christmas parties celebrating the season with much joy and happiness.  But as I drove home, I thought of the stable where Jesus was born; of the manger that was his bed; of Mary and Joseph’s great courage in raising a child in poverty, trusting in God alone, and I smiled thinking that the families I visited were not celebrating Christmas: they were living it.  The Christ-child offers a sign of hope for the whole human family; as sign of peace for those suffering from hardships of every kind; a sign of freedom for the poor and oppressed; a sign of mercy for those caught up in the vicious circle of sin and addiction; a sign of love and consolation for those who feel lonely and abandoned (cf. Pope John Paul II, 24 December 2002).  A small and fragile sign, a humble and quiet sign, but one filled with the power of God who out of love became man (cf. Pope John Paul II, 24 December 2002).

Let us place our joys and fears, our tears and hopes at the feet of the Word Incarnate born for us this night.  Jesus “comes into the world in order to transform creation.  He becomes a man among men, so that in him and through him every human being can be profoundly renewed.  By his birth, he draws us into the realm of the divine, granting to those who in faith open themselves to receiving his gift the possibility of sharing his own divine life” (Pope John Paul II, 24 December 1998).  Let us pray that the light of Christ, that shown so brightly that first Christmas night, remove the darkness of sin, illumine our minds and hearts, and reveal in us the richness and beauty of God’s truth and love.  O come, let us adore him: Christ the Lord!

©2011 Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers

Thanksgiving

Psalm 138

I thank you, Lord, with all my heart,
you have heard the words of my mouth.
In the presence of the angels I will bless you.
I will adore before your holy temple.

I thank you for your faithfulness and love
which excel all we ever knew of you.
On the day I called, you answered;
you increased the strength of my soul.

All earth’s kings shall thank you
when they hear the words of your mouth.
They shall sing of the Lord’s ways:
“How great is the glory of the Lord!”

The Lord is high yet he looks on the lowly
and the haughty he knows from afar.
Though I walk in the midst of affliction
you give me life and frustrate my foes.

You stretch out your hand and save me,
your hand will do all things for me.
Your love, O Lord, is eternal,
discard not the work of your hands.

After you’ve been married or in religious life for a while, there’s a tendency to start taking the relationship for granted.  It’s not that you love your spouse or the members of your community any less.  Over time, you just become so at ease with them that comfort begets complacency.

Thanksgiving is a time for us to focus on the great gift the Lord has been in our life and in the lives of those we love.  It’s about sharing the gift of ourselves with others.

Thanksgiving is a special time to be grateful for what the Lord has granted us both materially and spiritually, but it does not mean dwelling in comfort and abundance.  Rather, it implies a personal response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who calls us to be His courageous servants of all that is true, good and beautiful, and to make a connection between the faith that we learn and the lived experience of that faith.

In the Gospel of Luke, nine of the ten lepers are so comfortable in their relationship with the Lord that they fail to “bless the God of all who has done wondrous things on earth.”  Only one of them came back to give thanks to the Lord and, through his physical healing and restoration, received an even greater gift of spiritual renewal and salvation.  The lesson for us is that God has ways of rewarding those who are generous with what they have received from Him.

 Every Sunday we come together in the ultimate act of giving thanks: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where we receive the Holy Eucharist, which literally means “thanksgiving” (the Greek word “eucharistein” means “to give thanks”).  The Eucharist strengthens and nourishes us in the middle of the desert of our lives–on our journey of faith–so that we can be faithful witnesses to the goodness, beauty, and fidelity of Jesus Christ in the hope that we may be a Eucharistic presence in the lives of others amidst a culture that constantly nourishes itself on the food of this world–food that fails to satisfy the human heart’s hunger and thirst for truth.

We thank God the Father for the grace He has bestowed on us in Christ Jesus; for the sacrifice of his only-begotten Son by which we are sanctified and saved, and that this sacrifice is made present to us in its fullness of grace and love and spiritual fruitfulness every time we dare to approach this holy altar to receive Jesus.  This is a gift for which mere thanks is not enough.  So we fall down in worship before the Lord and we recognize in gratitude our responsibility to live what we receive, to become “other Christs” in the world, to live the Gospel and to allow the grace of the Holy Eucharist to refashion us in the image and likeness of God, which we had lost through sin, and that continues to be obscured by our attachment to sin.

So on this Thanksgiving Day, let us be faithful stewards of the natural and supernatural gifts of God: our homes, families, and work as well as the grace of the sacraments, prayer, and the hope of eternal life.  Let us also be thankful for the crosses as well as for the resurrection experiences in our lives.  Let us receive all of these gifts in a spirit of humility and an attitude of gratitude.  Let us “give thanks to the Lord for He is good; for His love endures forever.”

©2011 Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers

For All The Saints

A pirate, a vampire, and Cyclops from the X-Men.  These are a few of my favorite costumes I wore as a kid on Halloween.

Halloween has experienced an increasingly virulent “love-hate” relationship among Catholics over the past decade or so, particularly since the advent of the Harry Potter phenomenon.  Judging from the plethora of articles and blogs on the topic, Catholics seem to be divided into two camps.  The first says, “Reject Halloween at all costs since it is the devil’s holiday and only serves the corrupt the hearts and minds of our children.”  The second says, “Oh, come on!  What’s the big deal?  There’s nothing wrong with kids playing ‘make believe,’ having fun and getting candy.  It’s not like they think Halloween is for real.”

I believe this time of year presents our children with a tremendous faith-learning opportunity where the emphasis should be not on Halloween itself but on the Feast of All Saints.  They need to know the history of All Saints, its tacit connection to Halloween, and how it has become distorted by the secular culture.

In a nutshell, the Feast of All Saints was established shortly after the implementation of religious pluralism in the early 4^th century.  During this time, Christians desired to formally honor the martyrs who gave their lives for the faith, and the Feast of All Saints was established and celebrated on May 13^th.  In the year 844, Pope Gregory IV moved the Feast of All Saints from May 13^th to November 1^st, where it remains to this day.

This is where the connection to Halloween comes in.  “November 1^st marked Samhain, the beginning of the Celtic winter.  Samhain was the Celtic lord of death, and his name literally meant ‘summer’s end.’  Since winter is the season of cold, darkness and death, the Celts soon made the connection with human death.  The eve of Samhain, October 31^st, was a time of Celtic pagan sacrifice, and [the Celts believed that] Samhain allowed the souls of the dead to return to their earthly homes that evening.  Ghosts, witches, goblins, and elves came to harm the people, particularly those who had inflicted harm on them in this life. […] To protect themselves from marauding evil spirits on the eve of Samhain … the Druids (the priests and spiritual teachers of the Celts) built a huge new year’s bonfire [and] offered burnt sacrifices [of] crops, animals, even humans.  People sometimes wore costumes of animal heads and skins” (Reverend William Saunders, “All Saints and All Souls,” Arlington Catholic Herald, 2002).

Despite the spread of Christianity throughout the known world, the collective memory of some of these Celtic customs remained.  Hence, the Christian Vigil for the Feast of All Saints, or All Hallows Eve celebrated on October 31st, became Halloween.  Instead of observing the Christian custom of remembering deceased loved ones in a special way, the culture exploited elements of pagan rituals and practices to create what has become a pseudo-holiday.  Nevertheless, it is clear that All Saints day evolved out of a purely Christian ethos and not from pagan idolatry.

Then what should we do about the kiddos?  To what extent and level parents choose to inculcate Halloween into the lives of their children is a prudential decision.  However, Halloween is an occasion to help children not only appreciate the true significance of this time of year, and to remember and honor those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith (i.e., baptism) but also challenge them to become saints in their own lives!

In order to become saints, we don’t need to be great theologians like Saints Augustine or Thomas Aquinas.  We don’t need to be martyrs like Saints Felicity and Perpetua.  We don’t need to be great leaders like Saints Louis and Benedict.  We don’t even need to perform great works of charity like Mother Theresa or Martin de Porres.  In order to become saints, we must allow ourselves to be totally consumed by the fire of God’s absolute love.  We become saints by fulfilling Christ’s command to love the Lord our God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.

To be saints means that we must seek union with the Father in love through the deepening and strengthening of our relationship with Jesus in the Holy Spirit.  Jesus’ call to sainthood begins with his command to us: you must “be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect“ (Matthew 6:48).  Holiness is a calling by God to share in His very life through desiring and striving for spiritual perfection in love.  The way of holiness molds, shapes and forms us into the Body of Christ–into Jesus himself.

To become a saint always involves a receptive listening to both the Word of God and to the Church.  Saint Monica shows us that sainthood involves fervent and constant prayer, because it is only through prayer that we can come to know God better, and knowing Him better, we love Him better, and in loving Him better we find our true happiness in Him (cf. Thomas Merton, Praying the Psalms, 12).  The more we “act under God’s Spirit”, the more we seek to know and to do God’s Holy Will in our lives, the more we implore the assistance and grace of the Holy Spirit, the more we grow in holiness and the closer we come to sainthood.

Christ tells us that the road to sainthood passes through not only love of God but love of our neighbor as well.  Like Saint Francis of Assisi, God chooses us, his saints, and sends us off on our mission.  The world is the field in which the word of God is sown.  Through our efforts as evangelizing saints–as sowers of the seed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as living witnesses to the goodness, beauty, and truth of our Catholic faith–the world will bear succulent, rich fruit.  Yet, we may not know what fruit we are producing because it is God who picks and distributes the fruit of our labors!  We may never know how someone was touched by something we said.  We may never know how things turned out after someone has come to us for advice.  We may never know how someone’s life was changed when they met Jesus in us.  But as His saints, we know that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and it is in this outpouring of love that the God who wishes to reveal Himself achieves his purpose and goals” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, You Crown the Year with Your Goodness, 209).

Saint Therese of Lisieux once said, “In order to enjoy the merciful love of Jesus, it is necessary to humiliate ourselves, to acknowledge our nothingness, and this is a thing that many are unwilling to do.  God wants humility of heart.  When He sees that we are convinced of our nothingness . . . and appeal to Him, He stoops towards us and gives with divine generosity.”  “Following Christ means going with him into the Father’s vineyard—the world—to share in the work of redemption” (von Balthasar, 211).  In this world of sin and darkness, poor and humble saints shine brightly.  Through them, the light of Christ ignites our hearts and inspires us to respond lovingly to the Father’s tender embrace.

The bottom line is this: we are responsible and will be held accountable for teaching our children the faith and helping them to fall ever more deeply in love with Jesus.  In our love of God and neighbor we too become saints, which should cause us to rejoice and be glad, for our reward will be great in heaven.

©2011 Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers