A Tale of Two Brothers and a Father Who Loves Them: The Lukewarm Brother

Welcome to Holy Week! It’s that greatest week of the Church year when we must confront ourselves in all our capacity to reject God, and then overcome that rejection and run back to Him even as He comes to us. With that in mind, I’m bringing in a dear friend, Kyle George, to give us two guest posts on the parable of the prodigal son to meditate on this week.

 

“Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing. So he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

 

The Story of the Prodigal Son is one that always speaks to my heart not because of the typical interpretation of a wayward son squandering his inheritance on sinful ways of living only to be forgiven when he returns home to his father. It speaks to my Catholic Faith. Especially, concerning the two brothers. I will concentrate this writing on the older brother who is consistently seldom talked about, yet he can teach us so much about our Catholic faith.

The next writing will be on the younger brother and his father.

 

A prodigal is a person who recklessly spends their money on lavish ways of living. Like the younger brother, the older had all that he needed to be happy, yet he neither spent it recklessly nor appropriately. He never took advantage of the good that he had from his father for his benefit. He toiled and labored on his father’s land. He followed the rules, but took his good life for granted becoming lukewarm. The oldest brother is the Catholic who knows the goodness of the faith. They know the rules. They know the teachings enough to take them for granted. At least the younger brother could be given some benefit of the doubt for not really knowing the good that he had or how to use it well. The older brother knew very well, but never used it for any reason good or bad. It’s a horribly grave tragedy to know you have a gift and squander it because you don’t know how to use it well. It’s an even worse tragedy to know you have a gift, know that you can use it, but never even try to use it at all.

So, often in my Catholic life I have heard stories of my fellow Catholic brethren not taking their faith seriously. I have seen so many fall into complacency in their faith. I did not become Catholic to watch my people, who I chose to participate in this faith that I love, squander this great gift of being Catholic because they do not know the beauty of it! The Catholic Church is the greatest means of salvation. The Catholic Church is the fullness of truth. She, and only She, is completely united to the Son and guided by the Holy Spirit to lead us to the Eternal Father who spoke us into being from the dust through the Word (His Only-Begotten Son) and breathed life into us by the Holy Spirit so that we can have eternal life through following the fullness of truth (the Catholic Faith) to get there. If any Catholic actually fell in love with the faith because someone convinced them in their heart that they should care about knowing what She offered in Her truth, then they would be a Saint.

The sin of the older brother is that while he had all that he needed to be happy, he never took advantage of it. He never loved His father enough to use what his father had for his good. God has so much for us to use for building up the good in ourselves enough so that by our holy living we can in turn help others become holy. Each of us is uniquely gifted and God gives us the Church, Her Sacraments (especially, Confession and the Eucharist), Her Saints, and Her Doctrines to become perfect as Her Heavenly Father is perfect. Her goal is to make us more like God. That is why the Son became man. By His taking on a human nature while still maintaining His Divine Personhood we could one day have a perfect human nature well enough to participate in the Divine Personhood of the Triune God. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 460.) Her goal is that we can embrace the Father, because He is our Father too. We must be bold enough to ask for His graces (His gifts) using it for the benefit of becoming Holy so that the world may know the love and goodness of God. That way no one can possibly take their faith for granted like the older son nor squander it like the younger son in wayward living.

For I became Catholic to become Holy. I became Catholic because I love it. So, love it. She is the truest means of salvation. All the Father has given through His Only-Begotten Son is yours. So, take advantage of the grace of the Holy Spirit to do good things in this life so that you can be supremely happy in the next.

 

 

Kyle George is a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of New Orleans studying at Notre Dame Seminary. He enjoys writing about spirituality, love, and how to be a better Catholic.

Love to all!

-Tani

The Blessing Chest

Those of you who have been following me for more than a few months may have noticed I’ve been in a pretty sad place for a while. My hands are getting pretty bad, and I save them for academic writing above blogging. The blogging I do do is usually reserved for the blogs like Epic Pew and The Catholic Response, which I have made monthly commitments to. That leaves Surrender the Brownies with the dregs, the sad and personal things that I can’t put anywhere else, and the posts that are fueled more by passion than commitment.

A year ago, I posted about advent continuing past Christmas. I’ve felt like that for the whole year, the waiting for God, the anger that He hasn’t come yet. I found a lot of things to dread and kind of forgot to look for the good in bad situations. I was always worried about everything, even to the point of having panic attacks with alarming regularity. 2015 was a difficult advent year, but I’ve got a feeling that 2016 is going to finally be the year of Christmas.

Not that Christmas happens right away, of course. It’s a gradual process. So to aid in that process I’ve decided to start a blessing chest.

How it looks on my desk right now

The idea is that, every day, I look for one blessing (at least) and, every night, I write it down to put into the chest. I’ve been doing it since I arrived here at Franciscan University on the 12th. It’s really helped me start each day happily; instead of dreading whatever bad things might happen, I look forward to finding the good things. Often, there’ll be so many during the day that I’ll have trouble picking just one to write down. I didn’t expect this at all. Yeah, bad things keep happening during the day- currently, I’m writing on a dislocated wrist (owch) after walking up a steep hill (owch) just to find that one of my favorite classes was cancelled (owch!) But I know that sometime today, I’m going to find a blessing worth writing down, something amazing and special, a gift from God. That makes every day a treasure hunt of goodness, thus the treasure chest I’m using.

This is how I’m going to find my joyful self again, and I encourage everyone else to try something similar, too. You don’t have to use a treasure chest, but do try to find one thing every day (especially on the bad days) that you can be thankful for. It’ll brighten your entire day, and that’s a gift worth having!

Love to all!

~Tani

2015 blogging year in review

And here we are again! Another year has flown by, and it’s been a year full of changes and growing up. Goodbye, 2015!

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,800 times in 2015. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Be Not Afraid, For I Bring You Glad Tidings of… Confession?

 

What? Confession? Glad? If you’re like so many Catholics, even otherwise orthodox ones, the idea of confession can often fill you with dread. You need to talk to another, powerful, person about what a failure you’ve been, about how much you’ve fallen short of the glory of God, and that’s absolutely terrifying. Yes, you’re receiving grace from the sacrament, but is it worth the panic and the mortification?

Get out your Bible study hats, brownie-bites, it’s time to dive into a Bible story that suddenly jumped at me today as a really super-good reason to never fear Confession again. And it even has to do with our present Advent season!

You might guess from the title of this post what the story is, or you could just click the embedded link above. Either way, let’s take a close look at Luke 2:8-20 and the incredible story of Christmas night.

Let’s start with those shepherds. Shepherds were outcasts, for the most part. They wore weird clothes, they were dirt poor, and they smelled like sheep. They were weird and, if they went into the city, it was immediately obvious to everyone what they were. So here they are, alone, for the most part. Weird-looking. The least important people in the entire country… until that night.

Boom, crash! Giant angels appear in the sky! Now, everything the Bible says about angels says that they are terrifying. Literally every time they appear, they have to tell people to calm the hell down and not be afraid. And they appeared tonight, not to kings or to wise men (who just had a pretty star) and not to celebrities… but to stinky shepherds, shivering their way through another arduous night shift. The glory of God’s most beautiful creatures filled the sky, singing all together, and telling these seemingly worthless outcasts that God had come to earth and they were the very first to know; the VIPs of salvation with a meet-and-greet-pass to see the King of Kings! And not as a powerful, shiny, terrifying judge…. but as a baby.

Fragile, pink, whimpering, and as non-threatening as they come, the God of the universe had become a human, and the first humans He wanted to meet were the ones who thought themselves completely unworthy of human contact right then. He didn’t call for them to put on royal robes and bathe first, and He didn’t wait until they were perfect to call them to Himself. No, He sent His messengers to them when they were at their most normal, most awful selves. He wanted them to come to Him right then, even though it meant walking through the city. He had no judgement or shame for their state, because He had joined that state expressly for the purpose of meeting them and forgiving their sins, turning the outcasts into sons. He didn’t ask for grand gestures or sweeping bows, but delighted in the simple praise of a bunch of uneducated animal wranglers.

And you know what? It’s the same Jesus now as it was then. The same unthreatening, loving baby waits in the person of the priest as waited in a manger, for all of us outcasts to come to Him and see firsthand His humble glory. For all of our fears, our worry that we’ll be in the confessional too long, our terror that Father will get impatient with us for confessing too long or too much or not enough, we’re still called.

We doubt, we fear, and we stink of sin. But the angels still call us to come and see Christ, and give glorious testimony to the fact that He’s here to save us from that sin! Padre Pio testified that angels gather around the altar at Mass and the tabernacle, giving witness to Christ’s coming in the sacraments. So don’t fear! This is the good news of great joy, and it’s time for us to get up and go to Him who is waiting for us.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to those upon whom His favor rests!

Love to all, and Merry Christmas!

-Tani

 

 

 

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When I Say I Understand Your Pain…

When I say I understand your pain…

I’m not saying that our pains are the same.

I’m not saying that your pain is less than mine.

I’m not trying to one-up or compare myself to you.

I’m not trying to be condescending or pitying.

What I *am* doing is trying to give you what I really, really wish people would give to me, and that’s love. I don’t want people to say they exactly understand my exact pain, but I want to hear that I’m not alone in being in pain. I want to know I’m not the only one who’s vulnerable and scared, not the only one who knows what it’s like to beg God for death and yet beg Him to let you live, that I’m not totally lost in the dark of suffering. I want to know that I’m still lovable and connectable even when I feel totally dark and scared and hurt.

Pain is isolating, precisely because it’s so unique to its victims. And that isolation can sometimes drive people to do awful things, so I try to not be alone with it by trying to make sure nobody else is alone in it. And ultimately, I want to point people to the one person who can understand exactly what pain we’re in, because He knows everything about us. Thankfully, He also understands what it means to suffer. I understand the state of pain, but Christ understands the exact particulars. So I’m not saying I’m just like you. I’m saying He’s just like us.

A lot of people think of the words “take up your cross and follow me” (Matt 16:24) as a scary abstraction. They find the idea of a cross terrifying, because crosses are rightly seen as instruments of torture and despair. Even Christ begged to be let out of His passion! Crosses are scary, and following Jesus means more than even just a crucifixion. It means being crucified even after intense suffering, like the icing on a particular awful cake. It means carrying a cross on a back that’s been torn apart by whips, with bruised knees and a broken nose and absolute exhaustion in body and soul, and then STILL being killed on it. Crosses seem so hopeless. But they still have a small hope in them, that after the way of the cross ends, there’s always a resurrection. We’re not called to not be afraid of our crosses, especially those of us whose crosses are more literal, because crosses will always be terrifying. We’re called to have hope, even in the middle of that fear, that the cross is what’s going to get us to heaven. It’s a scary road, but it’s the only one we can follow if we ever want to be happy.

I don’t want to understand your pain. I don’t want you to really understand mine. I want all of us to understand His, because He’s the only one who understands ours. And, if we can understand His, we understand that all pain eventually leads us to somewhere painless, if we follow Him on that road. My love is imperfect, and selfish, and weak. His is not. But if my pitiful love can get someone, anyone, to understand His a little better, then it isn’t totally useless.

I have a lot of thoughts about suffering, and those thoughts shouldn’t be discounted merely because I haven’t felt literally every kind of suffering the world has to offer. But my own experiences do give me the ability to speak about pain in general, and especially about the One who makes all pain worthwhile. No, I cannot claim to know exactly what you’re feeling or why, but I can offer to share what little hope I’ve found on my way of the cross. That’s what I’m saying.

(Note: This is going to be the first in a series in which I respond to three things I hear a lot. The first is that I can’t say I understand other people’s pain, the second is that I’m too happy to really be hurt, and the third is that people think they can’t talk about their problems around me because mine are so big. These all require answers so that I don’t hurt anyone, and nobody hurts me. So keep your eyes open for more!) 

Love to all!

~Tani

The Man Who Taught Me To Pray

“For prayer is nothing else than being on terms of friendship with God.” -St. Theresa of Avila 

This is Bill.

He wears green in front of green things.

Bill was my youth minister for Life Teen all through High School. Bill is the stepfather of one of my best friends. Bill is the husband of the lovely lady who makes the best macaroni and cheese in creation. Bill drives a big truck, he can’t really sing (though he tries) and he always commands absolute respect by his mere presence in a room, though he never acts pompous or mean about his role as leader. He’s well-loved by just about everyone in the entire world. He’s a pretty awesome guy.

But the best thing about Bill is that Bill is also the person who taught me how to pray, without ever even meaning to.

I already knew what to pray, of course. I knew the basics, how to say a Hail Mary, how to ask God for what I wanted as my family sat together during morning and night prayers. To me, that was prayer- the scheduled, formalized, and phrases that I oft-repeated until they became almost meaningless, sure that that was how one talked to God. At Life Teen, all prayers followed a pretty regular outline of Hail Marys and St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle-s. Sometimes, someone would ask for a particular intention, and everyone would nod and say “amen,” and maybe shake the person’s hand afterward and promise their continued prayers. In that comfortable state of spiritual complacency, I felt that my prayer life was solid and didn’t need to improve any more at all.

Then came the Virtuous Reality Life Teen in March of 2012. I wrote an overview of it then, but the whole learning to pray bit was at the very end of the retreat, in the last two hours, so I really didn’t mention it. When we left the retreat center, I ended up in the truck with Bill and a few others. Since retreats are exhausting, the other teens pretty quickly fell asleep in the back. I had my headphones in and was dozing in the front seat when, in the space between two songs, I heard Bill quietly talking. I turned down the music, and heard him having a conversation. He spoke chattily, like he was just talking with an old friend. It was only when I heard him thanking the person for a green light that I realized he was praying- but praying like I had never heard anyone pray before. He spoke to God like he knew Him; not with bored familiarity, but with joy and security in the presence of the Other. He thanked God for even the tiny things around him, like the view, and for the success of the retreat. He was talking like there was nobody in the world besides Bill and God.

St. Alphonsus Liguori once said that:

Your God is ever beside you—indeed, He is even within you. “In Him we live, and move, and are.” (Acts 17:28). Not only is there no need of an intermediary through whom He would want you to speak to Him, but He finds His delight in having you treat with Him personally and in all confidence. Speak to Him often of your business, your plans, your troubles, your fears—of everything that concerns you. But above all, converse with Him confidently and frankly; for God is not wont to speak to a soul that does not speak to Him.”

Since that day, that quote has always reminded me of Bill, and every time I read it (and, since it’s one of my favorite quotes from one of my patron saints, I read it a lot) I say a quick thank you to God for blessing me with this incredible role model. I pray like he does, now, too, and gosh does it ever make a difference in life to not feel like you have to say thees and thous in order to make God hear you. God loves us and is interested in us, and so it should be the most natural thing in the world to just talk to Him like a friend. I can talk to God in the good times and the bad times and the bored in-between times, and He’s always as new and interesting and involved as the very first time we talked. That’s the cool thing about having an infinite God. He’s infinitely interesting and eternally available.

Bill had to move to another parish recently, and so I probably won’t be seeing him very often at all. But, on the off chance he ever reads this, I thought he and the world should know that he completely revolutionized my prayer life, and I’m incredibly grateful to him. Also, I owe him some peanut butter cookies, so there’s that.

Love to all!

-Tani

I Feel Nothing for the Planned Parenthood Videos

I’ve been struggling with writing this for the past few weeks, since I watched the first vid and realized that it wasn’t making me cry or throw up like so many other people claimed to have done. I thought it was just a fluke, until I watched the third video, which depicted the corpse of an aborted fetus being dissected while doctors discussed how much they could profit from selling the remains. I watched, and I felt… nothing.

It wasn’t precisely a nothing of apathy, but it was just a total absence of feeling. I saw tiny legs, a clear spinal column, and I just felt cold and dead. I didn’t sob. I didn’t rage in anger for the death of all abortionists. I watched, the same way I’ve watched videos depicting the horrors of the Holocaust, and felt a total lack of feeling, a void. Mathematically speaking, my feelings could have been measured in negative numbers as I watched the vid. I turned it off, closed my laptop, and walked away, still feeling nothing.

Many of my friends talked to me later about the vids, talking about how they couldn’t stop vomiting or that they sobbed for hours, if not days, about what they saw. Some were so traumatized that they shook uncontrollably, or so enraged that they started hypothetically discussing the idea of simply bombing all the abortion clinics they could find. These videos have evoked massive reactions in people, and they should. What they depict is so hugely evil that any normal, sane person should feel these emotions when faced with them. And I’m not sure what that makes me. Abnormal? Insane? Jaded? Part of the problem?

I feel like part of the problem. It’s usually the people who don’t feel anything in a situation who let horrible things happen, and I don’t want to be one of them. I wish I could throw up, or cry, or scream, or throw things, or even write impassioned blog posts about how horrible apathetic people like me are. But I can’t. I will keep fighting to end abortion, no matter what my feelings (or lack thereof) may be, don’t worry about that. It’s still an evil, and it still hurts God and hurts innocent human beings. So this confession might be rather meaningless, in the end, except to possibly confirm what some friends have told me already, that something is very wrong with Tani Federoff and she needs help. I might even be horribly selfish, to be worrying about what I feel when innocent children are being torn apart and sold. I thank the one friend who suggested that this was just a defense mechanism in my brain to keep me from fully understanding what the videos show, which makes me feel incredibly pathetic, but not actually insane.

I don’t understand why I don’t feel, and I’m sorry. I want to beg the forgiveness of the soul of the baby shown in the video, who is undoubtedly happy with God now, if me not feeling anything when faced with his tiny, broken body hurts him in any way. I’ll continue to march and to witness for life, until abortion is outlawed and hopefully gone forever, even if it means marching with no feelings at all. Because being pro-life isn’t about having feelings. Our marches aren’t fueled by fleeting emotions. We fight, not because we feel like it, but because it’s the right thing to do, for the sake of every single unborn child and their human family.

Love to all.

-Tani

Let’s Pray a Novena for Tsarnaev

Readers, this is not a post about current events, not really. It is not a rant for or against the death penalty, nor is it a vilification of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the young man who set off a bomb at the Boston Marathon and was this week sentenced to death. This is just a plea for prayer for a very lost young man who desperately needs to find Christ.

In 1887, a murderer by the name of Pranzini was sentenced to death in France. This widely publicized story was seen by a young girl named Thérèse Martín, who had a deep devotion to the mercy and love of Christ. She began storming the heavens for the repentance and conversion of the murderer, instead of rejoicing over his death. She kept what was really important in mind- not that a man was dying, but that a man could die without accepting Christ. And then, as Pranzini was mounting the scaffold to be executed, he asked for a crucifix, so that he could kiss the wounds of Christ in repentance for his wrongs. St. Thérèse’s prayers had worked! The man had been saved!

And that, Christians, should be our example. No matter whether we believe that Tsarnaev should die or live, we should all be praying as hard as we can that he will repent. We absolutely cannot claim to be on the side of justice if we don’t see Tsarnaev, or any other criminal, as human– as someone made in the image and likeness of God, made for heaven, and then pray with all our hearts that he makes it there. So today, and for the next nine days, I’m asking everyone who reads this to pray a novena to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, for the salvation of the soul of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I’m including the novena prayers here for easy reference (or you can be like me and print them out to tape beside your bed!)

“Glorious St. Therese, whom Almighty God has raised up to aid and inspire the human family, I implore your Miraculous Intercession. You are so powerful in obtaining every need of body and spirit from the Heart of God. Holy Mother Church proclaims you “Prodigy of Miracles… the greatest saint of Modern Times.” Now I fervently beseech you to answer my petition (mention here) and to carry out your promises of spending heaven doing good on earth… of letting fall from Heaven a Shower of Roses. Little Flower, give me your childlike faith, to see the Face of God in the people and experiences of my life, and to love God with full confidence. St. Therese, my Carmelite Sister, I will fulfill your plea “to be made known everywhere” and I will continue to lead others to Jesus through you ~ Amen.

O Little Therese of the Child Jesus,please pick for me a rose from the heavenly gardens and send it to me as a message of love.O Little Flower of Jesus,ask God to grant the favors I now place with confidence in your hands… (Mention specific requests)… St. Therese, help me to always believe as you did in God’s great love for me,so that I might imitate your “Little Way” each day.~Amen~

Love to all!

-Tani

Why Having Womynpriests Would Actually Destroy the Church

And now it is time, once again, for me to totally flout my feminist nature and probably insult a whole bunch of people. Who’s the target this time? Is it vegans? Fat-positive SJWs?

Gender-Role-Nonconforming Polar Bears?

 

No, dear readers. Today, I am going to deliver a total biblical smackdown on so-called women priests. All joking aside, for people who claim to be following Christ, these ladies sure do seem to enjoy insulting Him. Why, you ask? Well, really, saying that Christ intended to call women to the priesthood is calling Him a liar and even, to an extent, denying His very divinity —which I know is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but let me explain.

 

So, let’s get metaphysical. God is Truth. As a being of pure infinity, He is not only simple truth, but infinite Truth. There is no truth that is truth-ier than God. He Himself says that “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’” (John 14:6) The idea of God being pure, perfect Truth is also echoed by others in the Bible, like St. Paul, who said, “…even if everyone else is a liar, God is true.” (Romans 3:4) Deuteronomy 32:4 calls Him “God of truth, without iniquity.” (Iniquity means being grossly unfair, unkind, or untrue, for you people not schooled in fancy words. Which means me, because yes, I had to google the definition.)

As the great Flannery O’Connor once said, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” God is unchanging and unchangeable, as a being outside of time and space. Because He is unchanging and unchangeable, His truth is also unchanging and unchangeable (hanging with me so far?) no matter what people might think or say about it. God can say nothing but the pure, absolute truth, because dishonesty would be completely against His nature.

 

Even the enemies of Christ recognized this, when, in Matthew 22:16, the Pharisees say, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.” And they were right. Christ never really cared about popular opinion. He was born of an unmarried virgin, hung out with prostitutes and Gentiles, claimed He was God, and commanded people to eat His body. He wasn’t the kind of person to avoid breaking cultural norms when they conflicted with His mission. Christ intended for men and only men to be priests. A common justification for women priests is that Jesus always intended to make women priests, but the cultural norms of the day prevented Him from doing so. But that implies that Christ obscured the truth to appease the people, which He had never done for any other facet of the Catholic faith, including for things far more important to the faith than a female priesthood.

 

Since God cannot be untruthful, saying that Christ was deliberately dishonest denies that He is God, and also throws into doubt any and all of His other claims. If He lied about wanting women to be priests (and refusing to be completely truthful is a form of lying), then who is to say He didn’t lie about the primacy of Peter, on which we base the Church? Or the forgiveness of sins? Or even the Eucharist? If Christ is dishonest, then He is not God. If He is not God, then we do not have any reason to have a Church. And if we do not have a Church, why would we need priests, of any gender, at all?

Women priests- a crime against truth, God, and fashion

 

So, there we have it. Saying that Christ intended, but did not carry out this plan, to ordain women to the priesthood actually completely undermines the very Church that womenpriests want to run. Those who say that they are justified in wanting a female priesthood claim they only want equality, but this is not a matter of equality, but of truth. It is true that women are equal to men in terms of dignity, humanity, and redeemability. It is not true that we are exactly the same and that God wishes us to perform the same tasks. And to try to circumvent God’s truth will only leave you outside the Church, worshipping not God… but only yourself.

Take that, New York Times.

Love to all!

-Tani