The forgotten age of Christendom.

Oh, to live in a non-secular age...

I am increasingly frustrated at the attitude of our world. People have forgotten that for centuries, Christianity (and Catholic Christianity, for that matter, as it was the only Christianity for some time) was the dominant culture of the entire world. Not to say it was dominant in the east, but for the most part, worldwide Christianity was the most powerful driving force in every day life.

However, apparently the past 50 years has undone all of this. People no longer remember an age of Christendom. People act as though Christianity has always been little more than an opinion, a cute emblem of a primitive past. Christianity was once the foundation and saving power of society, intellect, spirituality, and freedom. Those days are, sadly, only a memory. People born in my age have either inherited a crumbling Church that they want so desperately to lift up and bring people into, or have come from families who rejected it long ago...or who are doing so now.

It makes a passionate, fiery young spirit like myself wish that I were a crusader going off to fight a holy battle...NO...NOT LIKE YOUR PROFESSOR TELLS YOU THEY "ACTUALLY WERE..." The Crusades were a rescue mission from Muslim aggression, and only devolved because of the actions of a few without papal permission. Read this article if you're having trouble understanding/believing what I'm saying.

Anyway, I often wish that I could fight a physical battle. It's very hard sometimes being a male and watching what I care about crumble around me. I wish to fight a battle with sweat and blood, not words and prayers.

Yeah, kind of like that! Thanks Aragorn!

I can only imagine the sorts of comments I might get now..."Prayer is a spiritual battle!" "We don't want to hurt people with violence! Jesus said those who live by the sword..." Yada yada. I know this people.

The only way that I can explain this is to simply say that I am the kind of person whom, every once in a while, just wishes to do things concretely and to have excitement and some risk. I am fond of thinking that I would gladly die knowing I actually did some real fighting in an effort to make a difference, than sat idly by while reading story after story of failures of the Church at large to defend society against secularism. If you find yourself thinking any variation of the thoughts in the previous paragraph, just suffice it to say that you just don't understand what I'm talking about.

A nice little way to end this rant, I suppose, is that I know in the end that we will win. The last few verses of the bible quite explicitly say so. I can only hope that somehow I can take part...or something.

Yeah, yeah! I like how you illustrate everything I'm feeling, Aragorn!

Well, reader, I feel I've gotten off track a bit. Please pray for an end to secularism and fight in your everyday words, actions, and expressions of joy in your life in Christ to bring back a Christian culture. Only then can our crumbling world put an end to the increase in suicide, divorce, depression, and of course...sin.

Amen.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to fight for Christendom.

On lukewarmness of faith.

I was once a lukewarm Catholic from a family of lukewarm Catholics.

I really don't care if any of them end up reading this. I just hope it does some good to expose the utter failure in logic, yes, LOGIC, of being culturally Catholic and nothing else.

Our faith cannot be simply something we kinda do sometimes to get holy points and feel like a good person. If Jesus is who he said he is, we must give our whole lives to him! If someone comes and claims they are God and that we must follow him and we say we believe it...then we must become radically devoted to this person and do everything in our power to live a life He would be proud of. And if you asked any lukewarm Catholic, I'm sure they'd nod and say quite softly because you've made them "uncomfortable" that you asked, that they agree that Jesus IS that man.

However, if our faith really is just something we kinda hold true to sometimes and do this whole mass thing that we don't understand or really seem to care about or be all that into, which lukewarm Catholics profess by their actions, then Jesus cannot be God. God is everything. He created everything, He created us, and He calls us to Him. If that's all there is, then Jesus is not God. And if Jesus is not God, there is no God. And that's the conclusion I logically reached, once upon a time. But that's a long story.

I wish the hypocrisy and idiocy of lukewarmness of faith would end. It makes me sick.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a fiery faith.

Iron will.

I'm better now.

Sometimes the only reason I want to continue with something is because I can't stand to give up. I admire perseverance too much.

I like the hero of a story the most when he has his face in the mud but refuses to die.

For instance, one of my favorite moments in Dragon Ball Z is when Goku is being held under the water by Frieza, too hurt to fight back, slowly drowning...then he thinks about his family and finds the strength to beat his way to the surface.

I love the moment in the Lord of the Rings where Aragorn is quite sure that Frodo is dead and the Ring is in the hands of the enemy. Certain doom for them all. Yet, he clings on to hope and charges into battle against hundreds of thousands of orcs. Ready to fight, always.

For that matter, I love the part where Merry and Pippin are surrounded by Uruk-Hai, and Boromir rushes in to save them, literally taking them all on and winning...for a while, at least. He never gave up on redeeming himself...some of his last words being how sorry he was that he assaulted Frodo.

And what about Roland Deschain, last gunslinger of the line of Eld? Virtually all of his friends and family dead, murdered in the eternal war against darkness, the entire fabric of reality collapsing around him...the only one who can reach the Dark Tower and reverse the damage caused by the Crimson King and save all existence...yet he plods on. The most recognizable quote from the Dark Tower is "The man in black fled across the desert...and the gunslinger follows." His progress, like his will...inexorable.

In Star Wars, the moment where Luke is about to be executed via the long, slow digestion of the Sarlacc, lightsaber nowhere in sight, surrounded by Jabba's henchmen. When all hope was lost, he was prepared all along to fight for the freedom of his friends. Later, he shows that he never gave up on his father Darth Vader, whom was thought to be lost to evil even by the optimistic Obi-Wan, Vader's former mentor. Luke's love saved Darth Vader.

There are so many other examples that I love...William Wallace, the Elric brothers, Leonidas, Westley, Maximus...How can I give up when all of the fictional characters I admire never did? People who aren't even real. The characters I spent so long watching, reading about, wishing I was them...well, this is the way I will be like them. I won't give up, even on myself, on my own doubtful mind.

The example I know I should hold above all though, is the One who said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He never gave up, either.

He never gave up on me.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was for a fight to the end.

I make all things new.

"Behold, I make all things new."

When I was 12, I had one friend. I was bullied at school. I also didn't love God. I didn't even know what that meant.

Ten years later, I know what it means to love God, and I do. I have a lot of friends who showed me they loved me today.

Today, I feel like I am 12 again.

This is the paradox created by my love. The more I grow in it, the younger I feel. "Behold, I make all things new," said the Lord. I understand what that means, now.

Today was the best birthday of my life. I can't wait until my 13th.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream that makes all things new.

Seeing the world with new eyes.

I see the world entirely different than I did not long ago.

The other day I went to my first Protestant service. There was lots of singing, praying, and talking. It was a great new experience. However, there was much missing. Much, much missing.

I know that there is at least one Protestant who reads my blog, and I would encourage that person (and people from other Christian traditions) to understand why I am writing the way I am, and that it is not out of arrogance nor malice. Protestant and non-denominational churches, as I understand them, empower the individual to interpret scripture as they understand it, with a limited guidance on their interpretation from their church and/or pastor. One can essentially believe whatever they want, with some exceptions.

However, in the Roman Catholic church we believe that truth exists, and we have found it. Protestant churches view other denominations or beliefs as those who have looked over the evidence in the Bible and come to a different conclusion; the Catholic church is drawing its conclusions not only from the Bible but from tradition passed down from the apostles. How can we defend sola scriptura by saying that God trusted us with interpretation of scripture when we still come to different conclusions? Why would Jesus ascend into heaven, telling His disciples "Just figure it all out for yourselves." Why would He leave us behind with even the remotest possibility that we would disagree on exactly what was going on in the Gospels and the rest of the Bible? He is God, after all. Doesn't that seem like a mistake, that so many Christians could be left simply disagreeing on what it all means? God doesn't make mistakes. God would want us to agree on what He was trying to achieve by dying on a cross.

That being said, I hope anyone who objects to this post can understand my reasoning on why I feel obligated to speak the way I am. It is not out of arrogance, but out of a clinging to what I know is true. I don't see it as an opinion but as something valuable to know! :)

What I found to be missing in the service was the focus on Jesus at mass. His presence in the Eucharist, our praise of Him, our focus on foreshadowing our lives in heaven. I was sad that the people at the service I went to earlier that day were missing out on so much. I knew that they were there because they were seeking God and loving God, but they have probably never known what it is like to fully participate in the mass as even many Catholics do not! I was so upset at this thought that I burst into tears talking about it with my soon-to-be-Catholic girlfriend. I was imagining what it might be like to have everyone I know, and the whole rest of the world as well, truly taking part in the sacrifice of the Mass, as Jesus spoke of when He told us "do this in memory of me." I imagined what it might be like for everyone to take part in what St. Paul described in 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 when he said, "The bread which we break, is it not a sharing in the Body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread." The one bread! The one Christ! Not the many symbolic breads!

I imagined what it might be like. Then I realized that it wasn't so...and it broke me. I was so hurt, reader. So, so hurt. I couldn't even understand why, thinking about the experience later. I always knew not everyone was Catholic, and that not every Catholic really lived out their faith nor appreciated it. And then I understood something new about myself that crept up so quietly, that I was shocked.

I don't see the world in the same way anymore. When I first thought of my blog as one giant text, "The Dream That I Dreamed", I imagined it as a sort of melancholy tale of how my life is lived only to try and fulfill a high and lofty dream that may never be achieved. I viewed it as a determination to keep alive a view of all that my life and the world could be if only things were different, somehow. A full outline of what I'm saying can be read here in my first blog post.

These days, my blog is more about Christ's vision in my life, and the beauty that He has created if only we could see it. It should be more like "The Dream That He Dreamed" rather than "The Dream That I Dreamed." But I won't change it now, if only because I like the consistency.

If you need an example of what I mean, I'll tell you a story. Today I was praying the rosary with my girlfriend when I noticed outside that it was a beautiful day. Partly cloudy, and enough wind that the clouds would block the sun for a minute and then move away to let the sun shine again. I thought that it looked like it was glowing outside, and then I realized "maybe God made it that way just so it would look pretty on days like today" and I started crying because I felt so loved. Then I thought about how much I love everyone I know, and how happy I am, and how it can only be unimaginably better in heaven, and I started crying more! It was such a great moment...and then I went to mass! ALLELUIA! I shared in the infinite mercy of mass with a bunch of my fellow Catholics and friends, and it was so beautiful. What a wonderful thing, and it was all a gift from God!

And all this...I never understood. I thought I did, but I did NOT...and I'm not even sure when it all changed. I'm so happy. I used to think that it was impossible to cry tears of joy. I thought it was a myth...now I do it all the time.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was His dream.

Secrets.

I am fascinated by silence.

Most of my day today has been filled with silence. My social plans fell through, and so I ended up spending a lot of time alone with a book...I went on a long walk. I even went into church and hung out with Jesus for a while (I intended to go to mass, but it turns out they had adoration and moved it to 7).

Silence often speaks louder than noise, and gets the point across better. When you don't have the distraction of things on the outside whistling for your attention, you can better hear your voice on the inside. You can more easily reflect, stop and think. God finds it easier to talk to you, too.

I'm even more fascinated by silence when it comes to the way people interact. The things we are unwilling to say to one another...the one "secret" that everyone knows but will not discuss. Silence really does speak loudly.

I found out today that most people are oblivious to the observations I make of other people. Sometimes I can tell how people feel about me, or other people, just in the way they walk, the way they look at what's around them, the way they position themselves, their expressions, what they say and how they say it. Sometimes I'll move people like chess pieces into entering a situation or conversation where they will unconsciously reveal something they're thinking, all without them ever knowing it. It's not an exact science, but it works most of the time. Am I manipulative or just clever? Or perhaps you think I'm bullshitting you. I'm not out to convince anyone of anything, so make your choice any way you like!

This sort of thing has come into play in my life recently. I have a group of friends who I am sure all know what I know, but none of us are willing to say anything about it. It truly is for the best, since it just wouldn't be prudent to talk about it at this point, but it still fascinates me how we all hint to each other our knowledge but never quite openly speak about it. It makes me literally giggle sometimes!

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was that silence was given its proper respect.

The torture of humility...

O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, hear me.

That's the first line of the Litany of Humility, which I've begun to pray daily. It's basically a list of desires and fears that you pray Jesus takes from you to help you be humble. It's torture. Every time I pray it I realize how much I want and fear all of those things, especially these three:

1. "From the desire of being loved, deliver me Jesus.
2. "From the fear of being forgotten, deliver me Jesus.
3. "That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

The reason I've begun to pray this prayer is because my pride has gotten to the point where it hurts me emotionally, constantly. It hurts a lot to always wish people loved me, or loved me as much as they say they do. It hurts to be left out and forgotten. It hurts that others are loved more than I am. If I was just humble, I would almost always be happy. I'm sure of it.


Every time I get on Facebook I see exactly what I fear the most every time. Because of my feelings of isolation, I am addicted to feeling the connection I get over Facebook, but at the same time Facebook feeds my isolation by forcing me to see pictures of friends hanging out together without me, and sending messages to each other about how much they miss each other and want to hang out, while I'm simply forgotten.

If I were only humble, none of this would bother me. So even though it hurts, I HAVE to try. I've never felt the need for God's help so strongly.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was that I would never be bothered by pride.