SPIRITUAL RENEWAL AND DEEPENING ONE'S RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

 

 

There is a story of an old lighthouse keeper. The man had only a limited amount of oil to keep his beacon lit so that passing ships could avoid the rocky shore. One night a man who lived close by needed to borrow some of this precious commodity to light his home, so the lighthouse keeper gave him some of his own. Another night, a traveler begged for some oil to light his lamp so he could keep on traveling. The lighthouse keeper also complied with this request and gave him the amount he needed. The next night, the lighthouse keeper was awakened by a mother banging on his door. She prayed for some oil so that she could illuminate her beacon went out. Many ships ran aground and many lives were lost because the lighthouse keeper forgot to focus on his priority. He neglected his primary duty and paid a high price.

(Jer 18:21-35, John 10: 11, I John 4:9, Mk 8:34, 10:37, Eph 6:10-20)

- Experiencing solitude, for even a few minutes a day, will keep you centered on your highest life priorities. Neglect that pervades the lives of many of us.

- Saying that  you don’t have enough time to be silent on a regular basis is a lot like saying you are too busy driving to stop for gas, eventually it will catch up with you.

- We have too long been parted by the hurrying world.

- When was the last time you carved out a chunk of time to enjoy the power of solitude to restore, refocus and revitalize your mind, body and spirit?

- To reconnect with who you are, you must find the time to be silent on a regular basis.

- It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is what are you busy about?

- Am I aware of my spiritual journey.

- Am I able to give the outlines of my spiritual journey until now?

- My vocation (call)

- Spiritual direction/ encounter

- Sense of personal mediation - hora media (30 min)

- My attention to the sacraments, Eucharist and reconciliation

- Always asking yourself and guide …how am I keeping on with my life?

- Daily discernment and reflections on my personality and awareness of what is around me.

Openness to accept the Holy Spirit to work in you and always being open to yourself to be formed. Spiritual journey is towards God, to pass through in order to grow spiritually and intellectually, all saints passed through this journey. We grow in four areas: IDENTITY, ACTION, GOD and OTHERS. The mission of God has been entrusted to us if we don’t grow in this for areas then we are not grown up to be rounded personalities.

IDENTITY

- Who am I the person God is creating me to be. We don’t have identity, we are in the state where we don’t know Jesus, we don’t accept it, as Jesus as a son of God, and the consequences are:

- Liars- we lie to ourselves and to God, we put on a mask, in order to save our faces in front of others. We fear to confirm to the truth, to the reality about ourselves, we try to repress or dent our feelings, we try to escape. We create an image of ourselves who we like be fantasy thinking that it is our real world.

Jesus was, what he was saying, we feel contradictions, disintegrated, no place in our ourselves. In accepting reality we accept the truth which will let us free. We have no security about ourselves, no coherence in what we are doing and saying. We try to distort the truth about ourselves, we block our personality. 

We also exaggerate things about ourselves, needs in order to attract others towards us, to be loved. We become slaves of other persons, instincts which we usually confuse them, positioning to be seen, honour, like politicians even in religious life, while their own life is void. I need this, that and not happy of what we have, we reject ideas of others, conservative, time table becomes security for them, public opinion, what will others say if I share? Sometimes we become too much, excuses. We have no freedom in ourselves, alienated slaves of our pleasures, our body, desires, principles, views. (IDENTITY- no name, no face, a thing ) = No identity

ACTION

- Any job, overdoing, vegetative (not doing anything)

The action is about transformation, transition, a step ahead out of lame excuses and sin, which gives me or leads me to the question what next? After identity. You have to acknowledge your weaknesses so as to learn from them, be ready for rejection despise my stand for the truth and reality of who I am than compromise with situations. It is through recognition of my weaknesses that I will learn, take courage to change through sometimes difficult but I should risk it through asking that we succeed in life. If you cant risk then yo cant grow.

OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

We image miracles from God, we ask many things which we usually do not need. We have an idea about God, but really isn't an experience in us, we pretend to command God, I need to pass exams, God heal me, we make God to be our slaves. We ask and we must get immediately and once we get we forget to thank. We only know about God from what we hear not experience. God becomes an idol in our hands. There is no intimate relationship, he is something outside our own creation and ideas.

OTHERS

Objectives, tools, art, my service, they are for me not me for them, for my comfort. Same attitudes we have towards God will be the same even to others, we think we can use them for our means. We have egoistic attitudes, usually we are in the center, we don’t belong to anybody or group which makes us different and give up instead of making God the center. Sense of anger, hatred, fear, anxiety, imaginations are fantasy, inferiority, complex because the way we are treated, we intend usually to categorize ourselves. Suspicious mind…they are speaking about me, superstition, we do many things but we we don’t know what we are doing.

 

Seven capital vices are present, which have an influence in our life. (Gal 5:13-26)

Pride- excessive belief in ones own abilities or superiority

Greed- Intense and selfish desire for wealth, possessions, or power

Lust- Intense or uncontrolled desires, especially sexual

Envy- Jealousy towards another traits, status, abilities, or situation

Gluttony- Over-indulgence and over consumption, especially of food or drink

Wrath- Extreme anger or hatred that leads to violence or vengeance

Sloth- Laziness or the failure to act and utilize one's talents.

A little lifting up the heart is enough; a short remembrance of God, an interior act of worship, made in haste and sword in hand, are prayers which short as they may be, are nevertheless, most pleasing to God; and far from lessening a soldier’s courage in moments of danger, they increase it. 

Let him then think of God as much as he can; let him accustom himself little by little to this brief but salutary exercise; nobody notices it, and nothing is easier than to repeat short acts of worship often during the day. We ought not to get tired of doing little things for the love of God, because He looks at the love rather than work. 

And we need not to be surprised at our frequent failures at first; the time will come when we shall make our acts naturally and with gladness. We need to act very simply towards God, speaking frankly to Him, and asking His help in things as they occurred; in experience, God never failed to give it. The usual method should be simple attentiveness and a loving gaze upon God.

The 1960s witnessed significant development in the Church in Africa. The celebration of political independence in many African countries, fresh breeze of cultural and religious revival. Seeking ways and means of articulating their faith brought to them by some missionaries form other parts of the world. There was increasing interest in various facets of the African life. 

Before the Second Vatican council, the official position of the Church with regard to the values of the African religion and life was not especially favorable. The relationship of the Non-Christian religions was being prepared, a suggestion to mention the African traditional religion along-side Islam, Judaism, and Asian religions was simply brushed aside. 

The council did recognize the need for the Church to be open to the history, culture, and traditions of all races and people. In Africa we have to appreciate a spirituality that is integral, binding the visible and the invisible life and death, the creator and creation, in mutual embrace of unity and harmony.

Life in the Church has never been the same since the Vatican II Council. Some tried to nip it in the bud, others tried to tame it, and still others tried to kill it openly. But many more loved it, cherished it and lived it. The Vatican II Council is a grace of God and is leading us into a renewed understanding of what the Church really is. That is the key to the future.

It is not easy to be a Christian, especially if you are also trying to pass your faith on to your children. Jesus spoke the common language of the people of his time and was understood at family tables and not in academic classrooms. We are fired into life with a madness that comes from the gods and which would have us believe that we can have a great love, perpetuate our own seed, and contemplate the divine. 

It is not easy to walk on this earth and find peace. Inside of us it would seem something is at odds with the very rhythm of things and we are forever restless, dissatisfied, frustrated and aching. We are so overcharged with desire that is hard to come to simple rest. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction. Desire is the straw that stirs the drink.

Spirituality is ultimately, about what we do with that desire, what we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, spirituality is about what we do with our unrest. This is a discovery that has come to light in the last forty years ago that much was coming up. To many spirituality is something paranormal, mystical, churchy, holy, pious, new age, something on the fringes and something optional. Not as something very vital and non-negotiable lying at the heart of our lives. We all have some spirituality whether life-giving or a destructive one. We wake up with crying, on fire with desire, with madness. What we do with that madness is our spirituality. What shapes our actions is our spirituality.

A saint is someone who can channel powerful eros in a creative, life-giving way. Soren Kierkegaard once defined a saint as someone who “can will the one thing”. Every choice is a renunciation. Spirituality is what we do with the spirit that is within us, how we can channel our eros, disciplines and habits, we choose to live by, will either lead to a greater integration or disintegration within our bodies, minds and souls. The opposite of being spiritual is to have no energy, is to have lost all zest for living, lying on the couch, watching football or sitcoms, taking beer intravenously.

Every health spirituality will have to worship at two shrines: the shrine of God of chaos and a God of order…that part of nature that can think, feel and act self-consciously. We need to be on fire again for our hope is no longer an easy hope. We live on a culture of despair within which Pentecost can no longer be taken for granted. Here we must take upon ourselves the burden of the times and refuse to make the Holy Spirit a piece of private property but a spirit that matters. (May Jo Leddy)

We have some bad habits that only God can cure. We have to sustain ourselves in the spiritual life. To pray doesn’t mean to think about God in contrast to thinking about other things, or to spend time with God instead of spending time with other people. Rather, it means to think and live in the presence of God. All our actions must have their origin in prayer. Praying is not an isolated activity, it takes place in the midst of all the things and affairs that keep us alive. In prayer a self-centered monologue becomes a God centered dialogue.

Knowledge alone cannot save us, like St. Augustine, he had two conversions: In the head and the other in his heart. At 25 he converted to Christianity, intellectually, he explored everything in life. In his head he was convinced that Christianity was correct. At 34 he couldn’t bring his moral life to check, harmony with his intellectual faith. This is when he prayed “Lord make me a good and chaste Christian, but not yet”. We need energy, willpower of sustaining ourselves on this road. The spiritual life is not a quick spirit to a well-marked finished line but a marathon, arduous lifelong journey into an even after we have some assurance that we are on the right road. “Elijah’s jar moment”, God’s promise to provide to those who are walking the road towards the divine mountain, without vision we perish. 

B.Lonergan, a great intellectual of our century and pious Christian says that “all genuine conversion must involve an intellectual conversion”. The heart needs guidance from the head, you have to fall in love. We need both the knowledge and the heart. Spirituality is about both. What do you do when you are too tired to read the gospels, to restless to have spiritual thought, too depressed to find words for God, or too exhausted to do anything. 

A lived experience of believers as they seek to follow Jesus. The important step is to realize the love that we are loved by recognizing that others are good to us. We may discover that the reason we can’t find time to pray is that we don’t want to pray. We have to believe that He loves us not because we have earned it but because He is good. Teresa insists on the primacy of surrender to God’s will: “Believe me the whole affair doesn’t lie in whether or not we wear the religious habit but in striving to practice the virtues, in surrendering our will to God in everything, in bringing our life into accordance with what His Majesty ordains for it, and in desiring that His will not ours be done.” 

We have two duties to be fulfilled Jean Pierre de Caussade in his work Abandonment to Divine Providence “We must actively seek to carry God’s will into effect and passively accept all that His will sends us… this state is essentially the gift of our entire being to God for Him to use as He pleases. Mother Teresa says “Holiness is to take whatever Jesus gives and give Jesus whatever He asks of us with a big smile. That is God’s will”. “we know that in everything God work for the good with those who are called according to his promise” (Rom 8:28). Thomas Kempis asserts that we have peace within ourselves, we will bring peace to others.

First be at peace with yourself and then you may bring peace to others. More good is done by peaceful man than by learned. The man of evil passion draws badness even out of good, and readily believe what is bad. The good peaceful man turns everything to good. The man established in peace is without suspicion. The restless malcontent is suspicious at every turn; unquiet himself, he disquiets others. He often says what he should not, and does not what he had better. He is well aware of his neighbor’s duty, indifferent to his own. Direct your zeal first upon yourself; then you can fairly direct it at your neighbor too.

Thomas Aquinas observes three ways in which we may be attentive in prayer: To the words, lest one err in pronouncing them, sense of the words, the end of prayer, namely to God, and to the thing for which we are praying. The most necessary and even the weak-minded are capable of having it. Moreover, this attention whereby the mind is fixed upon God is sometimes so strong that the mind forgets all other things. Charles Borromeo reminds us that we do have a responsibility for some of our distractions:

“Another priest complained that as soon as he comes into church to pray the office or celebrate Mass, a thousand thoughts fill his mind and distract him from God. But what was he doing in the sacristy before he came out for the office or for Mass? How did he prepare? What means did he use to collect his thoughts and to remain recollected? … If the tiny spark of God’s love burns within you, do not expose it to the wind, for it may get blown out. Keep the stove tightly shut so that it will not lose its heat and grow cold. 

In other words, avoid distractions, as well as you can. Stay quiet with God. Do not spend your time in useless chatter… for churchmen nothing is more necessary than meditation. We must mediate before, during and after everything we do… When you administer the sacraments, meditate on what you are doing. When you celebrate Mass, reflect on the sacrifice you are offering. When you pray the office, think about the words you are saying and the Lord to whom you are speaking. 

When you take care of your people, meditate on the Lord’s blood that was washed them clean. In this way, all that you do becomes a work of love. This is the way we can easily overcome the countless difficulties we have to face day after day, which after all, are part of our works: in meditation we find the strength to bring Christ to birth in ourselves and in others.” (Charles Borromeo, Sermon, in The Liturgy of the Hours, Vol. IV, 1544-1545).

That we should establish ourselves in the presence of God, talking always with him. We ought to give ourselves up entirely to God, whether in temporal or spiritual concerns, and find our happiness in doing his will, whether he leads us by the way of suffering or by the way of delectation, for they were the same to one truly resigned to him. That we should hold fast to faith when God tries our love by inflicting times of spiritual dryness; it precisely then that we should make good acts of resignation to his will, for one such often advances us far upon His way.

A little lifting up the heart is enough; a short remembrance of God, an interior act of worship, made in haste and sword in hand, are prayers which short as they may be, are nevertheless, most pleasing to God; and far from lessening a soldier’s courage in moments of danger, they increase it. 

Let him then think of God as much as he can; let him accustom himself little by little to this brief but salutary exercise; nobody notices it, and nothing is easier than to repeat short acts of worship often during the day. We ought not to get tired of doing little things for the love of God, because He looks at the love rather than work. 

And we need not to be surprised at our frequent failures at first; the time will come when we shall make our acts naturally and with gladness. We need to act very simply towards God, speaking frankly to Him, and asking His help in things as they occurred; in experience, God never failed to give it. The usual method should be simple attentiveness and a loving gaze upon God.