The occasional, often ill-considered thoughts of a Roman Catholic permanent deacon who is ever grateful to God for his existence. Despite the strangeness we encounter in this life, all the suffering we witness and endure, being is good, so good I am sometimes unable to contain my joy. Deo gratias!


Although I am an ordained deacon of the Catholic Church, the opinions expressed in this blog are my personal opinions. In offering these personal opinions I am not acting as a representative of the Church or any Church organization.

Monday, July 28, 2008

Welcome to "Being Is Good"

Well, now... here I am doing something I swore I'd never do: start my own blog. It's not like I don't have enough to do without the added pressure of regularly posting my thoughts on a website for all to see, assuming "all" (or a tiny percentage thereof) are actually interested. But then something happened...a catalyst of sorts. Let me explain.

I live in a Florida retirement community...a very large one. And, like me, most of our parishioners are also retired. Demographically, then, our parishioners are older and relatively affluent. Anyway, this past Sunday, as I was chatting with a parishioner after Mass, he said something symptomatic of what I believe to be today's most common spiritual error. He claimed that retirement had been very difficult for him. He'd had an "important executive position with a major corporation" and it was hard for him to adjust to doing "almost nothing."

I asked if he'd spent any time thinking deeply about this apparent problem of his, and if so, had he drawn any conclusions. He replied that he didn't need to think about it; the problem was clear: "I used to be important, but now I'm not. I used to do important things but now I don't." He then added, "It's OK. I'll get used to it."

Now the usual response to such comments is to encourage the person to volunteer one or two days a week...you know, "Get involved in parish ministry! Become and usher, a catechist, a minister to the sick. Help out at the soup kitchen or the food pantry or hospice...but do something! Channel all that unused energy into something that will help you and help others."

This certainly isn't bad advice, but it really doesn't address the core problem. Although these ministries and volunteer activities are valuable, I can assure you that, at least in the mind of this parishioner, they will never match the importance of his pre-retirement job. They will always pale in comparison.

The reason is simple; and it relates to that most common spiritual error I alluded to above. This is the error of believing that our work -- and by this I mean our human work -- defines us, that the things we do to earn a living here on earth are the most important things we do.

How common is it? So common that it's a real challenge to find someone who doesn't believe it. And, sadly, this includes most Christians. Do you want proof? Just ask a parent, any parent, about his hopes for his children. The answer will likely relate to their worldly happiness and success: that they'll do well in school, or get into a good college, or marry "well", or enter a prestigious profession, or achieve fame, or simply make lots of money. The problem with centering one's life on such hopes is that, even in their realization, they never satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. And as my parishioner friend has discovered in his retirement discontent, at some point worldly achievements become nothing more than memories. But more importantly, a life focused on worldly success cannot focus on its true end, the end for which that life was created. Man cannot serve two masters.

God didn't create us to achieve worldly success in this short earthly existence; he created us for a life of eternal happiness with Him. This doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy this life. On the contrary. Life is meant to be savored and enjoyed in all its diverse abundance. Because life is good! Being is good!

This was brought home to me some years ago while attending a reception aimed at establishing ties between a Catholic college and the local business community. As I mingled self-consciously, I overheard a professor of English ask a nearby businessman, "And what do you do?" Without a moment's hesitation, the businessman replied, "I enjoy being." What a marvelous answer! I only wish I had heard the professor's response. But based on those three words, I suspect that if I had asked that businessman to relate his hopes for his children, he would have answered, "My hope for my children is that they get to heaven."

And so, that's what I'll be writing about...enjoying the gift of being (except when I write about something else) and helping God help us achieve salvation.

God's peace...

2 comments:

  1. Wow! For three years, I've heard my dad praising your gift for homiletics, and now I get to see it firsthand!

    It's funny, though, because in the past couple years I've really been delving into the Church's "social teachings" (the real ones, not the amorphous "reasons to vote Democrat"), and one thing that's really struck me is the dignity of work. Like St. Therese said, "Work now; work harder later."

    I don't think we're ever meant to "retire". But you're absolutely right that we should never be defined by our work nor by worldly success.

    Somewhere, I think it's in _Familiaris Consortio_ or _Love and Responsibility, John Paul II or Karol Woytyla says that "love must expand or die," or something to that effect. It really strikes me as the fundamental principle a Catholic should live by: we must always been expanding in love, whether by openness to life, or by giving to charity, or by our active apostolates.

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  2. John, I'm a bit strapped for time right now, but thought I'd pass along a recommendation. You might want to read "Leisure The Basis Of Culture" by Josef Pieper. St. Augustine's Press (1998) - $10+ on Amazon. Pieper's ideas on work and leisure are worthy of some deep (leisurely) thought.

    I'm an longtime (30+ years) reader of Charles Williams and have had a nice conversation or two with Tom Howard on the subject (back when he taught my son at St. John's Seminary in Boston).

    Best to Nancy & Joe...

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