“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, on your own intelligence rely not…” Proverbs 3:5

So I got a ticket the other day. I was driving on the highway, listening to some music when, all of a sudden, I hear sirens behind me. I looked down at my speedometer and was horrified to see the dial read “90 mph” (the speed limit was 70 mph). I knew I was done for. I pulled over to the side of the road, got my license and registration out and prepared to receive a monster ticket.

The police officer came up to my window and said 4 words: “Ninety in a seventy?” I felt horrible. He gave me the ticket and I got back on the road, driving safer, slower and with more appreciation than ever before.

This incident got me thinking, though. I have the same tendency to have a “heavy foot” in my spiritual life. I try to force myself into some “perfect” faith life; I try to tackle problems on my own rather than asking God for guidance; and I allow the phrase “Thy will be done” turn into “my will be done.” It’s sad, but true.

Jesus comes to us today in a verse from the Book of Proverbs. I’ve always thought of the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Wisdom as the biblical-precursor to the popular series “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” They contain aphorisms and advice on practical matters. In this particular passage, the writer is describing the sort of attitude that we should have before God. It reads like a checklist of things we should do and say as sons and daughters of God. Yet it’s not meant to be a mere list of the ways and means of being a Christians, just like our prayers are not supposed to be just repetitious, meaningless words. We are called to have a transformation, a conversion of heart. And our actions should reflect this conversion.

Now, I’ll be the first one to say that it’s very easy to slip into complacency in terms of our prayer life; furthermore, I admit that, for the last year or two, my prayer life has been one of laziness and self-contentment. But, in my opinion, the beauty of our faith is that every passing moment provides with the opportunity to turn it all around. Today we can decide to change. At this very second, you and I look up to heaven and rededicate our lives to Christ. Salvation, my brothers and sisters, is a stone’s-throw away.

In our celebrity-obsessed society, we see people becoming star-struck and tongue-tied when their favorite baseball player or rapper is in their midst (ever seen that show "Fanatic" on MTV?). If we can get that stupid around some “famous” person, how much stupider should we be when we come to our Lord? One of the most dumbfounding truths you’ll ever come to know is that the King of the world, the Creator of the universe, the Lamb of God wants to talk to you. How humbling is that? Whenever I stand before the Eucharist, I just feel so small. I feel more awestruck than I ever would meeting some movie star. And I just feel stupid. I’m not using the word stupid in a negative sense; rather, I’m using it to contrast the infinite-knowledge that God has and how, in comparison, I’m nothing.

But here’s the crux of Christianity—God loves us anyway. No matter how ugly or unintelligent or bad the world makes us think we are, God loves us. Brothers and sisters, we’ve been sold a bag of lies. We’ve all bought into this false-attitude towards life. We look in the mirror and see all that we’re not. But when God looks at us, He sees all that we are and all that we could be. And that love should drive us to our knees, in submission and humility. God desperately-wants us to love Him back and to trust Him. Just as a child categorically-trusts his or her parents, we too are called to trust our God with all of our heart, knowing that He has wonderful plans for us (see Jeremiah 29:11).

So, what am I saying here? I’m saying that prayer is an amazing thing. It can (and does) change the world. Talk to God. Tell Him all of your problems. Be naked (spiritually and emotionally…not physically) before Him. He already knows all of what you know—indeed, He knows much, much more. I promise that if you are real with Him—good or bad—He will be closer to you than ever before. And that, my brothers and sisters, is worth more than anything in this life.

Oh…and I also want to ask you to drive carefully. You don’t need to drive fast in order to evaluate your spiritual life. It just took a whack on the head (and a blow to the wallet) for me to realize this. Think of your reading this Randumb Thought as your whack in the head. Amen.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." Matthew 5:9

It's a little before 2 a.m. I am sitting on my couch with my roommate Dennis, watching t.v., when a preview for a movie called "Elephant" comes on the screen. It appears to be about a school shooting, and we are both interested enough to stay up to watch it.

An hour and 11 minutes later, I am left speechless. The first 50 minutes of the movie were tedious, slow-paced and methodical. But the rip-roaring final 20 minutes were as gruesome, maniacal and ruthless as I can ever imagine. The pure, unalterated hatred that was pouring from the screen left the viewed with this feeling of numbness, as if what was transpiring was an isolated, distant event that could never happen in real life, much less in a town like his or her own.

But that's exactly what the people in towns like Littletown, Colorado thought until that fateful fall day at Columbine High School.

I remember being in middle school when the school shootings at Columbine occured. I don't, however, recollect any immediate effects on my life. But, in retrospect, I can see the world change in response to these heinous actions by these heinous teens.

But the question I asked myself when all of this happened, the question I asked myself while watching the events unfold in the movie, and the question I am asking myself at this time is this: "How did it get this far?" What happened in the lives of these teenagers--indeed, in the lives of anybody who cold-bloodedly murders another person-- to cause them to react in such an evil way? Was it a dysfunctional family life? Were they picked on by their peers? Was there something biologically-wrong with them? Was it a combination of these factors, or something I didn't even think of?

I grew up in a loving house, but I did endure a 3 to 4 year period of intense familial tension that took a major toll on me personally, spiritually and physically. During this time, I began to notice that I had a real problem with repressing my anger for a period of time, only to release it on a helpless-person who happened to annoy me on a given day. And, when I was a young boy, I was picked on for being small and docile, but that ended as soon as I hit my growth-spurt and was big enough to make people second-guess whether they wanted to test me. So, of the aforementioned-factors I can identify, I've had some experience with each of them. Yet, I cannot imagine myself being in a position where I truly thought of picking up a gun, loading it up ammo, entering into my school or workplace, and picking-off people around me. It just simply does not register for me.

I do know one thing: something has to change, be it our culture, our gun-control laws, the way we deal with children who display anger tendencies, or just the way we look at teenagers in general. The violence that our culture venerates is sad and begets more and more violence. A person can flip on the television, and see images of brutality and decadence scroll by without the slightest remorse or revultion. The demented, desensitized way that the characters in this movie went about their killings disturbed me. It was as if they were merely playing a video game.

And maybe that is the problem. Maybe our "reality"-obsessed culture has become desensitized to the horrors of "real" life. Maybe, with games like "Grand Theft Auto," "James Bond," and an endless-string of war-themed games, our minds have become so dulled and dilluted with images of horrifying violence and malice that the sight of a human being killing another human being is common place and barely noteworthy.

You may be thinking, "Well, is this supposed to be a political rant? A spiritual reflection? A personal testimony? Or just the ramblings of a 19-year old at 3:35 in the morning?" And I don't the answer. But what I can say is this: we need a rival of morality. We need to get back to the days when violence against humanity--whether it was against a "fetus" or a "person"-- was viewed as immoral and unacceptable. We need to get back to the days when the wishy-washy, noncommital rhetoric of a bunch of talking heads was viewed as just that: unimportant words by unimportant people. I think the biggest injustice in the last 5-10 years was the development of the attitude that we cannot impose our idea of right and wrong on others. Well pardon my bluntness, but to hell with that! That is what the essense of democracy is: voting on what you feel is right. If we cannot stand up and speak our mind and our beliefs, than we've lost sight of what our country was built on. And if we can't strive to make our town, our state, our country, our world a better, safer, more moral place, than we're left with only one option: we can sit back, turn on the news, and watch as a generation of disenfranchised-youth mow each other down with AK-47s, shotguns and glocks.