Category: Spiritual Life

Christian prayer centers us differently

I am frequently confused by Christians. They complain they don’t know the tradition, that they don’t know if God exists, they equate faith, belief, church, sacrament as all the the same and don’t seem to be able to make distinctions. A Vincentian Father begins a personal dialogue that may be helpful to you, as it is for me. When I was in theology school one of my professors said that most Catholics only pray to one of the persons of the Trinity forgetting that Catholics (and Orthodox) are decidedly Trinitarian. The concept of praying to the Father through Son under the power of the Holy Spirit escapes many… Nevertheless, here is Fr Collins:

Christian prayer is God-centered rather than self-centered. Consistent with the spirit of the first commandment, the very opening address of the Lord’s Prayer escapes from the normal gravitational pull of self-absorption in order to focus on the Creator.

The context is decidedly Trinitarian. It is offered to God the Father, through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is our unique and indispensable window on God. His words and actions are like so many panes of glass in the window of his humanity.

When viewed with the eyes of faith in the light of the Holy Spirit they reveal who Jesus is as the Son of God. As Jesus stated: I am the way, and the truth, and life; no one comes to the Father but by me’ (John 1:6).

Prayer in Practice
Fr. Pat Collins, C.M.

Coming to God?

An enduring question in the spiritual life is knowing God. In fact, many, many people, even the “professional” Christians struggle with this question and more startling how to answer it that is reasonable, truthful and otherwise satisfying. Who is God to you? How do you know God exists? What is the source of your certainty? Or, alternately, what is your God?

For me, I think we need to attend to the basics and ask how do these basics impact life in a concrete way. For too long Christians have been avoiding answering the question of God’s existence and God’s work in life in a personal way. Recently, I came across the following idea that I find helpful. In Romano Guardini’s The Inner Life of Jesus, we read:

If someone should ask, how do I come to God? What kind of being is God? This would be the answer: God is just as He manifested Himself in Jesus. Whoever looks upon Jesus, whoever takes into account who Jesus is, how He speaks, how He conducts Himself, what His attitudes are – such a one is perceiving God Himself.

And he will get to God by going in Jesus’ company, allowing himself to be instructed by Him, and allowing himself to become centered in that identity with which he makes his approach to Jesus. Then he is indeed on the way, in truth, and he partakes of life.

What do you think? Is Guardini correct that in seeing and knowing Jesus we see and know God?

Living in order to be happy

How must we live in order to be, or to become, capable of happiness? The question is one which ought to occupy us nowadays more than ever before. Man should take his happiness as seriously as takes himself. And he ought to believe God and his own heart when, even in distress and trouble, he has an intuitive feeling that he was created for happiness.

But this entails certain clear convictions. For a full and satisfying life man must know what it is all about. He must have no doubts about being on the right road with all the saints to back him up, and divine strength to support him. Such a life is a dedicated one, conscious of being blessed and touched by God himself.

Prison Meditations of Fr. Alfred Delp
Alfred Delp, SJ

The Harvest Ember Days

Ember Days or the Quatuor Temporas are a traditional time of harvest fasting “four times” per year. The Ember days are the Wednesday, September 19, Friday, September 21 and Saturday, September 22.

This is a time to ask God for the gift of holy priests for the harvest of souls. Let us voluntarily take up the Ember Days, whatever your intention may be.

For more on the Ember Days:

https://www.fisheaters.com/emberdays.html

http://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/12/20/how-observing-the-ember-days-can-enhance-your-spiritual-life/

How do I want to live my life?

At the beginning of a new year the following words of Father Alexander Schmemann give us much to think about:

“…What then gives meaning to a particular day, to the TODAY we live in? Is it not simply one day out of a long sequence of days that each one of us has to live through? Yet for me, as a Christian, its new and deep meaning comes from the past. It is a day related to Christ’s coming into the world, a day AFTER His coming, and thus the Christian is the one who first of all, REMEMBERS. He can forget Christ; he can wake up in the morning and think only of the petty concerns of that particular day, yet, on a deeper level, even these minor concerns become a very different experience if he remembers that he is not simply John Smith who has to do this or that, but the one to whom Christ has come, whose life Christ has assumed and has given new meaning. “Today,” however, has a second meaning, because it is also a day BEFORE Christ’s return. Thus I am always living between the two comings of Christ: the one in the past, the other in the future. And finally, the meaning of TODAY comes to me from the words of Christ, who says that He is ALWAYS with me. “And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 27:20). Past, present, future – we see that the time in which we live is not only the time of the calendar, but the time that is shaped from inside and transformed by faith, by Christian experience. It is related to the coming of Christ in the past, to His coming in the future, and to His presence now…”

Celebrating Thanksgiving today 2017

Celebrating this day of Thanksgiving with loved ones and friends, I thought this morning at Divine Liturgy that what is crucial is diving into what really matters, what we’ve been given by the Lord —the most holy of giving thanks. It is the Holy Eucharist, instituted by the Lord Jesus “on the night he was betrayed and entered willingly into his passion.”

Here we see the root of our life: The Lord in His Life-Giving sacrifice shows us the relationship between His infinite mercy, justice and His love. We participate in Lord’s kenosis inviting us to assent to deification in the Life of the Trinity in a synergistic way. This is our sacred, divine Liturgy.

“I give thanks to you, my sweetness, my honor,
my confidence;
to you, my God, I give thanks for your gifts.
Do you preserve them for me.
So will you preserve me too,
and what you have given me will grow and reach perfection,
and I will be with you; because this too is your gift to me
—that I exist.”

-Saint Augustine, Confessions

Adrienne von Speyr

A women not really known in the US is the Mystic and Theologian, Physician, Writer: Adrienne von Speyr (20 September 1902 – 17 September 1967); she is known in theological circles as being a close associate to the Swiss theologian and priest, Hans Urs von Balthasar.

On this date, the feast of Saint Hildegard von Bingen, von Speyr died. Some will say that Speyr’s devotion to Hildegard provided her with a fitting intercessor at the Throne of Grace at this key time in her mission. Both shared a similar vocation.

Among the interesting things about Adrienne’s theological work is her 4 volume commentary on the Gospel of St John which she claimed St John dictated to her. Likewise, her volume, Book of All Saints, is quite interesting. A book I have not read but that is recommended to me is Matthew Sutton’s Heaven Opens: The Trinitarian Mysticism of Adrienne von Speyr.

Balthasar once wrote of his friend,

“In fact, on one occasion very soon after her conversion, she was driving home from her office, she suddenly saw a great light in front of her car (a pedestrian also jumped aside in fear, and Adrienne stopped) and heard a voice close by which gave the key to all that was to follow: Tu vivras au ciel et sur la terre  (You shall live in heaven and on earth).”

Hans Urs von Balthasar, First Glance At Adrienne von Speyr

What is interesting about Balthasar’s comment is a similar experience Saint Benedict had shortly before he died where, according to Saint Gregory the Great Benedict saw the whole world in a ray of light. Saints beget saints.

Discern differences

To begin to discern differences in one’s life a person must be attentive to what lies within, to what brings and supports peace and tranquility [stability of heart] or what produces and reinforces confusing, destructive behavior. This attentiveness means concretely taking time to listen to one’s inner life.

It presumes a discipline of being in or creating a quiet environment in which a person can begin to recognize what is happening internally. It presupposes that while any discernment process might necessarily include dialogue with others, it must include, above all, a dialogue with oneself-in relationship with God.

Silence and solitude can provide this conversation. Such attentive listening can lead to less illusions and self-delusions (signs of the devil according to St. Anthony of the Desert). It can also lead to greater knowledge of one’s true self, a self more grounded in truth, more capable of living in reality.

Edward Sellner, Finding the Monk Within