Advent

Until He comes again!

Posted on by MSFriend
Until He comes again!
Until He comes again!

Today we begin a new season in the liturgical year – Advent.  It’s actually the beginning of a new year in the liturgical calendar, so Happy New Year!  In the past I’ve written about some of the beautiful Advent traditions of the Catholic Church (check them out by typing “advent” in the “categories” section and my previous posts should come up).  I’ve written about ways to prepare for Christmas – Jesus’ first coming.  Today I’d like to focus on ways to prepare for Jesus’ second coming.

Just two days ago the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of St. Andrew, one of Jesus’ first disciples.    I sat and read the Gospel for the day (Matthew 4:18-22 and decided to do a lectio divina.  At first glance I thought, there’s not much to chew on here – Jesus says to Peter, Andrew, James and John, “come follow me.”  He says the same to us.  Done, right?  NOT!  I wasn’t giving up without a fight, I knew there was more to glean, so I kept at it.  Sure enough the Holy Spirit provided, as it usually does.  I asked myself, what did it take for these 4 men to give up everything they knew, all of their comforts, to follow Jesus at the drop of a net?  It took faith, sacrifice and trust.

Faith

Peter, Andrew, James and John had not only heard of Jesus, they personally witnessed His power.  Shortly thereafter they were called and followed.   They must have believed that Jesus was “the Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  God said “listen to Him” and they DID.  They possessed the faith they needed to make the Trinity a priority in their lives.

Sacrifice

Talk about sacrifice!  I would find it very difficult to walk away from my family – no questions asked.  Could I “drop my net” and leave my loved ones in the middle of the sea without asking questions?  Probably not.   I would need answers. Even when I got answers, I’m not so sure they’d be enough to leave it all behind.

Trust

How obvious the trust these men had in the Lord!   They heard His voice, they listened and they followed.  They knew nothing about what to expect, they knew nothing about where they were going and they knew nothing about when or even if they would return to their normal lives.  What they DID know was that this man they called Jesus was worth following and that He would not steer them wrong!  

Advent

This Advent I would like to take a different approach to the season.  Actually, I’d like to add my own tradition to the beautiful traditions of the Church.  I’m still going to patiently wait to decorate for Christmas.  I’m still going to focus on the reason for the season. I’ll pray with my Advent wreath and Jesse Tree.  However, I will also take stock of how much faith and trust I have in the Lord and how much I sacrifice to follow Him.  

 Advent is one of my favorite seasons. I absolutely love preparing for the coming of Jesus.  I literally feel like I’m sprucing up my house for a special guest to arrive on Christmas day and in a way, I am.   However, reading Matthew’s Gospel made me think of something else.  As Christians we believe that Jesus will come again, right? So how am I preparing my “house” for His second coming?  How am I preparing my soul for Jesus to take residence there?  In keeping with the theme of faith, sacrifice and trust, here’s what I’m thinking.

Practicing DEEP faith

This week, in his homily on the Feast of St. Andrew, the deacon talked about some powerful words the Bishop uses during ordinations.  While holding the book of the Gospels together with the priest or deacon to be ordained the Bishop says “believe what you read, teach what you believe, practice what you teach.”  Isn’t that what deep faith is all about? 

This Advent maybe we can think about whether we TRULY believe what we read in the Gospels. Do we read them enough?  Do we teach what we believe?  Teaching what we believe looks different for everyone, but how are we teaching what we believe?  Is it even important to us to teach what we believe? More importantly, is there integrity in our teaching?  In other words, are we practicing what we’re teaching?

Being counter-cultural

In today’s world and especially during the season of Advent (which the world mistakenly believes to be the Christmas season) –  sacrifice is not on anyone’s mind – in fact, overindulgence is.  So how can we sacrifice for Christ this season? We wait more, we spend less in order to teach what we believe – that the reason for the season is Christ, not gift exchange.  How can we sacrifice the rest of the year?  By stepping out of our comfort zone and doing more for Christ even when it’s inconvenient, even when we have our sights on something else.

Surrender all

This is a tough one.  Trust goes hand in hand with surrender.  How difficult that is for us humans, especially if we’ve been “graced” with the need to control.  These past few months I have been actively focusing on trusting the Lord with my life.  I believe it has everything to do with the book I just finished reading entitled Forty Weeks (I know I keep mentioning it but it has changed my life).  

So for me, in order to focus on trusting more, I have to make a conscious effort to invite the Holy Spirit into my daily life.  I have to invite the Holy Spirit into my prayer, into my thoughts and into my decision making.  This is not easy, but it CAN be done.  We just have to be aware, awake and conscious of the present. We cannot let ourselves be distracted with worry, anxiety or thoughts of the past or the future.  

Will you join me this Advent season?  Will you slow down and take stock of how well you are preparing your soul for the coming of Christ? How deep is your faith?  Are you willing to sacrifice for the one who sacrificed for you?  Will you trust that whatever He wills for you is infinitely better than anything you can ever control into being for yourself?  What are you going to do until He comes again? God bless you!

Faithful is the one who calls you!

Posted on by MSFriend

The one who calls you is faithful!
Gaudete Sunday!

The one who calls you is faithful and He will also accomplish it!  This Gaudete Sunday we hear the words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians:

“Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing.  In all circumstances, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.  Do not quench the Spirit.  Do not despise prophetic utterances.  Test everything, retain what is good.  Refrain from every kind of evil.  May the God of peace himself make you perfectly holy and may you entirely, spirit, soul and body, be preserved blameless for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  THE ONE WHO CALLS YOU IS FAITHFUL, AND HE WILL ACCOMPLISH IT!  Brothers, pray for us too!”

When I heard these words being proclaimed yesterday evening, tears welled up in my eyes because I thought:  “There’s still hope for me.”  Lord knows I try very hard to be as holy as I can in all aspects of my life.  However, no matter how hard I try I often fall short.  There are things that I think, say and do on a daily basis that are so far removed from what Jesus taught and did.  There’s the judgment, the anger, the laziness, the sharp tongue, the ego, the selfishness.  I guess you can say the harder I try, the fiercer the storm of temptations.  The worse part of it all is they often win.  So what am I to do?

Paul’s words to the Thessalonians gave me a clue and coincides with what I read and discussed with my prayer group this week.  In his book, Into the Silent Land, Martin Baird, talks about our wounds – one of which is temptation.  Would you believe  he talks about the “benefit” of temptation?  The general idea of this section in the book is that God is closest to us in our wounds.  Therefore, we should not run away or dismiss our temptations, failures and wounds.

Richard Rohr, in his most recent book, Just This, discusses the very idea of God being closest to us in our wounds.  He writes:  

“There can be no infilling unless we have made room for it.  Emptying out must precede all filling up, and in equal measure.  God as Trinity revealed this as the very shape of God and all things created in this image continue the same movement.  In other words, vulnerability and power are in an eternal exchange.  They produce and need one another.  

In the human sphere, vulnerability shows itself as wound, grief, or desire.  These are the primary ways that we make room for the Divine Infilling that is always ready and waiting to move into any open and inviting space.  Just as nature abhors a vacuum, God waits for any spiritual vacuum and rushes to enter it.  God never comes uninvited, unneeded, or undesired.  Even Mary’s “yes” seems to have been necessary.  

When we gradually learn to live the pattern of the Trinity, we see that God is both All Mighty and All Vulnerable, in equal measure.  This alone allows us to deal with the full human situation – and know that God is not watching suffering, or even just allowing it, but is somehow actually a part of it!”

Let me get back to the benefits of temptation.  How exactly do our temptations benefit us?  Truly an “aha” moment for me and something I’m looking forward to practicing.

You see…….it’s in our human nature to think, think, think!  It’s the incessant chatter in our minds that everyone is talking about these days.  It’s thinking without ceasing and it’s often automatic.  We are usually operating on autopilot and it’s the autopilot that offers the opportunity for us to give in to temptation.  However, if we start to become aware of our thoughts and temptations we can begin to work on overcoming them instead of giving in to them.  We can do this by approaching every waking moment as we do our practice of contemplation.

Everything I  read about the practice of contemplation advises one  to sit in silence without allowing thoughts to distract the practice.  They recommend  adopting a prayer word.  The prayer word allows one to let go of thoughts and remain focused on God.  The prayer word can be as short as one word, like God, Jesus or love and as long as Jesus, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner.  This is a centuries old practice that has worked  for many contemplatives.  Not only can it work for our own practice of sitting, but Martin Laird suggests we adapt it to our daily life.  In THIS way we pray without ceasing as Paul suggests in his letter.  Wow!  Our temptations “benefit” us by leading us to pray without ceasing!  Amazing!

That’s just what Jesus did in the desert.  He was tempted several times by the devil.  However, He didn’t make conversation with the devil, He didn’t entertain the shenanigans and he didn’t give in to the temptation.  What DID Jesus do? He recited Scripture!   It was His defense and it was how he overcame the temptation.  That’s what we can do as well.  The minute you become aware of a temptation to judge, to become angry, jealous, etc. recite your prayer word.

Whenever your ego gets the best of you and you’re tempted to respond to someone in a way that’s not Christ like, think of your prayer word.  It might also help to think about this before you speak:  is what I’m about to say kind, true or necessary? (I didn’t come up with this myself, I heard or read it somewhere).  This is how we can pray without ceasing – by turning our unceasing thoughts (which are usually temptations) into prayer!  Amen!

Just as important as praying without ceasing is our thirst for something more.  We must never grow complacent or comfortable in our prayer life.  There is something to be said about routine but with routine comes the danger of distraction.  If you’re comfortable with your prayer life, if it’s grown to be a routine that  you rarely even notice, then maybe it’s time for a change.  Do you feel like you know enough about the faith that there’s nothing else to learn?  Are you so closed-minded that you believe there’s nothing more to learn from others?  Don’t be fooled.  Paul tells us:  test everything, retain what is good and more importantly do not quench the Spirit!

We are all on a journey toward holiness.  Too often on the journey we become disappointed with ourselves because it seems like we take one step forward and two steps back.  The reality is we are called to be “perfectly holy.”  St. Paul tells us that the one who calls us is faithful and He will accomplish it. As impossible as it may seem, we WILL be perfectly holy one day.  Our wounds and failures are going to help get us there.  Thanks be to God!

O Wisdom of our God most high, guiding creation with power and love, come to teach us the path of knowledge!  God bless you!