Practical Signs III - Humility, Freedom, Self-Compassion

All of the signs (as adapted from Eastern Wisdom for Western Minds) have an inherent tension to them. Spiritual growth comes from within--but also arises from God running to meet us. My spirituality is inseparable from my interior inviolability and free will as a human person, but its fruits are expressed and revealed through my exterior words and actions in the world.  

• Understand that spirituality is not (strictly speaking) something you do, but who you are and how you live. The fruits of spirituality are naturally expressed on how you speak and works of compassion for your neighbors and--as well as the intention and disposition behind those actions.   
• Exhibit humility in your spiritual growth, avoiding pretense and self-inflation.
• Are no longer possessed by your possessions.

Fr. Solanus Casey's Preserved Room
"A Visit with Blessed Solanus Casey"

• Experience concern and compassion, not only for other people in general, but even for people who wrong you or annoy you. You also experience a sense of responsibility and stewardship for all of God's creation, including the earth's natural resources.
• Seek to help others develop spiritually.
• Feel a growing understanding and appreciation of your entire being--body, mind, and soul--recognizing that the Holy Spirit desires to dwell within in you, that God has made you in His "image and likeness" . . . 
• Out of Infinite Love
• For love
• To be loved

Practical Signs II - Spiritual Maturity, Temperament, and Communication

 Some signs of spiritual growth (adapted from Eastern Wisdom for Western Minds) involve how we react to life's turmoil--and how we speak to the people around us. 

• More able to speak the truth in love and gentleness
• Not as upset by life's dilemmas and difficulties: You remain calm amid chaos
• You don't need to control outcomes; you can speak and act on your best impulses without being caught up in the end result

• Can look for the deeper meaning in events
• Becoming more & more compassionate, kind, accepting, and loving
• Commit to regular spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, and study

Practical Signs: Rising Spiritual Life and Growing Maturity

I started my career in quality measurement. One of the fundamental maxims of the field is to set SMART goals that help you and your team know which direction your plans, projects, and programs are really going. 

From MOBE, LLC ("Put your goals within reach")

Advancing spiritually isn't so cut and dry. People of good will experience periods of both consolation and desolation, closeness to God and separation, ecstasy and trials. The three-fold path that St. John of the Cross pioneered includes a repeating cycle with purgative, illuminative, and unitive phases.

The work of the Holy Spirit rising in your life is often accompanied by the following practical, discernable signs (adapted from Eastern Wisdom for Western Minds by Victor M. Parachin):

• Looking and asking for guidance concerning spiritual growth.
• Finding an appropriate church community
• Reading inspirational or challenging Christian books
• Learning from gifted spiritual teachers, including a regular confessor, spiritual director, trusted friend, and saints who model heroic virtue in ways that speak to your life and unique personal mission 
• Experiencing the "condition of peace and joy" and bringing it to the troubled, distressed, and hurting (i.e., spiritual and corporal works of mercy)
• Living and acting more from interior convictions than to gain the approval of others. (This will be easier for "Questioner" personality types than "Obligers" in Gretchen Rubin's 4 Tendencies framework). See below. 

The "4 Tendencies" Personality Types
Created by Gretchen Rubin

• Forgiving others more easily when they hurt you -- a spouse, a parent, a friend, a co-worker
• Self-discipline in matters small and large
• Waking up many days feeling grateful--even very, very grateful--for no reason other than the opportunity to enjoy another day. 

Sunrise for the Restless Child

No Closed Doors

In one daily homily in March 2015, (Pope) Francis pointedly asked Christians who do not act mercifully toward brethren who have fallen away but want to reenter the Church community who they think they are. "Who are you who shuts the door of your heart to a man, a woman who wants to improve, to return back to the people of God, because the Holy Spirit has stirred his or her heart?" the pontiff asked.

The Church, he said, is "the home of Jesus and Jesus welcomes--but not only welcomes, (he) goes to find people." 

Joshua J. McElwee

10 Things Pope Francis Wants You to Know about the Family

 

Our Brothers' Keeper,
Southern Illinois

From Magnificat Year of Mercy Companion, Jubilee Holy Doors

• The Door to Our Hearts: Calls us to open our heart to Christ. Like Mary, who bore him deep within her body, Christ gives us the grace to open our hearts to the conversion, unity, and justice of the Kingdom of God.
• The Door to Our Homes: (C)hallenge(s) (us) to find ways to open the doors of our homes to our families, our friends, and all who need us.
• The Door to the Churches: The silent witness to all the moments of our lives. It is the door welcoming the new born child who years later is married by the priest and finally the witness at the end of life as the body of the deceased Christian is received into the Church. The Church door is the door to salvation, the portal of the Kingdom of God. Christ himself told us that He is the door to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Christ not only invites us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through Him, He even leaves the keys to his Apostles, assuring them that “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (Mt. 16:19).”

In the Cool of the Evening

(c) Review & Harold Publishing
"Adam is at the center of the picture now, and everything is described as being there for him and the woman: the garden, the rivers, and the animals."
from Time to Be Astonished (Sunday School Net)

This is My Body:A Call to Eucharistic Revival (Bishop Robert Barron)

(Adam and Eve) are to care for creation and, if I can put it this way, they are to be the spokespersons for it, appreciating its order with their illuminated minds and giving expression to its beauty with their well-trained tongues. . . Human beings were intended to be the means by which the whole earth would give praise to God, returning in love what God has given in love, uniting all things in a great act of worship.  

This is why . . . Adam is represented in . . . rabbinic interpretation as a priest, the one who effects union between God and creation. As he walks with Yahweh in easy friendship in the cool of the evening, Adam is humanity--and by extension, the whole of the cosmos--as it is meant to be, caught up in a loop of grace, creaturely love answering divine love.

from page 4 

      

 

Animated

 "The most basic petition, when animated with even the first hint of faith in Christ crucified, lifts even the most impossible situations into the warmth and light of God Himself."

"Christian Prayer and Fire from Above"

Fire from Above: Christian Contemplation and Mystical Wisdom

Dr. Anthony L. Lilles, PhD

St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, 1586 (engraving)
Agostino Carracci (courtesy of the Minneapolis Institute of Art) 

Last Friday night was a 1st Friday, so I decided to go to confession in downtown Baltimore. The priest seemed like an Old World Polish cleric, and he gave me a longer than usual penance: 3 decades of the Rosary focusing on 3 Joyful Mysteries (the Nativity, the Presentation, and Finding the Child Jesus in the Temple). I was only able to pray one decade that night in the church, but was confident I could finish the penance before Sunday Mass.

Before even 24 hours from receiving absolution, I fell into the same habitual, mortal sin that led me to confess my sins in the first place. I still had two decades left of my penance. In the context of 15 years of trying to defeat this sin, it certainly feels like I'm in a "most impossible situation."  

Remember when our songs were just like prayers?

Like gospel hymns that you called in the air.

Come down, come down, sweet reverence,

Unto my simple house and ring,

And ring.

Ring like silver, ring like gold,

Ring like clear day wedding bells.

Now I've been crazy, couldn't you tell?

I threw stones at the stars, but the whole sky fell . . .

Ring like crazy, ring like hell;

Turn me back into that wild-haired gale.

Ring like silver, ring like gold,

Turn these diamonds straight back into coal,

Turn these diamonds straight back into coal,

Turn these diamonds straight back. 

In a Distant Country

From The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming by Henri J. M. Nouwen; "Deaf to the Voice of Love" (Chapter 2: The Younger Son Leaves):

But there are many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, "Go out and prove that you are worth something." Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me. They are always there and, always, they reach into those inner places where I question my own goodness and doubt my self-worth. They suggest that I am not going to be loved without my having earned it through determined efforts and hard work. They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worth being loved, and they keep pushing me to do everything possible to gain acceptance. They deny loudly that love is a totally free gift. I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved and follow the voices that offer a great variety of ways to win the love I so much desire. (p. 40)

Rembrandt and Saskia in the Scene of the Prodigal Son in the Tavern
Rembrandt (c. 1635)

 

 

What Plato Did Not See

The School of Athens
Raphael

From "Homestretch" in The Story of St. Monica and Her Son Augustine:

That a great pagan philosopher should present the theory of the Word seemed to confirm the doctrine of the Word in the teaching of the Catholic Church. In short, he was reading Plato, but he could not help doing so in the light of his childhood faith, the faith of his mother and of the great Bishop Ambrose.

However, it was soon apparent to him that Plato, for all his genius, had not reached the heights of St. John. It was impossible to find anywhere in Plato the magnificent thought that become the faith of Christians: "the Word become flesh and made his dwelling among us" (John 1:14). Plato had known nothing of the great themes of the Gospel: the fall of man through sin, God's mercy, the Incarnation of the Word, the redemptive death of Christ on the cross. Evidently, Augustine did not at first understand these things, but he has said that he kept hearing a voice crying out to him:

"Courage! I am the food of the strong. And you will eat me. But it is not I who shall be changed into you, for you shall be changed into me!" (Confessions, Book Seven, X). 

-Leon Cristiani

"Jesus Christ, Bread of Life

Mane nobiscum

-Taize

 

The Future Trap

Newburgh Pointe, The Last Twilight of 2021

From The Screwtape Letters, Chapter XV (in the voice of one demon to another):

The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things: to eternity itself and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment--and of it only--humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present--either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing a  present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

Our business is to get them away from the eternal and the Present. . . It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. . . Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the Future. Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

. . . To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too--just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the Future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it.

We do!

. . . (We) want a man hag-ridden by the Future--haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth--ready to break the Enemy's commands in the Present if by doing so we make he think he can attain the one or avert the other . . .    

-C. S. Lewis 

St. Joe's Consecration Day 43: Preparing Your Heart and Mind

 We recognized our attachments to broken ways of understanding love. At the root of sin is doubt in the goodness of God's plan for our lives, and we need teachers who show us the way.

We enter into union with Jesus in Baptism and through Him adoption by the Father. Because we enter through our humanity, we therefore also become an adopted child of Joseph and Mary.  This process of transformation or healing conversion helps us leave behind our doubt and our attachment to our limited understanding of what is truly good for us. 

In this new identity in Jesus, we have Joseph as a father and Mary as a mother.  Mary nurtures us in her motherhood and Joseph leads and protects us in his fatherhood. This is our one and true identity. 

Then one should receive Communion in this state of grace, and receive Jesus in his body, blood, soul, and divinity with spirit and mind reflecting on how Joseph received Jesus in that moment in his appearance in our world at the Nativity. From this moment forward, you will be led by St. Joseph in a new way. Entrust yourself to him. Place yourself in his presence often and ask him to take care of you--whatever your needs are--as a child would ask of a father. 

From Consecration to St. Joseph (pp. 163 - 165)

Bottaro and Settle

"Joseph and Jesus"
by Kathy Lawrence

What do you hope for as a fruit of this consecration?

• Growth in purity of heart and humility and all the other virtues that Saint Joseph so perfectly modeled in his everyday family life. 
• Strengthening and sanctification of all my Christian friendships. 

What intention do you have to place trustingly in the hands of your father, Saint Joseph? 

The healing conversion of my family.  

St. Joe's Consecration Day 42 - Holy Family as Model of the Church

 We hold up the Holy Family not as icons of awe alone, but as models to live our lives by. Not only do they exemplify the life of perfection that we're all called to live, but they also facilitate it, opening up the channels of grace through the Incarnation and Resurrection that make it possible to join to their blessed happiness. 

"The bond of charity was the core of the Holy Family's life, first in the poverty of Bethlehem, then in their exile in Egypt, and later in the house of Nazareth." (Redemptoris Custos).  

The path Jesus opened up for us to go to Divine Union is the path through normal, everyday, human life: 

"Salvation is realized in actions which are an everyday part of family life. . . 

What is crucially important here is the sanctification of daily life, a sanctification that each person must acquire according to his or her own state and one which can be promoted according to a model accessible to all people: St. Joseph is the model of those humble one whom Christianity raises up to great destinies . . . He is proof that in order to be a good and genuine follower of Christ, there is no need of great things--it is enough to have the common, simple and human virtues. But they need to be true and authentic."

 -St. John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos

It takes a deeper authenticity to accept the true path to holiness. It is not one of great and lofty and widely visible things. The Holy Family exemplifies for us a life of poverty, simplicity, and complete anonymity. This is almost too much to bear. It was too much for the religious leaders--and many of the religious faithful--of Jesus' time to bear. 

We must travail the arduous path of dying to self, letting go of our attachments to our false idols of superficial holiness that only end up serving our own pride. 

We must be willing to do the difficult work of growing in charity in "everyday family life." It's easy to feed the poor at a soup kitchen. It's much more difficult to feed your spouse and children with words of kindness instead of impatience. 

From Consecration to St. Joseph (pp. 158 - 160)

Bottaro and Settle

Pope Francis inside the Sanctuary of the Holy House
CNS Photo; Vatican Media

Can I accept what the Holy Family models for me?

Yes.

What deeper areas of growth am I really in need of?

I need the security in my identity as beloved son of The Father to freely ask for and receive help from other people. I need to accept that I am loved by God and by the Holy Family. That my worth is not tied to any external measures of performance or success. 

St. Joe's Consecration Day 41 - The Holy Family as Instrument of Salvation

 Salvation is realized in actions that are the everyday part of family life. 

Why should the fatherly love of Joseph not have had an influence on the filial love of Jesus? And vice versa why should the filial love of Jesus not have had an influence on the fatherly love of Joseph, thus leading to a further deepening of their unique relationship? (John Paul II, Redemptoris Custos)

Joseph formed Jesus, and Jesus formed Joseph.

God became man so that man could become God. (St. Athanasius).

What everyday parts of your family life need to be purified so as to become more like acts appropriate for salvation?

• Holding onto and replaying wounds from long ago; exaggerating faults and sleights
• Holding onto guilt and shame that prevent me from living in the moment and being generous, open, and honest with the people God places before me now.

Day 40 - The Holy Family as the Image of the Trinity

 

In the Book of Genesis God says, "Let us make man in our image." Note the "us." God is speaking from His Trinitarian voice even in the first book of Scripture. Out of this image, "Male and female He created them." Genesis brings us immediately into this awareness that somehow the creation of man and woman together can point us to the Holy Trinity.

A child is the fruition of a man's physical gift of life as the initiator and a woman's receptivity, union, and nurturing of this gift within herself. The man is drawn to the woman out of love and he gives himself to her because of love. The child is the fruit of love, the fruit of two persons giving and receiving each other.

The dynamic of self-gift leads our minds and hearts closer to contemplating the reality of the Trinity. God the Father is the initiator of the gift. Jesus the Son receives the gift, and in return, is a gift to His Father. The love that eternally spirates between and from the two of them is the Holy Spirit--the eternal and infinite Fruition of Love between the Father and the Son. 

The love between Joseph and Mary is the perfection of human self-gift and love. The fruit of their love is also at the same time the fruit of the love between Mary and the Holy Spirit, which is the self-gift between human and Divine. And as Jesus consisted of every perfection in both his humanity and his Divinity, his very being pronounces the perfection of the love of his human parents.

Joseph, Mary, and Jesus then are the perfect human image of the Holy Trinity. They are also the passageway through which we all enter into communion with the Holy Trinity. 

. . . Joseph, Mary, and Jesus stand at the center of space and time, and history flows outward from their existence.   

How is your love imperfect?

Whenever I chose my own self-centered, grasping desires over the good of another person. When I chose a physical need over a spiritual need and miss an opportunity to make an offering of myself to God. 

Who are you called to make the greatest gift of self to in your particular vocation?

To Jesus in the daily offerings in prayer, solidarity in suffering, and expressions of gracious joy. To my brother whom I live with. 

How can you give more of yourself today than you did yesterday to be faithful to who you are called to love?

Engage my brother in longer conversations. Offer him something as a gift or prepare one for him for Christmas. Invite him to celebrate Advent and make a good Confession. 

Follow through on my commitments to prayer, fellowship, and asceticism. 

 

St. Joe's Consecration Day 39 - Peacemakers

Matthew 5:9 

"Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God."

From where does the peace of a child come? It comes from the place in their heart where they have complete confidence that they are safe, that they are cared for, and that someone they love will defend them. This is the peace that our hearts long to live in, but what in our life's journey steals that peace? Often it comes from wounded parents who let us down, who didn't keep us safe, who didn't know how to love us the way we were created to be loved. 

" . . . peace does not come from outside, from the world. It comes in communion in faith and love with Jesus, the Prince of Peace. It is a fruit of prayer." 

-Fr, Jacques Philippe

The Eight Doors of the Kingdom

The Holy Family deeply desires to love you in the ways you needed to be loved. They long to have you enter into their family and live as their adopted son. 

(Being persecuted for the sake of righteousness) IS a blessing. Enduring persecution increases our capacity to trust the Father. It increases our capacity to be in union with the suffering and persecuted Christ. 

And can we not say that the Holy Family--as a communion of persons--lived the Beatitudes perfectly?

The Holy Family for Elijah
by Laura Balmaceda

What are the areas of your life that are not at peace?

• The fear that I'm not competent or smart or likable enough at work
• The fear that others may think me lacking or not worth spending time with
• A false belief that I can find peace only after first finding someone to be married to or achieving greater financial security

What are the areas of your heart that are in need of healing and peace?

The damage in my heart of not being loved for my own sake, to be defended by parents who believed in me and were concerned about protecting me from external dangers and other people's misunderstanding of me. I needed to feel and see their pride and joy for me. I needed their love to be expressed in clear and unconditional ways. I needed to be able to trust them, that they weren't lying to me or trying to manipulate me. 

Spend time with Our Lady and St. Joseph sharing those places with them. Open your heart to let them love you there. 

Do you have confidence in your identity as a beloved son of God?

Yes.

How might receiving your identity help you in times of adversity?

It helps me remember that I need not panic, fear, run, or hide. I can always turn to the Holy Family, rely on prayer, and rest in God's love secure in my identity as His son. 

Day 38 St. Joe's Consecration - Merciful

Matthew 5:7-8 

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy; blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

"In Latin 'mercy' is signified by 'misericordia' from 'miseriae' meaning misery and 'cordis' meaning heart. It is the nature of God's mercy that His heart extends into our mercy and redeems it . . . Mercy signifies that God draws our misery into His own infinitely loving heart."

-Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg

Misericordia: The Roots of Mercy

When God draws our misery into His heart, our sin, our mistakes, our wounds are burned up in the fire of His Mercy. Our encounter with the Lord's mercy is what enables us to GIVE mercy and forgiveness to others who have hurt us. It is not in our power to be unaffected by or forget an offense. But the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession (from the CCC 2843). 

The Holy Family literally lived with the Heart of Mercy (Jesus). Jesus learned the gift of mercy in the Holy Family. 

"Purity of heart finds expression in mercy. Mercy purifies hearts as nothing else does."

Fr. Jacques Philippe

The Eight Doors of the Kingdom

To have a pure heart means your whole self is oriented to God: your thoughts, your actions, all of you. And with that purity of heart, you begin to see everything around you as God sees. You begin to see the person in front of you as God sees her and honors the gift of God in each person.   

Holy Family Hearts II
Venxara

Where are the places in your heart in need of the Lord's mercy?

• Abandonment; rejection; neglect
• Sexual integrity; failures to be chaste
• Pride; lack of humility and simplicity

Is my life oriented to God?

Are my thoughts, actions, and desires given over to the Lord for purification?

Always remember to hold the hands of mercy when looking at your sin and weakness.

Day 37 St. Joe's Consecration: Meek

Anger and lingering resentments from our interactions with other people are often of signs of our needs for healing, that we have sensitivity to a particular wound that is open and in need of care. When we experience this, we can ask ourselves what is underneath all the anger.

A person striving for meekness is someone willing to look at their poverty and weaknesses--someone who isn't afraid to enter into those places in the heart with the Lord that are in need of healing. 

The Holy Family had meekness. Though they had a passion for the salvation of souls, from defending humanity from the works of the evil one, passsion for each person who crossed their path . . . no one knew that they were encounting the Son of God and His Immaculate Mother. They were approachable, and down-to-earth, and unassuming. 

When we encounter the hardness of our own hearts . . . the meekness of Jesus can heal us. The desire for healing and the willingness to let the Lord into those places in our hearts is the thirst for justice. It is a thirst for holiness and wholeness. It is a desire for the places we have been wronged by others and we have wronged others to be made right. It is a thirst for union and communion with the Lord.

"We must believe that God wants to wed us in spite of our ugliness and, believing, allow Him to do it." (Fr. Jacques Philippe, The Eight Doors of the Kingdom).

  

Where are the places in your heart that you feel a need for deeper healing?

My fear of abandonment and rejection that manifests itself whenever a relationship ends and I see that my feelings are dismissed and my worth as a human being is not seen and valued. 

With the Holy Family by your side, ask the Father to reveal the places in your heart that He thirsts to heal you. 

Day 36 - Knowledge of the Holy Family: Poor in Spirit

The Holy Family as a family of The Beatitudes.

Self-reliance vs. true detachment from things of this world

Poor in spirit = awareness of one's true identity as a son or daughter of God = humble confidence

= free to give of oneself

= free to receive another's gift

"(The experience of poverty) is meant to awaken a new hunger in our hearts, hunger for God. In (this) poverty . . . no food, no satisfaction, no human security can suffice." (Jacques Philippe from The Eight Doors of the Kingdom)

We can imagine that the Holy Family a deeper sorrow for fallen humanity because they understood the cosmic reverberations of human frailty. . . They opened up their sorrowful hearts in trust that God will bring good out of all things.

Can you see your weakness and poverty as a gift? As something lovable to the Father?

Yes, because it awakens my hunger.

What keeps you from experiencing and living the confidence that you are loved by the Father in your poverty?

Firstborn problems. The false belief that nothing can be given to me; everything must be earned

Is it difficult to trust in the Lord's providence in times of sorrow?

Yes and now. When sorrow hits and I don't pray, ruminating and catastrophizing instead, then it is difficult to trust.

Do you believe that He desires to console you? And that He will?

Yes. Sometimes.

St. Joe's Consecration Day 35 - Divine Mercy

St. Joseph taught Jesus he was good without having to do anything (to prove that goodness). Jesus's being drew Joseph's and Mary's awe, contemplation, and love. 

For centuries, God has continued to unfold the delicate intricacies of His love for us (see A Father Who Keeps His Promises by Scott Hahn), from Adam and Eve to the modern saints who have seen and spoke of His Divine Mercy:

• St. Margaret Mary Alocoque and the Sacred Heart (17th century)
• See Consoling the Heart of Jesus by Fr. Michael Gaitley
• St. Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart (18th century)
• St Therese of Lisieux and the Little Way (19th century)
• St. Faustina and her Diary Divine Mercy (20th century)

Take a break from your busy life where you're either running away from your weakness by pretending to be in control or running away from your weakness by trying to prove your worth. Listen to Jesus tell you that He is strong in your weakness, that He loves you in your weakness, to stop running away from your weakness. 

Let's stop this rumination for a moment and listen for His song.

The Concert of Angels by Gaudenzio Ferrari

Do you typically avoid your weakness by pretending you are in control? Or feeling that you need to earn the sense of having worth before God? 

Depending on the day or situation, it can be some of either mechanism of avoiding and acknowledging my weakness.

If the former how can you submit yourself in one way today to the reality that you do not have the control you would like?

• Send a message to the leaders of my Trinity small group and be honest about missing the last session.
• Send a message to my spiritual director and be honest about missing his prior call.

If the latter, how can you submit yourself in one way today to the reality God's love is bigger than your imperfection?

• Fast but also be open to receive any gifts God gives me.
• Reframe any negative self-talk with gentle appreciation in gratitude for God's love and mercy.
• Visit a beautiful church or seek God in adoration in a small chapel. 

St. Joe's Consecration Day 34 - The Resurrection

The moment of the tomb opening up, when Jesus Christ conquered death, is the moment that changes everything for all time. Because of the moment Adam and Eve chose sin, and then the moment when Mary and Joseph said "Yes," we are led to this moment. 

The stone was rolled away, and Jesus was not there. The man who loved so insanely that he suffered torture and death for the sake of his beloved plummetted to the depths of death and came out alive. This moment is so important because it validates all the other moments that came before it. 

. . . We forget all too readily that Jesus is KING. Jesus is LORD. We bend a knee and fall to the ground in the presence of our king and lord. Do we know what that means? 

. . . (Jesus) said so many things that people thought were crazy when they heard it, that they walked away from despite the miracles that he was working in their very sight. 

Our God is madly in love with us. Oh how much He loves us! Despite how silly and adolescent we are in our pride, balking at his rightful authority, going against his will over and over again, he pursues us to the end of the earth. 

What are you holding onto in your life that goes against the teaching of Jesus?

Any subtle attachments I have to political affiliations. 

What commandments do you have the most difficulty with?

The 6th and 9th. 

Where does the authority of the church challenge you the most?

In calls to political action on life issues when I worry about how the wider society will perceive me or when I expect conflict and disagreement from people I care about? 

Open it all up to Him today. Sing Alleluia with all the saints and angels of Heaven, proclaiming that you are in need of a Savior--and you have One!

St. Joe's Consecration Day 33 - Trustful Surrender

 Jesus himself knew what to do within this strange silent stillness (of Holy Saturday). It was the stillness of the Garden of Gethsemane. It was the torment of his heart, deeper than words, that expressed itself in blood sweat through his pores. It was the shocking, total, and utter acceptance of his human nature ("Let this cup pass!") and then the acceptance of his divine Father ("Not my will but yours be done."). He must have learned those words from his human father, who taught him how to sit in silence and encounter God in the prayer of the deep. 

"I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were in created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you. Together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

. . . I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place."

 -from an ancient homily in the Office of the Readings for Holy Saturday

What doubt do we hold onto in our lives that we don't think God will take care of?

It is easy to say we trust God, but do we act like it?

What do we ruminate about?

• Conflicts and disagreements with other people, especially those who are close to me.

What do we stress about?

• Not having fulfilled a vocation. Whether I will always be alone. 

What situations bring out the worst in us because we begin to feel the loss of control or worry that all will not be well?

• At work, feeling overwhelmed with too many assignments to do in a short time or feeling misunderstood or undervalued
• Succumbing once again to some habitual sin, feeling that there's no way out or that I am perpetually defective or deficient
• Interactions with my parents or siblings in which I feel there is some unbridgeable chasm between us