Me & my bad habits lead me back to you?
It’s now Palm Sunday. With Holy Week upon the world and
Easter less than a week away I’m feeling like I am doomed to burn in Hell
rather than enjoy the bliss of Heaven.
My Lenten vows are all broken
with the exception of Chocolate and even then, I took advantage of a Sunday loophole
a couple of weeks back to enjoy one small square of mint chocolate from a local
confectionary. I’m sure many a Catholic priest would agree
the Sunday Lenten loophole may not be necessary for a post Vatican II Lent.
Lent is supposed to be about fasting, almsgiving, and
prayer. Goals that I set out to try and
achieve with vigor as I tried to get rid of my really bad habits that have
become mortal sin of gluttony. If, as
St. Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 3:16 my body is a temple of God and ergo holy
why am I ok with my body resembling the temple of Artemis circa 2023 AD instead
of 550 BC? Nearly every Friday this lent
I’ve eaten out for all 3 meals instead of trying not to eat anything period. I know I was trying hard this past Friday in
particular to abstain from most food until dinnertime, only to have my caffeine
cravings get the better of me leading to an AM Dunkin run and Ed Sheeran’s “Bad
Habits” playing on the radio as I pulled away with coffee with Irish Crème
flavoring and old fashioned donut in my hand.
My prayer life? Yes, I’m still
praying my distracted rosary but the other prayers I was trying to incorporate
into my daily life, like meditating at night on passages from Imitation of
Christ by Thomas á Kempis courtesy of the Hallow app, I ended up skipping in
favor of watching secular YouTube and/or playing this addicting 2-2-4-8 game on
my phone. I had a goal of writing each
night a reflection of my Lenten journal and publishing it nightly on the Random
Thoughts blog as a form of meditation/education of myself and perhaps you, who
read my blog about how to try and be holy, only to watch more TV and fall
asleep. My total charitable giving can
be summed up as one bag of clothes in a clothing hamper I gave to Salvation
Army at the beginning of Lent and maybe some loose change I’ve kept in a piggy
bank to Catholic Relief Services courtesy of their Lenten rice bowl
program. If I weren’t still squandering
my money on junk food, I would have something to give instead of nothing for the
local beggar on the street corner who, well let’s face it I end up driving past
rather than pulling my car over to hand that beggar something. Why I
am doing a lousy job with the fasting, praying, and almsgiving this Lent.
My husband often states that I give up too much stuff. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself for trying
to not eat French Fries, or French Fries while dining at a casual dining
restaurant, or just going out to the casual dining restaurant, or Door Dashing
food with French fries from aforementioned casual dining restaurant and eating
it while watching DFB YouTube channel learning all about the Walt Disney World
casual dining restaurants I’ll never be able to enjoy because I’m spending too
much money eating out at local casual dining restaurants.
But, this is what is troubling me this particular Lent.
Awhile back I watched Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio”
instead of doing something more practical/righteous. As I was watching the move the one thing that
struck me was how Catholicism was incorporated into the movie. For example, del Toro gives Geppetto a son
by the name of Carlo. Carlo was tragically
killed by a WWI bomber when the bomb struck the Catholic church Geppetto was
carving a beautiful new crucifix for the altar. The whole reason Carlo died was because he
raced to go back into the Church to retrieve the perfect pinecone Geppetto told
him they needed to plant in order to have a tree to carve in the future. Let’s just say that pinecone then grows up
into the tree that gives birth to Pinocchio thanks to the magic/compassion of
the Blue Seraphin (I know in the book it was a blue fairy, but del Toro’s fairy
resembles a Seraphin rather than a fairy) after Geppetto has carved for himself
a replacement son out of that pine tree in a drunken fit of rage and grief. According
to the Seraphin of death, whom Pinocchio meets later, that Blue Seraphin broke
the rules by brining him to life in the 1st place and now he can
never die. Additionally, the whole town
became frightened of Pinocchio when he wandered into a Sunday mass after
Geppetto told him no. When Geppetto goes
back to finally finish the crucifix he began years before with his late son Carlo
Pinocchio asks Geppetto, pointing to the wooden Jesus “Why do they like him and
not me?” Geppetto then explains the town
just has to get to know him better and eventually they will love him like they
love the wooden Jesus. In fact, in an
interview del Toro gave he compared his Pinocchio to an imperfect messiah like
Jesus who constantly dies and rises from the dead but has adopted “Disobedience
as a virtue” as he points out everyone else in the movie seems to have some
type of invisible strings attached to them by their virtue of living in fascist
Mussolini’s Italy in the 1930’s that causes them to obey except for
Pinocchio. And yes, while del Toro’s
Pinocchio’s stays truer to Carlo Collodi original disobedient Pinocchio
including Pinocchio squashing poor Sebastian J. Cricket, does that mean
disobedience needs to be celebrated? I
thought the moral Carlo Colledi was trying to show in his original Pinocchio
the problems of disobedience and dishonesty.
Now lying is perfectly OK as long as Pinocchio could use his nose to
create a bridge to allow papa Geppetto and Sebastian J. Cricket to escape out
of the belly of that whale.
Here’s the reason why
I’ve been so grieved this Lent and disappointed with myself. To answer del Toro’s Pinocchio question of
why the town loved the wooden Jesus on the cross rather than the frightful looking
wooden puppet is because the wooden Jesus represents the real Jesus who died on
the cross for me. To quote from St.
Paul’s letter to the Philippians-
“Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not
regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather he emptied himself, taking the form
of a slave, coming in human likeness, and found human in appearance, he humbled
himself, becoming obedient to the point of the death, even death on a cross.”
Or as St. Paul put in his letter to the Romans-
“Just as through the disobedience of one man the many
were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man the many will be
made righteous.”
Or from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians-
“Just as in Adam all died even so in Christ shall all be
made alive.”
So because of me and my bad habits, me and my bad choices,
me and my selfish desires, God had to send His beloved only begotten son to suffer
a literal excruciating death (the word origin is to inflict massive pain via
the cross in Latin) to save my soul. So
yes, I feel guilty every time I sin and part of me doesn’t want to continue to
inflict pain on the Son of God because he didn’t deserve it.
And yes, there is also this part of me that wants to accept
the offer of salvation that Jesus’ death and resurrection bought for me which
means I to must die to myself. But
selfishly I don’t want to die or give up my errand ways and do what I want to
do. I want to be disobedient which of
course leads me to become depressed to the point where well part of me thinks I
should just send myself to Hell asap.
Of course I don’t want to go to Hell either. Luckily a friend of mine gave me some
hope.
This year the Passion of the Lord was read from the Gospel
of Mathew. While that gospel makes a
reference to the two thieves on the cross trading insults with Jesus alongside
the crowd, the Gospel of Luke details a conversation between those two thieves
and Jesus. One demands Jesus to save
both of them if Jesus is truly the messiah.
The other one, known in the Catholic Church as St. Dismas, admits that
he and his thieving/murdering companion deserves to die but Jesus is indeed
innocent. St. Dismas just asks Jesus to
remember him and Jesus responds by promising St. Dismas he and Jesus would be
together in Heaven. My friend reminded
me that this criminal who was probably evil his whole life, was converted and
saved. I like the way Dallas Jenkins,
who would eventually create one of my favorite TV shows “The Chosen” illustrated
this in one of his early short films “The Two Thieves” (See link below) which drives
home the point that Dismas was an evil man and really deserved death because he
killed a Roman and needed Jesus salvation, and Jesus knew him and offered
salvation despite Dismas’ evil past.
So maybe I can hope in the resurrection. Maybe I can believe I can still be
saved. Maybe my heart will be willing to
obey God just as His only begotten son did to the point of death on a
cross.
Because as anyone in a twelve step program admits powerlessness
over their own live but a need for a higher power to save them.
