Dear Franciscan University of Steubenville

Dear Franciscan,

A little over a week ago, I walked across that well-worn stage in the Finnegan Fieldhouse, shook Fr. Sean's hand, flipped my tassel, and went from being student to alum. In the last few weeks, I've had a lot of time to reflect on my four years at Franciscan, and the more I reflect, the more I realize that it would take a lifetime to even begin to process the last four years.

So as I close this beloved chapter of my life, I just have one thing to say: thank you.

To all of my professors, thank you. Thank you for your commitment to being academically excellent and passionately Catholic. Thank you for witnessing to me at every moment, whether it be through your passion for the subject you teach or through your passion for the God you serve. Thank you for challenging me to always give my best, especially when I just wanted to procrastinate.

To my catechetics professors in particular, thank you. Thank you for taking so seriously your vocation to form us into the Church's next generation of catechists. Thank you for expecting and demanding so much from us. Thank you for setting the bar high, for not settling for mediocrity, for giving us the lessons here that would prepare us to persevere out there. Thank you for being the coolest people and for inspiring us. Thank you for forming us into the men and women of prayer that we need to be to serve God and His Church.

To my dear friars, thank you. Thank you for your spiritual fatherhood. Thank you for your teasing, your jokes, your witness. Thank you for taking your vows seriously. Thank you for bringing us the Sacraments. Thank you for all the times you said yes to spontaneous confessions, and thank you for all the times you said no and made us wait in line. It was good for us.

To my beloved sisters, thank you. Thank you for your witness of a life lived totally for Christ. Thank you for showing us what the joy of religious life truly looks like. Thank you for your friendship, your laughter, your joy. Thank you for your prayers and for your spiritual motherhood.

To my wonderful household, thank you. Thank you for teaching me what it means to be a woman of God. Thank you for challenging me to remain faithful to the covenant that I made to you. Thank you for teaching me how to live out our consecration. Thank you for being my sisters. Thank you for walking with me, for supporting me, for praying with and for me. Thank you for dance parties, praise and worship, physical touch, and movie charades.

To all of my spiritual mentors and moms, thank you. Thank you for listening to my rambling, my rants, my emotional outbursts. Thank you for challenging me in prayer, for supporting me in difficult times, for rejoicing with me in times of triumph. Thank you for helping me to realize the plan God has for my life and for helping me to become the woman He made me to be.

To my friends, thank you. Thank you for the laughter, the shenanigans, the love. Thank you for standing with me through the good and the bad. Thank you for challenging me when I became complacent. Thank you for bringing me down to earth when I got too lofty and crazy. Thank you for putting my needs before your own in so many instances. Thank you for teaching me how to laugh at myself. Thank you for showing me what authentic friendship looks like. Thank you for being the people that I will want to laugh, cry, and rejoice with for the rest of my life.

To my beloved Franciscan, thank you. Thank you for forming me and shaping me into the woman I am today. Thank you for inspiring in me a love for Christ that goes so deep that I will continue to carry it with me wherever I go. Thank you for teaching me to love His Church and inspiring me to spend my life to serve that Church. Thank you for four years of laughter, tears, joy, growth, late nights, studying in the library, praying in the port, Tuesday night praise and worship, Austria story swapping, household commitments, and so much more. I have been changed by you, Franciscan, and I'll forever cherish the memories of these four years that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Thank you, Franciscan. You will always be home. So until I come back to you, keep that big piece of my heart safe under the statue of St. Francis.

xo,
Catie

Deeply Love One Another

I've been wrestling a lot in prayer with attachments to others and with relationships. And I've discovered that when it comes to loving others, there are two extremes: to be too attached to people or to be too afraid to be attached to people.

For most of my life, I lived in the first extreme. I cared far too much about what others thought about me, and I placed too much emphasis on my relationships with others and not enough on my relationship with Christ. My relationships, instead of leading me into greater holiness, detracted from my relationship with Him because I gave them a higher place in my heart than Him. There was always a certain grasping in these relationships: it seemed that no matter how much love these people showed me, I was always hungering for more, grasping for things that I didn't think they were giving me, expecting more than was reasonable from them.

But now that I've progressed a bit in the spiritual life, I find myself falling into the second extreme. Every time I feel a deep love stir in my heart for another person, I live in a state of fear that I'm falling back into that first extreme. So instead of examining this love or allowing it to grow, I try to squash it or run from it.

There's this relationship in my life right now that is extremely important to me. This person is a spiritual mentor to me, and she's teaching me so much about what it means to be a holy woman of God. She’s become such a big part of my heart that I can’t imagine my life without her in it.

And honestly? That terrifies me. I live in a state of fear that I'm too attached to her, that my love for her is unhealthy, that our relationship gets in the way of my relationship with God.

When I begin to feel this deep love for her rise up in my soul, my first instinct is to run. Squash it. Root it up out of my heart and throw it far from me. Because obviously this deep and incomprehensible love that I have for her isn't from God--it must be from my own grasping, my own brokenness, my own need that I'm grasping for her to fill.

False.

In prayer, the Lord has been opening my heart more and more to the truth that He wants me to be in this relationship. He wants me to have this deep love for her. He wants to use her love to change me. He wants to use my love for her to soften both of our hearts to His love for us. Through her spiritual motherhood, He wants to teach me more about what it means to be a daughter. And through my spiritual daughterhood, He wants to teach her more about what it means to be a mother.

“My children, I will be with you only a little while longer … I give you a new commandment: love one another.” -John 13:33-34.

This is our faith, sisters. It is Incarnational -- He could have saved us in any way, but He chose to come in the Incarnation -- to come as a human person that we could see and touch, to use a human body as the instrument of our redemption. And He chooses to come to us physically in the Eucharist, to give us His Body and Blood in order to continually sanctify us and draw us closer to Him. And just as He wants us to encounter His love in His real presence in the Eucharist, so He uses others to bring us to a deeper encounter with Him.

Faith is not a solitary journey. It's not meant to be. Our God is a communion of persons -- three Persons, one God. And just as the Trinity exists in community, so are we meant to exist in community. We can't go it alone. We need others: friends, spouses, spiritual mentors, teachers, siblings, parents. And when I live my life in fear of being too attached to others, when I try to squash the love that stirs deep down in my soul for others, I miss out on the way that He wants to move through those relationships to transform my life.

Ultimately He is the only one that can fulfill all those desires that we feel so deeply, but that doesn't mean that others aren’t part of His plan to do that. He works through others to fulfill those desires.

And this relationship in my life? The love that stirs so deeply in my heart, a love that seems to reach into the abyss of my soul, a love that scares me and yet brings me an incredible amount of peace and joy--this is His love. I’m not capable of loving that deeply and selflessly on my own. This love flows from my love for Him. Because I love Him with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind, I am free to truly love this beautiful and incredible spiritual mother of mine as myself. "Love of neighbor is inseparable from love for God" (CCC 1878).

And the love that this spiritual mother has for me flows from His love. When she loves me, she is truly and freely loving me, but only because it is His love being poured out into her soul. He could fulfill my desires in any way, but He chooses to do it in an incarnational way--to use her love to show me how deeply He wants to fulfill my desires. When I think of this deep love that I have for so many in my life, I’m reminded of the quote from Les Mis: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Through my relationships, I see the love that God has for me.

Sisters, there is nothing wrong with desiring relationship. There is nothing wrong with desiring to be loved, affirmed, wanted, cherished by others. There's nothing wrong with being attached to others--as long as we're attached first and foremost to Him. When we set our sight on Christ and our focus on our relationship with Him, others are going to come into our lives. He's going to bring other people into our places of need, and He's going to use their love to change us and to show us His own love for us. And what a beautiful gift. What a blessing to know that we do not walk this journey alone, to know that a love that stirs so deeply in our souls is a participation in the love of Christ.

Be not afraid to love deeply, to seek relationship. Just remember that He loves us first and that He loves us most. When we allow this truth to be the penetrating force and guiding principle, we are truly free to love deeply and to love selflessly.

So here's to deeply loving others.

Our Good, Good Father

I have a confession to make. I have been in serious spiritual desolation for the last four months. And y’all, it stinks. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. But it’s the Year of Mercy! And this morning, our good Father hit me over the head with His mercy!

This morning, as I was trying to pray morning prayer, I reached the end of the intentions portion, and I realized that I didn’t have the strength to pray for anything that wasn’t already scripted for me. So instead of trying to spout off the thousands of intentions I know that I should pray for, I opened my hands and my heart to God and cried out, “Father, you know the intentions of my heart even better than I do, and I don’t have the strength to pray for them myself, but I give you this empty vessel I call a heart and hope that it’ll be enough for You.”

And despite the fact that it’s a very meager gift for the King of kings, I think it was the most pleasing thing I could have given Him.

Maybe this is the mercy of God—that it is more pleasing to Him when we come to Him with empty hands and breaking hearts than when we come to Him with what we think is perfection and righteousness.

Because the reality is that we’re never going to be sinless or perfect in this life. There will always be something within us that is lacking, that needs to strive for a higher degree of perfection. It’s the price that comes with being fallen creatures in a fallen world.

And you know what? I think God prefers it that way. If we were already perfect, or if belief in God were the only necessary requirement for Heaven and it didn’t matter how we lived or sinned (a common misconception in our modern culture), then we wouldn’t need a Savior now. We would only have needed Him to die for us that one time 2,000 years ago, and we wouldn’t need Him now. We don’t still need a Savior if we’re already saved, right? Sure, we might still really love Him—after all, how can you not love someone if you truly believed that He died for you? But we wouldn’t need Him, not really.

But here’s the thing: God is a Father. And like any good father, He wants His children to need Him. 

So often, I’m tempted to think that I need to pick myself up from my sin and make myself perfect before I can approach my Father’s throne. But more often than not, I can’t do that. Most of the time, when I approach that throne, I do so with empty hands. And sometimes, I have to crawl my way to that throne, because I don’t have the strength to pick myself up and walk.

And as I was praying about that this morning, you know what I heard Him speak to my heart? Well obviously you don't, so I'm about to tell you: He prefers it that way. He wants to be the one to pick us up. He doesn’t want the finished product. He wants all of us, all of our brokenness, because He wants to be the one to fix us, to make us whole.

There’s this song that I love. I want you to take a few moments to listen to it now, because I think we all need the reminder. It's called Good Good Father, click here.

Oh I’ve head a thousand stories of what they think you’re like, but I’ve heard the tender whisper of love in the dead of night, and you tell me that you’re pleased and that I’m never alone. 

You’re a good, good Father, it’s who you are, it’s who you are, it’s who you are, and I’m loved by you, it’s who I am, it’s who I am, it’s who I am. 

I’ve seen many searching for answers far and wide, but I know we’re all searching for answers only you provide, cause you know just what we need before we say a word.

The mercy of God lies in the fact that He loves us. Not because of who we are, but because of who He is—goodness itself. 

Today, I’m thankful for my brokenness in a way that I have never been before. Because it is only when I acknowledge and embrace my brokenness that I can clearly hear that tender whisper that reminds me who I am—a daughter loved and cherished beyond belief.

A Silent Advent

Tonight, my family decided to go for a Costco run while my sister was at basketball practice. I decided to tag along, even though I had no real reason to. After getting hit with some serious carsickness, I found myself regretting the trip, especially when after we went to Costco, I was faced with waiting in the St. Rose parking lot for 25 minutes for her practice to be over. As we pulled into the parking lot, the Holy Spirit struck, and I hopped out of the car and headed inside the church. After all, sitting in my favorite church for 25 minutes was way better than sitting in the car while my grandparents listened to the news on the radio.

Delighted to have the church to myself for the first time ever, I hurried all the way to the front and plopped myself down to adore my Lord and Savior.

Then I realized something. I have never heard St. Rose silent before. In all my years of going to St. Rose (too many for me to even begin to count), I've never heard it silent.

Three months ago, I would have reveled in that silence. But now? Now it made me shift uncomfortably in my seat and lean over to check the time. Still 20 minutes to go. Shoot.

It seems paradoxical, but sometimes silence is deafening.

I never used to feel that way about silence. It used to be something I craved, something I tried to cultivate in my every day life, something that I would jealously safeguard. When did silence become so uncomfortable for me, something to be avoided at all costs?

Sitting there in my favorite church, secretly hoping that someone, anyone, would walk in, I found my answer.

Silence became a hostile environment for me when it stopped being the vehicle for me to hear the voice of God.

At some point in the last four months, silence became a reminder of the chasm that seems to exist between myself and God.

Silence, rather than giving me the opportunity to quiet my soul so that I can hear His voice, has now become a deafening, crushing sensation that causes me to do everything I can to make noise so that I don't have to face a truth that makes me almost sick to admit.

I no longer hear the voice of God. I'm no longer in tune with it. Or He's no longer speaking.

Desolation, folks. It's not pretty.

But you know what? It's advent. And advent gives me hope. 400 years passed between the time that the last prophet spoke in the Old Testament and the time that Christ was born to us on a silent night. 400 years of silence, of desolation. For 400 years, the Israelites felt the paradox that comes with silence. I wasn't there, but after 400 years, I'm willing to bet that the Israelites were beginning to feel a little hopeless.

Tonight, after 25 minutes of deafening, crushing, piercing silence, I realized that when I'm forced to face the silence, I'm assaulted by the fear that God will not come, that He will not speak, that He will forevermore remain silent.

It's been four months and I'm barely holding on, how can I handle 400 years?

But after 400 years of silence, God came. And He came in silence.

Silence is hard for me. 15 minutes of silence in my home parish felt like hours. I wanted to put on music, to go home and turn on the TV, to call a friend, anything that could distract me from the desperation I felt when facing the silence. I suddenly wished that I had brought a rosary to pray on or my bible to read or my breviary to pray with. Anything that could give me the chance to escape from the discomfort that silence brought my soul.

But unless I want to miss Him when He does come to me again, I can't do that.

Our Savior came to us on a silent night. The King of Heaven and Earth, who made everything we have and everyone we know, came to us in such humility that only those whose hearts were silent could recognize Him.

Is my heart silent? Is yours?

Until it is, we will not be able to recognize the many ways that our King comes to us every day.

I pray that during these last few days of advent, both you and I will be able to silence our hearts as we prepare for the coming of our Savior.

Come, Lord Jesus.

The Failure of Bathsheba

Have you ever been in a situation where you knew doing something was wrong, and you did it anyway?

Maybe that thing was your idea, or maybe it wasn't. Maybe you let yourself be convinced by others that it was okay, when in your heart of hearts you knew that it wasn't.

I've fallen into this, dear one. Too many times, I've gone along with something I knew in my heart of hearts was wrong, either because I was too afraid to speak up or because I let myself be too influenced by the opinions of others.

Are you familiar with the story of Bathsheba? She was the wife of Uriah, a man of great character. He was faithful to his God and king, unwilling to back down from his duty to his king and country even when urged to do so by his Kind, David (2 Samuel 11:6-11).

I think it's safe to assume that Bathsheba too was a woman of character. How could she not be when she was married to such a man? And yet, Bathsheba is most well known for her sin of adultery with David.

"It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, 'Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?' So David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived; and she sent and told David, 'I am with child.'" 2 Samuel 11:2-5

Y'all, I think that Bathsheba fell into the same trap that we so often fall into. In her heart of hearts, she had to know that her sin with David was wrong. But she let it happen anyway. She didn't speak up, either because she was too afraid of what David would do or because she let herself be influenced by his opinion. And this failure to speak out led to some serious consequences: she conceived a child, her husband was killed in David's attempt to cover it up, and the child she bore died as punishment for David's sins with her.

Now thankfully, Bathsheba's story doesn't end here. She goes on to be David's most beloved wife and gives birth to Solomon, the great king of Israel. She receives the greatest honor possible: she is considered a prefigurement of Our Lady and is mentioned in the genealogy of the Messiah.

Dear ones, our Lord had mercy on Bathsheba. Despite her failure to speak out, He showed His goodness to her. And He does the same to us: when we fall, He picks us back up. He gives us the grace to turn from our sin and cowardice and be molded into something great.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul writes:

"Since we have the same spirit of faith as he who wrote, 'I believed, and so I spoke,' we too believe, and so we speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence."

In this world that we live in, there are going to be many times when fear and the opinion of others will make it difficult for us to speak out. But dear ones, we must. If we won't speak the truth that this world so desperately needs, then who will?

Let us not faith as Bathsheba did. Let us have the courage to speak up, both with our words and with our actions.

Rations

I don't know about you, but I ration things. I ration my time, my energy, my money, my friendship, my chocolate (I'm a selfish hoarder when it comes to sweets). I make choices every day about how I want to spend these things. How much time can I afford to spend listening to that friend who really needs me? How much energy should I devote to this paper? How many moments should I spend sitting with the Lord in silence when I have a million other things demanding my attention? How much money should I throw in that collection box and how much should I spend going out with friends?

A couple months ago, during a Steubenville Youth Conference Holy Hour that I was working, the priest said something that struck me.

God's love does not have rations.

STOP. Rewind. Repeat.

God's love does not have rations.

There's never a day when He doesn't stop loving us. There's never a day that He says "that's enough, this is too much, I've given too much love to her, I'm gonna stop."

Isn't this our greatest fear? That if we give people the chance to see us for who we really are, they're going to realize that we're too much for them? Or that people will only see us as another thing to ration their time and love to and not someone worth giving it all for?

I don't think it's too presumptuous of me to assume that you have felt this way one time or another.

I know I have.

During those moments of adoration that night, the Lord spoke a truth to my heart that I know I'll have to continue to learn over and over again for as long as it takes for me to truly understand:

His love for me will never run out.

He doesn't have a limited amount to give to me. He doesn't have to ration His love, His energy, His patience, His forgiveness, His time. And what's more, He doesn't want to, no matter how unfaithful I might be.

In my limited ability to love, so often I have the mentality that if someone isn't returning the rations that I've given them with equal rations of their own, I don't want to ration anything else out. Well, she clearly doesn't love me as much as I love her, so I'm going to stop wasting my love and energy on her.

Can you imagine what life would be if our God had that mentality?

Thankfully, He doesn't.

No matter how little patience I have for that son or daughter of His that I just can't seem to love the way I should, His patience for how slow I am at figuring out how quickly everything will fall apart when I try to remain in control will never run out.

No matter how little energy or motivation I have for giving my all to the things that I've committed to (*cough cough* schoolwork, work, ministry, my family *cough cough*), His motivation for moving my heart to greater love for Him and His Church will never run out.

No matter how unwilling I am to forgive that person who still seems to have no awareness of the ways they deeply hurt me, His willingness to forgive the sins I commit that hurt Him and His children will never run out.

No matter how quickly I am ready to cut down on the time that I give to Him in prayer each day, the time that He spends pursuing my heart and showing me what I mean to him will never run out.

No matter how little love I show Him in the things that I do and the people that I meet, His love for me, love that took Him to a gruesome and painful death on a cross for the sake of my soul, will never run out.

Dear ones, if we rely on our own strength, it's not surprising that we need to ration. On our own, we don't have enough. But when we turn to Him, He pours out an abundance.

So the next time you feel tempted to ration something, turn to Him. Ask Him to multiply whatever it is you feel that you don't have enough of. The God of Abundance wants to give. Let Him.

What are you rationing in your life right now? What do you need an abundance of?

Faithful Waiting

A few weeks ago, the first reading for mass was from Exodus 32. I've heard this passage a thousand times (okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one), but for some reason, this time it struck me deeply, and I've been praying with it ever since.

"When the people saw that Moses was delayed in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said to him, 'Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for that man Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.'" Exodus 32:1

In the past, whenever I've heard this reading, I've always shaken my head at the Israelites. Dim-witted Israelites, they're ridiculous, I think to myself. It's not that hard, geez. 

I'm convinced that it's moments like that when God laughs.

How often do I become impatient in waiting for the Lord? How often do I lose hope when He doesn't seem to be acting as quickly as I think He should? How often do I think that God is delayed from coming to me and turn to other gods to try to satisfy that impatient spirit within me?

The answer, when I'm truly honest with myself, is sobering.

I'm so quick to turn to other things when I don't think that He's moving as quickly as He should be. Sure, I don't melt all of my gold jewelry and make a giant calf out of it, but I do turn to other things. I look for satisfaction in other people, in worldly things, in my own plans for my life.

Rather than waiting on the Lord to act, I take things into my own hands. And let me tell you, it doesn't usually work out for me. God's prophet doesn't send people to slaughter me, but I end up sinking rather than walking across that water (see Mt 14:29). 

Patience is a tough one. It's difficult to wait on the Lord. It's hard to trust that He's working even when we don't feel it, even when we can't see the fruits of it. So often my limited faith leads me to believe that if I don't feel the Lord working, it's because He's delayed in coming down to me. 

What I forget is that He doesn't need to come down to me. He dwells within me. He is never delayed. His timing is perfect. 

I hope that the next time I think that the Lord is moving slower than I would like Him to, I remember this passage. And I hope that the next time you think He isn't working, you remember this post. Learn from the mistakes of the Israelites. Learn from my mistakes. Learn from your own. 

God's timing doesn't always make sense, but it is exactly what we need.

Lord, root out the other gods of my life that I've created in my impatience. Grant me a growth in that virtue of heroic patience. Help me to trust in Your perfect timing. Open my eyes to Your constant presence, so that I don't miss what You're doing now because I'm too busy waiting for You to come down from the mountain.