Focus Simplifies

Hi friends,

This is the second reflection I’m sharing after our time in Rome at St. Carlo and St. Pier Giorgio’s canonizations last month. If you missed the first reflection on pride, happiness & St. Carlo, take a look at it here.

God bless you and those entrusted to you,

Caitlan

Because of the ways many of us live and the technology we use, I think sometimes our brains can feel like pinball machines.

The pinball in my mind can shoot around from emails or texts pinging in to children needing things to to-do lists being made and forgotten to an idea for an article or children’s book that I need to scribble down somewhere.

And when my mind looks like that, I start putting milk in the pantry or throwing away dish cloths.

About one month ago, my brain did feel like it was occupied by the dinging and thwacking and flashing lights of this arcade game. After months of writing and producing The Restless Grain and then starting to launch it, overlapped with homeschooling and the daily tending to my children and family, layered with trying to care well for our home, I felt spent.

Do you also know how this feels?

When my husband, our two eldest and I got on a plane to Rome for St. Carlo Acutis and St. Pier Giorgio Frassati’s canonizations, I turned off my phone—for a week.

My husband had his phone for work and for us to talk with my parents and our two youngest children at home, and I didn’t see any sense in paying an extra daily charge for international use.

I am so grateful as I look back at this decision, and I think St. Carlo (a Saint known for modeling a healthy use of technology) must have participated in giving me a heavenly nudge to unplug.

Though Rome is a noisy city, after a couple of days without my phone on and being present to my kids and our pilgrimage, I could feel my mind clear. We visited historic sites, walked through Holy Doors, went to Mass and Adoration. We saw and touched and tasted things that grounded me in something so much bigger than myself.

On our final day in Rome, we went to St. Carlo and St. Pier Giorgio’s canonization Mass. After Mass, we gathered for drinks with a few new friends and someone asked, “How have you been impacted by St. Carlo?”

I shared what I originally loved about St. Carlo and what I needed to be reminded of on that trip: St. Carlo helps us know and tap into the reality that when Christ becomes our focus, life becomes simpler. Commitment to Christ simplifies, rather than complicates our lives.

Jesus is not an add on or a burden. The living Christ brings order to the chaos (sometimes self-made) that can exist in our lives.

St. Carlo went to Mass every day after receiving his first Holy Communion at age five. His parents weren’t even practicing Catholics at that point—he asked his nanny to bring him before school.

As he got older he articulated that we make appointments for all sorts of other things in our lives: meetings, sports or music practice, dates with friends. For him, daily Mass was simply a daily appointment with Jesus.

Does making Jesus our focus mean we let go of other things? Yes, and thanks be to God.

When we know what it most important, we can identify things that consume our time and energy that are not as important. As the saying goes, “If everything is important, nothing is.”

St. Carlo still went to school, played soccer, and hung out with friends. He still went on vacation with his family, played Nintendo, and created a website dedicated to Eucharistic miracles. He lived a life that most would agree was fulfilling in many ways. And he did so with joy, hope, and faithfulness because he was unabashedly, unwaveringly focused on Christ. He allowed Jesus to direct and guide him in all.

As I trade gelato and basilicas for kneading sourdough and teaching math, I will ask for St. Carlo’s prayers in this—St. Carlo, pray for me that I can keep my eyes focused on Jesus like you did. When the noise comes, help me to listen for Jesus’ voice first. And, please, help me not put milk in my pantry.

Pick up a copy of new children’s picture book, The Restless Grain: A Tale of Hope