Spiritual Opportunity

As people of faith it is often easy to get caught up in our own self and fail to see the simplicity of the world around.  Looking around at other faiths and cultures can allow you to bring aspects of it to your own faith to grow deeper in your own walk with God.  I am not talking about doctrine level stuff or changing faith but incorporating ascetic practices to deepen your faith.  Do so with caution so you do not break any of the rules of your own faith. 

An example being that I recently took a vacation to Lancaster Pennsylvania .  It did the touristy stuff but one of the highlights of my trip was the Amish buggy ride.   For 45 minutes I was one of those tourists in the back of the buggy being driving around the countryside gawking at the farms.   My particular ride was guided by a remarkable Amish woman named Rachael.  During our ride she told of her life, family and the Amish community.  During my ride along the county side I realized that I was having a moment of “spiritual opportunity”.   Listening to Rachael talk about family, community and simplicity, God was inviting me to take concepts of the Amish life and apply it to my own life.  I was not being called to cut off my power and trade in my car for a buggy, or to even learn more about the tenants of the Amish religion.  God was inviting me to do and inventory of my live and see if I was living as simply as I could or if I could do better in little ways. 

These spiritual opportunities are all around us if we are aware enough to recognize them.  We have them in the Catholic tradition in the writings of the saints.  St. Therese invites to follow the “little way” and other saints invite us into their own spirituality.  But these spiritual opportunities can be found every day in nature and in life.   They may not be profound; they may be small nudges that help us redirect our spiritual compass back towards Jesus.  I encourage you to find spiritual opportunities in your everyday life that you can take to help you on your journey.          

Losing the labels of society and finding the self that God created you to be

Have you been caught up in the "world", "rat race" or "society" for so long that you have lost your sense of who you are?  Have you been too busy trying to keep up with what others think that you have lost the ability to think for yourself?  It is easy to get caught up and lose your true "self".  The key is being able to find yourself again without falling back into the pattern or confusing your true self with the image that society has made you believe you are.

Outside forces
We are all affected by outside forces from the moment we are born.  It comes from our parents, our peer group and our teachers.  They place on us labels that are used to separate us from others such as smart or pretty.  These are handy to separate groups into categories, but are bad if we embrace the label and let it define us.  When we identify with the label and let the label define us rather than us defining the label we fall victim to society.  For example, your first grade teacher labels you as "smart", you are smart for a first grader, but if you were placed in sixth grade you would not be considered smart.  But if you are holding on to your first grade label of "smart" for the rest of your life you are stagnating your growth not matter how smart you are. 

By not identifying with any label placed upon you from outside, both good and bad, you cannot be affected by the label.  You are neither smart nor dumb, which are relative terms, you are you.  Once you accept you are not your label outside factors will have no effect on you.  All you need to do to find yourself is to get below the labels. 

Getting beyond the labels 
As we have been labeled since birth, it is hard to get through the labels to find your true self, because labels are constantly flying on to you.  If you take off work do get away from the pressure to find yourself, you are labeled as a "runner", "hippy" or a "seeker" all of which are labels.  If you keep working to find yourself they will say you are a "day dreamer" or a "slacker".  These are just the labels you get merely trying to find yourself.   The key to finding yourself is to stop identifying with the labels.  You are not your label.  When you don't identify with any label you are able to get to your true self. 

But are you your label?  No, it is not possible.  For example, they say you are clumsy.  You are not clumsy, your actions at times may be clumsy but your actions are not you.  You may trip once in a while but a majority of the time you are walking just fine.  So you can't be labeled clumsy any more than you can be labeled one who walks.  Though you do both of these actions neither can define you as a person.   

Finding Yourself
So you realize that outside forces are constantly putting labels on you and that you need to not identify with the labels, but how do you find yourself?  The answer is to do nothing at all.  When a wood carver does his work, he does not carve the object out of the wood.  He carefully removes the wood from around the object until the object appears.  So he is not carving an object he is just removing the parts that don't fit to the object.  The same is true with you, once you remove the labels that are encasing you, your true self will appear and shine not never before. You are no longer "smart", "pretty" or "studious" or any label that has been put on you.  You may do actions that are intelligent and you may have features that other find attractive but your actions and features are not you they are merely outside things you do or characteristics you posse.  The real you is indescribable and unable to be labels is a culminations of your experience and of all of your actions.  To label the self is to limit the self. 

The "world" will continue to put labels on you that is all they know how to do.  They cannot fathom something without a label but you will be able to walk through the label which only purpose is to limit you and place you in a box.  When you walk through the label and are not defined it your true self will come shining through with infinite possibly.  

Encouringe without Pushing

Having a child come home and state they have a vocation to religious life can be a blessing.  It can also be terrifying depending on your perspective.  While every good Catholic family feels that it is a blessing to have a priest or sister in the family, having your 'baby' be the one in the family may take some getting used to.

Every parent wants their child to be happy.  We all know that following your called vocation will make you happy.  Though sometime it takes time to find the vocation you are called to.

Throughout your child's life you should preach openness to vocation without pushing it.  As parents we should always be open to the call of God in our life and our children's life.  Pushing a vocation whether marriage or consecrated life is counterproductive, but encouraging discernment of the will of God is the best road to take.

Tips for encouraging without pushing

• Attend Mass and have your child understand what is going on from a young age.  

•  Have regular interactions with priests and nuns so the child knows they are normal down to earth people

•  Talking about aspects of religious life, not just Sunday Mass.

•  Encouraging volunteer work and serving others in a everyday life.  

•  Don't overly state that the child should be a priest/nun, but make it an option among many.

•  God calls not you, so don't get in His way.  Let the child figure it out on his/her own and come to you rather than the other way around

What to do if your child thinks they have a calling    

• Attend mass and pray about the calling of God.

•  Attend Adoration. 

• Have them speak with or visit a religious community. 

• Make sure they know the requirements to join.

• Have them be open to all options of religious life. 

Having a child open to the will of God no matter the direction they choose is blessing.  It means they know and trust God to work in their life and want to blossom to do His will as best they can.  Encourage them to listen for the whisper of God, without pushing your own desires for them will result in happy fruitful children who live out their vocation. 

Prayer drought : When faith seems dry

There are times in our lives when our faith life seems dry.  We may still be doing our ordinary prayer life but seemingly only going thorough the motions.  We may seem in a rut or be going thought a particular trail where we cannot feel the presence of God in our life.  There a few things we can do to jump start our spiritual lives.  They may not all work for everyone an they may take time an effort, so expect results on Gods time rather than the schedule that we put Him on.  There may be a reason that we are going through this that can be turned into a greater good.  If you have been though a prayer drought before you may have found that God used that experience at a later time for you to help someone else. But there are some things you can do to use this prayer drought to grow closer to God.

Talk to God
If you are feeling in a rut the first thing upon realizing the rut is to bring it to God.  Put it all on the table, tell God about what you are feeling.  Because you are in a rut the answer and feeling that you may have previously felt when you were close to God may not happen.  You may feel that you are just talking to yourself but be assured that you are not.  No need to sugar coat with God.  Though we treat God with respect and awe  don't hide things from him.  If you angry tell God your angry, getting out the anger can help walk through it. 

Don't give up
As we know from the parable of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8) that we have to be persistent in our prayer even if we think that nothing is happening.  Things may not change, there is no guarantee that you will get the results that you are looking for. 

There are certain TV preachers that will tell you that you are not getting what you want because you are not praying hard enough.  The Catholic Church doesn't teach that.  God loves you and wants to bless you but if you pray to win the lottery and don't it is not because you didn't have enough faith.  Jesus does say that if we had the faith of a mustard seed we could move mountains.  Persistent prayer will change your interior life which can lead to an external change.  

Take a step back and try something new
Perhaps a step back form your current prayer ritual could give a new perspective.  If you have become too comfortable or bored with your routine then changing it up could spark you emptiness.
Adding a new prayer or routine to your life could spark a new way to come to good.  Perhaps daily mass once a week or a rosary on Wednesday night could add to what you are doing and make you feel less like you are not pulling your weigh in your relationship with God.  Often it is us who get complacent and feel empty because we have gone so far away from god and need to come back. 

Entering the nothingness to find God
Our relationship with God is a two way street.  Sometimes we feel he has left us and other time we feel we have left him by putting him on a shelf every Sunday till we return to him.  Both of these feeling are natural and will happen at different points in our lives.  Sometime we have to enter into the despair and let go of our conceived notions of who God is and find him in the nothing. 

This entering into the nothing is something that will be elaborated in future posts but finding God in the silence is a theme that goes back to the Old Testament and has taken many different nuances and perspectives, some bordering on heretical.

Spiritual dryness is something that can happen at anytime, whether letting everyday life distract us from God or just feeling like He is not there even though we are praying diligently.  Shaking up our prayer life is a start and truly seeking God and telling him our desires rather than just falling into the trap of just reading prayers.  God knows where we are in our struggle and is working to help us through it, we just need to continue to trust in our heavenly father.

A good thing vs a God thing

There are certain situations that cause us to doubt God.  When things don't seem to work out our way or when we make choices that seemed good on the onset, don't pan out like we had hoped.  It is easy to blame God for these things.  But as we point our finger at Him we must keep in mind that all good things are not God things.  This is a hard concept to grasp, especially if you came from a line of thinking that all good things come from God and all bad things come from the devil.

 All good things are not God things
God has a plan for us and invites us to share in that plan.  God wants to bless us and gave us free will to chose him or not to.  This is not to say if God plan was for you to turn left on Main street and you when right, you are doomed because you didn't follow God plan.  But if you intentally when right to sin then that's a different story.  

But we can be presented with many good things that are wonderful things.   But we do not need to choose them all and if we were to put them all on our plate we might stumble under the weight of all of the good things.  God gives us lot of good things to do and choose from but we have to discern which ones are merely good things and which ones are God things which will bring us closer to him and increase our holiness.  

This is difficult and part of being human.  We may also have some regret about the choices we make and which good things we choose but if we are working with God in prayer and activly discerning which will bring us closer to him, God will bless our choices more than we can see from the results we calculated will happen at that moment when we made the choice.

This "good" thing "God" thing is in every decision we make on where we work, where we live or how we spend our money.   We have to make the decision on how we feel God is calling us with the information we have at hand.  We cannot predict the future nor can be change the past.  We have do what we feel God is asking us to do then, "Let go and Let God."  He will handle the details and bless us in ways we may never have imagined were possible. 

Church Hierarchy

 

© Marie-Lan Nguyen / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY 2.5

Many people know about the hierarchy of the Catholic church but they are confused on the intricacy of it.  We know who the Pope is, we see the bishop at confirmations and hear his name weekly in the Eucharistic prayer and we see a priest and deacon at mass.  That is really all we see in our everyday Catholic life but then what is a cardinal, a monseigneur or a brother and how do all these roles fit together?

This is a very short intro to the Church hierarchy to clear up some confusion about who does what.  This topic could a whole book and there are books written about it.  But for a blog post this covers the basics.  

There are details about each role and nuances that the average person may not know about the powers of the bishop and authority of bishop and what he can and can’t do.  I may cover that in a future post but I wanted to get the basics of the titles out to start.

Lets take the it from the bottom up

Deacons

Deacon is a holy order that primary role during the mass is to proclaim the gospel and outside of mass to be involved in service to the Church.  The deacon was established in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 6:1-7).  

There are two types of deacons transitional and permanent.  The transitional deacon is on his way to becoming a priest and must first be ordained and deacon.  This period usually last about a year(or two), until the deacon is ordained a priest. The second type is a permanent deacon who is ordained to be a deacon permanently with no aspiration to the priesthood.  The permanent deacon can be married before ordination but after ordination he cannot marry or remarry if his wife dies.    

Priest

The primary role of the priest is to administer the sacraments to the people.  In the early church the bishop was the primary dispenser of the sacraments but as the church grew it became logistically impossible for the bishop to say mass for the entire diocese.  The priest is the ordinary minister of the Eucharist.  Hence the proper name of Eucharistic ministers in extraordinary ministers of communion since they are help the priest because it would be difficult for one priest to distribute to the whole congregation.  The priest cannot confer the sacrament of holy orders and generally does not administer confirmation (except on Easter Vigil), because these are usually left to the bishop.

Bishop

The bishop is usually in charge of a specified geographic region of the church called a diocese (or archdiocese if there are suffrage diocese beneath it).  The bishop is responsible for teaching doctrine, governing Catholics in his jurisdiction, and sanctifying the world and representing the Church.  The bishop is the fullness of the sacrament of holy orders and has an unbroken succession to the apostles.  

Pope

The Pope is the bishop of Rome but with the title of bishop Rome comes the a multitude of other  titles (Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, Servant of the servants of God).  The power of the papacy comes from being the successor of Peter the first vicar of Christ.  The Pope speaks for the church in union with college of bishops.  

side note on papal infallibility

The Pope has the authority make infallible statements on faith and morals but rarely uses this authority.  Detractors try to use this authority to undermine the Church but if understood in proper context they really do not have a case.  Usually the doctrine is already widely held and the Pope makes it “official”.  The last time the pope made an infallible statement was 1950 in regard to the assumption of Mary into heaven.

Other:

Brother

A member of a religious order with no holy order but has taken the vows of the order to live by the chrism of the order.  

Monseigneur

An honorific title given to a priest by the Pope.  There are three levels of monseigneur and the diocese are limited to have less than 20% of the clergy in a diocese with the title.  But in regards to duties and function a priest and monseigneur are the same except of the title.

Cardinal

A cardinal is a prince of the church in ecclesiastic terms and a cardinal is usually a bishop(although not always).  The major role of the cardinal is to elect the next Pope upon the death of the current one.

Changed by the Resurrection

Note: Thank you to everyone who inquired about my new baby. Mommy and Baby are doing great. 

Growing from Lent

So its the Tuesday after Easter, your Peeps are eaten you have drank sodas that you gave up for forty days, but are you changed?   Yes, it is okay to go back to the things you gave up (unless is was a sinful habit, if you gave up smoking for 40 days don't go back), but are you changed by your lent and Holy week?

If you are not changed then what was the point for you.  Jesus gave himself for us and we should be changed by it.  If we go back to our selves of that we were on the day before ash Wednesday then our external lenten sacrifices did not change our internal spiritual self.    The purpose of the external sacrifice is to lead to internal changes.  We should be different people than we were before we started our lenten journey.  Not dramatically different but more inclined to the direction of Christ.  We may not notice this at first but if we look at ourselves introspectively we may see small changes.  Suppose I gave up television.  After Lent I may go back to watching TV but I may recall fondly the time I had playing board games during my time away from TV during lent and my watch less TV after Lent.  Not at dramatic change but a change none the less.

Lent is a time for new experience through sacrifices and alms giving.  Maybe I helped out at a soup kitchen for the first time maybe I would like to do that again every so often.  Not at dramatic change but a change none the less.

Whatever buds your lenten journey produced need to be cultivated and grown to be incorporated into your spiritual journey.  Lent is a time for planting and Easter is a time to continue process to maturity.

There is still time.  

Easter didn't end on Sunday.  The resurrection may have happened but Easter is just beginning, we still have 40 more days of Easter.

This is the time to see what you want to keep from Lent and what didn't work for you.  Some things no matter how hard we try just don't work.  Once for Lent i decided that for lunch everyday I was only going to have soup.  So for 40 days every day at lunch I had soup.  It was a great lent I lost 15 pounds.  But by the end of it I was done with soup.  Some of the things I did that lent brought me closer to God but the soup was a form of fasting I felt afterwards that I might have gotten closer to God other ways.  I still eat soup but everyday soup is not a way for me personally to connect with God.  I was noble in my aspirations behind the soup but the practice just didn't work.  Also during that lent I made a practice of says more of a variety of prayers.  That worked for me and afterwards I had more prayers to my prayer inventory.  But you have 40 days of Easter to work it out to get it goig all year round.


We can be like the Apostles and encounter the risen Christ.