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A little over a year ago Fr. Joseph Huneycutt and I met in person for the first time and after spending a weekend together decided to collaborate on a book about "perpetual repentance", what to do when we've been a dog and eaten our own vomit after "tasting the heavenly gift". We submitted our manuscript along with my illustrations and it was accepted. A couple days ago we received an email from Conciliar Press that it is now available HERE
AN EXCERPT:
Sinning is like dating our exes.
Temptation is my “Little Black Book”. It is a list of the phone numbers (OK… and email addresses and Facebook profiles) of old friends or lovers that I broke up with long ago but still hold a soft place in my heart. They are people I chose once and then chose to give up and throw out of my life. I know I ditched them for a reason; they were bad for me in some way. The problem is, I don’t know why I still hang on to their number and call them up when I need what they once gave me that I once enjoyed.
St. Peter, quoting the Proverbs, says going back to my old “friends” is like a dog that returns to its vomit. (2 Peter 2:22) That is probably one of the most unappetizing images in scripture. But it is exactly what I do when I go back and eat what I spit out and threw up in my “conversion”.
So, I despise self-promotion, but I also have a blog, podcasts and a FB account, and have written a couple of books, so I can't fake not enjoying some sense of notoriety. The royalties on this will buy me a couple of nice dinners out with my wife so it's not about the money. I sincerely hope it points some people toward the mercy of God shining, even dimly, in their darkest place.
11 comments:
Congratulations!!
Posted on facebook!
Congratulations!
Thank you, Susan! I've been out of the blog loop for a while... but may your new book also be blessed! https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/theology-body-extended-spiritual/id884186070?mt=11
Thanks, Steve!
congrats Steve... what a satisfying accomplishment. Just posted it on FB too.
I've come to the conclusion that we don't actually "fall back into sin" as the saying goes. We go get that sin we kicked out yesterday, last week, last year and bring it back. We need what comfort we can get out of it even if it's nothing more than a cheap thrill. Fr. Tom Hopko was right: if you say "no" to a sin you have to find something positive to say "yes" to to take its place. That "something" of course is Christ.
Going back to the old sin for the old comfort and consolation it provided (along with the attendant problems)results in what an old psychologist friend of mine used to call "being comfortably miserable". We know it's crappy but we have grown used to what comfort we can get out of it. Believing we should turn to Christ for that consolation is one thing. Committing to that path requires faith. That's really the hard part of Christian living. We believe the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence but we can't see it. We don't like putting all our faith into something we can't see.
William, "comfortably miserable" indeed! No matter how you cut it, sin is easy compared to the effort it takes to be holy. If we spent the effort we have to expend cleaning up our messes and put that toward virtue... well, big "IF" that usually doesn't occur to us until we're deep into our consequences. Ugh.
Early on in my new-found faith I was visiting with my spiritual father. I mentioned that I was troubled by the lack of sincerity in my prayer life. You don't want sincere prayer, you fervent prayer he responded. What is fervent prayer I asked. Imagine you are in the cabin of a jet liner flying at 30K feet and all 4 engines fail at once. As the jet is careening towards earth and death seems a certainty, what you will hear in that cabin is fervent prayer. I allowed as how I didn't quite see my circumstances as quite so severe; I wasn't on an out of control airliner. Yes you are he said. As your spiritual father I pray that you will come to see the danger you are in. And I ask you to pray for me that I may see the danger I am in. If God opens our eyes he will also open our hearts. Then we will be able to fervently pray not only for ourselves but for everybody because now we truly care about them. We will be less inclined to judge them because we are in the midst of confronting our own sinful natures. Having come to see how easily we were led astray and how slippery the slope is, we will be more inclined to cutting them some slack. That is the first step in learning to forgive.
This is good news! Congratulations!
Any plans to release on Kindle?
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