Open This, Open That

I haven't written much since January. That's almost 4 months of not writing much, not feeling like I had anything to say and, besides, feeling just out of my skin. Part of this was Lent, which I was able to go into fully this year, abstaining form alcohol, cigarettes, video games and that other pernicious habit (as I told my wife), writing.

Writing, pernicious? That's an odd notion for a writer. But not for the writer I was in January and since then, until today, that is. I was uncomfortable writing and I was uncomfortable with writing - both my writing and that of others. Almost all writing, in fact, except the occasional factual text, the Bible and the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church.

Okay, that sound like bragging, but it's not. A Catholic writer - moreover, a writer who in the mid-stream of life becomes Catholic - is bound I think at some point to ask him or herself Why bother in a fresh and challenging way. If the Word is truth, and the Word is the Lord, what can I add but confusion or, at best, redundancy? Ultimately, or essentially, does not all personal writing arise from a desire to be known as a writer; that is, as a feature of ego? This notion was supported in encountering Lent, a time of abstinence, where we enter the desert with the Lord and commemorate his passage and becoming as well as our own.

There is no juncture of the Catholic experience that I have not found to be life changing. Just wanted to mention that.

So I stopped writing both blogs and poems, and I thought of myself as a former writer, quite sincerely, in the same breadth of belief that encompasses St. Paul's call that we empty ourselves and become slaves to the Lord, to serve Him and each other as He served us. This was hard for me, but right.

It was right to forgo art. And I was ready to accept that the rest of my life would be more of the same, an ever deeper engagement with self-forgetting and self-renewal, in the name of Jesus Christ, while attending dutifully to life's material precincts: family, church, and job.

But you know God. His plan encompasses the here and now as surely and in the same moment that all eternity is present. I do not pretend to understand God the way a man knows himself, but I worship God as a man who believes He is truth.

In this time, since January, it happened that our priest, Father Petrus Hoang, was relieved (to be reassigned) and a new priest appointed, Father John Boyle. Father John is many things, among those being a priest who is dedicated to the dictates of the Church in matters of liturgy. We have experienced changes in the celebration of the Mass that I will likely discuss another time, To the point of this essay, on the past Monday evening I attended an extraordinary Mass. My first.

Now, I agree with the Church that all Masses are, well, Masses. They matter the same, the same supreme sacrifice is commemorated...well, I won't try to go into an explanation of the Mass here, as I am not a priest.

I am not a priest, but Father John is, as is Father Petrus.

I am a layperson - salt and light, as Father John mentioned in a long, cozy chat he was kind enough to grant to me one day, just as Holy Week was upon us. There were things I wanted to discuss. Not questions, so much, as matters of the parish and of the self that I felt I needed to present to Father. Things that needed talking outside the confession booth.

I digress. Back to the Extraordinary Mass, which was fine and lovely, and so like our Church, which can be depended upon to have its ears open to our present spiritual needs even as the past is alive and the future promise equally present. "If I were a priest," I thought to myself, "I would celebrate the new Mass and the Extraordinary Mass." 

With that thought, the bars on writing were suddenly lifted. I realized what I had been wanting and what had held me back. The underlying premise of my OpenCatholic project was that of person proposing that Catholics be open to others about what it means to be Catholic and equally open to the beliefs and experiences of others. My assumption was that "OpenCatholic" was, at heart, a progressive stance. But it's not. It really very traditional. Very, meaning utterly. I mean, I have always felt I was acting in accordance with the Law, of course, but the perspective I assumed was, at the very bottom, personal. I had a point of view I wanted to share. Thus my skepticism of its real worth.

But I am no longer skeptical of my writing, or of myself. I am dead certain that the Catholic Church, in the new liturgy and the old, worships God as He has instructed us, and in a way that is pleasing to Him. I am open with what I am, as God in in me, and I am open to any and every person as a child of God, not as they think they are, but as their belief compels them to be. I love this life, this journey. I ask everyone to make good, hard choices and to be open to the Holy Spirit who will speak to them of the present and the eternal moment. Of now, as known, and now, as realized through the Word.

I will never put a term of judgment to any one's choices, except as they insult the Holy Spirit, the voice of God.

Put another way, let those who have ears listen, those with eyes, see.

I do not know that any writing, any public or personal act, could add to that admonition. Live fully, openly, that you may have life eternal.

In His precious name, Amen.