Unto Life

This is my final project for our fundamentals of film production class at JP Catholic.

One Man's Wierd is Another Man's Jewel

From Proverbs

“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Proverbs 30:31

My friend was excited because he was going to have lunch with a girl he was interested in. This evening he was telling me how it went. He said he couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. So I asked him if she was cool (easy to talk to), and he said, “she’s cool.” So far so good. But then he says, “it’s a shame I’m going to have to cut her loose (not pursue her anymore).” “Why?” I asked. “Because when I asked her about Church and stuff she said ‘I go every now and then when I have time.’” He’s like me, looking for the kind of girl that is so religious that people think she’s weird.

“Who can find a good wife?” Proverbs 31:10

Hearts

From 1 Kings

Then Eli'jah said to all the people, "Come near to me"; and all the people came
near to him. 1 Kings 18:30

The lesson begins…

And he repaired the altar of the LORD that had been thrown down [by taking]
twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to
whom the word of the LORD came, saying, "Israel shall be your name." And
he put the wood in order, and cut the bull in pieces and laid it on the wood.
And he said, "Fill four jars with water, and pour it on the burnt offering, and
on the wood." And he said, "Do it a second time"; and they did it a second time.
And he said, "Do it a third time"; and they did it a third time. And the water
ran round about the altar, and filled the trench also with water. 1 Kings 18:30-35

I am repairing you, Israel, who has been thrown down away from God. Despite the 12 jars of water you have thrown on your stone hearts, the Lord shall enflame them again.

Answer me, O LORD, answer me, that this people may know that thou, O LORD,
art God, and that thou hast turned their hearts back." Then the fire of the LORD
fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the
dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people
saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, "The LORD, he is God; the LORD,
he is God." 1 Kings 18:37-39

But Who Am I?

From 1 Chronicles

David speaking of provisions for building the temple:

“Who then will offer willingly, consecrating himself today to the LORD?" 1
Chronicles 29:5

The respond by offering their service and money:

“And whoever had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the house of the
LORD” 1 Chronicles 29:8

And then they rejoiced:

“because these had given willingly, for with a whole heart they had offered
freely to the LORD; David the king also rejoiced greatly.” 1 Chronicles 29:9

David blesses and praises the Lord and then says these beautiful words:

"But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer
willingly? For all things come from thee, and of thy own have we given thee.
For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as all our fathers were;
our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding. O LORD our
God, all this abundance that we have provided for building thee a house for thy
holy name comes from thy hand and is all thy own. I know, my God, that thou
triest the heart, and hast pleasure in uprightness; in the uprightness of my
heart I have freely offered all these things, and now I have seen thy people,
who are present here, offering freely and joyously to thee. O LORD, the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, our fathers, keep for ever such purposes and
thoughts in the hearts of thy people, and direct their hearts toward thee. 1
Chronicles 29:14-18

After freely giving their prized earthly possessions up to the Lord, they find joy in their hearts. This joy must have cleared the smog out of their hearts because it is followed by a heartfelt realization, “but who am I, who are we?” This whole time I cling to my earthly possessions and marvel in their beauty while, as Saint Augustine says, “if they had not been in you they would have not been at all.” Life is a shadow and will not last. Such simple and profound realizations, but even the realization is a gift from God. David thus says, “keep for ever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of thy people, and direct their hearts toward thee.”

Behold Your Gods

From Judges

In Judges chapter 2 we read of Israel’s unfaithfulness, repeatedly forsaking the God of their fathers and bowing down to the gods of the people around them. But when we read of people bowing down and worshipping pagan gods, we sometimes fail to observe that it isn’t just a mindless act of falling to ones knees in front of a pagan god alone that is so alarming. Every worship of a pagan god involved the accompanying rituals. Often these rituals involved revolting sexual perversions, twisted moral dispositions and even human sacrifices.

Not much has changed today. We have our gods of lust and greed to mention a couple. We still make our human sacrifices while we go about our day distracted by TV, radio, a toothache. If every Christian spent one more hour a day in prayer abortion would slow to a hault. If every Catholic worthily received communion just once a week they would change the world momentously. What gods are we worshipping that consume the other part of us that should too be living the Christian life.

Reflections on Exodus

"Preach always, when neccessary use words."
~St Francis of Assisi

Call me crazy, but I don't think this quote implys that there is a scarcity of moments necessitating the use of words. It means there is a plethora of moments when we do not act out our words. Our lukewarmth leaves us mute. So then, what flame ignited the saints? What cold woke them up?

Manna, this spirit that moves us to act? What is it? In the dark of our human hearts we sometimes wander, as if in a desert, thirsting to find meaning or that thing they call love. Despair can grow like fungus, claiming victory in its blotting out of the son. It weeps gnashing echoes, "Meaning? Love? Being? Absurd!"

But in every human heart, even amongst the darkness, there is a whisper, "I AM." A serene sound, milk and honey, nourishment for the soul. "I am here to save you." A hope that flashes and shines through the blinding grime of sin, dispelling the blindness of the proud. Philosophers murmur, "why is there something, rather than nothing?" The Christian finds his sublime answer in I AM.

Jesus is the manna, the bread of life, perfect being who sustains all that is. Only He can nourish and heal. Hot and cold facilitate, cooperate in that healing. Lukewarmth breads disease. So be hot, be cold, and when neccessary use words.

See by Faith

In Genesis 12 God tells Abraham to leave his country and his kindred behind and go to the land that He will show him. God also promises Abraham many descendents.

What does Abraham do? He leaves. But he brings his nephew, Lot, with him, after God had told him to leave his kindred behind.

Why did Abraham bring Lot? Abraham was childless. He brought Lot so he'd have an heir, even though God had promised him many descendents. Abraham, as upright a man as he was, shows a lack of faith by doing this.

How often do we do this; say we believe one way, and act in another. I did this for most my teen years. I spent much time wrapped up inside the comfort of lukewarmth. It wasn't until God took me outside and showed me how to see by faith that I realized just what He has done and continues to do for me.

In Genesis 15 God takes Abraham outside and says, "Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." Reading further in the chapter we notice that it was still daytime when God did this. Abraham could see no stars. He thus learns a lesson of faith; that although we cannot always see the blessings of the Lord, if we look towards His direction, somehow we can sense they're there.

And he believed the LORD.

Credo

Throughout my high school years secular philosophies dominant in the media and culture atrophied my unexercised faith. I felt my complacency turn into a void and became tainted by the absurd. Acquiring a business and material things only multiplied my yearnings. I had propped up the inner walls of my heart with created things and now, under the weight of a momentous realization, I felt myself collapsing. I realized that all my life I had been avoiding the most important issue a person could ever face: himself. Who am I? What's my purpose? What is truth? Pilate's skepticism taunted my thoughts. I feared that under the covers of my nominal faith would be only blank pages, no answers, just archaic myths. But now an impatience overshadowed my fear, and I searched.

Releasing myself from worldly ambition opened my eyes to a living beating world. I became aware of what seemed obvious, yet so foreign; the inevitability of faith. That every desirable thing I could think of, beauty, justice, love, was a religious notion perceivable by faith alone. There is no knife to cut, container to measure, or x-ray to see these things. That the universe is not hauntingly neutral, but that there is meaning, struck me to the ground with awe. Such simple thoughts which I had pondered before now penetrated me to new depths and spawned oceans of understanding inside me. And as I laid there on the ground, with the world of transactions and appointments bustling by, I found a divine romance.

Because I wanted to love, I wanted to know. Love without a desire to know is not love at all, but infatuation. I suppose grace is what makes you realize you’re fooling yourself. And by now the precedent had been set, I was seeking truth.

The Deafening Sin of Adam

I exist. How else could I think? But all these thoughts seem to only find illusion after illusion, like running but not moving. If I stay here, I am left to myself, and that would be a sort of hell. I find it perpetually interesting that I see in Catholic morality a holistic remedy to and prevention of loneliness. Pride sees only itself and is therefore content, for lack of a better word, with "I exist." But I think hard-wired into every person is a desire for more than this. Seems obvious, but we don't act like it, as demonstrated by every act of sin. One of the greatest examples today is abortion aka the human race's identity crisis. Tonight when you lay in bed, pause for a moment, take a deep breath, and in the stillness of the moment give attention to your chest and the heart within it that beats blood to that thought facilitating organ you are using right now. Count the beats in a minute and you will have counted the amount of babies killed in that same minute. Like Adam and Eve tempted with a chance to be like God, among many things we are taking it upon ourselves to redefine the person to something more suitable for the times. The old definition of "a living human being" has been abated. Lust, immodesty, and contraception are some of the many selfish actions sustaining this social psychosis. Yet these are the actions many of us young Christians give a passing laugh to when trivialized in the media. Somewhere deeper past that thinking organ of ours is an awareness that all these worldy idealogies stop at "I exist." This same awareness is what perks its ears when we hear the echoes of grace. Grace, as St. Augustine writes, which calls, shouts, and breaks through our deafness; flashes, shines, and dispells our blindness to see our true existence, our true identity so that we may see His.

Prayer

20 seconds ago I was making funny faces and making my baby cousphew (he's really my cousin but like a newphew) laugh while I really should have been blogging about my homework reading. The cool thing is that my baby cousin is 20 miles away on the other side of San Diego, suited up in his jammies ready for bed. His adorable giggles were being Skyped to me. Now, whether or not that last sentence makes grammatical sense, the fact remains that when he moves to Japan next week :*( with his mom and dad, my beloved cousins, cousuncle Chuck will only be a click away via video conferencing. It'll be kinda like chatting through the glass at a ticket window...only more personal... and across several time zones...and an ocean. Whales hum serene messages into the deep blue while above them a digital ocean carries waves of words and symbols across the world in sharp flashes. Like excited atoms on the surface of the sun our email, instant messages, and other electronic packages bounce around in a sizzling fluid of ones and zeros.

But does more connection necessarily mean more communication? Potentially maybe. However, communication between client computer and host computer is entirely different than the kind of communication I'm really interested in; Love. Computers modulate and demodulate sounds and images, sound waves to my eardrum, light waves to my retina. But I think love provides a different kind of communication. Its the devine medium that connects us in a supernatural way. Unconstrained by space and time. There's something more important beneath the words. Kinda like that song goes, "I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do. They're really saying I love you." The Catechism says, "Such attentiveness of the heart, whose decisions are made according to God's will, is essential to prayer, while the words used count only in relation to it. Abraham's prayer is expressed first by deeds." What I find myself learning more and more each day is that our very lives, when working according to God's will, are like prayer. When we greet eachother, when we make eachother laugh, when we work, when we play, suffering and joy, all things can be oriented towards God. Making my baby cousin laugh is more than a physical action and reaction. It is the movement of a free will, choosing to love another for love of God. It is thanksgiving for the gift of life. It is recognizing and delighting in the dignity of this ensouled creature made in the image of the Creator. It is sacred communication. Perhaps if husbands and wives viewed their marital embrace as a prayer, families would begin to harmonize and resonate with charity like never before. With an openness to God, prayer is made fruitful according to His will. And how great is the fruit of new life.

I sense there are endless insights into the beautiful logic of our faith waiting to be articulated. It will be interesting to see what kind of communicators JP Catholic will forge for the Church. The professors are ignited and the resources are growing. However, regardless of the caliber of our apparatus, only proper disposition of our hearts will produce communication worth communicating, both to God and to humanity.