Monthly Archives: February 2014

Are you in the Garden or in the Desert?

21 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in Faith, Spirituality

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Since I wrote and posted How’s Your Spirituality? last week, I have tried to pay more attention to how I feel about my relationship with Christ, and to how I have shown, through my actions, the value I place on my relationship with Him.  I have reflected and tried to assess whether each day has been lush with hope, or spiritually dry from a poor or indifferent attitude, and whether or not there was any particular aspect of my feelings or behavior that I could improve.

For the most part I had a good week.  I was happy with the way I had shown charity to others and for the way I kept my cool in some tense situations. But, I felt I could have done better by taking my prayer time more seriously and so I gave my hour of adoration on Monday a little kick in the butt to make up for it.

Then Tuesday rolled around.  It started off on a good note but turned into a hectic morning at the office.  There was a particular issue that arose, one of those situations where you can choose to do nothing and let the pieces fall where they may, or you can step in and fix it as quickly as possible to stem the bleeding, so to speak.  I chose to do the latter.  Wrong decision.

Actually, it felt like the right decision for about four hours.  Then it turned sour and it became obvious that it had been the wrong one.  Big time wrong.  It wasn’t like a mortal sin, rather, it was just a major bone-head moment that included poor judgment that resulted in a serious leadership faux-pas that would impact things outside of my realm of responsibility. By the end of the day I was bewildered.  I was absolutely convinced when I made the decision that it was the right one and, so, it was disturbing when it finally sunk in how wrong I was.  I went home that evening and barely talked to my family.  I hardly slept that night.  I profusely apologized to my boss the next morning and sincerely hoped that what may have been the worst mistake I had ever made in my career wouldn’t be my last one.

While I was licking my wounds and pondering what went wrong and why, I thought about turning to God and praying for understanding and that things could be made right.  But, I just didn’t feel like doing it.  I didn’t have the right words or thoughts in me.  And, because I didn’t feel I could do the exact thing I knew I ought to do – turn to Him – I felt even more frustrated.  I suddenly felt like I had been transported to Yuma, Arizona in the middle of the summer – kind of a spiritually bone-dry desert with no hope of survival.

Then, God-moment number one appeared.

On Wednesday morning, after I had diligently worked all morning to round up the cats and stuff them back in the bag, I took a moment during my lunch break to go to a blog site I visit from time to time by Father Robert Barron, founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary.  The subject of his blog post for the day, believe it or not, was “How should we address spiritually dry periods?”

He quoted Sir Winston Churchill when he was asked by someone, “What do you do when you’re going through Hell?” to which Churchill responded by saying, “You keep going!”  You get through it, and get it behind you.

Fr. Barron went on to say that when God draws us in, he allows us to feel uplifted, excited and enthusiastic about the experience.  But then, God will often withdraw that feeling from us to show us that we’re not supposed to fall in love with the experience, we’re meant to fall in love with Him.

According to Fr. Barron, God puts us in a desert that can feel like a time of pure desolation.  So, what do you do?  You hang in there, you keep going, you don’t give up, you get through it.  You keep your eyes focused on God, not on your good feelings or your bad feelings.

He used the analogy of a marriage.  After the wedding day, the euphoria goes away.  You’re not supposed to fall in love with your feelings, you’re supposed to fall in love with each other, through good times and bad, for better or for worse, and so on.  “It’s the same way with religion, you’re either in the garden or you’re in the desert.  But, that’s life.  You keep your eyes focused on God.”

This was a whole new perspective worth considering.  I had to ask myself if, in the newness of my faith, I have been in love with the feeling and with the activity of being Christian?  I truly love being Catholic, but am I truly loving, and keeping my eyes focused on, God?

Enter God-moment number two.

After leaving Fr. Barron’s blog site, I continued to surf around on-line.  I came across a passage from the book That Tremendous Love by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen.  To be honest, I didn’t, and still don’t, know much about Archbishop Sheen but I have often seen references to him and to profound things he’s said.  I thought I would finally actually read something attributed to him so I read the passage:

“At the beginning one loves God for only his gifts or for the emotions He sends us. He treats us then, ‘like a young woman who is being courted.’ If gifts are no longer given in abundance after true marriage has occurred it is not because the husband’s love is less, but because it is greater. For now he gives himself. It is not the husband’s gifts that his wife loves nor his compliments, nor even the thrill of pleasure she gets from his company. She loves him. The moment the Lover is loved for Himself, then the nature of the gifts ceases to matter. If God withdraws all sensible gifts it is only because He wants the union between the soul and Himself to be more personal and less dependent on His generosity.”

Now, what do you think the chances were that I would, in the state of mind that I was in at the moment, find not one but two articles, in two totally separate locations on the internet, directly related to my acute spiritual condition of the day?  Slim to none is my first guess.  No, I believe God intended for me to find those.  He intended for me to ponder our relationship and for me to ask if I was in love with him or if I was in love with the feeling of being new in Him.  He was telling me I need to focus on Him even when I feel small and incapable of doing so.  He was telling me to not give up when the going gets tough and the environment gets dry, but to keep on going and to turn to Him for help.  He was telling me it’s nicer in the garden than it is in the desert.

Where are you, in the Garden or in the Desert?

“O my God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me … Therefore, I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost I will not fear, for You are always with me, O my dear God.” – Thomas Merton

(The post, “Are You in the Garden or in the Desert?” first appeared in Reflections of a Lay Catholic.)

How’s Your Spirituality?

13 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in Faith, Love, Prayer, Scripture

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Every six weeks or so when I see my friend, Tim, I get asked the question, “Hey, Jer, how’s your spirituality?”  The neat thing is he’s not just making small talk, he’s sincerely interested in knowing how I’m doing spiritually and is willing to jump in and give me a boost if I need it. 

The first time he asked me I was taken by surprise and didn’t know what to say, so I gave him an automatic, “Great, everything’s wonderful!” response.  The next time I was a little better prepared and, fortunately for me, I was being truthful when I said, “Man, it couldn’t be better.”  The third time he asked, I hesitated because, although I wanted to tell him everything was fantastic, I would have been lying.  Instead, I gave him a tentative look and said, “Well, actually, I’ve been going through a little dry spell lately.”  And then, true to form, he helped me talk through it and helped me get back on track.

Tim’s concern for not necessarily just my physical well being but, instead, for my spiritual health, is a good example of the type of friend I’ve made since becoming a Christian.  I have been blessed with many friends just like him. 

At some point a couple months ago I started thinking seriously about his question. “Why should I wait for him to ask me?  Why not ask myself from time to time?  And, if I take time for reflection and do a self-evaluation, how do I describe and qualify my spiritual life?  What makes it great as opposed to being only mediocre or not good at all?”

First, I thought I needed to define Spirituality.  So, I Googled the word hoping to find a dictionary but the first hit that came up was a link to the Student Wellness Center at Ohio State University (go figure?).  Their definition of Spirituality started out like this, “Spirituality is not religion and is not even necessarily affiliated with religion.”  I thought, “Hmm, the heck you say!”  Obviously, this was not going to get me close to the spirit (pun intended) of what Tim was asking.  Finally, in checking Webster’s dictionary, I found a suitable definition – “Spirituality:  The sensitivity or attachment to religious values”.  I thought, “Now, I can work with that!”.

The word “Sensitivity” lends itself towards how I feel about my religious values.  Generally, from one day to the next, I feel grateful, excited and full of hope about my faith in God, my acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Savior, and my desire to live life as He wants me to live – full of charity for, and service to, others.  It feels good to acknowledge and accept His love, and to recognize and proclaim my love in return. 

But, I have so-so days at times, too.  These are when I feel overwhelmed trying to understand everything; feeling confounded that I can’t get the pieces to fit together, which causes me to doubt; and days when life simply gets in the way and keeps me from those precious prayer moments.

Then, there are the bad days:  the days when I let my concupiscence get the upper hand; days when I let stress and aggravation cause me to feel less charitable than I ought to be and I don’t realize it until it is too late

The second part of the definition is, “Attachment to religious values”.  Unlike the feelings related to sensitivity, “Attachment” conjures up the idea of putting that acceptance into action.  Again, there seem to be different levels of qualification to this aspect.

The best days seem to include some element of showing kindness to others – there’s not much that feels better than that. I admit I feel pleased with myself when I go out of my way to help others.  Same thing for sacrificing for others – there’s just something special about it.  And then there’s prayer.  The act of telling and showing Him my love, and accepting His love, definitely produces a spiritual high.  I’ve noticed, too, the wonderful feeling, the positive self-affirmation, when I do something that appears to influence and lead others toward Christ.  I feel like I’ve earned my pay for the day.

In business it’s often said, “Some days they pay me too much and others they don’t pay me nearly enough.”  The same goes with spirituality, I think.  There are days I just don’t earn the right to feel very spiritual.  Days when I don’t act with love to others.  Times when I take out frustrations either intentionally or unintentionally on others.  And, worst of all, when I sin and I know I’m sinning but I do it anyway.  I’m thankful this doesn’t happen often but when it does it feels devastating.  When I look at those actions in retrospect, I know that Jesus is weeping for me. 

When I became Catholic, many caring friends, Tim and others, cautioned me to take it easy, to accept a certain slowness to the learning process.  Sometimes I just don’t want to go slow.  But, I think they’re right.  It’s easy to put the cart before the horse, as the saying goes, and get ahead of myself in trying to understand Christianity and trying to live it like a saint.  I kind of feel like a newbie golfer who is just learning the game but gets frustrated because he can’t shoot par.  It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that even the pros don’t always shoot par.

During this exercise of examining my spirituality I’ve learned a few other things, too.  I’ve found that when I pray, when I read the scriptures, study the bible, and associate with other men and women who do the same, I begin to understand what was in Jesus’ mind and I think I’m starting to think more like he did.  My mind is becoming renewed.  Instead of just existing in the flesh like I did for years, I have begun existing in Spirit, too.  I think my mind has reached a higher level because of its connection with the Holy Spirit. 

So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away;  behold, new things have come. – 2 Corinthians 5:17

I am so very grateful to all the people who have gently pushed me, pulled me, guided me, offered insight along the way, and waited at each way-point with open arms and a knowing smile.  I appreciate friends like Tim, the guys in my bible study group, the men and women on the Christ Renews His Parish teams, and my family who care enough about me to ask about my spirituality, my walk with God.  It’s heartening to know that, as I move ahead, you will be there for me.  God bless you all.

(The post How’s Your Spirituality? appeared first on Reflections of a Lay Catholic)

Eucharistic Adoration: One Hour of Peace, Hope and Love

09 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by in Eucharistic Adoration, Prayer

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It’s been a while since I posted anything about prayer and I think it’s about time to bring the subject up again.  I’ve been praying a lot lately for guidance and strength to get me through some difficult tasks, and for the health and well being of some people I know.  Tonight, I’m particularly looking forward to 6:00 p.m. tomorrow when I go to church for my hour of Eucharistic Adoration, that special one hour of the week when it’s just me and Jesus.

I tend to do my best praying when I’m in church and the best time to do that, I’ve found, is during that one hour a week I set aside to pray in front of the tabernacle during Eucharistic Adoration.  I look forward to the quiet time and the feeling that I am in His presence.

I mentioned in an older post that I was still getting used to praying.  I still am today.  I tend to ramble.  I need to be more succinct so I can fit it all in when I only have a short amount of time.  I have found, though, that my time in prayer is tremendously more satisfying with less pressure on myself to get it all just right when I schedule a full hour in Eucharistic Adoration once a week and take my time. 

As a Catholic I believe the bread and wine, the consecrated Hosts, are actually the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ – combined, they are the real presence of Christ.  The basis for this belief is found in Matthew 26:26-28:

“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and giving it to his disciples said, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’  Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.’”

For me, tomorrow is not just any night of Eucharistic Adoration.  It’s Adoration with the Blessed Sacrament exposed, which, in my opinion, is the most profound and satisfying way to pray.  Exposition is when the Blessed Sacrament is removed from the tabernacle and exposed for Adoration in a monstrance, a sculpture with a glass enclosure that reveals the Host. 

 

Pope Francis 1 with a monstrance

Pope Francis 1 with a monstrance

When I pray during Adoration, whether it is when the Host is exposed or not (reposed), I genuflect for most of that hour.  What is significant about an hour, you ask?  Well, that comes from when Jesus, after agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane, finds his disciples asleep.  Upon waking them, He asks Peter, “So you could not keep watch with me for one hour?” – Matthew 26:40.                            

The glory of Eucharistic Adoration is best described in the words of Blessed Pope John Paul II, “The Eucharist is a priceless treasure:  by not only celebrating it (at Mass) but also by praying before it outside of Mass we are enabled to make contact with the very wellspring of grace…We must understand that in order ‘to do’, we must first learn ‘to be’, that is to say, in the sweet company of Jesus in adoration.”

When I am in adoration I always feel a sense of calmness, of comfort, and my thoughts come to me more clearly.  I find when I am laying it all on the line to Jesus, or just having a casual one-sided conversation with Him, my thoughts flow much easier than at any other time of prayer.  Sometimes I catch myself doing all the “talking” and I have to quiet myself down and simply try to soak up the joy of being in His presence.  In author Kathleen Carroll’s words, “The best kind of friend is the one with whom you can spend time without having to say anything.  You can just share the moment and enjoy each other’s company, knowing your relationship is deeper than the spoken word.  That kind of silent communication is what takes place between you and Jesus when you participate in Eucharistic Adoration.” 

The first couple times I spent an hour in adoration I knelt the whole time and actually spent the entire hour having a one-sided conversation with Jesus.  I would run out of things to say so I would repeat myself which made me feel a little stupid. But, the more I went, the more I observed that other adorers would spend about half their time kneeling in prayer and the other half sitting and contemplating.  I asked and learned that it was okay to do that.  I also learned that it is okay to spend time simply gazing at the Host and soaking up being in the presence of Jesus.  It is okay to sit and consider the life of Christ and what he might say to you in light of your circumstances in life.  And, it is okay to just sit and listen – listen for that still small voice, that bit of clarity that will give you the direction for which you’ve been searching.  It’s okay to bring your bible and read passages from it, or your prayer book from which you might recite some prayers special to the moment.  It’s okay to write in your journal about how it feels, what is on your mind, and to record the specific things for which you are praying.  And, I have found the more I spend that one hour a week in the presence of Jesus I tend to agree more and more with Mother Teresa’s sentiments, “The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time you will spend on earth.  Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in Heaven, and will help bring about everlasting peace on earth.”

Most adults I know are married, have a significant other, and/or have children.  Imagine the sadness we would have if we couldn’t spend at least one hour a week with them, the ones we love more than any others on earth.  Then, imagine the ridiculousness of accepting that it would be okay to not schedule at least one hour a week to devote to the one’s you love the most.  Now convey that thought over to our relationship with Christ.  Can we not spend one hour per week getting to know Him better and letting Him help us get to know ourselves better?  By doing so, will we not be able to love our families and friends here on earth more fully?

If you have not had or taken the opportunity to pray during Eucharistic Adoration, I hope you give it a try.  Many parishes have Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration with continuous exposure of the Blessed Sacrament, and some, like ours, offer exposure one day per week with each week having a different day.  I’m sure you will find your hour well spent and that it will be a special time filled with the Lord’s peace, hope and love.  For those of you reading this who do participate in weekly Adoration, I pray that you will encourage others who don’t by inviting them to join you to see what they are missing.  As Fr. Sean Davidson, of the Missionaries of the Most Holy Eucharist, who visited our parish to help us get Perpetual Adoration up and running, said, “The adoration of Jesus in the Eucharist also leads to greater reverence at Mass, a deeper desire for personal holiness, and a stronger sense of union with the parish and the whole Church.”

Good night, God Bless, and may you find His Grace through your hour of Eucharistic Adoration.

(Eucharistic Adoration:  One Hour of Peace, Hope and Love, was first published on Reflections of a Lay Catholic.  Portions of this post were excerpted from Finding Grace Through Eucharistic Adoration)

Saints in a Confessional Box

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in Catholic Moral Teaching

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February 7, 2014

Saints in a Confessional Box

By Robert Barron

The Catholic Church is often criticized as rigorist, unrealistic, and unbending, especially in regard to its teaching on sexuality. How could anyone, we hear over and again, possibly live up to the Church’s demands concerning masturbation, artificial contraception, or sex outside of marriage? Moreover, every poll that comes out suggests that increasing numbers of Catholics themselves don’t subscribe to these moral demands. Few expect the Church to acquiesce to the moral laxity of the environing culture, but even many faithful Catholics think that it ought at least to soften its moral doctrine, adjust a bit to the times, become a tad more realistic.

I wonder whether I might address these questions a bit obliquely, shifting the focus from the sexual arena into another area of moral concern. The Church’s teaching on just war is just as rigorist as its teaching on sexuality. In order for a war to be considered justified, a number of criteria have to be simultaneously met. These include declaration by a competent authority, a legitimating cause, proportionality between the good to be attained and the cost of the war, that military intervention is a last resort, etc. Furthermore, in the actual waging of a war, the criteria of proportionality and discrimination have to be met. The latter means, of course, that those engaged in the war must distinguish carefully between combatants and non-combatants, targeting only the former. If these criteria are strictly applied, it is difficult indeed to find any war that is morally justifiable.

Many would hold that the Second World War met most if not all of the criteria for entering into a war, but even its most ardent moral defenders would have a difficult time justifying, in every detail, the waging of that war. For example, the carpet bombings of Dresden, Frankfurt, and Tokyo, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, certainly violated the principles of discrimination and proportionality. Even more egregious examples of this violation, of course, were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Catholic moral theology would characterize all of these actions as intrinsically evil, that is to say, incapable of being justified under any circumstances.

In the wake of the atomic bombings in 1945, the English moral philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe made the Catholic case vociferously in a number of public debates. She went so far as to protest President Harry Truman’s reception of an honorary degree at Oxford, on the grounds that a great university should not honor a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. In answer to Anscombe’s criticisms, many Americans — Catholics included — used frankly consequentialist forms of moral reasoning, arguing that the atomic bombings undoubtedly saved untold numbers of lives, both American and Japanese, and effectively brought a terrible war to an end. And I am sure that a poll of American Catholics conducted, say, in late 1945 would have revealed overwhelming support for the bombings.

But does anyone really think that the Church ought to lower its standards in regard to just war? Does anyone really think that the difficulty of following the Church’s norms in this arena should conduce toward a softening of those norms?

Here is the wonderful and unnerving truth: the Catholic Church’s job is to call people to sanctity and to equip them for living saintly lives. Its mission is not to produce nice people or people with good intentions; its mission is to produce saints, people of heroic virtue. Are the moral demands regarding warfare extravagant, over the top, or unrealistic? Well, of course they are! They are the moral norms that ought to guide those striving for real holiness. To dial down the demands because they are hard and most people have a hard time realizing them is to compromise the very meaning and purpose of the Church.

Now let us move back to the Church’s sexual morality. Is it exceptionally difficult to live up to all of the demands in this arena? Do the vast majority of people fall short of realizing the ideal? Do polls of Catholics consistently reveal that many if not most Catholics would welcome a softening of sexual norms? Sure. But none of these data prove much of anything, beyond the fact that living a heroically virtuous life is difficult. As in regard to just war, a compromising of the ideal here would represent an abdication of the Church’s fundamental responsibility of equipping the saints.

However, here is the flip-side. The Catholic Church couples its extraordinary moral demand with an extraordinarily lenient penitential system. Suppose the pilot of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (I believe he was a Catholic) came into a confessional box and, in an attitude of sincere repentance, confessed the sin of contributing to the deaths of 100,000 innocent people. The priest would certainly give him counsel and perhaps assign a severe penance, but he would then say, “I absolve you of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And that man’s sins, before God, would be wiped away. Period.

The Church calls people to be not spiritual mediocrities, but great saints, and this is why its moral ideals are so stringent. Yet the Church also mediates the infinite mercy of God to those who fail to live up to that ideal (which means practically everyone). This is why its forgiveness is so generous and so absolute. To grasp both of these extremes is to understand the Catholic approach to morality.

Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary.

Saints in a Confessional Box.