Winning

I just want to alert everybody to the awesomeness which will be the next few weeks in the liturgical calendar. Prepare yourselves. You will probably have to pick your jaw up off the floor when you are done reading this. So without further ado: Starting today...
Sept 26th- The Feast of Sts. Cosmos &Damian (you know those guys whose names we hear every time the extended version of the Eucharistic Prayer is said). They are legit.
Sept 27th - St. Vincent de Paul
Sept 29th - The Archangels- St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and St. Raphael
Sept 30th - St. Jerome
Oct 1st - St. Therese of Lisieux
Oct 4th - St. Francis of Assisi
Oct 5th - St. Faustina Kowalska
And later on...
Oct 15th - St. Theresa of Avila
Oct 18th - St. Luke
Oct 20th - St. Paul of the Cross
and Oct 22nd - Blessed JPII!! We love you!

KAPOW! That is the sound of Satan getting punched in the face by this incredible lineup! (I literally just punched the air). There is going to be so much grace falling from heaven that Satan won't even be able to see straight. Ha!

Just one more reason why I love the Catholic Church - it gives us weeks like these. :)

Prayer

I tend to be a very task oriented person. Maybe it is one of the curses of being an engineer. We focus on results. How you get those results is important but not nearly as important as what the result is. If the plane is flying (not falling out of the sky) who really cares how you got it in the air?? I exaggerate, but you get my point. Being immersed in this life style and already being a task driven individual often causes me to look at life through this lens. Lord, Thank you for said blessings. Please do such-and-such and please help so-and so with this-or-that if it be your will. Amen. This is basically how I have approached my prayer life until now.

The only instruction I ever received regarding prayer was in my childhood. As children most of us are taught intercessory prayer and prayer of thanksgiving. You thank God for the beautiful day, your many blessings, and then ask him for things you think you need or want. Amen. That is how you pray. Or so I thought.

Recently, I have been challenged by my spiritual director to change the way I pray. In order to do this, my spiritual director is challenging me to use Lectio Divina as my primary form of prayer from now on. I am meditating of the Word of God and learning to listen to the Lord's whispers through this. I am to no longer focus on  tasks or outcomes I desire but on the person of Jesus Christ. This sounds like one of those "Umm, duh! That's simple." things but it is harder than I thought. The difficulties are three-fold.

1) When you grow up doing something a certain way for your entire life, it is extremely hard to break the habit. I have prayed the same way for 22 years. Now I must change. It is for the better but that does not make it any less unnatural and foreign to me. It is a struggle to keep my mind from reverting back to the "old way of doing things". There is nothing wrong with the way I used to pray but there is more to be gained by changing.

2) Prayer is my rock through the twists and turns of life. If ever I am frustrated or upset, I run to Christ. In the past, I have taken comfort in spilling all my problems to the Lord and telling him how I think he should handle them. Now, I am learning to take my troubles to him and then wait to see what he has to say about them. Though I know this is a MUCH better way to handle things, my "comfort blanket" per say is momentarily gone. I am in a transition period where I am basically learning to trust. And trust is no easy lesson.

3)Taking the focus off yourself and onto someone else is an inherently unnatural act. Human beings are self-centered by nature. That is why it is so hard to love. We look out for ourselves - numero uno - before we worry about others. But Christ calls us to radically flip that and do what is best for others no matter the cost to ourselves. In my prayer, I am learning to take the focus off of myself and turn it to Christ. I am in a sense learning how to love. I am learning how to love Love Himself and in turn how to love others with His love. That's a lot of love!! And as Christ showed us on the cross, love doesn't come easy.

I know this is long already but I would not be doing justice to the subject if I did not share with you how beautiful this new journey is despite the hardships. I selected the Gospel of John to begin my Lectio with and over the past week of prayer I have only made it through half of the first chapter. I had no idea the Word of God could have so much impact and meaning behind EVERY SINGLE WORD. I am reading and meditating on verses I have heard many times but somehow completely missed the meaning of before now. And no matter what I am meditating over on a given day, I am always receiving exactly what I need to hear. The Lord's Word is magnificent and I learning so much already. I did not know what I was missing before but now that I have tasted the grace the Lord bestows on you when you are open to it, I hope to never go without it. I am falling deeper in love with the Lord through his Word. YAY! :)

Pride check

I think this article speaks for itself....  WOW.

As I've watched college students graduate recently, I've noticed a distressing trend. Campus ministries are becoming better, teaching orthodoxy without hesitation. Genuinely Catholic colleges are brimming over with zealous young people

And yet.

There is a harshness, a sort of snobbery happening. I watch in not a little horror and listen to what they are saying, as they measure other people by their overt acts of piety, while they size people up and discard them like the stuff of yesterday's recycling bin because they don't fit the new collegiate image of perfect holiness.

And I can just imagine that several years hence, they will go together with their young children to a playdate. They will meet another young mom at the park. They will inquire as to how many children she has. And when they discover that she has two, four years apart, they will say something sanctimonious about how they are open to God's plan for having children and has she ever heard of NFP? She will sit and wonder briefly whether she should tell them about the two years of cancer between the first birth and the second, about how desperately she prayed for this second child, about what a miracle he is. That young mom, with the two children widely spaced, will have just learned how some people of faith can judge one another. Litmus tests. Checklists. As she raises a family in the real world, she will see that attitude given voice over and over and over again, while Jesus weeps for his Church, broken and divided.

What's the opposite of gentleness? Harshness. Hard lines. Brittle rules. 

So there you are, you all grown up and graduated and out in the real world! You've come so far. You've left behind the safety of campus life, the happy campus ministry, the structure of academia. You've gone and gotten yourself a real job in the real world. With a real cubicle and a good excuse to shop at that very fine career wear store. Good for you!

You have a zeal for the faith that can be spotted a mile away. You wear it proudly splashed across your chest on more than a dozen t-shirts collected over the years of vibrant Catholic education. And you've come to embrace all those devotions of our faith as you've learned of them in your coming-of-age. You are on fire for your faith and you are eager to go out there into the real world and tell everyone just how Catholic you are.

May I whisper a word or two to you? CONTINUE READING.

Precious Jesus, grant me the grace to be gentle and humble. Amen.

Vessels

I am reminded today about the importance of continually educating ourselves in the practice of our faith. During my lunch break today I was having a very casual conversation about life outside of work with the coworker who shares a cube with me. I mentioned that I was Catholic and that I try to go to church as close to every day as possible. He commented on how nice that was and the conversation moved on. I thought nothing of it.

Well 2pm rolls around and my coworker (let's call him Joe) approaches me pretty randomly and starts asking me all about confession and the Catholic beliefs behind it. It caught me completely of guard. I tried my best to explain it and the conversation continued from there. We covered everything!! Mary, the saints, confession, the priesthood, the trinity (specifically the Holy Spirit and the charismatic gifts of the Spirit), marriage, the bible, forgiveness, salvation, and the Eucharist.  AND...For the majority of the conversation he was whole-heatedly agreeing with me. How beautiful the truth is!

The Lord is truly magnificent and the Holy Spirit can work wonders. All we have to do is be open to Him moving in our lives. I was totally unexpecting and totally unprepared for the conversation I had this evening. He chose me to be a vessel for His work anyways. Not only myself but Joe as well. There were times in the conversation that I didn't have all the answers and God chose to use Joe to stretch me also.

This conversation also solidifies in me the fact that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ meant to be united in the one Body of Christ. It is not natural for there to be so many factions and splits within His children. I think it is so important for all of us to be open to listening to others beliefs because it is only through listening that we can have a peaceful dialog with other faiths. And it is only through dialog that people will be open to hearing the wonderful truth we have to share with them.

Praise Jesus for amazing opportunities to be vessels of His love!! :)