.png)
Something I’ve realized through this Harrison Butker ordeal is a fundamental misunderstanding of Catholic lingo, even by Catholics.
In our world today, vocation and career are often used interchangeably and because they are it causes confusion.
Not that I think me explaining the difference will help those who 1. Have been conditioned to be offended and 2. Those who just want to be offended, but, for fun and learning purposes, let’s dive into the difference.
For the Catholic Church, vocations are a state of life. There are only three: the married life, the consecrated religious life, and the single life.
Within your vocation, you live out your career or trade. For example, my husband obviously is a military man (his career), but his vocation is the married life.
My oldest daughter is currently in the state of the single life and her job is a Focus Missionary. She doesn’t feel called to always remain in the single life, but that’s her current state and the Church calls her to live it out well.
Some priests throughout history have been scientists (a job) while living out the state of life as a religious.
There are no other vocations as understood by the Catholic Church. And usually, once you get into the vocation you are called to, you feel like your life starts. This is not to say that your life was meaningless or had no value before, it’s just that you feel most alive.
My daughter told me a story that a priest gave in a homily recently. He was telling a group of teens that when he was a teen he had a girlfriend that he cared a lot about and she was his best friend. His friends convinced him to break up with her so he could date a girl in an upper class and he did, but his life was all off and he could see the sadness in his ex-girlfriend’s eyes.
Once he became a priest, she came up to him, looked him in the eyes and sweetly said, “There you are.” Meaning, she now saw him fully alive in his vocation as priest.
We can live out a career within our vocation, Catholic Pilgrims, but what Harrison Butker was trying to emphasize is that no matter your career in the married life, family comes first and taking care of them will be the most rewarding.
Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Tuesday.
There's a note, just one note, in an Allison Krauss song that is proof to me that Heaven is real. I know that sounds crazy, but when it hits, I can't describe the feeling it gives me. All I know is that I wish it lasted forever and because one note makes me desire its sound for eternity, to me, that means my soul was made for eternal goodness. The song is "If I Didn't Know Any Better," for those wanting to know. When I look at the masterpiece painting "Ecce Homo" (Behold, the Man) by Antonio Ciseri, I literally have to be pried away. My soul is so moved by it that it's almost painful because I don't know how to express how it makes me feel. One time, my dad and I went to a John Hiatt concert together in a very cool theater in KC. At one point, we got to get close to the stage and John Haitt started playing the song, "Cry Love." I was so entranced, I couldn't move. I remember so vividly how captured I was in that moment. I went home that night and probably listened to it on my dad's cd player 20 times before my soul felt satisfied. It's one of my top three favorite songs of all time. In the "Brothers Karamazov," Father Zosima says, "Much is hidden from us on earth but, as a compensation, we have been given a mysterious, sacred sense of a living bond with another world, with a lofty and superior world." "And if the awareness of (the soul's) ties to that world weakens or dies in you, then all that has grown within you will also die. And you will become indifferent to life, will even come to hate it." I have my ties to Heaven: Music, paintings, churches, the Eucharist, my children's faces, my husband's love. All these things let me know without a doubt that Heaven is real and that I'm made for it. So many people have lost that tie or have never felt it and we see the consequence of that loss all around us, which is tragic. That is why it is so imperative that we promote the good, the true, and the beautiful, Catholic Pilgrims, so that we can help remind people. Live the Faith boldly and travel well this Tuesday.
Continue ReadingWe've probably all seen the videos of the young women (and men, too) who are defending their decision to never have kids. I'm not here to talk about that necessarily. But, I saw a young woman make a video where she said, "People always ask me what the purpose of my life is. The purpose of my life is to get my nails done. The purpose of my life is to take naps. Have you ever taken a nap? They are fantastic. The purpose of my life is to travel..." I watch those kinds of things with such sadness. No, you were not born so that you could get your nails done or take naps. Those aren't purposes for a life, they are activities that you do (all can be done with kids, I might add). The purpose of your life is to be a gift to others. Never has anyone been born where God had in mind for them a life totally lived for themselves. Never. The mantra of our western culture for far too long has been to focus on the self to an extreme degree. This has not made us more healthy, happy, fulfilled, or capable human beings. Yes, being a gift to others is not as easy as living for oneself, though I would argue that it's harder to go through life imploding in on yourself. Everybody has a purpose and that purpose is to be a gift to other human beings through loving them, caring for them, supporting them, and enriching their lives. And it can't just be a now and then kind of thing, it has to be a gift of self that stretches you and asks something of you. Christ's life is a full and complete gift to us. Mary gave herself to the whole human race by saying yes to being the Mother of Our Savior. The Saints give themselves away for love of God and love of others. You were made for more than nails and naps, Catholic Pilgrims. So, live the faith boldly and travel well this Monday.
Continue ReadingI went to grade school in a very old looking building right in the center of my hometown. If I think about it hard enough, I can actually conjure the smell of that building up in my mind--floor wax, chalk, sunlight on old books, and wood. One year when I was home for Christmas, I asked my mom if she could get us in to look around. It had been at least 34 years since I'd been in there. The last time I had walked the halls, I had been a kid. Since my mom knows everyone in town, she got us in. It smelled exactly like I knew it would. Naturally, everything was smaller than I remembered. As I was walking down the halls stopping by each classroom I had once been in, I thought to myself, "It's so weird to come back to a place you once spent every day in after all this time." I looked in my 3rd grade classroom and it was almost like I could picture little Amy sitting there with her penny loafers on and her new glasses. That room had once been my whole world when I was 8-years old. Take, also, the church that my husband and I were married in. I haven't been in it since the day we walked out as husband and wife. Isn't that weird? I drive past it all the time when I'm home, but I don't go inside. Mostly because it's a Protestant church and I'm Catholic now, so there's really no reason to go in. But, it was in that church that my life with Dustin started. There are lots of places that are so significant to our lives that we will never go into again: Hospitals where we were born, hospitals where our children were born, homes that we grew up in, homes of our grandparents, churches that we attended and schools. Whenever we move for the military, right before we leave our home, I like to sit in the empty, clean house and just think about all the memories made there. All the memories that will just seep into the walls and I wonder if the "ghosts" of our laughter and love somehow linger. I hope it does. Life is a funny thing, isn't it? In the moment, certain places are our whole world and then time marches on and those buildings and towns get replaced by other buildings and towns. And sometimes, you can't go back, you just have to keep moving forward on our pilgrimage through life, which ultimately leads to the place we all long to be--Heaven. Have a good Thursday, Catholic Pilgrims.
Continue Reading.png)
.png)
.png)