"Fight the good fight of faith: lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art called, and hast confessed a good confession before many witnesses." - 1 Timothy 6:12

In the history of the Church there is a common occurrence, at least in appearance, where the good work of one is soon lost. Like a delicate flower nurtured by life giving rain, only to then wither away by scorching heat. Or like a boxer building up an 11 round lead on the scorecard, only to get knocked out in the final round. Think of many great saints such as Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola, and Alphonsus Ligouri. Some saints, as they prepare for death, get a firsthand glimpse of their hard work falling apart. Oftentimes it involves a newly founded religious order already losing zeal for the faith. It is a difficult purification for such saints. Why, even St. Alphonsus was more or less kicked out of his own order before he died. While it is a final purification for such saints, it undoubtedly is on account of original sin. That is, human nature, being fallen and thus disordered, often too easily drifts away from God. When someone leaves a work behind for others, there is a grave possibility of this work falling apart. Perhaps this is why some people are a little concerned about Opus Dei. Opus Dei, for the first time, has a new leader whom has never worked with St. Jose Maria Escriva. How long will it be before the "Work of God" loses its savour? Hopefully not in my lifetime.

And so I, being a great saint, had to endure this destruction of work over the past weekend. Hopefully it means I won't die too soon. I'm so busy purifying my wife everyday I'm sure. I speak of, though with perhaps slight exaggeration, our recent parish Confirmation/First Communion.

Last year I was helping out with catechism and sacramental prep at the church. I absolutely hated it. There was little to no structure. There was such apathy. I would teach a lesson, and then there would be zero follow up by parents at home. The children never prayed. Many never went to Mass. One parent would routinely show up very late to pick up her child. That is until I told her to show up on time, or pull out of catechism. Then I never saw her again. A couple of times I had parents come up to me and say "I heard you're doing catechism... I want my child to get Communion." Oh? I had no idea these families were Catholic. I remember one mom coming to me a couple of weeks before the bishop's scheduled arrival asking for the sacraments. I told her she should've been reading the bulletin for updates and registration. She said they never went to church, so it wasn't her fault that she never read about anything in the bulletin. So I asked her, in a slightly smoother manner, why on earth she wanted something that she obviously couldn't care less about. And I never talked with her again. It sure is easy to be hated when you take a stand for truth. I quit right after the Confirmation/First Communion that year. I did my best for my four little confirmands last year. And I'm proud that the bishop said he was impressed when they answered his questions so well during the homily. But I don't miss the position at all. 

Fast forward to this year. A dozen new children received these sacraments on Sunday at our church. A dozen! Yes, including all the ones that I said notachance to last year. The rumour mill is that they no more went to Mass and studied catechism now as opposed to last year. The difference is that I wasn't there to say no. My "good" work, that being saying the word no, was completely reversed as soon as I bailed out. Is this my purification? There's the catch. I'm actually not a saint, or even very saint-like. The whole thing is more annoying than anything. Clearly we "rigid" Catholics are looked down upon, outnumbered, and simply seen as being in the way of people getting what they want.

Yet God somehow permits this to regularly occur. Fallen nature makes any growth fragile. Life is just like that. I mean, I will work out very hard for months on end. Then I might get a two day flu bug. By the time I recover from the flu bug, I've lost all the gains I've made from the previous months! It's so hard to grow! It's so hard to sustain any growth! Anything we do in this world is so fleeting. We win one battle, and promptly lose the next one. This is why my opening quote is so important: "Fight the good fight of faith." I love that. It is a fight. A FIGHT. Often a fight is about getting knocked down and, well, you say it Rocky Balboa: "Life's not about how hard of a hit you can give... it's about how many you can take, and still keep moving forward." This applies to work outs, catechism, the pro-life movement, heck, even to making supper each day.

Having said that, I quit catechism teaching, and have no intent of returning. A fight can sometimes mean a change of strategy. Our current strategy involves raising our own children to be Catholic, and to hopefully have them excel at learning catechism. To figure out how to truly have a Catholic home. Some days our fight is merely to survive. But all in all, we wait for further instructions from the Lord. We wait for the next fight. It's not an if, but a when. And then we fight our next battle. If our work comes to nothing in our own eyes, so be it. The point is we fought the good fight, and did so with eternity on our mind. The Lord will take care of the rest. Whether we see results or not. Then, maybe then, we can shout out those immortal words when we finally pass from this life:

"Yo Jesus, I did it!"

Lord of the Dance

One of Don Cherry's favourite lines to say is: "His ways are mysterious indeed." This cannot be closer to the truth. Truly, no one can understand the mind of God, His ways, His methods. It is beyond our imagining.

Sometimes, however, this can lead to bewilderment, if not frustration. Our minds were created to know. Today's great patron saint, St. Thomas Aquinas, explains that: "Man’s ultimate happiness consists in the contemplation of truth, for this operation is specific to man and is shared with no other animals. Also it is not directed to any other end since the contemplation of truth is sought for its own sake" (Summa Contra Gentiles, book 3, chapter 37). We seek clarity. We seek truth. Ultimately we seek the Truth (God). We get dumbfounded when we don't understand something. Flabbergasted. Agog. Mystified, perplexed and even befuddled. I should close my thesaurus. Lest you get appalled or disconcerted.

These thoughts of seeking truth and understanding enter my mind sometimes as I leave the house on a lovely weekday afternoon. I'll have just finished my lunch and I'll be heading back to school for my usual chaotic afternoon of teaching, floor hockey, safety patrol, and archery. No rest for the wicked. Usually not even a bathroom break. As I leave the house I sarcastically say to Becca: "Well, I'm off to save the world." I say so on such days because I know that I have to teach dance. Dance. Me. With apologies to my King Henry VIII character I once played, this is not a dancer's leg. I head out the door and tromp to school. Not exactly with a sissone or waltz in my step.

The dance goes fine. Most of the young girls automatically love it, because they love dance. Interestingly enough, it's my tough little hockey playing boys who seem to enjoy it the most. They get to see me jumping around, or is that goofing around(?), and thus they get to, for a brief few moments, shed the composed cool guy attitude and jump around for the heck of it. They assemble, and scissor kick, and compete (always compete) against each other. It's fun. The next day I know they will have forgotten everything, as probably will I have. We'll practice again. There'll be a little assessment later. Then we'll forget it all over again.

And that's me saving the world.

The bewildering, puzzling, and stupefying part of this is that my busy life as a teacher leaves me virtually no time to spend on my catechism and sacramental prep duties at the church. Never you mind my degrees, training, and dedication to the faith, my dance teaching make me way too tired to care about catechism. Those grapevine steps have a price.

I'm left in a muddled state.

In reality I inwardly despise dance in this town. Every Wednesday night we trudge out to Mass. The church crowd is shockingly sparse. As I leave the church I have a habit of looking across the street to the Tisdale Dance Studio. The place is always packed with people. God is here. They are there. And I wonder... how is it that I'm the busy dance teacher, and not the catechism teacher? How is this God's will? His ways are mysterious indeed.

I'm not really complaining. It is my duty to feed my boys (...and wife). I am happy to have a job. Even if there are aspects I do not really enjoy, I try my best. Yes I am out of my element sometimes, and this is wearisome to me, but deep down I know that it is what I am supposed to do. And yet... why God? Why? Is it to teach me humility? Is it all part of some greater plan? Is it simply for obedience? Is it to somehow, unknowingly, help that one child get through a difficult time? I do not know. It is mysterious to me.

The words of the Charge of the Light Brigade enter my mind. To paraphrase Tennyson: It is not for me to reason why, but to do and die. In the end, perhaps the greatest happiness of man, the contemplation of truth, lies in that God Himself knows why. And we contemplate Him. Not us, our actions, feelings, or anything else. We contemplate Him. He knows best. And I simply need to know and understand that. Perturbed or not. And besides, It is not me who will save the world. It is Him. And there is nothing baffling, bemusing, or flustering about that.

Only amazing.

"Don't Get Discouraged"

I am an unofficial catechist. Unofficial in that I refuse to spend the hours it would take to fill out the mountains of paperwork for the diocesan officials. Anyway, I teach catechism. I hope Jesus doesn't mind the "unofficial" designation.

So far it's been an interesting experience. Note: "interesting experience" usually means that something is messed up. Recently I learned that none of my four students have ever heard of sin. Also, I learned that only one of them knew how to do the sign of the cross. None of them knew about Adam and Eve, or the Trinity, much less that Jesus is both God and man, and that He is in the Eucharist. Don't even ask me if they knew any prayers. In other words, things have started the way I envisioned they would.

The other day I took them up to the main church area and showed them a big beautiful statue of Mary. You know the kind, the big old beautiful ones that liberals are keen to remove from churches because they take us away from Jesus, or away from themselves, or something. I was telling the kids about Adam and Eve, and sin. I then pointed to Mary's feet. I looked over at the kids and noticed they were all mesmerized. Why was Mary stepping on that snake? So I told them why. In the end, they appeared deeply touched that they had a special other mother in heaven to watch over them and help fight the devil. You might even say this was a beautiful moment of grace.

So I took them back downstairs and soon enough they began packing to go home. A couple of mothers came at various times. Each of the moms complained about something. One was that catechism started at 4pm and not, say 3:40pm. That extra time was just so inconvenient she told me (never mind that if it was dance class it would be no problem). The other was asking how long her son had to go to catechism. I told her right until the end of June. She was not impressed. I told her that she could teach him herself if she wanted. She said no, because she wanted him to have "the social life." Anyway, the kids all left. I wandered up to the church and went and prayed next to that statue of Mary. Deep discouragement filled my soul. The kids don't know anything. The parents aren't going to raise them in the faith. In fact, the parents would probably rather not. All I hear is complaining. I'm taking this time to teach someone else's kids for what? Let someone else do it! Where's Father in all of this? It's just like I thought it would end up.

As I sat there and looked at the statue I thought of that serpent under the foot of Mary. Then I remembered some words I've heard many many times before. Back in Barry's Bay the parish priest would always tell me in confession, no matter what I confessed: "...but don't get discouraged, don't get discouraged." Each and every time I went to confession he insisted I avoid discouragement. It all seemed so obvious then. Of course, discouragement is the tool of the devil. That little serpent sitting under Our Lady's foot was probably madder than, well, hell, at having those four little kids mesmerized by the thought that staying close to Mary could defeat him and his lies. It's so predictable, how could I fall for it? Immediately following me showing the kids the statue of Mary, the devil orchestrated various parents to put on the air of annoyance. My subsequent thoughts of the kids not knowing or caring also was orchestrated by the evil one. That feeling of discouragement, then, could only be a sign that something good happened.

Now the feeling didn't disappear. But at least I knew to ignore it. "Don't get discouraged" I repeated to myself. Thank you Mary.

Apparently the devil doesn't care about the "unofficial" designation.

That's ok. Apparently neither does Mary.

And Remember... Jesus Loves You!

Well it's been over a week now since I got back at the old grind. I probably should have done some work over the Christmas break to avoid such a busy first rush at school, but hey, sometimes it's best just to enjoy the rest (i.e. be lazy). My latest project at school has involved setting up a recess floor hockey league. Needless to say, I've had a very large number of students sign up. Who wouldn't want to play floor hockey during recess?

Another project that unfortunately will be taking up my time is teaching catechism at the local church. I say unfortunately because though I had volunteered to teach it back in September, apparently it's just starting up now. I've also just found out that it involves me teaching sacramental prep (Confession, Confirmation, 1st Communion). As it stands right now, the set up is a total joke and seems destined for failure. The kids whom I am supposed to teach never, ever, go to Mass (incidentally, I teach them at school). And why this has waited until January I have no idea. I get the feeling I am being set up to fail. I mean, yes, the Holy Spirit can do amazing things and all. But does not grace perfect nature? In other words, God expects us to use our heads too.

But the real kicker in all of this is my position as a "volunteer" with the parish, and thus with the let's-buy-all-the-red-tape-we-can-find-because-it-makes-us-feel-so-special diocese of Prince Albert. So we all know that there are many abuse cases that have seriously hurt the Church in Canada. Well apparently I'm not allowed to volunteer to teach catechism until I complete 20 or so pages of documents for the diocese. These documents include having not just 3 references, but 3 reference letters from people whom I've known for over 3 years. They must fill out documents too, and fax them in. I almost cried as I started looking through this volunteer package. I didn't even get through half of it. I threw it on the counter and left it there. Oh yeah, and apparently I have to watch a 2 hour DVD as well regarding being a volunteer for the vulnerable.

I'm not sure what phrase best describes all of this. Heavy-handed? Cruel? Obsessive? Moronic? Yes, I am sure that insurance is difficult to get for church employees and volunteers. I do know, in reading through half of the application, that much of what was written has nothing to do with insurance. At least I don't think insurance companies need a half of a page describing what hobbies I am interested in. Now I've completed numerous applications in the past 5 years. I've applied for teacher's college, a Master's program, and eight or so different school boards. Most of these applications involve being with the vulnerable. None of the applications I have done even compare to this volunteer application.

So poor Father when he finds out that I'm not going to bother doing the application. I suppose he can take it or leave it. It's not that I'm giving up. Heck, I can just call up the parents if need be and arrange to teach catechism unofficially. Sort of like a private school for catechism. You know, to go against the system. Sadly, though, this "system" happens to be our Catholic Church. I can just see Pope Francis' face if I were to show him the application package to teach catechism. Here our Holy Father has been going on and on about living out our identity as a missionary Church. Prudence is one thing. Astringent formality is quite another.

That's my rant for the day.

And remember...

"D$#% right he does!"