Fly away!

It's been a month since my last post, and even longer since I really shared something here. Tomorrow morning my family and I will fly out to attend our sister, Sr. Anna Sophia's first profession of vows with the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, TN. This is a really special moment for her and for us, considered in the terms of religious life to be her wedding day! And I think I can share similar sentiments with the exclamation: "My little sister's getting married!" Only in our case, without the anxiety that often accompanies it.

So I humbly ask your prayers for her and for our travels. I also ask you for your prayerful support of our newest Oblate priest, currently Deacon John Luong, OMV, who will be ordained by Archbishop José Gomez the following Saturday, August 4, 2012 at St. Peter Chanel Catholic Church.

This summer has been a very packed summer for me, working full time doing technical work and having little time at home. The family time that I have had has been great, and it's nice to be in my hometown to also visit with friends from high school and college and go to some of the places we frequented when we were studying together.

It has also been nice to be close to the Oblate community here, to have that sense of continuity, even though I am not living at the rectory or taking part in all of their daily schedule.

In my ongoing discernment, I am continually reminded of one of the more common signs of vocation, identified in a powerful way by an Apostle of the Sacred Heart sister during my visit with the Redemptorists in New York a few years back. And that is that we can discover our vocation and become convinced of what we discover by the deepest desires of our heart. A question I pose to myself and which others have asked me recently is: "How sure are you?" And by boiling down the signs I have received and my peace of mind and precisely these deepest desires, I am able to say: "I'm sure!" We have to leave room for God to intervene and understand Him to have said that I was supposed to be there then but that there are new plans. That is a possibility, and it is also a possibility that I have made mistakes in discernment and treated as clear something that was not. But moments like the one I had last week serve to confirm what I have discerned thus far - waking up with the singular phrase and sentiment: "In my heart of hearts, I want to be in Boston." And it is these treasured moments that carry us through.

So we set off with a lot of excitement to spend time with our new extended family of new Dominicans and their families, and then visit more family in the southeast before coming home for a couple weeks before I return to Boston for First Theology. Again, quite the appropriate finish to my jam-packed summer!


Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

For Religious Liberty

As so many pastors and Church leaders have taken the opportunity today to extend the Bishops' invitation to stand up for the full meaning of Religious Liberty to their flocks, I also wanted to provide some resources via this blog. From Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, find his opening message and homily on YouTube. From the Archdiocese of Boston, find Cardinal Sean O'Malley's address and various materials: www.bostoncatholic.org/Freedom.

Today's celebration is particularly interesting because June 24 is the Solemnity of the Birth of John the Baptist. As Fr. Bill Neubecker, OMV pointed out this morning at St. Peter Chanel, John was an outspoken activist politically, challenging the immorality of his king, Herod. This characteristic makes him a great patron of this particular movement in the Church and in our country, giving us an example of where we must draw our bottom line in insisting upon the dignity of all of humanity and the standards that this dignity demands. Fr. Bill and Archbishop Gomez both insist that Religious Liberty has always encompassed more than freedom of worship and faith; it also includes the freedom of conscience, to be able to follow our faith-based morality without coercion.

Fr. Larry Darnell, in his brief talk this past Thursday to open the Fortnight observance at St. Peter Chanel, addressed the fact that most charitable activities of the Catholic Church, if they are not limited to serving only Catholics, effectively declassify that church or institution of its religious status. That is, by exercising the Christian spirit of charity toward all human persons in their basic needs, those institutions become legally non-Christian and thereby waive their First Amendment protections. This is huge! This kind of disqualification policy certainly does not flow from the sentiments in which our founding fathers fled their homeland and certainly does not reflect the decades of legal and judicial process in this country up to this point.

As Fr. Bill also pointed out this morning, echoing the warning of Pope Benedict XVI during the US Bishops' Ad limina visit to the Vatican, what we are experiencing is a radical secularization in our culture - a forceful removal of God from every public equation, and now extending into citizens' private affairs as well. And the Pope has written extensively on the topic of secularization and its dangers both here and in various European countries, as I was fortunate to read in my Contemporary Philosophy class this past Fall.

Joining with the whole Church, let us again implore the intercession of Mary Immaculate and the Forerunner, John the Baptist, for the restoration of the protections that millions of Americans agree religion deserves, and for the swift repentance of this great nation in every way.


Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Fortnight for Freedom

It's been a month since my last post! How the time flies!

I've been working, doing software development and IT work up in Burbank, plus some website-related and Oblate-related tech work on the side. It's been great being home and spending time with friends and the Oblates out here.

In the name of both truth and charity, as this blog is named, I wanted to make sure you are all aware of the US Bishops' call to observe the two weeks beginning today as the "Fortnight for Freedom" - an observance of "prayer, study, catechesis, and public action" surrounding the topic of religious liberty. This time period was chosen as it leads up to the commemoration of Independence Day on the secular calendar, and contains several saints who fought for their rights to religion despite political persecution.

I therefore invite you to visit the USCCB page, and inquire at your local parishes as to how you can participate more fully in this event, which calls us to invest ourselves in learning about what religious liberty means and why it is important that it be preserved.

At our Oblate parish in Hawaiian Gardens, CA, Saint Peter Chanel Catholic Church (12001 East 214th Street, Hawaiian Gardens, CA 90716), we will host the following events:

• Holy Hour - June 21, 2012, from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm: praying that the religious liberty of the American Catholic can be preserved.
• Talk - June 25, 2012, from 7:45 to 8:45 pm in the Old Church: Fr. Larry will give a talk on St. Thomas More and the present crisis of Religious Liberty. 
• Holy Hour - June 28, 2012, from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm: praying that the religious liberty of the American Catholic can be preserved.
• Talk - July 2, 2012, from 7:45 pm to 8:45 pm, in the Old Church: Fr. Larry Darnell and Fr. Ed Broom will have a talk on the Formation of Conscience on religious matters and politics. The life of some saints will be given as examples.
• Holy Hour - July 5, 2012, from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm: praying that the religious liberty of the American Catholic can be preserved.

I hope you can join us or find ways to participate in your area. Let us entrust this time and our nation once again to Our Lady of Guadalupe, our patroness, trusting in her motherly care for us and her powerful intercession with her Son on our behalf.




Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Home!

I'm now a quarter of the way through formation program with the Oblates! Of course, the numbers are less significant than the progress of actual formation, and the 8-year program that is mostly governed by academics is really meant to be sufficient foundation for ongoing formation.

All of that said, it is great to close out a wonderful year in Boston! We all grew tremendously, both individually and as a community. I continue to stress that my favorite aspect of this year's experience is the community aspect - recognizing that our having come together and everything that we shared together and all of our interactions and the ways that we learned from our struggles and supported one another are really a work of God in which we are mere cooperators. Yes, we came as full persons, each with his own story of calling, and yes, as persons, we engaged in all of the community experiences that we shared, but it was the grace of God that was present drawing us together and sustaining us through the exams and the housework, our ministry and our vacations.

Now I'm home for a few months (until late August), with time to relax (and enjoy the Long Beach weather) and time to work. I'm a bit sad, being separated from the Oblates who were involved in formation directly, as well as the others in the Boston community around St. Clement's Shrine, and the other seminarians at St. John's. But it's great to be home with family and friends, and still to be near the Oblates in Hawaiian Gardens.

As much as I get to look back on this past year, I also get to look forward to what the Fall will bring. Hopefully, we will have some new postulants in the house, and we'll also have some changes in the professed community. I will begin Theology studies, which will be a bit of a transition for me, with probably more reading and writing and a different kind of precision from science or philosophy, though the hand-in-hand operation of fides et ratio will certainly be in play.

So here's to an enjoyable summer!

Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Obama's stance on same-sex marriage

If you haven't seen the video yet, I think it's important to not only read what comes out of various offices and what is reported on various public figures' remarks, but also to hear and see it from them directly. Here is a link to an article with the video clip and somewhat of a transcript, as well as links to longer video segments:
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/president-obama-affirms-his-support-for-same-sex-marriage.html

LifeSiteNews has a more critical article that incorporates Obama's history of statements on the issue, in more substantial detail:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/obama-says-his-support-for-same-sex-marriage-based-on-the-golden-rule

I think that it is important to note that Obama seems uncomfortable delivering these remarks, as though his "affirmation" (his term) is hesitating: "at a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married" could nonsubstantively be reduced to "I think same sex couples should be able to get married". It gave me great hope to see Secretary Sibelius (HHS) shifting her weight nervously and struggling to hold a blank expression as Obama announced the controversial January mandate to her department. Obama's hesitating expressions, especially in the critical moment in this statement on same-sex marriages, as well as Secretary Sibelius' nervous body language, give evidence of the intuitive notion that what was just spoken was incorrect. This realization is precisely the fissure in the dam that will ultimately burst wide the floodgates of truth.

Oh, how we pray for the day when those who hold tight to the self-defeating doctrine of relativism will realize their folly. It's not that "I have the truth and you don't," however true or false this may be, and in degrees of truth and falsehood; rather, it is the case that the truth is out there: I seek it, and relativists reject or ignore it. The truth speaks for itself, and sets us free.
  

Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

Government rant

I just received this Obama Administration email from David Plouffe (Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama). Here are the opening lines:

Good afternoon --
Most Americans are concerned that all we'll see from Congress this year is inaction. Count me as one of those Americans.
But the fact is we need Congress. President Obama is doing everything in his power to move our economy forward. Not surprisingly though, the proposals with the biggest impact require legislation.
So at this make-or-break moment for the middle class, the President has called on Congress to move forward with a concrete plan that creates jobs and helps restore middle class security.

Huh??? Ok legislative process is slow and cumbersome because of having to satisfy so many interests. So definitely agree with "concern ... inaction" in Congress "this year." Notice how that first paragraph is book-ended with "Americans" capitalized and plural - see how much that says about the appeal of this message?

But look at the following paragraph. It presumes that we were trying to work without Congress ("but we need [it]"), which, in fact, is precisely what Obama has tried to do. In fact, he said in his January speech making the HHS mandate public, that he was, in very similar words, "tired of waiting for Congress" and that "we needed to do this faster" than Congress could or would.

And "Obama is doing everything in his power" - in fact, he's overstepping. And then "not surprisingly" - because it's in the Constitution - we "require legislation" to "move our economy forward."

Plouffe, on behalf of the Obama administration, appeals to the middle class, then, creating an atmosphere of urgency - a critical window of incredible opportunity, but how hesitating is the language that follows? "to move forward" and "create jobs" (but not fill them) and "help restore" but not restore. Perhaps it's being realistic, but so much of politics is about cloud-surfing idealism at this stage in the game...

Along the same lines, after detailing the President's checklist of the next economic recovery legislation he is pushing, Plouffe closes with the following:

That's it. It's straightforward and entirely within Congress's power to pass and send to the President for his signature.

It's a further appeal to the American people that Congress is so ineffective that the President must hold their hands and spoon-feed them ideas for new laws, and based on what we have seen, it's even more than that - it's a threat to "pass this or else" - and the "or else" is that Obama will once again push his Executive branch over the edge and press an agency to do his dirty work in the regulatory sphere so that the public will come back and beg Congress to give in. Seriously.

This whole game (honestly what so much of politics is) stands in the starkest contrast to everything that I'm studying about philosophy and its applications and ramifications for both personal and state ethics and understanding the values that should motivate personal as well as political action and policy.

Come on, America, wake back up and let's do things right, because there is such a thing as right; there must be.


Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca

People People

So my last post was April 12... and so much has happened in the past month! We had a day of recollection, celebrated with the transitional deacons who will be ordained priests this summer, attended the closing ceremonies at Boston's Eucharistic Congress for young adults and college students, and filmed interviews for the upcoming Seminarian Scholarship Dinner, and I donated platelets twice (I am a regular bi-weekly platelet donor with the Red Cross).

Continuing (to some extent) the theme of my previous post, I would like to share a little bit about what is commonly referred to as the "people person" disposition. What I understand it to refer to is people who have a natural tendency or inclination to interact with others, to be personable, both in sharing their emotions and being willing to receive others' sharing of emotions, and in all of these ways, to enter into communion with others (to use a more theological phrase).

I have found that in my formation, which is as much instructive (someone teaching or sharing their experience) as it is experiential on a personal level (the program providing opportunities to discover more about myself and about the life and work of priests and religious, especially Oblates), I have come to be more of a people-person.

This past month has been evidence of this, as I was reflecting with my spiritual director recently. I discovered in my journal that the past month has been full of various encounters and "conversations" (the word I frequently used in my journal) that have led to my realizing some insight or helping someone else to, or just receiving the consolation and gratification that comes from/with being present to someone who needed to share a troubling incident and their reactions to it or discuss their reactions to some news that we all received.

It's these moments of deeper contact among persons, and in our sharing, that the communion to which Christ called His church is realized. We have evidence of this in our innate longing for human relationships that complement and support us, and elevating those relationships by the infusion of the divine love that we are called to express to one another is how the fullest sense of communion is reached.

We were just reflecting in our Introduction to Sacred Scripture class this morning that, when we pray the psalms, our personal disposition may be quite opposed to what is expressed in the psalm (a state of joy, yet reading a psalm of lamentation or despair). This becomes, then, an opportunity to pray these psalms for those who are in a state that would be helped by what the psalm expresses, giving voice to others' longing for redemption or consolation, for justification or the return of their former prosperity. They can be an opportunity for us, when saddened or angry, to rejoice with those who are happy, celebrating their reception of grace and their blessedness. It is this kind of communion, of sharing in each other's experiences, that characterizes the heights of our life on this earth.

While I am both distant and isolated from my younger sister, Sr. Anna Sophia, who is a novice preparing to make her First Profession of Religious Vows this summer, we have a great sense of closeness based on precisely this sense of communion. Through our letters, we are able to share our experiences that most affect us, and to reassure each other of our prayers for one another. I also know that due to her daily schedule (and the difference in time zones), we actually pray Morning Prayer at the same time each day, using the same universal prayers of the Church, and in this way, also express this communion of persons.

Coming from a background of computer science (though I did pursue a minor concentration in speech/communication studies), I never quite identified with the "people person" idea. I appreciated silence, and often found it difficult to initiate conversations or really enter into the situation of my "conversation partner." I have been learning now that this is inherent to communion, and that I actually want to be that present to others in conversation and in ministry. In personality psychology, it has been identified that, on the spectrum of introversion–extroversion, a great many "quiet" people are, in fact, extroverts, in that they draw their energy and drive from others, rather than finding it within. I was surprised by this phenomenon when I took a simple survey that classified me as an extrovert, though I was not the outgoing, center-of-the-party guy that I thought exemplified that label.

I also see my own growth in this area of "people-people" in how I interact with the guys in the house, in my perceptiveness of my own relationships with each of them, and in my conscious efforts along those lines to seek opportunities to deepen the relationships that I feel are more distant. We are not machines, and we are not programmable, by many means. But I believe that the desire that has been placed in our hearts for communion with one another merits our attention to fostering growth in that communion, and that our common human dignity demands it.

In this world in which we seek so often to reduce our reality to cold, hard, facts and measurable empirical data, let us strive all the more to maintain those aspects of our experience that remain unquantifiable, that transcend the confines of the technical sciences, and that, ultimately, give real and lasting meaning to our lives.

Love the Immaculata!
Mariam cogita, Mariam invoca