Little Shoes

Advent is such a beautiful time of preparation and memory making. A friend told me long ago to be very attentive to what I do with my children in a season as charged as Advent and Christmas. Everything takes on the air and feel of a tradition!

One of those traditions is to begin our Advent with a small basket on our family prayer table that represents a manger. We have a container with pieces of yellow yarn and shredded paper close by. We begin on the first Sunday of Advent, by remembering that when Jesus came, there was no room for him, no soft place to lay his head.

Our family makes a special focus to make a soft place for baby Jesus in our home and in our hearts. Each time we offer a sacrifice or choose a kind word when it would have been easier to be harsh, we can put a piece of "straw" in the manger. On Christmas Morning, we process with our baby Jesus to the manger which has been prepared for him.

Another favorite tradition is centered around St. Nicholas Day (on December 6th). Our children remember (even if we forget) to set out a shoe (just one shoe in my family!) before bed on December 5th. In the night, "St. Nicholas" brings chocolate coins and one real silver coin and places them in the waiting shoes. Sometimes there is even a chocolate orange, but heaven help me if I forget to pick up the chocolate coins! (I found them at Hobby Lobby this year)! I've never thought to take a picture of the little shoes all lined up.

Getting ready for Advent this year, I can't help but notice that my children are not so little anymore (at least, most of them aren't), and my oh my how those little shoes have grown. We really do have only a few years with them when they are small. So I invite you, parents, to do as I do as we prepare for this holy season: take a breath and say a prayer for the grace to be present to and grateful for this special time with your family. The special grace of sharing this season with children is not a blessing that everyone receives, and those shoes won't be little for long.

Fence Post Theology

Early on in our marriage, my husband would joke that I could take even the most unrelated job or activity, such as sitting on the front step as neighborhood kids are coming home from school or starting a picture framing business, and find a way to make it a “ministry” in my own head. I suppose this is because my definition of ministry has always been very broad. A few years ago, when Dr. Matt Halbach came and spoke at our diocesan catechetical leaders meeting about the process of evangelization, I was vindicated in my belief.

Dr. Halbach outlined Pope Francis’ understanding of the mission of the Church as a ministry of accompaniment. It isn’t always overt, Sacramental (with a capital S), or even on church property. Often times, ministry is just being truly present to someone, even if it means standing at the fence post and talking to your neighbor. This perspective takes on an urgent significance when encountering people inside the Church building as well: before they can be “theologized” they must be evangelized. You cannot try to give someone moral formation (parenesis) or the plethora of theological details before they come to deeply know the proclamation of God’s boundless love for them (kerygma).

Years ago, I complained to my friend and mentor, Dr. Tom Neal, that I met so many people who are thirsty for God, who need Him in their lives so desperately, but that I felt incapable of helping them. Catholicism is so dense and rich that all I had to slake their thirst was a fire hose. Tom sent me a short little message that challenged me to place a higher priority on my own theological formation. He quoted Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

The study of theology, especially my Catechesis of the Good Shepherd formation which takes the richest content to offer to the smallest ones, is a quest to understand God’s plan of salvation well enough to equip me in the ministry of giving a drink of water to these thirsty ones without drowning them. It is to know the big picture well enough to be able to help others form their own understanding, line by line, stroke by stroke. Theology and Ministry aren’t just the tools and approach we use for sacramental classes or catechist in-services, they are for the fence-post, too.

Faith Seeking Understanding

After all these years, I've finally decided to jump in and begin working toward a Masters Degree. People pursue masters degrees all of the time, but it turns a few heads and raises a few eyebrows at cocktail parties when a lay person seeks to obtain a masters in theology. Theology? Really? Why would you want to do that?

One of the essays I must write for my application process is about the concept that theology is really “Faith seeking understanding.” Some critics see this statement as the claim that somehow through study, one can take their faith and replace it with concrete understanding. This is, of course, ridiculous. Yet "faith seeking understanding" still is a definition of theology that I can reconcile with my own experience, because it does not mean for me that wish to systematically unpack each mystery and define it until it no longer evokes awe, wonder, and humility. It is rather the opposite.

One of my favorite stories, told to me by a Benedictine monk named Father Albert, was of St. Augustine considering the mystery of God by the seashore. He saw a young boy taking buckets of ocean water and carrying it to dump into a small hole. When the saint asked the young boy what he was doing, the boy answered that he was trying to put the ocean into the little hole he had made. St. Augustine replied that this was impossible, the ocean could never fit in such a small space. The child responded, “Neither can you fit God in your little mind.”

I remember considering this story in the quiet of a monastic Basilica as I looked up at the images of the great saints who had spent their lives seeking God’s face. I imagined myself with a little cup in my hand. God is like the ocean, and that little cup is like my mind. I knew I could never “fit” God into myself, but I knew that I could fit into God. So I decided to throw my cup into the ocean.

“Faith seeking understanding” is the decision to dive in to the wide expanses of an ocean that I could never see, know, or explore all at once or ever. The object of my faith is a Creator who has fearfully and wonderfully made us all and who desires us to know Him. I consider my desire to know Him in return and to seek to understand Him etched into my humanity and extending through all eternity. In other words, by this very seeking we anticipate the heavenly reality now and we wiill continue to practice theology even when God is “all in all”[1] and when the “knowledge of the Lord covers the earth like the waters cover the sea.”[2]




[1] 1 Cor 15:28


[2] Hab 2:14