Catholicism, holiness and spirituality

The Other 6

Loyola Communications has come up with a nice little web site called The Other 6 - www.other6.com; The Other 6, as in the other six days of the week aside from Sunday. Its aim is to give people a place to share their answers to two questions: Where have I found God today, and Where do I need to find God today? For those who do or have done the daily examen, these are familiar questions.

The messages appear as bubbles; light colored bubbles for those who respond with a need to find God in their day, and darker bubbles for those who are sharing where they found God in their day. The size of the bubble gives an indication to the number of comments and responses to a person's message. When you mouse-over the bubble, you can see the message; if you click on the bubble then you can add your response.

I like this site on two levels. First, it's visually appealing and fun to work with. Second, it gives people a place to reflect on God's work in their daily lives. So, as you reflect on your day, how would you answer those questions? Feel free to leave answers over at www.other6.com.   

Living & Suffering

Here's another little part of Karl Rahner's work 'Encounters with Silence' that spoke to me recently:

Only knowledge gained through experience, the fruit of living and suffering, fills the heart with the wisdom of love, instead of crushing it with the disappointment of boredom and final oblivion. It is not the results of our own speculation, but the golden harvest of what we have lived through and suffered through, that has the power to enrich the heart and nourish the spirit. And all the knowledge we have acquired through study can do no more than give us some little help in meeting the problems of life with an alert and ready mind.

Karl Rahner, from Encounters with Silence

It's the experience of living - with it's ups & downs, successes and failures - that
leads to more wisdom and love. I can't 'think' my way into it, though such a safe, contained and controlled approach seems attractive. That's challenging for me, to make that jump from mental to physical, to risk putting knowledge to work.

Only in love

This reflection, a prayer I suppose, on finding God through love has caught my attention. I'm a thinking person, but no level of thinking will really get me close to God. Letting the love inside us - which is God - act in our lives is what Rahner says will get us closer to God. I like that.

Only in love can I find You, my God. In love the gates of my soul spring open, allowing me to breath a new air of freedom and forget my own petty self. In love my whole being streams forth out of the rigid confines of narrowness and anxious self-assertion, which make me a prisoner of my own poverty and emptiness. In love all the powers of my soul flow out toward You, wanting never more to return, but to lose themselves completely in You, since by Your love You are the inmost center of my heart, closer to me than I am to myself.

Karl Rahner, from Encounters with Silence

Peace & Tranquility

Something we easily, and often forget:

If you seek peace and tranquility, you will certainly not find them so long as you have a cause for disturbance and turmoil within yourself.

St Ignatius of Loyola

Service to Others

At Mass today, our priest had a great sermon. Part of his reflection was about this wonderful prayer from St Ignatius:

Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
    to give and not to count the cost,
    to fight and not to heed the wounds,
    to toil and not to seek for rest,
    to labor and not to ask for reward,
    save that of knowing that I do your will.

It fits nicely with today's Gospel: Serving God and others, with the only reward that of knowing I am doing God's will. How great it would be to walk through life, day by day, with that attitude.

Wealth and Eternal Life

The rich man and the eye of the needle – this Gospel passage from Mark 10:17-30 hits close to home for me. I’ve kept the commandments, but do I really have to go sell everything I own and give the proceeds to the poor if I am to have eternal life?

Compared to pretty much all the rest of the world, those of us in the US, Europe and other developed countries are rich. In much of the world a few thousand dollars will get someone a house to live in; in my part of the country it will make a payment, maybe two, on a 30-year mortgage. There is some poverty in our developed countries, and people do struggle financially from time to time, but I think in the terms Jesus is talking about, we’re wealthy.

Society defines us by our wealth and material possessions, even more so in an election year as political consultants slice and dice the demographics. What part of town do we live in? What do we drive, what do we wear? Where do we shop, what do we buy, and where do the kids go to school? How much did our house cost? And we make the comparisons all the time; it’s part of how we define ourselves and others.

But then Jesus says all that gets in the way; to have eternal life I have to sell it all. It’s tempting to say that he didn’t mean this literally, that he was using it as a way to tell me something about my relationship with material possessions and wealth. Maybe so; but then which things do I take literally vs. figuratively? Jesus said some tough things, and it’s easy to keep the tough ones at arm’s-length while embracing the easier, more politically/socially acceptable ones literally.

A supportive family, good education, hard work and some lucky breaks have all come together to bring me a rewarding and lucrative career. There have been ups and downs, but the ups have far outpaced the downs. At times, I’ve basked in the status and the wealth this career brought, and it never fails that when I do that I get led astray, away from God. That’s the danger that wealth and possessions bring – before we realize it, they are guiding our lives and dictating our actions in ways that don’t always line up with the Gospel. Yet, we live in a material world.

This material world – and my actions within it – can glorify God. That’s why God created all this in the first place. It’s essential to have the right orientation towards it all; as St Ignatius said:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory,
    my understanding, and my entire will.
All I have and call my own.
Whatever I have or hold, you have given me.
I return it all to you and surrender it wholly
    to be governed by your will.
Give me only your love and your grace
    and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more.

Patient Trust

From one of my favorite Jesuits, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
   to reach the end without delay.
We would like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
   unknown, something new.
And yet, it is the law of all progress
   that it is made by passing through
   some stages of instability -
   and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
   your ideas mature gradually - let them grow,
   let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
   as though you could be today what time,
   (that is to say, grace and circumstances
   acting on your own good will)
   will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
   gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
   that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
   in suspense and incomplete.

This is  from the wonderful little prayer book titled Hearts on Fire: Praying with the Jesuits. It's a great book - highly recommended.

Principles and Foundations

As I was reflecting on week 3 of the Online Retreat this morning, I reworded in my mind the abbreviated principle and foundation first put forth by Ignatius. I personalized it, and that made the impact more personal too. Here's my personal version:

I was created by God to praise, reverence and serve God, and in this way to save my soul. God created everything else to help me achieve that.

Wow, when I look at it that way, I feel pretty special. The version from the online retreat is:

God created us
to praise, reverence and serve God
and in this way to save our souls.
God created all of the rest of creation
to help us achieve the purpose for which
God created us.

A more recent version, from the book 'Ignatius of Loyola' (a great book), goes like this:

Human beings are created to praise, reverence and serve God our Lord, and by means of this to save their souls.

The other things on the face of the earth are created for human beings, to help them toward the end for which they are created.

The older version from the widely-used translation by Elder Mullan, SJ, goes like this:

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.

Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.

And the other things on the face of the earth are created for man and that they may help him in prosecuting the end for which he is created.

Any way it is worded, this is one of my favorite things Ignatius ever wrote.

Smiling

One of my favorite one-liners from Anthony de Mello, SJ:

Behold God beholding you ... and smiling.

Just a little contemplation to start the day.

Perfect Resignation

Flipping through the pages of my Jesuit prayer book (Hearts on Fire) I came across this one that I thought would be good to share:

My God, I do not know what must come to me today.
But I am certain that nothing can happen to me
that you have not foreseen, decreed, and ordained from all eternity.
That is sufficient for me.
I adore your impenetrable and eternal designs,
to which I submit with all my heart.
I desire, I accept them all, and I unite my sacrifice
to that of Jesus Christ, my divine Savior.
I ask in his name and through his infinite merits,
patience in my trials, and perfect and entire submission
to all that comes to me by your good pleasure.
   Amen.

St Joseph Pignatelli, SJ

This one really speaks to me. Resignation has such a bad connotation most times. Here it is not a fatalistic sort of resignation, but one of acceptance. Accepting God's plan, providence, and love for us in the face of uncertainty, turmoil and struggle... that's often difficult for me to do. Maybe it's not a matter of doing, but of not doing.