{"id":151,"date":"2010-11-02T21:40:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T21:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2010\/11\/an-in-between-post\/"},"modified":"2010-11-02T21:40:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-02T21:40:00","slug":"an-in-between-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2010\/11\/an-in-between-post.html","title":{"rendered":"An In-Between Post."},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: inherit\">I apologize in advance for this in-between post. My thoughts are a little vague.<\/span> <br><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Lucida Grande';font-size: small\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 11px\"><br><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EfyIKTYECeA?fs=1\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=EfyIKTYECeA?fs=1<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: x-large\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace\">\u201cMaybe I don\u2019t have to be good but I can try to be at least a little better than I\u2019ve been so far.\u201d<\/span><\/span> Call me a southern kid, but these Avett Brothers resonate with me as much as any Church Father. And besides, I have the sneaking suspicion that they are Catholic, with lyrics involving \u201cMother Mary\u201d and a focus on being fallen.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: left\">But that line I pointed out really sums up my thoughts today. God doesn\u2019t expect us to be perfect. He is saddened by our sins, to be sure, but he\u2019s not exactly jumping out of a celestial throne in shock, yelling \u201cWhat? Marc screwed up again?\u201d He gets it. He gets us. When God looks at us it is a look of love, not of expectation. Think about that for a second. In those rare moments when we are really gazing at someone we love, be it our Lover in the Eucharist or our spouse, our child or mother; our faces are not those of expectation. They are those of wonder and love. Granted we might be longing for those we gaze at, but we do not desire their immediate change, we do not gaze at them in the hope of what they might become. If we do, we objectify.\n<p>God wants us to be better every day. God wants us to give our best, knowing full well we will fail. So don\u2019t wreck yourself thinking that He\u2019s just sitting and waiting for you to be a good person. He\u2019s not, He\u2019s fully in love with you; all He asks is that you \u201cdo your best.\u201d Which consequently, is why I believe you have to be dead to be canonized a saint. See, if it was just about being a good Catholic then the Church would canonize the good Catholics as saints where ever they found them, give them a cupcake, and that\u2019d be it. As it stands, we\u2019re all just bad Catholics trying our best, so we sure as hell better be dead before some one tells us we did a good job. Because its not about doing a good job, its about fighting the good fight, and a fight implies work, not perfection, and a real fight means you\u2019re dead at the end.<\/p>\n<p>So fight for perfection, but don\u2019t freak out when you don\u2019t achieve it. God loves you. End of story.<\/p>\n<p>That Avett Brothers song wasn\u2019t the best quality. I do believe I shall do them justice now.\u2019<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XybDZ9I9k4k?fs=1\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=XybDZ9I9k4k?fs=1<\/a><\/div>\n<p><\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/3060433030054060305-7289470095194976545?l=badcatholicblog.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I apologize in advance for this in-between post. My thoughts are a little vague. \u201cMaybe I don\u2019t have to be good but I can try to be at least a little better than I\u2019ve been so far.\u201d Call me a southern kid, but these Avett Brothers resonate with me as much as any Church Father. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>An In-Between Post.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I apologize in advance for this in-between post. My thoughts are a little vague. &quot;Maybe I don&#039;t have to be good but I can try to be at least a little\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2010\/11\/an-in-between-post.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An In-Between Post.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I apologize in advance for this in-between post. 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