Miss Walter's Words: Testimony of Light

"He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb, and he will turn many of the Children of Israel to the Lord their God." - Luke 1:15-16

I think I’ve found my new mantra.

Just the other night I was praying from my Magnificat and came upon a verse that I believe I have overlooked quite a few times. It is a verse from John chapter 1 verses 6-8 that talks about the coming of John the Baptist. It is written: “[John] was not the light, but came to testify to the light.”

As simple and factual as this may seem, this verse is packed with an important message for the ministry of our lives. We are not the light, but come to testify to the light. John the Baptist was not the messiah, as firmly stated. He was a prophetic man who dedicated his life to preparing the way for Jesus. He devoted his entire existence to the Kingdom, to testifying to the truth. There are two main things that we can draw from this verse, starting with the idea that we, like John, are not the light.

“[John] was not the light…]

It’s not uncommon to notice more selfishness than selflessness in the world around us. Much of the society we live in tends to lean more towards the idea of simply bettering ourselves and remaining inwardly focused. In a way, we treat ourselves as if we are the light. Even if we don’t, there is still the trap of idolization to fall into (which I must admit I have at points) in which we treat our fellow humans as if they are the light. We are not the light, but rather, all glory, goodness, all spark of kindness or genius is ignited in us by the Holy Spirit. We do not singularly carry our power or ability to do things, but rather must turn in thanksgiving to the God Who made us. Acknowledging Him as the light is what we should aspire to do in all situations and storms of life, rather than relying entirely on our own power or that of others. This is the calling of every Christian; to pave the way for Christ to come into our lives by first acknowledging Him as the light.

[…but came to testify to the light]

Since God has created our entire existence, we have no higher responsibility than to spend eternity praising Him for it. We are here to testify to the light, to call Jesus in to tap into the inner well of identity that has been buried within each of us. We are called to be love. We are here to be His, to discover the origin of our identity in Him and to draw other souls to Christ. This is not just an imprinted loyalty, but something much deeper that is woven into the very fibers of our being. We are here on this earth to turn all things over to Christ through praise. We are His people, His souls, and His children; a calling to which there is none higher. In the simplest form we, like John the Baptist, are called to live our lives so that we testify to Christ in everything we do.

Let us meditate on this verse as a basic outline for our mission to live for Christ.

I am not the light, but come to testify to the light.

Vocations: The Holy Adventure

"All of us can attain to Christian virtue and holiness, no matter in what condition of life we live and no matter what our life work may be."

 - Saint Francis de Sales


I'm pretty sure I'm called to be married, very, very quite sure. There was one summer where I thought I was called to the priesthood, but a very good friend of mine who knows me incredibly well told me that, though it'd be awesome if I became a priest, I shouldn't put marriage out of the question, especially because of my history of having problems with a fickle heart, or at least being prone to having crushes easily. I listened to her, and this 30th is me and Julie's first year anniversary, and she and I both are very sure that God wants us specifically with each other. There is still the possibility that He doesn't, but we've both prayed a lot about it so far, and we're always hopeful that He's calling us to marriage together someday.

Now, I know next to nothing about the priesthood and religious life and the single life (vocation-wise). I've read some of "Love and Responsibility" and the "Theology of the Body" talks, and I've always been fascinated by the vocation to marriage, even before I came into the Church. But I was thinking about vocations the other day at work because I had been thinking about ways to sanctify grounds-keeping for the Lord in ways other than trying to hear myself praying over a leaf-blower, and I kept getting an idea into my head:

More than anything, we are called to holiness, whatever we do and no matter where we are, no matter the situation we're in.

I don't mean holiness in the sense of the fantastic things you hear about in the lives of the saints. Some people may end up doing amazing, miraculous things like the saints, but often we're simply given our daily tasks, our responsibilities, our vocation. Our normal, often tedious, things we need to do are where most of us will be able to strive for holiness the most.

I had an English teacher once who, when we were discussing Graham Greene's book, "The Power and the Glory" (a book about a "whisky priest" who learns to get past despair), told us about three "levels" of vocations. The first is our vocation to Christ, that we are called to live out our whole lives as His disciples more and more fully as time passes, as we hopefully grow closer to Him. The second is our "state of life" vocation; marriage, priesthood, religious life, single-life. The third is our occupational vocation(s), whether its as a part-time student and grounds-keeper like myself, as a teacher, as a therapist, a physicist, however we work everyday. What's important is that the second and the third levels are supposed to help us with the first; that is, we grow in holiness by working hard and lovingly in our occupation and state of life for the sake of our life in Christ.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that no matter who we are, we all have the "universal call to holiness", and we all have our vocations that guide us along the path to holiness, and holiness is really, more than anything else, growing in love with Jesus more and more as we work, as we live with our spouse, as we live as a priest, in the religious life, as we live consecrated, no matter what.

Perseverance: Move Forward Through Love

"The more a man loves, the more he fights for what he loves." - Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen

I once read a manga (Japanese comic books, for those of you who don't know) in which the main character, a ten year old boy wizard from England, was sent to be a teacher in Japan. The main focus of the story was his trying to become a good teacher and at the same time become a stronger wizard so he could find his father, who everyone thought had died ten years before the story takes place. The boy becomes stronger, and at one point in the story acquires a special power to be able to fight even the strongest of enemies, but with his new power comes a lot of pain and suffering. 

However, one of the main themes throughout the entire manga is that no matter what hardships the boy faces, he ends up defeating them, learning from them, growing and improving from them. He meets and grows with both old and new companions, many who share in his sufferings because they help him so much, and they help to make him stronger to reach his goal; they all stride forward together, and in the end he finds his father and rescues him. 

There was something the boy's master once told him that really shows this theme; "You must continue moving forward, even if you're covered in mud." Even though the boy experiences extremely painful hardships, he gets up and lives through all of them, continuing to fight and persevere through everything to get to his goal.

St. Paul writes "But we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us." (Romans 5:3-5) We all experience some form of suffering in our lives, some form of trials and tribulations, something or someone that has, does, or will cause us pain. Maybe we have a crisis of faith, or a loved one dies, or we had a bad breakup, or we have a disorder or affliction that makes life tough for us. Oftentimes it's the small things we get anxious about or fight about or screw up or think we've screwed up. We often run away from things that might cause us pain and suffering, and they are certainly not good in an of themselves! However, our trials, our tortures, our pains and sufferings can produce good if we let God help us with them, help us run, walk, and even sometimes crawl, bruised and bloody, through the mud of the world.

My point is that, no matter what comes our way, we know we can persevere in Christ our Lord, just as He persevered "even to death on a Cross" (Philippians 2:8). God made us in His image, with His intellect and will, and the will He's given us must be used to fight through everything. This faith we have lets us persevere to search for our loving God, even if it's been a long time since we've been with Him or talked to Him or even thought about Him. Our hearts are designed to fight for what we love, to move through the muck and mud of the world, of sin, of fear and anxiety, of despair, even when we feel like the darkness covers us completely, onward to our God, the One Who pulls us out of the mud into His merciful, joyful arms.

So may we all have faith, hope, and love always, to fight for all three, to fight through our sufferings, finding our power in Christ, striding forward with all of our companions that we meet along the way, and finally reaching the goal of God Himself. We are made to fight, and in Christ we can, even, or rather, especially on our crosses.

Dearly Beloved: Kingdom Hearts and the Love of God

"Pure love ... knows that only one thing is needed to please God: to do even the smallest things out of great love - love, and always love." - Divine Mercy in My Soul, St. Faustina


I really, really, really like the video game series "Kingdom Hearts".

Don't worry, this isn't going to be a rant of the greatness and majesty of the game series (especially because all greatness and majesty belongs to God). However, there is something amazing about this series that is in every one of its games, or at least the ones I've played (and it'll probably be in the one coming out this year!); the concept of love.

From a video game, you wouldn't normally expect the Christian concept of love. It'd more likely be the view of the world, that love is some mysterious force we can't understand shouldn't try to, or, even worse, that love is simply a feeling that happens to people. However, Kingdom Hearts doesn't do this!

In the first game (spoilers ahead, but this is the internet, so whatever), Sora, the main character, is presented with a choice; either lose the person he's been trying to rescue the whole game (one of his two best friends, a girl named Kairi), or become a Heartless, people without hearts transformed into creatures of darkness. In the end, even with Kairi's pleading for him to save himself, Sora decides to become a Heartless to save her. Then, in Kingdom Hearts 2, he and Riku, his other best friend, save the world from the Nobodies but get trapped inside the "Realm of Darkness". Recently, I've been thinking about how much this sounds like 2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made Him Who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God." Christ took on all of our sin so we wouldn't have to die from it anymore.

Now, I know you might be thinking that this all sounds rather silly. "A video game teaching us about the love of God, the love of Christ? Ridiculous!" However, this game series, especially the two noted above, show us something very, very important, something that all of us tend to forget really often; love is, first and foremost, the sacrificing of yourself, in whatever ways you do so, by your time and talents, by your giving up of distractions and pride, for the joy, the happiness, the GOOD of the beloved. The Father sent us His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, for this purpose, for us to be saved from sin and death and to be united to He Who is Goodness Itself again! "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that those who believe in Him might not perish but have eternal life."(John 3:16) At the foot of the Cross, and at the stone rolled away, we see the sacrificial redemption for our good, that God loves us more than we can ever imagine.

There's a song in the Kingdom Hearts series called, "Dearly Beloved" that plays at the start menu of each major game, and I think the placement of that is important. You mostly play as Sora in the games (with a few exceptions, but the characters are always similar), and the focus of the game is always on his quest to save the world, and that quest starts with a song called, "Dearly Beloved"; Christ saved the world, and He did it for His dearly beloved: Us!

Dearly beloved of Christ our Lord, we're all supposed to love like God does; sacrificially for the good of each other. May we all live solely for that, as heroes and heroines in this story of salvation by our God!

Please pray for each other, everyone, and please pray for me as well!

Patience: Virtue and Love in Time

“Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.”


It's been more than a month, so please forgive me! I beg all of you readers; please pray for me!


Patience.

It's a fundamental virtue that is found in all three of the three theological virtues and in the four cardinal virtues and is necessary to truly have all of them. Prudence requires patience because wisdom requires the humility found in knowing that we can do nothing without God and that even with Him we can do nothing except by His schedule for everything. Justice requires patience because giving and receiving one's due requires the knowledge of what that due is and the wisdom to make the best decisions. Temperance requires patience because it's restraining ourselves so we can more adhere to God's plan for us. Courage requires patience because we need to know and wait for the right times to show the strength given to us by God.

But the theological virtues require patience even more!

Faith needs patience because we all need to be able to be still as we let God fight our battles for us (Exodus 14:14). At Mass I was at once, the priest giving the homily gave everyone a phrase to remember; "Faith is God's work in us to which we respond." It's often so difficult to remember that God is working in us constantly, and because we're fallen, we want things and events, especially help from God, as soon as possible. But God's plans for us take time, lots and lots of time, so we need to learn patience from Him to have true faith.

The second theological virtue, hope, is all about patience! So many people don't have hope, and this is partly because none of us are good at being patient, or at least not as well as God desires for us. He wants everyone to have hope in Him, and because His plans can take years, lifetimes, even centuries perhaps, He wants us to be patient with Him and each other, especially to be able to do the third theological virtue and the most important one; love.

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Luke 10:17) The Lord Jesus Christ tells us to love God and each other, and this is impossible without patience. Without patience, we can only think ourselves, about when we're going to get what we want. St. Paul tells us that "love is patient" (1 Corinthians 13:4), that "it... always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians 13:7). Love requires us to think outside of time, outside of our own desires, and into God's time, into what He desires for us and everyone else, especially those around us that we're called to love (hint: it's everyone). Love requires patience because giving ourselves to each other and receiving each other's time and talents takes time. It takes time to get used to each other, it takes time to do things for each other, it takes time to do things with each other, and it takes time to realize all of this.

I'm not very patient. I'm really horrible at it, actually, more than most people you know, most likely. If I'm ever confronted with a problem, whatever it is, I want to solve it as quickly as possible so I and others part of it can be done with it already. Some might say, "Oh, that's good, you're getting rid of the problems in your life." However, it more often than not causes more problems than I already had before trying to solve it! I need to learn to be patient so I can live and love as God wants me to, especially for those closest to me like my parents and my girlfriend. Along with God, they're the ones who have to deal with my impatience the most, and I know I'll love them better as I get better at being patient, and, more importantly, I'll get better at loving the God Who offers me the gift of patience constantly out of love for me, the God Who was patient when He said, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done", (Luke 22:42) and patient enough to die on a cross for everyone.

So let's all strive to be patient, persevering through whatever may come in our lives, whatever attacks we face, and let's all obey God as He asks us to have faith, hope, and love, all bound by patience.

All of you holy men and women, and all of you angelic hosts, and by the powerful intercession of Mary, Most Holy Mother of God, please pray for us!

All of you readers, please pray for me and for each other!