20 Ways NOT To Practice The Catholic Faith This Epiphany

May this season of Epiphany - Epiphanytide - be filled with reminders of the joy of the Word among us.

Soon it will be Gesimatide. For those using the newer terminology of Ordinary Time, or Tempus per Annum (time or season throughout the year), the expression 'Gesimatide' is likely unfamiliar. Gesimatide, the three Sundays preceding Lent (Quadragesima, 40 days before Easter), is also known as Pre-Lent: Septuagesima (70), Sexagesima (60), Quinquagesima (50).

Gesimatide is also known as Shrovetide, and begins on Septuagesima Sunday and ends on Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) before Ash Wednesday (40 days before Easter). Gesimatide or Shrovetide is preserved in the Ordinariate. The liturgical colour for Gesimatide is violet/purple.

The "old" way of counting or identifying days in the calendar lends additional intimacy to the experience of immersion in God's time, i.e., God's way of relating to His creation. There is a character or personality retained in the names we have been given that help us enter into a more personal encounter with Jesus as the Holy Spirit leads us through the liturgical year. Our identity as Catholics living according to the whole of the Gospel is therefore strengthened in depth and breadth. Our understanding of the necessity to embrace Christ's ongoing invitation to holiness is sustained and refined.

Spiritual discipline requires... discipline, the discipline of cooperation. That is, practice and repetition to dispose our hearts and minds to the grace that God offers us for our sanctification.

As we approach another season of grace, let's avoid complicating our lives and others' by committing acts of cruelty, indifference and/or indecency. Try not to lose yourself or become unhinged. Avoid...

1. treating the Holy Eucharist like it's a tortilla chip. S-A-C-R-I-L-E-G-E!
2. instituting a half-dozen or more little rules and then demand that people conform to your neurotic tendencies.
3. stating that you're too old to change (from bad habits) and then insisting that everyone else has to be okay with that.
4. being a griping dour old grump. (You might think you have a good reason to act like a hungry bear that just woke up after a winter's hibernation, but you're not a bear and you're not getting any younger. So, get over it. Stop wasting time and get on with living a life that gives reason for the hope that is within you. - 1 Peter 3:15)
5. being so meticulous that to describe such behaviour as scrupulous would be a massive understatement. (No one - and I mean no one - likes a fusspot.)
6. promoting one's importance and reputation at the expense of another's reputation and/or well being (Review St Matthew 23:12).
7. imposing arbitrary small-minded rules with little or no thought to the real emotional and/or spiritual impact on others (see also #3).
8. ambushing others in the sacristy or narthex five minutes before Mass begins with personal gripes aimed at correcting some perceived threat or imagined injustice against you (see #3).
9. making unseemly comments about a coworker or parishioner (Review St Matthew 5:27-28).
10. making jokes in poor taste in the communion line. (Stay focussed!)
11. being threatened by others who are joy-filled (see #5).
12. interrupting others merely to hog the conversation and/or to prove one's imagined intellectual superiority.
13. elevating conspiracy theories to the level of fact. (What's that old saying? "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln)
14. holding theories or opinions that are clearly offences against charity.
15. being hospitable in order to merely gain favours from others.
16. pretending that gossip is acceptable. (A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip. - Billy Graham)
17. pretending to be supportive but never being available when invited to help around the parish (or home or office...).
18. canonizing a recently deceased relative or friend. (As much as we can have a reasonable hope that a buddy or relative who was a faithful Catholic is in a better place, it's more than a bit presumptuous to assume that we control the gates of paradise. Pray for the repose of souls! Please leave the final judgement of souls up to God!)
19. being indifferent to (or even indulging) your child's persistent disruptive behaviour during Mass. (Kids may not come with an 'off switch', but if little junior won't behave himself, then, as a charity to others, a parent should temporarily remove him to a location outside the nave.)
20. acting like you own that favourite pew you occupy every Sunday and giving others the stink-eye when they attempt to enter what you consider to be your private and personal domain.

One could think of the above list as an examination of conscience of sorts, if you spin around the text a bit. For example, "Have I gossipped about others and then defended my attacks on another person by referring to it as mere venting?"

That said, if your behaviour fits any of the above remarks, you'll probably fit in at any Catholic parish. The Church is not a cult of the perfect. Catholics are works in progress, striving and even struggling at times to shed sinful habits as we grow in virtue by cooperating with God. Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit. Things go best when we cooperate with God and repent of our sins.

Duc in altum!

Faithful Catholics take their salvation seriously. The Lord Jesus gave us the Sacraments to accompany us closer toward Him, so that with Him and in Him, and present to Him in and through His sacraments, we may praise God by dedicating ourselves and our actions daily unto the greater glory of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, the Most Holy Trinity, while working and praying for the salvation of souls. Let us worship God in the beauty of holiness.

Stay close to Jesus! Stay close to Jesus in His sacraments! Go to confession; go to Mass.