Why I Started this Substack

Musings

2-13-23

A little more than a year ago I started writing this substack, which I call The Narrow Path, as a reference to Jesus’ teaching:

† Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it! † (Matt 7:13-14)

Why?

I guess it came down to three things, which I list in my profile: Life, the world and God. I wanted to start making sense of all three things, or at least talk about them, even if only to myself.

Life

At the end of November 2021, I came down with a bad cold (I don't know if it was covid as all my colds are bad and it didn't really matter). During that time my last workplace was harassing me to take the bioweapon covid shots, even though I was a remote employee for more than a year and never even left my home. The harassment was so intense that my health declined from the stress, leading to that bad cold, which would not go away. It was also at that time that my workplace was saying I could submit a religious exemption to escape the bioweapon shots. I hemmed and hawed about doing that as something in my soul said NO. I just could not use God to prop up an immoral and murderous system. So I didn't. I quit. I walked away from it all.

The salary was gone, the health insurance was gone, the retirement account was gone, the idea of me as a contributing employee to society was gone. I also knew that because I am old (56), I would never be hired again. I threw my life away. For what?

Or did I? What is life supposed to be?

Even before the covid me-too freakout, my life just seemed to be getting worse. Nothing ever worked out. Seventeen year marriage down the tubes. Useless college degrees that never translated into a “career.” Family medical issues that never improved. I tried to do everything right and it ended up wrong. By the time covid came around and the world disintegrated, I had already had a 40-year start.

So what is “life"? What are we supposed to be doing and how? Many of my substack posts deal with these questions and what we humans consider “life.” The conclusion I am coming to is that everyone’s life is different. One size does not fit all, and comparing ourselves to other people’s “lives” will just lead to envy, jealousy and depression. In addition, St. Robert Bellarmine below states it succinctly - our lives here are to glorify God, our creator, and to live them in accordance with His will to obtain everlasting life in Heaven.

The World

Planet Earth is perfect. The Universe is perfect. The World is perfect. God created it all and thus everything works in harmony as it should. What is not perfect is us. We took the perfect world and through our misplaced ego and pride generated by our free will, fell into darkness and sin. That is the only world we now know.

St. John Chrysostom notes: “That is why our Savior does not talk about “the world” but about “the cares of the world”, not of “riches” but of “the lure of riches”. So don't let us blame the things themselves but the perversion of our consciences.…”¹

We define “the world” now as “the cares of the world.” The world is now our creation and it’s not so good. The world is everything external to us, that we created. Governments, wars, politics, pandemics, famines, schools, pornography, money, drugs, hospitals, computers, social media, television, automobiles, workplaces, yes even churches, these are the cares of the world, which translated to us - IS THE WORLD.

Many of my substack posts talk about these cares of the world. Most of the time I look at the world as lost, and hopeless. I try to make fun of the world in our animations/cartoons because to take it seriously would make me lose my mind. I can’t reconcile the cares of the world as the perfect world God created. There is a disconnect and so like most humans I choose the illusions of the world we created, because to try to obtain the perfect world God created is too difficult.

God

Finally there is God.

I mainly started this substack to talk to God. No matter what topic I write about, God is the audience. I know He listens, but I don’t really know what He thinks about my posts. I keep writing anyway because He created us, loves us and listens to EVERYTHING we say.

My journey with God has been quite circular. I grew up Catholic, and went to Church every Sunday. We did all the Catholic things - Lent, Advent, baptisms, communions, confirmations, confessions, etc. While my mom was the traditional Irish Catholic, my dad was not Catholic but went to Church with us every week nonetheless. His steadfastness of attending Church when he didn’t need to has left an imprint on me ever since. He was baptized/confirmed a Catholic on his deathbed. I hope to see him again if I get to Heaven.

In the 1980’s I fell away from the Church and God. The cares of the world took over as they usually do in young people. I eventually married secularly, which ended up a disaster, and I kind of knew it from the get-go but continued on as I was basically an atheist at that point. By the time my marriage was falling apart in the 2010’s God was poking at me. He showed me His power by immediately taking away my life-long depression when I cried out to Him one day. I will never forget that day, it was a Wednesday, in my mother’s house in the morning. Poof! The dark cloud was gone and never returned. All those years of anti-depressants, stupid therapy and misery did nothing. One silent prayer cured me.

Still I continued on with the cares of the world occupying my life, as God continued to poke me. Then everything fell apart. I fell into the Dark Night of the Soul. From about 2014 to 2017 everything in my life was a disaster. I saw no light at all. This was not my previous depression, this was utter loneliness and abject darkness of my soul. This was my ego being squashed and obliterated. The hurt was so deep because as my ego disappeared there was only emptiness in its place. I thought I would be an empty husk forever until one day when I was trimming a rosebush and God asked me clear as day † “Do you believe?” † Immediately I answered “yes I do” and the Dark Night ended.

Even though I thought God had come back in my life, He told me † “I was always there.” † I cried that day and felt ashamed in how I had ignored God for decades. From that point I returned to the Catholic Church and the real presence of Jesus in the Mass. When the covid-me-too freakout closed all the Churches, God guided me to the Latin Mass and my current Parish where I now feel at home. Although I go to Church by myself each Sunday I feel like I am picking up where my father left off, attending Mass even though I don’t have to. He wanted to be there and so do I.

That is my history with God and Jesus. Our lives and the world are NOTHING without God. The Way, the Truth and the Life should permeate our entire being and lives. But our egos and pride get in the way most of the time. There is a God, He created us and wants us to live with Him forever if we just follow Jesus' teachings. The problem is as St, Gregory the Great once said: "the more we advance towards perfection, the more we have to endure trials. Once our soul has abandoned the love of the present world, the hostility of this world increases.”² Nobody wants to live a hard life in a hostile world. It's so much easier to say God doesn't exist, we go poof at death, and then live the way we want to.

Or is it?

So now you know why I write this substack, and my musings on life, the world and God will continue until God calls me home.

1. Saint John Chrysostom (c.345-407)
Priest at Antioch then Bishop of Constantinople, Doctor of the Church
Sermon no. 44 on St Matthew's Gospel ; PG 57, 467

2. Saint Gregory the Great (c.540-604)
Pope, Doctor of the Church
Homilies on the Gospel, 1,15