I recently had the opportunity to attend a St. Paul’s Center for Biblical Theology Priest Conference. I am not a priest, but I have the privilege of going to conferences every year for work. The theme for the conference this year was the Jubilee in honor of the Jubilee Year of Hope that the Catholic Church is currently celebrating. As is their custom for their keynotes, Dr. Scott Hahn and his team elected to hone in one the biblical roots of the notion of the Jubilee. For some, this may be equivalent to a tedious day in the classroom, but for me it was a welcome instruction of our faith’s Jewish roots.
Dr. Hahn himself chose to focus on the original Jubilee, the seventh day or the Sabbath, for all three of his keynotes. He challenged the priest to truly practice a Sabbath day of rest and to keep it holy as the third commandment requires. And then he further challenged the priests to encourage their congregations to do the same. He asked them the pointed question of how many times their parishioners had confessed breaking the 3rd Commandment in the confessional, not meaning that they missed mass. The point that he wanted to convey was that keeping the Sabbath day holy is more than just going to mass. Mass is the best and holiest thing to do on the Sabbath, but it is not the only thing we should do.
Not leaving his challenge without a solution, Dr. Hahn gave a bunch of suggestions on how to make the Sabbath holy. But the most valuable information that I took away from his presentations was his exhortation to not bite off more than you can chew, and to not bind yourself to hard and fast practices. This is an excellent piece of advice when it comes to living out the Christian life, and it is one that can cause me to struggle.
The Chirstian life is all about repentance and changing our lives to conform to the way that God desires us to live. He gives us a moral code, not because he wants us to meet his expectations, but because the moral code allows us to be in the best possible state to receive the love He desires to give us (like keeping the Sabbath day holy). It can be a temptation for some Christians (like myself), to feel like they need to reorient their whole lives whenever they realize that they have not been following this moral code to the nth degree. For Example: Someone who feels guilty about going to Mass on Sunday but then spending the rest of the day watching twelve hours of football, scrolling endlessly on their social media accounts, or going to work for the sake of a vain desire of money may overreact and give up football completely, delete social media off their phone, or quit their job in order to reorient their lives.
In some very rare instances, these may be appropriate actions, especially if we need to eliminate mortal sin from our lives. But as a whole, they are often steps that are too large and can be unfruitful. Good may come of these efforts, and the intention is certainly admirable, but it may ultimately result in the resenting of God, because we can be tempted to think He is the reason why we don’t get to have something that we really want. We can then lose hope, give up completely, and revert to our original way of life because it is easier.
If we want to succeed in walking the arduous journey of our faith life, we need to take Dr. Hahn’s suggestions and make little adjustments at a time. If we need to pray more, we may need to add 5 or 10 more minutes rather than a half hour. If we want to do more service work, we may need to find an appropriate amount of time that fits with our schedule rather than an unrealistic weekly commitment. Or if we want to learn more about our faith, we may need to start at the level that is appropriate to us rather than trying popular teachers and evangelists just because of their name.
The one caveat in this advice is that we should not use the ‘slow and steady’ to be an excuse to rest on our spiritual laurels. We need to allow ourselves to be pushed and stretched because God wants to give us His life. So it is essential to keep pushing forward. But what Dr. Hahn’s advice is pointing to is that the quality of our capacity to grow is just as important, if not more so, than the quantity. 5 minutes spent in loving contemplation of God is often more fruitful than spending 30 minutes of constantly checking the time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
In all, we need to push ourselves, but also be reasonable in what we can take on. This is where it is helpful to have a spiritual director or community to hold us accountable. If we can confide in them, they can objectively look at the situation to give us advice that we may not have been able to see on our own. God is calling us to himself, and this will cause us discomfort because our sinful selves do not want to give up our pleasures and comforts. But the cross was accomplished by putting one foot in front of the other, and in the same way, our journey to heaven takes one small shift to God after another until we are strong enough to run to Him.
