Tracking Virtue, Conquering Vice--A Book Review

When I was trying to find a new book to review for The Catholic Company, I came across Tracking Virtue, Conquering Vice by Rev. Joseph E. Classen. What initially attracted me to this book was not the hunting and fishing exploits of Fr. Joe. I am certainly not an outdoorsman. I've never been hunting and the last time I went fishing was....well I can't remember when. I don't even own a gun. What intrigued me about this book was the author. When I saw Fr. Joe's name listed as the author, my mental rolodex started spinning. I kept trying to figure out where I had heard that name before. Then it finally dawned on me. I was in the seminary with Fr. Joe! And, he and I went to the same high school. Even after realizing that I knew Fr. Joe, I still had reservations about reading his book. I just don't have any interest in hunting and fishing and I did not think that I would get much out of it or enjoy reading it.

I decided to order a copy anyway. I was pleasantly surprised! Fr. Joe is a brilliant story teller. I felt like I was right there with him as I read the stories of his hunting and fishing expeditions. He has had some amazing adventures and tells his stories in an entertaining way. It almost made me want to go out and buy a compound bow to do some deer hunting.....almost.

In addition to being a great story teller, Fr. Joe does a fantastic job at helping his readers see the vices that they have in their own lives and how to overcome them with virtue. So often when we think of the vices of gluttony, greed, envy, etc. we don't see ourselves as being guilty of them. Fr. Joe makes the connection between these vices and human behavior that may be sinful. He also gives us practical advice on how to overcome these vices with virtue.

I highly recommend anyone who wants to grow in virtue to pick up a copy of Fr. Joe's book, whether or not you are an outdoorsman. You will come away with the inspiration to become a better person.

(Required FTC mumbo jumbo: I received this book free in return for giving an honest review of it.)

News Flash: Our Culture Is Telling Us to Jump Over Lakes In Motorcycles

At one of my recent high school youth group meetings I had the opportunity to ask the teens the following question: "What is our culture telling us?" After I posed this question, immediately one eager gentleman raised his hand. I called on him and he asked me the question, "Is MTV our culture?" I responded that MTV is most certainly a part of his culture. I asked him, "What is MTV telling you?" I eagerly anticipated his response. I knew that anything from MTV would be an opportunity to tell the teens how our culture is oftentimes a bad example of how we should live our lives. His response was, "MTV is telling us to jump over lakes in motorcycles!" I thought "This is not the answer I was expecting" as the whole group began to laugh at his response.

After the laughter died down, a bright young lady raised her hand. I called on her and asked her what our culture is telling her. Her response, also not one I expected, was somewhat more deep and thought provoking. She responded with, "Our culture is telling us that it is O.K. to be a failure." Wow! I was floored by her response. I am frequently amazed by the teens I work with. They often have as much to teach me as I have to teach them, and this was one of those times. Our culture does say that it is acceptable to fail.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't believe that it is unacceptable to fail. Lord knows, I have failed many, many times in my life. It is perfectly alright, and natural, to fail, but we need to pick ourselves back up and try again. However this is not what our culture is telling us. Our culture is saying that it is O.K. to fail, because there will be someone else there to pick up your slack. It is O.K. to fail in school, because you are going to move on to the next grade anyway. It is O.K. to fail in life, because the government, or some other entity, will come in to take care of you. Our government will come in and "bail out" anyone who does fail. This is what our culture is telling us.

This line of thought is just wrong, and if we continue down this path we will raise a generation of teens who will grow up and expect someone to fix their problems and failures. If someone comes in and "fixes" our failures then we as individuals have learned nothing about life. We will continue to fail because we will not have learned from our failures. We will also become unnecessarily dependent on others. This is not what Christ intends for us.

Christ gave us a free will to choose what we want in life. If we so choose, we can allow ourselves to fail in life and let others "bail out" our failures. However, Christ wants us to choose to pick ourselves up after our failures and try again. He knows that we will make mistakes and fails. He also understands that it is though our failures that we learn and grow. He doesn't want us to depend unnecessarily on others. He wants us to depend on Him. It is only through depending on Christ that we ultimately find success in this life and the next.

Sacrificial Love

In my work as a youth minister, I come across some pretty deep and theological things. As I was doing some prep work today for a future meeting, I came across this quote from Pope John Paul II:

Love is not merely a feeling. It is an act of the will that consists of preferring in a constant manner the good of others to the good of oneself.

Wow! What a convicting statement! If I am to love others I then need to prefer the good of others over myself. I need to be willing to sacrifice myself, to let go of my desires, and to give to others without question. I love my wife, I love my children, I love my extended family and friends, but do I really and truly prefer their good over mine? Unfortunately the answer to that is, oftentimes, no.

Reflecting on this brings to mind last Sunday's Gospel reading from Mark where the rich young man wants to know what it takes to inherit eternal life. Jesus' answer to him was to "Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." (Mark 10:21). Taken at the surface, this passage is telling us to give up all of our earthly attachments, to sacrifice earthly wealth and possessions. But taking this passage deeper, we get to the heart of what Christ is calling us to--and that calling is to love.

We need to be willing to do more than just give up our earthly possessions for others. What Christ is calling us to do is to prefer the will of others over our own wills. Preferring the will of others changes the dynamic; it changes our attitude toward sacrifice. Just giving up our will for others involves an attitude of sacrifice. There is nothing wrong with sacrifice. In fact, sacrifice is necessary and important. It's our attitude about sacrifice that needs to change. Giving up our will has negative connotations, which makes sacrifice more difficult for us to do.

However, if we prefer the will of others over our own, then sacrifice becomes much easier. If we prefer to give our money to the poor rather than buying a fancy new entertainment system, then the decision to sacrifice our wills is much easier. Christ wasn't telling the rich young man to give up all his wealth because there was some poor person that needed his money. He was telling the rich young man how to love--that is, he was telling the rich young man that he needed to prefer the will of others over his own.

Christ himself preferred the will of others over his own. He paid the ultimate sacrifice for all of us through his crucifixion. Christ, in his humanness, didn't want to die, but he understood love. And that love required his death in order for us to have life. I hope and pray that someday (soon!) I may be able to understand love like Christ does.

Catholic Speaker Month--Matthew Kelly

When I heard that Matthew Warner over at Fallible Blogma wanted to create a "Catholic Speaker Month" movement to feature Catholic speakers across the blogosphere, I jumped on it. I thought it was a fantastic idea to get the word out about all of the wonderful Catholic speakers that our country has to offer. And if you are a regular reader of my blog, you can probably guess who I picked (since I quote him often)--Matthew Kelly.

As a note of disclosure--I haven't heard Matthew Kelly speak...yet, but I'm working on it. However that wasn't a requirement to feature a Catholic speaker. The whole idea is to get the word out about them. I am familiar with him, though, having read his book Rediscovering Catholicism. This is a fantastic book about the Catholic faith, and if you haven't read it yet, I suggest picking up a copy of it. This is such a great book that I am using it as a part of my high school youth ministry curriculum.

But this is not a post about featuring the best Catholic authors (maybe Matthew Warner could do that next), it's a post about the best Catholic speakers. First a little bio, taken from www.matthewkelly.org,

Matthew Kelly was born in Sydney, Australia, on July 12, 1973. Over the past ten years more than three million people in fifty countries have attended his talks, seminars, and retreats. Against the backdrop of his travel to fifty countries, millions more have been touched by his writings and appearances on radio and television programs.

Both as a speaker and as an author, Kelly possesses a powerful ability to combine the ageless tool of storytelling with a profound understanding of today's culture and the common yearnings of the human heart. As a result he captures our imaginations and helps us to see the challenges and opportunities of our everyday lives in a new light. With a keen sense of humor and heartwarming charm, Kelly seems to effortlessly elevate and energize people to pursue the highest values of the human spirit and become "the-best-version-of-themselves."

I know several people who have seen Matthew Kelly speak, and every one of them say that he is a wonderful speaker and full of life. He is passionate about his mission and delivers his message in a way that draws people in and gets them as excited and passionate as he is.

Matthew Kelly speaks on a range of topics but most often he centers on the idea of encouraging people to"become the best-version-of-themselves". When I first heard him talk about this idea in Rediscovering Catholicism, I thought that it was a little "self-helpish". (I have no respect for the self-help industry, as it seems to be trying to convince people that they can improve themselves without the help of anyone else--including the grace of God) However, after reading further, I discovered that Matthew Kelly believes (and I agree!) that the way that we all can become the best version of ourselves is through our faith in Christ, and that the Catholic Church holds the Love and the Truths that allow us to become the best version of ourselves.

Matthew Kelly is a wonderful and passionate speaker and author. If you have the opportunity to hear him speak, either live or on CD, or read one of his books, I strongly encourage you to do so.

By the way....If you are a Catholic blogger yourself, there are still speakers available. Head on over to fallibleblogma.com today and pick one out, even if you don't know any of them! The whole idea behind this is to get the word out about Catholic speakers.

Training for Devotion

My mom took my name, Timothy Daniel, from the bible. She chose my name at a time in her life where, as she tells me, she wasn't even going to church, much less picking up a bible. But for some reason, when she was trying to decide on my name, she picked it up. It is that reason that St. Paul's letters to Timothy have always held a special place in my heart. Every time I read them I am affected by them in some way. They seem relevant to my life. It's been a while since I read those letters to Timothy, so I picked my bible up today and began reading Paul's 1st Letter to Timothy. And, again, I was moved by what I read.

The passage that struck me today is from the 4th chapter of that first letter:

Avoid profane and silly myths. Train yourself for devotion, for, while physical training is of limited value, devotion is valuable in every respect, since it holds a promise of life both for the present and for the future. (1 Tim 4:7-8)

After I read that passage, I started reflecting on what devotion means and how I can train myself for it.

There are, in actuality, several ways we need to show devotion in our lives, each of them important. The first way we show devotion is in our work--our jobs and our schooling. We show this devotion by doing our jobs to the best of our abilities and making the best of all situations we encounter in our work, whether good or bad.

The second form of devotion that we need to show is with our children, if blessed to have them. We need to be a committed and devoted parents. We need to make ourselves available to them when they need us. The discipline we give our children needs to be done out of love and not out of our selfishness. This devotion is more important than our careers, and we need to remember that. We need to be willing to have a balance between our devotion to work and our devotion to our children. And we need to make our employers aware that our family is important and sometimes has to come before our jobs.

The third devotion we need to have in our lives is to our spouses. This one is the most critical and most important of our "earthly" devotions. We made a commitment to our spouses when we said those vows, when we entered into the Sacrament of Matrimony. We need to uphold that commitment, that covenant that was made. This devotion needs to take priority over both our jobs and our children. If we let this devotion fall between the cracks then our families, and possibly our careers and lives, will fall apart. We need to spend time with our spouses--talking with them, and not just about the weather or the football game. We need to open our hearts and souls to our spouses and share our joys, our fears, our insecurities with them. This is particularly difficult for me to do. But I find that when I am successful in opening up to my wife it truly does deepen my love for and devotion to her.

The final--and by far the most important--devotion is our devotion to our faith--our devotion to Christ. Without Christ in our lives we can do nothing. Just as St. Paul said, "physical training is of limited value, devotion is valuable in every respect, since it holds a promise of life both for the present and for the future." Placing our hope, our devotion, in Christ, we are enabled to be devoted to our spouses, our children, and our jobs. We cannot be truly devoted to anything if we are not first devoted to Christ. Everything else falls apart with out Him.

So, we need to "train" ourselves for devotion. We need to put forth our best efforts in our jobs. We need to spend time with our children. We need to pour out our hearts to our spouses. And, most importantly, we need to pray. How does one "train" himself in these devotions? We do as any good athlete would. We practice. And then we practice some more. The best athletes are the ones who are deeply committed to their sport. If we can be deeply committed to just one of these devotions in our lives--our devotion to Christ--then all of the other devotions we have in our lives will fall into place naturally.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Are you happy? No, seriously! Think about it. Are you truly happy? Hopefully your answer is yes. If you are happy, where does your happiness come from? What makes you happy? Is it your spouse or boyfriend/girlfriend? Is it your job? Is it your car, the size of your house, the things that are in it? Does money make you happy? If you have all these things and they make you happy, then good for you! You are a happy person! Now let me ask you another question....

Are you truly happy with your earthly possessions, happy enough that you don't desire more? Does that happiness you get from the things and people in your lives truly fulfill you--permanently, or do you have to keep filling your house with more stuff to stay happy?

One of my favorite movies is The Pursuit of Happyness. Watch the clip from the movie below about happiness.



For those of you who haven't seen this movie, it's a true story about Chris Gardner, a down and out father who is trying to raise his son after his wife leaves him. Chris struggles to make ends meet for his son. At one point in the movie, as Chris is trying to get a job with a major financial advisory firm, he ends up homeless. But Chris doesn't give up. Chris has a goal. He has a vision. Chris is pursuing happiness.

At first glance, you may think that Chris is pursuing happiness in money, fame and possessions. That's because Hollywood glosses over a very important aspect of Chris' life--his faith. In an interview after the movie was released Chris said, "My faith is one of the strongest guiding forces in my life." Chris is a man of faith. His pursuit of happiness is sought through his faith, not earthly possessions. He also stated that "Money is the least important component of wealth." Chris' plan for wealth and happiness includes faith, it includes prayer. Wealth is found in your faith, not your possessions or bank account.

There is also another important component of the pursuit of happiness--and that is discipline. Many people think that a life of discipline (of following rules and guidelines) is stifling and restrictive--that it keeps us from doing what we want to do. They think that discipline will keep them from being happy. Chris Gardner was extremely disciplined in his pursuit of the job as a broker. Did it restrict his happiness and success? Did it stifle him? No, it brought him success. It brought him happiness.

Christ wants us to live a life of discipline, not to stifle and restrict us, but to bring us happiness--to bring us freedom. How does discipline bring us happiness and freedom? Think of an alcoholic. No one wakes up in the morning and says, "I want to be an alcoholic!" (At least not in my experience.) The descent into alcohol abuse, for many, comes from a lack of discipline. This is particularly apparent in teens who grow up to be alcoholics. Many teens start drinking out of rebellion to the rules and restrictions that their parents and the laws put on them. Some people start drinking alcohol because they think it makes them happy. For some, this begins the slow descent into alcoholism. They become slaves to it. They are not free because of their addiction. They are not happy.

God wants us to be happy. Matthew Kelly, in his book, Rediscovering Catholicism, says that "God sent his only Son to respond to humanity's yearning for happiness, and to offer direction in satisfying that yearning...The philosophy of Christ is the ultimate philosophy of human happiness. At the same time, the philosophy of Christ is one of self-donation." The pursuit of true happiness requires self-donation, it requires sacrifice and discipline. It requires faith in Christ. The reward of that faith, sacrifice and self-donation is a peace and happiness beyond our imagination, a happiness that fills us to the core.

I Can Relate to Bob Rice....

I haven't written a blog post in a while, and Bob Rice, a blogger whom I follow, pretty much summed up why in his latest blog post titled Brain Freeze. Yep, I'm feeling it, too!