St. Francis of Assisi Blog

I almost cancelled the whole trip. I had pretty bad anxiety leading up to it. I don’t like flying to begin with, and this whole trip was just insane altogether!

And the whole internet indulges our need to get pumped for next year, helping us decide to finally lose that gut, or start a small business, or go paleo, or get a raise, or be less anxious, or to just vaguely do better as we march into January.

The season begins with the celebration of Christ’s birth as God-man, the first of His three most significant days on earth (the other two being the day He died and the day He rose from the dead), the day that changed the world forever because never before had we experienced the presence of God in our midst as we would for the 30+ years to follow. 

“Deny yourself.  Take up your cross.  Follow me.”  These words spoken by Jesus Christ to the young ruler in answer to his question of what he must do to gain eternal life form the foundation of our quest for salvation. 

I almost cancelled the whole trip. I had pretty bad anxiety leading up to it. I don’t like flying to begin with, and this whole trip was just insane altogether!

Start thinking about ‘spiritual time’ rather than temporal time and mark it by the liturgical calendar. The Church preaches that ‘time’ is a precious commodity.  St. Jose Maria Escriva expressed it well when he said

A bunch of years ago my Spiritual Director asked me, “What are you seeking in your spiritual life?” Not knowing that he was lobbing me a ‘softball’, I answered, “To become a holy man.” Then he dropped the fastball-curve on the outside corner with

Strangely enough, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead isn’t on any of those lists.  Stranger yet, none of the thirty-seven miracles performed by Him chronicled in the New Testament are listed.

I kept going and felt like sleeping it off would be the right decision, but I woke up the next morning in a ridiculous amount of pain. Knowing that it wasn’t going to go away on its own, I went to the Doctor.