"A Living Prayer," Alison Krauss and Union Station: Wonderfully Catholic Sentiments

Here is a beautiful ballad, "A Living Prayer," sung by Alison Krauss with her band Union Station on the Tonight Show. The song was written by Ron Block, the man playing the guitar over Alison's left shoulder.

I can't help but think as I listen to the lyrics of this song, how Catholic it truly is.The sentiments behind wanting to be a "living prayer" to God as we go through life and wanting to live "inside the love the Father gives," are deeply Catholic. One could meditate and pray over these simple words with much benefit. Indeed, may we all strive, by the indwelling of the Spirit within us, to be a living prayer to the Father, learning to live inside His love in the way we care for others. The feeling behind these lyrics goes beyond seeing the loving deeds we do for others merely as a confirmation of the authenticity of our faith. These are the expressions of a heart that understands, on some level, that by being a living prayer in the way we give ourselves in love for other people, not only do we truly bring Christ to others through our own loving actions, as we do so, we ourselves also grow closer in personal intimacy to His heart.

The Human Being in Heaven: Body and Spirit Together, Not A Body Only

When we think of heaven (those who do not believe that the human being is obliterated at bodily death), how do we imagine the joy that is there?

We can't, of course, know with any degree of thoroughness what heaven is like (1 Cor 2:9). But we can come to understand at least a few things, dim though they may be.

What does this have to do with the reality expressed in the title of this post, that human persons are not only composed of a physical body, but of a spiritual soul integrally united with a body?

Here is how this relates: I suspect that oftentimes when people of faith ponder the idea of life in heaven, they  imagine the joy of heaven in an unbalanced and thus incomplete way. By this, I mean that I have a hunch that sometimes we imagine only, or mostly, physical sorts of pleasures and leave out spiritual pleasure. And when we do this, we are shortchanging ourselves, hoping for a heavenly hereafter that leaves out a very integral part of our human nature. (Perhaps men are more prone to this than women.)

If I am at all correct in this, I have a suggestion as to why. It is because our life here on this earth, at least for many Americans, is so occupied and concerned with physical, bodily pleasures and discomforts. We are hyper-sensitive to our physical state of sensation, a luxury made possible by our contemporary American way of life. We want the best foods, the most comfortable cars, the most comfortable chairs, nice smelling places, the most comfortable temperature, etc. So much of what we call the enjoyment of life has become excessively concerned with physical comforts. This, in turn, tends to make us forget, or diminish, the spiritual aspects of our lives as human beings. And so, when we imagine eternity, perhaps we tend to translate our physical comfort-oriented existence here below into our notion of heaven.

Why might this be a problem? (For indeed, I believe that it is.) It is a problem because it can lead, perhaps, to our leading an unbalanced life here on terra firma before we die. If we neglect the reality of our spiritual souls, giving excessive attention to our body, we will not be able to grow and flourish as human beings in the fullest way possible. We have minds that are made for truth and goodness, and hearts that yearn to delight in the realization of beauty. This is also a problem because it might cause us to think of heaven in a rather inadequate way. The joy of heaven is no mere endless physical pleasure, like a never-ending ice cream cone. It is not a heavenly massage or a perfect recliner chair. This would not fulfill our nature as human persons, creatures of spirit and body both.

Whatever will be the myriad enthralling mysteries of eternal bliss that we will only know when we arrive, by grace, at our final home, we can say this with confidence. The experience of eternal joy that awaits us will delight every aspect of our human nature as human beings to the fullest extent. We will have unimaginable joy and delight of heart, mind, spirit, soul, and body. Life in union with the blessed Trinity will fully actualize the highest capacity of our mind's desire for truth, our will's desire for goodness, our heart's desire for beauty and for union with another person who loves us, and our psyche's desire for complete wholeness and integral and full self-possession. The full, total, and integral reality of our being will be engaged as never before.

So, when you muse about what might await us after death, don't sell yourself short and think in a way that would only imagine us to be bodily creatures who sense and feel. Realize too, that we have the faculties of our human spirit. And that our whole person, as an integral unity of body and soul, will experience the utter delight, peace, and joy for which we yearn.

Selfishness and True Charity are Mutually Exclusive

Is it truly Christian to do a good thing for someone else because I am secretly looking forward to some sort of personal reward from God?

When Christians talk about performing a charitable service in the context of encouraging others to join them they often say, as an enticement, something like, "and you get back so much more than you give." While this may be true, I do not like how common this emphasis has become.

Sometimes such an exhortation primarily emphasizes the benefits to the charitable giver and the benefits to those in need only secondarily. The benefits to others are merely an afterthought. It's as though the person trying to encourage charitable behavior were saying, "If you want lots of spiritual benefits to come into your life, do good things for others. God likes this and will reward you for it. Oh, and by the way, other people benefit also."

This is not an appropriate attitude for anyone who genuinely seeks to imitate Jesus Christ. He did not seem to be the sort of person who said to Himself, "If I do this good thing for this person, yes he will benefit, but I will also get a big reward as well, so I think I'll do it." No. This sort of attitude is selfish and therefore far from the mind of Christ.

When we engage in doing something charitable for others, seeking benefits for ourselves should never be our primary motivation. The fact that we might experience personal spiritual fruits in the course of doing good deeds ought not be the foremost thing in our minds. If it is, our motivation for doing the good work is tainted. We have turned it into an act of selfishness.

When we do good things for others, we should not be thinking of ourselves. Rather, we should be thinking of the other person(s), and how much they, as a child of God, are worthy of our love and sacrifice. Our interior attitude as we perform charitable works should be other-centered, not self-centered. I should not care whether I will benefit when I do a good deed; I should care entirely about the others I am helping and how I can be of service to them.

In some Christian circles it is an all-too-common phenomenon to be mainly interested in the blessings we receive ourselves when we do good deeds for others. This is a perversion of the Christian faith, and is certainly not the example set for us by Christ. If we have to be enticed into loving others by the carrot of receiving a personal reward of whatever form, we have not even begun to comprehend what it means to imitate Christ. We should love because every human being is worthy of nothing less, no matter what happens to ourselves in the process, no matter the personal cost.

We Americans seem to be big on seeking rewards. But staying at this level, that of expecting a reward for everything we do, is ultimately childish. There comes a time when we must put childish things behind us, begin living more as adults and stop looking for rewards; and instead, seek to learn from Jesus how we might give more and more of ourselves away for the benefit of others.

Blessed Certitude of Being Forgiven: A Wondrous Gift of Sacramental Confession

[Please note this post is not intended as a theological exploration of the sacrament of reconciliation. Rather, it is a reflection based on my personal experience about one particular aspect of this sacrament: how marvelously it shows God's eagerness to bend down to us with the gift of mercy in a way that takes account most eminently of the needs and weaknesses of our human psychology.]

Something that has stamped me indelibly as a person is the history of my being a convert to the Catholic faith. Next to life itself my Catholic faith is God's greatest gift to me.

I was baptized (praise God) as an infant. However, as a young man I did not embrace the Christian (Protestant) faith into which I had been baptized (though I never rejected it either). I was agnostic and used to think that even if God did exist, when it comes to the issue of divine ontology we mere humans find ourselves with no choice other than being doomed to perpetual uncertainty.

Then, God's grace came into my life in a way I had never dreamed could be real. . . .


But, this is not a post about my conversion. This is just by way of background to comment about what I want to say now: I am so grateful to God for the awesome sacrament of confession!

As I prepared to profess the Catholic faith and be received into full communion with the Church, being a convert who was already a baptized Christian, I was faced with the (at first daunting) prospect that my first confession would cover 28 years of my life! As I took instruction in the faith (which a gracious priest agreed to conduct privately over a series of meetings), one of my first difficulties was thinking about the Catholic practice of sacramental confession. Certainly, it is the case that we can pray directly to God for forgiveness for our sins and move on from there.

But as I thought about this (then a newly believing Christian but not yet Catholic), something bothered me: How could I know for sure--how could I ever have a deep, peaceful confidence in my soul--that God has truly forgiven me? I knew that I was a sinner and had done some awful things; I had offended God and deeply hurt others and myself by my sins. And I was completely certain that to go forward in life as a newly reverted (converted) Christian, I had to ask for and receive the forgiveness of God for my past sins. I ached to have my soul cleansed; I knew I needed this. And I believed that God since He is truly our Father and loves us immensely would also want us to be able to have confidence in His mercy. What father could stand to have his beloved child uncertain about an authentic gift of forgiveness? I knew that on some level, if I could never have genuine confidence in having been personally forgiven by God for my own particular sins I would always be plagued by an interior anxiety--a spiritual angst would be simmering within: Has God really forgiven me? (i.e. Has my prayerful request for forgiveness been adequate enough? Has it been heard? How do I know?)

Then one day it hit me (at this I experienced a thrill of realization): The Catholic practice of sacramental confession--because it is so tangible--is an almost unbelievably perfect answer to the above wretched state of anxiety as to whether God would ever truly proffer his mercy to me. Left only to my own private self-assessment how could I be certain that my own flawed prayers would elicit the (badly needed!) divine mercy I desired? We don't (usually) hear God speak into our ears! How could it be adequate to merely "feel" like God had forgiven me?

Confession to a priest (a validly ordained Catholic priest who has received the authority from God to forgive sins through the power of Jesus Christ) I realized, would give me vastly more confidence about whether or not I had truly ever received forgiveness from God. I realized that while I could fret endlessly about the sincerity of a private prayer offered to God alone I could be absolutely certain of the fact of having gone to confession and heard those blessed words with my own ears, actually spoken by a real human voice: "I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." How could a person not be sure of the reality of having gone to confession, named his sins with his own voice, and received back the words of absolution from another living human voice?

I give praise and thanks to God for the awesome sacrament of reconciliation. Because of its particular form--taking place in a person-to-person interchange involving lips and ears of flesh for both parties--I need never doubt whether or not God has truly forgiven me my sins. It is as blessedly simple (almost scandalously so) as asking myself: Did I truly confess my sins with my own lips? Did I truly hear those words of absolution with my own ears? Yes, I did! Thanks be to God!

It is so amazing the love of God--how truly fatherly He is. No, He does not have to work through a priest to bestow forgiveness upon us. But, loving father that He is, isn't it so like our God who freely emptied Himself out on a cross for us that He would institute a way to forgive and heal us of our sins wherein we could not only be forgiven but would then possess the great peace of a conscious, personal certainty of the exchange--our confession for His mercy? What hope this gives me!

Does God love us enough to provide a way to be free from anxiety about His mercy?

Let us prepare; go to the confessional; speak our sins to the priest whose lips speak for Christ and afterwords know without doubt that we have heard these wonderful words: "I absolve you of your sins." Thanks be to God!