Some thoughts about the battle with temptation

More random thoughts, this time about temptation and the spiritual battle that we all must face.

Lord, free me from the desires that lead to darkness.

Jesus tempted by Satan and ministered to by the angels: The icon of my life.

By going through life blissfully ignoring the fact that we are being lured by Satan, we also blot out the reality that we are being ministered to by angels.

Sometimes I am so torn. Pulled in this direction and then in its opposite. At times my heart swells within me and I yearn to soar into the heavens and to that realm which transcends all human existence. Other times, I am rooted in earth, in things below, and the angel of Satan tries to throw me to the ground, and all my life is about is the darkness, the weakness, the woundedness.  

Can it be that only by feeding my soul can the hunger of the wounded beast be calmed?

Those things in my life that have brought me true joy, true peace, true love, these have been the matters of soul and spirit. Those parts of my life which have brought me fleeting moments of pleasure have passed by quickly and, for the most part, have left me feeling empty and alone and unfulfilled in the core of my being. 

Since you have been raised up in company with Christ, ask Him to help you use the pains and the trials in your life as opportunities to grow, to learn, so that you don't wallow in self-pity and anger that in the long run are more painful than the crosses Christ asks us to bear. 

Since you have been raised up in company with Christ, let your eyes and ears feast on what fills you with joy that lasts, rather than on what brings you pleasure that quickly fades away."

Surround yourself with beauty, because it will help heal what is not beautiful in your life. Look at things that direct you to God. Look at things that direct you to what is best in yourself.

God bless you!

Random Thoughts (Abandonment to Aliveness)

Monday, October 10, 2016

Here are some random thoughts from a collection I’m working on.

Abandonment

Because of my own sin, I have cut myself off from Him, and then I accuse Him of abandoning me.  

 

Abortion

Hell hates goodness. It sneers at it. It lashes out at it. It tears children from their mothers' wombs and then convinces the lawmakers to call it legal. Who knows how many potential Mother Theresa's we have lost, and how hell has rejoiced to see their light extinguished? 

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve's sin was that after they listened to the serpent, they made their decision without ever going back to God to get His side of the story.  

Adultery

The new valued more highly than a lifelong matrix of relationships and responsibilities.  

Addiction

“I am the Lord your God. Have no other gods before me.”   What happens to our lives when our chief sources of motivation, satisfaction and delight are things that are toxic to our souls? That is what addiction is about, and addiction is a spiritual sickness that needs to be treated by spiritual means.  

Aging

The time when our prowess has run its course, a time when our strength is on the wane, strength that was never really ours but only lent to us for a moment for the good of others, the time when we can feel the pain of not being able to do what once came to us so easily. The sages tell us that what we need to learn to do to prepare for such times is to exercise our strength without over-identifying with it. And then to let go. We are also warned by the sages that if we fail to learn this lesson, we risk becoming bitter old people, cursing life, cursing faith, because we placed all our self-worth in our own abilities rather than in who we are. 

Jesus tells Peter of the nature of his death: When you are older you will be tied fast and carried off against your will.  Many of us, as we grow older, begin to see this as a prediction of our own deaths, because to a great extent the process of again carries with it a gradual loss of freedom. Pray we remember that, when our time comes.  

Aliveness

When I give without strings, when I serve without seeking praise or recompense, when I let God use me and delight in watching his power at work, when I decrease and see Him increase, when my focus is on his goodness rather than on my own iniquity, when I listen to the other and not to my own mind’s infernal chatter, it is then that I am most alive, most energetic, most truly myself.

When I live out the words, “He who loses himself for my sake will save it--will discover who he is”--then I have learned that the most real way of living is to live in the truth of the challenge.   

Some more next time.

God bless you!

Don't mess with the Blessed Mother

Friday, October 07, 2016

The Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

I remember a time in high school when the class bully along with his “crew” had threatened to do me great harm after school whenever they saw me. For several days I managed to slip out the door as soon as the bell rang and run home from school by a secret route. Needless to say, I was living in constant fear, and as the school day was coming to an end, my anxiety was almost unbearable.

Finally, after several days of running and hiding, I gave up. That night, I said a rosary asking the Blessed Mother to help me. I prayed as fervently as I was able at that time in my development. The next day I went to school and lo and behold, the bully was absent! It turns out that he had come down with Scarlet Fever or something like that. It was an ailment that kept him out of school for two entire weeks. When finally, he returned to school, for some reason his vendetta had evaporated and he and his friends troubled me no more.

My motto from that day on was, “It’s not nice to mess with the Blessed Mother.”

I always remember this story on the day we honor Our Lady of the Rosary, October 7.

Perhaps you have stories of your own to tell about the power of the Rosary prayer in your own life. Reflect on these things today, and give thanks.

Inspired by yesterday’s Gospel Passage (“ask, seek, knock”), perhaps you might pray your rosary today for a special need or intention which you carry your heart but have neglected to ask for, or for a person who is suffering whom you might unite with the sufferings of Christ as you pray the Sorrowful Mysteries today. Today, I will pray for that bully, wherever he is.

God bless you! Have a nice weekend!

Don't give up asking: a quick exercise in prayer

Thursday, October 06, 2016

Today’s Gospel passage for Mass, Luke 11:5-13, contains some of the most encouraging words of Our Lord Jesus Christ, words that we need to be continually reminded of because we tend to forget, or to doubt, or to deny:

. . . ask and you will receive;

seek and you will find;

knock and the door will be opened to you.

So why not move away from the paper or the screen and close your eyes, and ask for those things which you have forgotten to ask for, those things which you have given up asking for, the things you don’t think you are worthy to ask for, or those things which you feel are barred to you forever. Take Jesus at his word: ask, seek, find. Please do it now . . .

. . . . .

Very good. Now if you took the time to do this little exercise, then you will have practiced lectio divina at its best. (lectio divina is a particular way of praying with the scriptures and is practiced regularly by monks and members of many other religious orders.)

Just a couple of suggestions for you now:

·         Some things take time, and we are impatient.

·         Some things are part of an on-going process and we have to observe it and see it through to its end;

·         Some things may take a lifetime to be realized.

·         Many of things we ask for are given to us, but often at a time or in a manner which we didn’t think of ourselves or which we would rather not have chosen. So pray also that you may have the wisdom to keep your eyes open that you may see the wonders of God’s work in your life, today especially, and always.

·         In all things, trust and patience are essential. If either of these is lacking, then pray for an increase and make that a part of your regular prayer as well.

God bless you today and always!

Two brief questions

Two brief questions to ponder and that will be all for today:

When you are in balance,

     what is different

          from when you are not?

When you are centered,

     what emerges that cannot be sensed

     in the midst of the whirlwind?

God bless you!

You are both good and not-so-good

We have been conditioned somehow to think of many things in terms of black and white, turning things into polar opposites. Another way of saying this is that we are often addicted to either/or thinking: something is either right or wrong, either good or bad, either saint or sinner, either holy or evil, either introvert or extrovert, either progressive or conservative, either lightness or darkness.

In truth, however, we are living in a world where things are gray, not black or white. We, too, are a mixture of both good and not-so-good (I don’t want to color it by saying “bad” or “evil”). We have strengths and weaknesses, we have victories and losses, we practice virtues and we fall in times of temptation, we are charitable and selfish, we are strong and weak, we have done things we are proud of and things that we are ashamed of.

And God loves us with all of this. And God is in all of this. And God works through all of this, all of the time.

God is also just and merciful, and this seeming contradiction is hard for us to reconcile at times. The most eloquent statement of the pair is one offered by Richard Rohr in his book, Things Hidden: Scripture and Spirituality which I have often recommended and which I recommend again, because I am re-reading it and finding great wealth in it.

Rohr puts it this way: “. . . every time God forgives or shows mercy, God is breaking God’s own rules and showing terrible inconsistency” (p. 20). How many times have we been called inconsistent and we want to stamp our feet in frustration because the one accusing us simply doesn’t get it, simply doesn’t get us. Because we are all inconsistent in one way or another.

So anyway, God, as I said, works with all of this and we do not have to pretend we are all good and holy people. That is the posture of the self-impressed (and self-deluded) hypocrite. That is the worldview of the Pharisee. That is the folly and pomposity of many of our religious leaders, which is why so many of us find Pope Francis to be so refreshing, and so many of our contemporary religious leaders find him so hard to take. (And when I hear of these things, all I can think of is the battlefield between Jesus and the Pharisees, do vividly depicted in the Gospels, especially in the Gospel of John).

Study the Bible and take consolation in the fact that so many of the characters and “heroes” in Scripture are also inconsistent mixtures of black and white. Rohr puts it this way, and I find this to be a very consoling passage:

In the Bible we see God using the very wounded lives of very ordinary people, who would never have passed the tests of later roman canonization processes. Moses, Deborah, Elijah and Paul were at least complicit in murdering; David was both and adulterer and a liar; there were rather neurotic prophets like Ezekiel, Obadiah and Jeremiah; an entire history of ridiculously evil kings and warriors—yet all these are the ones God works with. (p. 17)

And, my friends, God works with you and through you.

God bless you!

Most of the world is suffering today.

Monday, October 3, 2016

The Gospel passage for today’s Mass is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus deliberately makes the hero of the story, the one who cares for the victim of robbers, to be a member of a religious sect hated by the Jews. The enmity between the two sects is displayed elsewhere in the Gospel. Last week, we heard about how Jesus and his followers were blocked from entering a Samaritan town because they were Jews. So the ill-will went both ways.

We can think of many situations in our own troubled world where the same intense racial and/or religious bigotry is rampant, and more often than not at the root of violence and destruction. It seems as if this is a time in history when the demons of hatred are exercising an awful lot of power, which is why we should be praying the prayer to Saint Michael with special urgency and fervor these days:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle,
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil;
may God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do you, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits
who prowl around  the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen!

Now, a couple of observations about the parable itself:

·         There have been stories in the news about Muslims protecting and caring for Christians, here and elsewhere, or about Christians caring for Muslims. This is a good example of the parable made contemporary.

·         Note especially that the parable contains examples of religious bigotry itself, as the Jewish officials leave the victim lying in the ditch.

·         How are you the victim? And who comes to care for you? God Himself is the good Samaritan, caring for and loving all the people on the earth, not merely those of a certain religion, race or sect.

·         Are we sometimes like those who passed by the suffering victim without doing anything to help.

·         Notice that the Samaritan cares for the victim and pays for his continued care out of his own pocket, and promises to return at a later date, perhaps to see how the wounded man is doing. Would we do that?

·         Notice the economics of the parable, and the trust between the Samaritan and the inn-keeper. Would such a financial arrangement even be possible in our day? Could we be that trusting?

Just a few observations for reflection today. Please continue to pray for peace in our world. Do you realize that here in 2016, most of the people in the world are in dire straits due to war, hatred, injustice and economic oppression? How lucky we are. And, as the Lord has told us, “to whom much is given, much will be expected.”

Let us pray for the grace to do our part.

God bless you!