Breaking In The Habit

For an industry far removed from religion, Hollywood sure does like to include God, heaven, hell, angels, and a host of other religious imagery in its movies. Television as well. This year saw the introduction of God Friended Me on CBS, and NBC’s The Good Place has continued to receive great reviews through its third season.

Unfortunately, neither Br. Tito and I had ever watched these shows so we couldn’t comment on their success. What we could comment on, though, were the loads of examples of the entertainment industry diving into the realm of religion with some subpar theology.

And yes, there are loads of examples… including my least favorite movie of all time.

Besides being the greatest Order in the history of the Church (obviously…) the Franciscans have quite a unique feature to their history: we are the first Order to include missionary action into our Rule of life. Going to foreign nations, preaching the Word, and building up the Kingdom is what we’ve done from our very inception.

And it is what we are doing even today.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit one of our friaries down in Jamaica where the friars serve the poorest of the area. One friar in particular, Fr. Colin, is the pastor of two churches out in the country, requiring him to drive 20-40 minutes on dirt roads just to get to his church, and then multiple hours each day visiting his parishioners. Many live in houses made of unsealed wood and sheet metal, lacking many things we would consider basic necessities. As a missionary, he serves their needs, may it be physical or spiritual, and works to make life better for them.

It was a shame to only spend two days with him, as there was a lot more to show, but I think this video offers a great glimpse into what he does on a regular basis.

So… the first episode of A Friar Life will still be releasing today, but apparently I forgot to post this video from Wednesday on the blog. Oops. If you’re interested in the A Friar Life video, you can find it on YouTube this afternoon, but I won’t be posting it here until tomorrow.

Anyway… My first assignment! This is exciting! Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Catholic Center at the University of Georgia, and let me tell you: my trip exceeding even my high expectations. Having had a very difficult semester, I find myself of late very tired and worn out. (I think that fact that we got snow in Chicago twice this April also had something to do with it.) While I am often someone who looks forward to the future and gets excited about planning what’s next, I hadn’t been able to do that for UGA because I was so overwhelmed with what was right in front of me.

Getting on campus, my whole attitude changed. I found myself with a lot more life than I’ve had this year. I felt excitement in me that had frozen away in the snow and began to imagine the possibilities of the future.

And man… are there some possibilities! These students are amped up for the year, and there is just so much that we could be doing.

With that said, I hope you enjoy this video. It’s obviously not the totality of my first assignment, but it serves as a great first impression, offering a glimpse into what I’ll be doing next year. More to come, I’m sure, and be sure to check back tomorrow for the first episode of A Friar Life!

Heresies. Statements about God that are, how shall we say… Wrong. A major issue in the early Church as Christianity was still trying to make sense of the reality of a Triune God, many heresies have persisted even to today. They take different forms and go by different names, but their reality is the same.

In this video, I present five of the most common heresies of ancient times and look at how they remain among us today.

After watching this video, you might, as one commenter indicated, think that this is nothing more than theological candy; getting into the technicalities of theological issues are mental gymnastics that have nothing to do with our actual lives, and when we find ourselves in tragedy, with struggles, or facing life’s issues, none of it matters.

It is a common response, I would say, to many forms of art and education. Look to the most recent tragedy at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris and you will find people saying, “why is money being spent on this when people are hungry?” There is a false dichotomy set before people that they may have the basic necessities of life OR they may have thought provoking, transcending art that fills their soul, but the cannot have both. The truth is that we should be funding and caring about both of these issues.

With theology, it is same. People can care about more than one thing at a time. One can at the same time be in a tragic situation with immediate emotional needs and still care about being precise about how we speak of God; one can at the same time care for the poor and still insist that liturgy matters. To say that the two are in any way mutually exclusive or that it is a waste of time to care about one when we face another problem is a false construction.

But it’s even more than that. Not only can we care about two things at once, I think that the two things ultimately lead to one another. Honestly, what could be more important, in the midst of a tragedy, than knowing who God truly is? That is not an exercise of mental gymnastics in which we engage esoteric topics for our own amusement. Knowing who God truly is might be the very thing that gets us through the tragedy. These questions are not escapes, but offer very answers we need.

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As a final note, I would like to point out an issue of sloppy language in this video that does not accurately present what I meant to say. In the video, I state that monophosytism is the “official stance of six current eastern Orthodox Churches.” I did not mean to refer to the Churches of “Eastern Orthodoxy” but rather the eastern Churches in general (sloppy language.) The Churches in question are actually among Oriental Orthodoxy (technically speaking, “eastern” and “oriental” mean the same thing). Further, I did not mean to imply that these Churches, today, are considered heretical, only that monophysitism is. Over the centuries, the stance of these Churches has become refined and they have resolved many, if not all, of the theological problems. Today, they would not consider themselves monophysite, but “miaphysite.”

I apologize for the mistake, and I thank you for understanding.

After two years and many requests… A Friar Life is finally here. Over the past three months, I have been to San Francisco, New Jersey, New York, Cincinnati, and Jamaica filming the brothers in action. Over the next month, I hope to include two more.

And frankly, I’m barely scratching the surface.

When I started planning this project over Christmas, I came up with a list of candidates multiple pages long. There’s just no “prototypical” friar. Each one is unique. Each life is different from the rest. What I hope to show you in this series leaves out so many experiences, so many personalities, so many ministries that just wouldn’t fit.

It’s true what they say: once you’ve met a friar, you’ve met one friar.

When I talk with guys discerning our life I tell them that it’s not about being like me or anyone else. Many will not identify with much of my life, or much of another friar’s life, and that’s fine. Becoming a friar is not about fitting a mold or being like the rest. No, becoming a friar is about identifying the underlying spirit that guides us all and finding a way to live it themselves. Our rule and life is to live the Gospel, and there is no shortage of ways to do that. My hope with this series, once again, is to show people the breadth of our lives, not so that others may imitate it, but so they might make it a part of their own.