"Keeping an Eternal Perspective" Jeff Cavins

let me say a word and offensive reason in dialogue with faith because faith is that true faith unites us to that substance of reason in order to realize its full potential needs the horizons revealed by and truths contained in the faith and not just any face but the Catholic faith and here's one of the problems we are created in the image and likeness of God I have an intellect and I have a will but there's another aspect to being created in the image and likeness of God that I started thinking about a while ago and that is this that God is not limited by time we are limited by time to a certain extent are we we are living in the here and the now but I started thinking that human beings are different than animals in that we can project out into the future and not only can we project into the future but we can live in the past and so like God who is outside of time in the past in the future in the now we find ourselves doing this also we find ourselves struggling and there was a new book out that I was reading called simple life it was a father and a son writing this book about trying to simplify their life and they made a great point when they said for many of us the past and the future are something more than just the past in the future they are our competition the past is my competition the future becomes my competition they drive us beyond healthy limits for some of us much of our daily schedule the rigors we put ourselves through is a result of fear we fear the future we fear the past and while we concern ourselves with one or both we forget about the present the only moment where we have some real control of our lives but I've got news for you we often stumble when our pasts in our future compete with the present but you know what the good news is Jesus Christ who is in the past in the future came into the present to show us how to live and so this isn't something that Jesus didn't contend with the past and the future cross but he came into the present to show us how to live and that's what we want don't we we want the mind of Christ so that we can live our lives today the real voyage one writer said the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new vision new vision we need new vision that sees that life is more than what the world is selling not only can we clutter our past and future with overwhelming challenges but we can challenge our present with complexity and stuff in our lives earlier this year a global marketing research firm announced that almost everybody agrees with a statement there is never enough time in the day to get done what I need to get done how many of you have ever said that before there just isn't time in the day and I felt like that and many times in my life and time is an interesting thing because God has given us all 24 hours a day he's given us adequate time to do what we are called to do I'm married I have three girls I have a wife and I am a father I'm a husband and God has given me 24 hours a day to be a father and to be a husband but someone was observed and I believe it was Einstein that said that God invented time to keep everything from happening at once and and I and I think that could be true but but what I find with my mentality at times is that I reverse that and it's like I'm trying to make everything happen at once multitasking is the the word of the day how many times do we see people walking down the street doing this sitting it's soccer games the other day there were I counted them on the sidelines 15 parents watching the soccer game doing this and I thought to myself we're not here we're not in one place anymore we're trying to do everything have you noticed when you were a kid how time was slow time it was so slow and you were a kid summer seemed like an eternity I got to thinking I think it's like you know for kids God puts training wheels on time he puts training wheels on time so that they can learn to live because he knows that when they grow older the training wheels are coming off and you're gonna experience time as it really is and the older you get the faster that bike goes and you notice that I mean look at me 30 years old and time is really really going and your kids will come up to you in the middle of the summer and they'll say I'm bored and I'll say good I'll take the training wheels off mow the lawn but I found that to be so true the time is elusive time just seems to get away from us and we become frustrated when we live our lives we become so frustrated when we live in this time and we live our lives as though this was all there was and this is what we've set our heart in now this problem gets back to idolatry this problem goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden this problem of the heart and what we set our hearts on in our minds when you look back in Genesis chapter 3 and you see the fall of Adam and Eve when you first read it and you see the results of original sin and then you go back and you read carefully what Eve did there's something that doesn't make sense for it tells us in Genesis 3 1 through 6 that she saw the fruit and she saw that it was good for food it was a delight to the eyes it made one wise what's not to like about that what is not to like about something that's beautiful to the eyes tastes good and it makes you wise what's not to like about it and so I went a little bit further and many of you know that st. Augustine from his confessions wrestled with this issue of sin and he identifies as you've perhaps seen and read and some of dr. Hahn's works and some of the other talks that you've heard over the years that st. Augustine really wrestled with his sin of stealing pears off of a pear tree and he asked himself why why did I do it his conclusion was that I did it for sin sin for sins sake but that's bad philosophy that's not right we don't choose things that are gonna hurt us and kill us we choose things that are gonna make us happy so why did I do it his conclusion was I did it I stole the pears I throw him at a bunch of pigs why because I wanted the affirmation of my friends I went after a good and I made that the best I made that a god and so when we take anything in our lives and we we take any creation in our lives and elevate it to God or the Creator it's idolatry and our lives will instantly be out of balance what's not to like about smartphones what's not to like about email well there's a few things there but what what's not to like about Netflix what's not to like about TiVo what's not to like about iPads and sports and bowling and hunting and scrapbooking now that's not my own personal thing don't get me wrong I'm not what's not to like about clothing and shoes and cars and motorcycles and xpac and tech Xbox and texting and boats you fill in the blank but when that gets your attention and that is elevated where God should be in your life and your attention and giving your mind over to that we're all out of whack we're in imbalanced what gets our attention is narrowed to the creation rather than living with eternity in our mind why don't I walk with the mind of Christ why don't I walk with the mind of Christ I'll tell you why I don't walk with the mind of Christ because I've got other things on my mind I got everything on my mind and I've got to take that clutter and push it back and I have to start giving myself over to the basics of the faith of relationship filial relationship with Christ reading the Bible not reading the Bible to teach a group but reading the Bible because God wants to talk to me God wants to speak to me reading the Catechism and delighting in it and experiencing the sacraments and submitting myself to the Magisterial teaching of the church but Paul said to the Corinthians a very complex society that lived on this isthmus where the the Isthmian games took place he said he said I'm afraid of something my fellow brothers I am afraid of something for you you know what it is here's what I'm afraid of I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness just like I read to you in Genesis chapter 3 says I am afraid that just as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ ah just saying those words even makes me joyful the simplicity and the purity of devotion to Christ we can't lose that no matter how exciting things are a great quote that I ran across that's one of my probably my top two or three thousand quotes it's a pizza it's another delicious quote listen to this it says by man by the name of Samuel Johnson he says it is generally allowed that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire and invigorated his pursuit isn't that something it is generally allowed that no man ever found the happiness of possession proportionate to that expectation which incited his desire and invigorated his pursuit nor has any man found the evils of life so formidable in reality as they were described to him by his own imagination every species of distress brings with it some peculiar supports some unforeseen means of resisting or powers of enduring CS Lewis said in his book the power are they the problem of pain he said all things all things that have ever dearly possessed your mind should have been but hints of heaven everything that has deeply possessed your mind should have been hints of heaven tantalizing glimpses promises promises never quite fulfilled echoes that died away just as they caught your ear he says if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy the more probable explanation is that I was made for another world earthly possessions were never meant to satisfy it but only to arouse it to suggest the real thing and so my friends I want to submit to you this evening that if your mind if your mind is deeply possessed by things and hobbies which there's nothing wrong with things nothing wrong with a hobby but if your mind is deeply possessed wake up to a CS Lewis said and realize that that is a hint to something you are called to and it isn't this world but its heaven and so everything in this world has to be put in proper perspective there was um a study done by a psychologist by the name of Richard Ryan and he did a study on the pursuit of affluence and he mentioned that the pursuit of affluence has damaging psychological effects including severe depression and anxiety the cause pursuing material things were told will make our lives happier and more comfortable in trade jargon these items are called extrinsic value values in a series of case studies dating to 1993 Ryan and and Kaiser examined the effects of pursuing money and material goods they said that obtaining wealth as a goal creates a lower sense of well-being and self-esteem no wonder they're not created for that you'll never become who you are called to become if you just simply pursue affluence the symptoms aren't tied to how much or little money a person already has nor are they tied to what country a person lives in or their age people from different income brackets in different countries and in different age groups shared a common characteristic everyone who pursued affluence as a goal turned in a lower mental health score to be sure in fluent affluence isn't destructive is as an incidental benefit to the pursuit of other more fulfilling and meaningful goals it's the pursuit of such inner goals or intrinsic values that makes people experience a higher sense of vitality and fulfillment one of the problems that we have is that our desire for things and being conformed to the way the world thinks rather than being transformed by the renewing of our mind is that it has bled over into not just physical things but even just electronic stimulus in our lives email email is out of control I'm just saying it's out of control instant messaging is out of control and there was a recent book by a guy called Tony Schwartz and he he did an excerpt from that book on the huntington post website I have no idea why it was there how I found that out but he mentioned in this article called breaking the email addiction something very interesting and he said he said today it isn't overload that we are battling as much as we are battling addiction addiction to what instant gratification instant gratification sorry I thought I had a message instant gratification in addition to studies they show that many people today are checking their emails 10 to 15 times an hour and they're checking their email because they're addicted they're addicted to instant gratification getting everything right now that fixed and the study also showed that they were ignoring they were so overloaded in their life so busy and they could take all of their work home with them in something this size and that they couldn't get away from it and so in order to get away from it they went to their email to break up what they were supposed to be doing and what they found was that those who multitask couldn't get done nearly as well what they were supposed to get done if they had only given their total concentration on that and that's what I am too discovering with the Lord right now is that the Lord is telling me don't multitask with me don't talk to me and multitask with all these other things give me your attention look at me look at me talk to me let me talk to you in the late 1960s and I want to talk to you for a few minutes here about what I think is really the solution and it's actually very simple but it's gonna take quite a bit of effort in the 1960s there's a famous study called the Walter Mitchell study and it's a fascinating study if you've got kids you'll identify with us where they took a bunch of four-year-olds and they put the four-year-olds in a room and then they put a marshmallow down in front of every four-year-old and then they put a little Bell next to it and Mitchell said to the little kids listen I'm gonna leave the room if you want the marshmallow all you got to do is ring the bell and you can have the marshmallow but if you will wait if you'll wait till I come back in the room I'll give you another marshmallow they'll have two kids looked at was okay so he left the room and there's the kids he said 70% of the kids took the marshmallow and rang the bell in the first minute 30% waited and then he studied why you know what his conclusion was his conclusion was that the 70% who took of the marshmallow even though they knew that I just had to wait a little bit and they'd get double 70% of them took the marshmallow you know why you know what the common denominator was they were staring at it they were staring at the marshmallow and those the 30% that got another marshmallow that resisted found something else to look at my friends we need to stop staring at marshmallows we need to stop staring at marshmallows and we need to look at something else and that is Christ the Blessed Mother the Saints the Bible the Catechism the Blessed Sacrament this is what God is offering us in our life today Paul said in Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 through 2 one end to he said I love this he said we need to set our minds on things above and not on earthly things even though we know that our reward in heaven is great we ring the bell on earth we ring the bell on earth for everything that's coming our way even though we know that if we'll wait and we'll put our lives in order and really focus on Jesus and do what he called us to do there will be eternal rewards for us that can't even be compared to the sufferings that we go through today

Channel: Franciscan University of Steubenville

Views: 9,569

Rating: 4.9333334 out of 5

Keywords: Faith, and, Reason, Jeff, Cavins, John, Paul, II, Catholic, church, faith, family, Franciscan, University, Steubenville, Jesus, Christ, Holy, Spirit, hope, conversion, new, evangelization, Christian, witness, apologetics, permanent, values, spiritual, growth, God, EWTN, Life, on, the, Rock, great, adventure, bible, series, Christianity, spirituality

Id: 7wBebLshrAg

Length: 21min 2sec (1262 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 14 2012