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It is my usual rule to avoid political discussions on my blog, because I feel that they distract from my true purpose, which is to present the Catholic faith in a way that moves people’s hearts. However, I am unable to let the election Tuesday of Barack Obama as President go unmentioned. Here is what I think.

I spent the day after the election in prayer, reflecting on Tuesday’s events, and then I watched the evening news. I am very happy for African Americans. The election was a great day for them and I am glad that they are my compatriots who now can feel fully a part of this country. They have been waiting a long time, and great injustices have finally been righted. I believe that this is even the hand of God at work.

I don’t know yet if I can call Mr. Obama my president. I call Mr. Bush my president, even when I disagree with him. But Obama is different, and it’s because of abortion. If he remains as radical as he has so far appeared to be, I think I will remain angry. If, however, he truly does seek to fulfill his promise to be one who unites, maybe he will decide not to be as radical as I fear. I don’t know.

He needs the grace of God in order to see the humanity of the unborn. Let us bless God in a spirit of patriotism for our homeland. We should pray for Barack Obama, because our nation needs him to be a leader who protects the weak, and because he is a fellow Christian whose soul may be at stake. We should take nothing for granted—that he is, for instance, a hopeless radical; because the demands of his office may bring out a side of him that we have not seen yet.

Popes, presidents, and kings have been changed by the office that God has bestowed upon them. I believe that Mr. Obama has a good heart, and great sincerity; I think it is quite possible that something we have not seen before may emerge once Obama shoulders his responsibilities. That is what I will pray for. Please help me pray for Barack Obama, and for our beloved country. And may God bless America.

The Mass is a form of liturgy within the Church. Many people use the terms “Mass” and “liturgy” interchangeably, but they aren’t really the same thing. A liturgy is any public act of worship; the Mass refers specifically to the re-presentation of Jesus’ sacrifice on Calvary. While the Mass is the Church’s most important liturgy, Christ works through all liturgies, including the Liturgy of the Hours (prayed in monasteries and by priests), and the liturgies of the different sacraments.

The Mass is the prayer of the whole Church, and as such it is the same the world over, everywhere the Roman Rite is celebrated (there are other rites, such as the Eastern Catholic rites, but the Roman rite is by far the largest in the Catholic Church). The Mass most commonly prayed today is the Rite of Paul VI, named after the pope who approved it, although the older form of the Mass, called the Tridentine Rite, is regaining some popularity after our present pope permitted it to be celebrated more widely.

The Rite of Paul VI can be celebrated in any language, including Latin, but it is typically celebrated in the language prevalent in the parish community, which in this country is English. It’s not hard, though, to find Mass in Spanish or other languages such as Polish in places where there are communities of speakers of those languages. Whatever the language, the form remains the same, and you will recognize the Mass even if you attend one in a foreign country where English is not used.

The Mass is a sacrifice. It re-presents to us the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. This does not mean that the sacrifice happens again, every time the Mass is celebrated; it means that the participants in the Mass (the priest and all the congregation) mystically enter in to the one sacrifice that happened on Calvary two thousand years ago. In the event that is the Mass, we offer our selves, our sufferings, our hopes, our needs, and indeed everything we have to the Father to be joined to the One Sacrifice on the Cross.

In that union between God’s people on earth and the Cross, Jesus works. Our sufferings are redeemed, which means that they are changed so that good comes out of them; our prayers are heard, in a way that is particularly pleasing to the Father because the priest offers them “in the person” of Christ; and we are nourished by sacramental food, the Body and Blood of Christ which we believe have become Real for us on the altar.

Catholic teaching on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is one of the indispensable doctrines of the Church, one that we must believe if we want to be Catholic. A person’s faith in the Real Presence can grow slowly, as mine did; or it can happen all at once. However it happens, the Catholic comes to believe that it is God who is feeding us through the hands and words of the priest; he is feeding us real food, food that we need in order to become holy in our daily lives. It is a food with many wonderful dimensions: it strengthens us, it nourishes us, it helps us to fall in love with God, it forgives our small failings and faults. Most Catholics that I know agree that it would be impossible to make it through the week without it. And many people are drawn to the Church precisely because they want the Eucharist. Whatever your level of interest, don’t be afraid to look at the doctrine of the Real Presence and ask, “Could it be so?”

Have you noticed that as a product evolves in the marketplace, the manufacturer pays more and more attention to aesthetics? Cell phones are a good example. Back in the 1980’s, when cellular technology was brand new, cell phones were large, heavy, bricklike objects that lacked a certain “form factor,” to say the least. Today cell phones are elegant, have color screens, and are programmable with custom wallpapers and ring tones. The aesthetics don’t add to the functionality; instead, they make the phone more pleasurable to use. The pleasure is an added benefit that is hard to quantify — how many dollars does custom wallpaper add to the value of a cell phone? — but it’s something that people obviously want, because the new phones fly off the shelves as people upgrade their old ones.

Our hearts long for beauty, and we should pay attention to this longing. I’m not saying that everyone who reads this should run out and upgrade his cell phone; rather, realize that the longing is there for a reason. It’s there because God put it there. It’s the sound of God’s call; it’s our sense that something is lacking in this life, that there’s something incomplete about our lives in this world. It is our transcendent natures that speak to us in this longing, that part of us that is too big for this world, that simply doesn’t fit into a material creation.

We long because we are both matter and spirit, and that spiritual part of us hungers for real food. We can’t satisfy it with cell phones, or with Nintendo Wii’s, or cars, or houses, or anything else — only the nourishment of God will satisfy. If you feel this longing, and I think everyone does (at least, everyone who listens to his own heart), there is only one thing that will satisfy, and that is God. And the easiest and most direct way to get that satisfaction is through the Holy Eucharist that God gives us through the Catholic Church. This is God become tangible to us, sacramentally present under the signs of bread and wine. The Eucharist is food that truly satisfies, at least for a few hours or days, and then we become hungry again. But the beauty of it is, that God is always available to us through the Church that Jesus founded. We eat real food today, in anticipation of the overabundant banquet that will be tomorrow, when we see our Lord face to face, after the renewal of all things, in the New Creation that our Father is preparing for those who love him.

I have my Grandmother’s old electric clock that used to hang in her kitchen on the wall of my living room. It’s a trinket, worth nothing, except for what it is worth to me. Grandma and Grandpa, now in their late 80’s, no longer live on the farm; the farmhouse and all the buildings have been leveled, and there is nothing to see there anymore. But every time I look at this clock, I feel again like I’m standing in my Grandmother’s kitchen; I can smell the baking bread, feel the warmth of the hot summer day, see the view out of her kitchen window looking to the south.

I feel sentimental about this old clock, but there’s something more than sentiment at work here too. I look back to the days of my childhood, so many of them spent on Grandma and Grandpa’s farm, but I am also looking forward. I expect to see the farm again, in a different form perhaps, but everything that is essentially true about my grandparents’ farm is imperishable. It was, it is, and it shall ever be. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

When we have spread on earth the fruits of our nature and our enterprise… according to the command of the Lord and in his Spirit, we will find them once again, cleansed this time from the stain of sin, illuminated and transfigured, when Christ presents to his Father an eternal and universal kingdom (CCC 1050).

Heaven is a place where we can expect to see again what we have left behind on Earth, only purified and perfected. This is the action of Jesus as Redeemer: no detail, no matter how small, of anything human will be left out.

Salvation and redemption hinge on the understanding that all our actions have eternal consequences, because we as beings are part imperishable spirit. Salvation is the blessed assurance that, once baptized and having lived a worthy life, we will spend eternity with God, the angels, and the saints in Heaven. Redemption, on the other hand, is the “turning around” of all our actions and drawing them to the Cross, so that they might be taken up into Heaven and transformed with Jesus as he ascended. Salvation gets us there; redemption provides the reality that we will find once we get there. When I look at Grandma’s clock, I have the hope of my salvation; and I see the clock as part of something wondrous and new in the New Creation of the redeemed.

It is as Jesus said after he multiplied the loaves and fishes in John’s Gospel: “Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost” (John 6:12). We can expect, too, that for those of us who are faithful, persevering to the end, truly not the smallest detail will be lost of our lives. We will find again everything we have left behind, only glorified, perfect, and beautiful beyond all telling. God has not forgotten the slightest bit of our suffering either, for it is as he says: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4). This is what we as Christians await: the glory of a new world, where our God will walk among us. Blessed be God forever.