Why Baton Rouge is Beautiful

St. Joseph Cathedral, Baton Rouge

I'm home sick today with a bad cold, so I thought I'd take this rare, blessed minute of free time to write about what I've learned since I've been in Baton Rouge.

The school year started off rocky-- being a new teacher is hard, but I've been learning so much. God has used every bit of it to teach me. It reminds me that I'm not the teacher, He is.

Now that we've settled in and school is in full swing, I'm starting to really enjoy my classes. My freshmen are especially wonderful. Right now we are trying to understand the basic theology of the Trinity, something difficult for even the greatest theologian. They are doing so well! As God's providence would have it, the unit I taught before the unit on the Trinity led directly into this one, bringing unexpected graces and truths to the forefront. God is just awesome that way.

Before studying the Trinity, we talked about life's "big questions": who am I? Where did I come from? What is the purpose to my life? What is the meaning of suffering? What is the importance of my family and how does it impact my life? The unit culminated in watching The Human Experience, a documentary about two brothers from New York City who travel the world in search of what it means to be human. Based both on the movie and our discussions from class, we concluded that every person on the planet desires most deeply to be loved, to be wanted, to have security, to be a member of a family who supports and nourishes them.

Enter: unit on the Trinity.

The Christian faith, in my opinion, provides the most compelling answer to these deepest of human desires: the whole purpose of our existence is to be part of the family of the God who is Love. Suffering is caused by sin and not God, but in Christ, even suffering has redemptive power-- power to bring us and others more fully into communion with the God who took on human suffering so we could be His.

The very first paragraph of the Catechism sums up the whole of the Christian faith. It says, 

"God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life."

The only reason God created us was to be in blessed communion with Him, the God who is love... the God who is family. "It is not good for man to be alone," God says in Genesis. Even God is not alone-- He is three. We were made in the image and likeness of God. We were made for loving community.

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Recently, both before and during these discussions with my classes, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Church as the family of God. My favorite thing about the Church is that she is catholic-- universal! She is in every country, in every part of the world. In some places, she is underground, but in all places, she is present. Also, in all ages, she is present. The treasury of the lives of the saints is deep and wide-- inexhaustible. It is a constant reminder that my faith is not something that I made up myself-- something that is based on passing emotion or a particular socio-economic existence. The diversity of the saints is evident when you read their stories, yet hardly ever will you find one saint in isolation. They come in clusters, in pairs, in groups. Why?

Because we were made for community, and community makes all the difference.

In recent years, I've witnessed friends fall away from the Faith little by little. My heartache is inexpressible, yet I could see plainly that the biggest reason was their lack of solid Catholic community. I recently read an article all about that, with a particular focus on college life. One quote from the article struck me as particularly true: 

"...the best predictor of which students will stay strong amidst the new temptations of college has not been their level of Catholic knowledge, or the strength of their families back home. Rather, the best predictor has been having Catholic friends."

This is not only true for college students but for anyone, everyone, children and adults included! We are not strong by ourselves. Especially when our faith is still in its beginning stages, we cannot stand alone. We need God's grace first and foremost, but we also need grace-filled friends. We can't let our pride get in the way. We need others to help us in our faith journey, and we need them in our lives every day.

It is true that the Church is not meant to be a closed fortress-- people made that mistake pre-early 1900s and still make it today. We're not supposed to close ourselves off to the world and huddle together in private to weather the storm. On the flip side, we're also not supposed to be so integrated with society that we are easily swayed by its passing fads, fancies, and fiction that the media purports as truth. That is what happened in the 1960s, in the chaotic wake of Vatican II. As with all things in the Catholic life, the truth lies in the middle road-- the road that we walk, as St. John Bosco said, "with our feet on earth but our heart in heaven."

We need Catholic community. And we need it desperately. When we have it, we are more able, as a community and as individuals, to reach out to those who need God the most-- to open ourselves to others who are in need of the Gospel of Truth and Life. When we are secure, we are strong. We are able to reach out to others. But we will never have lasting security relying on the things of this world. Our security comes from heaven. The psalmist cries out, "you alone, LORD, make me secure." It is only in and through the Church, filled with imperfect people though she is, that we find heaven on earth. It is only in the Church that we have the utmost security of life, love, acceptance, and grace because it is in the Church that God comes to dwell among His people, in the flesh.

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I noticed it before I moved to Baton Rouge, but I have experienced it more and more every day since I've lived here. Baton Rouge is beautiful not because of its landscape but because of the openness of its Catholic community to newcomers. It's something that I've found here even more than at Franciscan! Even more than in Mobile!

Catholic people in Baton Rouge love to meet new people. They are never content with their social circles, even if they are vibrant and somewhat satisfying. Networking is huge here-- if you know one person, you know people in all five local dioceses-- Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lafayette, Lake Charles, and Houma-Thibodaux. Maybe it's the close proximity of the dioceses. Maybe its the high Catholic population. Maybe its the history or the socio-economic background of the people here. I don't know. But what I do know is that from the moment I set my foot onto the campus of LSU to visit my brother (my first experience of Baton Rouge) I was loved. As soon as I set foot onto the campus of St. Michael High School to interview for the job, I was loved. And I could feel it. (AND I'M AN ALABAMA FAN! lol) I didn't have to fight for it. I didn't have to bend over backwards to have social interaction with people. They showered it on me with invitations, hellos, hugs, and verbally expressed excitement simply that I was here, every time they saw me.

"Catholic world" is not meant to be a closed fortress or a bubble, and it's not in Baton Rouge. But "Catholic world" should exist, because "Catholic world" is just another name for family-- for the Church, whose sole mission is to evangelize-- to bring more and more people to God. Social circles of Catholic friends all over the country and the world are meant to interconnect-- intertwine-- become one-- become bigger and bigger until they encompass the world! The beauty of our faith is that it is universal. Every Mass, every country, every language, every people-- lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. The law of prayer is the law of faith is the law of life. We pray the same prayers, we profess the same creed, we live life together. Social media has the power to connect us all as a Church like never before if we use it correctly, but nothing will replace personal interaction and the physical/material expression, one person to another, that we are wanted and loved-- that we are family. Because we are. We are family, and moreso even than our blood relatives. The spiritual order is greater than the material order, although the material order can express the spiritual. By Baptism and especially in the Eucharist, we are all the family of God, the Body of Christ. This is one thing that Baton Rouge Catholics (at least the ones I've encountered) not only understand but live.

Let's not let our social circles become exclusive, especially our Catholic social circles. We are all probably guilty of that at one point or another in our lives-- I know I am. What we don't realize is that our Catholic social circles have the potential to be evangelizing forces in our secular society. They can evangelize us and they can evangelize others.

We need the Church for our own nourishment, but we aren't the only ones. The world needs the Church. And the world needs a strong Church, a tight Church, a Church filled with visible love for all of its members. A love that is based in Truth-- the whole Truth-- the Truth that is God and His plan for the world.

We need each other. That's fact. It's in our DNA-- in the way we were made. We bear the mark of the God who is Trinity. We need to start living like it.

Our world is in desperate need of peace-- peace in our hearts, in our homes, and in and between our nations. True communion creates peace. True communion is based in Truth and Love, in the God who is both of these.

Jesus says, "blessed are the peacemakers, for they will become children of God." Do not merely be peace lovers. Be peacemakers. Make peace by being welcoming. I don't mean a 1960s "all are welcome because it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're nice to people" welcoming but a true welcoming: a recognition of the humanity in the other-- a delight in the other-- a call to sainthood and the offer of a helping hand to get them there. The key is the helping hand to get them there.

No one becomes a saint in isolation. No one makes peace by being focused on himself. We need each other. Desperately.

Today, I'm particularly grateful to everyone in Baton Rouge (and in my life) that has been truly welcoming to me. You have been instruments of God. He has used you to change my life.