I Can Relate...

Pax Christi vobiscum! Come Holy Spirit!

I just have been doing some reflecting lately (not in front of a mirror, like usual...uh wait), and I had something occur to me. Basically, as I've been discerning, I've been trying to figure out what it is I'm getting into here, seeking to live life as a celibate priest of the Roman Catholic Church. What have I found? It is fitting that in the Catholic faith we are seeking a relationship.

Allow me to explain: What are all of us looking for in this life? If we are all really honest with ourselves, we are looking for a relationship. We desire to love and to be loved. All of us long for someone to share our most intimate self with who will respond in kind: a true relationship. (Or maybe I'm the only one...?)

Then what do I find in the Faith but the fact that God has been doing the same thing and to a much higher degree. Get this: the Faith tells us that God so desires a relationship with us that He became a man, born of a woman, Mary, in order to seek us out and draw us back to Him. The second Person of the Trinity, the Word of God, fully God Himself, became flesh and dwelt among us (see John 1:14). Jesus Christ, "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross" (Philippians 2:6-8, emphasis mine).

Stay with me here. This means that the Son of God, Who already shared in the eternal glory and majesty of the Father before all the ages, humbled Himself to become human (it would be similar to one of us becoming an ant in order to draw all ants to a relationship with us) and then humbled Himself even more when He died for us. Now that's what I call seeking a relationship.

Even if you don't believe it, you have to admit the idea of it is staggering...and it's also exactly what we desire.

So that's where I say it is fitting. It is called an argument from fittingness. Our desire lines up exactly with what we find in the Faith. And if the God Who creates is the same God Who reveals Himself to us in the Faith, then this only makes sense: God created us for Himself (and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him, as St. Augustine reminds us), and so we should find that the desire within us matches up with the God we find in revelation. In other words, the person I was created to be should line up with the information I have about the God Who creates. And we do indeed find this correspondence between the claim made in revelation (that God created us for Himself and His love) and the fact found in my life experience (that I desire to be loved perfectly).

I mean, who doesn't want to be loved perfectly just as they are? I could sure go for some of that.

So in my reflection I have realized that I too will be entering into a relationship with my Bride-to-be, the Church, and through her, a relationship with God. That's right, as a Roman Catholic Priest, I will be marrying the Church.

The only difference is that in this marriage, I will wear a collar, not a leash.

God bless you all! And know that I pray for you constantly. St. Peter and St. Paul, pray for us!