Halfway through Lent

So we're twenty days out of forty into Lent. (Technically twenty three out of forty-six if you're counting Sundays). So what's the verdict?

The past three weeks have definitely been an incredible experience and journey for me and I spent a lot of that time basking in the Lord's presence and generally enjoying a beautiful and fruitful time. They say that getting to the halfway point is the hardest part of the journey, and that once you're halfway you're basically home free.

Unfortunately, that doesn't really seem to be the case with Lent. At least, it doesn't seem the case for me, for Lent. This is a difficult season... it's a season of repentance, of growth, of discipline, of weeding out old habits and beginning the process of separating yourself from things that are holding you down from your relationship with God. Although that sounds pleasant and wonderful, when you actually get to the humanity level of it, and you see someone like me, you realize it's a lot more painful and a lot more difficult than what may be depicted.

This is a time when we realize that that thirst, that yearning, that we feel in our daily lives can only be satisfied by God. It's a time of saying goodbye to ourselves and realizing that we can't actually do all that much on our own, and that ultimately our ego has to go if we truly want to live. Because only Christ can give life, and only Christ can satisfy the deepest desires of our hearts at those times when we are even too scared to look at ourselves, in our heart of hearts, and see what might be there.

Although I am thankful and relish this incredible time of consolation and comfort from God, I know it cannot last - and the painful process of ridding yourself of poison (with His help) and cleaning those battle wounds? - that has just begun. And it's a journey I am glad to have started, but it's a journey and a process I know will not stop when Lent ends later this month. It's a process that must be committed to, that must be chosen, that must be endured.

Honestly, I have broken all of my Lenten promises at least once since Ash Wednesday, and we just reached the halfway point. As amazing as it would have been to go all forty days keeping those promises and those commitments, and how great bragging rights I can get or whatever if I kept those; I sit here, writing this blog post, and have realized in this process how thankful I am to have actually broken all these 'Lenten promises'. I'm not saying that the commitments and promises meant nothing to me, and I did indeed try my very hardest with them, but what would surviving forty days without internet on my phone have gotten me? What would serving forty days without complaining gotten me? I would have grown in a lot of virtue and probably have been a lot more productive with my time away from home. But looking back now, perhaps breaking these promises taught an even more important lesson to me this Lent, one that perhaps God wanted to teach me more sitting in my current spot in life: that WE'RE NOT PERFECT.

But God is. We can try all we want, but the very fact of the matter is that we can't be perfect. We aim to be perfect, but we're not at the present state. We're not perfect because we don't love God as perfectly as we should. God makes us perfect. God completes us. And only with God and His assistance can we become perfect.

We all try too hard to figure it all out on our own. We want to solve our own problems, we want to think that we don't need to rely on other people. While that's very admirable, there are and will be times in our lives when that simply won't be feasible - there will come a time when we realize that we really can't do it all on our own, no matter how much we don't like to say or hear that fact. I truly believe that God is allowing this period of desolation for me because I need to learn precisely that: I have become too comfortable in doing things by myself and have become too reliant on myself to the point where that can become prideful. And pride is the man's ultimate undoing. It is the root of sin and it is the root of everything that is wrong in this world. Love has no room for pride. I am standing here, in this place in my life - physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, relationally - because of the grace of God and through hundreds of thousands of others souls' influences, whether they be positive, negative, or anything in between.

So although I have been experiencing a lot of pain and suffering the past couple days, I am ready for all that this Holy Lent has to offer me and I am ready for all else that God is trying to speak to me this Lent, and through the rest of my life. We grow in desolation, and although this time, this healing and growing time, is difficult, it is the only way to grow stronger and blossom into all that God is calling us to be.

So fight on, brothers and sisters. Pray for me.

Pax semper vobiscum.

Beauty of the call

Day 20 of IMPACT | May 23, 2015

I'm going to start by admitting that this post was written a little bit after the fact, but I dated it on the day of the ordination so I can place it better in context for my personal reflection of my mission.

Today I was given an incredible opportunity to attend a priestly ordination in the Archdiocese of Vancouver. The deacon was a friend of mine and I was absolutely thrilled to be attending for the first time, the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

The whole Mass left me speechless and in awe of the beauty of God and the beauty of the Sacrament. As outward signs of inward grace, seeing this Sacrament in particular take place filled me with a deep sense of joy and simply awe. The community of priests, in particular, when they came up and one by one laid their hands on the new priest and embraced him, gave me such an excitement and beautiful feeling inside. The fact that a new priest is supported by so many other priests, like a brotherhood, is so wonderful to me. There was so much grace that was poured out during that day and it was absolutely beautiful to me.

The ordination was a blessing for me because it allowed me to see the beginning of the fulfillment of that vocation for that new priest. It showed me the beauty of the call that God gives each and every one of us - our vocation. After greeting the new priest after his ordination, he radiated pure joy and importantly, peace. It was so wonderful to see him discovering God's vocation for him and now making the decision to enter into that vocation.

I'm continuing to learn that God always desires the best for us and his call for us is the call that will give us the most fulfillment, but also importantly, the best way for us to serve others and bring others to Heaven with us. The two sides of our faith - holiness and mission - is ultimately best fulfilled through our vocation. Our God who loves us so much has personally designed a plan for each of us to live - and I cannot wait to discover what God has in plan for me.

Looking forward

Yesterday I finished my last exam of the year and thus, my second year of university came to an end. It's simply incredible how fast the time flies and how in a blink of an eye, I am halfway through my undergraduate degree.

Looking back, this year was a very important year of my life filled with many challenges, lessons learned, discoveries, friendships, reparation, and discernment. I've discovered the whole journey is not as straightforward as I initially imagined and that a lot more discernment, living, and praying goes into all the deciding.

This year I served on the student executive of Catholic Christian Outreach, an organization which significantly changed the course of my faith life over the past two years. Through CCO I discovered my desire for a personal relationship with Jesus and that motivated me to fervently search for ways to fulfill that desire - through the sacraments, through the Eucharist, through spiritual direction, through personal prayer. In turn, all of this allowed me to learn a lot more about myself and address and strengthen my weaknesses.

Perhaps the single most difficult decision this year was deciding to go on mission this summer. A lot of fear and a lot of uncertainty was present and I described a lot of that in my previous reflection in February. It was terrifying for me that I didn't know what was in store (and still don't know a lot of it... to be honest) and as someone who plans a lot and someone who sticks by a set a course of action, this was something that frightened me quite a lot. The mission so far, even though I haven't started yet, has been a big lesson on trust in the Lord that He will indeed provide. So far, He has certainly been doing wonderful things for me in preparation for mission that I never knew were possible. Now a week away from mission, I am filled with a certain sense of excitement but also peace as I embark for the summer.

My future is certainly unknown and I don't know what's in store for me in the next years, or even the next few months on mission: but I am confident that the Lord knows what He is doing, even though I won't necessarily always know. I'm slowly learning to let go and gain peace from that.

Onwards.

Fearless

It's so easy to enter into an endeavour when we feel we have control over it. If we can feel like everything is planned out, everything is ready, and all obstacles are adjusted for and accounted for, it is actually quite easy to hop right into it. For me, everything has to be this way, it allows me to be comfortable when everything is planned, and everything is organized, and everything is accounted for. I don't like surprises, and if I have do something where there is even a hint of a possibility that I won't be able to expect the outcome or what will happen, I get uncomfortable and tend to back out. For me, being comfortable is something that is so important to me that I pretty much would never do anything uncomfortable.

But that's exactly what the Lord is calling me to do.

The past couple weeks have been a large for me as I discerned possible pathways for the summer. One particular path frightened me greatly, but it seemingly was the path the Lord wanted me to go (of course.)

I think the Lord throws obstacles and choices in my path as a way for me to grow in specific virtues. In particular, in this episode of my life, that virtue happens to be trust. The reason I don't do many things is fear. It's the ultimate fear that I'll be caught off guard, that I'll be called to do something I'm not comfortable with, or to do something that I ultimately would dislike doing. It's the fear of failure, it's the fear of being placed outside of my comfort zone.

But the Lord never intended for us to be comfortable. Pope Benedict XVI said something that still resonates with me always: "The world offers you comfort. But you were not made for comfort, you were made for greatness." Imagine that. It is so easy for me to do the less daunting thing, to do the thing that I will know the result to, that I know what will happen. No surprises. But what would the accomplishment in that be, where would the joy be? How would the world change if we all stayed in our own comfort zones and never dared to enter into a place that would make us even mildly uncomfortable?

To be Christian, to be Catholic: the last thing we want to do is be comfortable. In our comfort zones, we will never reach anyone that the Lord wants to reach. We would never be able to do His work in this world. If we all did that, I don't even think I would have my faith to this day. The Church needs fearless leaders.

I think for me, being fearless means so much more than just not being afraid of anything. Being fearless means letting go of my own reservations, doing the work that I am called to, and letting (more, trusting that) God take control after that. It's action and mentality based on the unwavering trust and love in the Lord that He will indeed provide for us.

It's so hard for me to let go of that control. I'm continually learning to let God take the steering wheel and drive me where he wants me to go. I go into it, and I let God do the rest. I've seen the Holy Spirit move in hearts and I've seen Him do incredible things through normal, ordinary people. I know God can do amazing things and I know he's working and active in my life. Time for me to begin trusting that the God of the Universe knows what He's doing.

Orate pro me, et pro vobis orabo.

That still, small voice.

The past couple weeks have been truly blessed for me. At certain times during these past weeks I've been filled with a certain excitement that's difficult to put into words. I guess that's the way the Spirit works in a subtle, but again not-so-subtle way. There's a certain joy and peace that has overcome me and the anxiety I've been feeling for so long seems to have vanished the more I continue to discern my vocation to the priesthood. It's strange. The second I started thinking about my vocation again and a possible calling from God, that was the time that I somehow stopped worrying about everything in my life and where it was going. It was like a deep sigh of relief was emitted once that thought entered my head.

It's a good feeling that I don't quite want to shake off. My spiritual director was telling me about times of consolation and desolation - I seem to have entered another period of consolation after a long time of desolation. I guess this is a time to charge up courage and prepare, because we have to keep going and sometimes that going is hard.

I feel a strange happiness and joy and lack of worry when I think about entering the seminary. It's strange because a couple years back, I wouldn't have thought about it for even a second and maybe even dreaded the thought. But that's not how I feel now - I feel calm and also a strange exhilaration thinking about it. I wonder if that's the Spirit moving in me again. If God is pushing me towards the seminary, I will definitely go. But I know that at this point, I'm not ready. Not just yet. I feel like there's too much I must address in myself before I can take that next step. But the thought excites me.

I have not felt happiness and joy this intense anywhere but the Eucharist, but in Reconciliation, but in Adoration. I know that still, small voice is pushing me back towards Him. There are still a lot of questions I have yet to ask but somehow, I don't feel worried any more.

I'm just trying to listen to that still, small voice.