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My mother once related a story to me about my older brother, who was preparing to propose to his girlfriend (now his wife). He had just a lingering bit of hesitancy because he “wasn’t sure if he was ready to give up the single life.” This seemed ridiculous to my mom, since she knew my brother wasn’t going around clubbing or having a wild time, but I understood immediately what he meant.

Last week we spoke about the role children play in our journey of discipleship and our growth in self-giving love—at least, for those with a vocation to marriage. In our individualistic culture, which values autonomy over almost everything else, it’s a hard sell to get someone to commit to loving one other person unconditionally and sacrificially, but being “in love” with that person can serve as a motivating factor.

I’ve been speaking about the vocation of marriage over the last couple weeks, and in particular I’ve highlighted how each vocation of marriage is actually a vocation of being married to a specific person.

It’s impossible to discuss the nature of Christian vocation without talking about marriage, by far the most common vocation to which Christians are called. Before talking about self-giving love in marriage, however, I feel obligated to make various caveats:

Last week I highlighted that Christian discipleship is always borne through our acts of love to those around us. I made it clear that our vocation should never be seen as a way to escape our literal neighbors, the people who are close to us.

Before we get into the fruits of discipleship, I want to quickly identify the beneficiaries of those fruits. We model our lives on Jesus so that we can better love other people. But while we all called to love all people, we are not called to love everyone in a generic sort of way. The love of Jesus is expressed directly, personally, and tangibly.

“No one who earnestly seeks being a disciple of Jesus stays the same.” I wrote that last week, but how are we changed? What is discipleship meant to make us become?

As we discuss what aids us in our growth as Christian disciples, we must talk about the sacraments. We must talk about them because to be a disciple is to live as Christ commanded, and Christ has commanded us to be baptized and to partake of his Body and Blood.

The saints guide us through their writings and their example. However, except under the very rare circumstance of an apparition, we don’t have the benefit of direct guidance from them, so we have to take what they said and apply it to our own lives.

Reading the Bible is the most direct way to receive the teaching of Jesus. But in Christian discipleship we can be mentored not just by the Master, but also by other more experienced disciples.

Last week I claimed that having a personal relationship was a necessary part of discipleship, since being a true disciple involves a living connection with and constant feedback from a teacher.

For my next series of blog and Flocknote reflections, I have decided to write “Letters from the Park” (Bethel Park, that is). I hope to share my pastoral year experiences as we recall that now-Deacon Dan Kushner completed his pastoral year in Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish.

Discipleship is a word that doesn’t really have an analogue in our current culture. We might talk about scholars being disciples of some prior figure in their field, but this just means that their teaching is in line with-and further develops the teaching-of their predecessor.

So, we’ve just completed a tour of the deadly sins and how they manifest in our modern lives. And I want to tie us back now to why we started talking about sin in the first place: Sin keeps us from having a healthy relationship with God.

Well, everyone knew we’d cap off this series with the sin of pride, and it’s important to distinguish between pride from vainglory, which we discussed last week. Vainglory is focused on making other people think we’re great: It leads us to really, really care about what other people think of us. Pride is being certain that we are great, and that we don’t need any help or correction in how we live our life.

If the family is a privileged place of prayer, what keeps so many families from praying together more often? Our busyness surely has something to do with it: Sports practice, service requirements, and so many other things lay claim to our lives, and thus keep us from letting God lay His claim upon us.

Our discussion of the Mass last week reminds us that prayer is not just a private event. Private prayer is important, of course. Jesus even warns us not to use public prayer as a means of self-promotion, showing how “holy” we are (see Matthew 6:5– 6). But public and group prayer is important and valuable. It is important because Jesus encourages us to gather together to pray (see Matthew 18:20).

If being in the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is a privileged place of prayer, the greatest act of prayer we can take is participating in the Mass. In the Mass, we are not only invited to be in the presence of Jesus, but to come before him, to unite ourselves with his sacrifice re-presented on the altar, and finally to receive him not just spiritually but physically in the consecrated elements.

So far, our discussion of prayer has focused primarily on content: What should we say or think about? But, as I mentioned before, the location we pick for prayer matters too.