Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life John 14:6

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1 BULLETIN ARTICLE: October 29/30, 2016 Father James Chelich I Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life John 14:6 Every Christian, in every time and place, in every society and under all sorts of conditions has been faced with the same task: finding a fulfilling WAY to LIVE that allows them to engage the reality (the TRUTH) around them and within them. True religion is about engaging reality. It is about engaging the reality of the world the way it actually is: physically, chemically, biologically and as a living material whole. It is about engaging the reality of ourselves and others the way we actually are as persons with bodies, minds, and interior spirit. True religion does not facilitate the fabrication of personal realities about any of this. It is not about constructing a fantasy about the world, life or ourselves. A fabricated world, life and self has room for only one person: me, and it is all about me. But it is also, by definition, solitary and isolated. It never engages the reality (the TRUTH) of anyone or anything, and can therefore never delight in its beauty or contribute to its life. It never brings you into communion with yourself, others or the world. Jesus holds open the WAY to your TRUE self spiritually. He invites you to join him at the only place you can find and engage your true self, and that place is in the silence at the center of your consciousness. Every morning find three minutes to join him there. First: Turn off all noise of any kind computer, phone, IPod, radio, TV, music, everything. Pray: God show me my best self, the person you made me to be and You want me to be. Focus your attention on this for a minute and try to picture your best self. Keep a small notebook of the things you discover God revealing to you about your best self. God s dream for the man or woman he created you to be is rooted deeply in your conscience. As you continue to pray this prayer each day, you will come to see it more clearly. Pray: God help me see more clearly the gift you have given me to give for the life of others. Focus on this for another minute. This gift is already within you. God has placed it within you for the life of others. A fulfilled life is about giving it. It may not be clearly seen or much developed, but if you look, you will have a sense of it. If you keep asking in prayer you will come to see it more and more clearly. Write down in your notebook each new aspect of that gift you come to see.

2 Pray: Lord Jesus, walk next to me through the day. In each situation I find myself, draw out of me my best self and move me to give the gift you have given me to give for the life of others. Along with engaging the reality (the TRUTH) about yourself spiritually, you need to engage the reality (the TRUTH) about yourself physically. This happens when you step out of the shower or the bath and stand in front of the mirror. You have a body that body. It is not everyone else s body. It is not supposed to be. It is yours. It is constructed uniquely to give expression to what you have discovered about yourself spiritually. Look at your body carefully. Your body will tell you that you are a man or a woman. If you are a man, your body will tell you that you carry the seed for a woman, for one woman your woman, and for the conception of your children. If you are a woman, your body will tell you that you hold eggs to be fertilized by a man, one man your man, with whom to conceive and give birth to your children. The TRUTH of who you are is grounded physically in the reality of your body. As you look at your body, pray: I give you thanks, O Lord, that I am fearfully, wonderfully made. Psalm 139:14 The wrong place for you to engage the reality (the TRUTH) of who you are is in your mind ever thinking and re-thinking an identity for yourself, ever imagining new configurations of who you are as a person. Anything constructed here, in your mind, is a fantasy that may not, and usually does not have any base in reality (the TRUTH). You grow progressively more and more isolated in yourself and from others. Yet today we abandon our children more and more to time alone in their minds and in the surreal world of their video games. Where are the caring adults in their lives to lead them into prayer and to guide them to the discovery of themselves as men and women? The most dangerous place to engage the reality (the TRUTH) of who you are is from the opinion of others and by listening to the thousand voices of the media. Here, as Jesus says, the blind lead the blind (Matthew 15:14) and they lead them to share the same sorrow. Your beginning point spiritually as a creative actor in the world is revealed to you by God in prayer, in your innermost consciousness. It is disclosed to you physically in your body, through which you will express who you are and what you have been given to give for the life of others as a man or a woman. This is the true WAY to learn to truly love yourself and to engage LIFE fully.

3 II BULLETIN ARTICLE: December 2016 Father Jim Chelich The answer to the greatest question in a person s life, Who am I, can only be found in the person themselves deep in their interior spirit (their consciousness) and in their body. God speaks the truth about who we are in our interior spirit and God has written the truth about who we are in our body. Previously, in a short paragraph, I introduced you to the essence of what Pope Saint John Paul made special effort to point out to us as the Theology of the Body: Along with engaging the reality (the TRUTH) about yourself spiritually, you need to engage the reality (the TRUTH) about yourself physically. This happens when you step out of the shower or the bath and stand in front of the mirror. You have a body that body. It is not everyone else s body. It is not supposed to be. It is yours. It is constructed uniquely to give expression to what God reveals to you about yourself spiritually. Look at your body carefully. Your body will tell you that you are a man or a woman. If you are a man, your body will tell you that you carry the seed for a woman, for one woman your woman, and for the conception of your children. If you are a woman, your body will tell you that you hold eggs to be fertilized by a man, one man your man, with whom to conceive and give birth to your children. The TRUTH of who you are is grounded physically in the reality of your body. As you look at your body, pray: I give you thanks, O Lord, that I am fearfully, wonderfully made. Psalm 139:14 The primary responsibility for helping a developing child listen to God in prayer falls to their parents. The primary responsibility for helping a developing child read the theology of their own body falls best to their fathers, for boys; and falls best to their mothers, for girls. This needs to begin very early, and progress organically as the child grows both physically and cognitively. This presumes and requires that there be a relationship of warmth and trust, and an ongoing conversation between a father or mother and their son or daughter about their body. Should you fail to do this, you leave your child either to their own mind to imagine who they are as a man or a woman or, far worse, to their peers and the media to inform them. Why would you do that to the child you say you love? Why would you leave them adrift when it comes to exploring the most vital questions facing a human being: Who am I as a person physically and spiritually? From the earliest age parents must help their children read the theology of their own body. When you are faithful to this task, your child does not grow up with a confused gender identity, because their gender identity is well grounded in their own body. Then your son is confident and free to express himself as a man, the unique man he is. He does not have to have the body any other man has, nor does he have to be the man that anyone else is. Then your daughter is confident and free to express herself as a woman, the unique woman she is. She does not have to have the body any other woman has, nor does she have to be the woman that anyone else is. It is not just to ground gender identity that we help our children read the theology of their own body. It is to provide a solid grounding for the whole of their physical being: learning what their eyes are for, and helping them train their eyes to recognize the no

4 good, but look for the good in the world and in others learning what their hands are for, and helping them train their hands to do what is good in creativity, craft and labor. Let s face it, parent are historically bad at engaging their responsibility to help their children read the theology of their bodies. An astounding number of parents, many very religious, abdicate this responsibility entirely. For this reason I have asked our Youth Ministry staff to organize evenings of inquiry for parents: How to Talk to Your Son or Daughter About Their Soul and How to Talk to your Son or Daughter About Their Body. Look forward to them. Attend them. Equip yourself to help your children engage the most vital question in anyone s life: Who am I?

5 III BULLETIN ARTICLE: December 2016 Father James Chelich I believe it important not only to study trends in our times and, when they pose a real danger, to make you aware of them. There is a growing crisis in personal identity among our young people and young adults, not only spiritually, but even physically. The most disturbing is that of gender identity. When a child s sense of gender (gender identity) is not grounded from his or her earliest years in the physical givenness of his or her body as a male or female, then that child retreats to other places and turns to other sources to inform him or herself of his or her gender identity. The most likely place they will retreat to for a gender identity will be within the confines of their own mind in other words, given to their own imagining. This is not a good place for this to happen. The mind of a developing child or young person is full of impulses and uncertainties not a stable environment to think things through on one s own. Retreating there reinforces the false belief that you are what you think you are. This leaves a child or young person very vulnerable to the many voices around them more than willing to tell them what they should think they are. In our highly technological society, a developing child or young person, left to their imaginings, are certain to be influenced by his or her peers. Ideas about oneself and the world are shared in person, but much more pervasively on the social media to which they have access. Many of the voices to which they are exposed on social media have their own aggressive agenda when it comes to gender identity. Alone, in his or her own mind, and/or influenced by the voices of others, a child or young person s gender identity ends up being grounded only in how I feel about myself. Feelings unanchored to objective reality are a prescription for mental disorder. They can move chaotically in any direction and come to disabling conclusions about oneself and the world. They may be acted out in bizarre ways. Psychological counseling, as a healing art, seeks to re-ground in objective reality, individuals lost in their imaginings, and give them the ability to function as persons on a ground of reality. This mission has been heavily eroded in the modern theory and practice of psychological counseling, which more and more accepts on faith the philosophical notion that there is no such thing as objective reality only subjective reality. When this is the case, psychological counseling offers no other assistance than the palliative service of making people feel OK about whatever they imagine reality (and themselves to be). At the root of this problem facing a developing child or young person, is the absence of parental guidance in discovering their own body from their earliest years. This, in turn, translates all too often in parental ignorance and neglect of where their developing child is being informed as to their identity as a person (physically, mentally, spiritually). If you get to the root of a problem and turn it over, you usually discover a solution. The solution is parental attention and guidance, early on in the child s development: fathers helping their sons and mothers helping their daughters discover their own body, and pointing out to them the reality given in their own body that makes them gender specific (i.e., males and females).

6 I am not talking here about temperament, mannerisms, or sensitivities that can emerge in a developing child or young person. Which of these temperaments, mannerisms and sensitivities are considered male or female, are culturally determined. They vary from culture to culture across the world. What is not culturally determined is the givenness of a male s body, which makes him a man, and the givenness of a female s body which makes her a woman. When grounded in the objective reality the physical givenness of their own body, gender identity becomes a foundation upon which temperament, mannerisms, and sensitivities can emerge in a child in a way that will allow them to become a unique and stable person creatively engaging life. Father James Chelich