Marcus

This week we are going to discuss the last two categories of the Thirsting for Truth program: Life Skills and Building Witnesses. These last two categories make the Thirsting for Truth program unique and well suited for Young Adults. Young Adults, once they graduate from high school, start working or going to college and find themselves having to make decisions on things they were never clued into. Unless you had parents who took the time to talk to you and teach you about those things you’re likely to end up learning the hard way.

Life Skills

That’s the reason we have this category called “Life Skills” – because no matter what kind of vocation you end up in – these are things everyone needs to be aware of.

For example, when two persons get engaged they approach their pastor if they intend to be married in the Church. In most places they are required to meet a few times with their priest and attend a weekend long retreat or seminar. In this one weekend they receive

1) Education on the Church’s moral teachings on sex and marriage (many of them hearing it for the first time)
2) Advice on how to communicate and handle conflict
3) Advice on budgeting and the importance of managing finances
4) Education on the Church’s teaching regarding children and parenthood

And they receive all of this in two days. It’s hard to imagine they will be able to remember it all, much less internalize it in a way that is effective for their long term benefit. These retreat weekends and seminars are great opportunities to introduce the couple to the beautiful teachings of the Church. However, some of the couples attending the retreat may already be adults who are carrying years of baggage into their marriage. They could already be in bad financial shape, have issues with the Church’s teaching on contraception and divorce, or any other number of problems. Additionally, these marriage preparation retreats are designed to prepare engaged couples for their vocation but what about those who are not getting married? Where are they getting their vocation preparation?

When you hit 18 or 19 years old you start making decisions that will affect the rest of your life. I’ll give you an example. Thirsting for Truth is something my wife and I do part-time. Would we like to do it full-time? Yes and hopefully we will have that opportunity in the future. However, the reason we can’t is because when we were dating, engaged, and initially married – we were weren’t very good at handling our money and managing debt. Even though we didn’t get ourselves into an overwhelming amount of debt we had enough that once we decided that we wanted to do ministry we couldn’t just leave our jobs and do Thirsting for Truth full-time because of our debt and lack of savings. We may have been able to start this years ago if we had been smarter in the beginning.

We are looking to help prepare priests. religious, married persons, and professionals, for their vocation long before some of them even decide on their vocation. All vocations can benefit from learning how to responsibly manage their finances, live chaste lives and become better public speakers and writers. Young Adults who attend a Thirsting for Truth group for years will slowly become equipped to become great in their vocation which will be a benefit to their spouse, children, and faith community. Better marriages, better parish communities and better children start with a better individual.

In Life Skills We will talk about things like early marriage, early parenthood, handling conflict, relationship skills, choosing a school and major and choosing and building a career – things that people should be thinking about long before they hit 25 or 30 years old.

Building Witnesses

The last category of the Thirsting for Truth program is the one I am most excited about. It is what, I believe, makes Thirsting for Truth unique. This category is where I get to turn the tables on you. At Thirsting for Truth we have a desire to witness to others but we also want to help build other witnesses for the Church. Part of how we plan on doing that is by giving you the skills you need to be great witnesses. I know that a lot of you out there have great talents and great stories. You have something to say or write. You have an important message to deliver and we want to help you deliver that message.

If you have an interest in being a public speaker, or blogging, we want to help you develop your speaking and writing skills and then give you a platform to practice and reach others without having to build your own organization, foundation or network. Our dream is that if we help give you these skills you will then use those skills to go into your community and start a fire. I would love to find people to contribute to the Thirsting for Truth program but we also want to help you build up your parish and community.

We will also work on delivering workshops in the area of technology and media. Maybe your parish has a terrible website. If we help you gain web development skills then maybe you will volunteer some of your time to help build a better, more captivating, website for your parish. In this way we are also hoping to build up a network of skilled young Catholics so that we can lean on each other to create a greater presence of Young Adults in Catholic evangelization.

We plan on developing that network of awesome Young Adult Catholics through My Thirsting for Truth.

Post Video Questions:

1) What do you hope to get out of TFT and what do you hope to contribute?
– Do you have interest in becoming a speaker or writer?
– Do you have interest in event planning
– Do you have interest in coordinating community service/volunteer efforts?

2) What are your dreams (vocation, ministry, career)?

Get to know the dreams and talents of those around you. Someone take down notes of everyone’s answers so that your leaders can start discussing how the group can help each other achieve those dreams and goals together.

The “Theology of the Body” is a series of lectures delivered by St. John Paul II during the first five years of his office as Pope. Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body aimed to show us how our bodies have the ability to reveal a greater understanding of the nature and love of God. In other words, it is a study of God (Theology) through the human body: Theology of the Body.

For example, we understand the Christian God to be Triune. There are three persons but only one God. This is a mystery and an extremely confusing concept. It gets even more confusing when we discuss the nature of each person. There is the Father – who loves the Son. He offers himself as a gift to the Son. The Son openly receives the gift of the Father and then offers himself back as a gift of love. This exchange of love between the Father and Son is so powerful and so real that it is another person. The Holy Spirit, the third person in the Trinity, is the bond of powerful love between the two. All three persons are so integrated, so unified, that they are one God and one family – Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

If you are confused that’s okay. It’s a mystery that can never be fully understood. However, we have an image of this love stamped into our bodies to help us gain a greater understanding.

We see in the creation story, in Genesis 4:27,

“God created man in his image,
in the divine image he created them;
male and female he created them.”
– Genesis 4:27

I find it interesting that it is repeated three times over as if to say, “this is really important”. What’s more interesting is that the third time we see “male and female” is substituted for “in the divine image”. This tells us that something about the creation of male and female images the nature of God.

If we look at the nature of the sexual relationship between a man and woman, husband and wife, a man initiates a total gift of his self to the woman. The woman may choose to accept the gift and receive the man’s love and then give herself back as a total gift. The love between the two can be so powerful, so real, that in nine months their love can literally be another person. The life that comes forth from their union can be said to be the embodiment of their love and the bond between the two. And so they become family: father, mother and child. Three persons but one family. This shows us that ultimately, God is family and we are a small scale of image of the God family.

There is so much more to the Theology of the Body but this gives a great example of how understanding the purpose and meaning of our body can lead to a greater understanding of God. The Theology of the Body serves as a great foundation to understand Theology and Philosophy in general. At Thirsting for Truth we use the Theology of the Body like a lens to view the world and Catholicism. In that way, we have a much easier time giving context and meaning to other teachings of the Church.

For example, Ephesians 5:21-33 is often deemed controversial because it is a difficult passage to understand.

“Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body.

As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

So [also] husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.

‘For this reason a man shall leave [his] father and [his] mother
and be joined to his wife,
and the two shall become one flesh.’

This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church. In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.”

At first, it sounds like the author, St. Paul, is telling husbands to dominate their wives and for wives to simply do whatever their husbands ask of them. I’ve known many people that have been angered and offended by this passage – specifically women – but it was only because they didn’t understand what it was saying. On the contrary, St. Paul is calling men and women to greatness in their marriage. Let’s first look at what he is calling husbands to do.

St. Paul tells men to love their wives as Christ loves the Church and as their own bodies. In what way did Christ love the Church? He sacrificed himself and gave up his life on the Cross. This is the challenge that man have – to sacrifice themselves for the good of their wives. Husbands are being called to lay down their lives – to the point of death – for the one that they love.

As for women, St. Paul urges them to be subordinate and to respect their husband. This should not be mistaken for inferiority to the man. St. Paul uses the imagery of Christ and the Church. Woman are the image of the Church and are called to be open to receive the love from their husbands. The Church fulfills its purpose by being open and receptive while Christ, as the head, gave himself entirely to redeem and sanctify his Church. St. Paul is not saying that men should dominate their wives. He is calling men to raise up their wives. This is just one example of how the Theology of the Body really helps us to understand what’s going on in Ephesians 5. It really gives greater context and meaning to that passage.

Our hope is that we can unpack things like this, using the lens of the Theology of the Body, in future meditations.

Questions for Discussion:

1) Have you ever heard of the Theology of the Body or is this brand new?

2) What do you think, or feel, the Church’s teachings are in regards to sex, marriage, and sexuality in general?

3) Do you think the Church attempts to suppress our desires for union and sex?

4) What is hard to understand about the Church’s teaching?

5) What are some questions you would like to see tackled in future meditations?

Faith and Reason will be the most important category of the Thirsting for Truth Young Adult program. The “Faith” aspect of this category will consist of learning basic Theology, Philosophy, Church teaching, and Church history. The “Reason” aspect will discuss how the logic of the world can bring us to greater understanding of Theology and then help us to implement our faith into our everyday lives. Our goal is not simply to understand and make sense of the Catholic faith. Our goal is to ultimately take that understanding and put it into action.

Original Sin

That’s not always easy. Before Adam and Eve’s original sin they were endowed by something called “preternatural gifts”. They had infused knowledge, absence of concupiscence[1] and bodily immortality [2]. In a nutshell, before their sin they had a few things going for them:

1) They couldn’t experience pain and death the way we now do.

2) Their Intellect and Will were intact and united.

– The intellect is how one comes to know a thing and discern right from wrong.

– The will is the ability to choose what we know to be right.

Sin brought death into the world and Adam and Eve, after their fall, were left with a darkened intellect and a weakened will. All humans inherit this problem through original sin. Because of our darkened intellects we have a harder time telling right from wrong. Some more than others. This is why some people call good things bad and bad things good.

Even if we can properly discern what is right we still need a strong will to be able to choose that which we know to be right and good. The two must be united and well formed in order to be combat the tendency to sin. Often we may find ourselves attracted to something we know to be wrong or too weak to choose what we know to be good. This is why St. Paul, in Romans 7:15, says “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” It is not enough to learn right from wrong. We must also train ourselves to continually choose what is right.

Learning more about our faith will help us to develop our intellect and better discern right from wrong. However, we must then put that faith into practice with the use of reason. This is why we have married the two sub-categories “Faith” and “Reason” because faith and reason must go hand-in-hand.

Think of it in terms of “Romance” (faith) and “Logic” (reason). Christianity is all about developing a relationship with God. Like any good relationship you need to have romance and be grounded in logic. If you have one without the other your relationship will fail. No one can conduct a relationship on pure logic and no one should expect to have a successful relationship without logic. A relationship requires a delicate balance between the two. Two people can feel so in love that they want to spend every waking minute together. They might write silly poetry and sacrifice their own wants, or needs, for the sake of the other. However, if they don’t follow some structure, set standards and guidelines as well as goals, they will wander aimlessly into problems. If they are too rigid their romance will suffer leaving the relationship boring. If they have no structure then their relationship will be based on feelings and built on sand. We have to apply this same kind of thinking to our relationship with God. Faith and reason, like romance and logic, must go hand-in-hand.

In future meditations we will discuss matters of Theology and Church teaching from both perspectives.

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Questions for Discussion

1) What sort of struggles do you experience in combining your faith with everyday life?

2) Are there some aspects of faith that seem unreasonable?

3) Are there aspects of everyday life where you find it easy to see faith expressed (ex: technology, relationships, business… etc)?

4) What questions would you like to see answered in future meditations?

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References:

[1] Concupiscence is the tendency to sin or the tendency to choose what we know to be wrong. This is what causes sinful behavior to sometimes appear appetizing.

[2] “Preternatural Gifts” – Catholic Culture Dictionary: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=35763