Iron Sharpens Iron

If I hadn't gone through that darkness, I wouldn't be where I am today. My parents really wanted to have a family, but my mom wasn't able to get pregnant until she was 40. I was their miracle baby, born on her birthday, exactly one year after she completed a special Novena in petition for a child. I was gifted with a baby brother one year later. My family was nominally Catholic; we would go to Sunday Mass and receive the Sacraments, but there was nothing more. When I was about 11 or 12, my parents turned away from the Church and my faith life took an incredibly long pause. Writhing Agony Teenage years were packed with pressure, a lot of which I put on myself. I’d compare myself to other girls; I wasn't happy with my appearance. I was highly self-conscious and anxious. Though I excelled academically, I had a difficult time in school because I was very ambitious. I wanted to get ahead—show people that I could be successful and intelligent. We didn't have much money as a family, so I figured that studying well and getting a good job was going to solve it all. Instead, I got sadder and sadder. I would go for sports and celebrations, but I would wake up the next day and feel all empty. I had a few good friends, but they too had their own struggles. I remember trying to support them and ending up questioning the why of all the suffering around me. I was lost, and this sadness made me close-up and curl into myself. When I was about 15, I fell into the habit of self-harm; as I later realized, at that age, I didn't have the maturity or the ability to speak about what I was feeling. As pressure intensified, I gave in to suicidal thoughts, multiple times. During one hospitalization incident, one of the doctors saw me in such agony and said: “Do you believe in God? Do you believe in something after death?” I thought it was the strangest question to ask, but that night, I remembered reflecting on it. That's when I cried out to God for help: “God, if you exist, please help me. I want to live—I'd like to spend my life doing good, but I'm not even capable of loving myself. Whatever I do, everything ends in burnout if I don't have a meaning for all of it.” A Hand of Help I started to talk to Mother Mary, hoping that maybe she could understand and help me. Shortly after, my mother’s friend invited me to go on a pilgrimage to Međugorje. I didn’t really want to, but I accepted the invitation, more for curiosity to see a new country and nice weather. Surrounded by people who were praying the Rosary, fasting, walking up mountains, and going to Mass, I felt out of place but at the same time, I was also slightly intrigued. It was the time of the Catholic Youth Festival, and there were around 60,000 young people there, attending Mass and Adoration, praying the Rosary every day; not because they were forced to, but joyfully, from pure desire. I wondered if these people had perfect families which made it really easy for them to believe, clap, dance, and all of that. Truth be told, I craved that joy! While we were on the pilgrimage, we listened to the testimonies of girls and boys in a Cenacolo Community nearby, and that really changed things for me. In 1983, an Italian nun founded the Cenacolo Community to help young people whose lives had taken a wrong turn. Now, the organization can be found in many countries worldwide. I listened to the story of a girl from Scotland who had drug problems; she had also attempted to take her own life. I thought to myself: “If she can live that happily, if she can come out of all that pain and suffering and genuinely believe in God, maybe there's something in that for me as well.” Another great grace that I received when I was in Međugorje was that I went for confession for the first time in many years. I did not know what to expect but going to confession and finally saying out loud to God all of the things that had hurt me, all that I had done to hurt others and myself, was an enormous weight off my shoulders. I just felt peace, and I felt clean enough to make a fresh start. I came back touched and started University in Ireland, but sans adequate support, I ended up in the hospital again. Finding Way Realizing that I needed help, I went back to Italy and became a part of a Cenacolo Community. It wasn't easy. Everything was new—the language, prayer, different personalities, cultures—but there was a truth in it. Nobody was trying to convince me of anything; everyone was living their life in prayer, work, and true friendship, and it was healing them. They were living peace and joy, and it wasn't made up but real. I was with them all day, every day—I saw it. I wanted that! What really helped me those days was Adoration. I don't know how many times I just cried in front of the Blessed Sacrament. A therapist wasn’t speaking back to me, no one was trying to give me any medication, it just felt like I was being cleansed. Even in the community, there was nothing particularly special, except for God. Another thing that really helped me get out of my depression was that I started looking to serve others. As long as I kept looking at my own self, my own wounds and problems, I was just digging myself into a bigger hole. The community life forced me to come out of myself, look to others, and try to give them hope, the hope that I was finding in Christ. It helped me so much when other young people would come to the community, young girls who had problems similar to mine or sometimes even worse. I looked after them, tried to be an older sister, and sometimes even a mother. I started to think about what my mother would have experienced with me when I was hurting myself or when I was unhappy. There's often a certain sense of helplessness, but with faith, even when you can't help someone with your words, you can do so on your knees. I've seen the change in so many girls and in my own life from prayer. It's not something mystical or something I could explain theologically, but faithfulness to the Rosary, Prayer, and Sacraments has changed my life and so many other lives, and it has given us a new will to live. Passing it on I returned to Ireland to pursue a career in nursing; in fact, more than a career, I felt deeply that it's how I wanted to spend my life. I'm now living with young people, some of whom are like me when I was their age—struggling with self-harm, depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or impurity. I feel that it’s important to tell them what God did in my life, so sometimes during lunch, I tell them that I wouldn't really be able to do this job, see all the suffering and pain if I didn't believe that there was something more to life than just death after illness. People often tell me: “Oh, your name is Joy, it suits you so much; you're so happy and smiley.” I laugh inside: “If you only knew where that came from!” My joy is one that arose from suffering; that's why it's a true joy. It lasts even when there's pain. And I want the young people to have the same joy because it's not just mine, but it's a joy that comes from God, so everyone can also experience it. I just want to be able to share this infinite joy of God so that others can know that you can go through pain, misery, and difficulties and still come out of it, grateful and joyful to our Father.

Anacleto González Flores was born in Mexico in the late 19th century. Inspired by a sermon heard in his childhood, he made daily Mass the most important part of his life. Though he joined the seminary and excelled in academics, on discerning that he was not called into the priesthood, he later entered law school. During the years-long Christian persecution in Mexico, Flores so heroically defended the fundamental rights of Christians that the Holy See awarded him the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for his efforts. As many Mexican Christians courageously gave their lives for their faith, he continued to write against the atrocities and became a prominent leader of the Cristero War. In 1927, he was arrested and cruelly tortured—he was flogged, his feet were cut open with knives, and his shoulder was dislocated. An unfazed Anacleto remained firm in his faith and refused to betray his fellow faithful. As he was shot to death, he openly forgave his killers and died, exclaiming: “I have worked selflessly to defend the cause of Jesus Christ and His Church. You may kill me, but know that this cause will not die with me.” He openly forgave his killers and died, exclaiming: “I die, but God does not die. Long live Christ the King!” After years of living a holy life centered on devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and an exemplary Marian devotion, Flores gave his life to the Lord with three of his fellow faithful. This brave martyr was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, and he was declared the patron of the Mexican laity in 2019.

Several years ago, I participated in the annual meeting of the Academy of Catholic Theology, a group of about fifty theologians dedicated to thinking according to the mind of the Church. Our general topic was the Trinity, and I had been invited to give one of the papers. I chose to focus on the work of Saint Irenaeus, one of the earliest and most important of the fathers of the Church. Irenaeus was born around 125 in the town of Smyrna in Asia Minor. As a young man, he became a disciple of Polycarp who, in turn, had been a student of John the Evangelist. Later in life, Irenaeus journeyed to Rome and eventually to Lyons where he became Bishop after the martyrdom of the previous leader. Irenaeus died around the year 200, most likely as a martyr, though the exact details of his death are lost to history. His theological masterpiece is called Adversus Haereses (Against the Heresies), but it is much more than a refutation of the major objections to Christian faith in his time. It is one of the most impressive expressions of Christian doctrine in the history of the church, easily ranking with the De Trinitate of Saint Augustine and the Summa theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In my Washington paper, I argued that the master idea in Irenaeus’s theology is that God has no need of anything outside of Himself. I realize that this seems, at first blush, rather discouraging, but if we follow Irenaeus’s lead, we see how, spiritually speaking, it opens up a whole new world. Irenaeus knew all about the pagan gods and goddesses who stood in desperate need of human praise and sacrifice, and he saw that a chief consequence of this theology is that people lived in fear. Since the gods needed us, they were wont to manipulate us to satisfy their desires, and if they were not sufficiently honored, they could (and would) lash out. But the God of the Bible, who is utterly perfect in Himself, has no need of anything at all. Even in His great act of making the universe, He doesn’t require any pre-existing material with which to work; rather (and Irenaeus was the first major Christian theologian to see this), He creates the universe ex nihilo (from nothing). And precisely because He doesn’t need the world, He makes the world in a sheerly generous act of love. Love, as I never tire of repeating, is not primarily a feeling or a sentiment, but instead an act of the will. It is to will the good of the other as other. Well, the God who has no self-interest at all, can only love. From this intuition, the whole theology of Irenaeus flows. God creates the cosmos in an explosion of generosity, giving rise to myriad plants, animals, planets, stars, angels, and human beings, all designed to reflect some aspect of His own splendor. Irenaeus loves to ring the changes on the metaphor of God as artist. Each element of creation is like a color applied to the canvas or a stone in the mosaic, or a note in an overarching harmony. If we can’t appreciate the consonance of the many features of God’s universe, it is only because our minds are too small to take in the Master’s design. And His entire purpose in creating this symphonic order is to allow other realities to participate in His perfection. At the summit of God’s physical creation stands the human being, loved into existence as all things are, but invited to participate even more fully in God’s perfection by loving his Creator in return. The most oft-cited quote from Irenaeus is from the fourth book of the Adversus Haereses, and it runs as follows: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Do you see how this is precisely correlative to the assertion that God needs nothing? The glory of the pagan gods and goddesses was not a human being fully alive, but rather a human being in submission, a human being doing what he’s been commanded to do. But the true God doesn’t play such manipulative games. He finds His joy in willing, in the fullest measure, our good. One of the most beautiful and intriguing of Irenaeus’ ideas is that God functions as a sort of benevolent teacher, gradually educating the human race in the ways of love. He imagined Adam and Eve, not so much as adults endowed with every spiritual and intellectual perfection, but more as children or teenagers, inevitably awkward in their expression of freedom. The long history of salvation is, therefore, God’s patient attempt to train His human creatures to be His friends. All of the covenants, laws, commandments, and rituals of both ancient Israel and the church should be seen in this light: not arbitrary impositions, but the structure that the Father God gives to order His children toward full flourishing. There is much that we can learn from this ancient master of the Christian faith, especially concerning the good news of the God who doesn’t need us!

Q – How do I know if my love for sports is idolatry? I practice four hours a day, hoping to get a college scholarship, and I think about it all the time, following the professional teams closely. I love God, but He just doesn’t hold my interest like sports do. When does my passion cross the line into idolatry? A – I, too, am passionate about sports. I played baseball in high school and college, and even as a priest, I continue to play Ultimate Frisbee, soccer, and American football. Sports can be “the field of virtue,” as Saint John Paul II once said. But in our modern world, we do often hold sports in very high esteem…perhaps too high. My college baseball coach had a great saying: “Nothing in sports is eternal.” That helped me keep everything in perspective. Winning the championship or losing the game won’t make a bit of difference in eternity. It is meant to be fun, giving us a chance to exercise and practice teamwork, discipline, courage, and fairness—but there are no eternal consequences to an athletic contest. So how do we keep sports in its proper perspective? We look at three things to know if sports (or anything else) has become an idol: First, time. How much time do we spend on it versus how much time do we spend with the Lord? I once challenged a class of teens to spend ten minutes per day in prayer, and one boy told me that was impossible because he played video games. I asked him how much he played, and he told me that he often played eight to eleven hours per day! If a person doesn’t have time for a serious prayer life—fifteen to twenty minutes minimum, every day, because they are spending that time on sports, then it is indeed idolatry. This doesn’t mean that it has to be perfectly equal—if you practice for two hours per day, you don’t necessarily need to pray for two hours per day. But there does need to be enough time in your life to have a solid prayer life. This includes making sure that our sports life does not conflict with Sunday worship. My brother, an excellent ballplayer, once had to miss an important tryout because it was being held on Easter Sunday morning. Whatever we do instead of Sunday Mass becomes our idol! This also includes making time an integral part of our sacrifice for the Lord. Do you have the time to volunteer at your church or a local charity? Do you have enough time to perform your daily duties well (to do your studies to the best of your ability, to do household chores, and to be a good son/daughter and friend)? If sports take up so much time that there is no time to give back to others, then we are out-of-balance. Second, money. How much money do we spend on sports games, equipment, trainers, gym memberships—versus how much money do we give to the church, charities, or the poor? Where we spend our money determines what our priorities are. Again, this isn’t necessarily a perfectly equal ratio—but generosity is a major part of belonging to the Lord, from Whom all good gifts come. Finally, enthusiasm. In America, where I live, American football is our national religion. It amazes me to see grown men sit outside in sub-freezing temperatures at a Green Bay Packers game, with their shirts off and their chests painted team colors, wearing a foam hat in the shape of cheese (it’s a weird tradition!), cheering at the top of their lungs…and many of these same men would be bored in church on Sunday morning, barely mumbling the Mass responses (if they attended at all). What makes you excited? Are you more excited for a sports contest that won’t be remembered in a year or for the challenge and joy of the epic quest for holiness, the chance to advance the Kingdom of God, the battle for souls which has eternal consequences, the pursuit of an eternal victory which will make your trophies pale in comparison? If you find that your enthusiasm for sports is still stronger, consider what Christianity truly is. There is literally nothing more exciting and adventurous on earth than the quest to become a saint. It involves many of the same qualities as a good athlete: self-denial, dedication, and single-minded pursuit of a goal. But our goal has eternal reverberations! Considering these three things—where you spend your time, how you spend your money, and what makes you excited. These can provide valuable insight as to when something has become an idol to us.