… she’ll say it always takes someone dying for me to blog.

The truth is, of course, that for once, I didn’t have anything to say. Because there was so much already being said. Because the media had pounced on this story due to its combination of celebrity, tragedy, sensationalism and ultimately bizarre-ness.

I’m talking about the death of Chris Benoit, his wife Nancy and son Daniel.

Nothing I say now will change the fact that the circumstances surrounding their deaths are beyond unusual and may never be resolved. All I wanted to say about his storied career, especially how he raised up the WWE belt in Singapore back in 2002, my friend THEXhas already said on his blog. Go check it out.

RIP Chris Benoit
1967-2007

I think it’s interesting how the words from St. Mark’s gospel from the Thursday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time (June 7th – last week) the make so much more sense now than ever.

The scribe said to Jesus, “Well spoken, Master; what you have said is true: that He is One and there is no other. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice.”
Mark 12:32-33

That night, my mother had tuned into EWTN (the Eternal Word Television Network – the premiere Catholic media organisation) and I caught a fair amount of the homily from their daily mass in Birmingham. One of the things that really struck me was the theme of “Faith in Action”, and how that was relevant not only in the gospel passage above, but also in the week-long readings from the book of Tobit, unfortunately classified as Apocrypha and therefore not available in most “non-Catholic” Bibles.

“Faith in Action” means a lot of things to a lot of people, but to me, it means serving God in the world he has placed me in. I’m only realising this now, that what God has intended for me is this – not to take me out of the world, but to truely immerse myself in it. For too long I’ve been comfortable living away from it – unwilling to do anything that would mean having to deal with the realities of life – sickness, pain, aging, loneliness, regret. But the truth is, we have been given the poor so that we might know how to be poor ourselves – poor in spirit. Our faith calls us to this spiritual poverty – our response should be one of action.

This is the poverty that St. Francis of Assisi recognised in the ministry of Jesus. This is the trust that God demands of us as Catholics – as Christians. To trust that when we give up our physical and emotional attachments to things of this world, that we will receive from him much more than we could ever hope for.

That’s why I’m discerning with Ordo Fratrum Minores – The Order of the Little Brothers – the Franciscans.