Smorgasbord #67

Bride | Obstacles | Catechist

Feb 07, 2025

Bride

I got a cold sore last week, which hasn’t healed yet. I can’t remember the last time I had one, probably more than five years ago. I knew it was coming. I woke up one morning and felt a slight tingling on my lip, but then I saw a small patch of redness on my upper lip. It’s super annoying and inconvenient. Mainly because I kiss my kids repeatedly, but most importantly because I kiss my wife repeatedly, and now I had to refrain from doing so to not pass on the virus to them.

Physical touch is one of my love languages, and here I am, unable to kiss my loved ones. It sucks. There’s been a good amount of snuggles and roughhousing, which helps, but I think the most challenging part is not being able to kiss Diana. When you’ve been married for over a decade and raising a young family, sometimes physical touch is put on the back burner. There have been days when one or both of us are touched out, and we just want to sit quietly in the living room and watch a show before bed. We’ve been there.

This longing for my cold sore to heal so I can kiss my wife again made me think of the love of God. I yearn to embrace and kiss Diana because I love her; she’s my bride. Similarly, God, the bridegroom, longs for His bride (us, the Church). I know this might be difficult for men to picture since we usually initiate the embrace instead of being embraced, but stay with me.

I also thought of the beauty of feminine receptivity. As British novelist William Golding once said: ”Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she will give you a baby. If you give her a house, she will give you a home. If you give her groceries, she will give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she will give you her heart. She multiples and enlarges whatever is given to her.”

God wants to have intimacy with every one of us. He loves us more than anyone in the world. As reckless as He is with His love, He is also a gentleman and won’t force himself on anyone. He wants us to choose Him, so He gave us free will. He willed us into existence and wants us to be in a relationship with Him, just like the Most Holy Trinity is a relationship.

How can we better receive His love? Every day is an opportunity to grow closer to Him. There are many ways to achieve this, but prayer is the most crucial. There are also many ways to pray. Which one is better? The one you can do consistently. The liturgy of the hours (LOTH) has been helping me develop intimacy with God.

LOTH is the official prayer of the Catholic Church, also known as the Divine Office. It comprises psalms, hymns, readings, and other prayers, prayed at specific times throughout the day, such as morning, midday, afternoon, evening, and night. Thus, the day is sanctified by prayer. If you want to dip your toe in the LOTH pool, start with night prayer, which is very brief. Right now, I’m aiming to pray morning and evening prayer.

Although the laity is not required to pray the LOTH like the clergy, we are still encouraged to do so. If you’re anything like me, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel; you just want to show up and pray with a framework someone smarter than you came up with. It’s an opportunity to practice receptivity. You don’t have to buy the books to try LOTH; you can download an app like iBreviary, visit divineoffice.org, or search YouTube for Sing the Hours to get started.

Obstacles

An obstacle is something between you and your end. For example, when I met Diana, she lived in California, and I was in Phoenix. The distance was the obstacle to us spending time together, the end. We wanted to spend time together to get to know each other and discern if God was calling us to be married. We dated long-distance for nine months before I proposed to her; the rest is history.

We face obstacles every day. You want to drink coffee, but you’re out of beans. You want to have an apple fritter, but the person before you buys the last one. You’re next in line for confession, but Father needs to get ready for Mass, and you don’t get to go. You could buy coffee on the way to work, get a different donut, and try to go to confession the next day.

What’s the purpose of an obstacle? God allows obstacles to happen, so they must serve a purpose. We have free will, so we have options for addressing obstacles. I immediately thought of Marcus Aurelius and “the obstacle is the way,” which is one approach. We overcome the obstacle, conquer it, and carry on toward our goal. This is how my brain works: I see a problem, I look for a solution, I find the next problem (or it finds me), and so on.

Another option would be to give up on pursuing our goal as soon as the obstacle reveals itself. We start the year energized, ready to work out every day and eat right, then we miss a couple of days, which turn into weeks and months. I have been there a few times. We give up, we throw our arms and abandon the quest.

I just learned about Aristotle’s golden mean, which is about finding the balance between two extremes or vices. For example, too little courage is cowardice, but too much courage is rashness. Stinginess is too little generosity, but too much generosity can turn into wastefulness. As we would say in Mexico, don’t put the candle too close to the saint so it burns it, nor too far that it doesn’t shine a light on it.

Knowing this, we could think of obstacles as invitations to practice virtue. We will need prudence, the mother of all virtues, to help us do the right thing at the right time. Temperance helps us achieve self-control. We need courage to fight our fears and justice to give everyone what’s due to them. The best news is that we can practice these skills and grow in virtue, regardless of the raw material we’re working with.

Let us go now and see what invitations are waiting for us.

Catechist

Last Saturday, the kids preparing to receive their first communion, and their parents were on retreat. I was asked to help by giving a talk in Spanish on the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. I would give the talk three times, first to a group of 3rd graders, then a group of 6th to 10th graders, and finally to a group of 4th and 5th graders.

I was nervous during the first session with the third graders. I was talking too fast, sweaty, and probably way above their heads, using words like epiclesis and substantiation. Still, they were very forgiving, and I had taken the jitters out. Since there were no questions after I finished my exposition (probably not a good sign), I ran to the Church to see if I could go to confession. Luckily, I was able to go.

My oldest son, God willing, will receive his first communion and confirmation in May, so he and Diana participated in the retreat. I had a couple of hours until my next session, so I joined them briefly. I witnessed two seasoned catechists talk about the real presence, and their talk wasn’t much about facts but about a story, the story of salvation.

I mentally noted the points they were hitting and merged them with what I had prepared. The group of 6th to 10th was smaller, and I probably was still slightly nervous and rushing. My talk was right before lunch, so maybe they were distracted because they were hungry. It is a mystery, after all, something we will never fully understand with our limited intellects.

My last talk was right after lunch with the 4th and 5th graders. This was a big group. By this time, I felt relaxed and better understood what I wanted to say and do with my class. I started weaving the story of salvation from Adam and Eve, the protoevangelium, Abraham, Melchizedek (it would’ve been nice if I had remembered to add the manna from heaven), the Last Supper, and Calvary.

I asked the kids if Jesus is God, and they said yes. I asked them if God could lie, and they said no. So, with those two premises: 1. Jesus is God, and 2. God tells us the truth; we read John chapter 6, where Jesus says we must eat His flesh and drink His blood. We connect that to the Last Supper and the Mass. If Jesus says, "This is my body," it is His body.

There was one kid who knew all the answers to my questions. He had already received his first communion, but not confirmation, and he was very eager to answer. I saw myself in him because I was like that at his age, extremely keen to show what I knew. In a way, I still am like that.

They knew we are body and soul and that if you deprive the body of food and drink, you die. I told them that the same thing applies to our souls. How can we nourish the soul? By receiving the bread from heaven. It all ties back to the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith.

It is a fun challenge attempting to explain something like transubstantiation. The best I could do was say that it looks and tastes like bread, but the breadness is no more, and instead, you have Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity. The same Christ that healed the lepers and restored vision to the blind brought Lazarus back from the dead and rose on the third day. He came into the world two thousand years ago and hasn’t left; He just looks different. That’s why it’s a mystery; we need to see with the eyes of faith.

If you believe in the real presence, congratulations, you are part of the third of Catholics who believe in the Church’s teaching. According to Pew Research Center, seven in ten Catholics think the Eucharist is just a symbol. Next time you do a holy hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament, remember your brethren who don’t believe in the real presence, offer a prayer in atonement for their disbelief, and pray that they may come to the radiance of His light.

Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.

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Sobremesa

You’re at a wedding reception. Complete this sentence: When the DJ plays _________, I need to get on the dancefloor.
What’s an obstacle you have right now?
What topic could you give a 15-minute talk without any prep work?