From Krakow to Prague: An Unexpected Juxtaposition

Have you ever had a hard time sharing your faith?  If you’re anything like me, sometimes you just get so passionate about being Catholic that it can be difficult to see the world from another perspective.  I mean, the Catholic Church is amazing!  But if we’re called to “go out to all the nations” and proclaim the Good News, that requires us interacting with people who are not like me, people who have a different background and viewpoint and might challenge me with things I’ve never even considered or cared about and yet are still created in God’s very own image and likeness.  It can feel impossible, pushing me out of my own little world into a bigger reality – one that I don’t fully understand and don’t have control over, which makes it scary.  But it’s the challenge of being a believer!

One of my favorite memories from my World Youth Day pilgrimage was an encounter I had with a cashier.  World Youth Day was over, and our diocesan group headed to Prague for a couple of days before flying back to the United States.  I had only heard great things about Prague – how beautiful the city is, how interesting the history is, how much more impressive it would be after the Polish cities.  But what struck me most about my 48-hour experience in Prague was just how much it lacks faith – and even more so, how much the city doesn’t seem to even desire it!  People are inspired more by John Lennon than by any religious figure.  Beautiful gothic cathedrals have renovated interiors so that they can function as office buildings.  Tourists take gleeful family photos under life-sized versions of the crucified Christ and a mourning Mary Magdalene and Mary His mother.  The tour guide pushed us away from churches and into shopping districts.  And almost everyone we talked to seemed to see faith as something below them, as if their culture had outgrown it and moved on to something better that more directly fulfills their personal needs and desires.  Why believe in anything if you don’t have to? 

This was striking after having a week immersed in Poland, one of the most actively Catholic countries in the entire world.  I mean, there were busy churches on every street corner, offering 6 Masses a weekend and having confession for hours and hours every day of the week.  And then to be surrounded by a million excited young Catholics at every moment of the day and night?  You can always create a reason to doubt, but you’d be hard-pressed to do so in that environment.  You could see the Holy Spirit moving with enthusiasm and passion!  So to go from what could be described as a week-long faith-based pep rally to a culture that prides itself on that fact that it is without faith was…a shock.  A statistic we heard from our tour guide (that I’ve looked into a little since and seems pretty accurate) was that 80% of the Czech Republic identifies as either atheist or agnostic.  What a difference from its next-door neighbor!

Do they know what they are missing out on?  Do they care?  Don’t they want to at least ask the question of “what if”?  Walking through the streets, I felt a serious sadness and a longing that I had never recognized before – a longing for a whole country of lost people.  It was definitely a place that could have led me right where the evil one wants us to go:  into a state of hopelessness.

We got back from the tour and I ventured into the gift shop of the hotel, looking for a couple of last-minute gifts for my godchildren.  All of the “religious” items looked cheap or ridiculous, but eventually I found a couple of cute marionettes (including one that as dressed like Pinocchio!) and headed to the cashier.  The teens in front of me couldn’t make up their mind what they wanted and took longer than necessary, eventually deciding not purchase anything.  I smiled at the cashier and made some sort of passing joke about teenagers and their great decision-making skills.  As she rung up my items, she asked if I was part of the group who had just come from Poland.  I said yes, and then she asked if I had gotten to see the pope.  I shared a quick story about how yes, we had on multiple occasions, including when we were walking early in the morning to our Jeweler’s Shop dress rehearsal and he drove by in a car that was no more than 15 feet away from us!  She finished wrapping up my purchased, paused, and looked at me.  She then said “My family and I aren’t religious, but I love Pope Francis.  He gives me hope that there’s something bigger out there after all, helping us and protecting us.”

I mean… how cool?!  No, we didn’t get to have some sort of big theological discussion, but there was something even better expressed in that short conversation:  HOPE.  It doesn’t matter if you’re Pope Francis’s absolute biggest fan or if you are someone who often gets frustrated with the way the media takes his words out of context all the time.  The fact that the pope, the main person in the Catholic Church, who is a priest and celebrates Mass in persona Christi, who is a part of the apostolic succession right from Jesus Himself, could inspire hope in someone who claims to be agnostic at best and make them even a little tiny bit more open to the concept of a God who intimately cares about them, is awesome!  Isn’t that what World Youth Day is all about, to inspire people to live & love the Gospel message, to let the Holy Spirit move them in ways that they might not even realize but lead to the conversion of hearts?

Every once in a while, I think about that lady, and about her family, and about the city of Prague.  And I pray fervently for them.  There is a longing there, a desire for something bigger than them, someone that gives them hope.  We know that desire is faith, and that someone is Christ.  I pray that the people of the Czech Republic come to realize that Truth one day – and that they come to realize that the hope they have is real and true and worth it in every way imaginable!  Who knows, maybe the next person who inspires them to have hope will be you.

To Be Like Teresa

I want to be like Teresa.

Who is Teresa?  Teresa is one of seven characters in “The Jeweler’s Shop:  A Meditation on the Sacrament of Matrimony, Passing on Occasion into a Drama,” a play written by St. John Paul the Great when he was still known as Karol Wojtyla, Auxiliary Bishop of Krakow.  Teresa starts off the play in Act 1 with the announcement that she just got engaged to Andrew on the right side of the market square, and by the end of the act, she and Andrew see how their marriage will reflect Heaven’s Love within the world.  Most importantly, Teresa is the character I was lucky enough to be when we performed this play in Poland during World Youth Day.

Backing it up…  World Youth Day.  I still can’t believe it happened!  In the two weeks that I’ve been back in Richmond, tons of people have asked me “how was it?” and “what was your favorite part?”  Honestly, I don’t even know where to begin!  Do I share goofy stories of bus ride games and delicious (and cheap!) pierogi meals?  Should I tell them about the cramped tram rides and the long walks home to our hotel?  Should I start with the fact that there is a Catholic Church on every block of central Krakow and that we got to visit the relics of three saints within a mile of each other?  Do I tell them about the spiritual high of celebrating a Mass with 2 million people, waving their flags in a way that I imagine is similar to John’s Revelation when all of the nations are gathered at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb?  Do I tell them how the things I thought I’d pray about ended up being put to the side for other things that God wanted to work on in my heart?

When Christine asked me to consider being in the play, I was really hesitant… but she’s persistent and enthusiastic and basically impossible to say no to (and thank the Lord for that!).  I said yes and put on a brave face, but I had a ton of reservations about it – I almost backed out a couple of times before we started practicing.  When I started reading through the script, I still wasn’t convinced I could do a good job.  I’m a youth minister and musician, so you’d think that I’m used to having all eyes on me and having people rely on me…  but acting is something very different, and it stretched me far outside of my comfort zone.  Plus, it was hard for me to connect to my character of Teresa.  She’s so deeply in love with her new fiancé Andrew, she quickly gets caught up in sentiment and reminiscences, and she makes jokes about things like high heeled shoes!  None of these were things I could relate to, and I quickly found myself wishing I either had similar experiences in the past to pull from or that my introverted self would ease up so that I could let myself go and have fun with it.  Acting was a struggle, and I wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that we had* to perform twice during the trip that I had originally signed up for with the intention of NOT having any commitments to worry about during it.

*Christine would often say “we get to perform twice!” with excitement; I would often repeat it in my head as “twice… yikes.”

Once we got to Poland and our World Youth Day adventures started, it was easier to let myself experience the pilgrimage and not be consumed with concern for the play.  Plus, there were a ton of quick opportunities to pray throughout the days – every time we stepped into a church (which was quite often!), I could let the world fall away for a few minutes, breathe, and refocus myself on Christ.  But when we’d talk about practicing late at night or look at our Thursday and Friday schedules, my nerves would kick in again.

Finally, the performance days were upon us.  We got to do a final run-through on Thursday morning, and Act 1 (where Teresa and Andrew are engaged) went smoother than I expected.  And once we got all the way through Act 3 (where Christopher, their son, is getting married to Monica), I was feeling better about the whole thing.  At least I had a general sense of where to stand!  Thursday night’s performance came, and at the end of it, I was relieved and happy… but honestly, I walked away from that performance knowing I could do better.  So when we got to Friday, my prayer throughout our morning World Youth Day catechesis sessions was that God would give me the grace and courage to be His instrument so that I could convey His Love through the performance.  I needed His help to allow myself to become one with my character Teresa rather than focusing on the ways that I am different from her and getting frustrated with those differences.  And that Friday performance was awesome!  I know for a fact that Adam (who played Andrew, my fiancé/husband) and I both had a lot of fun on the stage that night, and I wasn’t worried anymore about exactly where to stand or how to deliver my lines – I simply lived it, and it was glorious.  I was Teresa!

After the Friday performance, we went to the Stations of the Cross event with Pope Francis and 800,000 fellow pilgrims.  I tried to connect to the reflections that were shared, but I was distracted by other thoughts.  I mean, why was it so hard for me to let myself go during the play and have fun with it?  As I prayed, my thoughts led me back to feelings I experienced a couple of months back while talking about an upcoming wedding within my family.  Now, it’s well-known in my family that I don’t really date, and I’ve never had a boyfriend.  I’m not against dating by any means, it just hasn’t been the right situation for me yet.  As my family talked about this particular wedding, the question of plus ones was brought up, as a number of the siblings and friends coming to the wedding are not yet married, including me.  Since the wedding was still 6 months out at the time, I light-heartedly asked “well, what if I’m dating someone when the wedding comes around,” which quickly received the response of “you’ve never dated, and you’re probably going to be a nun anyway and never have a significant other, so why would we give you a plus one to our wedding and waste money on an extra seat that won’t get used.” 

Yeah…  Talk about a crushing blow.  I shrugged it off at the time, but it is something that has really been coming back to haunt me.  Don’t get me wrong, religious sisterhood is beautiful!  And if God calls me to that vocation, I will receive it with my arms and heart wide open.  (Honestly, sometimes I wish and pray for that vocation, nuns are such an amazing gift to the Church and to the world!)  However, I am very sure that God is calling me to discern and pursue the vocation of being a wife and mother.  I love that this is my call!  After a solid year of discernment, I feel very blessed to know this in my heart and be comfortable with it.  BUT that doesn’t make the idea of marriage very easy for me…  Part of that has to do with my history of a mental illness tearing my family apart, and it scares me to think that either my future husband or I could repeat that situation.  But even more than that, I sometimes deal with my own spiritual battles.  Just like many other women, I struggle with the way I look, overanalyzing relationships, and feeling stuck in the present rather than hopeful for the future.  At times, it’s hard to believe that there’s some man out there who will ever desire my wellbeing enough to give their life for the sake of mine.  I know that’s really harsh, but I struggle with that lie.  And the conversation about the wedding a few months ago made this wound even bigger – but I chose to ignore the pain.

So, coming into World Youth Day, I thought I knew what prayer intentions would be on my heart – for my family, for my mission partners’ intentions, and for my career path.  Halfway through the pilgrimage, after “The Jeweler’s Shop” performances, it was painfully clear that God had other ideas for where He was going to be working on my heart.  And just as I was starting to wrestle with the fact that God wanted to heal me in a way I hadn’t even acknowledged needed healing…  I fell.  Literally.  I was walking back from the Stations of the Cross and had just forced my way through the huge crowds, and as I sped up to walk the last 3 blocks to our hotel, I got pushed as someone passed behind me, lost my balance, and face-planted on the cobblestone sidewalk. 

At first, it seemed like I was fine and I made it back to the hotel – where it soon became clear that the area under my right toe was swollen.  Falling and hurting my foot changed everything.  All of a sudden, I went from being independent and doing my own thing to having to continually ask people for help.  We went out for celebratory drinks with the cast and documentary team, but Adam had to help me home, Ria had to give me an ice pack, and Richard had to seriously support me as I made my way to my hotel room for the night.  And then there was all of the walking to look forward to the next day as we hiked 9 miles out to Campus Misericordiae for the big World Youth Day vigil, and the needing help to stand, and then the walking again…  Since grad school, I’ve really come to keep my guard up with most people and be self-sufficient.  I don’t want to rely on other people or expect anything extra from them, because that requires having faith that they’ll be okay with you being so attached to them – and that kind of trust is scary.  But being independent is not really what our faith is about at all, is it?  Or what it means to be human?  You have to be able to trust without being able to see every detail of the future.  You most definitely can’t reflect, as Teresa puts it, the absolute Existence and Love by yourself.

We left the closing Mass of World Youth Day in the blazing heat, part of a sea of 2 million people all walking in the same direction, with me clinging to Adam’s arm for miles.  All I could do was keep walking – I couldn’t look up to see where I was going for fear that I would step on something that would make me stumble again.  I had to rely on Adam, who was looking ahead at the road before us, keeping us on track as we journeyed from Campus Misericordiae (a glimpse of Heaven) back into the world.

What struck me most was that Adam didn’t complain about me needing his help, as much as I apologized for making the experience more difficult for him.  And at that moment, it was in my miserable broken body that I realized how broken I was in my heart.  When we started our World Youth Day experience, I kept trying to figure out why I was there, what God wanted from me during this pilgrimage… and in this moment, I realized that all He wanted was me.  The real me.  The me who was buried under fears and excuses.  The me who has hope of being like Teresa.  The me who trusts other people, who wants to say “Jesus, I trust in You” and mean it about EVERYTHING, including my future.  You know, God could very well put a person in my life like Andrew who puts aside his own plans, feels me as a persistence inside his soul, and throws me a bridge.  Heck, on this trip, he gave me wonderful men like Adam (and Richard, and Dillon, and a number of others) to literally lean on when I couldn’t support myself.  If I can have a friend who’s willing to do that for me, why can’t I believe that my future husband is really out there and will really do that and more for me?  Why don’t I trust God as much as I trusted Adam in that situation? 

That is my hope and prayer now.  I want to trust.  I want to be able to say the phrase “Jesus, I trust in you” and mean it with my full heart.  World Youth Day and this play have made me realize that I haven’t been trusting Jesus with everything… but I need to let Him heal me, even in the places that I’ve been ignoring for fear of finding out just how broken I am.  I need to give Him all of my reservations and fears so that I can stop holding back and start believing and living in freedom.  And I’m working on it, slowly but surely.  The future is still unknown, but I can accept it without anxiety.  Love has overcome anxiety.  I have hope that, one day, I will be like Teresa, standing hand in hand with my husband on the steps of the Jeweler’s shop, reflecting the absolute Existence and Love within the world as we gaze upon Christ through Heaven’s windows.

One Woman's Yes

Today, Heaven touches Earth.

A woman says yes to the God of all creation.  Yes, I will receive You into my life.  I will let You fill me up to a point where I can't help but overflow with Your Love.  I will care for You above all other things.  I will hold You in my arms.  I will be Your perfect lover and adorer.  I will carry You into the world for all to see.  I will labor in Your vineyard and prepare a place for You.  I will open myself to You completely, never hiding from Your eyes, never desiring anything apart from Your will.  I will join my heart to Yours.  Yes, I will be who You've always intended me to be, the Theotokos, God-Bearer.

Today, Heaven touches Earth.

A woman says yes to the God of all creation.  Yes, I will always be with You, united in Your suffering, never leaving Your side.  I will go to the foot of the cross where You, the Heavenly Bridegroom, are waiting for me.  I will unite myself to You in a new way, a way that changes everything.  I will suffer with You, die with You, and one day rise with You, as we are one.  I will open myself to Your mystery, my thirst only being satisfied by Your everlasting presence, living for You and You alone.  Yes, I will be both Bride and Mother, the one who gathers Your children and leads them into Your arms.

"Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord." Luke 1:38

"Woman, behold, your son." John 19:26

Today, Heaven touches Earth.

Beautiful Is NOT Bad

Have you ever had that moment of almost liking something and then immediately hating it?  I can't be the only one who has found themselves scrolling through their Facebook news feed (let's be honest, this happens way too often, especially with "snowmageddon"), and stumbling upon a post that looks solid...so you click on it.  I look at the picture, read through the post, and somewhere between the opening line and the end I've gone from interest to distaste to being concerned with our society.  Today, I saw a post that peaked my curiosity...  but by the end I was perturbed.  Here's some excerpts:

How to talk to your daughter about her body, step one:  Don't talk to your daughter about her body, except to teach her how it works.  Don't say anything if she's lost weight.  Don't say anything if she's gained weight. 

If you think your daughter's body looks amazing, don't say that.  Here are some things you can say instead:  "You look so healthy!" is a great one.  Or how about "You're looking so strong."  "I can see how happy you are - you're glowing."

Better yet, compliment her on something that has nothing to do with her body.  Don't compliment on other women's bodies either.  Nope.  Not a single comment, not a nice one or a mean one.

Teach her about kindness towards others, but also kindness towards yourself.

[...] 

 Remind your daughter that the best thing she can do with her body is to use it to mobilize her beautiful soul. 

From "Love What Matters" on Facebook

So here's the deal.  I get what the point of the post is - something to the effect of "you are not defined by your body, you are lovable just the way you are, don't pass on the problems you have with your own body to your daughter, live a balanced life, etc."  And it's not that this is bad...  but right from the beginning, it's already saying that anything you can say about the body is negative.  It's fighting the societal norm of over-valuing the body to the point of under-valuing the soul by reversing it.  "Don't talk to your daughter about her body."  Don't say that the princess dress she is wearing makes her look pretty, don't say that she's lucky to be tall enough to ride Space Mountain, and don't say that her dimples are so cute they make you want to smile.

But wait...  Aren't those good things?  In fact, our bodies are supposed to be good, right?  We've all heard it a billion times before, that God looked upon everything He made, including man and woman, and said it was very good.  It says it right there in Genesis 1:27, that:

"God created mankind in His image; in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them."

Why are we so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater?  Just because we're in a twisted world that has taken our clean, beautiful sheets of paper and wrinkled them up to make them look like trash, that doesn't mean we should throw them away as if they are bad mistakes.  As Christopher West says, we are called to unfold the paper.  The paper is a gift and has a wonderful message inscribed on it that the whole world is meant to see.  Instead of tossing our bodies aside as being less important, let's take our bodies and the desires that come with them and bring them to God so that He can unfurl the creases and restore us to our original beauty.  We are human beings.  We aren't simply souls that have a body while we're on earth, we are both body AND soul.  Let's not limit how God can speak through both parts of our nature.

2 of the best compliments I've ever been lucky enough to receive encapsulate this for me.  One was from a friend in my college campus ministry who said "Katie, you have the prettiest smile."  The second was from a music minister after I played and sung during adoration who said "you are a gift to the Church."  One spoke to outward features of which I have very little control, and one spoke to inward talents of which I have a significant amount of control - but both spoke to my entire being, both body and soul.  And both helped me see myself as a daughter of God.  If we're going to change the kind of compliments we give, let's focus them less on what we are and more on whose we are.  Let beauty shine forth from our bodies and our souls so that we become the like the moon, reflecting the beautiful light of the Son back onto the Earth.  Your body is a gift, just like His body was, is, and will always be a gift.  Help everyone else see them for what they are - an image of God.