Smorgasbord #52

Thank you, Ten years, TOB

Thank you

I sent the first Smorgasbord a year ago because I was stuck trying to pump out 40 Before 40 essays regularly. Smorgasbord has evolved throughout the last 52 weeks, and I think the refining process has been organic enough that I like where I have landed: three ideas that have caught my attention during the week. Sometimes, they’re good, sometimes not. Sometimes, I finish it by Tuesday; sometimes, I stay up late Thursday trying to cobble something together.

It has been a good exercise in stick-to-itiveness, and whether you have been here since the beginning or this is your first time, I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for taking an interest in reading the ramblings of a man trying to make sense of life week in and week out. I hope you get something out of it, if anything, a sense of relief that you’re not me.

One thing I have enjoyed about writing this newsletter is that for the last year, I’ve been paying more attention to people and ideas. Ever since

Seth Haines

wrote a piece about becoming a noticer, I’ve taken that to heart. Smorgasbord is me, processing in real time, the top three ideas that crossed my desk (phone, mostly) that week.

It’s interesting to see what has popped up the most in the last 52 weeks. It’s mostly a mixed bag of Catholicism, things I’m watching or reading, self-improvement, and cocktails—which I’ve done less of because I’m not drinking as much alcohol these days. If you’re into that, great! I plan to keep this party going indefinitely while I work on other projects behind the scenes.

Once again, thank you for reading and for being a fellow pilgrim on this journey.

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Ten years

Diana and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary last week, and she wrote 10 Years & Unsolicited Advice for married people or those thinking about getting married. If you still want more after you have read that one, check out the essay we wrote together for our 9th wedding anniversary.

I had so many ideas about what to write that I ended up with analysis paralysis. I’ll say this: my life is so much better with Diana and our children in it. Even with the challenges this vocation brings, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Okay, maybe one thing: I would’ve hired a Mariachi band for our wedding reception.

On our anniversary day, we dressed up and went to our parish’s perpetual adoration chapel towards the end of a holy hour for vocations, just in time for benediction. It was the right amount of time for the kids to be quiet before we had to take them out. Our pastor,

Fr. Daniel Cruz

, gave us a blessing in the main Church with our kids as witnesses, which was very special. It felt intimate and chaotic at the same time. Oliver debuted as an altar boy, holding the book for Father to read. The two younger ones wandered off a bit, so we had to chase them and contain them halfway through.

We had gone to confession before the whole thing, so I mostly started laughing at how everything went down. Fr. Cruz took a picture for us, and we parted ways. Diana and I had dinner at a steak house. Unfortunately, this restaurant didn’t have a license to allow people to bring their own wine, so we still have a bottle of wine we got back in 2013 when we got engaged, which we have been saving for a special occasion. We might open it this weekend. If you want to know more about the bottle we’ve been saving, click here.

We’re going to my hometown for Christmas, so we didn’t plan anything big for our tenth anniversary, but maybe in 2025, we’ll be able to do something as a delayed celebration.

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TOB

I’m currently studying Theology of the Body as part of the Adult Faith Formation program at the Kino Catechetical Institute in the Diocese of Phoenix—that’s a mouthful. I thought it was interesting that in the late 70s, Cardinal Wojtyla already had a complete manuscript for his next book, Man and Woman He Created Them, and that once he became Pope John Paul II, he took this manuscript and chopped it down into pieces to use in his Wednesday audiences between September 1979 and November 1984. These 129 short reflections were published weekly in Observatore Romano, making TOB a serialized book—in my opinion.

It’s no coincidence that the same week Diana and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary, I learned about the concept of original unity. Sidenote: the readings for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time also dealt with marriage.

“…[original unity] is based on masculinity and femininity, which are, as it were, two different ‘incarnations,’ that is, two ways in which the same human being, created ‘in the image of God’ (Gen 1:27), ‘is a body.’”

I had heard that the Domestic Church is meant to be an icon of the Most Holy Trinity, in that we live in communion, and the love of husband and wife begets a third person. But JPII breaks it down even more to say that we are one nature, humans, with two complimentary ‘incarnations,’ male and female, which, in communion, in a relationship, become the image of God.

In “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,” he said that man is called to exist ‘for’ others, to become a gift. The more we become a sincere gift of self for others, the more we reflect the image of God.

I’m excited for the next four weeks I get to study TOB, especially since I learned what papal biographer George Weigel said about it in his JPII biography “Witness to Hope”:

“John Paul II’s theology of the body is a theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences sometime in the third millennium of the Church…It has barely begun to shape the way the Church understands herself and thinks about herself barely begun to shape the Church’s preaching and education, but when it does it will compel a dramatic development of thinking about virtually every major theme in the creed.”

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Sobremesa

1. What would you like to see more of in future Smorgasbords?

2. What’s the oldest wine vintage you’ve had, and was it any good?

3. When do you think TOB’s theological time bomb will go off?