The Resounding Note

Saturday was like peering deep into a wishing well and faintly seeing a reflection of the future despite the ripples of distortion. I found much to be comforted with, much to be concerned with, but all to be overjoyed with as timing, even for that day, was exactly to the point and circumscribed within God's blessed design. There were little hints everywhere; if we but only search for these joyful notes in spite of the cacophony surrounding, we would find our dwelling place secure.

I feel somewhat exiled from a past mixed with a delayed longing for a complex future, a restructured bond that hasn't quite reset. Some is but a deep nostalgia misplaced. However, so much remains fluid and in flux, except my desire to return in earnest and concerted steps through faith.The city of my birth, the city I returned to, is not whitewashed or even clean. It has its bruises, its diversions, and its divisions, but it is found lived in and experienced. Even so, there was cause for great joy that day: weddings! Weddings can be messy affairs, the mixing of two parts not quite similar. In the case of the one I stumbled across at the Cathedral played to the contrasts of the City... Outside the Cathedral in front of Jackson Square, there was a woman playing a full-size piano moved into the midst of the fortune tellers at the steps of the Cathedral. The other side of the Cathedral contrasted greatly with a parade for St. Patrick's Day with much useless noise that overpowered much in the Square, from the people streaming in for the wedding, to the more subtle sights and sounds... but for a moment all melted away and the silence of her piece amid the hustle and bustle of a tourist-filled space was all that could be heard... Much like prayer in a tempest. Like a decisive stroke of a master artist's brush completing a masterpiece, this flashed before me in silhouette.

Communication doesn't win by being the loudest but, rather, by being the most heartfelt, the most direct. All the garishness passes away at once, and one sees clearly the outline of a city and of the soul itself. Let us not forget to nourish our souls through earnest prayer and moments of silence throughout the day to mark the gifts and the struggles the Lord gives us to complete through Him.

Three Roses

There are three roses in a vase, not a dozen.
Why not a dozen?
Should that somehow show how much greater is my love?
No! For the amount of my love is not shown in the number
but in something much deeper, much more real.

These three roses are a singularity.
They do not show the vast numbers of the others in vases elsewhere
or others in vases elsewhere for others.
The are themselves gifts and enough in themselves.

Not only all this, but the roses are only themselves a symbol of a gift
I could not create alone or simply from love of you.
No, so much more, they are a gift of Him Who Is to us both
and of the love that is Him.

They are signs of our children and His gift of Him.
They are but a gift—Pure Gift—of Him.

Dedicated to the memory of marriages damaged through the pains and difficulties of divorce and to the children of those bonds, February 16, 2014.

The Married Philosopher

A good friend of mine has stated: "Men are either married or philosophers!"

What he fails to remember is that I know one married philosopher, and I very much think that both he and his wife will become saints because of it! 

But seriously... perhaps we ought to pray that they, like all married couples, will both understand better the philosophical beauty of Heaven as marriage consummated with God!

Ah! The objection of being only in the first stage! I am in the first stage still yet, trying to harmonize this philosophy to its proper pitch and timbre, too! But as the great composers know the notes before they are played or put to page, so too do we as lovers of an infinite God know that love must be harmonized both above and below for beauty to exist. And we do know that beauty exists because God exists and has so loved us (cf. 1 John 4:18-19)... So we love and must, therefore, strive to be perfect, "as [our] Heavenly Father is perfect!" (cf. Matthew 5:48)

Strike up the orchestra... Allow Him to show you the composition He has for you so beautiful that it quite literally is something you are willing to die for and offer your life for on behalf of your friends, of which there is no greater love (cf. John 15:13).

We must fight the good fight towards this perfection by God's grace in our lives through this high calling of life towards greater holiness in Him!

It is through all vocations that we are called to love both God and neighbor... selflessly. Marriage is but a focused magnifying glass that beams the light of Christ to another, so also is that vocation directed to compassionate procreation of a Domestic Church with Christ as her Head. It must be both above and below, for the sake of the children born below for Heaven above!

To Him be all honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.

The Luminosity of the Higher Things

When one orders one's life in the brilliancy of the higher things, the more luminous things, an interesting thing occurs. Things that once happened in retrograde become ones that move in a more natural course, in a way that gives meaning and governs the movements of everything else in such a profound, moving way.

If one begins the day with such an ordering with our humanity keyed to this central need for belief and to place it upon the bedrock of a Faith not untested but one put through fire and tested, not of clever myths or elaborate ruses, then we see open wide the vistas the same Faith provides: the quiet assurances when even the darkness returns or the bright lights become but a twinkle of the Promise to come. If we but remember it doesn't revolve around us but we to Him, then we are able to see how even the smallest occurrence in the Cosmos has meaning, value, and deep need for redemption in every sense. We cannot do it ourselves, as though we as mere planetary bodies could move the dangers of comets or asteroids in the path of another or fully change the irregular orbits of others not fully seeing His love. However, we must trust from that initial explosion of matter from nothing until we have our time end here and do our part in the order He has given to make the changes in the time He gives us.

If we like planetary bodies realize that the Sun does not revolve around us but us to it, so must we in everything we do. There is Someone always greater than I. Or even to our secondary loves, to our moons in orbit 'round us who also move in concert with us and often born of collisions, if we but recall that they but reflect the light of Him Who Is, who came before us... Even this will give the one who has this beautiful truth greater understanding to work towards the order He has given before our time began.

We are so lost often times in the Secondary Loves... that not until they eclipse with the One True Love do we realize our error. Not until even the Secondary Loves be understood and placed in their proper order and timing does the love of Him begin to make sense to our often aimless understanding.

Yet, with the beauty of all of this, those who put forth this valid and true notion, who give their lives in service to it, can and should be heard. "If we have ears, we ought to hear..."

I am in still in wonder, because of this understanding, why those who see this all but still see Shadows everywhere when it is nothing but the dawn of a New Day where the Sun scatters its dazzling light wherever He wills. I still wonder even more with those in the Church who do not understand Her teachings in a similar way or rejected the ability of the Church to speak of Marriage (its structure, content, or telos—aim)... Have we not been down this path before? ...Or those who have left over some reason or another, whether by birth or choice away from the unitive Banner of Christ. I do not understand it like I would if someone doubted the Sun rising again tomorrow.

Let us believe these things, out of love for Him and for one another. Lead, O Kindly Light...

"Your friends make known, O Lord,
the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.

Let all your works give you thanks, O Lord,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your Kingdom
and speak of your might.

Making known to men your might
and the glorious splendor of your Kingdom.
Your Kingdom is a Kingdom for all ages,
and your dominion endures through all generations." - Psalm 145

Let Man Not Divide

The secret to love is not the falling in love... but the rising. The former is easy and takes little effort. The latter requires the act of will, a "Yes" to mean "Yes" and a "No" to mean "No." The first is easier to counterfeit; the last near impossible to fake. We are lost in the feeling of falling when in reality we were already fallen but raised by Christ. So if it is to be falling, make sure to rise with the morning. Love awaits.

Fidelity is more than saying "yes" to the One; it is saying "no" to everything that is not of the One. This is the secret of Christian marriage in its mirroring of the marriage between God and Man. It is a dying to self and a gift that, from the outside, is incomprehensible but, from the heart of it all, is worth dying for. It is the fait accompli of life... It is reason to offer sacrifice. It is the fatal attraction that unsticks heart from hand and allows the new life of communion as One.

At the same moment it validates the complementary nature of the two different worlds and invalidates every other attempt to merge two worlds too similar for the sacrificial self. Love requires this sacrifice in order to be complete, and Love requires this sacrifice in order to be more than simply a feeling but an honest, sincere act of will to love without end.

Love requires this authentic act of self to remain in fidelity until the end of the bond, one being in the temporal life which ultimately must point to the other one: the Eternal.

Love requires nothing less than everything. Let man not divide. No decision otherwise, whether civil or social, can divide what God has joined together. Amen.

Sacramental Life: A Fiat to Truth

The moment one forgets that the imperfection isn't an end but merely an illusionary setback, that it isn't an indictment alone but a vindication based upon the One Who Saves, upon His mercy, and upon the grace that flows from Him as a font of every blessing here on Earth below; not until then do we realize that His love, which is mercy and truth itself, is reason enough to strive for perfection in and by, and through His grace. Love has no further end but to beget further love in the deepest recesses and places of the heart of one's beloved and in the heart of whom, who bears Love's origin. It becomes senseless and without meaning, which it is to say life itself, when man forgets that primordial truth which springs from existence itself—that we are loved and that we are called to love within the boundless confines of eternity. Without a fiat to this truth, man cannot love, and if he cannot love then mercy and salvation cannot be fully accepted.

Love has no end until Love is espoused to the Other and in that espousal the Lover becomes fully known to the Beloved and the Beloved becomes fully known in the most intimate of espousals to the Lover.

This is the meaning of the Sacramental Life. That is to say: everything has meaning between the Lover and the Beloved, and the one who is loved—that is, the Beloved—wastes no time in reuniting with the Lover and desires nothing less than Communion, blessed Communion, with the One who loves without any reservation or fear.

We love the Other, not because we are first, but because "He first loved us" and because He first "espoused us."

Love as Vocation

Vocation is an interesting topic. Much is often said about it in Catholic circles, especially for those of "religious" vocations, as though there only some specific religious vocation. Hardly is this the case, but it is quibble of the language to be sure.

Or is it only a failure of the language? Is it only an oddity of the English language as the word is? Is it shackled to conceptions that might be ill-formed or, perhaps, only under-formed? Could it be a lack of blossom in the modern conception of the word of "vocation?" Perhaps.

Vocationally, at least within some very reverent and holy groups of Catholics, the idea of the priesthood as the singular "holy" vocation—that is to say, in a way, religious—has historically been the priesthood or consecrated vocations. However, this might as well be a slighted perspective. Not always has this view been the case, but it has prevailed more often than perhaps is necessary. It belabors the earthly joys that the particular vocations offer up in one way or another. However, all authentic vocations do just this besides, in large or small ways, throughout the history of the Church. As it ought to be in the first case.

Nevertheless, we do hear prayers for the religious vocations to flourish. That those with these internal callings to be supported and rightly so. It is necessary, it is needed, and it is helpful. However, it could be say it is also a hindrance to the larger perspective.

How can we raise society merely from these—pardon the evocative language—"miracle cases?" Where are the ordinary cases of holiness? There lies the basis for each authentic vocation lived out as a testament to the Gospel preached. It is the Gospel preached without words but with actions.

God does work miracles, everyday miracles, and ones of intense conversions. Rightly and beautifully so, He does. However, He also works the smaller miracles, the ordinary miracles as well day in and day out within the Domestic Church. Building the Family into the Holy Family, in parcels or parts, raises the watermark for all subsequent actions. The holiness—the set-apart reality of grace—flows from this consecration of the ordinary, as Blessed John Paul the Great taught with his call for a "universal call to holiness" born out of the Second Vatican Council and one of its Apostolic Constitution, Lumen Gentium, as well as John Paul II's Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte" and his Apostolic Exhortation "Familiaris Consortio."

Certainly each vocation builds upon and supports the others, but it takes an initial spark of the Domestic Church, the "Holy Family," the hidden years of toil and work, to bring foundation for the work of the Vineyard at the summation of each person's vocation.

With regard to one's vocation, the heart should burn for consummation, which is to say: to consume and be consumed and yet remain as ever before, constant and unhindered for eternity, a burning bush that remains unburned as zeal presses on in beauty bright. One's vocation shouldn't be the path of least resistance, to the easy way out. It should be the innermost selfless desire wrapped in the greatest good with one's gift set—nothing more, nothing less. It should bear itself through trial and rejection. It should be peerless in its presence, open to questioning, yet receiving no doubt. In the end, the vocation is Love Itself, so in Love should one wait who is discouraged in the Vocation set, in its timing and its wait that Love so gently begets. Come, O Love Divine. Teach us thy ways to peace. Thy name be blessed.

"The Eucharist is the Sacrament of Love; It signifies Love, it produces Love." - St. Thomas Aquinas

It's been such a blessed time to spend so much of it in reflection at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, which has a re-presentation of the Holy House that Lady Richeldis was instructed by Our Lady to build in model of the Holy House in Nazareth.

There is a great joy to be in the Holy House in Nazareth and contemplate God's inner wisdom, the beauty of Love come down. To be at the prime example of the Domestic Church and thus pray for the whole world.

I was given the view, the quiet peace at the Sunday Mass of the Feast of the Holy Family at Our Lady of Walsingham to see a young family, a young suited man with his wife and their young child who kept smiling through out the High Mass, peering back perhaps at the organist and the choir in the loft. Not a cry or frown came from her. I couldn't help but focus there as the readings went on, as it was the Feast Day of the Holy Family... and I was enthralled with the smile, with the image of them. They were among those who went for a wedding anniversary blessing, which I thought was fitting to the time. The joy and contentment of such an example to reverberate and echo the liveable example of the Holy Family.

It amplified to me such a wonderful reverberation of the following reflection:

"[From the family in Nazareth] we learn silence. If only we could once again appreciate its great value...the silence of Nazareth should teach us how to meditate in peace and quiet, to reflect on the deeply spiritual, and to be open to the voice of God's inner wisdom and the counsel of his true teachers. Nazareth can teach us the value of study and preparation, of meditation, of a well-ordered personal spiritual life, and of silent prayer that is known only to God." Pope Paul VI, 5 January 1964

Let us live these words with joy for the New Year ahead. Deo gratias, Anno Domini 2013!

To the One Whom Heaven Has Hidden

To the One whom Heaven has hidden... What glorious vision,
He for whom Time obeys and space diminish!
Sight remains obscured and the distance hidden,
This the Royal Road He hath given!

Speak of the one whom You have held from me, O Gracious One...
Speak of her as radiance that reflects the Light of Your Son!

Love, O Love, won't thou speak of the Other and in us indwell
Love's Spirit, and in all the tyrant temporal tempests quell.
O Love come now to us and dwell!

Make of us a shelter to weather the storm,
Out of the dust and air to form
Us in your likeness and to us transform,
That which is Love Outpoured.

Come to us, O Love in hiding...
Give us the grace to trust Your timing.

Rooted in Love

How is the Domestic Church to be built? How are the Living Stones of it to be built? How can we ignore this necessity in the present day? How can we not see its need?

I pray for the clarity of this point, and in this point that I too may make this plunge into the Deep. No, the jump is not soon for myself. The Truth doesn't change with the delay of timing—it remains Truth. Truth remains timeless as does Love because both are one in the same.

It is because both Truth and Love is at its heart Sacrifice, not vain sacrifice, but rather it must be sacrifice with purpose. Dying to oneself and picking up one's cross is senseless without purpose and so it must be there to be seen and experienced. Purpose must reside where sacrifice and, therefore, where Love and Truth exist. Therefore, the day of the Domestic Church and its fruition of its Holy Desire is to be rooted in love to the sacrifice of the glory of the Lord, in His Sacrifice and His Resurrection.

Where He places each one of us is not our own wills in isolation; it is His will anchored in our individual free will to choose His will for the greater good of our individual souls and the multitude of the souls of others.

I pray for my Beloved for these reasons. I must be purified for the glory of this union that prefigures the one to come in Heaven with Christ the Bridegroom and His Bride, the Church.

My love lifts up his voice, he says to me, "Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come.
For see, winter is past, the rains are over and gone.
Flowers are appearing on the earth. The season of glad songs has come, the cooing of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree is forming its first figs and the blossoming vines give out their fragrance. Come then, my beloved, my lovely one, come." - Song of Songs 2:10-13

Anew has this Springtime come. Time has no place for this new springtime; the prefigurement brings the Reality to come to the very Ground we walk upon. We are on Holy Ground because He has made us and, thus, this ground Holy.

Patience in love endures all things. Love endures all things because He is Love. No tribulation extinguishes love because "perfect love casts out fear." We must remember this Truth. Love find its way. Through all things—Love finds a way.

I pray for the Little Ones for these reasons. We must first be purified for the glory of this gift, this glorious gift, of the blessed union to be. Fatherhood flows from the gift of adopted sonship with the Heavenly Father, Motherhood from the gift of the Fiat to Love Himself. The Little Ones are the glorious gift of this blessed union. They are the fruits of Love. They are the fruits on the Vine.

We are the Vine's branches; the Father is the Vinegrower. As Christ is the Vine and we the Branches, we are to transmit the Holy Faith of Ages Past, the Holy Faith in Christ Jesus. We must be the Vine's branches that unites the Little Ones to Christ and His Church.

We are called to grow the Domestic Church in all Her glory for the Love of Christ. For the Love of Christ, we are given to the Other. Love's fate is to fully give Itself: freely, fully, fruitfully, faithfully. Love must be transmitted for Faith and Hope to even branch out and blossom. Love must come first.

This is the Call—to love, know, and serve the Lord. Too often we get caught up in how, but the most important fact is that we must first be rooted in love. Faith and Hope can only supplement this one virtue, and—in the End—Love is all that remains.

This is where my heart and my prayer rests, for my Beloved and the Little Ones: let us first be radically rooted in love, to Love Himself, and all the rest will be added unto this. To be radical is to be rooted in that which you believe, as the 1350-1400 Middle English word came from the Latin radix, root. Let us be rooted in His love. Let us go to the Root of Love.

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another." - John 15:1-17

Archetypes and Models of Sexual Differences

The need for the Marian and Christ archetypes in modern times is ever the more present. It wouldn't be purely out of the sheer sociological necessity rationalized away by Joseph Campbell in his seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, but there is a ring of truth in that purview into the human consciousness no matter the society or time.

The schools of thought as to how to explain the truth found in such works stretches back as far as the arguments of how to explain Faith either from a purely spiritual, religious standpoint to the notion that science can explain Faith away in a purely empirical way. This debate results in the classic chicken and the egg conundrum. What matters, however, is that such a correlation can be made and be accepted for what it is.

So the need is present for both Christ-like and Marian persons in our everyday life because they are underlying models for masculinity and femininity. What modern thought and design has gotten wrong in this arena is to assume that this is somehow "typecasting" the players on the stage, so to speak. I daresay, it would be dangerous to otherwise not assume these roles!

The hyper-roles of either masculine or feminine models and the perversions within, bespeak to the danger of Man to take either the testosterone-packed or estrogen-soaked emotional roller coaster of living by hormones alone, as if they were both merely just animals and not rational animals. Both are prominently present in modern day as any quick view of the cable lineup or a simple Internet search can testify. Both can be intermingled between the sexes and assigned to either at seemingly sheer will by the social scientist. This is the underlying mistake of living by and acting through hormones alone: no act of will exists and certainly no rationality to it whatsoever.

This then all leads to the response that is begged in light of the present-day situation. The framework on how to respond for such situations where hormones and biological tendencies cut one way and the prevailing social winds cut the other can very well leave a person stranded without any paddle, wind for the sails, or compass to guide. In short, the framework is no framework at all except to base itself off the fact that there is no structure to a response. The actors act simply because of sheer observations of their actions and declaration that this is indeed the new "normal," whatever that might mean to the observer upon circumspection.

In light of this new "normal," however, the archetypes come in to play for good to unsnarl the precarious mess before the precipice of so-called progress. If one knew and understood that "monomythic" truth to not be simply an observation of the societal underpinning but an overarching design, how would the approach to the given roles change? Would you question the reasons as to why such promptings and cultural refrains repeat without ceasing? Could it very well be that such prompts of the will are, dare we say in poetic form, written on the hearts of all? And, of course, the answer is an emphatic and strong yes.

With the two archetypes in place, the vocations are brought into focus and made clearer. The clarity that results lasers in the sight of both male and female to the beauty of the other and catapults the other into that image of the Divine, which is Love. Love, not out of our incompatibility or sheer difference, exists and even thrives in the sameness that can be found in an equality that does not equate the notion of equality of the physiological with the equality of freedom and God-given dignity before all. One exists to help the other, not to dominate the other. "Love conquers all" does not mean it dominates. Rather, Love allows the other to coexist even when the Lover consumes the Beloved. The Other does not cease to exist in the union of love, but rather it lives in union or completion of that end love. That is why martial love begs for a consummation—or, in other words, a completion. The union, and therefore the two sexes, are incomplete without it.

All of this funnels into the reality of the two models of Christ as the New Adam and Mary as the New Eve and the necessity of both. For if the two sexes are incomplete without total and complete union, then how will the imperfect union of Love ever suffice the Eternal? How does Love conquer death? Given such a model in Jesus and Mary, it does.

Both exist in the supernatural sense to help point the natural inclinations to the Eternal and to relate from the Eternal to the temporal. If we take their models into our everyday existence and experience, then when we do we naturally rise to lofty heights of both esteem and understanding that is the reality of the Eternal. Christ as the natural and perfect Bridegroom and Mary as the first member of Church, which is the Bride of Christ, shines the way to the Eternal and to the fulfillment of life itself, whether in marriage or in religious life.

Thus, in this present reality, the vocational "crisis" is made clear. It is not that we do not have enough priests, enough religious, or even enough faithful marriages that we must resort to some how "redefine" their definitions or somehow erase the original image of their definitions. It is that we do not have enough Christ-like or Marian examples living out their God-given natures fearlessly today.

We, too, can dare to live faithfully, fruitfully, fearlessly, and freely as New Adams and New Eves if we only accept that call. It is a call into the Darkness, but the Call still remains.

What Love Is... And What It Is Not...

Love is not happiness. Love is joy.

Joy has an interesting quality to it. It doesn't just have a simple relational aspect, like emotions such as happiness. Joy lives outside of both the emotional and rational spheres. It speaks to heart and head simply because it can. It speaks because true joy has Hope wrapped in it. Yet, "Hope that sees is not hope at all," so, it must also has Faith contained therein. Even more, if Faith has not works—works of charity—then Faith is dead. Therefore, too, Joy has Love, True Love contained therein.

However, the interesting thing about Love is that it requires the depths of sacrifice and self-giving with purpose. It must have an ordered purpose, or else it flies off the tracks of life into ruin. It becomes a fiery chariot racing towards the Sun, only to make its fiery crash to the depths of the earth, a fiery demise. This demise is seen everyday as "normal" and acceptable. Nothing could be further from the Truth.

If there is anything that I can learn from this experience of witnessing fiery demises on a personal level, of being a product of a fiery demise, I would stress the need for authenticity of hearts. I pray for those entering the marital arena. How much do we need the Domestic Church!

And what about Marriage? Why should we be worried on how we define it?

Because our very existence as a People depend on it. We do not exist without it.

Love does not seek quick fixes, does not quit at the first at bat, does not throw in the towel when it gets uncomfortable. Love does not fail the Other. Authentic Love requires a vow. It cannot exist outside a vow. It must subsist in a vow because, without it, love is merely a shadow of its meaning. It is icing without the cake.

This is what is strange about our society today, from our secular to church society. It demands all these things: quick fixes, no-fault verdicts, dissoluble definitions, dissoluble unions, dissoluble meanings of what a vow is. It is not quick fix. Love is not a quick fix.

Love is not merely a promise, and therefore marriage is not just a promise. It is a lifetime choice. A vow gives the love its permanence, its value as a currency. "I love you until death do us part," has a lot more permanence than "I love you until I no longer feel love for you." That, my friends, is crackle of Confederate money, a false currency. It cannot subsist on itself. It dies a ignoble death in the dark, cold and alone. Love does not burn out. It sets the world afire.

The difference between a vow and a promise is just that, promises are made to broken. Vows, on the other hand, cannot. They are the bonds, the marks of the One who gives breath to us all. We cannot escape our vows when the going gets rough. We cannot escape True Love.

Why then do priests who are given strong crosses to bear become Black Sheep Dogs or abusive priests muddy the waters of the Priesthood? Why do men and women forsake their avowed Vocations? Why do husbands cheat on their wives? Because they know not the depth of the vows to which they previously assented to. They do not mean the Yes that they spoke at the Beginning.

We are told by Christ: "Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No.' Anything more is from the evil one." (Matthew 5:37) "Anything more" is what we have today. It is not love; it is an excuse for love.

It's saddening, but it is not the final answer. It is not the end.

The Domestic Church and the Priesthood both require a sacrifice that the World today doesn't recognize. The World would rather redefine both to a temporary nature, ones that live on whims. Whims do not last; they have no continence. They die.

True Love never dies.

Both marriage and the priesthood require sacrifice. Both require the Other in inseparable ways, one for the Witness of earthly union and the other of Divine. Neither can be divorced from the other. Both require True Love. Both require the Cross.

That is the meaning of "I do."

A Reflection on the Eternal

Something caught my attention one Sunday morning at Mass, and I found myself seeing a little more into a moment, as I am wont to do. My sightline during the consecration passed through two friends praying together as a couple. And I cannot stress how significant I say "as a couple."

As the Mass is the representation of His Sacrifice at Calvary, I have seen before St. John and the Blessed Mother at the Cross before as in a historical flash of vision. However, here, I had seen something unique to this graced view to extrapolate it to something equally relevant: to seeing it in our times. All of this, as though it is dramatizing the Word given to us and giving us a dramatization of Gospel through the representation of the Mass.

As I mentioned, "as a couple" for me brings a significance to this grace I was given to see. For in this grace, they were an unwitting witness to hope. And, though they might not have understood the personal significance of this to me, my gratitude for this moment is present even until now.

Furthermore, the scene even now speaks of something greater being intertwined in a synergy I cannot even fathom to fully describe on earth. Yet, this has a great significance, because even as the priest is in persona Christi, we are inasmuch "in persona" to others as well, and this is certainly very good.

Indeed, we can say "Lord, it is very good to be here"... and say we ought to set a tent here and never leave. Yet, we do leave... not out of lack of love but because of an even deeper love! And again, I rest on those words "as a couple" because it is important to see it not as a degradation of a better gift, but a unique one in itself to reflect His love "in persona" in other, but no less valuable, ways—through, with and in His Sacred Heart.

That grace given me is, in part, a prayer for both of them on their journey ahead. I pray that His grace remains present ahead, even in the struggle as much as the strength of building together a new life as one.

As iron sharpens iron, I pray for unceasingly for the blessed race ahead. It makes an unspoken "Yes" more present through a witness that is a reflection of the Eternal. Deo gratias.