What’s up? (Part 1)

Something’s up, they say. It's difficult to pinpoint: a current, a wave, an atmosphere. It's not business as usual anymore says one. No program is going to fix it, says another. There's an air of urgency and concern.

Concerns spring from deep within. They grasp for words to say what they mean, to describe their discomfiture. Perhaps Yeats’ words fit the times: "The best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity."

The story gets told in these terms:

Catholics are confused and torn - the ones hanging on. Half have quit. The faithful don't know who or what to believe anymore. They hear a prominent archbishop say the Holy Father is out of touch. They hear mixed messages about sin and morality, if they hear about sin at all. Respected theologians speak about moral conduct in situational and relativistic terms. Catholics have bought into worldly standards for marriage, sexuality, lifestyle. Never mind that rock music holds traditional values up to ridicule. the kids need “their" music. Love has become puppy love, more concerned with selfish pleasure than with sacrifice, patience and dying to self.

Homes for runaway young people are finding a new caliber of clientele. Sacred absolutes are falling on rebellious, indifferent ears, despite the utter hopelessness of circumstances. Failures to reach some of these young people are increasing. Some are going back to the streets from probably their last-chance safe havens. People in places of help use words like “diabolical" to describe what they see happening.

Even priests are sniping at priests. A holy brotherhood is becoming infiltrated with an undercurrent of defensiveness or suspicion or polarity. Condescension replaces dialogue. Smugness replaces tolerance. Hauteur replaces humility.

Everybody agrees that values have lapsed or gone dormant, but nobody thinks it's anybody's fault. It's not the teachers’ fault; it's not the young people's fault; it's not the parents’ fault; it‘s not the priests’ fault; it's not the bishops’ fault.

So the story gets told…

A priest has a faraway look of reflection. His tone is quiet. People don’t come to the sacraments, he said. They don’t come to Mass. They're bitter, angry. They don’t want to hear anything I have in say. They could care less about God or religion or the Catholic Church. They’ve turned it off any they’re not about to turn it back on. Many are full of hate. Many more are simply indifferent toward the Church

Catholics are having abortions, living together before marriage and they are very vocal about their rights in this regard. Their rights… they’re not interested in what the Church has to say about women in priesthood. They don’t care. They want what they want, so that’s their value. They say the Church is repugnant, but they want to be a priest in it.

Something is terribly wrong and putting a Band-Aid on it won’t fix it. One more program putting people on one more spiritual high, feeling good about themselves one more time – it's all useless. Do it. I don’t care. It won't matter, he said. What matters is what's underneath all this: the malaise, the emptiness. Only one thing is going to work and that's for people to change their lives and get right with God. The communion lines are long, but the confessionals are vacant.

Another priest shook his head. It's not business as usual anymore, he said. We‘ve been asleep too long. Satan is in the world and in the Church, too. You can laugh if you want to, he said, shrug, it off if you want to. The intellectually arrogant will go on with their mush, but the word of God still stands, yesterday, today, tomorrow – if there is a tomorrow. God’s not going to stand for 20 million abortions, rampant idolatry, moral decadence so depraved it’s unspeakable. God’s not going to stand for teaching elementary school children that choosing to act out homosexually is like choosing a new hat, and then teaching them so-called safe ways to indulge in repulsive practices.

The solution is simple really. We have to repent. We have to get on our knees. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on January 31st, 1988

Hungry

A special place is reserved in my heart for people whose own hearts are hardened and ugly and black with sin. The reason is quite simple: Takes one to know one.

I thank God for the profound blessings He has given me in my life. I thank Him especially for the opportunities I have had to love and show compassion for others like me: the bums and derelicts, the haughty, the selfish, the lustful, the greedy and indifferent, the addicted and desperate, the lazy and morose, the liars and thieves. I am not set apart from these. I long for their fellowship with me in our saving, loving, forgiving Lord. I want them to know about the victory that can be ours, not of ourselves, but in Him.

I can’t help it and I can’t explain it, but I feel drawn to those who have cut themselves off from God’s grace. Somehow there’s an urgency inside me for them to know that I understand, I’ve been there; I’m there now; I know the struggle; there’s hope.

I don’t boast of sin. St. Paul says, “What, then, are we to say? ‘Let us continue in sin that grace may abound?’ Certainly not! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” My boast is that God loves us sinners.

The sinners I find most difficult to love are the proud, the arrogant, the puffed up. The reason, again, is apparent. I find pride to be my most debilitating defect. Pride puts me at a distance from those most in need of my authentic concern. Pride blinds me to the beam in my own eye.

Once more, St. Paul: “…Every one of you who judges another is inexcusable. By your judgement you convict yourself, since you do the very same things. (People say) ‘We know that God’s judgement on men who do such things is just.’ Do you suppose, then, that you will escape His judgement, you who condemn these things in others yet do them yourself? Or do you presume kindness and forbearance? Do you not know that God’s kindness is an invitation to you to repent?”

I bring all this up today because I believe it’s important for me not to become smug or self-satisfied, to fail to recognize myself in the coal-blackest sinner. There, but for the grace of God, go I; and in my case – there I go.

As I bask in God’s favor in the Church and in the availability of the Sacraments, somehow hunger has become a growing part of that experience. A hunger for souls – not for the good guys, but for the bad guys.

God loves the poor and our hearts go out to those in need. But it strikes me that sometimes those in most need are the fat cats, the complacent, the stuffed. We sinners need more than a meal.

Whenever the subject of sin comes up these days, somebody always seems to fret about having a good self-concept. For my part, I have no trouble knowing that I am a person in love with God, longing to do His will, striving to follow Him, to obey Him, to love those He loves. I also know I fail in that. I’m aware that parts of me are revolting and embarrassing and dark. I deliberately choose evil. Al Capone had “My Jesus Mercy” chiseled on his tombstone. I wonder if people think, “Good thing Al prayed that prayer,” or if many don’t quietly pray it for themselves. I know I do.

Today, I don’t kneel and thank God that I’m not like the rest of men. On the contrary, it is my kinship with my brothers and sisters which stirs my soul to appreciation. This is why I am grateful: “It is precisely in this that God proves His love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now that we have been justified by His blood, it is all the more certain that we shall be saved by Him from God’s wrath.” - T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 22nd, 1987

Feelings and temptation

The insight came to me with a freshness and a sense of peace and security. Surely this understanding about temptation was a gift. I do not know why I had not had this awareness before.

Certainly I could say the words – “Just because you’ve been tempted doesn’t mean that you have sinned.” People had explained this to me over and over. Just the same, I had grasped the idea only intellectually and not with faith. It was in the gift of faith that I was able, I suppose, to have an epiphany of understanding, a kind of manifestation of the truth underlying the concept. It’s like an “aha!” experience. We call dumbly poll-parrot that two plus two equals four. But when we understand what that means in a concrete situation, it makes more sense.

For example, if I have two dollars and you give me two more, two plus two equals four has much more meaning.

So it was when I came to understand about temptation.

You see, the thing I saw into was that the devil is a liar. Not only does he put a thought into my brain, he then follows that up with a subtle lie usually along the lines: “You sure are a bum for thinking such a thing. Look at you. You say you love God and you say you love neighbor. How can you love? Would a person who loves God be thinking what you’re thinking? You’re doomed, brother. God doesn’t want the likes of you around.”

It’s all a lie.

The plot thickens, of course, with feelings that come into play. A greedy thought sets up certain feelings. A lustful thought feels one way, a slothful thought feels another. Now I know that God gave us our feelings, and they do indeed make our lives very interesting. The thing I’ve discovered about feelings, though, is that they are unreliable. Feelings just exist. Just because feelings can be appropriate in a given situation doesn’t mean that they are. Feelings are not an unmistakable clue to the truth.

How often do we feel anger toward someone, for example, only to find out that we misunderstood? Or how can two people encounter the exact set of circumstances, one feeling serene and the other wired for sound? Feelings may add spice to life, but they certainly are no recipe for understanding.

In the case of temptation, the devil will put a lustful thought in my mind, and sure enough, I’ll start feeling, well, you know what those feelings are like. Then, though, the devil will begin his accusations, chiding his victims for not feeling disgust and revulsion, for after all, wouldn’t a truly faithful, believing, spiritual person feel horrified? The poor victim’s feelings are involuntary, but they do seem to confirm the devil’s lie.

And that’s the whole point, that’s what the big lie is: falseness represented as the truth. We can get tangled up in fiendish logic and lose sight of the fact that what has been happening is a plain old homespun run-of-the-mill temptation.

Let me lay it out simply. The devil puts a thought in our head. Quickly now, he lies, telling us we’re no good for thinking such a thought. Then, before we have too much time to think about that, he starts running on about our feelings. Then, so the devil’s plan goes, since we’re no good anyway for thinking such thoughts and feeling such feelings, we might as well act on or act out this initial thought, which was not our idea, but his.

To be sure, the devil knows exactly which thoughts to put in my mind because he knows my weaknesses, my stress points, my areas of confusion and doubt. But guess what, so does God.

God knows I have sinned, but Scripture and my faith confirm in my heart that, for those who will turn to Him, there is no condemnation. That does not mean there will be no battle. Spiritual warfare is very real, I should think. Just because I have gained some insight into the devil’s wiles is no guarantee that the father of lies won’t try again.

This gift of understanding, however, has been comforting to me, giving me strength for the struggle and encouragement toward the victory.

My nature is broken, inclined toward evil. Like St. Paul says, though, not that I live, but that Jesus lives in me. He is my hope, my strength, and my song. I have found that in the heat of temptation, in the pack of lies, in the confusion, in the tugging toward the wrong and the yearning for the good, if I simply say “Jesus” the devil can’t stand it, not for long. – T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 2nd, 1986

Afraid of the dark

OK, I’ll admit it. I’m afraid of the dark. You’d think a grown man could shake it off, but when I turn off the light at the top of the stairs at night, something akin to low-grade panic sets in. It’s a good thing that there’s another light switch a few short steps away. Who knows what fearsome creatures could come out in the absence of light?

My case is relatively mild. I cope. While my circumstance is more rightly described as a phobia, there are some genuine fears, I believe, common to the lot of us in the human frame.

Take, for example, the fear associated with making a decision. I’m not talking about what to wear today. In my closet, that choice is somewhat limited anyway. Will I wear these blue pants or those blue pants?

But what about the decision to change some aspect of my behavior? Whenever I get my throat blessed on the feast of St. Blase and the priest asks me, “Will you turn away from sin and follow the Gospel?” my throat opens up right away for the gulp in it.

Sure, sure, I say yes; but what’s really going on is a qualified maybe. While part of my indecision is an awareness of fundamental incapacity, part of it is fear as well.

One of the most startlingly honest lines I’ve ever heard preached in a homily was: “Living the Christian life sometimes can be very boring.” As I struggle with the decision to live the Gospel, I fear boredom.

Sin, you know, can seem very exciting, indeed be very exciting, until dues day, remorse day, awareness of emptiness day, until the day when I realize I’ve been duped by the devil and feel weak and stupid.

Having sinned before, sometimes I am blessed with the recollection of payday before I do the deed again – so I back off. However, short of making any real commitment to fix the situation by a head-over-heels surrender to the Lord, I just kind of hang there afraid that becoming a down-home, broken-hearted Christian will be real boring.
I hang on to a few “pets.” Not that I actually plan to do this sinful thing again (Whew! Who needs the ag?), I do like tinkering with the exciting prospect once in a while.

I was told the story about a woman who had a problem with pornography. She’d go to the porno shop, then go to confession, then repeat the process over and over.
One day she was in a different town, New York City, and she popped in to St. Patrick’s Cathedral to go to confession. The priest asked her if she really wanted to do something about the thing she kept doing. She was in a bind, like me having my throat blessed. What could she say? She said yes.

“For your penance,” the priest told her, “fast and pray every day for a year.” Well, she did it. And from that day to this she hasn’t had the problem.

I’ve heard it said that the opposite of fear is not peace of mind, but love; because when we are in the presence of love there is no fear.

When a child gets afraid at night, he runs to his parents’ bed. Because why? Because there he will be in the presence of love. He may not be able to articulate that, but that’s what happens. With mom and dad, he is not afraid.

We often associate fear with big scary panics, but sometimes we are simply afraid we’ll be bored. However, if we run to our Father’s arms and become willing to do what He asks of us, like St. Paul says, eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it even occurred to us the reward which God has prepared for those who love Him.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on September 21st, 1986

"Bless me, Father..."

“Bless me Father for I have sinned. I can’t really remember how long it’s been since my last confession – six years, eight years? It’s been a long time. Probably some of those confessions when I did go weren’t ‘good’ confessions. I know I didn’t tell about some things I should have. I know that today I can’t possibly remember all the things I’ve done. Some of the things I have to say are so embarrassing and petty, I’m going to need God’s special grace just to say them. For all of that, here I am. I want to be reconciled with God.”

So began, roughly, the confession several years ago of someone with whom I’m well acquainted: me. I share this with you today to try to put an experience with the Sacrament of Reconciliation on a one-to-one level. We human beings are like this, I think: We can understand the personal experience of another person sometimes better than all the intellectual, educational, social – even scriptural and ecclesiastical reasons – that abound for going to confession. These latter things sometimes even enable us to keep our distance, keep us “thinking about it.” Here’s a guy going into the box.

Sorry. You won’t get to hear what I said after that. The only sin I’m going to tell you about is the one that kept me away a long time. You guessed it: Pride.

Suffice it to say that the Hound of Heaven was after me. It was He who overcame my pride. My spiritual life was pretty empty. I really didn’t know what I was looking for.

There’s a saying, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you keep getting what you’ve got.” I kept living the way I was living: and I kept being hungry, or uneasy, or guilty. Whatever it was, I kept being that way. I didn’t want to live that way anymore. You can laugh at this if you want to, but I wanted “fullness.” I don’t know how else to say it.

I wanted to be honest. I wanted to be able to be honest, but I guess I had gotten so far away from God I couldn’t even imagine what being reconciled with Him would be like. At best I’d feel okay for a while and then I’d get real bored, real fast. At worst I’d face a bunch of impossible demands for perfection, demands I’d never be able to meet.

When I was just a lad, I had been in the confessional one day and had just said my contrition. Then, Father asked me what I had just said. I said I had said I was sorry. Yes, but what else did I say? I couldn’t think, I was I was truly sorry, Father. Well, don’t you know that I also made a firm purpose of amendment. I said I was going to change. Father made it clear that amendment was part of contrition. It was that same firm purpose of amendment that stuck in my craw those years later. It was both a stumbling block and what I wanted to do.

Enter now that pride I mentioned. Please don’t get me wrong in this. I’m not quite sure what it was all about. I am trying to be honest with you and this is, after all, a personal story. But it wasn’t the big wrong things I had done which were keeping me away from confession: you know, like the banks I robbed and so on. It was the petty, embarrassing, sniveling, mean things I had done which were the hardest for me to face. Does this make sense to you?

So there I was, spiritually empty, afraid to change, afraid what change might bring, knowing I couldn’t meet the demands out there, nagged with the idea that I’d been away too long.

Then one day I hear this little bit of wisdom. The story goes that a man died and met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. Fully expecting a thorough interrogation, the fellow was ready with a long list for when St. Peter would ask him, “What have you done?” Much to his surprise, however, that wasn’t the question. Instead St. Peter asked him, “Who are you?”

It occurred to me that sin was not so much what I had done, but who I was. I am a sinner. That’s before, during, and after the confessional. Sin was a condition in my life, and sin meant those actions which lacked love. It wasn’t so much that I committed this sin of pride, or that one – although certainly I did. But it was that I reacted pridefully to situations in my life, including the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Because I had not been loving, I was consequently very empty. I needed to come and let Jesus fill me with His forgiveness and His love.

I’m no authority on the Sacraments. But Christ gave His Church the power to forgive people, and the Church vests that power in her bishops and priests. I fit somewhere in the “People of God.”

No doubt there were many more dynamics in my coming to Reconciliation than what I have detailed here. I did go, though, with all my imperfections, all my embarrassment, all my memory loss, all my uncertainty, all my emptiness.

There was no magic in there, just a lot of honesty, gentleness and love. I’m still as imperfect as they come. I don’t hold myself up as better than you.

I came away from that confession reconciled with my God, knowing He loved me beyond my wildest imagination. He wanted to say to me, “I absolve you of your sins.” He wanted me to hear those words. He knew I had been responding to situations in my life without love, had known it all along. He just wanted me to acknowledge it, too, so that I could understand firsthand a little better the depth of His love.

written by Thomas A. Russell in February of 1986