Back from Vacation

Hello again, everyone! I'm back from resting with my family for the month of July in the home where I was living when God called me to the priesthood. Everything in their home takes me back to the beginnings of this life I live now with Christ. And in that way, visiting with my parents is an opportunity for me to be renewed and strengthened in my vocation.

I used the time to read some books on Saudi Arabia and the Middle East to better understand the character of that region. And I revisited Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I caught some keeper fluke with my father. Did some golfing. And I was woken up each day by an Aussie-doodle. Some may think it crazy to spend a month with your parents, but I love it. We laugh a lot. And I'm able to help them with some things around the house.

Something that struck me while I was away from the parish was just how easy it would have been to forget about religion altogether. I don't mean that I did, but that it would have been easy. While I'm here with you, living on the grounds of the parish and doing pastoral work, it's easy for me to feel connected to my spiritual life. But as soon as I leave from here, brave the Expressway, throw on a pair of shorts and slides, and set out on the boat, for example, I must admit that my thoughts are sometimes distant from Catholic piety and devotion.

I love the Church. It's the lens through which I look at the world and perceive the meaning of life. But God seems to permit me at times to experience something of the dryness that I think many people experience when they are far from the Church. And while I would never wish that sense of emptiness for anyone, I'm glad that He does allow me to experience it - at times - because it helps me to understand that spiritual condition a little more. I don't enjoy it at all. Materialism, to me, is joyless and uncomfortably dull - like a desert.

But it's good to be aware of it I suppose. At the very least it's humbling for a priest to wrestle with the temptation to think the world may be right after all, and that religion only imprisons those who are too cowardly to throw off the shackles of an old, irrelevant institution. But what is really happening when I feel far from God? I am distracted; that's all. It is not that God does not exist, nor that I am actually far from Him, but that something is distracting me from Him.

One thing I learned for sure this past month is that social media hasn't really been helping me at all. Instead, it's acted only like a flood of digital content that drowns me and makes it difficult for me to stay close to God and the Church. I'm done with it, that's for sure. I find very little use for it at all. It hasn't helped me to cultivate a life of prayer and recollection. In fact, by the end of July, I had removed YouTube from my phone altogether.

Rather what I want now - with a renewed desire - is stillness of heart, to keep silence, to move between my daily tasks with gentleness, to prefer classical music for the promotion of contemplation, and to make time for the reading of good books. I want nothing to do with this culture of noise and distraction, of constant commentary and pointless posts.

I want to be in the world, but not of the world - to love the world, and to serve others in the world, while at the same time detesting the spirit of the world and remaining unstained by the venom of the enemy who rules it by distraction and noise. For me to stay close to Christ I need only to be still and to know that He is God, to know that He has called me and is calling me even now, and that I have said "yes" and will continue to say "yes." +