Category: Spiritual Life

Knowing & praying God’s name is blessed in us

In the opening collect for today’s Mass, the priest asked God the Father: “Increase Your Spirit within us and bring us to our promised inheritance.” Here the promised inheritance is none other than communion with the Trinity. It is heaven! Our promised inheritance is the pledge of future glory: Christ received in the Bread of Life. Taste and see the goodness of the Lord!

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How much time in the past year have you given thought about your “promised inheritance”? When was the last time you considered your own worthiness to receive the divine gift of the promised inheritance? What criteria exists for someone to receive such a gift? With sin in the world and in our own lives, experience tells me that we want the gift but we don’t really know what it is, why we are receiving a promised inheritance from God and too often we don’t see how sin would prevent us from heaven. BUT do we have sin on our souls? If we didn’t we’d be dead or merely presumptuous.

At last I knew, my conscience, my self-awareness, my religious sense, my own experience of who I am as a person says, I am a sinner. Sin is the falling away from God; it is a radical break in my relationship with God. More precisely, “Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. it has been defined as ‘an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law'” (CCC 1849). I fall from grace by word and action, by thought and disordered affections. Don’t you? The psalmist says that man and woman speak with a divided heart, a forked-tongue. Do you confess the truth of Jesus Christ all the time?

Does a divided heart make me a hypocrite? By definition, NO. But it doesn’t if I don’t pretend –at least I don’t think I do– to be anything more than what I am: a loved sinner. A man who sins, falls away from God and yet is loved unconditionally by God, redeemed by Christ. It is Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross and his promise of salvation through Him as the Bread of Life that I am able to be justified. In a word, awareness of one’s sin indicates that you can’t fall off the floor. Were this the awareness of all Catholics who make the claim to know Jesus and receive Him in the Eucharist today!

So, why talk about sin on a Sunday in which we pray that God would bring us to our promised inheritance? For starters in our to accept this wonderful promise we have to be worthy of the gift. Stepping into heaven, being a part of God’s inner, transcendent life we have to be as pure, as holy as we can possibly be give our freedom to say “yes” to God and to cooperate with grace. Accepting the promised gift means that we have to deal truthfully with reality as it is presented to us. And we know from experience, reality has never failed us but we may have failed reality. The Bread of Life offered by Jesus in today’s gospel is not make believe, it is not what we want it to be, it is Himself: body and blood, soul and divinity. The Bread of Life is His real, authentic self. In order to have Christ present in our life and for our prayer to be as effective as possible, we have to consider the frequent prayer, may Your name be held holy.

Saint Cyprian of Carthage says so clearly:

We pray, ‘Hallowed be Thy name,’ not that we wish that
God may be made holy by our prayers but that His name may be hallowed in us…It
is because He commands us, ‘Be holy, even as I am holy,’ that we ask and
entreat that we who were sanctified in baptism may continue in that which we
have begun to be. And this we pray for daily, for we have need of daily
sanctification, that we who daily fall away may wash our sins by continual
sanctification.”

We have work to do.

Spiritual Motherhood for Priests takes off

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Since last year I’ve been thinking of the role spiritual
mothers, in the example of Our Lady, play in the lives of Catholic priests. I am thinking in particular of Our Lady of Sorrows for this type of spiritual maternity. In the past I mentioned this idea here and here at the beginning of 2009 (perhaps I should do it more). The
call to be a priest’s spiritual mother includes a woman’s offering herself to
God, praying in intercession and reparation for the priest, spending time in
Eucharistic Adoration and becoming a point for God’s grace to work in the life
of a priest. A woman of any age can do this work of intercession; she can be single, married, or widowed. This spiritual work is hidden and contemplative, sacrificial and
silent. It is in this special work that the reparation for the sins of priests
might happen for as the Holy Father said, “nothing makes the Church, the Body
of Christ, suffer more than the sins of her pastors.”

My interest has been sparked by two people, Franciscan
Cardinal Claudio Hummes and Benedictine Father Mark Kirby, the latter drawing
on 

Adoration & Spiritual Maternity.pdf to ask the Divine Majesty to renew priesthood
through a special devotion to the Eucharist. But there’s been other work done by
people such as Catherine Dougherty, Mother Marie des Douleurs and Maria Sieler as well as the countless laity and consecrated men and women of the Church.

In October 2008 Tulsa, OK, Bishop Edward Slattery started a
process of formation for women to dedicate their prayer for the needs of the
priesthood. I am told that there are some women in the Bridgeport Diocese that there
are women who dedicate their lives as a spiritual mother for priests but they
are so hidden no one knows them. Something has to be done in the manner in
which Bishop Slattery is doing this holy work! 

More recently Jane, living in France, has begun some work
and prayer on spiritual maternity for priests. Her blog, Spiritual Mothers of
Priests, is a good personal initiative to assist priests (and I presume
seminarians) with prayer and sacrifice during this Year of the Priest. Ladies,
visit and follow the work of Jane and join other women to this special work for
priests.

Faith roots the relationship with God

Never a day goes by that I don’t ask the question about my faith and my life of faith. I doubt any serious Christian would go through life without asking the same: How does my faith impact my relationship with God and vice verse? Do I live in certain intimacy with the divine nature? Do others see God in me as I relate to them? How credible a witness am I of Jesus Christ and His Good News?


Without faith it is impossible to please God. (Hebrews
11:6). Faith is the foundation of our relations with God. For the man without
faith, God has no meaning, no value, no place in his life. On the contrary, the
more lively our faith is, the more God enters into our life, until finally he
becomes our all, the one great reality for; which we live, and the One for whom
we courageously face sorrow and death. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if
we die, we die to the Lord (Romans 14:8). Those who dedicate themselves to the
spiritual life do not lack faith; but often our faith is not alive and concrete
enough to make us always see God in everything, which would give us the sense
of his fundamental, transcendent and eternal reality that infinitely surpasses
all earthly realities. In practice we do not reflect sufficiently on the truth
that to be a believer is a pure gift of God, not due to any personal merit. God
is both the object of faith and the giver of faith; it is he who infuses into
us the desire to know him and to believe in him and who makes us capable of the
act of believing.

Divine Intimacy, Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD

Reclaiming the right focus with 5 loaves & 2 fish: being fed by the hand of God

Today the Church suspends her reading of Mark’s gospel for the next four weeks in favor of reading the famed narrative of the Bread of Life discourse of Jesus from the Gospel of John. Here the Church asks us to meditate on the life-giving food, the Eucharist, which Jesus gives to us as His supreme gift of love and life. Here the abundance of the sacred banquet is beginning to be known.

The readings this 17th Sunday through the year, taken together provide a framework for how are Christian lives are lived: in recognition of the Providence of God that is lavished upon us.
In theology school a professor of mine, Jesuit Father Daniel Harrington, often encouraged us to preach on the responsorial psalm because it is the link between what is heard in the first reading and the gospel. Admittedly, the psalm response is rarely looked at by the preacher and often preaching on the psalm can be difficult if the psalmody is not part of one’s daily bread at prayer. But today Psalm 145 is provides us a most excellent, fitting link between Second Kings and John 6: the Lord will feed His people. The psalm response is “The hand of the Lord feed us; he answers all our needs.” Wow! The Lord indeed is good and wants our happiness. The Lord will feed us. He will answer our every need. What a tremendous consolation to know that we are not left orphan in this world and that God hears our petitions and wants to see us thrive. But our thriving is not meant only for ourselves but for Him and the community of faith. What other good news can there be than to know that God sustains our every moment.

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The verses of the psalm can’t be overlooked. There we hear the experience of the Jewish people giving thanks to God by blessing His holy name. And in turn, the people have the expectation that their King will help them “in due season.” Psalm 145 shows the give-and-take between God and His people. It is the same for the relationship we have with Jesus. 
Theologically we believe that these expectations are not self generated but are put into our hearts by the Lord Himself. He made us, He sustains. He calls us into greater communion with Himself. The desires of our hearts are none other the desires of the Lord: we are made for Him alone. The psalmist  recalls for us that the Lord will satisfy our hunger, He will feed our bodies and souls because He hears us. Consequently, our relationship with the Lord will not be frustrated because His promises are true.
In the inaugural homily of Pope Benedict in April, 2005, he said those who give themselves over to the Lord are never disappointed; nothing good in ourselves will be forgotten. The pope’s message to the world was and continues to be one that says he or she who abandons the self into the Lord’s hands will be fed. That is, our life in Christ is one of trust, one hope that doesn’t disappoint.
Today, Saint John tells us that that humanity’s longing is to be fed by the Lord. The desire of humanity’s heart is on fire for something more than the daily fare of food and drink that doesn’t satisfy. As Saint John tells us, the Lord instructed the Philip and Andrew to feed the crowd themselves. They had been following the Lord for a period of time and presumably knew the ways of the Lord by the way He fed the desires of the human heart. Philip and Andrew experienced first-hand the incredible life-giving food given by the Lord. Not relying on themselves the apostles relied on the word of Jesus and a boy’s barley loaves and fish. The apostles’ reliance leads to the miracle of an incredible feeding of the crowd that no human act could do. We are told that the Lord gave thanks (he prayed). He lifted his mind and heart to God by asking His Father to satisfy the hunger pains of His children. And as John narrates, God the Father supplied the need.
This gospel passage is an example of the Providence of God caring truly for His people. It wasn’t as some contemporary scholars and preachers say: the human sharing is the miracle. No. The miracle is the trust, the asking, the giving thanks and the reliance on the only Person who can truly, really answer our human need. “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.” Jesus’ asking the Father to supply our need is the miracle; it is the supernatural intervention into human history. The miracle lies not in human actions but in the Divine outpouring of Life. It is in Jesus that God the Father stooped down into our history to raise up the needy, the poor, the vulnerable: all of us.
In John 6 we see Christ the priest mediating for us who beg to be fulfilled. The loaves and the fish are a prelude to Jesus instituting the Eucharist and the priesthood. By themselves bread and fish aren’t the pledge of future glory. Loaves and fish will never satisfy because they will never be enough. But what God said in Kings and what John tells us of Jesus, the Father gives what we need. In fact, The Lord gives us more than we can ever imagine. Why? Because Jesus is the food that satisfies; Jesus is that pledge of glory to come; He is the one who gives food and drink that satisfies our hunger and thirst. There is the hope, there is love between the divine and the human.

Suicide and Catholic help: Being aware of the signs in order to help

Yesterday there was a story that caught my attention at the Catholic News Service (CNS) site: “Father’s suicide attempt leads Catholic family to help others.” The odd thing for me is that yesterday I put out in the parish vestibule a booklet on suicide (see below) thinking it might be helpful to some of the parishioners because the topic seems timely and since a young man accidentally committed suicide last year here.

Facing our own human frailty and that of others confronts us daily. Few escape serious impact of personal issues which belong to us, or of those of others, especially if you are pastoral care worker, teacher, nurse, doctor, priest, etc. Mental illness, the various forms of depression, emotional issues, un-processed feelings and the like all impact our lives in ways that may or may not be known to us. Certainly, some people attempt suicide to get attention, others involuntarily commit suicide while still others actually intend to do that desperate act. My first experience of suicide was during my high school years when a teacher of mine committed suicide. Over the years I’ve known of others –through pastoral engagements– who wanted out of life and others who were playing a game and one-thing-led-to-another. The fact is, suicide is a reality in our lives and we have to deal with it sensitively and competently.
When I was at the Catholic Information Service at the Knights of Columbus I edited what I think is a helpful booklet to assist students, parents, clergy, pastoral care workers, teachers, really anyone interested in helping another understand the reality of taking one’s life and how to be attentive to suicidal signs. It is not enough to parrot the Church’s teaching and point someone to the necessary resources; you have to act like Christ and be knowledgeable enough to respond humanely and spiritually. Professionals have their work to do and friends, family and other friendly people have theirs.
Read “Coping with a Suicide: Catholic Teaching and Pastoral Practice.” You can order a hard copy by sending an email to cis@kofc.org.

Becoming like Christ

Pay attention! The author has something really important to say:

The Encyclical Mystici Corporis says expressly:
the Holy Spirit is communicated to the Church so that she and each of her
members may become daily more and more like to our Savior. Those whom God
foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (Romans 8:29);
every Christian is holy and pleasing to God to the extent that he has become
like Christ.

And it is the Holy Spirit who is the artisan who will
fashion the traits of the divine resemblance in us, making us daily more and
more like to our Savior. If we would cooperate fully with his action, each day
would witness some progress in our becoming more like Christ.

Struck by this thought, [Blessed] Sr. Elizabeth of the Trinity prayed:
Spirit of love, descend within me and reproduce in me as it were, an
incarnation of the Word, that I may be to him another humanity; wherein he
renews his mystery.

If Christ is the model to which all the baptized should
conform, there is no presumption in aspiring to become so like him that he can
renew his mystery in us, or rather, prolong in us his work of glorifying the
Father and of redeeming men. Indeed this is exactly Jesus’ desire in sending us
his Spirit.

Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen, OCD, Divine Intimacy

NO such thing as second class grace

I have to admit that I am not a frequent reader of the spiritual theology of Saint Josemaría Escriva but I am more and more interested in what he said because I think there is something that corresponds to my heart. Time will tell how he will affect my my life. 


Here the saint briefly speaks to the fact that we are called by the Gospel to conform to Christ –a message I tried to get across to the parish youth group. Of course, speaking of following AND conforming the self to the Will of God is a hard concept to get across to anyone let alone young people. As Christians we follow; we also closely adhere to the cross while looking to the resurrection. Be careful, you don’t get the resurrection without the cross coming first.

Back to the saint’s thought: Saint Josemaria said, for example, about the matter of sanctity and priesthood:


There is no second class
sanctity: there is either a continuous struggle to be in the grace of God and
conformed to Christ our model or we desert these divine battles. Our Lord
invites everyone to sanctify himself in his own state. In Opus Dei this passion
for sanctity–in spite of our individual errors and miseries–is not changed by
the fact that one is a priest or a layperson. 

Saint Josemaría, Homily, Priest for Eternity, 13 April 1973

Daily Rule of Prayer: Mass, adoration, lectio divina…

For the most part, the time for priestly and diaconal ordinations have come and gone. Where I am for the summer, a newly ordained priest is due to arrive in a few days. Having heard plenty of ordination homilies over the years none are as insightful as Benedict XVI’s especially when he proposes a plan to be spiritually fit. Of course, all what is said is not restricted to priests but applicable to the laity as well. All of us reading this post are familiar with all the points made about developing a prayer life and seeing them together constitutes a serious plan. Father Mark draws our attention to one item that is near-and-dear to many of us: lectio divina. I am re-posting a portion of my friend Father Mark’s recent May blog entry because I think it’s helpful.

What is Father Everypriest’s daily Rule of Prayer according to Pope Benedict XVI? Let’s consider the elements of the Rule in the order in which the Holy Father presents them.

1) Daily Holy Mass. Daily. Not 6 days week, not 5, or 4 days a week, but daily. The liturgical cycle in its hourly, daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms is given us precisely to facilitate our “abiding” in Christ hour by hour, day by day, week by week, and year after year. Integral to the liturgical cycle is daily Holy Mass. The Eucharistic Sacrifice sends the divine lifeblood coursing through one’s spiritual organism. Without daily Mass, the priest will succumb to spiritual anemia.

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2) The Liturgy of the Hours. The Hours give rhythm and grace to daily life. They are a school of discipline (discipleship), a supernatural system of irrigation channeling grace into every moment of the day, a privileged way of offering thanks in communion with all who, “in heaven, on earth, and under the earth,” confess the Name of Jesus and bend the knee before Him. A priest who loves the Divine Office will enjoy an interior life that is sane, and sound, and wholly ecclesial. Fidelity to the Divine Office refines the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, sharpens one’s discernment, and imparts to everything the priest does a certain Eucharistic and doxological quality.

3) Eucharistic Adoration. Are you surprised? Eucharistic adoration has known a kind of springtime since The Year of the Eucharist (2004-2005) that was also the year of the death of Pope John Paul II and of the election of Pope Benedict XVI. Two Americans known for loving their brother priests and ministering to them tirelessly –Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen and Father Gerald Fitzgerald of the Holy Spirit– insisted on a daily hour before the Blessed Sacrament as a sine qua non of priestly spirituality. The priest who adores the Blessed Sacrament exposes his weaknesses and wounds to the healing radiance of the Eucharistic Face of Jesus. Moreover, he abides before the Eucharistic Face of Jesus as the representative of his people: of the sick, the poor, the bereaved, and of those locked in spiritual combat. The priest who looks to the Eucharistic Face of Jesus, and draws near to His Open Heart in the Sacrament of the Altar, will, just as the psalm says, be radiant, and he will not be put to shame.

4) Lectio Divina. Again — a monastic thing? No, a Catholic thing. The quality of a priest’s preaching is directly proportionate to his commitment to lectio divina. Neglect of lectio divina leads to mediocre preaching. Opening the Scriptures is like opening the tabernacle: therein the priest finds the “hidden manna” his soul craves. The four steps of lectio divina can be accommodated to any length of time: 1) lectio, i.e. the Word heard; 2) meditatio, i.e. the Word repeated; 3) oratio, i.e. the Word prayed;

4) Contemplatio; i.e. the indwelling Word. Lectio divina cannot be occasional;
it is not a random pursuit. Learn to say, “I am not available.” Get over feeling guilty about taking time for God!

5) Holy Rosary. Yes, the daily Rosary. It’s a spiritual lifeline that has saved many a priest from spiritual shipwreck. The brilliant and holy exegete and founder of the École biblique in Jerusalem, Father Marie-Joseph Lagrange, was observed praying fifteen mysteries of the Rosary each day, and asked, “Why, Father, do you, a great exegete, need to pray the Rosary?” “Because, ” he answered, “it decapitates
pride.” I would add that not only does the Rosary decapitate pride; it decapitates each of the seven capital sins: pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. With the passing of the years I have come to appreciate the profound wisdom of an old Dominican priest to whom I used to make my confession years ago. Invariably, after confessing my miseries, Father would ask, “Do you say the Rosary, son?” And invariably I would reply, “Yes, Father.” And then he would say, “Aye, then you’ll be alright.” A priest who prays the Rosary daily will be alright and, almost imperceptibly, will grow in purity and humility.

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6) Meditation. Meditation can mean many things, even within our Catholic tradition. It is integral to the prayerful celebration of Holy Mass and the Hours. “it nourishes Eucharistic adoration. It is the second “moment” of lectio divina. It is the soul of the Rosary. In my own experience, meditation is related to “remembering the things the Lord has done.” Saint Gertrude the Great, a model of the mystical life grounded in the liturgy, used to say, “A grace remembered is a grace renewed.” Understood in this sense, meditation, by recalling the mercies of the Lord in the past, infuses the present with hope, and allows the priest to go forward with a holy boldness.

Is it necessary to set a period of time apart for meditation as such? That depends on whom you ask. The Carmelite, Jesuit and Sulpician traditions would hold fast to some form of meditation as a daily exercise. The monastic tradition has, on the whole, taken a more supple approach to meditation. It is a daily practice, but one diffused in every form of prayer, including the liturgy itself. One learns to pace one’s prayer, to pause, to breathe, to linger over a phrase, a word, or an image. Whether one espouses the Ignatian way or the monastic approach, meditation is an integral to every priest’s daily Rule of Prayer.