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 Website: http://timburke74.blogspot.com
Profile: Tim Burke is first, and foremost, a husband and father of 5. He works as a full-time Catholic youth minister for two parishes in the Diocese of St. Petersburg and will be entering the Year of Inquiry for the Permanent Diaconate in the Fall of 2010. In addition to writing for Catholic Dads, Tim writes his own blog, called Salvation Is An Adventure.
Recent posts by Tim Burke:
I’m a Dad…with 5 children. I was thinking the other day about how ungrateful my children are for the all the things their mother and I do for them. I work very hard to put food on the table and a roof over their head. I pay entirely too much money for my son to play baseball and my daughter to take pottery classes. My kids have everything they need and some of the things that they want. Are they grateful for all I do? No. They just ask for more.
My wife, well, she works even harder than I do. She educates them (we home school). She prepares the meals, cleans the toilets, scrubs the floors, washes the clothes, makes sure the baby has a clean diaper….I could go on endlessly listing all the things that she does for our kids, and me. Do our kids even show one bit of gratitude for all that she does for them? No. They just keep asking for more.
Reflecting on this lack of gratitude brought to mind a couple of different things. First of all, am I grateful? Am I grateful for all that my wife does for me and our family? Yes. Do I show it to her? No. I tend to take all that she does for granted. More importantly, am I grateful for all that my Heavenly Father does for me? I’d like to say yes, but I’m not. My words, my actions say otherwise. I take all that God does for me for granted. I don’t take the time to thank Him for providing me with, well, EVERYTHING. God has provided me with my job, my house, my food, my very life….I could go on endlessly listing all the things He does for me. Yet, I don’t thank Him
By Tim Burke on January 22nd, 2010 | Category: Defending LifeOver the past several months, I have been planning a Respect Life Youth Rally for the youth of the Diocese of St. Petersburg. It has been a labor of love. Tonight, at the rally, as a part of the prayer service which includes Eucharistic Adoration, I will be giving a reflection. Below is that reflection the I will be giving:
Most of us here tonight are survivors. If you were born after January 22, 1973, then you are a survivor. I am a survivor. All of us born after the legalization of abortion in the United States are missing friends. We are all missing classmates. Some of you may even be missing siblings.
It is unfortunate, but we are living in a culture of death. We are living in a culture that places a higher value on polar bears and turtles than it does human life. We have elected officials that believe that it is more important to give a woman the “right to choose” than it is to protect innocent babies. We live in a culture that believes that the choice for a woman to have a baby begins after she is pregnant and not before she has sex.
For 37 years now babies have been killed. For 37 years the culture of death has been allowed to grow and permeate everything in our society. It seems as though the battle is futile—that there is so much resistance to changing the laws.
Think for a moment. How many of you think you can change the culture of death? How many of you think you can actually have an impact, that you can influence the leaders of our country to protect life from the moment of conception?
Angela talked to you tonight about how to defend a pro-life stance. She shared with you some answers
By Tim Burke on October 26th, 2009 | Category: Faith & Spirituality, Family LifeFor many years the leadership of the Catholic Church in America (and perhaps elsewhere) have been talking about the crisis in vocations to the priesthood and religious life. In the conversation to address the issue of the crisis in the priesthood, there have been many suggestions made. Stepping up the campaign to recruit good men, allowing priests to marry, and allowing women to become priests have been popular ideas floating around. While there are people that have strong arguments on both sides of the married priest and female priest debate, I’m not going to address this debate now. If you want to know my views on women priests, you can read my post on why women can’t be priests. There is one idea that I have heard that I feel needs more attention, and that is encouraging marriage.
When I first heard of the idea of promoting marriage as a way to increase celibate vocations, I didn’t understand the connection between the two. I mean, how can a marriage encourage celibacy? It just didn’t make sense to me. But I heard this idea from several sources. So I spent some time thinking about it, and it started to make sense. Marriage and holy orders are both vocations–they both are a commitment. They are both covenants: marriage a covenant between man, woman, and God and holy orders a covenant between man, the Church, and God.
Marriage is also in a crisis, like holy orders. Fewer and fewer people are choosing to get married. And for those of that do decide to marry, many of those marriages end in divorce. People are no longer making the commitment to married life. Many Catholics are no longer taking this sacrament seriously. However, people are still having children. And we have (and are continuing to) raise
My mom took my name, Timothy Daniel, from the bible. She chose my name at a time in her life where, as she tells me, she wasn’t even going to church, much less picking up a bible. But for some reason, when she was trying to decide on my name, she picked it up. It is that reason that St. Paul’s letters to Timothy have always held a special place in my heart. Every time I read them I am affected by them in some way. They seem relevant to my life. It’s been a while since I read those letters to Timothy, so I picked my bible up today and began reading Paul’s 1st Letter to Timothy. And, again, I was moved by what I read.
The passage that struck me today is from the 4th chapter of that first letter:
Avoid profane and silly myths. Train yourself for devotion, for, while physical training is of limited value, devotion is valuable in every respect, since it holds a promise of life both for the present and for the future. (1 Tim 4:7-8)
After I read that passage, I started reflecting on what devotion means and how I can train myself for it.
There are, in actuality, several ways we need to show devotion in our lives, each of them important. The first way we show devotion is in our work–our jobs and our schooling. We show this devotion by doing our jobs to the best of our abilities and making the best of all situations we encounter in our work, whether good or bad.
The second form of devotion that we need to show is with our children, if blessed to have them. We need to be a committed and devoted parents. We need to make ourselves available to them when they need us.
By Tim Burke on September 23rd, 2009 | Category: Faith & Spirituality, Family LifeI was traveling down a major road in my area during evening rush hour and I saw something that is, unfortunately, a common occurrence. There was a line of traffic at the drive through of the McDonald’s. In fact, there was so much traffic waiting for the drive through that it was spilling out onto the road. I say that this is unfortunate not because I have animosity towards McDonald’s (I love their french fries!), but because we, as Americans, don’t make time to sit down to a family meal anymore. Our lives are so over-scheduled (mine included). Between running the kids from one activity to the next, both parents working, and the long hours we have to put into our jobs, there just doesn’t seem to be time to sit down and eat together anymore.
My family is in a good situation when it comes to family meals. My wife and I chose to make the sacrifices necessary for her to stay home with our children. So, family meals are served most nights. I also have a flexible work schedule, which allows me to be home with them for most family meals. Oftentimes I have to go back to work after dinner, and am not home as much as I would like to be to support my wife and spend time with my children. But at least I can make it home to dinner most nights. Family mealtime is good for families. Families are healthier when they eat homemade meals together, and not just physically. Families are also healthier emotionally and spiritually through sharing a meal together. A sense of community and belonging comes from sharing this all too important meal together as a family.
There is also another meal that is, in my opinion, more important than family dinners. That
By Tim Burke on September 2nd, 2009 | Category: Family Life “My name is Tim and I’m a TVholic. It’s been 3 1/2 years since I last viewed TV.” (Roar of applause from the crowd.)
My wife and I made a decision for our family several years ago. We decided that we needed to give something up as a family for Lent. We talked about giving up sweets as a family, giving up snacks between meals, and giving up video games (great idea, but not everyone in the family played video games, so that one wouldn’t work). We ultimately decided to give up TV for Lent. Forty days with no television. At the time it seemed like a daunting task. Could we do it? We thought so. We would hold each other accountable and promise to not turn the television on. And we succeeded! We made it 40 days with absolutely no television. Then another question emerged as we entered Easter season. Do we turn the TV back on? We decided not to, so we canceled our cable subscription. Money was tight anyway (isn’t it always?) and we could use the few extra bucks a month it cost for more worthy causes, like food!
And so for nearly 4 years now we have been virtually TV free now. We occasionally turned the TV on to watch American Idol or a baseball game through the fuzzy reception our antennae gave us, but now with the conversion to digital we’ve gone completely dark (no digital ready TV set in my house). From time to time someone will ask me if I saw a particular news program or television show. I always answer, “No, we don’t watch TV at my house.” I get a range of reactions from looks that say “you’re nuts!” to “I could never do
By Tim Burke on August 17th, 2009 | Category: Defending Life
Can you put a price on life? Some people think you can. I heard a statistic on the radio the other day that stated that, on average, parents spend $200k raising a child from birth through age 17.
My wife and I just welcomed our fifth child into the world. While at the hospital I heard several comments from nurses, after hearing that our new baby was #5, saying that having that many children is expensive. Yes, having children is expensive. But what difference does that really make? Unfortunately for many people, it makes too much of a difference. It is easy to do this when money is our focus in life. When we place the accumulation of money and worldly comforts above God’s will for our lives, then we cannot afford children. They will be too expensive. Our world is so caught up in money and possessions that we see raising children as a liability and not as an asset.
However, life is not a balance sheet. It is not about weighing our assets and liabilities. When considering having children, the question of affordability should not be the main question we ask. It is absolutely a component, as we should not be irresponsible. Adding children to a family should be an ongoing discussion between husband, wife, and God. Prayer is probably the most important aspect of discerning having children. We need to discern what God wants for us and our family. If God does want a married couple to add children to their family, and the couple discerns that through prayer, then God will provide for that family. We have always struggled to make ends
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