Advent: All About Commitment

I recently did an evening on discernment at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee which about 40 young adult attended. I mentioned briefly that fidelity was a virtue that we can use to give ourselves a self-check on our desires. That when we think we've landed on the thing that we are called to be we might want to ask ourselves if this is "all about us" and what present commitments we might have to maintain before we head off to take on this new venture, or even if we should.

A young person in the audience asked a great question: "What if you're married and you've discovered that you want to head career wise in a new direction but your partner doesn't support your decision? "

Wow! It gave me pause to just think about that possibility and also provided me with my moment of grace for the day. When I decided to start to pursue some new options my wife, Marion was so supportive. She was afraid to be sure because BustedHalo® and the Paulists were so generous to us over the past 9 years, that indeed that made any decisions very difficult. But Marion knew that I was called to minister to young people. She would watch me come alive on retreat or when I'd be through with a spiritual directee or when I'd preach a reconciliation service. She knew that this was what made me feel most alive and that "most alive" person was the man she fell in love with.

Talk about someone who knows about what it means to be committed to someone else. Fortunately for me, Marion was also able to re-capture some of her desires in her new job teaching deaf children again after years of teaching special ed.

But what if you are not in the same boat? What if your partner thinks that you are not called to your vocation or to an avocation? I think there are two schools of thought here:

1) Perhaps you are not called to what you think and this person who knows you intimately can see that better than you can? Perhaps they are providing a wake up call and that this calling is only about your selfish needs? Maybe you failed to take into account how your actions would impact your partner? All this is good fodder for reflection.

Or 2) Maybe your spouse doesn't have your best interest at heart? Maybe they never did! Maybe they don't understand what it means to be committed to someone else and they have only their interests at heart? Maybe they don't want someone who is fully alive because it makes them look bad or "less than". Perhaps they don't want to share the spotlight?

Regardless, in both cases an examination of commitment comes into play and advent is the perfect time to re-examine our commitments. God re-commits to humanity at Christmas by giving us Jesus. God indeed chooses to give His very self to us in the person of Jesus, who in turn, experiences all of our humanity, including death. But many times we forget about what a great commitment that is. We get caught up with our own feelings of how cute the Christ child is in the manger but we often forget that the wood of the manger also comes along with the wood of the cross.

What evidence has my partner giving me that they are indeed committed to who I am becoming? Do they want what's best not just for me, but for US as a couple? What do i have to compromise to maintain a healthier marriage relationship and yet retain an individual identity as well?

To not make that commitment, or to not take it seriously is to not understand the sacrament of marriage and may even be grounds for Annulment, depending on the case.

For those of us who do understand marriage and who live it, each day....

May this Advent be a time where you rejoice not only in your commitment to one another but also in God's commitment to all of us.

Getting Something For Nothing: The Just Do It Mentality

Today's proverb is a doozy:

Proverbs 10:2
"Ill-gotten treasures profit nothing,
but virtue saves from death."

I've been following the Tiger Woods fiasco and it never fails to amaze me how some people expect to get away with just doing whatever they feel like doing when they feel like doing it. There's no retribution for their actions that enters into possibility for them. The rules don't apply to them. They have nothing to limit their consumption be it greed, sex, food, drugs or whatever.

Nike's moniker for years was "Just Do It" and Tiger Woods seems to have taken that literally. His alleged affair is just one more note on the kind of stars that believe that the world is simply their own personal playground and they are the ones who have all the toys and don't have to share with others.

The virtues of temperance and fidelity are often checkpoints for us. Is my desire based on an unhealthy addiction that I feed all too easily. Do I keep in mind my present commitments and responsibilities? Or do I cast all of that to the wind? The latter seems to be all to easily dispensed with in a country where the divorce rate is close to 50%. Do half of the people who get married really understand the notion of commitment? Do both parties in a marriage understand that they will sacrifice for each other and that "no matter what" they need to be bound to one another working on the issues that face them?

Will both parties always have each other's back?

Or will one violate their sexual commitment and the other take a golf club and start swinging?

It seems to me that Tiger's empty virtues lead him to gain these ill-gotten treasures and if he only had a bit more humility he may not be in the headlines today.

But who am I to talk?

Often I forget my own commitments to my wife. I choose other things over spending time with her and some of those things are actually good things...like my ministry or even writing this blog. But they need to come secondarily to my marriage. And I need to remember that.

So I am off tonight to spend the weekend with my bride! In New York City for a day and then on to our family Christmas party (her side of the family). About 100 family members gather together to simply recommit ourselves to one another as family and to celebrate God's re-commitment to us at Christmas, where God embeds His commitment in human flesh, in human experience. God becomes one of us, as Joan Osbourne once wrote so we might "make our way home."

It is in that anticipation of this human God who loved us not only enough to take on our own flesh but also our own death, that we rejoice. It is not an ill-gotten treasure to be sure. But it is one that should indeed call us into virtue.

Finding Someone "Wonderfully Imperfect"

Over at a thought provoking blog "In Him We Live and Move and Have Our Being," we find some wonderful reflections on marriage all this past week. However the capstone of these posts came down the pike today. Take a look and a listen at this:



In marriage we all find out each other's flaws very quickly and part of marriage that I think a lot of people don't understand is that we need to do our best to blow off the behaviors or tendencies or quirks that someone has that really aren't that big of a deal. Somehow my wife overlooks my morning grumpiness and the fact that I'm often a slob who leaves clothes where I'm not supposed to. I know I snore sometimes and I can't count the number of times my wife has "kneed" me in the back in the middle of the night, or pulled off the covers. She once fell asleep mid-sentence late at night when I was talking to her and she was exhausted and I was troubled by something.

But God do I love her. And her me.

We've both worked hard on our more rougher edges and have really come to understand what it means to work at relationship--and it always has paid off great dividends for both of us and our relationship.

It seems to me that this is what we call commitment and it is a reflection of how God also stands by us no matter what we might do. That all we need to do is utter those two simple words "I'm sorry" and the slate is always wiped clean. And God does this perfectly, unlike me who always tends to keep just a slight bit of resentment lingering--something I'm trying to work on that is challenging and never easy.

But fortunately for me, I have a wonderful woman by my side, who often teaches me much about unconditional love.

May you find someone as "wonderfully imperfect" as I have. And may your wonderful imperfections be tolerated and loved by someone who loves you.

Princess and the Priest

In case you missed this....it's still funny.

Hey I'm trying to say some vows here....

OK this is too funny.



When I asked Marion to marry me she burst into tears and was heavily sobbing...for a moment I wondered if the answer was yes!

A H/t to our good friend the Deacon and the Anchoress

And they said it wouldn't last!

Dick and Betty Broussard have been married for 54 years, and haven't regretted a moment. So says the Dallas Morning News today.

By most predictions, Betty Sweitzer and Dick Broussard's relationship would never last.

She is gregarious and he is reserved. She's an only child and he's the oldest of eight. "I'm very German and he's French. I'm from a city and he's from a little bitty town. I went to college; Dick didn't." She was Protestant and he was Catholic.

And yet here they sit, 54 years later – married through thick and thin – with three children, six grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and another on the way.

Back in Baltimore in 1954, his priest said it would be a mistake. He told Dick, "You come down to the social next week and I'll introduce you to a nice Catholic girl."

Her minister said, "Betty, do not marry him. It won't last."

Betty says, "I came out of there crying and said, 'Let's get married by a rabbi.' "

It's very interesting how interfaith marriage has become the norm in today's day and age. Religion seems not to be such a stumbling block for the young and apparently, these folks led the way in this regard as pioneers long ago. Read more about this couple at the jump here but also take to heart that their lives have been far from easy. They've known and lives what I think I learned in marriage prep and has been at the forefront of my own marriage:

Marriage is not about happiness. Marriage is about commitment and that commitment sometimes leads to happiness.

But it always leads to knowing that someone else is always there for you...and that is always more than enough for me.

And apparently that is also true for the Broussard's:

"It takes love and commitment to keep a marriage together this long," Betty says.

Dick sums it up with one word: "tolerance."

Another Wedding video

This is more silly...but still great...

Brian & Eileen's Wedding Music Video. from LOCKDOWN projects on Vimeo.

Coming up...a play by play of my own wedding--- no video but maybe a picture or two.

So Father, Why Can't We Get Married Outside?

The latest Princess and the Priest from Busted Halo. I particularly like the running commentary.



My thoughts are similar but also I'd like to add a practical matter and a theological/liturgical one. If everyone got married in several outdoor locations, priests or deacons would have to run all over the place to do weddings. With the priest shortage as it is, there's no way this could happen in any kind of situation short of buying them a helicopter.

Look churches are beautiful and the ceremony is only as good as you make it by your participation. My wife and I planned a good deal of the liturgy ourselves and people still talk about it. The bride and the groom, theologically speaking are the presiders at a Catholic Wedding ceremony, not the priest, who merely acts as a witness. The mass is presided by the priest of course but the rite of marriage is really the couple's celebration of sacrament.

Speaking of marriage, I'm off to celebrate my 7th anniversary.

A Special Holy Thursday Memory

I met my wife (sorta) on Holy Thursday nine years ago and we went on our first date the following day: A Passover Seder at a friend's house--where we didn't partake of the lamb. At one point the entire seder was on one side of the room and we were on the opposite side sitting on the floor and talking as if we had known each other all our lives.

So Holy Week is special to us for many reasons--besides being the Holiest week of the year, it was also the time we started our relationship, one that flourishes still today.

As all married couples do, we too have our struggles. But we are just as crazy about each other as we were that magical first night.

Happy Anniversary, Darling.

The Princess and the Priest

The debut episode of the newest Busted Halo feature.

World Marriage Day

Over at the Deacon's Bench, Deacon Greg reminds us that today is World Marriage Day and treats us to one of the most beautiful homilies on marriage I have ever heard.

It’s so fitting that the first miracle of Jesus, the changing of water into wine, happened at a wedding, in the early hours of a marriage. Because marriage is about transformation – it is about how the water of our lives, when touched by another, is changed. Life becomes sweeter, richer, fuller. It becomes like wine. It has the ability to intoxicate us.

And, of course, what has become wine can then be further transformed. Wine, at this altar, becomes Christ. And two people, in marriage, become a family. The human story continues – enriched, changed, sanctified.

What this means is so simple, and so beautiful: when joined in the sacrament of matrimony, we become something more than what we were.

Go hug your spouse now or maybe even do something nice for them. I'm off to give the dog a bath.