...on the Feast of Stephen

It's the Feast of St. Stephen! My saint's day!

all of you, go now and read Acts 6:9 to the end of chapter 7.
be filled with love and awe at the incredible witness of this saint. God bless you all!

Incarnation - Crucifixion

What incredible mysteries of God's love, what an unfathomable gift and grace:

Think for a moment how phenomenal Christmas truly is.

First, out of great love, God creates us in His image. Out of Himself, He creates individual beings, separate people, to come together and meet in the family, to reflect the family that IS the Trinity. He who is relationally within Himself as Father, Mother and Child, creates individuals who are separate, to come together as "one flesh" (husband and wife) to give birth out of their love, who is then "flesh of my flesh". When we meet as family, we are closer to reflecting God than ever, while on earth. This alone is such a beautiful gift.

Second, out of great love, the Infinite, the Creator of everything, the Almighty, He who IS... He chooses to become like us. He chooses to make Himself one of us! We are naught but his creations! We are the ones who betray Him, who turn our backs to Him, who receive His love and then turn around and go about our days as though we don't need the One who is the very reason we exist and continue to exist. We're like a baby that says, "nuts to you, mom, I'm gonna get my own milk" as we lay there flailing and crying and thinking that when mom gives us the milk anyway that we're the ones who made it happen. God made himself one of us! Of course, He became one of us in all things but that disobedience. God chose to become a helpless child though... He chose to be obedient to His earthly parents, who are HIS creation! He made himself so low, that He took upon our flesh, our limitations. He was subject to time, to aging, to the struggles and hardships we go through. I cannot begin to describe how incredible this gift alone can be. Recalling that He is God, that He is infinite, perfect, omnipotent, existing outside of time, all these things, and yet His love is so great that He chose to take on our humanity from the very beginning of childhood, right into manhood, and continues to bear that humanity even now, resurrected. What a gift! For God to do this is already an infinite sacrifice. This was His first crucifixion. And what love there is in this sacrifice of the Incarnation.

Third, out of great love, as though it was not enough to share our life, hardships, and all things human (except sin), He gives His life in the crucifixion, dying for our sin so we may be born into new life in Him. Phenomenal how God is born like us so that in dying, we may be born like Him.

Merry Christmas.

The Mystery of Christ's Incarnation

As we are preparing for Christmas Eve Mass, we told little Katherine (3 years old) that baby Jesus will be at Church. Excited she exclaims, "Jesus will be there?" to which we replied, "yes, isn't that great!?" and matter of factly she responded, "it is great... yet mysterious".

She's 3. I have no idea what that was about.

Jehovah's Witnesses

Well guess who showed up at our door in Stratford? Looks like before I got here, some Jehovah's Witnesses spoke to my sister and asked if they could come by again and Jen decided she would invite them over to have a discussion with us sometime later this week.

...because I bought a book the other day on the subject and she figures I should talk to them

If you're thinking I sound annoyed, I'm really not. I actually bought this book on JW's because we have some that visit us in London and I wanted to educate myself well on the subject so I could properly address them. But hey, I can't read that fast Jen! Guess I got my work cut out for me.

I just wanted to share some funny anecdotes that I've read about thus far, here are some quotes from the book Answering Jehovah's Witnesses by Jason Evert. Also, so you know, Charles Taze Russel is the founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Apparently a guy named J.J. Ross published a book that claimed that Russel "knows comparatively nothing of philosophy, systematic or historical theology, and is totally ignorant of the dead languages". So ol' Russel decided to sue Ross, and here's the records from the transcript of the court proceedings, when the defendant's attorney asked Russel if he knew Hebrew, Latin or Greek:

STAUNTON: "Do you know the Greek Alphabet?"
RUSSEL: "Oh Yes."
STAUNTON: "Can you tell me the correct letters if you see them?"
RUSSEL: "Some of them, I might make a mistake on some of them"
STAUNTON: "Would you tell me the names of those on top of the page, page 447, that I have got here?"
RUSSEL: "Well, I don't know that I would be able to."
STAUNTON: "You can't tell what those letters are, look at them and see if you know?"
RUSSEL: "My way . . . [interrupted]"
STAUNTON: "Are you familiar with the Greek language"
RUSSEL: "No."

Some other interesting things I didn't know about their founder is that apparently he "discovered" one day that he was the seventh angel whom John spoke about in the book of Revelations. Not only that, but the six other angels were the apostles John and Paul, three other guys who I have no idea who they are, as well as Martin Luther! And to top it all off, Russell passed away on Halloween, (in 1916) while on a train, wearing a toga made from bedsheets.

Unique.

Squirrel Math

Am I the only one who has noticed the specific rhythm and flow of movement of squirrels?

Quite possibly!

I saw a squirrel running in front of me today, or rather it was more of a bounding than a run. You all know what I mean, I'm sure you've seen squirrels bound along the road. What I recognized for the first time today, is the way in which a squirrel bounding looks something like a sine wave. Even his tail in following after him seems to follow the direction the body was previously at. So it's like, I bet if we had a video of the squirrel and drew a squiggly sine wave across it, no part of the squirrel would deviate from that line at any moment of bounding!

I know, I know, you're all pretty impressed and amazed, and from now on you'll all pay closer attention to the math of the squirrel's bounding methods, and probably someone will write in saying, "Steve, I've calculated precisely the equation for the squirrel's bound" and then produce some figure like 2sin(14) and we all punch it into our graphical calculators and say, "hmm.. that looks about right" but nobody really wants to actually check the proof and see if it's accurate because, c'mon man, you have too much time on your hands.

Christmas Food-a-thon

Ahh, Christmas is almost here. It's one of those times of year that we celebrate and give thanks to God by having a day devoted to gluttony. Hmm... that's something to keep in check this year.

As bizarre and hypocritical as that sounds (and is) it is still understandable considering our culture's way of celebrating with a feast. This is all fine and good, and I am the first to say one of my favourite ways to come together with people and enjoy their company and have a good time is through a meal. But this is just a reminder to everyone that this year, be sure not to eat so much as to forget about God, but to love God more by eating and spending time with your family and/or friends.

Let's not wait until the new year to make such resolutions.

March On...

Good eve to all my loving friends and anyone else who may chance upon this.

I have returned from my trip to Maryland, having visited the Institute of the Incarnate Word's formation house and seminary. Granted, I came back a little bald, but at least the novices had a lot of fun cutting off all those curls. I wanted to thank everyone for your prayers, as the experience was quite intense, although I am sorry to say for those of you hoping so much that I would find my future home, that this visit seems to have raised more questions than answers. They are certainly a very solid order, and very orthodox, but as it stands, I have absolutely no idea what is going on at this point in time. Luckily I have finally made an appointment with my spiritual director so I hope to have some answers or at least to be at peace with whatever crazy process God is doing with me.

It was really quite incredible to be there though. I attended an Ignatian spiritual retreat, which was pretty much solely for me. That was a day and a half of silence by myself in the chapel, after a day and a half of silence with the Novices and Postulants. It was so strange to have people prepare food for me but I would eat alone, and then a priest would give these short talks outlining the next spiritual exercise and then he'd take off and I'd be all alone. It was a wonderful and peaceful time of prayer, and actually reminded me a whole lot of Medjugorje. But I had the opportunity to really talk it out with God and get to know more of my... well... lack of holiness. Ha ha... it's good to be humbled when I'm not very good at being humble on my own.

Anyhow, I don't really have a lot to share on the subject unless anybody has specific questions about these guys (I would highly recommend anyone to getting to know them, they are super holy men). Feel free to leave comments.

God's peace be upon you all.