Best of S and S: Sainthood

I am posting a "Best of Sainthood and Surrender" this week as I recover from surgery. Thanks for stopping by! My prayers are with you.

This was originally posted on September 4, 2008 and shows a definitive transition from my earlier posts to how I decided to live my life in the last year.

Sainthood

I have had something interesting occur in me in the last month. Bear with me because if you have thought to yourself: “Todd is acting kind of weird... “

Well... that might be normal.

It occurred to me at the end of July that I had been settling for second rate. Second rate in my family, second rate in my job, second rate from myself, and second rate from my God.

And that does not rate.

I started thinking in the beginning of August about how much time I wasted in a given day on (forgive me) total bullshit.

I would check my email every 10-15 minutes to see if there was something I needed to answer.

I would check my cell phone every 10-15 minutes to see if anyone had called.

I would browse websites so I could be "in the know" about anything and everything.

I would spend time listening to talks, reading books, reading the internet, watching TV, and doing anything possible to "improve my ability to do ministry, to be a better speaker, teacher, writer, campus minister, musician, husband, father, worker, gardener, homeowner, son, brother, uncle, entertainer, comedian, Catholic... blah, blah, blah..." (notice the priorities in that list)

I hereby apologize to you for all of that and more.

I don't know what changed, but I think that God worked on me in ways I would never have imagined.

1. My wife, my girls. I have missed too much time with them to try to provide them with things that matter less then my presence. When my own family starts to come apart at the seams because the laptop gets opened or the phone starts to ring, then I need to readjust my priorities. The best time I had this summer was going to the beach with the family. Going to the amusement parks and holding my daughter as we went on a roller coaster for kiddies or a water slide. Tickling the baby. Sitting on the couch and talking to my wife and praying with my her. There is no work in the world that I do that is worth sacrificing that.
2. The anniversary of Humanae Vitae. I was proud of the conference that Fr. Joe Fitzgerald hosted at St. Killian's and in the process I tried to make it something that it wasn't. In my final speaking engagement of the summer I was reminded that the truth mattered more than my jokes, that Christ is more important than my stories, and that prayer is more important than anything I had to say.
3. My wife’s grandmother passed away. This was a difficult two weeks because it simply reminded me how selfish I was. I continually had to die to my idea of what I should be doing and what God wanted to do with me. It also reminded me that the human family of Christ is beautifully broken, yearning for God, desperate to meet him and terrified of the prospect.
4. My father's heart attack. I treat myself terribly. Physically I have not exercised in over five years and I eat as if grease is stock in Exxon. God knows how much time I have left, but I need to give myself the self-discipline I tell everyone else to have.

What is the result? How have I changed? What do I see? What do I need to continue to work on?

The difference is that only one thing matters to me now: sainthood.

You read that right: I care about becoming a saint. Nothing more, nothing less.

This means that God gets 100% of my heart with 100% of my heart 100% of the time. (Thanks P. Kreeft) Period. Strike three. Game. Set. Match.

So forgive me if I am only checking my email once a day or less. Forgive me if I let the phone go to voicemail. Forgive me if I stopped watching the news, sports, reading articles, books, and every bit of drivel I can get my hands on. Forgive me if I don't know anything about the latest celebrities, movies, TV shows, politics, or sports events. Forgive me if I am not the guy who knows everything.

I'm not.

I never was.

I pretended I was.

I was lying. I was a fool

Forgive me for lying. I am still a fool.

If I am at home, I am with my family and I am pursuing sainthood with them.

If I am at Kellenberg then I am teaching and am pursuing sainthood with my students and coworkers.

If I am doing campus ministry then I am pursuing sainthood at the college.

If I am writing I am trying to discern what God wants me to write and get it on paper so that I can be a saint and journey to heaven with others.

I literally don't want anything else.

I want to be holy and I want to be a saint and I want to push, pull, drag, kick, punch as many people toward sainthood as possible, but especially my family.

I don't care what you think of that, or me, as long as you get closer to Christ.

I don't care if my students think I am crazy or if my coworkers are angry that I didn't teach exactly what was in the curriculum or if I didn't do that paperwork exactly by the handbook, as long as they realize that I am about the business of enabling more people but especially my students to become saints.

I don't care if I do less speaking engagements or if I don't write another book as long as people know that they need to be saints.

I don't care if I am the worst musician on the planet as long as people worship like saints.

I care about being a saint.

I care about you being a saint.

That is scary. It is easy to hide behind technology and busy work and schedules and to-do lists and ideas and planning and debates and current events and never confront the fact that the reason we are not saints is that we don't want to be. Once again, Dr. Kreeft offers the statement that nails my soul to the wall and convicts me in my own sin.

I'm not afraid, I am not stopping, I am not giving up, and I give it all to Christ.

Make me a saint.

Everything else can wait.

I was prompted to write this by reading the quote below that is now on the front of the website after I had given my personal rendition of Peter Kreeft's "Culture Wars" talk found on his website to my students during the first two days of classes. I just seemed like this entire summer finally made sense and I wanted to write it down and offer it. It is probably the most vulnerable post I have ever made. I realize that I have opened the door that cannot be shut.

"If you will look into your own heart in complete honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not a saint: you do not wholly want to be." - William Law

Sometimes sinners need to come out and tell the world that they are sick of sitting in the mud and muck. I’m not clean yet. I am in the process of growing.

Jeremiah 20:7-9

Mark 10:17-30

Ephesians

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.