If you’re following me on socials you may have seen this. If you didn’t, blame the algorithm. But that’s why you’re a subscriber, so you don’t miss the good stuff 😁
I don’t usually send you things I post to social media unless they’re significant. This is one of those posts I wanted to share with you, and share some personal thoughts about it.
HEADS UP!!
Watching this in an email app? Tapping the video will bring you to YouTube. Or read this email at CatholicFirebrand.com where the video will play inside the post.
I don’t want to make a career out of getting tough on my fellow Catholics. But some things have to be said. Tough love is a thing!
The comments I was reading, were real. They were a collection of comments I’d received over the past couple of day, but it’s not the first time I had heard any of them.
“People are looking at me…”, “The priest askd me not to change communion lines…” and so on are among the more common sob stories I’ve heard over the years. And they all make me sick, because inexcusable weakness triggers me, particularly in other Catholics.
This lack of interior strength and fortitude is characteristic of our modern age. People don’t know how to suffer, even the slightest bit. They interpret discomfort as pain, and they see pain as a weight to collapse under. In the secular world it has resulted in “safe spaces”. In the Catholic world, it has done the same thing—except our safe spaces are TLM communities.
I don’t believe half of the sob stories I’ve heard, but even if they’re untrue, they say something honest. “The priest looked at me funny for receiving on my tongue!…” You’d only use a story like that if you already think that the scenario is particularly offensive or harmful. A tough person wouldn’t come up with that. So whether it’s a true story or not, it still says something very honest—the storyteller needs to toughen up.
I’m not a particularly tough guy, and I’m not holding anyone to an unreasonable standard. I’m insisting that they should at least be as tough as I am…and I’d just call that normal, not super-heroic.
We should subject ourselves tor little moments of self denial, inconvenience, interior pain. And then up our game, with longer periods of denial, harder pains and inconveniences. If we can suffer the small things, we condition ourselves to suffer great things. And then the small things won’t even make us flinch, just as these sob stories wouldn’t make me flinch.
Stay strong Catholics! And remember that I love you.
Thanks for being part of my inner circle. This is yet another note that I wouldn’t share with just anybody. It’s just something to get off of my chest, that I thought you might benefit from. God bless you. I hope to “see you” at The Forge some time.