Does Jesus Want Us to be ‘Nice’ to the Difficult People in Our Lives?

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“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28).

Jesus couldn’t have been more clear that following him means imitating the Father’s radically generous, unconditional love. He didn’t just preach this love; he embodied it through his death on the cross, and he expected his disciples to “take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).

Over the centuries, those words have inspired countless Christians to heroic acts of love, sometimes to the point of sacrificing their lives.

Unfortunately, too many Christians also take Jesus’ teaching to mean that they ought to patiently put up with bad behavior from difficult—or even abusive—people.

But as Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak frequently point out to callers on their More2Life radio show, that’s a serious misunderstanding of Jesus’ call to radical love. In fact, such an approach may not be loving at all.

 

Jesus Wasn’t Always ‘Nice’

To see why Christian love sometimes calls for us to stand up for ourselves, set healthy boundaries, and in some cases, even end a relationship, we need to get a fuller picture of who Jesus really was.

Jesus dealt with “difficult” people all the time. Sometimes, those difficult people were even his closest friends! Other times, they were religious authorities who had it out for him.

Did Jesus quietly tolerate problematic behavior in the interest of “being nice”? He certainly stood up to the religious leaders who opposed him, often in forceful terms that left no question about their need for a change of heart.

Nor did he let his friends off the hook when they went astray. He famously rebuked Peter just moments after Peter confessed that Jesus was the Son of God (Matthew 16:23).

At the same time, Jesus met known sinners with tenderness and mercy: think of his encounter with Zacchaeus or the woman caught in adultery, for example.

 

Real Love Works for the Good of the Other

Each of these very different approaches had a common motivation: Jesus’ genuine love for the person, tuned to achieve the good of the person he was encountering. As St. Thomas Aquinas would later put it, Christ-like love “wills the good of the other.” Christian love cooperates with God to help the other person become fully the person God desires them to be.

At the heart of our love for anybody, then, is the question: “What do I need to do to help this person achieve the good that God wants for him or her?”

In a healthy relationship, the answer would begin with the needs and desires of the other person. But in the case of someone whose problematic behavior is causing real, ongoing harm to us or other people, the bar is a lot lower. In these cases, really loving the person begins with not letting them mistreat you or other people. Instead, it begins with helping them become a better person.

Usually, the first step is to engage the person in a respectful, cooperative conversation about how to change the problem behavior. In God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts! Making Peace with Difficult People, Dr. Popcak outlines a five-step process for doing that.

If a person isn’t open to cooperatively working on the problem, then the next step might be setting limits or boundaries on the relationship. Ideally, these boundaries are targeted at the problem behavior and don’t cut off the relationship completely.

Sometimes, though, it is necessary to end the relationship entirely, especially if your life or health are in danger. As the Church teaches, we have a duty to care for our own life (Catechism of the Catholic Church #2264).

 

The Love of the Cross

At this point, you may wonder how Jesus’ call for his disciples to “take up their cross and follow me” fits into the picture of Christian life. After all, plenty of saints have suffered, and even given their life, for the sake of Christ.

What distinguishes the sacrifice of the cross, though, is that it served a higher purpose; Jesus sacrificed his life to save all humanity. The sacrifices of the saints and martyrs participated in that sacrifice. For instance, saints such as Maximilian Kolbe, Gianna Beretta Molla, Oscar Romero, and Maria Goretti sacrificed their lives in order to save another life, or to stand up for truth and justice.

Each of us has everyday opportunities to practice this sort of sacrificial love: quietly putting up with a spouse’s annoying but harmless habit, getting up with the baby so your spouse can get some much-needed rest, ignoring a stranger’s rudeness out of charity.

But if you’re dealing with someone whose behavior is causing real problems, then ask yourself: Is putting up with this behavior really the best way to love this person? Does it serve Christ and the Kingdom of God?

If the answer is “no,” then it might be time to imitate Jesus’ other ways of loving difficult people.

For much more on this topic, check out God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts! And if you need professional, one-on-one help navigating a difficult relationship, reach out to one of the Catholic counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.

Where is God In Suffering?

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By Dr. Greg Popcak

 

We all hurt. Suffering is an inescapable part of life. But that doesn’t make our pain any easier to bear, especially when facing the kind of senseless violence that occurred at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, TX, where a lone, teenage shooter killed 2 teachers and 19 children.

Where is God in this? How do we find him?  Why did he “let” this happen?

These aren’t easy questions to answer, and the pain, anger, and frustration we feel in the face of evil is normal and natural.  The first thing we need to do is resist the temptation to allow our pain to make us respond in pain. Instead, we need to bring our pain to God and ask him to teach us how to respond to it in a way that will glorify him, help us be our best selves, and work for the good of all the people around us.

That said, a lot of the frustration, pain, and confusion we feel in the face of suffering is based on the grossly false assumption that things are supposed to work all the time, and that God has somehow dropped the ball when things aren’t working as we think they should. But here’s the truth: There’s nothing about the Christian view of the world that suggests this assumption is correct.

Yes, in the beginning, before the Fall, God ordained creation to exist in perfect balance. But as the story goes, this balance was catastrophically demolished when Adam and Eve committed the first sin. Because of this, in the Christian worldview, everything is actually supposed to be awful all the time. Original sin made the world a warzone, and misery is meant to be our natural state of being. If anything else exists — if there is anything good in this world at all — it is only because God is unfathomably merciful and, despite our ongoing efforts to keep wrecking everything, he is intent on creating order out of the chaos, peace out of the turmoil, joy out of the misery, life out of death. “Behold, I make all things new!” (Rv 21:5). “Good” is God’s miraculous, merciful response to suffering.

The fact that we take for granted how good things usually are and presumptuously assume that they should always be this good is a testament to how astoundingly merciful God actually is. It is proof of what I call “the mystery of good” — that is, the mystery of how (and why) God literally moves heaven and earth every single moment of every day to care for us, provide for us and tend to our wounds despite the fact that we are living in a warzone of our own making, a warzone he never intended for us to live in, and that he is doing everything he can to deliver us from, including sending his own Son to lead us through the minefields and back to the green pastures where he gives us repose (cf., Ps 23).

Although it can be tremendously hard to find God when we’re in pain, we discover that God is imminently, superabundantly, omnipresent in our experience of suffering.

  • Imminent: God is immediately present in our pain. He doesn’t hesitate to respond to us. Before we even call on him, he is running to tend to our wounds (cf., Ps 139:4).

 

  • Superabundant: No matter the depth of our pain, no matter the horrific nature of our suffering, God’s grace is greater. If we ask for his grace, God will enable us to respond to our suffering in ways that are heroic, healing and heralding of the good news that Christ has conquered and we can be victorious through his grace.

 

  • Omnipresent: Nothing can separate us from his presence. No suffering can keep him from us. He stands ready to guide every step we take as we respond to our suffering. If we ask his help and trust his grace, he will lead us through every trial.

It isn’t that God is present when we aren’t suffering and absent when we are. God is already imminently and superabundantly omnipresent in very first moments of our experience of suffering. I remind my clients that God’s presence in our pain is evidenced in our capacity to display any of the following four supernatural abilities.

    1. The knowledge that there should be more than this.
    2. The belief that I could respond in a way that would allow me to make more of this.
    3. The drive to be whole again in spite of this.
    4. The will to heal and grow stronger somehow in the face of this.

None of these abilities come naturally to us. The natural human response to suffering is to run until we can’t run anymore and then give up and die. If you’re inspired to do any of the above four things in the face of your pain, it’s because God is already moving in you, saying, “Do not fear: I am with you … I will uphold you with my victorious right hand” (Is 41:10).

When you find yourself in pain, when you’re forced to stare evil in the face, call to the Lord. Then take his hand and let him lead you to the resurrection that comes after this cross.

Feeling God’s Presence in Pain

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When we’re faced with many challenges, it can be difficult to understand the presence of God amidst the struggle. Where is God? Why would He let this happen? These are common questions that we have when dealing with difficult times. But are these questions the best way to find God in the presence of pain?

God created us for total union with him. Evil—the absences of good—attempts to separate us from God. The Christian response to evil is to refuse to give in to the darkness and pain of the moment and reach back to God who is already reaching out to us in that moment of pain. As Christians, we are privileged to know that evil is not the end of the story. God gives us the power to receive his light in the darkness and to spread that light to others who are suffering as well.

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Are you looking for healing? Struggling to find God in the hurt?

Check out:
Broken Gods—Hope, Healing, and The Seven Longings of The Human Heart

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Let’s look at three effective ways to find God’s light in the midst of darkness:

Show God the Wound–When we go to the doctor, we have to show the doctor the wound in order for him to treat and heal it.  God wants to give us his healing grace when we are hurting, but he can only do that if we are honest about how we are hurting.  Too often, we want our prayers to be pretty.  We don’t want to show God that we are anguished, angry, bitter, or resentful, especially if we are anguished, angry, bitter, and resentful toward him! But God wants us to be honest with him. He is big enough to handle whatever we need to tell him and strong enough to take us beating on his chest. Don’t ever be afraid to show the Divine Physician where you are hurting. Let him treat the wound no matter how ugly it might seem to you. Your honesty opens the door to his grace.

“Why” Is the Wrong Question–Evil is a mystery. We can’t ever understand why something happened, and even if we could, it wouldn’t make the pain go away. When you are hurting, don’t ask “why.”  Instead ask, “What does God want me to make of this?  How can I respond to this situation in a way that will enable me to open my heart to God’s light and share his light with others?” Suffering is only redemptive if we respond to it in grace, but if we do that, God will create something awesome out of even the awful. Just look at the cross and the resurrection!  When Satan tries to nail you–and those you love–to the cross. Ask God for the grace to rise up in the darkness and be his light in the world.

Be Patient–When we are hurting, the hardest thing to do is wait on the Lord. But it can help to know that being patient doesn’t just mean sitting around passively in our pain. Patience is the virtue that allows us to see how God’s grace and our good efforts are taking shape. Like a repairman who steps back from the job to see if what he has done is working and what he still might need to do next, patience involves an ongoing conversation with God that allows us to commit ourselves to the process of healing and rebuilding while resisting the urge to exhaust ourselves pushing buttons and turning knobs to no effect just so we can feel like we are “doing something.”  Patience allows us to be avoid becoming powerlessly passive or hopelessly hysterical in the face of pain, and instead, enables us to be powerfully proactive.

If you would like greater support in overcoming challenging visit us online at CatholicCounselors.com!

Pastoral Malpractice

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Pastoral Malpractice

– Dr. Greg Popcak

A physician I know was recently faced a dilemma. A patient of hers on pain medication began engaging in behaviors that made it clear the patient was abusing, and possibly, selling, his meds. The doctor had to refuse to refill the prescription and recommend an alternative course of treatment. The patient stormed out, accusing her of being, “uncaring and unprofessional.”

Sadly, treatments can be abused. When they are, responsible caregivers must refuse those treatments until the problems preventing them from being effective are overcome. The failure to do so can constitute professional malpractice.

The fact is, even the treatments prescribed by the Divine Physician can be abused. God gives us the sacraments to treat the spiritual illness—sin–that damages our relationships with God and others. Normally, these “treatments” should be readily available to every Christian “patient.” The sacraments aren’t rewards for good behavior.  They’re treatments for spiritual disease. But when treatments are abused, they must be refused.

Take Confession. If someone confesses a sin but says he intends to keep committing the same sin, the priest—who functions as a kind of Divine “Physician Assistant” when it comes to the sacraments—is actually obliged to deny absolution.  For pastors to give absolution under such circumstances would be to encourage the sinful behavior and make themselves party to it by spiritually enabling it.

The Eucharist is another example. It’s the ultimate “spiritual treatment” for healing the damage sin does to our relationships with God and others. But this “treatment” isn’t magic. In order for it to be efficacious, the recipient needs to be seeking strength to live the Christian vision of love. If someone receives communion because they want help overcoming the struggles they face in learning to love like Christ, they should never be denied communion because it’s the very “medicine” they are looking for.

But what if someone’s persistent behavior severely wounds the Body of Christ? What if they dedicate themselves to organizing racist rallies? What if they eagerly promote the slaughter of children in the name of “healthcare?” What if this person has been begged dozens—even hundreds–of times to stop wounding the Body of Christ in such a way, but they dismiss those warnings, insisting that what they’re doing is actually good? Let’s further say that this person draws deep personal comfort from being allowed to receive the Eucharist.

Should they? Is it responsible to allow anyone to experience spiritual consolation while they intentionally, persistently, and unapologetically scourged the Body of Christ? In St. Ignatius’ words, wouldn’t such a consolation, in fact, be a desolation of the Enemy?

Of course, God would certainly forgive such a person, but even God can’t forgive someone who doesn’t believe they need it. And to know we need forgiveness, don’t we need to be allowed to feel the separation from God that our actions necessarily cause?

Permitting such a person to receive the Eucharist not only allows him to “eat and drink judgment on himself” (1 Cor 11:29) but also constitutes pastoral malpractice (c.f. Ezekial 3:18).

As the bishops continue to debate whether to allow President Biden to receive communion, they would do well to stop letting  ideologues frame this as a political issue and, instead, take a clear stand against pastoral malpractice. There is nothing “pastoral” about letting people use the Body of Christ as an anesthetic to numb themselves while they abuse the Body of Christ.

Dr. Greg Popcak is the author of many books and the Executive Director of the Pastoral Solutions Institute (CatholicCounselors.com).

4 Ways To Find God When You’re Suffering

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In this Easter Season, Christ’s passion, death and resurrection calls us to reflect on our own response to suffering.

Suffering is a big part of life. A Christian’s ability to finding meaning in, and (hopefully) deliverance from, suffering depends on our ability to correctly understand the role suffering plays in the Christian walk.

Much frustration and confusion about suffering is based on the tacit assumption that things are supposed to work all the time, and that God has somehow dropped the ball when things aren’t working as we think they should. But here’s the truth: There’s nothing about the Christian view of the world that suggests this assumption is correct.

Yes, in the beginning, before the Fall, God ordained creation to exist in perfect balance. But as the story goes, this balance was catastrophically demolished when Adam and Eve committed the first sin. Because of this, in the Christian worldview, everything is actually supposed to be awful all the time. Original sin made the world a warzone, and misery is meant to be our natural state of being. If anything else exists — if there is anything good in this world at all — it is only because God is unfathomably merciful and, despite our ongoing efforts to keep wrecking everything, he is intent on creating order out of the chaos, peace out of the turmoil, joy out of the misery, life out of death. “Behold, I make all things new!” (Rv 21:5). “Good” is God’s miraculous, merciful response to suffering.

The fact that we take for granted how good things usually are and presumptuously assume that they should always be this good is a testament to how astoundingly merciful God actually is. It is proof of what I call “the mystery of good” — that is, the mystery of how (and why) God literally moves heaven and earth every single moment of every day to care for us, provide for us and tend to our wounds despite the fact that we are living in a warzone of our own making, a warzone he never intended for us to live in, and that he is doing everything he can to deliver us from, including sending his own Son to lead us through the minefields and back to the green pastures where he gives us repose (cf., Ps 23).

Although it can be tremendously hard to find God when we’re in pain, we discover that God is imminently, superabundantly, omnipresent in our experience of suffering.

Read the full article Here.

To help heal from sin this Lent, call on the Divine Physician

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This is Part 3 of my ongoing series exploring what it means to “be pastoral.” Each Lent, we’re asked to repent of our sins. But what does it really mean to be a sinner? And what does it take to stop? The answers might surprise you.

Sin vs. the call to love

In my last column, I noted that the main job for every Christian disciple is recognizing that, because of the Fall, our human understanding of love is hopelessly flawed and woefully deficient. We all want to love and be loved, but even when we try our best, we still end up hurting each other, using each other, demeaning each other and worse. In spite of our deepest wishes to love well and be loved deeply, we really can’t figure out how to do it. Being a true Christian disciple begins with acknowledging that only Christ and his Church can teach us how to give and receive the deep, godly love we were created to enjoy. To love as God does, we’ve got to learn how to:

  • Respect the divine dignity of each person, no matter what they look like, where they come from or what they’ve done.
  • Defend the life and promote the health of each person.
  • Live and love in a manner that respects God’s design of our bodies.
  • Actively encourage the full growth and flourishing of each person.

Each of us has the God-given right to expect to be treated in this manner and the God-given responsibility to treat others in the same way. This is the love Jesus commanded his disciples to share when he told them to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22:39).

Sin, then, is what happens when we choose to accept less than this love from others or give less than this love to others. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it” (No. 1850).

Convict or patient?

There are two traditional ways to think about our relationship to sin. The first is to compare committing a sin to breaking the law. The second is to compare being a sinner to contracting an illness. Both are legitimate views with long theological pedigrees. But as a pastoral counselor, I find the second view to be more useful, more effective and, in general, less fraught. Why?

Imagine contracting some life-threatening illness or being in a car accident that breaks every bone in your body. Could you guilt yourself into a full recovery? Could you shame yourself into walking again? Could you hate yourself enough to make the cancer leave? Of course not. We can’t take this approach to healing from sin either.

We can’t heal ourselves of the disease of sin. In fact, believing we can is both a heresy (Pelagianism) and, ironically, a sin — namely, pride. Every single one of us is infected with the spiritual disease that prevents us both from expecting others to love us as we deserve to be loved as children of God and loving others as they deserve to be loved as God’s children, in turn. This disease is sin.

As patients (or disciples), our journey cannot begin until we stop playing around with all the home remedies we use to try to mask the symptoms and finally admit that we’re powerless to cure ourselves. Our healing begins when we turn to God, the Divine Physician, to find the cure for what ails us. Likewise, we only get in the Divine Physician’s way when we insist on trying to “help” him by insulting ourselves (or others), shaming ourselves (or others) or beating up on ourselves (or others) for being sick — for being sinners — in the first place.

How can we heal?

Read the full article here at Our Sunday Visitor.

Understanding The Parable of the Talents–What Does It Mean For Us?

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This past Sunday, The Parable of The Talents (Matthew 25:14-30)  was read as the Gospel reading at Mass. As you may remember, this is the story in which “The Master” entrusts his servants with his property. One servant is given five talents. The second is given two. The third is given one.

The servants who received five and two talents respectively, doubled what they were given and pleased their master. The servant who received one talent buried it and only returned what he was given, which caused the master to punish the servant.

Over the years, I’ve heard many comments from people who are confused by this parable. Not only do they feel that the servants are being treated unfairly at the outset, but they are often disturbed by what a jerk “the Master,” who “reaps where he did not sow and gathers where he scattered no seed” appears to be.

Here are my thoughts, I hope it helps:

1. The Master who “reaps where he did not sow, and gathers where he scattered no seed,” is not a jerk.  He is God. God harvests salvation from the fields of the Devil (i.e., the fallen world). God brings good out of difficult situations. He reclaims what sin has worked to destroy.

2. The talents are a metaphor for grace (they are NOT merely abilities or money). The different sums are a sign of the receptivity to grace of each of the servants. The message here indicates: No matter how much we are open to receiving God’s grace, he gives us as much as we are willing and able to receive.

3. When the servants cooperated with grace, they saw the work of grace expand exponentially.

4. The third servant did not do anything with the grace he had been given because, literally, he “was afraid.” Fear separates us from grace.  Think about it.  Grace is the presence of God.  God is love and “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 Jn 4:18). 

The third servant did not cooperate with grace. Instead of clinging to God, he clung to his fear. Ultimately, the third servant separated himself from God by choosing to focus on his limitations over God’s Providence.

5. Grace will not be thwarted. Even when we resist or reject God, he finds ways around our resistance and redistributes it to those who will receive it and cooperate with it.  God’s will will be done!

Superficially, this seems like a harsh parable but ultimately, it is about the superabundance of grace, the generosity of God, and the fact that nothing–not even our fears of our own limitations–can stop grace from building the Kingdom.

Why Would God Let This Happen?—Keeping The Faith When Times Get Tough

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Why does God let bad things happen? Why am I going through this? What does this mean for me? … Do these questions sound familiar? You’re not alone.

Although we can sometime feel guilty when we question God or doubt his love, it’s more than okay to ask these questions. In fact, it’s even good to ask these types of questions—as long as we bring these questions and struggles to God. The world is not as it was meant to be, and figuring out how to respond to everything that is broken in our lives and in the world is a big job that carries a lot of pain with it. The good news is, God doesn’t want us to have to deal with this pain on our own. He wants to help. He wants us to bring the hurt to him.

Theology of The Body reminds us that faith and life are not meant to be separate things.  In fact, being a disciple of Christ begins with giving our body to Christ so that every part of us can serve him and learn to love others as he would have us love them. Truthfully, rather than making things simpler, living out our faith can make things seem more difficult at times because bringing our lives and relationships in line with God’s will is hard work.  Doubts and struggles are not a sign of weak faith. They’re an invitation to deeper faith.  As long as we keep bringing our doubts, struggles, and confusion to God–instead of letting them lead us away from him–the more God will use those struggles to draw us into closer union with his love and his will.

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Do you want to learn more about balancing struggles and your faith?

Check Out:
Broken Gods—Hope, Healing, and The Seven Longings of The Human Heart

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How do we bring our struggles to God? Keep the following tips in mind.

Be Where You’re At–We often think that we have to pretend with God; like we’re not allowed to admit that we have doubts, fears, or even anger with God.  But Jesus reminded us that we are not meant to approach God as fearful slaves, but as friends.  God desires our friendship, and friends are real with each other.  They don’t pretend.  They don’t put on airs.  God wants to be with you wherever you are, so let him.  Tell him your doubts, be honest about your fears, vent your anger.  Trust that God is big enough to take whatever you have to dish out. 

Why does God want you to be this honest and vulnerable with him?  Because it is only by revealing your heart to God that he can heal the hurt.  The best way to experience God’s mercy, love, and healing, is to simply be honest about where you are at and how you feel about him, your faith, and your life.  Let it out and ask him to heal whatever is broken, to give you the wisdom to see things the way he sees them, and to respond to everything in a manner that will glorify him regardless of what you’re dealing with.  If you can manage that much every day, God will take care of the rest. 

Re-center Yourself–Because we tend to turn to our faith and spiritual practices as a source of comfort, we also tend to abandon them when we feel like we’re not getting the emotional payout we were hoping for.  That’s especially true when we are experiencing faith-related struggles. 

While it’s understandable to want to give up on God, our prayer life, or even our faith in times of spiritual dryness or pain, abandoning these things simply creates a vacuum that tends to be filled with unhealthy thoughts and behaviors that cause us even more pain.  Instead of giving up, re-center your spiritual life with a few simple steps.  First, re-examine your approach.  If the way you are praying isn’t bearing fruit, try a different approach.  If you usually talk to God, focus more on listening and meditation.  If you usually use a more spontaneous approach, explore some of the more traditional prayers of the church—or vice-versa.  Whatever you do, don’t quit–RECOMMIT! 

Second, instead of focusing on your feelings and processing your faith through your emotions, process your feelings through your faith.  Confess whatever you are feeling to God–no matter how ugly or messy it is–but ask him to help you sort out your emotions in light of what is really true, in light of what gives glory to him, and in light of his grace.  Feelings are important but when they occupy the center of our lives instead of our faith and spiritual life, they tend to cause a lot of pain and confusion.  Don’t deny your emotions, but make sure to process your feelings through your faith.  You’ll be amazed at the peace this can bring.

Talk to A Spiritual Mentor--If you feel like your spiritual struggles are too much for you to manage on your own, reach out for good spiritual support.  Talk with your pastor.  Seek out a spiritual director or pastoral counselor who can help you reconnect with your spiritual resources.  The Theology of the Body reminds of what God said in the Book of Genesis, “It is not good for man to be alone.”  Don’t let the devil separate you from the heard and pick you off like a lonely gazelle. If you are struggling in your faith, reach out to the people God has put in place to help you.  Don’t be too prideful to seek out a Simon of Cyrene to help you carry your cross.

If you would like to talk to a spiritual coach or pastoral counselor, visit us online at CatholicCounselors.com.

Strengthening Faith Amidst Pandemic

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*This post is one among a series of articles discussing the liturgy of domestic church life. For more information, join the conversation on facebook in our group Catholic HOM—Family Discipleship.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems every day brings new changes, adjustments to the “plan,” and a “new normal” to adapt to. One of the many things that have changed is our ability to go to church. Many of us have not been to church in months, maybe we attend online, maybe we’re able to attend a service outdoors, or maybe we’re able to go to church in a way that meets the limited capacity requirements. But with all of these changes, how has our faith life been impacted?

A recent study by PEW Research found that most people’s faith has remained unchanged (47%) or grown stronger (24%) despite not being able to go to church during the pandemic. Only 2% report struggling in their faith because of events related to the pandemic.

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Transform your family into a joyful place where each member experiences life as a gift from God by checking out

Discovering God Together: The Catholic Guide to Raising Faithful Kids

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How can this be?

For a lot of us, the changes in our ability to attend our regular church service has caused us to be a lot more intentional and prioritize our faith in a different way. As research shows, some have had great success in developing their faith life in new ways, but for others this has been more of a struggle.

Many of us are still searching for new ways to live our faith at home and grow in faith as a family. The changes caused by COVID-19 have clear implications for our domestic church life. The Liturgy of Domestic Church Life is a way for Catholic families to make faith the source of the warmth in our homes.  Below are a few ways we can do just that:

1. Make prayer time cozy, not uncomfortable—Many of us feel that for our family prayer time at home we must all be kneeling and perfectly still. If this is comfortable for you as a family, great! But often this sort of expectation makes prayer time (especially with younger children) a bit of a battle. Make prayer time cozy and inviting. Set soft lighting, play relaxing music or praise and worship songs softly in the background, surround yourselves with blankets and pillows and cuddle up together as a family. Make your prayer space and prayer time feel like a warm hug in the arms of God—the one who knows us best and loves us most. This is a great way to developing a loving relationship with God for our kids and for ourselves!

2.  See God in your day-to-day—Make a point of noticing God in little ways throughout the day. Find a great parking spot, say, “Thanks God!” Out loud. Catch a beautiful sunrise or sunset? Acknowledge how God painted the sky today. Had a good conversation or meeting? Thank God for letting it go so well. By acknowledging how we see God working in our day-to-day lives allows us to prioritize God in a beautiful way. Check in with the family at the end of each day, maybe even over dinner, and ask, “How/where did you see God in your day?” Discuss those little (and big!) blessings.

3. Keep traditions alive—Let’s face it, we all love coffee and donut Sunday. It’s a fun way to get a special treat, have some nice conversation, and make our faith life a bit more fun. Keep traditions such as this alive at home! After watching Mass online, share coffee/juice and donuts/muffins (or whatever your favorite family treats are) together—even for a few minutes. This would be a fun way to get a few minutes together as a family, enjoying each other’s company (and maybe sharing our mass take-aways) before going about the rest of our day.

For more ways to live out your faith as a family, check out Discovering God Together: The Catholic Guide to Raising Faithful Kids. And join our discussion on facebook at Catholic HOM—Family Discipleship!

Hurting/Angry Over Mass Suspensions? Finding Spiritual Consolation in Times of Pandemic

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It felt like a gut punch.  This past week, the Ohio Bishops’ Conference, along with many other dioceses and bishops’ conferences across the country have suspended the celebration of Mass through Easter.

Last weekend was the first weekend I haven’t been to mass since…I can’t remember.  It was certainly the first time I have ever missed mass without being ill and unable to leave the house.  And I have never once missed any of the Holy Week liturgies—especially Easter Sunday mass. I found myself experiencing a mix of emotions; sadness, frustration, a spiritual ache, even some anger.

Not Alone

I know I’m not alone. I have had many conversations with clients in my Catholic tele-counseling practice and callers to my radio program around this issue.  People–already worried and anxious about how the pandemic is impacting their lives–are feeling cut off from their most important spiritual resources.  As one caller put it, “They are taking away the Eucharist when we need Jesus the most!”  

As I was praying through my own pain of not being able to receive Our Lord in the Eucharist, I felt the Holy Spirit move in my heart.  I remembered the parable of The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37).

The Good Samaritan

You may remember that in the story, a man is beaten by robbers and left to die on the road. A priest passes by on the way to temple, but can’t stop for fear of being made unclean from contact with the wounded man.  Next, a Levite, also fails to stop to help the man for fear of being made unclean and unable to attend temple.  Finally, a Samaritan stops to tend to the man’s wounds and bring him to a place where he can be cared for.  At the end of the story, Jesus challenges us to be like the Samaritan. 

What does this have to do with our present crisis? It means we need to step back and ask our selves, “What is the point of going to Church?  What is the fruit the Eucharist is meant to bear in our lives?”  The answer, of course, is that by attending Mass and receiving the Precious Body and Blood, God heals the broken parts of our hearts so that we can more effectively love our neighbor as God needs us to.

Love One Another

Of course, the Eucharist exists to be a source of personal consolation, but it has to be more than that.  It has to ultimately equip us with the grace we need to love more, to love better, to love as God wants us to.

Loving someone means “working for their good.”  If the entire point of receiving Christ in the Eucharist is loving others, what does it mean to “work for the good of our neighbor” in the midst of this pandemic?  It means willingly embracing the cross that social distancing requires of us so that we can “flatten the curve” and end this crisis quickly with as little loss of human life as possible.  Sometimes, true love requires abstinence.  This is one of those times.

A True Lenten Mortification

In Lent, we’re called to make sacrifices that will enable us to love better and build God’s kingdom. Sometimes, it can be tempting to choose sacrifices that make us feel good about ourselves.  “I’m going to do THIS for God!  Aren’t I wonderful?!?”  Although rooted in a good intention, this misses the point. True sacrifice isn’t about doing what we want to do for God. Rather, it’s about doing what God asks us to do for him and our neighbor.

It takes real humility to cheerfuly accept the sacrificies God brings into our lives, to consecrate those sacrifices to him, and to ask him for the grace to rise to these challenges in a manner that glorifies him, helps us respond to the people around us in a way that works for their good, and helps us become the people he wants us to be.  

Spiritual Communion & Commission

If you are struggling, as I am, with not being able to attend mass for the next several weeks, bring it to God. Offer up your pain with a prayer that goes something like this.  “Lord, my heart is longing to receive you, but while I am waiting to be reunited with your Precious Body and Blood, fill my heart with your love and grace. Heal the broken parts of my heart.  Help me respond to this challenge in a way that gives you glory, shares your love more fully with the people in my life, and makes me the person you want me to be.”

This prayer, and others like it, are what Catholics call “spiritual communion.”  It represents a desire to pursue union with God and the grace to build his kingdom even when the normal avenues of grace (i.e, the sacraments) are not available to us.  God gives us the sacraments as a gift, but he is not bound by his sacraments and his love and grace rush to fill in any space we open to him.  

While we wait in joyful hope to be able to encounter the Lord at mass and receive him once again in the Eucharist, make a spiritual communion as often as you can and participate in masses broadcast on TV or the radio as opften as possible. Until we can once again receive the Body of Christ, let us all pray for the grace to be the Body of Christ—especially to those the Lord has placed in our path.