EVERYDAY STEWARDSHIP - RECOGNIZE GOD IN YOUR ORDINARY MOMENTS

Countercultural Then and Now

Sometimes I wonder what this world will look like when my children get to be my age. Everything seems to be changing so rapidly and much of that change doesn’t seem to be for the good. I do think in some ways the Church is experiencing resurgence and a strengthening, but it will have to be in the face of an increasing culture of atheism and selfishness.

Of course, I bet my parents wondered the same thing when I was a child. As much as things change, they remain the same. When Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount, I would guess some parents there were having the same kind of worries. But Jesus proposed a way of life in the beatitudes that was countercultural then and is countercultural now.

In his book, Life of Christ, Fulton Sheen said this: “The Sermon on the Mount is so much at variance with all that our world holds dear that the world will crucify anyone who tries to live up to its values.” Living a stewardship way of life means bringing the beatitudes into our daily lives in a profound way. However, it also means living in a way that others may not understand or they may even turn away from us because of it. But with the reward in the end being the kingdom of heaven, the choice is really a matter of life and death, eternally speaking.

— Tracy Earl Welliver, MTS

(PRACTICING) CATHOLIC - RECOGNIZE GOD IN YOUR ORDINARY MOMENTS

By Colleen Jurkiewicz Dorman

The Devil’s Long Con

The algorithm on my streaming service has been suggesting a lot of romantic scam documentaries lately. If you’re not familiar, romantic scams are a particularly cruel form of “the long con.”

Some man presents himself to some woman as Prince Charming. He wines her. He dines her. He charms her mom and makes her friends jealous. Little red flags pop up here and there, but she shrugs them all off. She accepts convenient explanations.

She just wants to be happy.

And then one day, Prince Charming vanishes, along with the contents of the woman’s savings account. Every victim says the same thing: “I should have known better, but I wanted it to be real.”

I think the reason I’m so drawn to these shows is that I identify with these women. No, I’ve never been the victim of a romantic scam (if my husband married me thinking he would gain access to some kind of fortune, he’s the one who got scammed). But we have all told ourselves that something is right because it feels right. We have shrugged off doubts about a choice, a relationship, a habit.

We have accepted easy answers that don’t pass the sniff test — because we really, really wanted an answer, and we really, really wanted it to be easy.

The devil is a romantic scammer. A third-party retailer hawking knock-off joy and fulfillment. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. A false prophet. A thief, a robber who has climbed the fence, knowing the gate will not admit him.

These are all different ways of saying the same thing: we can recognize what is real by where it comes from. What it sounds like. This ability to discern truth is written into our souls. We can ignore it, if we want. Suppress it. We can follow the stranger.

But where will he lead?



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