Happy Pentecost!/ 50 Day mission complete

Happy Pentecost everyone!

WE MADE IT!  ALLELUIA! 

A little less than 50 posts later ( I missed a few days!) we have arrived at the end of the Easter season.  The mission of this blog was to post about joy for 50 days and celebrate Easter by writing.  I think there have been one or two good reflections and a lot of filler in between but it was a valuable celebration of Easter for me! 

A lot can change in 50 days. And I think I've changed a little.  Doing this blog made me try and find anything that was going on in my life, whether it was painful or stressful or any -ful and find the joy in it.  That's the main thing I've learned: there is joy in everything and God re-makes all things.  Even suffering can lead to joy.  

I pray to the Holy Spirit on this Pentecost that you and I all be filled with the Spirit of God and may use the gifts given us to spread the Gospel.  This blog was part of a daily writing routine that I hoped to establish and, since God has given me an ability to write I hope to nurture it even more in the coming year.  

I will no longer be posting daily but hopefully will do one more reflective and deeper post a week.  But I will be writing daily, hopefully two hours or three pages a day.  I'm making this semi-public on this blog to hold myself accountable.  May the Holy Spirit guide me in writing and in this new teacher position I was just hired for. 

God love you all! Remember to live your life abundantly in Christ this day!  

Be joyful and have a wonderful day! 

~OneCatholicGuy

Old search items

Today I was on facebook and needed to search for something.  I forget if it was a brand I liked or someone from elementary school or anything important.  It doesn't really matter.  What does matter is the second I typed in a letter a suggestion came up.  It was a suggestion for a questionable page that I had requested be removed from Facebook because someone invited me to it and it was not appropriate for facebook. Because I had visited the page when I requested it be removed, it pops up in my search bar now permenantly.

This is a weird little facebook quirk that many people online have complained about.  Very often in the complaints it is the person saying that they searched for their ex and they don't want their current significant other to see that search as a suggestion.  It seems frequency isn't the main reason for it being suggested but still some old stuff gets dragged up right in front of our eyes next to the little magnifying glass.

This can be a moment of temptation.  Should I look at this page, this person's profile, this thing I looked at once only fleetingly? You cannot change these suggestions or delete them in any way.  You're stuck with what they give you.  Sometimes it may be a past sin that you're looking at, or the profile of someone that you hurt by accident or on purpose.  But there it is, right in front of you.  What do you do with that?

I think that more than a temptation it can be an opportunity of grace and humility- both on and off facebook.  Very often in our lives we are reminded, sometimes daily, of a big mistake we've made or an offense committed or a stupid action done for no reason.  Those reminders should not be a way of beating ourselves up.  If we've sinned and been forgiven, those things are in the past.  But, like all sin, their consequences and effects still can haunt our present.  The ghosts of old search items may plague our minds if we do not give them over to God and say, "these were my mistakes.  This is where I've gone wrong.  Left on my own to search, I will seek things for myself which will lead to my self-destruction.  You are the way, the truth and the Life.  You are what I truly seek God.  Help me to seek you always, and to put the past in the past."

These reminders certainly can test us or even trick us into thinking we are the same person we are now as we were when we searched for them.  But we are not.  We are the person God has made us today.  When you're tempted to look at an ex, remember who you are now, not the person in a faded relationship from the early annals of facebook.  When you are tempted to look at a page that could cause you to stumble down a rabbithole into sin, remember that rabbithole is a tomb that Christ has overcome.  God will give you the grace to avoid the hole but you need to take the opportunity to go around it.

There is no strength to be found in facing your biggest weaknesses head on alone.  We are often weak and will fail and fall into bad habits.  Go at it with God, and avoid the near occasion.  Don't let the old search items take up any more of your thoughts than they deserve. Stick to your guns and walk away, you'll much more surely win the fight.

God bless you all and keep you on the right path!


~OCG

French fries

Today I had many happy moments, accepted a new job, got to watch puppies playing, saw family and friends. But the happiest moment for me was the two minutes I got to see my fiancée and share a few French fries. That is the joy that sticks out on an eventful day, because even on the biggest day of my life, my true joy is to be with her. Ketchup or no ketchup. 

~ OCG

An offer I can't refuse

Today's joy is a brief personal one: after many months in a job search I've finally been offered a full time job! I am so grateful that God has provided me this opportunity and am especially grateful that it is in a surprising bit of a career change! 

Thank you God!

~ OCG

Making Gravy- Why Pasta unites us

Today my house is very busy as we are making some sauce, sausage and meatballs.  It's a unique smell that fills the air and a unique joy that fills your heart and stomach when a family cooks together.  Cooking is a process that is part science, part art, and a large part genealogy.

Recipes are passed down through the generations and only those who are blood relatives or marry into the family get to share in the secrets that make children smile and grown men cry, "Molto bene!".

The uniting factor of food is something God intimately uses in creating His family with His Bride the Church.  From the earliest days, Christ shared meals with His disciples.  He met some of them for the first time at the seashore where they were fishing.  He brought all of them to celebrate at a wedding feast at Cana before He started His ministry.  He fed 5000 and more with a few loaves and fishes.

Most important to the unity of the family is a family dinner.  We all lead hectic lives, ranging between relationships and states, both mental, spiritual and, in my case, geographical.  The family dinner is when everyone sits at one table and shares one meal.  And in that sharing of the meal they share everything: their troubles, joys, laughs, griefs.  Food is a flash point of our familial existence inside and outside of the frying pan of temperaments family's can be.

Jesus unites us in one universal meal at the mass.  He offers Himself up as the meal that satisfies, the true food and true drink of our humanity.  We are united in Him not only as our priest, our King, our God, but our very sustenance.  He is the very food that gives us life, and life eternal.  It is in the Eucharist that the Catholic Church is truly united as a family around one table which also serves as an altar of sacrifice.

God's love within the Blessed Trinity is familial and it's appropriate and beautiful that He chose a family meal as the sacrificial remembrance of Jesus' Passion.  As I sit and enjoy this time with my family, I am grateful to God I have them in my life, that we have this time together before I get married, and that I will have the opportunity to someday soon have my own family.  Blessed be God forever in His Trinity and may He bless all your families this day!

God love you!

~OneCatholicGuy

PS: The meatballs are really good!