One of my favorite movies of all
Time is A League of Their Own, which
is about the short lived life of women’s major league baseball. Towards the end
of the movie one of the star players quits and decides not to play the
following season. The manager (Tom Hanks) asks her
why and she tells him that it is just too hard. He responds, “It’s supposed to
be hard. If it wasn’t hard everyone
would do it. The hard is what makes it
great.” This pretty much sums up my
faith life on an almost daily basis. There
are a lot of good religions out there, but if you want a truly great one, stick
with the Catholic Church. As with all great things, however, it is hard. Christ himself warned us of that fact when he
told the Apostles, “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first.” Now things might not be so bad if the world
would hate us for doing things that were relatively easy, but as a general rule
it doesn’t. It usually hates us for the things that are hard. The things that can challenge even the most
dedicated and leave even the holiest weeping in frustration in an Adoration
chapel somewhere. Exactly what those
challenges are will vary from person to person, but I really think that most of
us have them.
For me, one of my biggest struggles
is with the fine art of Natural Family Planning (NFP). It isn’t that I question the theology behind
it, because I don’t. I understand the theology quite well; it is just hard to
put into practice. There have been many
an occasion where fertility signs have been less than crystal clear and Katie
and I have just wanted to scream in frustration. Before I got married I
remember learning about
