In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity (Jeremiah 31:31-34) every person can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so may you be pleased to find here a variety of helps to the life of faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
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Jesus
calls us to consider our life as a relationship of faith through Him with the
Father as we receive our life from the Father as a gift moment by moment. We
provide our willingness to be open to God to know and do his will, and the Holy
Spirit draws us into the communion of the Holy Trinity. Our activity and concerns
are not distractions from God’s love but opportunities to live by his grace and
empowerment. Within our deepest desires we can ask the Holy Spirit to show us
how the Word of God sheds light on our life at every moment. We take time to
allow the Holy Spirit to train us in this spiritual skill, avoiding drudgery
and remaining vital and empowered by God’s grace to become holy and bear the
fruits of love and mercy, justice and peace.
FOLLOWING JESUS – We resist all other voices that would distract us from obeying and loving God
The first meaning of “disciplines” is not rigorous
tasks or punishment but developing and using our faith life skills as disciples
of Jesus. What is Christian discipleship anyway? It is simply coming to Jesus
and following Him who is sent out of love by the Father to us personally and to
all of us together to lead us into the life and love of God the Father in the
Holy Spirit. To put it the most simply, to follow Jesus is to allow Him to lead
us into the intimate life and love of the Holy Trinity. This is a taste of
Heaven on Earth. God instils in us divine grace or energy of love to empower us
to put sinful ways behind us and walk in God’s ways as Jesus did. Disciples
follow Jesus and learn from watching Him. We too are called to learn from Jesus
first but also from others who follow Him. Jesus guides us to live with our
whole being awake to the truth that all is gift from our Creator and to turn
the focus of our will away from selfish concerns in order to love and serve
others. It is in living oriented to others out of love that we experience
abundant life as our Creator desires for us all. This is our Christian rule of
life with trust in the Father, obedience to Jesus as Lord, and docility to the
Holy Spirit. Thus we live through our days, and sleep at night, in God’s
company rather than try to do it all on our own.
BACK TO GOD, DOUBTS, TROUBLES, STRUGGLES, PRAYER & FAQ
ABOUT DESIRE – Here is some of what St. Augustine wrote to Proba:
“Why he should ask us to pray, when he
knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realize that
our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know
it) but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we
may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great
indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is why we
are told: Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke with unbelievers.
The
deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger
will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed. No eye
has seen it; it has no color. No ear has heard it; it has no sound. It has not
entered man’s heart; man’s heart must enter into it.
In this faith, hope and love we pray always with unwearied desire. However, at set times and seasons we also pray to God in words, so that by these signs we may instruct ourselves and mark the progress we have made in our desire, and spur ourselves on to deepen it. The more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruit. When the Apostle tells us: Pray without ceasing, he means this: Desire unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and ask it of him who alone is able to give it.”
SPIRITUALITY – Christian disciplines – a more deliberate effort to follow the Lord Jesus
To achieve life goals we need to select appropriate means. For our life
of faith we do well to learn from the disciplines our Teacher Jesus practiced
and invites us to practice; so that in following Him we may allow Him to guide
us into the abundant life the Father desires for us, our spouse, and our
family. In the "Karate Kid" movie the master has the boy do manual
labour for certain moves to strengthen specific muscles to discipline karate
stances and moves. It is like this in the discipline of the Catholic Christian
faith. The Mass, the Bible, the Rosary, and other forms of prayer draw us more personally
into the life and mystery of the Holy Trinity.
DISCIPLINE – with our eyes on the goal we choose appropriate means to get there and practice them….
In – Disciplines for Christian Living – Fr. Thomas Ryan, CSP, a Paulist priest, reflects on the value for each Christian of developing discipline for a more abundant and satisfying life of faith in the life areas of:
1.
friendship
& family life (the value of cultivating real
connections with a few friends and with the members of our family wherever this
is possible),
2.
living
with a Sabbath rhythm (trying to rest – to pray and play
including Sunday worship – for one whole day in connection with the Lord’s Day),
3.
exercise
& play (our bodies were made to be active and an effective
way to manage our moods is to engage in gratuitous exercise, unlike intense
training, on a regular basis with the whole body in motion),
4.
prayerful
presence (prayer is really visiting with God, with the three
divine Persons, and we can do that formally at prayer time but also informally
during each activity of our day, like thinking of loved ones),
5.
fasting
(allowing the body to get in sync with the hunger and thirst in our soul to be
more aware of God),
6.
service (one
of the best ways to avoid excessive preoccupation with ourselves is to serve
others with all of our attention focused in love for those we are serving,
attending tenderly to them), and
7. vision of Christian faith (accepting to let Jesus open up within us his own wide view of life and love – St. Pope John Paul II spoke and wrote about living our life like Jesus according to the “law of the gift”, that is, filled with God’s love and life we have the power to live our life as a gift for others like Jesus).
The "duty
of the moment" – the great commandment of charity – love of God,
of neighbour, and of self is a call not to remain indifferent but to allow
ourselves to be moved, troubled, lifted up or cast down by others and what they
are going through; just as Jesus did. As we rejoice with those who rejoice and
weep with those who weep and show mercy; God fills us with his peace. As we walk
in the Lord’s ways we avoid selfishness, jealousy, or feeling sorry for
ourselves and trust rather in God to show us the way and provide for our
needs.
God is
mysterious; so we need to allow Him to “tame” our wild and disordered spirit. As
we “learn to keep God’s company” in a free exchange of mind and heart with the
Holy Trinity, we enter into a sleep that remains contemplative all night and
wake up refreshed and joyful. We needn’t worry about how this works but simply
trust in the Holy Trinity to sustain us in a life of communion with them and
with all living beings.
Jesus of
Nazareth called the Christ, the Lord, revealed for all time to humanity that 3
divine Persons together are the one and only divine being we call God and are
ever present. The only place in the universe, in all of creation, where they
can be absent is in the human soul when an individual turns away from God and
delves into sin, any refusal of the divine will, denial of love and its
demands, or any thought, word, act, or behaviour that is evil, an offence
against God, others, the goodness of creation, or life itself.
Serious sins are
various forms of selfishness that use other people as objects and deny or
denigrate the other's goodness and dignity created by God, simultaneously debasing
and estranging the sinner from peace and the communion of God's love. We are
constantly in need of seeking forgiveness, reconciliation, and conversion from
God through confession in order to avoid the great danger of hardness /
coldness of heart.
Avoid being
bored by taking interest in others rather than waiting for someone else to make
things happen. Dispel the impulse to escape the present and run after any
number of things. Draw on your inner freedom and deliberately spend time and
invest energy and interest in others, in God, in what you are doing. Participate
as fully and as often as you can in the words and rituals of the Holy Eucharist
and every other Liturgy and prayer as gifts from the Holy Spirit to draw us to
the Father through Jesus. Much grace comes to us through God's
inspired Psalms / prayers in
the Bible: e.g. Psalm
112 – “The happiness of the just man.”
In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity (Jeremiah 31:31-34) every person can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so may you be pleased to find here a variety of helps to the life of faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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