The Unveiling

Today, I got to daily Mass early.  I wish I could say this is the norm, but in fact I had an hour to kill after a meeting at work.  I decided to just head to Good Counsel and spend the time in prayer, reading, and most importantly reconciliation before Mass.  As always, I found myself wondering what I ever do that's more important than getting to Mass early (or on time).  Ugh.

So the Blessed Sacrament was exposed before Mass, but just before it began, the veil in front of the Eucharist was closed.  I felt a little pang of sadness, like "ok, bye Jesus"...but then I caught myself.  What I would be doing in 30 minutes was even more awesome than adoring Him.  Then it struck me, a thought that surely a whole bunch of much smarter and more eloquent theologians before me have already come up with: God veils what is special to Him in preparation for something to come.  (Actually, I did get that idea from Alice von Hildebrand's The Privilege of Being a Woman, but I have more).  Two examples came to mind.  The first is that the bride is veiled during the wedding ceremony until she and the groom become husband and wife.  You don't see the blusher veil so much anymore but I swoon when it's used in movies...that moment when the man lifts the veil away from his beloved's face and gazes upon her as his bride for the first time.  So good.

The other example I suppose is a bit more abstract.  But I was able to shed new light on desolations - God seemingly removing Himself from a faithful person during certain periods of his or her life.  St. John of the Cross called it the "dark night of the soul."  Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta experienced an absence of God for years at the end of her life.  WHY would a loving God do such a thing?!  Today I recalled for the first time in several years a really great confession I had when I was 21.  I was confiding my doubts about God's love because I felt like He didn't have a plan for me.  This wise young priest told me that sometimes God removes Himself from your life when He is preparing you for great love.  This greatly comforted me when I was feeling forsaken, and I'm glad I remembered it today.

So our Lord is veiled, whether that be within a gold tabernacle or behind a simple veil, during the celebration of the Mass because we aren't ready to receive Him yet.  We must first confess our sinfulness, hear His Word proclaimed, offer our gifts and our whole selves with them, present our petitions to our generous God, and make ourselves present at His Son's sacrifice on Calvary.  After proclaiming that we are not worthy to receive Jesus in His true flesh and blood...then, finally, does God make us ready.  Never do we actually become worthy, but God grants humility to those who beg it of Him.

In the eternal wedding feast, the roles are reversed.  Our unveiled Lord gives of Himself to us, His bride.  And that gift is His love...the love He seems to withhold on those dark nights.  We need only to come to Him in the Eucharist to receive it.

Freedom is...here?

This Gospel reading really struck me at a Mass I went to last week...and all I've done since is work so I'm just now getting around to this.  First of all, I have to point out that this is one of those passages immediately following the disciples suffering minor concussions and loss of IQ points.  Only those cool action sequences are never included, just the pathetic aftermath.  I love when they ask idiotic questions or answer questions in an idiotic way.  On the one hand, it's funny.  God must have laughed when it first happened, and I still do.  But more importantly, the disciples aren't any dumber than we are.  In fact, they usually have a lot more going on than we ever do.  It is refreshing to see them getting it wrong sometimes, despite the person of Christ actually walking and breathing in their midst.  Check this out:

³¹ To the Jews who believed in him Jesus said: If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples;³² you will come to know the truth, and the truth will set you free.  ³³ They answered, 'We are descended from Abraham and we have never been the slaves of anyone; what do you mean, "You will be set free?"  ³⁴ Jesus replied: In all truth I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave.  ³⁵ Now a slave has no permanent standing in the household, but a son belongs to it forever.  ³⁶ So if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free.”

I've never heard (or more likely, never paid attention to) the Jews' response.  What a perfect way to depict our generation.  Because we don't see ourselves as slaves, we can't understand freedom.  I think I have everything I need to survive, including free will, so how could I possibly be a slave?  By most definitions, I live in the "free-est" society in the world.  I started making choices based upon nothing but my own whims as a child, and as an adult I have the power to change anything I might not like about my life.  I feed and clothe myself and pay my own rent.  I allocate the precious moments of my time somewhat evenly between obligations and pleasure.  I know my future is an array of unopened doors to be selected at my disposal.  I have never been the slave of anyone.

Wrong.  I am enslaved by so much.  I am a slave to myself.  I am a slave to how I want to look, what I want others to think of me.  I am a slave to the time that I think is my own.  I am a slave to this body which I did not create, nor do I get to keep.  I am a slave to the imperfections I pin on others, the grudges I refuse to release, and the pride that makes me think I'm better than them in the first place.  I am a slave to stereotypes, assumptions, and judgments.  I am a slave to my spiritual weakness that makes me choose sleep over prayer, silence over action in the face of injustice, my convenience over someone else's pain.  As this Gospel said, I am a slave because I sin.  All those many moments of my life when I felt I had no control over my actions?  That's because sin did.  With all the free will that I take so much delight in, I choose to let sin in...over and over and over until my wrecked body, mind and spirit are caught beneath the lash, upon the rack.  But when the pricks of sin start to get through and actually register as pain, do I recognize that and run into the arms of the One who already died to wipe my sin away?  No.  I wait until I am laid bare and bleeding, when it is almost too late...then I fall to my knees before my Savior to beg for the mercy that was already freely given.

And I still do not do this enough.  We never do.  Sin has its cold, choking hands wrapped around our society and pretty much everyone in it.  Spiritually, Mother Teresa found Americans to be the poorest, loneliest people she'd ever met.  Her sick and starving Indians had more joy in their simple lives than we'll ever know.  Our society is dominated by sex, instant gratification, an eye for an eye, and enormous, readily-injured pride.  Freedom?!  Every so-called "choice" we make is influenced by our bodily needs, the never subtle messages of media, the opinions of fellow sinners.  

We have completely interchanged the definition of freedom for the definition of bondage.  We will never understand the true freedom that comes from Christ's sacrifice until we realize how tightly we are already bound by the things of this world.  It's a mighty good thing we have the most patient Teacher to show us how to clear that up.  In fact, He gave us 40 days to do just that.  

Seven for One

First, I recommend reading 2 Mc 7:1, 20-31.  If you don’t have a Bible handy or can’t find 2nd Maccabees in yours (ask me about that later!), use this link: http://www.catholic.org/bible/daily_reading/?select_date=2011-11-16

This was the Old Testament reading at Mass on Wednesday and it just astounded me.

Where has this woman been all my life?!  This unnamed mother watches her seven sons become martyrs all in one day because of their family's extreme faith in the Lord and some rock hard devotion to His laws.  I love that this reading is all about the chick.  The men are mentioned first, ²⁰but the mother was especially admirable and worthy of honourable remembrance, for she watched the death of seven sons in the course of a single day, and bravely endured it because of her hopes in the Lord.  It's like the author is saying HEY, PAY ATTENTION TO THIS WOMAN!  Because let's be real, in almost every Bible story the males have more cool things to do than the females do.  Until this moment, this woman's greatest accomplishment in life was bearing and raising seven sons.  Not that that is anything to shake a stick at.  A woman's worth was measured by her fertility, and so many sons in one family was considered a huge blessing from God.  Unlike today, when having any more than 1.5 children is just ridiculous.  Actually, what's ridiculous is denying the amazing life-giving power of creation that God lets parents borrow from Him in the sacrament of marriage.  
 
But I digress.  So Awesome Mystery Woman has this incredible gift of seven sons...and she lets them all die.  In fact, she encourages them to die.  What?!  Is she mental?  No, in fact, she is full of wisdom and full of hope.  She realizes two very important truths.  First, while all seven of these sons came from her womb, she doesn't give herself the credit for their existence.  It's all God.  ²² ‘I do not know how you appeared in my womb; it was not I who endowed you with breath and life, I had not the shaping of your every part.’  ²⁸ ‘I implore you, my child, look at the earth and sky and everything in them, and consider how God made them out of what did not exist, and that human beings come into being in the same way.'  She is giving glory to the Almighty Creator and giving back to Him what was always His.  Second, she realizes that eternal life far outweighs a short, grim, earthly one.  While every mother's natural instinct is to preserve the life of her offspring and keep them with her, this one is graced with the ability to look beyond.  In counseling her last remaining son she says, ²⁹ ‘do not fear this executioner, but prove yourself worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that I may receive you back with them in the day of mercy.'  Somehow she knows that while appeasing this evil king would win them more time on earth, a godly mother would instead prefer to share with them the everlasting reward.  In doing so, she commits their last moments in life to gruesome torture.  Each son's death is increasingly monstrous, and their mother dies last.  Scripture doesn't go into detail about how she died.  We probably don't want to know.  But I think we can all be pretty sure what...WHO...was waiting for her on the other side.
 
I am not a parent.  Sometimes I feel like one, but I am getting adequately paid to take care of three or four little ones at a time, and after twelve-plus hours, I willingly hand them over to someone else with a nursing license like mine.  But I think I can at least partially appreciate the depth of Awesome Mystery Mom's sacrifice.  Everyone knows how far moms go for their kids.  To the end of the earth, flipping over semi trucks and making their voices go all deep and scary when their babies are threatened.  But THIS mom says, "No.  These children were Yours first, O Lord.  Your laws are bigger than my desires."  And she knows that the best thing she can do is ensure they will live together forever in Heaven.  How many parents can do this?  In movies where people get tortured, the last straw is always bringing in a loved one.  The person being interrogated drops everything, forsakes all sworn obediences to governments and ideals to prevent even a hair on their special someone's head from being harmed.  It seems unnatural for a child to die before their parent, and when it happens, it is a unique and raw kind of grief that doesn't ever truly end.  
 
But we have this amazing woman to look to as an example of the courage we typically lack.  We have Abraham, whom God asked to sacrifice his only son, the one he had been waiting for until his old age.  Abraham, who in the picture of obedience had his knife to his son's throat when God told him to drop it.  But the ultimate example, the best, is the Father Himself.  After lovingly creating us in His image, we twisted the gift of free will into evil and hurt.  To save us from ourselves, God sent us His Son, knowing He would give everything right down to His Body and His Blood.  God didn't just watch His Son die...He watched Him suffer greatly.  He let his Child suffer and die for a people who didn't even love Him back.
 
Very few of us are called to be martyrs.  Even fewer, I would hope, are called to give their children away as such.  But that doesn't let any of us off the hook.  We are called to be just that obedient...if not unto death, then to the death of our own desires.  We are called to great sacrifice...if not our physical lives, then a daily sacrifice of our former lives.
 
God sacrificed everything for you...weak, sinful, prideful, somehow loveable person that you are.  What will you sacrifice today?

Gotta get down on...Tuesday?

November is a good time to be grateful about stuff. Right now I'm grateful for my job and the weird way things work out. My brother is coming home from LA on Wednesday and I wanted to work as little as possible while he's in town, so I was able to give 2 of my shifts away this week (how many jobs let you do that?) So I was only supposed to work Monday night, but...had a classic clumsy Jamie moment the night before and blew my wrist out. It's not even a cool story, sad to say. I was wearing socks and slipped on the hardwood floor in my bedroom and tried to break my fall with my hand. Textbook FOOSH! (Fall Onto Outstretched Hand, #1 cause of wrist injuries). At least I'm typical. Woke up the next morning to some moderate swelling and pain and realized pretty quickly that I would be a terrible nurse in that state. Amazing and annoying how many everyday tasks require weight bearing and full range of motion in the wrist joint, and how many of those tasks are part of an RN's job description. Writing, repositioning patients, drawing up meds, really any kind of pressure to the hand was just not possible...so I had to call in, as lame as that is.

So now I have almost a full week to let my wrist recover, and it's already somewhat better. Unless I decide to use my PTO (probably won't), I'll have a pretty pathetic paycheck next time but that's not the end of the world. It's like I've been given the gift of time (Chandler: "That's funny because last year I was given the gift of space. We should get together and make a continuum,") because yesterday and today I should have been sleeping and working. After my pretty taxing day of movie-watching, napping, and RICE therapy I received a house call from my chiropractor boyfriend who was concerned about my injury. I told him I got it checked out already and it's just a sprain, but Dr. Sean had to see for himself. What a guy :) And since I'm so pathetic and helpless, he felt the need to cook me dinner and rub my feet! Yep, had to brag a little...I like this one :)

So, my thankful list: my flexible job, not having to set an alarm this morning, time to catch up on my life, my brother visiting (not to mention my whole awesome family who I can't wait to spend several days with), my healing wrist, my selfless boyfriend, my trainer who will figure out a way to kick my butt at the gym tomorrow without hurting my wrist, a new laptop battery that lasts as long as it's supposed to, my roommate and friends far and near, my best friend who is coming home 2 weeks from today, City on a Hill/Life Teen and all the opportunities they provide for enriching my faith, and these 2 gloomy days aside, this gorgeous fall we've been having.

Now I need to get out of bed and take advantage of this freebie day. I spent my morning ice-ing my wrist and watching Friends...so if I go for a run, take a shower, and clean my house, I'll be about 1000x more productive than I was yesterday. And...go!

(Oh and the title comes from a modified version of Rebecca Black's "Friday" that my friend Bob is working on. The jist is partying on a random weeknight which is kind of cooler than on a Friday but mostly an awkward inconvenience. It's gonna be huge, just wait).

"Roughin it...Catholic style"

Nature's Call (n.) - annual weekend of camping with about 150 other Catholic young adults at Lake Pomme de Terre in southern MO/the true epitome of God's country. Activities include campfires and the things you eat and drink around them (turtle, beer, roasted Starbursts), vicious sports and less vicious games, impulsive midnight lake jumping, outdoor Mass, great theological conversations, great idiotic conversations, and general nature lovin.

Being a first time camper, I quickly learned that true roughing it is not my style (see title phrase coined by Jen Revers) so I was thankful for the on-site Port-a-Potties and the very off-site dirty old showers. Amazing how low one's hygiene standards can really go. But anyways, I think God decided that I was having trouble listening lately so He blessed me with visual displays of His love instead. Our campsite was on a steep hill jutting out into the lake, so it was dazzling to wake up to the sun sparkling on the water. But it was the stars that really got me. I've never in my life seen a sky like that, not even from the train bridge in Kirksville. After an overcast day on Sunday the clouds broke through and word around the campfire was the view was killer if you laid out in the clearing where we parked our cars. I grabbed my beach towel and pulled up a patch of grass away from the chatty group, because I had this feeling God wanted to talk to me. I was pretty full of emotions and wouldn't have even known where to start in prayer so I tried my best to just listen.

God didn't speak to me...he sang. His beauty was just staggering. I'm just now remembering that the priest who heard my confession earlier that day (in the woods, the coolest) talked about how God demonstrates his love through beauty, among other things...how appropriate. I laid there, tears streaming down my face, feeling waves of love wash over and over me. The previous night I had slept poorly and that day I couldn't even fall asleep for a nap. Sleep rarely eludes me like that. But basking in God's radiance was like being rocked to sleep by a loving parent.

It became obvious to me that a God who would paint me a picture of such brilliant and complex beauty would never forget me or design anything but plans for my welfare. Or cause me unnecessary pain. Looking back over several months I could see, as I always do eventually, why things happen the way they do. My struggles have made me grow in wisdom and continually draw me closer to Jesus. He has protected my heart at my most vulnerable times, and this weekend even blessed me with some resolution of a particular question. And it occurred to me that any future hurt related to this struggle is not something I need to understand. God usually debriefs me after a while anyways but all I need to know is He has chosen me to bear some suffering for His sake. It's nothing at all compared to what He already bore for mine.

Oh, hey, NC20? I'm there.

Note the well-deserved beer opened immediately after setting up the tent. Woof.

five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

My alma mater ejected its freshest crop of seniors last weekend, which means I have been a real person in the eyes of the world for a year now. I feel stuck in one of those weird time warps where somehow eons have passed without any time passing at all. As a gut reaction, I wonder what I really accomplished this year. Did I make any major contributions to science? Did I change any lives? Did I even change my own? For my compulsive side, I need to lay it all out for you. Ok, mostly for me.

*Passed NCLEX.

*Became a registered nurse in 2 states.

*Started a career.

*Paid a lot of taxes.

*Spent a fortune on gas.

*Saved a bit of money.

*Transitioned from graduate nurse to staff nurse.

*Was a bridesmaid in the weddings of 2 of my very best friends.

*Watched 2 and soon to be 3 people who I am close to move far, far away.

*Celebrated 3 21st birthdays.

*Began and ended an important relationship.

*Visited my college town 4 times.

*Became a Life Teen core member and got close to the kids in my youth group.

*Moved with my parents to a new home.

*Moved out of my parents' home.

*Decorated my own home.

*Paid my first bills.

*Flew to New York, Chicago, and Phoenix.

*Saw 3 productions on Broadway.

*Road tripped to Texas, Illinois, Michigan, and all over Missouri.

*Sang at 1 college tournament basketball game, 2 weddings, and 3 funerals.

*Learned more than I can ever format into a list about babies, breathing patterns, sputum, IV fluids, placating parents, pain relief, handling impossible situations, time management, storage of gasoline in a home, how to live with someone new, indications for calling my landlady, when to sleep for a night shift, tricks for saving my hard-earned money, when it is worth it to splurge, knowing what I can and cannot do, what my vocation means to me right now, how much Jesus truly loves me, and what things are really the most important.

...I'm tired.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Navigation System

It's funny how an unfamiliar area can become known, but there's no way to undo that. Once a place becomes meaningful, that meaning sticks. For five months I drove the same route to work, not noticing or caring about the houses I was driving by or the places to eat. It was just foreign territory at the end of my 40-minute commute. Then I met him, and it turned out he lives along my thrice-weekly drive. Right in the middle of that neighborhood where I thought nobody really lived, the place that used to mean nothing. Now I can't get to work without experiencing the memories. There's that incredible Italian restaurant where he took me for our first real date. There's the gas station we trekked to for milk and beer on a snow day. And there goes the street where he lives. The destination that at first made me full of nerve endings, all tension and excitement, then comfortably familiar - knowing after a long night shift he would be there with oatmeal and a warm, sleepy smile.

I keep passing the Chipotle where I wish I didn't know his order by heart.
And the restaurant where we broke up over breakfast.

I removed his house from my favorites on my TomTom. I never needed to save it in the first place because after I went there the first time, a map was drawn on my brain in indelible ink. Deleting an icon on a 4.3-inch screen didn't do me much good. I never realized my sharp memory for details until they were all ones I wanted to forget. How is it even useful to remember what road we were on when he told me my brakes needed to be checked out? But I know why I remember it - because I thought it meant that he cared about my safety. I learned in 7th grade life science that the brain chooses to save memories that have some significance attached, and tosses the rest. So as long as I find it significant, I will always think about my brakes when I cross the intersection of College and Grant.

My college physiology courses dove deeper: it is the hippocampus where both long-term memories and cognitive maps for navigation are formed. So ultimately, science rules: it is impossible to separate emotional memories from spatial memory. I can't expect College Boulevard to eventually transform back into the meaningless blur it once was at 45 miles per hour.

All I can hope for is that with time, the feelings that seep out of the too-familiar buildings into my car, my heart, will numb. Because I know the memories are there to stay. Besides, if I really wanted to avoid those altogether, I would just take the highway.