I Thought You Were Serious

“I used to think you were serious.” This is what my housemate Brian said to me last night as we engaged in horseplay. I asked, "Do you want me to be more serious? " He said no, but it was too late. His words had already betrayed him. 

Brian wants a brother who is striving for holiness and, in a way, to move toward being a leader and elder, as do many of the men in the Courage Apostolate and in the world in general. Leaders behave a certain way. They put childish things aside. I had put many of these childish things aside until moving in with him. 

Drinking, toilet humor, and immaturity are what have developed here in our home rather than men striving for holiness, especially over the last few months. Childish things are being re-embraced to the detriment of us both. 

He will not get me back to the seriousness of being a brother and elder in training, nor will other members of the group. Jesus is the only one who can do that with my involvement in the process of being drawn closer to Him, putting certain behaviors aside, and yielding to Christ. Embracing fatherhood and putting the days of my youth behind me happily, not begrudgingly. Embracing masculine adulthood so others who look to us as examples, as the fifth goal of Courage calls us to do, can do the same. Embracing our telos. 

To live the life I am called to and to take the role I’ve been gifted, I have to put childish things aside by God’s grace. Do I really want what He is offering me? The answer comes in a yes or no but also in actions. 

From The Detailed Rules for Monks by St. Basil the Great, “... to confess my personal feelings, when I reflect on all these blessings I am overcome with a kind of dread and numbness at the very possibility of ceasing to love God and of bringing shame upon Christ because of my lack of recollection and my preoccupation with trivialities...”

The last part speaks to me. I am preoccupied with trivialities: immature, inappropriate humor, drinking, oversleeping, materialism, and horseplay. These things must be put aside, as they all preoccupy me as they did in the past, which is why I rid myself of them. The desire to be entertained or pleasured has always pushed discipline and responsibility out of the way, and I believe it always will if I allow it to. 

Last night, we picked up alcoholic drinks because it was a feast day. After drinking and despite it being past our agreed bed time we started horseplaying. We allowed ourselves to fall into trivialities which led him saying to me “I used to think you were serious." I have to get back there so those who walk with me can get back there as well. The world and the Church needs men not boys to lead us back from the brink of destruction. Help me Lord to be the man that I am not the 12 year old I act like. 

2 Tim 1:1-8 “...For God did not give you a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self control...”

Written 1/26/21

Human written, AI spell checked

Image from mysticmonkcoffee.com