Planting Faith like Acorns

Dear Theophilous,

Some where during my French literature studies (either in high school or university), I was introduced to the short story L’homme qui plantait des arbres (The Man Who Planted Trees) by Jean Giono. For whatever reason, this story has stuck with me over the years, while so many others seem to have come and gone through my memory.

The story is of a young man who finds himself in the company of an old shepherd in an isolated corner of the southern French Alps. Suffering from years of drought, the local industry has dried up and the village has been deserted save for this one lonely figure and his flock. As he tends his sheep each day on the barren hillside, the shepherd plants a few acorns – only so many as he can carry in his pocket. Over the decades the acorns grow into saplings, and the saplings into a forest that brings life back to this hidden valley. As creation reclaims the barren wilderness, so too people return to the village, bringing life and laughter back to where there was once only the mournful whistling of the wind through the ruins.

This beautiful tale of life reclaiming death has followed me throughout the years. Recently, however, I have found my perspective of the story changing. Where I once identified with the young man hiking in the mountains; more and more I see myself as the old shepherd and this tale as an allegory for evangelization.

It’s no secret that those of us living in North America seem to be living in a desolate landscape when it comes to love of God. St. John Paul the Great even went so far as to describe western culture as a Culture of Death. Many who decry the world we live in would like to change it overnight – instantaneously creating a Culture of Life out of this Culture of Death by waving some magic wand. What we need, however, is the wisdom of the man who planted trees.

To bring life back to his hidden valley, the old shepherd did not bring in a a forest of mature trees to be planted. Nor did he pay the moving expenses for the 10,000 people to be relocated back to the village. Instead he planted a pocketful of acorns, day in and day out. The old shepherd knew he could not bring life back tot eh valley tomorrow, but he did have the foresight to know that if he slowly changed the landscape back from its barrenness, life would return on its own.

I am finding more often that I need to take this approach with my evangelization efforts. There is no way that on my own I can re-orient the world towards God overnight, but I can plant the seeds that will bring the Culture of Life back to this barren wilderness. Each day I search to plant one acorn in the soul of one person that I come into contact with. Over time, I pray, I hope this acorn of hope will grow over the decades into a mighty tree of faith. If even half of the acorns planted grow to maturity, a great forest of faith will begin to cover the landscape.

As this forest of faith grows and offers shady protection, life will eventually come back to the barren world we live in now.

The Sabbath Made for Us



Dear Theophilus,

I have always dreamt of taking a sabbatical. Of the places I would go, the books I would read, all of the writing I could do… Unfortunately, silly things such as the mortgage, car payments, and groceries always seem to get in the way. But all of these responsibilities have not gotten in the way of my family taking mini-sabbaticals in the form of a yearly holiday, and even weekly when we celebrate the Sabbath.

I find it funny how the world rejoices in taking time off for a sabbatical, yet rarely takes time off to rejoice in the Sabbath (the very root of sabbatical).

Sometimes I think we forget that God created the Sabbath for humanity, so that we could take a break and revel in all that He had created. In fact, the Sabbath was the very first full day that humanity enjoyed in all Creation – God created humanity at the end of the 6^th day (and saw that it was very good (cf. Gen 1:27-31) before …

And on the seventh day God finished the work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all the work He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that He had done in Creation. (Gen. 2:2-3)

I know Genesis states that God rested, not humanity, but remember that Christ calls us to be just like the Father: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt 5:48) And since God rested on the Sabbath, then we too should rest on the Sabbath – but how often does that happen in our digitally connected world?

There are times when we are forced to take a break from it all. It could be that our bodies begin to shut down through illness. There are times when we simply can’t keep our eyes open because we’re exhausted. Sometimes we just find ourselves somewhere where we can’t stay connected and the world has to wait until we return (although, to our humbling, it seldom does).

This was the case my family found itself in when we spent a week at a cottage at the beginning of August. My wife and I are blessed in that we are both teachers and enjoy an abundance of down time through the summer (there are moments between September and June when we don’t see this as much of a blessing, but we knew that before we even started our careers), but even with all that down time, we find we are increasingly busy through the summer months catching up on everything we put off during the school year, along with new jobs that always seem to come along. We find that we’re just as attached to the internet (via computer, phone and tablet) through the summer as we are during the school year, and now that our son has hit his pre-teen years, he seems to be as connected, if not more, than we are.

So a week at the cottage with no WiFi was a blessing of a forced sabbatical.

We still had our phones to keep in touch with family, but not being able to check e-mail, Facebook and Twitter took a few days to get used to. Being able to see the number of interactions without being able to follow-up on them had me twitching the first day or two, but then I learned to ignore them and revel more in the beauty of God’s Creation spread out before me.

Instead of staring blankly into my phone’s tiny screen, here are a few of the things during that week that was set apart (made holy):

·         Read Scripture and sip coffee beside a lake so calm it was mirror-like;

·         Pray and meditate deeply on the Rosary with my son;

·         Have Wildlife-Wednesday where I came to within 10 feet of loons, turtles, a crane, snakes, frogs, chipmunks, squirrels, geese, fish, and a lake otter;

·         Canoe and chat with my son for over an hour each day;

·         Paddle-boat with my wife;

·         Have water-noodle fights with my son;

·         Fish off the end of the dock;

·         Read in a mission church the size of my classroom.

By no means is this list definitive, it’s just the tip of the iceberg, but I found as the week went on that my pulse slowed, my shoulders relaxed and I enjoyed the leisurely pace of our mini-sabbatical. Gone were the worries of meeting deadlines, getting to appointments and the frustration of once again being invited to play an internet game.

This mini-sabbatical gave me a deeper appreciation of what the Sabbath really is: holy time, hallowed time, time set a part to truly appreciate what God has created and to thank Him for the countless blessings in my life.

Grasping the Meaning of "Catholic"



Dear Theophilus,

When most people think of defining the word Catholic, they probably think of it as the building on the corner where some of them go each Sunday, or at least at Easter and Christmas. Others will immediately think of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy, starting with its visible head, the Pope, and working their way down through the clergy of cardinals, bishops and priests. My experience has been that these same people usually equate Catholicism with a set of rules and regulations that hamper their individualism. It’s this thinking as individuals that keeps them from understanding the true meaning of Catholic.

Those who have taken the time to study the question a little further will tell you that the definition of catholic is “universal”. This comes from its etymological root in Greek of katholikos, coming from the phrase kath’holou (on the whole or in general) from the two words kata (about) and holos (the whole). In other words, catholic means to embrace the whole or something that is universal.

When I first began to grasp this concept of Catholicism as being universal, my human arrogance saw it as meaning that the Catholic Church (and more completely, Christianity) is for every person on the earth – universal. I say this was human arrogance because I perceived the Catholicism as being something human as opposed to divine. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Catholicism is universal in that it encompasses all of Creation. When we look at sacred scripture, the Bible begins with the story of Creation:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)

and then the Bible ends with a prophecy of Creation’s fulfillment in the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:9 – 22:5) telling us that Creation will be perfected since

Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. But the throne of God and of the Lam will be in it, and his servants will worship him. (Rev 22:3)

Since God’s plan is about all of Creation, it is universal or Catholic. We only need to look at the world around us to be overwhelmed by its immensity.

It is very scary and humbling, then, to realize that we are but a tiny speck in the immenseness of this Catholic Creation. This brings me back to my comment of human arrogance in thinking that we are central to God’s Creation. According to Genesis, mankind wasn’t created until the sixth day – the last of all of God’s Creation. Although God did give us dominion over His Creation, we need to remember that it is His and that we are only a small part of His universe. Understanding this we need to ask ourselves two very important questions: Where do I fit into God’s universal or catholic plan? and How can I understand God’s will for myself in such a large project as all Creation?

According to Fr. Robert Barron, we can’t – our minds simply cannot comprehend the vastness of God’s plan for Creation. In his Word on Fire lecture series, Fr. Barron used a few different parallels to try to explain our role in creation and our inability to understand the bigger or catholic picture.



Fr. Barron spoke of Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. When you look at it up close, you can only perceive a few dots and a smudge of colour. Stepping back you might begin to see how these dots and smudges can for shapes. It’s only when you look at the entire work from across the room that the artist’s complete vision can be understood. Since we are but a dot or a smudge on the canvas of God’s Creation, it is impossible for us to understand His entire vision for His universal creation.

Fr. Barron also spoke of the soldiers involved in the D-Day landings in Normandy. General Eisenhower, the man in charge of the operation, could see the broad scope of the battle plan – the purpose of each small skirmish to the whole that had to be fought to ensure victory. A sergeant leading his platoon only needed to be concerned about achieving his objective – taking the crest of a small hill or securing a bridge. If he had tried to comprehend the entire battle plan, it would have only muddled his understanding of his immediate situation, lessening his chance for success and thus endangering the larger victory.

It is our job as good Catholics to marvel at the immensity of God’s Creation, accept in awe that Catholicism encompasses the universal creation and to obediently understand our role in God’s plan, leaving the design to our Lord and Master.