In 1972, Jim Croce penned the unfogettable lyric…[sings] ”If I could save time in a bottle..”

Okay, I’m no Jim Croce…but there’s something so simple, universal and resonant about the lyric… the desire to capture the best moments of our lives and preserve the time we have with loved ones forever.

A few weeks ago, my wife Michelle and I took the kids to Disney World. We traveled all day, taking two planes and bus to get to the magic Kingdom, and by the time we finally arrived, I thought our kids, Emily, 6, Lincoln 5 and Lorelei, 2 were going to pop with anticipation.

We boarded the ferry that ran from our resort over to Magic Kingdom, we made our way into the park, pausing a minute in Disney Town Square to get situated. As we turned the corner onto Main Street USA, there was Cinderella’s castle in all of it’s glory, the late afternoon sun shining on it in pure perfection. I’ll admit… I was speechless. My heart soared. Luckily, snapped me back to reality. It was the squealing excitement of my daughters who were jumping up and down with reckless abandon, convinced that all of their fairy tale dreams had come true.

But Lincoln’s reaction was a little bit different. I watched for a minute and he didn’t move a muscle. He was shell shocked, unable to process what was unfolding before him.

“Buddy, are you ok?,” I asked.

“Dad, this can’t be the best day of my life.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t believe it’s real. It’s all real.”

So began four of the best days I’ve ever experienced as a dad. Since I had brought the family to Disney World, I was a rock star. Disney World, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. We did it all. At the end of each day, as we tucked the kids in bed they actually said things like, “Dad, you’re the best dad ever.”

And, you know what? They were right! Because it’s easy to be the best dad ever at Disney World. It is a place where you don’t say “no.”

“Dad, can I have some ice cream?” Yes.
“Candy?” You betcha!
“Funnel Cake?” Let’s get two for the whole family!

You just go with the flow and enjoy it. Eat Disney in (because Dad has seen the bill and we ain’t coming back for a long, long time).

When we got back, people asked me, “do you think the kids will remember it all?”

My response was always the same, “I don’t know if they will, but I know I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”

At least, I hope that I will. When we got back we gathered around the computer to look through the pictures that we took while we were there. There were some good ones in there, but they didn’t even come close to capturing the fun, excitement a joy that we experienced while we were there.

And this, of course, led me to a little bit of an existential crisis. What if I don’t remember? What if, with the passing of time, my memories of those four extraordinary days get muddled and and foggy. People always tell us to enjoy the time we have with our kids, and we do, but there’s this constant desire to capture every moment so that we can relive our experiences again and again.

This, I think, is the great temptation of our day. As technology has become more and more ubiquitous, cheap and accessible we have more opportunity than ever before to capture the moments of our lives, to put them in a bottle.

Think about this for a minute: have you ever been in the middle of doing something really great, and you stop what you’re doing to tell the whole world about it on Facebook?

Or, maybe, you see something incredible and you turn away to find your camera or activate the camera setting on your phone, only to find you’ve completely missed it by the time you turn around?

How many Dads have only ever seen their daughters dance through the two inch screen of a digital camera?

The other day, I heard an interview with George Clooney on NPR. They were asking what it was like to be incredibly famous, to be unable to go anywhere in the world without being recognized. He said what’s most surreal is that there is almost nowhere he can go where he’s not being filmed by someone. Everywhere he goes there are people with flip phones, cameras and other devices recording his every move. He said that sometimes he walks over to meet some fans on the red carpet and people don’t even have a hand available to shake his hand. They can’t even say, “I met George Clooney,” he remarked, “because the one time they got the chance they were too busy recording to take the time to do so.”

He wrapped up his thoughts with this observation…“I think we’re recording more but experiencing less.”

Why?

Are we trying to immortalize ourselves, to leave behind some kind of record that we were here, and in the great span of eternity we left some impression on something?

Are we just afraid that the memories of our youth will be lost?

Are we trying to show the rest of the world how great our live are?

I suspect that each of us has our own motivations and, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter what they are.

But, implicit in this musing a call to myself (and maybe to you to) to be present first. Someone once put it this way… where ever you are… be there!

Otherwise, the only memories our kids will have is of us yelling at them to keep being cute so we can get the right shot, or to be quiet so we can share their witticisms on Facebook.

As much as we want to, the days of our life were never meant to but in a bottle. Life wasn’t made for recording. Life was made for living.

There’s something about Mary, the mother of Jesus.

This could be a place to share the Catholic position on Mary, explaining its nuances and extolling its virtues, but there are countless other places to find that information.

This is more of a meditation, a personal exploration into the heart of Mary and what, if anything, she means to my spiritual life.

In the past, I’ve documented my struggles with Mary. I’ve talked about my former life as a Protestant and how, coming back into the Catholic Church, I pushed Mary to the margins of my faith because devotion to her seemed so superfluous to me. “We already have God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit to worship and reverence,” I thought, “what can Mary possibly bring to the table?”

This is one of the challenges we face when we talk about Mary, the presumption that elevating her to a place of adoration and love implies some deficiency in God.

But there is something that Mary can bring to the table that is found nowhere else in the trinity of God: the qualities of a mother.

God didn’t need Mary to play a part in his salvation of the world. He chose her, certainly, and used her fiat, “yes,” to enact his plan of salvation. But ours is a God that brought Adam, the first man, into being by breathing life into the dirt. It was by God’s own value judgement, “it is not good that man should be alone,” that the first woman was brought into being, proceeding from the rib of Adam. Likewise, the woman, Mary, who was mother of Jesus was not “necessary,” in the strictest terms. God made a divine but unstated value judgement to give us a mother in Mary.

Just as the first Eve was a gift to the first Adam, so Mary, the new Eve was a gift to Jesus, the new Adam, and you and me in the process. Why? Because there is no relationship that we, as human beings, better understand, desire and crave than motherhood.

As a father of three kids aged six and under, it’s fair to say that, in any given day, someone is going to cry about something. Without fail, when my kids fall down and get hurt, they instinctively call out “mommy!” I can swoop down to try and rescue them and take away their pain, but even as I try, they always resort to calling for mom.

Mothers bring comfort. They exhibit love in a way that is fundamentally different than a father’s love. And that’s a good thing. The love of a father and the love of a mother are complimentary and beautiful. One gives guidance and support, the other love, encouragement and comfort.

Men are taught to be big and strong. As we emerge into adolescence and manhood, there are few phrases that bring us shame quite like being called a “momma’s boy.” We flee the comfort of our mother’s side, putting distance between us and affirming our masculinity. Unfortunately, we have mirrored this action in our spiritual lives, leading us away from the comfort of our spiritual mother.

It’s time (for me and for you) to take a step back. To be unafraid to approach our spiritual mother, saying “to thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we life up our sighs, morning and weeping in this valley of tears.”

As we cry out to Her, she gives us the comfort that only a mother can bring and points us to the Father, the ultimate giver of strength and love.

This following story is true. It occurred at 6:30 in the morning at a Las Vegas Blackjack Table. If that bothers you, I apologize, but sometimes God pokes his head into strange times and places.

I sat at the far end of the table. I won a little, I lost a little, but mostly I was just there. A woman came and sat down at the other end of the table. She was older, maybe 50s or 60s, but certainly not “old.” She made chit chat with the dealer, and eventually started talking about the casino nights they have at her church.

“What kind of church do you go to?” the dealer asked.

“I’m Catholic,” she said with a pause, “at least, I’m Catholic now but I’m pretty disappointed with the church.”

My ears perked up but I sat quietly to see what came next.

“Yeah, I’ve been a Catholic all my life too,” the dealer said, “I know what you mean.”

The woman started telling a long tale about her Priest, how he’s taken control of all of the committees of their parish. It sounded messy, the way that egos and personalities get involved and people get their feelings hurt.

The dealer reciprocated with some stories of his own. Eventually, the conversation died down and I felt that tiny impulse within me saying, “speak up.”

“How can I?” I wondered to myself, “what kind of light for Christ can I be at a blackjack table at 6:30 in the morning?”

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “You know what the good news is?” I asked. Both the woman and the dealer turned to me as if totally surprised I was chiming in.

“What?” they both asked.

“Jesus is there.”

Neither of them spoke so I went on.

“I can understand being frustrated with people and personalities but, despite all of that junk, it doesn’t matter because Jesus is there in the Eucharist. When I remember that, nothing else really seems to matter.”

The woman looked down at the table, then back up to reveal the tears welling up in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she said. “I needed that.”

After a couple of minutes, I left the table to head to my morning meeting. As I walked away, I heard the dealer start his sentence, “You know, he’s right, none of that other stuff does really matter…”

The church is full of imperfect people who act in imperfect ways. It’s full of the saintly and jerks just the same. It’s even full of plenty of people to populate a blackjack table on an early morning in Las Vegas. Despite the triumphs and failures of those who make up the church, it all boils down to one reality: the presence of Christ and the ongoing life and love of this Christ for his bride.

In this week’s post, I some incredible, exciting news… the This Pilgrim’s Progress family is getting a little bit bigger. In 2012, Michelle and I will welcome the newest addition to our family, baby Williston 4.0. Michelle is just 7 weeks along but baby is already the size of a blueberry! To say that your prayers are appreciated is an understatement but, honestly, we could not be more excited to share the news with the world!

While I know that most of those reading will be genuinely excited to hear the news, I can already anticipate some of the questions, we’re in for:

Are you crazy?
Don’t you know how this happens?
How do you decide to have a fourth child?

To which, I will invariably reply:
“Yes.”
“Yes, but have you seen my hot wife?”
“Let me explain.”

I think, on some level, it’s a fair question when people ask, “How does a couple in today’s world decide to have a fourth kid?” Our culture has, on many levels, conditioned us to look at kids as sort of a drag on our personal identity and freedom. Truth be told, kids are loud, dirty, generally exhausting and…awesome.

There are probably some who have read this and thought, you just have lots of kids because you’re Catholic! To be honest, you’re right, but not for the reasons you think. You see, a lot of people have the gross misconception that the Catholic Church teaches that all married couples of child-bearing ability must have as many kids as physically possible. I have even been told by non-Catholics that the Church teaches against the usage of contraceptives because, “if you’re Catholic you’re not even allowed to have sex unless you plan on getting pregnant.”

If that’s what you believe, you have some serious reading to do of past This Pilgrim’s Progress posts. For sake of brevity, let me just say that the Church doesn’t teach either of those things, but rather, advocates for Responsible Parenthood, in which married couples consider where they are in life and earnestly ask God, “what is your will for our family?” It never guarantees that having kids will be easy, but it does encourage us all to be asking that question which should be at the center of our family anyway.

When our third child (Lorelei) was born just two years ago, Michelle and I were both pretty convinced that our family was complete. People often asked us if we were “done,” and while we always left the possibility open for more, in our private conversations it was clear that we were both feeling like perhaps, with three, that was it.

Then, something funny happened. We’d be out at various places herding around our three, and I found myself looking for another one. We’d load up in the car, getting everyone situated, and I couldn’t help but feel like someone was missing. I didn’t say anything to Michelle about it because, honestly, I felt kind of foolish. In conversations later, she admitted that she was feeling the same way.

When we finally told each other we were feeling this way, we set forth to start really thinking and praying about the possibility of adding another little one to family. In my mind, I came up with many “logical” reasons why we shouldn’t. “We’re already outnumbered!” “It will cost a lot of money!” “We ONLY have a four bedroom house.” It is amazing how many absurd excuses you can invent to resist doing something that you know in your heart is the right thing to do.

It didn’t take long for my mind to relent and, while the thought of adding a fourth should probably overwhelm me, I can honestly say it doesn’t. It turns out that any decision that starts with the question, “God, what is your will for me/us?” is accompanied by remarkable peace. If only I’d remember that more often…

Thanks, in advance, for your prayers for Michelle and Baby Williston #4.

The tweet read: “It would probably enrage my kids to know much of this parenting stuff I am making up as I go along.” Like most tweets, there was a story behind it that, honestly, I can’t remember. It almost certainly goes like this: one of my three kids was either doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing or not doing something that they were supposed to be doing. The details aren’t important. All that really matters is that I was doing my darnedest to change behavior and was flying by the seat of my pants in determining the response that would best yield the desired result.

If my kids have taught me anything, it’s that everything is really subjective. I’ve lost my temper over tiny, insignificant stuff. I’ve kept my cool in the face of tremendous disobedience. But most of the time, I find myself trying to figure out how to respond. When your kid falls down and gets hurt while running around the house, all you want to do is say, “see, I told you that if you ran around the house you’d get hurt.” But, there are hurts to fix and tears to stop so all you can really do is give them a hug and try to make it better.

Parenting, more often than not, seems like a great intellectual exercise of determining when to respond with consequence and when to respond with grace. I have to think that, as God is our eternal father, this explains a lot of the “confusing” parts of the bible. Luckily for you and me…He finally landed on grace.

Over the past week, I’ve had quite a few conversations about grace. It all started last week, when, huddled in our favorite booth at a local Starbucks, a friend admitted, “I wish I had a better appreciation of grace.”

Initially, the statement took me off guard. “What do you mean?” I asked.

He told me about a Protestant friend of his who talked quite a bit about the grace of Christ. “It just seems like that’s all he has to do, just appreciate and enjoy the grace of Christ” my friend said, “and I feel like I don’t do enough of that.”

His statement kind of struck me between the eyes. I remember my days as a Protestant, standing in lively worship services with the music swirling around me and emotions rising, feeling a deep appreciation and joy for the grace of God through his son Jesus Christ. My friend’s statement was disarming because it caused me to think, “have I lost that appreciation and joy?”

In subsequent conversations, I’ve asked others, “Do Protestants appreciate grace more than Catholics?” In other words, are we, as Catholics, so focused on pursuing the “spiritual life” and being changed that we forget to stop and just revel in the fact that, ultimately, despite all of our shortcomings and failures, Jesus has already paid the price for our salvation?

It seems to me that our relationship with grace, as Christians, Catholic or Protestant, is a bit like walking a tight rope. On one side of the tight rope is the tendency to sit back and say, “Jesus Christ has paid the price,” and to stop pursuing holiness and sanctification in this life. On the other side is the temptation to focus so much on “working out our salvation” that we try to wrestle the saving act out of the hands of Jesus and take it upon ourselves. Whether you fall off the tight rope on one side or the other, the end result is the same.

As Catholics, perhaps our perceptions of grace fall victim to the fact that “grace” itself is not a buzz word that we use all of the time. It’s not something we just talk about, it something we participate in by seeking it out in the sacramental celebrations of the church, which themselves are visible signs of the invisible grace that Christ has won for his bride.

In these sacraments is mystery, beauty, glory and grace. It’s easy to forget that and just go through the motions. But, the key to “enjoying” the grace of Christ is participating in the life of the Church and being transformed, through each sacramental act, into a follower more like our Master.

This morning, my oldest kiddo went off to her first day in the 1st Grade. Over the summer, our neighborhood was rezoned to a new school, so we all had a sense of the unknowns that were looming out there. Over the course of the 24 hours prior to the first bell, Michelle and I asked her many times and in a multitude of ways, “Do you want Mom or Dad to walk you in to the school and make sure you find your way?” Much to our dismay, she kept declining the offer.

Just ten minutes or so before walking out the door, Michelle asked her one more time. “No mom,” Emily said, “if you come inside with me, I know I won’t want you to leave.”

To be honest, I think my six year old is my hero today. She is brave and wise and I am so proud of her.

Last year at this time, I wrote a blog post for her, entitled Some Wisdom for a 5 Year Old. As it turns out, I have a little bit more “wisdom” to dispense, perhaps for her, or maybe just for my sake.

Dear Emily,

It feels awfully trite to start a letter with some observation about how quickly time goes by…especially when it’s written to a six year old. After all, when you’re six a year feels like five years and you wonder if you’ll ever make it to your next birthday. That is, you’ll find, one of the great ironies of life. The less life you have ahead of you, the faster it seems to go.

As of late, I have thought a great deal about time. In a letter written to a friend a long time ago, a man by the name of C.S. Lewis called attention to our fascination with time and used it point to the fact that, as much as us humans try to avoid it sometimes, we are created in the image of an eternal God.

Mr. Lewis wrote:
“Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (‘How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up and married! I can hardly believe it!’) In heavens name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.”

We’re not created for time. We are eternal and that, sometimes, is the greatest reassurance as I watch the race of life fly by and see you and your siblings grow by leaps and bounds.

This probably feels awfully obscure to you but these are the thoughts that your Dad thinks when he’s not playing Barbies with you or Legos with your brother. While I’m writing in obscurities, I have a few more things to share with you, so humor your dad for a few minutes and let me indulge myself.

Wonder is the most beautiful sight – One day, you might forget that when you were six, your mom and I took you and Lincoln to the circus. Rarely, if ever, have I seen someone as awestruck as you that night. You literally bounced the entire time, jumping up in down in fascination and excitement as the full spectacle of the circus unfolded before you. Your mom and I spent half of the circus watching you instead of the show and you, unknowingly, inspired smiles and laughter of joy from complete strangers around you. This, my dear, is the power of wonder and enthusiasm. You will find, as time goes on, that the world is filled with angst and cynicism and I, of all people, cannot cast the first stone at others who unnecessarily worry about things that are outside of their control. You might not be able to escape that, but every ounce of wonder you can hold on to will put you in the unique position of bringing joy and enrichment to the lives of others.

Learning is always cooler than being an idiot – Over the past year I’ve watched you grow into a world of ideas just waiting to be discovered. You are enthusiastic about learning and reading and finding out what mysteries of the universe lie in the cosmos or under your very own nose. Some day all of this will change and people will try to convince you that it’s cooler to live life as a cynic and a fool rather than a wondrous dreamer in pursuit of knowledge and beauty. They will try and convince you that the less you care the cooler you’ll be. Don’t walk away from these people…run away as fast as you can. At some point they stopped trying and, in effect, stopped living. The greatest people I know in life are those that thrive on learning new things, seeing new things and meeting new people.

Changing Diapers Isn’t Always So Fun – Recently, you began being a big helper by changing your little sister’s diaper. Your mom and I appreciate the help and we’re glad that you’re enthusiastic about the taking on this new bit of responsibility. But, responsibility isn’t always so fun. In life, you’ll make decisions that require follow through and some difficulty. You might choose to get married and start a family of your own and as awesome as that is, you’ll find that there are a LOT of dirty diapers to be changed over the years. Just as you’d never allow the fear (yes, fear) of dirty diapers to keep you from having a family of your own, don’t let fear of difficulty that comes with other responsibility keep you from pursuing greatness. Responsibility means giving up some things that you want in order to do something that has value and, to be honest, this reality scares a lot of people in to settling for mediocrity.

Don’t be scared to take on responsibility, even if it means personal sacrifice. That’s how you get the things that are important in life.

Keep up the good work and have a great year of school.

Love,
Dad

This month, Michelle and I will celebrate seven incredible years of marriage. In that time, my wife has challenged me in many ways, always pushing me to reach deeper within myself to pursue God and the call he has put on our lives. Of the many thing I love about my wife is her simple ability to help me put things in perspective and see things about myself and situations that I can’t see.

A short while after we were married, Michelle very lovingly pointed out one of my personal blind spots. “You don’t receive compliments well,” she told me after the crowd had thinned out following a speaking gig.

She clarified, “Your natural reaction is to make self-deprecating comments when someone tells you something nice.”

I had never given much thought to how I responded when someone said something nice. She was right, of course, that receiving praise makes me uncomfortable so I naturally look for ways to diffuse that discomfort by deflecting the praise.

That night, she offered me a challenge, “whenever someone says something nice, look them in the eyes and say, ‘Thank you.’”

It sounds so simple, even easy. So, why is it that, to this day, her simple challenge is still so difficult?

My inability to simply accept and receive a compliment is a microcosm. It’s a personal habit that can be overcome, but it points to something far deeper. Last week, guest blogger Chris Sperling discussed what we have come to call a “receptive spirituality,” in which we embrace our role as the bride of Christ and embody a greater receptivity to Him.

As I read Chris’s words last week, I was challenged by them in the same way that I was by Michelle’s words all those years ago. I don’t receive Christ well. I too often try to dictate the terms and tone of our relationship with my own thoughts and my own mind, rather than allowing him to do so.

I suspect that I am not the only one that has this problem. I imagine, however, that this receptive spirituality is far more difficult for men. As men, receptivity does not come naturally to us. Built into our biology and reflected in our psyches is the natural tendency to be a giver, a fixer, a doer.

Chris and I had some discussion about what a receptive spirituality would really look like. We gathered up a group of men to discuss the topic and see if receptivity in spirituality was even on their radar. Everyone agreed that it was something we needed to seek in our relationships with God. Then, as good men, we quickly turned to the mode of doing, essentially trying to construct a five step process whereby we could actively cultivate greater passivity. About fifteen minutes into that conversation, one of the other guys had the clarity of mind to say, “hey guys, I think we’re doing it wrong.”

In speaking about receptive spirituality, we began seeking examples. It will probably come as no surprise that we ultimately turned to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, as our example. Receptivity is Marian in the sense that it is submits, subordinating personal plans to the plans of God. It echos the response of Mary, who said to the angel who revealed God’s plan for her virgin birth, “Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:28). Her response recognized what we must seek,the Lordship of Christ over every moment of our lives.

Receptive spirituality, is also reflected in the other Mary, the sister of Lazarus. You’ll remember the story: as her sister, Martha, milled about the house waiting on their guests (the apostles and Jesus), Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, enamored with his presence and hanging on his every word. Mary let the presence of Christ be the determining force in her life. She did not have an agenda for him or an expectation for what his presence should look like. Rather, Mary just “was” in his presence.

When thinking about a practical implementation of receptive spirituality, the words of the Lord’s prayer keep echoing in my mind, “thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” What if that became our mantra, if every five minutes we sought to reorient ourselves to that prayer? It challenges me to stop trying to dictate the direction of my daily spiritual life, to take a breath, survey my surroundings and submit myself back to the Lord.

This past Sunday, I sat in Mass gazing at the image of my Lord on the Cross. In that moment, I sat thinking about being receptive, about opening myself up to the voice and will of God and allow his Spirit to wash over me. There was a peace in that reflection, a feeling like I could breathe a little bit more, like I was letting go of the heavy burden and picking up the lighter yoke of Christ.

Through the course of our seven years of marriage, Michelle has placed her trust in me to care and provide for our family. She has allowed me to make decisions both small and insignificant to life changing. I am her husband and her groom and she has entrusted me with that role and responsibility. And this, of course, is the model I must follow and learn from her, to give myself to Christ like a bride to her groom. I need to learn to throw myself into his loving arms with no regard for self, just trust that the one who gave his everything has the strength and love to sustain us, protect us and, ultimately, transform us.

This week, I turn over This Pilgrim’s Progress to a dear friend, Chris Sperling. Chris is a licensed marriage and family therapist working with couples in the Diocese of Austin. Every Tuesday at 6:00a.m. Chris and I huddle in the corner of coffee shop to digest Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. His guest post was, at least in part, inspired by one of those conversations. Enjoy!

As humans, we are consumed with the desire to understand ourselves. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? What is the “in between” supposed to look like?

In our striving to answer those questions, the best we can often manage is analogies and metaphors. Over the past several years I have been profoundly struck by the analogy most often employed by Blessed Pope John Paul II: the spousal analogy. John Paul II, recognizing the variety of analogies we have employed to describe the human condition, refers to the analogy of us as “spouses,” calling it the least inadequate analogy we use to understand ourselves and our relationship with God. However, understanding the spousal nature of marriage and the human person has proven to be a significant undertaking.

You might say to me “the spousal nature of marriage…isn’t that obvious?” I don’t think that it is anymore, if it ever was. We approach marriage today as agreement to get what we need from the other person. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. Many of the clients I work with struggle to understand what marriage means because it has not been modeled to them by parents and family. For many people, marriage, like most relationships, is viewed as disposable, disappointing, and, at best, utilitarian. Their understanding and conception of the marriage relationship is a pale comparison to the image that was infused into the human person by God at the dawn of creation.

Our Lord, as St. Paul points out in Ephesians chapter 5, gave us the ultimate example of being spousal: total self-donation of your being for the good of another. Jesus willingly and without argument went to the cross for his bride the church. We are his bride! Christ “gave himself up for [us] to make [us] holy, purifying [us] in the bath of water by the power of the word, to present to himself a glorious church, holy and immaculate, without stain or wrinkle or anything of that sort.” This is what is means to be groom.

If we understand the groom’s role of self donation, what then, does it mean to be bride in this scenario? Are we not all church? Then are we not all bride? If we are all bride what does it look like in action to be bride? If we look at a man and a woman’s body then we can have some understanding. The bride receives the groom’s body into hers in a very intimate way. It is the groom who gives himself to his bride. John Paul speaks of this in this way that, “the husband is the one who loves and the wife, by contrast, is the one who is loved (TOB 92:6).” The groom gives himself to the bride who in return receives.

It is in this image of receptivity that man has been created by our loving God and in our receptivity we image God himself. When we describe the trinity, we give light to the reality of our God as a reciprocal communion of loving persons. God the Father has eternally loved God the Son who has eternally loved him. From this reciprocal love proceeds the third person of the Trinity, God the Holy Spirit. This is the image and likeness that human persons were created after. It is in total self-donation that God the Father gives himself and which God the Son receives. In return God the Son gives himself in total self-donation to God the Father who receives this love. Notice there is only giving and receiving. There is no taking.

Too often as spouses we fail to image this reciprocal relationship, instead, spending our time attempting to get our needs met. A part of the work that I do when counseling couples is to teach them to make room for one another in the relationship. Often a couple falls into what we term a demand-withdraw cycle in their relationship that most likely becomes habituated. One spouse demands attention or interaction from the other spouse to which the answer is to withdraw from the relationship. Often the answer to solving this situation is to “make room” for the withdrawing spouse. The demanding spouse is attempting to take from their mate the attention to which they perceive they deserve.

Marriage was not created to be this way. Marriage is meant to be a giving-receiving model in which both spouses are looking for opportunities to donate themselves to the relationship. It is through this giving-receiving model that love most effectively proceeds from a relationship. Through this model, couples most effectively imitate the first and ultimate reciprocal communion of loving persons.

For each of us, this receptivity for is found every time we receive our Lord’s body and blood in the Eucharist. We are entering into this model as bride to Christ our groom in a real and physical way every time we do this. Likewise, we turn to our mother Mary who modeled this receptivity to the call of Christ as she “took all these things and pondered them in her heart.”

I try to make This Pilgrim’s Progress an apolitical place on the web. I follow politics for both personal and professional interest and, frankly, I’ve found that discussing it online or anywhere else does little to elevate the soul or spirit. More often, discussion of our current political situation leads to anger, frustration and malaise.

However, as we head deeper and deeper into the election season (does it ever really end) in anticipation of next year’s Presidential primaries and general election, it is already clear that this election cycle will have one predominant theme: class warfare.

The rhetoric sounds something like this:

Republicans: “We’re spending too much money on programs we can’t afford and we need to cut back.”

Democrats: “Republicans hate poor people and want to take away the programs that real Americans rely on.”

Republicans: “Too many people aren’t paying anything in taxes and are leaching off the system.”

Democrats: “Fat cat rich people need to pay more of their fair share.”

Sound familiar?

Tired of it?

Me to.

I write this post, not to focus on what’s wrong with politics and politicians. We’re their enablers. Politicians are just playing a game by the rules we’ve created.

Rather, I want to step further back and ask more essential questions:

Why has the body of Christ abrogated so much of its responsibility to politicians and government?

In other words, when did the Church hand over its responsibility to care for the poor, the widowed and the sick to the government?

Today, July 21, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops put out a press release citing their meeting with President Obama and Congressional leaders to “urge protection of the poor” in ongoing negotiation of a deal in increase the debt ceiling and cut the federal budget.

The release cited a document that was signed by the Bishops, along with “more than 60 heads of Christian denominations and religious organizations,” who call upon the President and Congress “ put the needs of the poor first in allocating scarce resources.”

It’s not that I object with the efforts of the Bishops and other Christian leaders to take care of the poor of our nation. I applaud them for those efforts and hope they are successful. However, the very basis of the press release made me wonder when the balance of this responsibility got so askew.

I think Jesus called his followers to care for the poor, not create governmental entities to do it for them. So, I have to ask the question, does government have to step in because you and I, as follower of Jesus have failed to meet our responsibilities?

I like to imagine a nation in which the President and Congressional leaders don’t get to use class warfare and the plight of the poor as a political weapon because the body of Christ is doing such a good job caring for the poor them.

Maybe I’m naïve or idealistic or maybe I just expect more. Either way, perhaps we need to reboot this conversation and start looking towards what’s expected from you and me when it comes to the “least of these” who live among us.

We are a pilgrim people.

We are a people in exile.

We are called in to be “in the world,” but not “of the world.”

Do any of these motifs sound familiar? We throw these terms around and we all know what they mean, don’t we? Why is it then, that none of them ever really help us understand what a life of faith lived out in the twenty-first century is supposed to look like?

At its core, This Pilgrim’s Progress has been written with the express purpose of offering musings from the pilgrimage of life and faith, to shed some light on the idea that the Christian life is about the pursuit of holiness through a profound relationship with Jesus Christ and his Church on earth.

As Christians, I think we have some idea of what our relationship with Jesus should look like. Sure, Protestants and Catholics differ in their understanding of worship and experience of God but, at their core, I think all Christians desire to reverence and worship the triune God. However, when it comes to how we understand our relationship with the world, the waters become a bit murkier.

There are many ways that Christians have conceptualized their relationship with “the world.” Some have hunkered down, fleeing the “evil” of the world. Others adjusted their Christian beliefs to match every cultural value, watering down the teachings of the faith that developed through the apostles and church fathers. Still others have taken the road of Christian jerkiness.

I can speak intelligently about being a Christian jerk because, in all honesty, I spent the first couple of years of my life of faith being one. I sat back with my arms folded, shaking my head at the sinfulness of others. I lamented the failings of those around me audibly and judgmentally. I turned my back on friendships with those who weren’t a righteous as I perceived myself to be.

“Why don’t they get it?,” I wondered. “How can they just turn their back on Jesus?”

It’s easy to sit in the ivory tower of faith and cast such aspersions. In fact, it’s much easier than confronting our own failures in the faith. As believers still saddled with humanity, one of our best defense mechanisms is to manufacture our own righteousness by pointing out the unrighteousness of others. The more we get frustrated about the obstinacy of others, the less we have to confront our resistance to take steps of progress in our own pilgrimage of faith.

So, what then, is our response? How should we respond to “the world?”

Love
It’s a cheap answer to say, “love.” But it’s the right one, isn’t it?

Jesus, who was without sin, was not so disgusted by the prostitutes and thieving tax collectors that he couldn’t share a table with them. What claim, then, do you have to be above such interactions?

Jesus recognized and valued the image of God in each human being, and never wrote them off as lost causes. St. Jude might be the patron saint of lost causes, but Jesus showed us what it meant to be the lover of the lost, of those who had been cast to the margins of religious life because of their sinful unworthiness. He is the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to save the one.

Compassion
The Apostle Paul knew what it was like to be a religious jerk. As a Jew, he looked at Christians as those who had turned away from the true faith. He says, “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance and in my unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13).

Whenever I read that passage, I marvel at the words, “ignorance” and “unbelief.”

It’s hard to believe, in this day and age, that people don’t know the gospel of Christ, but many don’t. I grew up in the Church, received the sacraments, and I don’t remember truly hearing the gospel until I was eighteen.

Still more, it is easy to see how people don’t believe. The division of the church and confusion of the Christian message has to be a stumbling block to those who have tried to understand.

As Catholics, however, we hold the truth. We believe that the truth of the Church is the complete truth of God and it is our job to compassionately respond to the reality of ignorance and unbelief that exists in our midst. Too often, however, our response to the ignorant and unbelieving is to write them off in frustration and disappointment.

What would happen if we looked at them with compassion instead?

Relationships
I once tried to justify my Christian jerkiness by likening my frustration to the holy anger that the Apostle Paul often displayed in his letters to the Christian churches.

“I just love God so much,” I would say, “that it makes me so frustrated to see people turning their lives away from him.”

It likely comes as no surprise to you that I was nothing like the Apostle Paul. It’s true that, time after time, Paul’s frustration comes off in his letters. We cannot, however, just focus on that frustration. We have to focus, first, on the relationships that existed between he and his readers.

It’s easy, when reading the epistles of Paul, to skip over the first or last chapters, when Paul is saying all kinds of lovely things about his brothers and sisters, dearly loved in Christ. And yet, those parts point the fact that Paul walked among the people to whom he wrote. He shepherded them, taught them about Jesus and the life of faith, and was legitimately dismayed when they turned away from the faith and back to their previous lifestyles.

Paul was like a spiritual parent to the believers of the first century churches and just like a parent gets frustrated when their child hurts him/herself doing something they were told not to do, so too Paul confronted the failure of spiritual children with a spirit of correction and love.

As much as we’d like, love doesn’t rule by edict and decree. Love exists in the investment in another’s life.

Having the truth doesn’t allow us to be jerks, it puts the burden on us to love. It means we pursue others with the same relentless abandon that sent Jesus to cross.

Jesus doesn’t need jerks. He needs us. And he needs us to look like him.