Faith & Works

Like most people from the small town of Opelousas, I was born into the Catholic faith. Throughout my life, I’ve been exposed to a plethora of different religions/worldviews as well, but I always come back to the Catholic Church as my home, but not just for the familiarity it brings; there is a sense of correctness and truth I find in my faith. With every part of my being, I hope that both you and I never stop looking for correctness and truth in every aspect of us.

I find myself really distraught when I see people who appear to have given up on this journey – they seem to be missing out on the difference between living and existing. For me, these quitters of the quest for correctness are not those outside of a faith, but many of those within it.

Gasp.

Please, don’t tar-and-feather me for blasphemy until after I finish this post.

As a self proclaimed Cradle Catholic, I’ve seen a swarm of people simply going through the motions; especially in a church. They kneel, sit, stand, and cross themselves at the appropriate times, but that’s the extent of their participation at church. No response. No singing. No comprehension of what’s being said. (Sometimes) sleeping. Checking their watch to see when they could finally leave.

You know, if I were God…

(Gasp, but tar-and-feather my heresy later)

…I’d be thinking “That’s not it at all.”

Something deep in my being tells me that faith is not simply going through the motions. Faith is the lens by which you view the entirety of life, not an aggravating set of hollow codes you have to abide.

I believed that this attitude set me apart from most Catholics; I felt very weird for thinking this. When I was about to wash my hands of the Catholic Church I met the Summers.

No, not related to Cyclops of the X-men, but just as cool as if they were. I first met my buddy Joseph in college (who was a year older than me) then his brother John Paul (a year younger). They were both really involved in their faith and they seemed to “get” the whole not going through the motions deal about faith that is so right to me.

Through getting to be close friends with Joe and JP, I learned of their parents and the story of them.

As young adults, Frank (a self-proclaimed atheist) and Genie (a Cradle Catholic who had left her faith) both felt God calling them to sell everything they owned and become missionaries. After a profound conversion experience, Frank left his law practice, they sold their house, took their young son Beau with them and headed overseas to preach the Gospel to people living in the third world.

Their passion for the missionary life grew so that they formed a local organization called Family Missions Company. This organization trains missionaries and sends them out to many different parts of the world. The company now has more than 100 missionaries, and has served in places like Mexico, Ecuador, the Caribbean, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Spain, and Ghana. My buddy Joe is getting old, because he’s the current director of FMC, a real big boy job.

As part of their outreach, they are holding a campaign to have people “like” FMC on Facebook. Please do so by clicking here.  And check out their website.

Catholic, Christian, or not, we millenials have the lucky burden of wanting to do more than go through the motions and be more than what’s expected of us. The Summers family and FMC is an ideal example of showing what they believe by what they do. And that makes them awesome.

 For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead. James 2:26

Now, you can bring out the tar and the feathers.

(Ms. Genie also wrote two books on her family’s transition to the missionary life. If you are interested in a copy, please shoot her a message. Here’s her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/genie.summers?fref=ts.)

(Remember to like FMC on Facebook.)

Beginning Again

I haven’t made a blog update in a long time and since I am going to be working with WordPress pretty often in the future, I decided to check out their blog capabilities. When I found out that WordPress had a feature that would upload every post from my former blog onto this site and when I found out that this UL was available, I decided to move over to this site. And the move re-engaged me into writing a new post.

…and the crowd either colectively cheers or collectively rolls their eyes. I’ll imagine it’s the former.

Being a successful human being is always an important question, and one that’s been on my mind a lot lately. I believe success isn’t quite measured accurately in judging the amount of income someone has, the square footage of his home, or the hotness of his wife. Important to note is that neither do I believe that our degree of success hinges upon our own happiness.

Sorry to contradict you, Dr. Phil.

In my opinion true success not rooted in ourselves. The focus is not internal. We are climbing the mountain of our own lives: only someone who looks at the mountain from far away can determine how big it is compared to other mountains.

Eh, imperfect analogy, but let’s go with it.

Two traits are necessarily important for me in this view. The first is that of friendship. The second, charity. Do the two mesh? Indeed. But, I’ll try to separate them.

Success to me means having the solid foundation of friendship. I speak not of popularity, but in substance. Having people in your life who are there not because of their own benefit, and being this way to others in your life. Caring for someone’s wellbeing above our own, not as a symptom of self-depreciation, but an honest and genuine desire. This is foundational.

Another tenet of success in this definition is what I’ll call charity. By this term, I mean doing good for the benefits of others, either in the future, halfway around the world, or in your hometown. The only difference I see between this and friendship is the degree of familiarity with the other person.

Changing the definiton of success from an internal focus to an external one.

Friendship and charity have clashed interestingly in my life. I am serving in one of my really good friend’s wedding the night before a rally in Washington DC for an organization I’ve been passionate about for over 8 years. Making it to DC seems to be incredibly difficult to go from Louisiana in 10 hours.

I always say that if our tasks are easy, then they wouldn’t be heroic.

I don’t know if I can, but I’ll try to do both the wedding and the DC trip. Why? Both are fundamentally important to me: celebrating a cornerstone in my friend’s life and recognizing myself as a small part of a big movement for charity.

I hope everyone has important events in their lives. I hope you all struggle with finding a way to make all of it work. It’s a good struggle.

Wish me luck as I see if there’s any way to both. And if there is, I”ll be sleep-deprived. And rushed. And stressed. And silly. And more than a little crazy. But it’ll be worth it.

I hope to use this as an opportunity to rediscover the traits that make me me. And though I might not be the best, I hope to be someone I’m proud of.

This new blog reminds me that it’s never too late to restart.

“Let us begin again, for until now we have done nothing.”
-St. Francis of Assisi