Saving Grace

"Prayer is not asking.  Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at his disposition, and listening to his voice in the depths of our hearts."

-Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Lately,  when I pray I get this image of myself as a little kid sitting on Santa's knee.  I realize that I am just listing all of the things I want God to give me.  I go to Him over and over saying "I want this, and then this..".   As I prayed during Mass last night it occurred to me that all I really need to do is pray for God's grace.   God already knows all of the desires of my heart.  More importantly he knows what I truly need to get me closer to Him and ultimately, heaven.

I realize that this is not a new concept.  And I know that I have had this occur to me several times already.   Sadly, I go through life forgetting so many things all the time.  How to pray effectively, how to do sixth grade math, my kid's names, the list goes on.  So, every once in a while I think the Holy Spirit gives me a nudge back in the right direction.  In my spiritual life I have these amazing periods of inspiration and I feel God's grace flowing into me.  Other times I really feel stuck in that "spiritual dryness" that so many have spoken about.  When I get back on track I feel like I have to re-learn how to pray, listen and discern God's voice from my own.

"Prayer makes your heart bigger, until it is capable of containing the gift of God himself".

-Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

All of the things I've been praying for, peace, wisdom, patience, guidance, can only be obtained through God's grace.  His grace is not something I can earn,  I can only pray for it.  Wouldn't you know, the homily would turn out to be about how we can open ourselves to God's grace.  This happens so often to me;  God places something in my heart then drives home the point with a homily. Our priest talked about the sacrament of Reconciliation and the importance of making room for God's grace to enter our souls by cleaning out all of the sin that can make us "too full" to receive God's gifts.

Okay, message received.  I really need to get to confession.  I guess this is why I feel like I've been praying and praying and feeling like no answers are coming.   I know all things come in God's time but lately I've been feeling especially "blocked" from the answers I usually get through prayer.  So, next stop, the confessional.  In my heart,  all I really want is to be pleasing to God.  By His grace I hope to get there.

"Lord, lighten the heavy burden of my sins by which I have seriously offended you.  Cleanse my mind and my heart.  Like a bright lamp, guide me along the right path".

-St. John Damascene

We Are Called

"You have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you:  Only to do right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. "  Roughly eight centuries before Christ gave us this week's Gospel messages we were given these words from the prophet Micah in Micah 6:8.  For this Sunday's Mass the music director at our parish chose "We Are Called" as one of the songs during the liturgy.  This is one of my favorite songs and it references this verse from the Book of Micah.  I rarely get through singing the words of this song without crying, no matter how many times I hear it.  I can feel the burning flame of the Holy Spirit in my heart as we sing "We are called to serve one another, to walk humbly with God".  Such a fitting song to set our hearts ablaze this Sunday, as the Gospel reading from Luke 12:49-53 began with the words "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!"

Monday's gospel reading was Matthew 19:16-22, "The Rich Young Man".  As was foretold in Micah, Christ again spells out what is expected of us as Christians.  We are asked to put service over possessions and walk with Christ.  The young man in the gospel account goes away sad at the thought of giving up all he had to follow Jesus.  Is he exceptionally shallow or materialistic?  Sadly, no.  He is just like most of us.  We grow so attached to our "things" that we can't let go of them.  We can be so possessive of them that we allow them to come between us and family, us and service, us and Christ.

The more we have and the more comfortable we become, the easier it can be to just forget about God.  We don't even necessarily consciously choose to shut Him out, we just get lost in our luxury, our friends, our entertainment.  We forget that we need Him.  I once read somewhere that Satan gloats in the fact that when times get hard humans will turn their backs on God and blame Him for their troubles or for not mitigating them.  This happens to be sure, but I think what is even more common is that we slowly drift from Him without realizing it, like the tide slowly dragging us from where we began on shore.  We don't perceive how far we've gone until we are in trouble.  We seem to be doing fine without Him, enjoying the comforts of our life that we believe we have earned for ourselves; lost in the pursuit of material goods, entertainment and companionship.    In Deuteronomy 7:11 Moses warned his people, "Be careful not to forget the Lord, your God , by neglecting his commandments and decrees and statutes...lest, when you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses and lived in them and have increased your herd, your silver and gold, and all your property, you then become haughty of heart and unmindful of the Lord, your God,".

When we are so content with the way things are it is hard to turn and focus on those who have less; to leave behind our own comfort to serve them. Did you ever notice that so many people who end up serving others deep down in the trenches, in the places where most of us prefer not to go, have come from those places themselves?   They are addiction counselors who have fought addiction in their own lives, children of mentally ill parents who grow up to become psychologists, poor children who grow up to be social workers, immigrants who return to their home country to share their education and training in the hope of making a difference.   I don't believe that God wants us to suffer, but what a blessing we become when we turn our difficulties in life into assets and the training ground we use to teach us how to relate to and serve others.  What an act of love it is, how pleasing it must be to our Lord when we offer these acts up to Him.

As Micah said, we have been told to do right, love what is good and walk humbly with God.  It is such a simple formula but so difficult to follow when you mix in the frailty of our human nature; the complexities that we layer into our lives.  We may long to be good, pray for the strength to be better, even strive for it, yet fail again and again.  We can take heart that the Lord's mercy is a bottomless fountain in which we can refresh ourselves.  We must not despair or fatigue of our efforts.  The Lord knows our hearts and ultimately we will succeed with the grace of the Holy Spirit.  When in Matthew 19:25 the disciples even despaired of being saved, Christ said to them "For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible." This is one of my favorite verses in the bible and the one I recall most often.  It constantly provides me with the perspective I need to not despair in vain over the difficulties I face in my daily life.

In Luke's gospel on Sunday Christ told us that the way would not be easy; that He did not come to bring peace but division.  We know, because He told us, that He offers us an internal peace unsurpassed if we place our faith in Him.  That message is juxtaposed against His unsettling message from last Sunday of bringing division not peace. Yes, we will have internal peace but those who are of this world will not always understand our intentions, our giving over of our lives to Christ.  It can cause friction with co-workers, friends, family and as we see lately, our government.  Yet, we must continue to trust the Lord's will for us and follow His commands regardless of the strife it may cause in our relationships.  In Luke 6:46 Christ asks, "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord', but do not do what I command?...the one who listens but does not act is like a person who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, it collapsed at once and was completely destroyed."  Let us not be washed away by complacency.  Let not our fire be damped out.  May the Holy Spirit enkindle in us an inextinguishable flame that ignites us into action and lights our way on this journey with Christ.

Feeding of the Five Thousand

Today's gospel reading was Matthew 14:13-21,  The Return of the Twelve and the Feeding of the Five Thousand.  As I sat down this morning to read the day's scripture with my kids, one of them commented that she had heard this story many times before.  Like her, I had heard this gospel passage many times throughout my life.  But, as I wrote in my first post, it never ceases to amaze me how with any given reading, be it the first time or the thousandth time I've read it, I can take something completely new away from the same piece of scripture.  To me this is confirmation that the words in the bible are the Living Word of God; truly divinely inspired.  They speak to me through different seasons of my life and flow through my ears to my heart where the Holy Spirit ignites a recognition of what my soul needs to hear at that time.

In the preceding passage to verses 13-21 of Matthew 14, Herod has just ordered John the Baptist beheaded in prison.  John's disciples came to tell Jesus of his death.  In this context Jesus sets off in a boat to a deserted place to be alone.  I can only imagine the distress and sadness that Jesus is feeling at hearing that his beloved cousin is dead.  Not only is he a member of Jesus' family but he is a man of great influence over the people, regarded as a prophet.  He probably just wants a few moments to himself to recollect and pray.  But the crowds won't let him have his time alone.  They follow him and beg him for more of himself.  Jesus gives them what they ask for.  I am so moved by his love for the people in the crowds.  At such a moment I would have probably lost my patience and yelled at them to leave me alone for just five minutes peace.  In fact, I know I have yelled this very thing many times to my children.  My capacity for giving is finite.  I give all day long at work, I give to my kids when I walk in the door and by the end of the day I feel I have nothing left to give.  I just want to be left alone.  I find no time for volunteering anymore.  I don't even always find time to pray or read His Word.  Christ shows us here his inexhaustible fountain of giving and love.  It challenges us to give in the same way:  To give until it hurts.

But even then Jesus isn't done giving in this gospel story.  After he has spent his day ministering to these crowds he tells his disciples not to send them away hungry.  The disciples can't imagine how they can feed five thousand men and thousands more women and children with what they have.  Christ shows us here that he will take whatever you have to offer and multiply it by thousands making it enough.  How often do we think, "What difference can I make in this world?  I am one person and there are so many issues facing us." Jesus shows us that even if the sum of your treasure is one cent, he will take that cent and turn it into to millions.  We can't imagine how and we don't have to.  All we need is faith.  The example of our faith and charity may inspire a chain reaction of a million others to do the same.

Ultimately, when Christ had nothing left to give he gave his own body.  He allowed it to be broken into a billion pieces that two thousand years later are still feeding millions of us around the world every day.   Just as the crowds in the gospel story sought Christ out, we come to Him in the Mass and ask for Him to minister to us.  We soak up His Word and we still want more.  We want to be fed with life sustaining bread before we go.  And He gives it to us.  In the Eucharist He divides His one body into enough to feed five thousand times five thousand, over and over again.  And we can never get enough.

 I find it remarkable that one can read a scripture passage repeatedly and find new meaning in it each time.  A different set of eyes will see something else entirely.  To me this is the best evidence that the Holy Scripture in the Bible is a living Word, truly divinely inspired.