Kerrie Rivard, Author at Regnum Christi

Let God be God

April 16, 2024 / APP News Feed, Blog, Regnum Christi News

“The fact that you are here this morning means that God is in your life, but who is he in your life? Do you turn to him as a life coach or cheerleader who just pats you on the back and encourages you to be a good person? He is the almighty creator of Heaven and Earth! Let God be God – let Him be Himself- in you and in your life…” Sometimes you hear a Sunday morning homily that just sticks. That was one of them. There was something in it that I wanted to explore, something that intrigued me…

I started to think about the ways we tend to treat God in our lives- the way we can compartmentalize him, and box him into a role we expect him to play. He is so much, and he is so much more than we understand. There are parts of him that we are more comfortable with sometimes, and parts that can make us completely uncomfortable. Do we force him into one of those roles, or do we really let God be God the way he lets us be ourselves?

Are we more comfortable with the idea of God as a cheerleader and life-coach, just there to pat us on the back and tell us to be a good person? Do we keep him at the level of an acquaintance or a paramedic? Or do we allow him to be I AM, in who we are? When you get a glimpse of the power and glory of God and know that he lives in you, his child, it’s a bit breath taking, but so, so exciting to think of what he can do, what he wants to do.

God, whose power is stronger than a thunderstorm but gentle like the breeze before Elijah, lives in you. He’s not there to be a cheerleader. He’s there to transform you- to remake you into that image of himself you were created to be- to shape you into a person of perfect freedom and joy through his love. Do you let him?

Christ, who prayed that you and he may be one as he and the Father are one, loves you more deeply than you have been loved by anyone. Do you let him?

The Word, who lived in the beginning and became flesh to save us, speaks to you. He whispers to you in prayer, and sometimes shouts loudly through your circumstances. Are you listening?

The Crucified Savior, who saw you, took your every sin, every fault, and died so that you could be with him forever, pulls all sin that separates you from him away from your life. Do you let him?

The God of surprises, who led the Israelites in the desert, protected Daniel in the Lion’s Den and was born of a virgin, wants you to show you, step by step, a plan for your life in him that is so much better than any of your plans. Do you let him?

Let God be God. Let God be God in you, in your life, in your prayer, in your plans. Instead of making him a consultant, let go and let him take over.

“God builds his house; that is, it does not take shape where people only want to plan, achieve, and produce by themselves. It does not appear where only success counts and where all the “strategies” are measured by success. It does not materialize where people are not prepared to make space and time in their lives for him; it does not get constructed where people only build by themselves and for themselves. But where people let themselves be claimed for God, there they have time for him and there space is available for him.”

* Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)

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3 Lenten Sacrifices I’m Not Stopping

April 2, 2024 / Blog, Regnum Christi News

Lent is a traditional time of making sacrifices in order to shed attachments to the world and come closer to Christ. The paradox of the cross, however, can reveal that what seemed to be a sacrifice is actually a gift. This is true of my experience with three sacrifices I have made during lent over the past several years which have become sources of joy and companions on my journey into the celebration of the Resurrection.

1. Sacrificing negative thoughts and being offended

As a sanguine-choleric personality type, I don’t naturally tend toward the negative. However, the world wears on all of us. Just before Lent I happened upon a video by Fr. Mike Schmitz of Ascension Presents:

Our culture incessantly demands that we take offense and rage against something or someone. This wears all of us down, even those born with rose-colored glasses. The angst of the culture can seep into our own relationships, making us overly sensitive to people in our lives and suspicious of the intentions of those around us, whether or not they meant to offend us. Examining myself, I saw this at times in subtle ways that I reacted to my spouse, to other people, and even to myself.

So for lent, I gave up being offended and harbouring negative thoughts about anyone. In the first few days, when I caught that sneaky irritation rising up in my thoughts, I immediately stopped it and simply told myself (literally in these words… but silently;-)) ” Nope. I gave up being offended for Lent. I gave up negative thoughts. I am dropping this at the cross. It’s Jesus’ problem.”

It was incredibly liberating. Sometimes I almost felt a physical relief, like letting go of something that was suffocating me so I could breathe again. Whatever was offending me was in God’s hands. It became his problem, not mine, and I was free to choose to love and be happy.

Was this simplistic and naive? I don’t think so. It’s not that I didn’t recognize problems, and some of them were BIG problems… but instead of letting them generate bitterness and resentment, I exercised the discipline of releasing them to God’s loving care. For me, it was an experience of being child-like. And now that it’s Easter, I don’t want to grow up and grow out of that.

2. Sacrificing the use of my cell phone when I am with other people

The first time I really noticed how cell phones isolate us was during a papal audience in St Peter’s Square a few years back. I had the gift of being there among thousands of enthusiastic Catholics on a warm sunny morning as the Holy Father rode through the crowds in the pope-mobile. Everyone had their phones outstretched, and as he rode past them, literally a few feet away, their eyes were on their phones and the pictures they were getting, instead of on the pope himself. Pope Francis was practically the only person who was truly present to those around him in that moment, with no screen as a barrier between those he was greeting and himself.

Over the next few years, I’d notice this in other places. The line at the grocery store. The subway. My kids’ soccer games. Even my own kitchen.

This lent I decided I would no longer let my cell phone take my attention away from the people who were physically in front of me. I resolved not to use my phone when I was in the presence of other people that I could be paying attention to. As soon as I made the resolution I learned what an addictive habit I had. The urge to check texts, email and social media at the first hint of downtime was really strong. I also became more aware of people using their phones in front of me and how it made me feel (good thing for lenten resolution #1… see above). Even if I was only around people I didn’t know, the black hole of my iPhone was still sucking my connection with the world around me into a digital void.

When I put my phone away, I noticed more details about the people around me. I smiled at them more, I anticipated their needs better, and I discovered things I would have missed if I wasn’t paying attention.

Since Christ used Lent to break this chain, I’m going to stay free, and continue to enjoy the real world and my present company!

3. Slowing down and sacrificing the need to rush

This is a sacrifice that was given to me, not one I chose. Several years ago, as Lent began I had to have a surgical procedure done – nothing serious or life-threatening, but something that needed to be attended to. I had never had surgery before, and my doctor told me that I would need a six-week recovery. I think I actually laughed out loud when she said this. I mean, I have 6 kids, an international student from China, a full-time job, and a crazy Goldendoodle at home (Chester- as in Chesterton). I told my doctor I was sure I’d bounce back well, and took 3 weeks off work instead. I should have known what was behind the little smile she responded with, but again, good thing for lenten sacrifice #1….

The surgery went well, but I reacted badly to the anesthesia and pain medications- getting really sick. This kept me in the hospital for a longer stretch, and in bed at home when I had expected to be back up and out. I slowed down–a lot. Thanks to friends who helped with meals and teenage children who helped with driving and grocery shopping, Paul and I were able to keep life moving, but it was slower.

For the first couple of weeks, I was frustrated. I realized 3 weeks off work wasn’t going to cut it; I ended up being out just over a month. The more I tried to speed things up, the more tired I got. When I felt a surge of energy and used it to do something crazy like go grocery shopping, I was laid up for the next 2 days.

As time went on, I got the picture. God wanted me to slow down. And he wanted me to slow down peacefully, not with bitterness and frustration. It was a really big adjustment for me. I realized how much of my energy I had been putting into doing more in less time, so I would have more time to do even more.

When I accepted the need to slow down, I was pretty sure things were going to fall apart at the seams. They didn’t. I learned that though I could usually do things quite well at the pace I had been used to, when I slowed down, when I paused, I made space for God to act in ways that my rushing had prevented before.

I had feared that slowing down would mean I was doing less for Christ in my life, but I realized that some of the people I know who have the greatest impact on others, who share their faith most generously, and who transmit Christ’s love most gracefully, do so at a calm and peaceful pace. They are about being more than they are about doing, and that ‘being’ changes the world around them. My slower lenten pace gave me the chance to correct my speed of living, and focus more on being present in the moment. It’s a bit like the way I have experienced latin cultures, putting time at the service of living instead of shoving living into efficient and effective increments of time.

All three of these sacrifices were transformed into gifts, but they require me to be diligent in not going back to my old habits. I’m up for that challenge. I’m also very grateful for a lent that is going to continue to bear fruit and help me grow and live in Christ’s love in new ways, resurrected through his transformative power.

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The Confidence of Being Catholic

March 26, 2024 / Blog, Regnum Christi News

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Mt 7:24-27

How do we build our lives on the rock instead of the shifting sands of the culture around us?  How do we keep our compass straight in a world where “north” is declared “south” and even truths and teachings of the Church are skewed to fit peoples’ pet projects?

Msgr. Romano Guardini, the great twentieth century theologian, mentor to Pope Benedict XVI and prolific writer, prophetically summarized the danger of being lost in the modern world while he wrote about the importance of forming and living by a Catholic world view. If we don’t, he says, “We find ourselves, first of all, with a tendency to consider the world—that is, the context of what can be immediately experienced—as the entirety of what is real and relevant, and proceed, exclusively from this presupposition, to respond to the problems of life”

Politics, terrorism, gender ideology, the economy, the media, jobs, decay of the family, school, work challenges, depression, ADHD, aging parents, addiction, failing health, technology and an ever-changing world with threats that reach us from thousands of miles away with one click.  Not to mention the ever present media and the 24 hour news cycle. New agendas, marketing and cultural shifts pressure us daily to adjust our living and thinking. To live based in responses to these things is very much building a house on shifting sands.

Instead, all of these screaming realities that demand our reaction and fragment our peace become context instead of foundation when we choose to see the world through Christ’s eyes. They are properly seen as events and elements of our world that we can respond to wisely, instead of letting them reign as the domineering drivers of our thoughts, actions and reactions.

The antidote to modern frenetic group-think is to take a pause, know Christ and learn to see through his eyes, to shape ourselves with an integral Catholic formation and to act from that as our solid rock, as a simple, peaceful and strong sign of contradiction in this domineering culture. This is a Catholic worldview.

Guardini rooted all of this in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament as the healing and blessed experience of Christ where “… things fall into true perspective. Vision sharpens. Much that troubles us rights itself.”

He brought that experience of prayer and closeness to Our Lord into concrete life by insisting on the sacredness of human beings even in the midst of their annoying or even catastrophic cruelties to each other.  That means the person who disagrees with you on Facebook, the adolescent obsessed with how many likes their picture got, the politician who threatens all you hold dear, the spouse who irritates, the neighbor who annoys, the person who disappoints you and the expectations you have of them.

The view we have of them, our thoughts towards them and our course of action stem from this reality instead of from a transient response to something they have done- positive or negative.

This doesn’t make life easy. But it makes it peaceful. Our world is not perfect. It won’t be perfect. But it must be redeemed. Redemption can be in fact, a more beautiful perfection than something that looks the way we wanted it to from the very beginning.  That’s the mystery of the cross. That’s the source of mercy. And redemption happens one person at a time.

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3 Steps to Discerning your Mission in Life

February 18, 2024 / Blog, Regnum Christi News

Whether they know it or not, everyone around us is discerning the will of God in their lives. Some may confuse it with seeking pleasure and accomplishment, but they are really looking for fulfillment – to accomplish what they were created for.

Even if we have already found our primary vocation and state in life, we continue to seek the way we are called to live God’s will on a daily basis. We are constantly asking Christ to show us how he calls us to serve him and others as a gift of self — our mission.

How do we find our mission and live it? Here are 3 simple signs that point to the God-given mission Our Lord has for you.

Step 1 “What is the greatest path of love for you?”

“At last I have found my vocation. In the heart of the Church, I will be Love!” -St Thérèse de Liseux

St. Thérèse de Liseux’s discovery of her vocation and mission proclaims the vocation and mission of all of us. We are all called to be apostles, and finding your mission as an apostle is synonymous with finding the way that Jesus calls you to love.

“For you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love.” -Galatians 5:13

Love is not about following your desires or warm and fuzzy feelings. To love is to the will the good of the other. So discovering your mission is not so much seeking answers in what makes you feel good and fulfilled. You find it in asking what way you can best concretely give of yourself for the most good of others? That is your call to love. That is your God-given mission. Bishop Robert Barron explains your mission as the answer to the question, “What is the greatest path of love for you?”

Step 2: What makes the fruits of the Spirit flourish in you?

Maybe step one narrows it down a bit for you, but still leaves you with a list of possibilities. Look at what your skills and gifts are. Then take a look at what you do to love others – your actions that will (and do) the most for their good — that brings out the fruits of the Holy Spirit in you.

“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” -Galatians 5: 22-23

Among these, pay particular attention to the gifts of joy and peace. What gives you a deep joy and an abiding sense of peace? This is different from superficial fun, happiness, accomplishment, or pride. A “deep joy” shares deep joy with others through your mission.

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep joy and the world’s deep hunger meet” – Frederick Buechner

Step 3: Live a perpetual discernment

This set of guidelines applies not only to discerning your vocation and apostolic work but also to seeking and living the will of God day-by-day, minute-by-minute.

What is my greatest path of love this morning? In this meeting? In this task? In this relationship? In this conversation? Learn to live in a constant state of discerning the mission of love before you, and you’ll find you are allowing God to love through you and bring you along on the adventure he has wanted to share with you from the moment he created you.

If you are a young woman who is interested in discernment, click the button below!

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Love and Lent

February 6, 2024 / Blog, Regnum Christi News

Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day this year. While many couples have decided to celebrate their love by going out for a romantic dinner earlier, over the past weekend, or on Mardi Gras, there is another solution sweeping social media:

For those who are more inclined to ‘marry’ the two events which share the calendar, and are willing to look a little more deeply at what our human love relationships and the beginning of lent have in common, the vistas are broader than it first seems.

Marriage, and other relationships based on real love are made of more than just candlelight, gourmet dinners, and chocolate. Lent is about more than fasting. Both are rooted in a love that is willing, in fact, committed, to self-sacrifice for the beloved.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
– John 13:15

What if, this Valentine’s Day, and this Lent, we looked past what we are giving up by fasting and abstinence, and instead, took the plunge to love our beloved as Christ loves us. A little less steak and chocolate, a lot more patience and forgiveness. Less presents, more presence. Giving less jewels but more joy.

“There is no greater love within a marriage and a family than for the spouses and children to lay down their lives for one another. This is the heart of the vocation of marriage, the heart of the call to become holy” -USCCB, Pastoral letter: Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan

40 days of laying down our lives in love for Christ and for our beloved here on earth… 40 days of learning to love like God desires us to.

“If a person really loves another, that is, really desires the total good of the other person, then such a person is committed by the very nature of love to give of himself or of herself for the sake, the good, of that other person. Giving of oneself involves sacrifice; it means that I make the other person a priority; it demands dying to self in order to live for the other.” -Bishop of Arlington, Paul Loverde

What if we took this lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday/Valentines’ Day to recommit to our vocation- our path to holiness, our marriages, and relationships, in seeking the good of others with love, even when it costs us?

What if, by bringing the two days together, God is asking us to love more, and to love more like He does? If part of the lay vocation is to sanctify the secular world, then this only makes sense. We have a magnificent opportunity this Wednesday- to reclaim human love to be in the image and likeness of God’s love for us. It’s a chance to reset our selfish fantasies about love and reorder our expectations and commitments to be what they should be, a free and joyful self-giving for the good of the other.

“What some people love is not a person but the experience of being in love. The first is irreplaceable; the second is not.” ― Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married

What if we really took this radical plunge during Lent? Perhaps we would understand better the depth of Christ’s love as the bridegroom for us as his bride? Perhaps we would see God, the often overlooked “3^rd person” in our marriages, more clearly?

“How can one love self without being selfish? How can one love others without losing self? The answer is: By loving both self and neighbor in God. It is His Love that makes us love both self and neighbor rightly.” ― Fulton J. Sheen, Three to Get Married

Perhaps our relationships would become richer and more precious to us, celebrated more deeply by loving sacrifice than by sharing steak and chocolates…

Speaking of chocolate (which is another of my loves) I recently had the double surprise of indulging not only in a delicious treat but in the strikingly wise poetry on the back of the wrapper… God is awesome in his generosity that way.

The full poem is:

Oh, No – Not E’en When First We Loved.

by Thomas Moore

Oh! no — not e’en when first we loved,
Wert thou as dear as now thou art;
Thy beauty then my senses moved,
But now thy virtues bind my heart.

What was but Passion’s sigh before,
Has since been turned to Reason’s vow;
And, though I then might love thee more,
Trust me, I love thee better now.

Although my heart in earlier youth
Might kindle with more wild desire,
Believe me, it has gained in truth
Much more than it has lost in fire.

The flame now warms my inmost core,
That then but sparkled o’er my brow;
And, though I seem’d to love thee more,
Yet, oh! I love thee better now.

This Ash Wednesday, and this whole Lent, let’s let God lead us and our marriages in a deeper and stronger love that discovers its true worth, and the depth of its fire and joy, in self-giving. And, 40 days later, may we rejoice in the triumph of resurrection of Christ over death, and in our relationships as well.

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Sacred Ordinary Time

January 23, 2024 / Regnum Christi News

January comes and with it an end to the Christmas festivities. The short days and cold temperatures begin to wear on us. As we put away the Christmas decorations and settle in for a few more months of winter, the Church changes seasons, to ordinary time. The ordinary days of winter feel barren, boring, and a bit dreary. We instinctively look forward to spring, or plan getaways to sunny climates to escape the cold. There doesn’t seem to be much to appreciate in the here and now.

If ordinary time is so inconsequential, why do we have so much of it in the Church? Is it a placeholder between the more exciting seasons of our faith? Or is it something more?

The drab days of January chafe against the grand new year’s resolutions we have just made. Our valient plans and virtuous ambitions are met with the monotonous routine of winter days that do not celebrate our good intentions, but rather seem to try to fold them into the flow of time that continues within our routines and daily duties. January refuses to be our cheerleader, and we are left to fight against the current of daily life, or find a way to adjust our perspective so that we have a reality that is coherent with the world around us.

Ordinary time has a hiddenness to it. Like the 30 years Jesus spent in ‘ordinary life,’ there is a value below the surface of the daily routine and cold winter days. Ordinary time teaches us to find the sacred the God has woven into each moment of our lives instead of trying to fabricate it ourselves.

“If we wish to be united to God we should value all the operations of his grace, but we should cling only to the duties of the present moment. The duties of each moment are the shadows beneath which hides the divine operation.” – Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence

January is full of the duties of the present moment that begin before the sun rises. The gift of winter is hidden in those moments. It’s seeing God below the surface, before the dawn. He comes to meet us in sacred ordinary time, and in those moments, we don’t go out to join him in celebrating the mysteries of his incarnation like we do in other liturgical seasons. Instead, he comes into the dark and ordinary moments of our incarnation to reveal his presence in our realities, to share our lives with us.

In winter we learn to live the maxim of St. Theresa of Calcutta to do little things with great love, discovering Love himself who is in those little things.

“True holiness does not mean a flight from the world; rather it lies in the effort to incarnate the Gospel in everyday life.” -Pope St. John Paul II

The Gospel lives in the midst of our routines- in the midst of the life God gives us with all the duties and sometimes monotonous circumstances it presents. Discovering Christ active in those moments unites us with him. In January we can, like Christ, rise before dawn to spend time with the Father.

We can examine our hearts to see if the soil he sows Himself in is rocky or thorny, and perhaps needs to be tended to welcome him more receptively.

We can let him heal through us by means of a smile at the office, a loving word to a child, an effort to ease someone else’s burden.

We can feed the 5000 (or however many children you have) with him, making grocery shopping, cooking and clean-up sacred, an imitation of the Gospel moment.

We can bear the insults and crosses that come with a burdened people, slugging through the winter, and respond with love and graciousness.

We can meet our friends who have wounds they would only show Christ through us, at the well (or over lunch or at the coffee shop) and offer them Him who will heal them and quench their soul’s thirst like the Samaritan woman.

We can follow Christ in casting our nets, whatever nets he gives us, and seeing the surprising bounty he brings through it.

We can wash the feet of those around us with Jesus, serving them in ways that honor their dignity and show them that they are loved.

In sacred ordinary time, the Gospel meets us in our lives. Each moment, when we are docile to what God asks of us, becomes an encounter with Christ in which we live our day together with him. Sacred Ordinary time is an extraordinary gift. It’s a time to learn to listen to and follow the rhythm of the silent music of the Holy Spirit in our lives and to live the holiness of each moment joyfully, knowing Christ is here, living it with us.

To be a good dancer,
with you as with anyone else, it’s not necessary
That we know where it will lead.
We only need to follow,
To be cheerful,
To be light,
And above all not to be stiff.

We don’t have to ask you for explanations
About the steps that you choose to take.
We need to be like an extension of yourself,
Quick and alive,
And pick up the rhythm of the music through you.

We must not desire to push ahead at all costs,
But allow ourselves to be spun, to be moved to the side.
We have to know how to pause and slide, and not walk.
And the steps would be rather clumsy
If they were not in harmony with the music.
But we tend to forget the music of your spirit,
And we turn our life into a gymnastic exercise;
We forget that, in your arms, life is something to be danced,
That your Holy Will
Is inconceivably creative

And all monotony and boredom
Is left to the old souls
Who play the wallflower
In the joyful ball of your love.

Lord, ask us to dance.
We’re ready to dance this errand for you,
These accounts to do, this dinner to prepare, this vigil to keep-
When we would prefer to sleep.

We’re ready to dance for you the dance of work,
The dance of heat, and later the dance of cold.

If certain melodies are often played in the minor key, we won’t tell you
That they’re sad;
If others leave us a little breathless, we won’t tell you
That they knock the wind out of us.
And if other people bump into us, we’ll take it with a good laugh,
Knowing well that that’s the sort of thing that happens when you’re dancing.

– Servant of God Madeleine Delbrel, from “We, the Ordinary People of the Streets”

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The Day After Christmas

December 26, 2023 / Blog, Regnum Christi News

For Tonight You are Mine by Helen Thomas Robson He saw it all.

He didn’t miss a thing.

Hours and days of planning and working and lovingly reflecting on how to welcome the Christ Child in your family… how to bring smiles to faces and memories to little hearts… Christmas shopping, menus, grocery lists, and hours of cooking dishes hoped to bring celebration and connection among family and friends. Always with a deep love, sometimes with a little stress and fatigue, stealing the precious moments of silence and prayer you can during this busy time, resolving to keep your heart and home centered on Christ and his coming.

The day comes, we celebrate with Him, in Mass, in each other. We laugh, we serve, we give, we receive.

He sees it all. And he smiles with love, with gratitude. The peace-creating smile of an infant, the deep and eternal smile of God who became a baby so we would know what that Divine smile looks like on a flesh-and-blood human face.

He was there, enjoying the family, friends, food, and most of all, your heart which gave itself in love and service to Him. He was there, giving through you, serving through you, loving through you. And the joy, the memories you hoped for, he made happen, through you.

He was there, praying in you. Gazing at you gazing at him in your heart. Grateful for the warm cradle of your love to welcome him.

We celebrate in gratitude for the coming of the Christ Child, and the Giver of all gifts looks at us in gratitude for the gift of love we give Him.

It’s enough to humble us into holy silence, the silence of the day after Christmas, when we can sit quietly with Mary, and ponder in our heart the miracle of yesterday and what it means for today and tomorrow.

We look at him in prayer, on this quiet morning, and ask him for one more gift. In our hearts we know he is asking us for the very same gift.

‘Stay with me,’ we beg. ‘Stay with Me,’ he asks in return.

Cradling the Christ child in our hearts, holding him who holds us, all we can say is thank you, and look forward to the days and years ahead, together. Because of Christmas.

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Have Yourself a Messy Little Christmas

December 19, 2023 / Blog, Regnum Christi News

Oh, how glossy marketing campaigns and commercialism have conditioned us to expect a certain perfection during the Christmas season… We anticipate perfect piety, perfect Christmas cookies, perfect parties, perfect family meals, perfect décor, perfect gifts, perfect smiles of surprise, and perfect family pictures… Anything else? Whatever it is, it better be perfect…

We are so immersed in this culture of marketing that in glancing at the Gospel telling of the first Christmas, it can seem like a completely different event. It’s worth taking more than just a glance.

In the first Christmas, we see joy and perfection in the midst of a mess.

We see Mary’s transition from being “greatly troubled” to giving her perfect yes. Her exclamation of “How can this be?” followed by her complete “fiat!” is the model for all of us at every age. No one ever feels ready to be a parent. No one is ever wholly sure that things are going to go ok in any major life change, or even in day-to-day events. But Mary said yes to the plan of God that she could neither see nor control, and we can too.

We also see Joseph’s pain and the decision to divorce Mary quietly until God intervened in a dream. Imagine Mary seeing Joseph’s broken heart and hoping against hope that he would believe and understand the truth. Imagine Joseph’s inability to reconcile Mary’s gentle perfection and the situation he was confronted with. Only God could make sense of it, but he let them experience the mess before showing them the truth. How often in our relationships we don’t understand each other and are wounded by stressful situations. Only God can heal and give clarity and meaning to them.

We see joy shared between Mary and Elizabeth and their children, and we see long and arduous journeys. We see Mary and Joseph with nowhere to stay as Christ is born, and yet in their poverty they offer a warm welcome to the shepherds and kings. We see the perfect family relegated to staying in a cold, dirty stable. Jesus entered the world — the beautiful world He created — in a dark and dirty environment. Stables at this time were often caves with feeding troughs, or mangers, carved into the rock walls. This was not the clean and ornate royal birthplace people would have expected for the Messiah. Jesus’ birth reminds us that God is not limited by our expectations, but our expectations can limit our understanding of his plan.

We see the joy of the Christ Child’s birth followed immediately by the need to escape Herod and flee to Egypt during the night. Imagine Joseph’s frustration at being unable to provide Mary with a clean, warm place to give birth, or a safe place for Jesus to rest, and see the difficulty of families living in poverty, unable to provide for the basic needs of their children.

No human being would have planned God’s birth this way. In the first Christmas we can find no superficial perfection, but so much messy, profound and unexpected beauty. The Gospel was apparently not written byHollywood or by commercial marketers. What we’re inundated with on TV, in the flyers that flood our inboxes and mailboxes and on the internet is fake news.

Real life, even the life of the Holy Family, is messy. If you’re a parent, there’s a good chance that right now some area of your house is strewn with toys, books, cheerios and the odd sock. Even more than that, in our relationships and circumstances, sometimes life just feels like one big mess. In those times, Christmas reminds us that God isn’t afraid of a mess — that’s where he creates unexpected beauty and joy. That’s where he comes to be born in us. He chose to show us through his own birth that there is joy in the mess, peace in the simplicity, and love in the confusion and pain of life. Hallmark can’t market those gifts.

So pray well, throw (and attend) great parties, make delicious cookies and meals, and celebrate with thoughtful gifts and lovely decorations, but don’t worry about perfection. Find and give the perfect joy, peace, and love that Christ makes present in the midst of us, whether life is messy or beautiful. At Christmas, it can be both, because God chooses to be present in that imperfect mix.

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Advent and the Art of Living Dangerously

December 12, 2023 / Regnum Christi News

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
-Robert Frost

We have two roads to choose from in Advent.

The first is the safe road. It’s the most obvious; the cozy, comfortable, much-traveled road of busy Christmas preparation with just a touch (ok, maybe more) of fragmentation. The roadmap is a checklist of ways we plan to make this the #BestAdventEver by accomplishing all of our goals and making our homes look Instagram worthy for the holidays ✨.

Many of us have been traveling this road every December for our whole lives. We’re used to it, we look forward to it and the many lovely things along its path, even though we are also slightly exhausted by it…and we also long for something more – or perhaps more accurately, for something ‘less.’ This time-worn and well-travelled road lets us chart out and accomplish our own comfortable spiritual and social plans and goals for advent- what we want to accomplish in our own souls and circles before December 25^th, making ourselves the cartographers, navigators, and captains of our own journeys. We may work hard on some important virtues, and try to keep our eyes on Christ and service to those he loves, but our focus is often a bit lost in the plans, checklists, and work we plunge into as we prepare for Christmas.

We also have the less traveled road, a dangerous road, an unknown but beautiful road, on which we abandon our well-laid plans and built in GPS, and simply follow Christ’s voice. Our map is the liturgy of the Church, and Christ is the navigator who leads us along it’s paths, telling us in prayer where we must go. We simply ask our Lord to guide us as he sees fit, to create in us a pure heart to welcome the Christ-Child, and then take one step at a time with him. The chaos of the first road still exists on this path, but in a way that is more distant and muted because we are intensely focused on listening to the voice of the Shepherd leading us, not getting distracted by the flashing billboards along the way. It’s the Advent road of the prophets who for centuries waited for the Messiah and gave us those incredible ‘O Antiphons.’ We join them in their longing for our Savior, and like them, bravely invite God’s pure and burning light in our souls to illuminate us in ways that we can’t plan or control. We walk with the prophets and like them, experience both God’s extreme tenderness and his powerful purification.

This is the road that truly leads us to Christ in Advent, but it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous because we are guaranteed to be challenged and purified on the journey, often in ways we wouldn’t choose for ourselves.

The love that descended to Bethlehem is not the easy sympathy of an avuncular God, but a burning fire whose light chases away every shadow floods every corner and turns midnight into noon. This love reveals sin and overcomes it. It conquers darkness with such forcefulness and intensity that it scatters the proud, humbles the mighty, feeds the hungry and send the rich away emptyhanded (Luke 1:51-53) –Watch for the Light, Plough publications, xvi

A dangerous advent is purifying, and filled with extraordinary love. God invites us to open ourselves to his light, to let him bare our hearts and souls, and heal the sin and wounds there. If we desire him to scatter our pride, we must let him bring it to the light. If we want him fill our poverty, we allow him to first take away what riches we hold in his place. If we ask him to feed us, he will first make us hungry.

A dangerous Advent is uncomfortable, in a beautiful way that promises lasting joy. God draws us close to himself and changes us with his love. He carves, purifies and prepares the “God-shaped hole in our hearts” to be filled completely by him in his nativity.

Seeing Mary’s Advent, we gain new insights into our blessed mother and watching her, we gain courage to live our own advent dangerously. The handmaid of the Lord walked God’s path and not her own. She began her advent open to the light and will of God, not knowing what it would be. She just said YES. Her serene smile confounds our fearful self-sufficiency when we see that this peaceful mother went forward with courage and perfect trust even though she was afraid (Luke 1:29), and confused (Luke 1:34). She was young, pregnant, and on the verge of divorce as she walked in trusting darkness (Matthew 1:19), hoping in the promise of God. About to give birth, God’s plan was still hidden from her. As they went from inn to inn during the cold night, looking for a place to welcome the Child, they discovered their Son’s deep humility in choosing to be born in a barn despite all of their efforts (Luke 2:7).

In our dangerous advent, the obstacles may be similar or different. We may have difficulties with our marriages, our children, our temporal needs. Or we may be pulled in many directions by circumstances that send us not on a road to Bethlehem, but to the grocery store, to kids activities and social events. The important thing is to listen to the still small voice of God leading us at all moments. If we live these circumstances and walk these roads like Mary did, we find the purpose of Christ in all of them. We find what he wants to change in us, we recognize the gaze of love he fixes on us in each moment, and we gain trust to say FIAT to the ways he wants us to serve and love others whom we find along our advent path. Mary lived an Advent of challenges and unknowns with unconquerable peace and brave love. This allowed God to give His son a warm, welcoming heart that said yes to Him and not her own plans, and soft hands to hold him, empty of any attachments, simply ready to embrace the Christ Child.

He wants to do the same with us. Are we ready to say yes? This advent, under the surface of all of the external preparations and celebrations, let’s ask God to give us the simplicity, courage, and trust to live advent in a real and dangerous way, the way Mary did.

Pope St. John Paul II wrote that we are an Easter People, and ‘Alleluia!’ is our song. We are also an Advent people this December, and ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel’ is our song.

Could but thy soul, O man,
Become a silent night!
God would be born in thee
And set all things aright.
-Angelus Silenius, 1657

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Kerrie Rivard

“At last I have found my vocation. In the heart of the Church, I will be Love!” -St Thérèse de Liseux

“For you were called for freedom, brothers. But do not use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh; rather, serve one another through love.” -Galatians 5:13

“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” -Galatians 5: 22-23

Oh, No – Not E’en When First We Loved.

Alex Kucera

Atlanta