Will I Make It To Heaven?

I'm working through reading the Bible in one year (using this excellent resource from Discipleship Journal), and I've just finished the Gospel of Matthew. I'm using Eugene Peterson's The Message Remix as my text for this endeavor, for three reasons:

• It's a translation I'm not very familiar with, so it's harder for me to just skip over passages thinking "Oh yeah - I've read this before." It forces me to pay attention to the nuances of his translation.
• It's written in a contemporary style that lends itself to prolonged reading.
• It has no footnotes, liner notes, references, maps - nothing but the text - that helps keep me focused as well.

Anyways, one of my favorite verses in the gospels had a chance to jump out at me again, so I wanted to share some thoughts on it.

Here's the verse from The Message Remix: Jesus said,"Yes, and I tell you that crooks and whores are going to proceed you into God's kingdom." (Matthew 21:31-32).

The brief quote reminds me that as much as I like to think that I'll get to heaven, the only arbiter of that judgment is God. If I have not lived my conversion to Christ through my actions, I can not claim to be an active and acting child of God. Sometimes, it will be those who we think of as less-than-desirable who will enter heaven because of their humility and their understanding of their brokennesss.

I did a retreat for a parish close to my home where both students (juniors and seniors) and adults were present (they were getting ready for their confirmation). The adults were going to celebrate the sacrament of penance and reconciliation for the first time. In talking with them (while the kids were confessing) they asked very pointed questions about what they should confess. They brought up issues that "good" Christians would not voice aloud for fear of being labeled as back-sliders or hypocrites. But these adults were cognizant of the fact that they had lead broken lives - they were honest with themselves and with each other about their need to confess. They gave me hope that their final initiation into the Catholic Church would provide us with strong witnesses about the saving power of God's grace.

Blessings & Peace,

Hugo

Peace is Not the Norm

I'm blessed that I have several magazine subscriptions through my job at OLS. One of the magazines I subscribe to is The Journal of Student Ministries, a recent addition to my yearly budget. I want to lift three paragraphs from an article in the most recent issue titled Is Jesus Magic? Healing and the Cross by Andrew Root. Andrew writes:

When we pray for healing, we ask not for magic but for a glimpse, a hint, a limited experience of the eschatos. We acknowledge that even our healing is only a taste, that even a child cured will one day be an adult buried. We recognize that in this world (which is not the end) healing, safety, and peace are not constants, nor are they the norm.

What is normal and inevitable? Sickness, atrophy, danger and violence. And because this is our norm, we need a God who bears it. Because this is the world in which we must live, we need a God who enters it. Because death cannot be escaped, we need a Jesus who experienced death himself. We need a Jesus who's not magic, bur rather is present, bearing the suffering normality of a dangerous world in his own body. We need a Jesus who pleads for healing and hears only silence.

The beaten and crucified Jesus has entered and made himself known in a world where the norm is suffering and death; therefore, we can never assume or declare that healing and health are solely the signs of God's presence and that suffering means God's absence . . . . God's presence is found first not in acts of healing, but in suffering and feelings of abandonment.

I really like the article, but these three paragraphs were the ones I resonated with the most. It seems to be a truism that most people walk around acting as if every thing's great (at home, at work, with family, with finances, etc.) when they're really just trying to hold everything together. We find comfort in projecting a false sense of contentment, because we don't want people thinking we're weak, or ineffectual, or frail, or any other adjective or adverb along those lines.

But in reality all of us have moments of weakness, moments when we're not fully ourselves, moments when we fall short of who and what we are. The Bible calls this aspect of ourselves sin, and we're constantly reminded that everyone - unequivocally - sins.

The article reminds me that as much as I'd like for this to be heaven on earth . . . it isn't. It also reminds me that my life doesn't have to be perfect to be pleasing to God - God is pleased with my half-hearted and half-successful attempts at holiness. It reminds me that I will never be perfect - that job description is left to God alone. And finally, it reminds me that in my practice of my faith I don't have to be a super-happy, got-it-all-together Christian - I can marinate in the messiness of my life and faith and still know that I am fully known and fully loved by my God.

Blessings & Peace,

Hugo

Holy Week Services

Here are the Holy Week services for Our Lady of Sorrows School. If you would like to find information on other parishes, you may download information for your parish here (as a pdf file) or, if not listed, find your parish on our diocesan web site.

OLS Holy Week Services

Holy Thursday

• 8:00 am - Liturgy of the Hours
• 11:30 am - Liturgy of the Word, Benediction, distribution of Blessed Bread
• 7:00 pm - Mass of the Lord's Supper (Washing of the Feet); Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament starts immediately after Mass and finishes at midnight
• 11:45 pm - Liturgy of the Hours

Good Friday

• 8:00 am - Liturgy of the Hours
• 12:00 noon - Stations of the Cross (with Bishop Pena)
• 3:00 pm - Passion of Our Lord, Adoration of the Cross, Communion Service

Holy Saturday

• 8:00 am - Liturgy of the Hours
• 9:00 am - Condolences to Mary
• 9:00 pm - Easter Vigil

My prayer is that you will enter most fully into the celebration of the Paschal Triduum by celebrating as many of these prayerful events as possible with your family.

May you have a blessed Holy Week, a blessed Paschal Triduum, and a wonder-filled Easter celebration.

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo De La Rosa III
Campus Minister

I'm either a heretic or a saint . . .

So the blog title doesn't actually have anything to do with the blog itself (well . . . maybe tangentially, but not directly), but it's a comment I cherish. :-) It came from a student in a catechist certification course I gave a few years ago . . . ahh, fond memories . . .

But I digress . . .

I signed up for a trial of Blockbuster's online movie rentals. The site gives you the option of rating movies you've already seen so that it can recommend movies you might like to see (and so it can filter out movies it doesn't think you'd like to see when you click on "recommend"). Well, I've been going through and rating movies I've seen . . . and so far I've rated over 400 movies . . . (443 to be exact). Update: 503 movies - Update Again: 583 movies :-)

And I know there's more movies out there I've seen and just haven't gotten around to rating yet. Which brings me to my tangential blog title: I don't know whether to be proud of the movies I've consumed or to be worried about the time spent on them.

To be sure, much of that movie watching came from my high school and college days - it just seemed that there were so many movies to watch! However, I'm also a big fan of renting, with this foray into online renting being a nice change of pace (3 movies out at a time, with unlimited movies every month) from driving down to Blockbuster, Hastings or Hollywood Video and having to physically rent movies (I'm getting lazier all the time!)

However, as we're currently in the season of Lent, I have to wonder as to this proclivity - that's a lot of time spent watching TV, computer screen or big screen. If each movie averages about an hour and a half, that means I've spent 650 hours (27 days - almost 1 full month!) engrossed in media.

Hmm . . . though 1 month isn't all that much time . . . but that could just be my inherent rationalization mechanism kicking in . . .

So an interesting thing for me to discover . . . I think once I've rated everything I've seen I'll post a complete number, and we'll see how high up I get. But in the meantime, Jesus' words are discomforting: for where your heart lies, there your treasure lies too.

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo