Runnin on empty

Ive been training for long distance running for the last month or so, its an interesting challenge.  My hope is to run the Philadelphia half marathon in November so I figured Id give myself enough time to train.  St. Paul tells us to run to win the race, Im going to run so I dont die in the race.  I dont know how marathon runners do it.  The most recent Boston Marathon winner ran it in just over 2 hours, I don think I can even drive 26.2 miles in Boston in 2 hours.

Follow the link (The Running Habit) for an interesting article about a nun who has been running in her habit, or religious clothing, for many years and for many miles.

Ive never been a runner, as a matter of fact, Ive always hated running.  However, Ive found running, like blogging, to be a great stress reliever and I look forward to doing both.  It amazes me the ages and sizes of people I see running at far faster paces than what I am doing.  I would think as father time creeps up that running would be difficult for most but it seems the exact opposite.  A number of folks have told me that many ailments that they had have disappeared and they have felt the best they have in years when they run regularly.  It rather interesting, I encourage anyone reading this blog to walk or run, its hard at first but there are great benefits.

I say a prayer first, and while Im doing it just so my heart doesnt explode.  If it does hopefully the Lord will take me ;)

Work, Who needs it?

Many people struggle with work for a variety of reasons.  That person may be in a dead end job, they may have difficult relationships with co-workers, they may be over-worked, over-looked, under-appreciated, or they may just not like what they are doing.

They bible says that man must toil each day for their bread.  Work isnt play, thats why its called work, sorry to state the obvious. We all toil in one way or another, it may not feel good, but at its core it is a great good.

The goal of the Christian life is to attain the beatific vision, or see God in the face, which would place you right smack in Heaven. So how can our Christian faith help us at our work and how can our work help us to live our Christian faith better.

These tasks are especially challenging if you find struggle at work, which is most likely a high probability. But without out this struggle how can one continue to grow, it helps us to gauge the strength of our character. I was given a great tip at one point time, which I didn't understand immediately.  This person said to "make YOU the object of your work."  Its certainly an interesting concept.

What making YOU the object of your work means is taking the focus off of what you are doing and put the focus on you and how you are doing it.  If you try to live virtuously and work virtuously you will be successful.  Doing your best will never leave you wanting more.  Whey YOU are the object of your work, you will flourish because you are trying to be your best.  If your focus is solely on your work you will do what you need to do to get the job done, which is fine, and will pay the bills, but what is it doing for your soul.  Whatever you are working on tomorrow, think about how you could become a better person by doing it, can you not take as many breaks, not chat so much, write slower and clearer, give an encouraging word, or put yourself in another's shoes to try and understand why they may be so upset today. Regardless of the task, its you who is being worked on.

Work can bring you sanctity, it can make you holy.  This is actually the goal of the Catholic religious order Opus Dei, or Work for God.  This group may sound familiar because of  Dan Brown's sensationalization of this group in his books The Davinci Code and Angels and Demons.  This group challenges its members, mostly lay men and women (not priests or nuns), to live heroic lives of virtue.

We can all make the world a better place through making our place of work a better place and focusing on virtue in a vice filled world.

Tick-Tock

What is it that makes a person tick? What makes you tick?  What the heck does ticking mean, am I doing it right now?  I guess watches tick and move, so someone along the line must have questioned "what makes people tick."

Well the biologist would say the heart, the philosopher would say the essence, the psychologist would say the mind, the theologian would say God. I would say......

What would you say, we all tick in different ways.  For some, the pursuit of something of value makes them tick. Others, the pursuit of making others happy.  And yet others still, living a stress free life.  I think its the beauty of life that allows us to have all of these differing views. After all, if everyone did the same thing life would be boring, right. Right?

Imagine, a lush land full of "milk and honey" where everyone loved one another and sought only to care for their fellow man.  This doesnt sound like a bad place at all, it actually sounds like Heaven to me.  A land where we look past our own needs for the needs of others.  If this were the case we wouldnt need to worry about ourselves because everyone would be worrying about us, for us.  What a novel idea, what a great idea.

Think of the opposite............what are you thinking of?.  Does it resemble the world we live in? For me, it does.  And Im not bashing this place, Ive got my owns failings and selfish tendencies.

Dont the greatest moments, feelings, experiences come when shared with another or when you give of yourself to another?  Often, I find myself reflecting on this life and wondering why its so tough.  Only in the light of faith has it made sense to me.  We are not made for this world, we were made for the next.  Sometimes I think I just want to get there but in God's great wisdom, He allows us to share in bits and pieces of the next life here and now, which provide for us sustenance and peace.

Little bits of Heaven, they come in many shapes and sizes, times and places, people, but no better, NO BETTER, then that of holy communion.  Isn't it interesting that its called communion. Communion is an interaction, a sharing in one, a giving of oneself, a mystical connection of all and of one, the comparisons are endless. This, I feel, is the battery that God has given us to keep ticking.

Our Father who art in Heaven, give us this day our daily bread.

Gettn Stoned

I guess that title will help you to understand how your mind is oriented.

I watched a movie this weekend called "The Stoning of Soraya M." check the trailer below.


Its a harrowing tale of a young Muslim woman wrongfully accused of adultery.  It stars Jim Caviezal who play Jesus in The Passion of the Christ and is also under the same direction.  It doesnt portray Islam in a negative light  because the protagonists are corrupt men who happen to be Muslim.  It brings to light the modern day brutality that still exists in the middle east as stonings and other means of execution still occur on a regular basis. I dont think this is the point of the movie.

This movie has so many parallels with Christ's passion and death.  Someone wrongfully accused and made to suffer to be an example. Religion is used as a cover to mans brutality and sinfullness.  Religion should cause the exact opposite in us, it should bring grace which sustains our peace and allows us to overcome sin. Knowing this, its no small wonder that Jim C and the director are also part of this movie.

I highly recommend this movie but you may want to close your eyes when the stoning occurs as it shows it in very graphic detail.  This gives it the R rating.  (Phillips and Ebert give it two thumbs up).

America's Past Time

Well folks baseball is in full swing again and for you Philly fans, half swing (hehehe).  Only kidding, they look like they've got another good team this year.


Ive got a friend who is from India and he visited with me a while back and what he said to me stuck like glue.  We Americans know about the big four: baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet.  I think thats actually a song, and why not, its a microcosm of what our American heritage is.  They represent the simple, down home, American life and in its most cheerful season, summer. These are our "past times."


Im renting a home that is completely furnished with a nice TV, video games, wireless internet, DVDs, a slipn'slide, and a fork (sorry for the dry humor, I crack myself up).  This brings me back to my friend who visited.  When he entered the home he said "wow, look at all the time passes." "Time passes" I thought to myself, these worlds still wring in my ears.  A time pass, a waste of time.  What is it that we are passing time for and what is it that we are passing time until.


His words made me think about how these new "time passes" have become our new past times! Yes we still have baseball (steroid ridden, marketing juggernaut you cant afford to take a family too), apple pie (with ice cream please), hot dogs (could do without these), and Chevrolet (Government Motors). Its no wonder we are trying to pass time, our time is fraught with struggle and strife, we have lost our simpleness and perhaps our innocence.


Scripture asks that we approach our faith as children do their parents.  We need to get our innocence back and our simpleness will follow.  My life is so full of distractions from my loved ones and my faith.  Its so easy to be pulled away, especially with all the technology we have in this day and age.  We need to relearn our past times and live in the moment so that they dont simply become time passes.  Every moment should be spent in relationship, relationship with others, our God, or ourselves, we need time for each.  We need to recreate to heal but not to the point that recreation becomes frivolous or wasteful.


My man St Francis Desales had a good point, "We must occasionally relax the mind, and the body requires some recreation also. Cassian relates how St. John the Evangelist was found by a certain hunter amusing himself by caressing a partridge, which sat upon his wrist. The hunter asked how a man of his mental powers could find time for so trifling an occupation. In reply, St. John asked why he did not always carry his bow strung? The man answered, Because, if always bent, the bow would lose its spring when really wanted. “Do not marvel then,” the Apostle replied, “if I slacken my mental efforts from time to time, and recreate myself, in order to return more vigorously to contemplation.” It is a great mistake to be so strict as to grudge any recreation either to others or one’s self."


I think a modern adaptation would have St. John swinging a Wii remote!! (please dont try to caress a partridge)  Have a great week!

Music to my ears

Hey folks, sorry its been a while since my last original post.  Life has been pretty hectic these last couple of weeks, I hope you all had a blessed Holy Week and Easter Sunday.  The celebration has continued this week with Divine Mercy Sunday (click for more info).  Now is a time, the time, for celebration. And what do people do when the get together to celebrate.............they drink?!, well they do that too but thats not what I mean.  They get together and cheer. If you're from Pennsylvania or are one of the 19.7 trillion people who have gone to Penn State University chances are you have heard this cheer.



Its an intense and intimidating experience to have 110,00 people chanting in unicen and it sure is powerful. This is another example of how sport can bring people from all walks of life to celebrate and focus on a common reality.

How much greater is it when we can come together and cheer about the savior of the world, Jesus Christ.  Take a look at this cheer from a Russian Soccer game.  They are cheering the ancient Easter greeting.  When one Christian greets another they say "the Lord is risen" and the fellow Christian responds "He is risen indeed" or "He is truly risen."



We all have ways to show the teams we cheer for, whether its a shirt, a hat, a spray-painted goat, or a monogrammed pen.  But our lives are representations of what we believe in and who we are. Faith alone will not suffice, "For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead." (James 2:26, NAB). Lets go show them who WE ARE.........

Happy Easter

"Dear Brothers and Sisters, An ancient Jewish legend from the apocryphal book “The life of Adam and Eve” recounts that, in his final illness, Adam sent his son Seth together with Eve into the region of Paradise to fetch the oil of mercy, so that he could be anointed with it and healed. The two of them went in search of the tree of life, and after much praying and weeping on their part, the Archangel Michael appeared to them, and told them they would not obtain the oil of the tree of mercy and that Adam would have to die. Subsequently, Christian readers added a word of consolation to the Archangel’s message, to the effect that after 5,500 years the loving King, Christ, would come, the Son of God who would anoint all those who believe in him with the oil of his mercy. “The oil of mercy from eternity to eternity will be given to those who are reborn of water and the Holy Spirit. Then the Son of God, Christ, abounding in love, will descend into the depths of the earth and will lead your father into Paradise, to the tree of mercy.” This legend lays bare the whole of humanity’s anguish at the destiny of illness, pain and death that has been imposed upon us. Man’s resistance to death becomes evident: somewhere – people have constantly thought – there must be some cure for death. Sooner or later it should be possible to find the remedy not only for this or that illness, but for our ultimate destiny – for death itself. Surely the medicine of immortality must exist. Today too, the search for a source of healing continues. Modern medical science strives, if not exactly to exclude death, at least to eliminate as many as possible of its causes, to postpone it further and further, to prolong life more and more. But let us reflect for a moment: what would it really be like if we were to succeed, perhaps not in excluding death totally, but in postponing it indefinitely, in reaching an age of several hundred years? Would that be a good thing? Humanity would become extraordinarily old, there would be no more room for youth. Capacity for innovation would die, and endless life would be no paradise, if anything a condemnation. The true cure for death must be different. It cannot lead simply to an indefinite prolongation of this current life. It would have to transform our lives from within. It would need to create a new life within us, truly fit for eternity: it would need to transform us in such a way as not to come to an end with death, but only then to begin in fullness. What is new and exciting in the Christian message, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, was and is that we are told: yes indeed, this cure for death, this true medicine of immortality, does exist. It has been found. It is within our reach. In baptism, this medicine is given to us. A new life begins in us, a life that matures in faith and is not extinguished by the death of the old life, but is only then fully revealed.

To this some, perhaps many, will respond: I certainly hear the message, but I lack faith. And even those who want to believe will ask: but is it really so? How are we to picture it to ourselves? How does this transformation of the old life come about, so as to give birth to the new life that knows no death? Once again, an ancient Jewish text can help us form an idea of the mysterious process that begins in us at baptism. There it is recounted how the patriarch Enoch was taken up to the throne of God. But he was filled with fear in the presence of the glorious angelic powers, and in his human weakness he could not contemplate the face of God. “Then God said to Michael,” to quote from the book of Enoch, “‘Take Enoch and remove his earthly clothing. Anoint him with sweet oil and vest him in the robes of glory!’ And Michael took off my garments, anointed me with sweet oil, and this oil was more than a radiant light … its splendour was like the rays of the sun. When I looked at myself, I saw that I was like one of the glorious beings” (Ph. Rech, Inbild des Kosmos, II 524).

Precisely this – being reclothed in the new garment of God – is what happens in baptism, so the Christian faith tells us. To be sure, this changing of garments is something that continues for the whole of life. What happens in baptism is the beginning of a process that embraces the whole of our life – it makes us fit for eternity, in such a way that, robed in the garment of light of Jesus Christ, we can appear before the face of God and live with him for ever.

In the rite of baptism there are two elements in which this event is expressed and made visible in a way that demands commitment for the rest of our lives. There is first of all the rite of renunciation and the promises. In the early Church, the one to be baptized turned towards the west, the symbol of darkness, sunset, death and hence the dominion of sin. The one to be baptized turned in that direction and pronounced a threefold “no”: to the devil, to his pomp and to sin. The strange word “pomp”, that is to say the devil’s glamour, referred to the splendour of the ancient cult of the gods and of the ancient theatre, in which it was considered entertaining to watch people being torn limb from limb by wild beasts. What was being renounced was a type of culture that ensnared man in the adoration of power, in the world of greed, in lies, in cruelty. It was an act of liberation from the imposition of a form of life that was presented as pleasure and yet hastened the destruction of all that was best in man. This renunciation – albeit in less dramatic form – remains an essential part of baptism today. We remove the “old garments”, which we cannot wear in God’s presence. Or better put: we begin to remove them. This renunciation is actually a promise in which we hold out our hand to Christ, so that he may guide us and reclothe us. What these “garments” are that we take off, what the promise is that we make, becomes clear when we see in the fifth chapter of the Letter to the Galatians what Paul calls “works of the flesh” – a term that refers precisely to the old garments that we remove. Paul designates them thus: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing and the like” (Gal 5:19ff.). These are the garments that we remove: the garments of death.

Then, in the practice of the early Church, the one to be baptized turned towards the east – the symbol of light, the symbol of the newly rising sun of history, the symbol of Christ. The candidate for baptism determines the new direction of his life: faith in the Trinitarian God to whom he entrusts himself. Thus it is God who clothes us in the garment of light, the garment of life. Paul calls these new “garments” “fruits of the spirit”, and he describes them as follows: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22).

In the early Church, the candidate for baptism was then truly stripped of his garments. He descended into the baptismal font and was immersed three times – a symbol of death that expresses all the radicality of this removal and change of garments. His former death-bound life the candidate consigns to death with Christ, and he lets himself be drawn up by and with Christ into the new life that transforms him for eternity. Then, emerging from the waters of baptism the neophytes were clothed in the white garment, the garment of God’s light, and they received the lighted candle as a sign of the new life in the light that God himself had lit within them. They knew that they had received the medicine of immortality, which was fully realized at the moment of receiving holy communion. In this sacrament we receive the body of the risen Lord and we ourselves are drawn into this body, firmly held by the One who has conquered death and who carries us through death.

In the course of the centuries, the symbols were simplified, but the essential content of baptism has remained the same. It is no mere cleansing, still less is it a somewhat complicated initiation into a new association. It is death and resurrection, rebirth to new life.

Indeed, the cure for death does exist. Christ is the tree of life, once more within our reach. If we remain close to him, then we have life. Hence, during this night of resurrection, with all our hearts we shall sing the alleluia, the song of joy that has no need of words. Hence, Paul can say to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). Joy cannot be commanded. It can only be given. The risen Lord gives us joy: true life. We are already held for ever in the love of the One to whom all power in heaven and on earth has been given (cf. Mt 28:18). In this way, confident of being heard, we make our own the Church’s Prayer over the Gifts from the liturgy of this night: Accept the prayers and offerings of your people. With your help may this Easter mystery of our redemption bring to perfection the saving work you have begun in us. Amen."

Pope Benedict XVI - Homily at the Easter Vigil Mass (not me)

Happy Easter to all...He is risen...