Christian Disciplines and Life Skills for Roman Catholics

In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity, as reported in Jeremiah 31:31-34, every human being 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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Developing Christian Disciplines / Life Skills as Roman Catholics

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.

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. 

FOOD FOR THE CHRISTIAN – as an infant on mother’s breast we feed on God hour by hour, day by day

PRACTISING THE PRESENCE OF GOD & RECONCILIATION – ANTIDOTE TO BOREDOM

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.” 

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In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity, as reported in Jeremiah 31:31-34, every human being 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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© 2006-2023 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2006-2023 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC 

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