Don’t Give in to Discouragement

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

Psychologists tell us that one of the chief evils of our age, an evil apparently less evident in earlier ages, is that of easy defeat. Be this as it may, most people who are honest with themselves would probably have to admit to indulging in despondency. They are fortunate if they have nothing worse to confess than despondency; there are many who labor under the weight of near-despair. Whether guilty of surrendering to the tempta­tion or whether burdened with a sense of guilt that in fact is without foundation, a man can reduce his spiritual vitality so as virtually to close his soul to the operation of hope. When hope dies, there is very little chance for faith and charity.

It is a commonplace to observe that the saints were not those who never fell, but those who never gave in to their falls. It is less generally understood that the saints felt just the same longing as we do for the excuse to go on falling. The parable of the wheat and the cockle should show us that the saints were not only as divided against themselves interiorly as we are, but that they had to go on struggling all their lives against the de­sire to let the cockle have its way.

A mistake we make is to think of the saints as triumphing over temptation by the felt force of ardent love. Some of them, certainly, experienced this fire, but for the most of them it has been a question of grinding out dry, hard acts of faith and hope through clenched teeth. The saints have had to fight every inch of the way against discouragement, defeatism, and even despair.

How could it be otherwise? No virtue can be productive of good unless it comes up against the evil that is its opposite. Courage is not courage until it has experienced fear: courage is not the absence of fear, but the sublimation of fear. In the same way, perseverance has to be tried by the temptation to give up, by the sense of failure, by an inability to feel the support of grace. The reason Christ fell repeatedly — one tradition would have it that He fell seven times — is at least partly be­cause we fall repeatedly and have need of His example in re­covering from our falls. The difference between His falls and ours is that, whereas His were because of weakness of the body, ours are because of weakness of the will. The likeness between His and ours lies simply in the use that can be made of them.

Even if we do not reproduce the Passion in any other re­spect, we have the chance of reproducing it in perseverance under exhaustion. If, as we have seen, the Passion is con­stantly being renewed in the members of Christ’s Mystical Body, there must always be some aspect of Christ’s suffering to which our own personal sufferings can show an affinity. If we are bearing witness to the same truth, opposing the same evil, moving in the same direction, then the same means must be used by us as those that were used by Christ — namely, patience and endurance in the all-but-defeating experience of life. The effort that we make to regain the position lost by ei­ther circumstances or sin will reflect the effort made by Christ to return to the interrupted work of cross-bearing. Nothing of our experience need be wasted, not even our sinfulness.

So it would seem that the truly Christian man transcends discouragement only by accepting it. No man can pass beyond an obstacle except by facing it and rising above it. To go around an obstacle is not to overcome it, but to evade it. Circumven­tion may be all right when we are traveling along a road, but it will not do when we are advancing toward God by the way of the Cross.

Read the rest here.

The All In Prayer (Mark Mallet)

My Lord and my God,
I want to be all in for you:

All my heart, and all my mind,
All my soul, and all my strength;
All my gifts, and all my talents,
All I possess, and all my will.

All I ask is for your
Grace and your Spirit,
Your love and your light,
Your kindness and your mercy,
That I may always and everywhere
Be all in for You.

by Mark Mallet

What to Dump For a Better Life

The following comes from the Integrated Catholic Life:

We’ve got a dumpster coming today for some household cleanup, an October cleaning of sorts to purge the house of many things—old broken but non-antique furniture, a basketball hoop that has seen better days, wet carpet pulled up from a home improvement project, and a wooden swing that served us well for many summers but is now warped and falling apart.

As I sit by the window, waiting for the truck that will bring the dumpster (I hope I got one big enough), it occurred to me that while I am at it, it might be a good idea to rid my mind of mental debris as well. If a cook works better in a clean kitchen, and if a home operates more smoothly with organized rooms, then I’m sure my mind (and spirit) will be better off if I get rid of a few things. Want to join me?

The purging, both physical and mental, won’t be overwhelming. We’ll just be getting rid of things we no longer need, or that can become not only an eyesore but unhealthy if they sit out too long.

First, we’ll start with resentment. It’s a toughie because it likes to linger, but we’ve got to get it out. Let us begin.

Did your parents prevent you from some pined for opportunity when you were a child that you’re just positive would have affected your life positively and differently had they done this or that? Were you overlooked at work although you really deserved a raise or recognition? Did a friend snub you? Did you buy some stock and then lose money because of bad advice or maybe just bad luck? Did rain get in your basement? Was the supermarket clerk rude? Did someone flip you off in traffic? Were you misunderstood? Do you have an acute or lingering illness? Did someone else seem to get a break in sports, or income or wife or life? Do you have some personal struggles that no one seems to understand or no one else seems to have? Did you experience a once in a lifetime catastrophe?

Okay, here it is:

You have to get over it.  

Ouch. I know that sounds harsh. And please believe me, I really do understand how hard it can be to refuse resentment. Some years ago my brother, just twenty-years-old, was killed in a car accident. I have lost five babies to miscarriage (one on Christmas Day). I have other private sorrows. I lived through a house fire as a child and battled cancer as an adult. I am experienced in the once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe department, which are not always “once in a lifetime” as some of you may also know first hand. I tell you this only so you will know I understand how hard this can be. Stewing over past hurts may be tempting, but don’t do it! We not only canlet go of resentment that tempts us, but we must or it will clutter our hearts and minds and will snuff out joy of living.

When we resent someone (or something), we hand over power to that person or situation. We let it control our moods and emotions, how we treat people. In short, resentment grows easily and can rob our lives of peace of mind and happiness.

“A stone is heavy and sand is weighty, but a fool’s provocation is heavier than both.” (Proverbs 27:3)

“The godless in heart cherish anger.” (Job 36: 13)

Three remedies to resentment are forgiveness, a reality check and gratitude.

First, let’s look at forgiveness and address what forgiveness of a person is not—forgiveness is not being stupid, trusting an untrustworthy person, for example. It is not putting yourself in an unhealthy situation over and over again, taking physical or emotional abuse, because you are constantly giving a bad person another chance. If a person willfully hurts you and is impenitent it would be ridiculous to put yourself in a situation to be hurt again. Forgiveness also doesn’t mean overlooking evil. Forgiveness does not mean giving access again when it is imprudent to do so. Sometimes, in fact, a situation necessitates distance from the person you forgive, for self-preservation purposes.

What does forgiveness—something Jesus tells us to do “seventy times seven” look like then? Forgiveness of a person means you look at him with compassion, trying to see him through “God’s eyes” so to speak. The angry and verbally abusive person may have, for example, been raised in a poor home environment. Imagine what it must have been like for him as a child growing up in a home with hate being spewed daily. Perhaps he says what was said to him. Forgiveness does not mean you subject yourself to his vitriol. Forgiveness does not mean you do not hold him accountable for his actions or say meekly that the wrongs are “not a big deal.” But you do, looking at him with “kind eyes,” seek understanding, and let go of the hurt, like a helium balloon into the sky, of the anger he throws your way. You sincerely wish the best for him. You pray for him. You bless him. This could be the grace that allows goodness and healing to reenter his life. God is good like that.

We can also play the “benefit of the doubt” or “make excuses” exercise to help facilitate forgiveness of a person and prevent resentment from taking hold in our hearts. We do this by imagining the best in someone and picturing a scenario that perhaps caused the behavior we are tempted to resent. A simple example is a man flips you off in traffic, either warranted or unwarranted by your driving. You can take it personally and get mad back, or control your thoughts to imagine he may have been just fired from his job, or his wife just left him, or imagine some other instance where he may have been wronged and gave in to a momentary action of anger against you. In short, you give him the benefit of the doubt and “make excuses” for him. It is easier to forgive when you have compassion for someone. And forgiving helps dissipate resentment.

Read the rest here.

Prepare Your Heart to Pray

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

Prayer is, as it were, being alone with God. A soul prays only when it is turned toward God, and for so long as it remains so. As soon as it turns away, it stops praying. The preparation for prayer is thus the movement of turning to God and away from all that is not God. That is why we are so right when we define prayer as this movement. Prayer is essentially a “raising up,” an elevation. We begin to pray when we detach ourselves from created objects and raise ourselves up to the Creator.

Now, this detachment is born when we clearly realize our nothingness. That is the real meaning of our Lord’s words: “He that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” His whole life was a continual abasement, always more and more profound. St. Bernard does not hesitate to say that such an abasement brings us face-to-face with God. Hence the peace of souls that have fallen, when, raised up by God, they find themselves in His presence. And it is precisely in their abasement, once they have recognized and admitted it, that they find Him, because it is there that He reveals Himself. The only thing that prevents Him from doing so is our “self.” When we own to our nothingness, this “self” is broken down, and once that happens, the mirror is pure, and God can produce own image in the soul, which then faithfully reproduces His features that are revealed in all their harmony and perfect beauty.

This is what our Lord meant in that vital passage in the Ser­mon on the Mount, and what all human considerations on prayer repeat endlessly but without arriving at its full splendor: “But thou, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber and, having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret.”⁹⁵ Enter this sacred chamber of your soul and there, having closed the door, speak to your Father, who sees you in these secret depths, and say to Him, “Our Father, who art in Heaven. . . .” This intimate presence; your faith in Him who is the secret depth of it and gives Himself there; the silence toward all that is not God in order to be all to Him — here is the preparation for prayer.

It is obvious that we do not reach such a state of soul without being prepared for it by quite a combination of circumstances. And this is just what we do not know sufficiently in practice. The way to prepare for prayer is by leading a divine life, and prayer, af­ter all, is that divine life. Everything that reproduces God’s image in us; everything that raises us beyond and above created things; every sacrifice that detaches us from them; every aspect of faith that reveals the Creator to us in creatures; every movement of true and disinterested love making us in unison with the Three in One — all this is prayer and prepares us for a still more intimate prayer. All this makes real the divine word of the Sermon on the Mount and the dual movement it recommends: shut the door and pray to thy Father. When He spoke thus, the divine Word showed that He knew our being and its laws. He revealed Himself as our Creator and made Himself our Redeemer. He showed that He made us and that He alone can remake us.

We do not suffice to ourselves; we have not in us that which can complete us; we need to be completed. I know I am putting it badly when I say that this complementing thing is not in us. Actually, it is in within us, but it is in a part of us that is, as it were, outside of us. In us, as in God, there are “many mansions.” God is within us in the depths of our soul, but by sin we no longer occupy those depths. When Eve looked at the forbidden fruit and stretched out her hand to take it and eat it, she went out of those secret depths in her soul. It was these depths that were the real terrestrial paradise, where God visited our first parents and spoke to them. Since the Fall, God is in us, but we are not!

The preparation for prayer consists in returning to those depths. Renunciation, detachment, recollection — whatever word we use, the reality is the same, and that reality is the true secret of prayer. Close the door and enter. . . . It needs only these two phrases to ex­plain this, but in reality they are only one thing. They represent a movement, for all that unites us to God is movement. The words are related to two “terms,” or ends. If we speak of the terminus a quo (that is, from), they say (and they do what they say): Close. If we think of the terminus ad quem (that is, to), they say: Enter.We have to close the door on all that is not, and enter into HIM WHO IS. There you have the secret of all prayer.

Read the rest here.

Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko: Polish Priest and Martyr

Today the church remembers the Polish Martyr Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko.  He was beatified by Pope Benedict in 2010.  The following comes from the St. Stanislaus Kostka parish in Brooklyn, NY:

Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko was born on September 14, 1947 in Poland on the feast of Holy Cross Day. He was  the fourth child born to Marianna and Wladyslaw Popiełuszko. Two days later, he was baptized in his family  parish church in Suchowola. His mother, still in a blessed state, offered him up as a servant God. In 1954, he started elementary school and then continued his education in the local high school. After  graduation, he entered the seminary in Warsaw. After a year of study, he was drafted into the army and  inducted into a special unit created to destroy priestly vocations among young people. Two years in the army  had adversely affected his health. Later it even interfered with his priestly ministry. He was ordained at the hands of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski on May 28, 1972.  During the years 1972-1980 he was a vicar in the following parishes: Holy Trinity  in Zabkach, Our Lady of the Rosary in Anin and Child Jesus in Warsaw. Due to  his failing health and inability to continue the duties of a vicar, he was assigned to  work with students in St. Anne’s Church in Warsaw. In 1979, he began his priestly  ministry as a chaplain to medical workers in the archdiocese of Warsaw.

On May 20, 1980 he was transferred to the St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish in  Warsaw. There he continued his ministry and assisted in the parish as a resident.

On August 31, 1980, at  the request of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski he celebrated Mass for striking workers. This was the beginning of  his ministry among workers.  All along, Fr. Jerzy was involved in assisting the needy – especially families with many children, poor, and  close to those in prison camps. He collected food and medicine for them. He attended hearings of those  arrested for interfering with martial law. He supported political prisoners.

In February of 1982 he started  celebrating Mass on the last Sunday of every month for freedom of Poland. As months passed, more and  more people came from near and far to participate in the Mass.  The communist leaders at that time were not pleased with the actions of Fr. Jerzy and the respect he was  enjoying from people all over Poland. More and more often things happened that were meant to scare  Fr. Jerzy and force him to resign from ministry. Twice his home was broken into, he was constantly being  followed, harassed, stopped by police. His home was bombed and his car was doused with paint. At the  same time letters were arriving at the Bishop’s office complaining that his sermons „were consistently taking  aim at the People’s Republic of Poland”. In September 1983, a case was brought against him accusing him  of „excessive use of his rights as a priest in an effort to cause harm to the People’s Republic of Poland.”

In  December 1983 he was arrested. Upon the intervention of the Church, he was released. He was facing a  possible 10 years in prison. From January to June 1984, he was interrogated 13 times. His prison sentence  was later dropped as a result of the amnesty program of 1984. However, simultaneously a slander campaign  was being conducted by Jerzy Urban, the then spokesman for the government newspaper.

On October 13, 1984, near the town of Ostróda an attempt was made on the life of Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko  who was returning from Gdansk to Warsaw.

On October 19, along with the driver Waldemar Chrostowski he  travelled to Bydgoszcz. At 6:00pm on that day, he celebrated Rosary Devotions and Holy Mass in Polish  Saints Martyred Brothers Church.

On their return trip at about 10:00pm he was abducted in a place called  Przysiek near Torun by three members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was brutally beaten, he was tied  up in a way that any movement caused the noose to tighten around his neck, and then he was locked in the  trunk of a car. A boulder weighing about 24 pounds was tied to his legs, and he was thrown into a tributary of  the Wistula River near Wloclawek.

His body was finally found on October 30.

Read the rest here.

Lesson One in Prayer by Dr. Peter Kreeft

The following comes from The Integrated Catholic Life:

Let’s get very, very basic and very, very practical about prayer. The single most important piece of advice I know about prayer is also the simplest: Just do it!

How to do it is less important than just doing it. Less-than-perfect prayer is infinitely better than no prayer; more perfect prayer is only finitely better than less perfect prayer.

Nancy Reagan was criticized for her simple anti-drug slogan: “Just say no.” But there was wisdom there: the wisdom that the heart of any successful program to stop anything must be the simple will to say no. (“Just say no” doesn’t mean that nothing else was needed, but that without that simple decision nothing else would work. “Just say no” may not be sufficient but it is necessary.)

Similarly, no program, method, book, teacher, or technique will ever succeed in getting us to start doing anything unless there is first of all that simple, absolute choice to do it. “Just say yes.”

The major obstacle in most of our lives to just saying yes to prayer, the most popular and powerful excuse we give for not praying, or not praying more, or not praying regularly, is that we have no time.

The only effective answer to that excuse, I find, is a kind of murder. You have to kill something, you have to say no to something else, in order to make time to pray. Of course, you will never find time to pray, you have to make time to pray. And that means unmaking something else. The only way to install the tenant of prayer in the apartment building of your life is to evict some other tenant from those premises that prayer will occupy. Few of us have any empty rooms available.

Deciding to do that is the first thing. And you probably won’t decide to do it, only wish to do it, unless you see prayer for what it is: a matter of life or death, your lifeline to God, to life itself.

Is this exaggerated? Are there more important things? Love, for instance? We need love absolutely; but the love we need is agape, the love that only God has and is; so unless we go to God for it, we won’t get it. And going to God for it means prayer. So unless we pray, we will not love.

Having got that clear and having made prayer your number one priority, having made a definite decision to do it, we must next rearrange our lives around it. Rearranging your time, preparing time to pray, is like preparing your house to paint. As everyone knows who has done any painting, preparation is three-quarters the work, three-quarters the hassle, and three-quarters the time. The actual painting is a breeze compared with the preparation. The same is true of prayer: the hardest step is preparing a place, a time, a sacred and inviolable part of each day for it. Prayer is like Thanksgiving dinner. It takes one hour to eat it and ten hours to prepare it. Prayer is like Christmas Day: it took a month of preparation, decoration, and shopping to arrange for that one day. Best of all, prayer is like love. Foreplay is, or should be, most of it. For two people truly and totally in love, all of their lives together is foreplay. Well, prayer is like spiritual love-making. God has waited patiently for you for a long, long time. He longs for you to touch the fringe of his being in prayer, as the woman touched the hem of Christ’s garment, so that you can be healed. How many hours did that woman have to prepare for that one-minute touch?

The first and most important piece of practical preparation is scheduling. You absolutely must schedule a regular time for prayer, whether you are a “scheduler” with other things in your life or not. “Catch as catch can” simply won’t work for prayer; it will mean less and less prayer, or none at all. One quick minute in the morning to offer your day to God is better than nothing at all, of course, but it is as radically inadequate as one quick minute a day with your wife or husband. You simply must decide each day to free up your schedule so you can pray.

How long a time? That varies with individuals and situations, of course; but the very barest minimum should certainly be at least fifteen minutes. You can’t really count on getting much deep stuff going on in less time than that. If fifteen minutes seems too much to you, that fact is powerful proof that you need to pray much more to get your head on straight.

After it becomes more habitual and easy, expand it, double it. And later, double it again. Aim at an hour each day, if you want radical results. (Do you? Or are you only playing?)

What time of day is best? The most popular time—bedtime—is usually the worst possible time, for two reasons. First, it tends not to be prime time but garbage time, when you’re the least alert and awake. Do you really want to put God in the worst apartment in your building? Should you offer him the sickest sheep in your flock?

Second, it won’t work. If you wait until every other obligation is taken care of first before you pray, you simply won’t pray. For life today is so cruelly complicated for most of us that “every other obligation” is never taken care of. Remember, you are going to have to kill other things in order to pray. No way out of that.

The most obvious and usually best time is early in the morning. If you can’t delay the other things you do, you simply must get up that much earlier.

Should it be the very first thing? That depends. Some people are alert as soon as they get up; others need to shower and dress to wake up. The important thing is to give God the best time, and “just do it.”

Place is almost as important as time. You should make one special place where you can be undisturbed. “Catch as catch can” won’t work for place either.

What place? Some people are not very sensitive to environment and can even use a bathroom. Others naturally seek beauty: a porch, yard, garden, or walk. (I find praying while you take a walk a good combination of spiritual and physical exercise.)

You probably noticed I haven’t said a word about techniques yet. That’s because three-quarters is preparation, remember? But what about methods?

I can only speak from my own experience as a continuing beginner. The two most effective that I have found are very simple. One is praying Scripture, reading and praying at the same time, reading in God’s presence, receiving the words from God’s mouth. The second is spontaneous verbal prayer. I am not good at all at silent prayer, mental prayer, contemplative prayer; my thoughts hop around like fleas. Praying aloud (or singing) keeps me praying, at least. And I find it often naturally leads to silent prayer often, or “mental prayer,” or contemplation.

Most advice on prayer focuses on higher levels: contemplative prayer. But I suspect many of my readers are prayer infants too and need to learn to walk before they can run. So these are some lessons from one man’s prayer kindergarten. Let’s “just do it” even if “it” is only crawling towards God.

St. Francis of Assisi: Our Model

The following comes from Fr. George Rutler:

On October 4, we give thanks for one of the best known and least known of all saints. Least known, that is, because Francis of Assisi was not a garden gnome, or a doe-eyed hippy skipping with animals and hugging trees. Garden gnomes do not bear the Stigmata of Christ's wounds. A vegetarian? He berated a friar for wanting to abstain from meat on a feast day and said that on Christmas he would “smear the wall with meat.” An iconoclast? He was meticulous in the ceremonials of the Mass, insisting that every sacred vessel and vestment be the best, and his Rule dismissed any friar who parted from the Pope on the slightest article of Faith. A pacifist? He joined the Fifth Crusade, simmering ever since eleven thousand Muslims had invaded Rome and desecrated the tombs of Peter and Paul in the year 846. Francis went to North Africa in 1219 to convert the Muslims and confronted Sultan al Malik al-Kamil, who had just slaughtered five thousand Christians at Damietta. Francis fearlessly told the Sultan: “It is just that Christians invade the land you inhabit, for you blaspheme the name of Christ and alienate everyone you can from His worship.” While counselors called for the beheading of Francis according to Muslim law, the Sultan was so taken with the humility of Francis that he only had him beaten, chained and imprisoned, and then he released him.

We are engaged in similar challenges today.  Of course, we are aware of the crisis in the Middle East, but the strife is worldwide. Consider Nigeria, whose Catholic population in the last century has soared to nearly twenty million. Last week, under Muslim pressure, the government stopped the Eternal Word Television Network from broadcasting. I have worked with this worldwide Catholic network for twenty-five years and have many Nigerian friends. Two days after the Nigerian bishops objected to this censorship, a Catholic church was destroyed by Muslims, who killed and wounded many worshipers. This seems to be under the radar of our own government and the mainstream media.

May Saint Francis be our model in how to deal with the threats of our own day: not enfeebled by sentimentality and relativism, but armed with a Franciscan zeal for the conversion of souls. We may not have Francis’ charm, but we have in our hearts and churches the same God. By the way, the popular “Prayer of Saint Francis,” which begins, “Make me a channel of your peace,” was actually the work of an anonymous author who published it in France in 1912. Its vague theology and lack of mention of Christ, express a semi-Pelagian heresy unworthy of the Saint of Assisi. Let the last words of the real Saint of Assisi be our guide: “I have done what was mine to do; may Christ teach you what you are to do. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”     

Mother Teresa on Loneliness and Love

"There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives, the pain and the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor may be right in your family. Find them and love them!" 

Blessed Mother Teresa