Who you are...Lion King style.

The Lion King

So I’m a supposing that everyone here has seen the lion king right? I mean it’s probably one of the greatest movies of all time. It wasn't until last summer though that I realized how profoundly Christian the message in the movie was. (thanks to Aaron)

If you really watch the Lion King you cannot help but see the similarities of "The Prodigal Son." I mean Simba leaves the kingdom for this tropical paradise with no responsibilities and no work. He is just living the "Hakuna Matata" lifestyle (no worries). He’s in this beautiful place with his best buds and not a care in the world and everything he could possibly want right? I mean that’s the life! But something happens, and he begins to feel empty inside. He realizes something is missing and that he wasn't made for this. He was made in the image and likeness of his father. He wasn't made for comfort and easy living. Or as Pope Benedict put it; "The world offers you comfort but you were not made for comfort but for greatness."

Watch these two clips in order and keep in mind the Christian theme. You’ll never see this movie again the same way. (There is a bit of an overlap on the clips)

Two things:

First, who here hasn’t uttered a line similar to Simba’s in the first video “You said you would always be there for me…but you’re not” when praying? Everyone goes through these moments. When we are beaten, broken and lost and we are yelling like Simba “why are you abandoning me!”  We want to know where Christ is and why He's not helping us, its because He’s right there on the Cross next to us saying the same thing with us; “My God my God why have you forsaken me.” It’s in our sufferings that we share more intimately with Christ. I don’t know about you but it’s easy to fall into the trap of only going to God in a time of need, tragedy, or suffering.  Then, when all is well we slowly tend to fall away from a devout prayer life because we think we don’t need Him. Sometimes God allows the desolation or suffering to bring you back to Himself. Sometimes God allows the suffering because there is some infection in us that he wants to rid us of, because if left unchecked…it would destroy us. In these moments of hardships and trial and suffering He allows us to “cast our worries on Him” and we allow Him to truly mold us and shape us...and sometimes it hurts.

Second, the most profound line of the movie occurs during this dialogue:

Mufasa's ghost: [appears among the stars] Simba, you have forgotten me.

Adult Simba: No. How could I?

Mufasa's ghost: You have forgotten who you are and so have forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You are more than what you have become.

DANG! I mean what a line. I think this is sometimes what God must say to us when he sees us lost in sin or worldly things. He's there screaming at us, "James you are forgetting who you are and thus forgetting Me! You are forgetting that I made you in my own image and likeness and I made you for greatness." It happens all too often that we get lost in something and forget who we truly are supposed to be. This is the problem of sin. My favorite author GK Chesterton said “And to the question, “What is meant by the Fall?” I could answer with complete sincerity, “That whatever I am, I am not myself.” Whatever and whoever we are, we are not our true selves when we sin, and we are exchanging our real versions for a lie. This is what happens to Simba, he forgets who he was called to be and thus forgets his father. We always think that happiness and fulfillment comes from having worldly pleasure, desires and living a  care free life, but in reality they come from truly giving of ourselves and helping others. My good friend Aaron always says; "Man only finds himself in a sincere gift of self." If you want to truly know who you are and the greatness you were made for you have to give yourself to Christ.

I could go on, but I’ll let my man CS Lewis wrap it up since he says it way better than I ever could:

“It is something like that with Christ and us. The more we get what we now call "ourselves" out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of "little Christs," all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented-as an author invents characters in a novel-all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to "be myself" without Him. …It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up yourself to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most "natural" men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

…The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

God Bless

James

I Thirst

This is not really a blog, just posting what is probably my favorite meditation/prayer which is written by Blessed Mother Teresa. It's incredible! Without a doubt one of the most beautiful things I have ever read! I want this framed and hanging in my room or office one day.

I Thirst

It is true. I stand at the door of your heart, day and night. Even when you are not listening, even when you doubt it could be Me, I am there. I await even the smallest sign of your response, even the least whispered invitation that will allow Me to enter.

And I want you to know that whenever you invite Me, I do come – always, without fail. Silent and unseen I come, but with infinite power and love, and bringing the many gifts of My Spirit. I come with My mercy, with My desire to forgive and heal you, and with a love for you beyond your comprehension – a love every bit as great as the love I have received from the Father ("As much as the Father has loved me, I have loved you…" (Jn. 15:10) I come - longing to console you and give you strength, to lift you up and bind all your wounds. I bring you My light, to dispel your darkness and all your doubts. I come with My power, that I might carry you and all your burdens; with My grace, to touch your heart and transform your life; and My peace I give to still your soul.

I know you through and through. I know everything about you. The very hairs of your head I have numbered. Nothing in your life is unimportant to Me. I have followed you through the years, and I have always loved you – even in your wanderings. I know every one of your problems. I know your needs and your worries. And yes, I know all your sins. But I tell you again that I love you – not for what you have or haven’t done – I love you for you, for the beauty and dignity My Father gave you by creating you in His own image. It is a dignity you have often forgotten, a beauty you have tarnished by sin. But I love you as you are, and I have shed My Blood to win you back. If you only ask Me with faith, My grace will touch all that needs changing in your life, and I will give you the strength to free yourself from sin and all its destructive power.

I know what is in your heart – I know your loneliness and all your hurts – the rejections, the judgments, the humiliations, I carried it all before you. And I carried it all for you, so you might share My strength and victory. I know especially your need for love – how you are thirsting to be loved and cherished. But how often have you thirsted in vain, by seeking that love selfishly, striving to fill the emptiness inside you with passing pleasures – with the even greater emptiness of sin. Do you thirst for love? "Come to Me all you who thirst…" (Jn. 7: 37). I will satisfy you and fill you. Do you thirst to be cherished? I cherish you more than you can imagine – to the point of dying on a cross for you.

I Thirst for You. Yes, that is the only way to even begin to describe My love for you. I THIRST FOR YOU. I thirst to love you and to be loved by you – that is how precious you are to Me. I THIRST FOR YOU. Come to Me, and I will fill your heart and heal your wounds. I will make you a new creation, and give you peace, even in all your trials I THIRST FOR YOU. You must never doubt My mercy, My acceptance of you, My desire to forgive, My longing to bless you and live My life in you. I THIRST FOR YOU. If you feel unimportant in the eyes of the world, that matters not at all. For Me, there is no one any more important in the entire world than you. I THIRST FOR YOU. Open to Me, come to Me, thirst for Me, give me your life – and I will prove to you how important you are to My Heart.

Don’t you realize that My Father already has a perfect plan to transform your life, beginning from this moment? Trust in Me. Ask Me every day to enter and take charge of your life. – and I will. I promise you before My Father in heaven that I will work miracles in your life. Why would I do this? Because I THIRST FOR YOU. All I ask of you is that you entrust yourself to Me completely. I will do all the rest.

Even now I behold the place My Father has prepared for you in My Kingdom. Remember that you are a pilgrim in this life, on a journey home. Sin can never satisfy you, or bring the peace you seek. All that you have sought outside of Me has only left you more empty, so do not cling to the things of this life. Above all, do not run from Me when you fall. Come to Me without delay. When you give Me your sins, you gave Me the joy of being your Savior. There is nothing I cannot forgive and heal; so come now, and unburden your soul.

No matter how far you may wander, no matter how often you forget Me, no matter how many crosses you may bear in this life; there is one thing I want you to always remember, one thing that will never change. I THIRST FOR YOU – just as you are. You don’t need to change to believe in My love, for it will be your belief in My love that will change you. You forget Me, and yet I am seeking you every moment of the day – standing at the door of your heart and knocking. Do you find this hard to believe? Then look at the cross, look at My Heart that was pierced for you. Have you not understood My cross? Then listen again to the words I spoke there – for they tell you clearly why I endured all this for you: "I THIRST…"(Jn 19: 28). Yes, I thirst for you – as the rest of the psalm – verse I was praying says of Me: "I looked for love, and I found none…" (Ps. 69: 20). All your life I have been looking for your love – I have never stopped seeking to love you and be loved by you. You have tried many other things in your search for happiness; why not try opening your heart to Me, right now, more than you ever have before.

Whenever you do open the door of your heart, whenever you come close enough, you will hear Me say to you again and again, not in mere human words but in spirit. "No matter what you have done, I love you for your own sake Come to Me with your misery and your sins, with your troubles and needs, and with all your longing to be loved. I stand at the door of your heart and knock. Open to Me, for I THIRST FOR YOU…"

---

"Jesus is God, therefore His love, His Thirst, is infinite. He the creator of the universe,
asked for the love of His creatures.
He thirst for our love… These words:
‘I Thirst’ –
Do they echo in our souls?”

Mother Teresa

Whats With The Title?

Thanks for checking out the new blog.

So why the title “ManAlive”?

Well it happens to be the title of possibly my favorite book. ManAlive by GK Chesterton, if you haven’t read it I highly suggest you add it to the top of your reading list. It is a novel about “Truth, beauty and the goodness of life.”

 (The man himself: GK Chesterton)

I chose this as my title because the main character in the book, Innocent Smith is one of my many heroes.  He is this man who is truly alive and amazed at this world. He refuses to take anything for granted, a good climbing tree, a cheap bottle of wine, his wife, his children, his house, his two legs… NOTHING. He courts and woos his wife again and again, he breaks into his own home to see his own possesions anew, he travels around the world for the purpose of having joy upon returning home. Chesterton elsewhere wrote that "the things we see every day are the things we never see at all." Smith has learned the amazing trick of seeing everything for the first time and so for him his life is full of wonder and awe. What the world finds to be ordinary and dull he finds to be wonderful and amazing...to be alive!


 

“The world will never starve for lack of wonders but for lack of wonder” - GK Chesterton

The biggest tragedy in life is that when we get use to stuff it stops amazing us! Or worse it starts boring us. We do this with things, places, people, and even God. We have lost our sense of gratitude and awe for the simple things in life. If you truly paused to look around at how wonderful this world is and how incredible the gift of life is, I can't help but think that you would be more joyful, grateful, and more alive. People are never amazed anymore by anything. Innocent Smith refuses to let this happen to his life or even his friend’s lives. Whenever his friends are unappreciative or just going through the motions of life he fires his pistol at them to scare them and make them grateful to be alive. He pretends his own property is not his, so he covets his own belongings instead of his neighbors. Whenever he finds himself taking his wife for granted he sends her off to some distant town or place so he can show up again only to court her and propose all over again. The book starts off as a kind of mystery case where there are all these accusations against Smith of polygamy, attempted murder and theft….only to find out through the trial that he is innocent of all of them.

"His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself by every electric shock to the intellect that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake.”

"This man’s spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.”

"If Innocent is happy, it is because he IS innocent. If he can defy the conventions, it is just because he can keep the commandments. It is just because he does not want to kill but to excite life that a pistol is still as exciting to him as it is to a schoolboy. It is just because he does not want to steal, because he does not covet his neighbors goods, that he has captured the trick (oh, how we all long for it!), the trick of coveting his own goods. It is just because he does not want to commit adultery that he achieves the romance of sex; it just because he loves one wife that he has a hundred honeymoons. If he had really murdered a man, if he had really deserted a woman, he would not be able to feel that a pistol or a love letter was like a song – at least, not a comic song.”

“He really is happy, because he really is hilarious, because he really is a man alive. He is so young, that climbing garden trees and playing silly practical jokes are still to him what they once were to us all.”

When was the last time you were truly amazed at something? When was the last time you were truly grateful for the blessings in your life? When was the last time you were truly living in the moment?When was the last time you truly felt alive?

So this is why my blog is titled ManAlive, because I hope to live up to the standard that Innocent Smith has made.

So now that my painful first blog is out of the way, I bet you are wondering; “What can I expect from future blogs?”

My blogs will range from Catholic apologetics, books, movies, random rants and thoughts, stories and experiences…basically a little bit of everything. Oh yeah and probably a lot of quotes.  

God Bless,

James