Prayer

Between the Lines: Holy Week, preparation

Steve · April 14, 2014 · 6 Comments

St. Augustine, Florida's "Great Cross." SJG photo.

In the “third week” of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, we are asked to look into the heart and mind of Jesus during his last days, to have compassion for him (to be “with him in his passion”) and feel as if he might have felt with his world collapsing around him. We are asked to remember three things: that he was fully human in his suffering, that he could have retreated into his divine nature but didn’t, and that he did all this for us.

In the coming days I will share some of my imaginings, contemplative glimpses into the story of Christ’s passion that are meant only to pull you further into the story and draw you closer to Christ. We begin with preparations. In Luke 22:1-13, Jesus and his disciples prepare for Passover and Judas Iscariot makes plans for his betrayal. And we ask ourselves, how might have Jesus felt?

I know the end is coming. I know my followers are faltering and one has even crossed over to the side of those who want me dead. This makes me sad, but I know it’s all part of the Father’s will. If it were not Judas it would just be someone else. But it is Judas, has always been Judas. From the day I called him, he has been moving toward this. I love him deeply, despite what he’s about to do.

So I know what’s coming, can sense what’s about to happen, and I know I need to fortify myself with the ritual of Passover, which carries with it both ancient memory and a new meaning and purpose. This is a new form of worship, an offering of my body and blood, a thanksgiving celebration that will go forward from this day, giving strength and sustenance to all who share in it.

And yet, this is my body that we’re talking about, my passion, suffering and death. There’s no other way around this. Not even my divinity, my connection to my Father, can take a way the pain of being a man facing death. I am afraid of what this will do to my friends, afraid they won’t be able to take it all, afraid that the work and way we have started will cease.

So I am unsure, but I know somehow that there is strength in this meal, this time around the table with my friends. Let’s begin.

Ask yourself in silence: What is this meal, this “last supper” to you?

Today’s Word: Gaze

Steve · March 16, 2014 · 3 Comments

We spend so much of our lives creating and maintaining the person that our friends, family and co-workers see. This is the “self” of our upbringing, education and career, as well as of the myriad of other roles we take on — parent, spouse, church member, little league coach, employee or boss or volunteer. This is the self that becomes what people say about us: Nice guy or jerk, selfish or generous, authentic or fake. This is, to a great extent, how we will be remembered when we’re gone. But who are we, really?

St. Ignatius suggests that we always begin prayer by becoming “aware of God aware of me.” Caught in this mutual gaze of adoration (for surely God adores us even more than we adore God), we begin to find our true selves. Aware of God’s gaze, we can have the confidence to be our true selves before God, taking off the masks that we often put on just to make it through our days in all of the different roles that we must play.

There is nothing wrong in playing roles. We have mortgages or rent to pay. We have family obligations to meet. We have passions to pursue. But all of these will fade with time and we will find ourselves alone before God, who cares little for our masks and greatly for our naked souls. So we must ask ourselves, to which of our selves do we give the most attention and time? Which of our selves do we feed most often?

If we’re not sure how to answer that question, we need to spend more time in God’s gaze. For only that time of solitude and prayer will remind us of our true selves, as writer and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes: “I am who I am in God’s eyes, nothing more and nothing less. This is the serenity and the freedom of the saints.”

Ask yourself in silence: How much time do I give to nurturing my true self that is held in God’s gaze? How much time do I give to nurturing my career and the rest of my life? Do I need to readjust my priorities in any way?

Today’s Word: Exile

Steve · January 1, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Over the past week I’ve read and heard several times now the story in Matthew’s gospel about Joseph and Mary’s exile into Egypt following the birth of Jesus. This is not a story to which we usually pay much attention. It’s a post-Christmas, dark tale about threats of death and the murder of innocent children, and who wants to spend much time thinking about that?

But here’s what I’ve found. There’s a message of hope for us in this story, for we have all experienced exile at one time or another in our lives. Maybe you’re there right now. It could be an exile from God or maybe from a friend or family member. Maybe it’s an exile from yourself, a time of running away from what you think might hurt you. But whatever form it takes, exile can be a time of great spiritual growth if we leave ourselves open to hearing the voice of God in the wilderness. Joseph, a much under-appreciated character in the life of Jesus, is the hero of this story because he was willing to listen for and act upon the voice of God. “Take Mary and Jesus to Egypt, Joseph,” God says. And Joseph does. “Time to come back to Judea,” God says, and Joseph heads back to Israel. “On second thought,” God says, “better go to Galilee,” and Joseph settles his family in Nazareth. Listen. Obey. Act.

This is the call to a life of active contemplation, to a life of listening for the voice of God and actually expecting to hear something. Not a sound, perhaps, but nevertheless a knowing, a sense of God’s presence and direction. It is a life of staying the course and trusting the journey because something tells you it’s right. It’s a life of acting on the still small voice inside of us.

Ask yourself in silence: Am I trusting the journey I am on? Am I even aware of the journey?

Today’s Word: Odd

Steve · December 1, 2013 · 4 Comments

The improbably odd Daddy Longlegs. SJG photo

On more than one occasion, my former spiritual director said to me, “If it’s odd it might be God.” It’s a funny line, a very short poem perhaps, but nevertheless a grain of wisdom to which we would do well to pay attention. For while we very often — perhaps most often — find God in the plain and ordinary moments of our lives, there are also those odd moments of synchronicity, circumstance and coincidence that cause us to pause and wonder, “what’s going on?” And for those of us who hold tight to God and to our lives of faith, we can find ourselves asking, “what’s God up to?”

You know the moments I’m talking about. The phone rings and it’s the very person you were thinking about or needed to hear from to get you through a rough moment. A song comes on the radio and bears just the message you needed to hear. A scripture reading at church seems meant just for you at that very moment. Your dream job becomes available right when you’re best able to accept it. A series of highly improbable events comes together in perfect fashion, leading you to the place you most need to be. Fill in the blank. We’ve all been there.

We can chalk it all up to pure luck or the roll of the dice. We can “do the math” and come up with the odds. We can just ignore that it happened. Or we can begin paying closer attention to the moments and days of our lives and realize that these things happen more often than we ever realized. We can begin to see God living and moving in our lives and call the whole thing a miracle. When we choose that way of living, we find ourselves filled with hope and faith.

Ask yourself in silence: When was the last time “something odd” turned out to be God?

Today’s Word: Gratitude

Steve · November 28, 2013 · 7 Comments

noah — Grateful for Noah. Photo by Ellen Sala.

It’s hard to believe how quickly time flies. Today marks the fourth anniversary of this blog. I started it on a crisp Thanksgiving Day at the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri in 2009, feeling extremely grateful for everything and everyone around me. Not much has changed on that front, except that life just keeps getting better and fuller with every passing day and year.

These four years have brought disease and healing, and they have given us new family members, including Jenny’s boyfriend Zach, our beautiful daughter-in-law Jess and, of course, the new keeper of our hearts, our grandson Noah. We treasure the time with older family members and friends and learn to lean in a little closer when they tell stories that we want to make sure we never forget. Our friends — both old and new — become all the more precious to us as the years pass, and the opportunity to spend time with all those we love is a blessing beyond measure. When you face any kind of serious health issue you learn this fast: It is the presence of those special people that enriches our lives, and everything we have or own pales in comparison to the gift of that time together.

Sunset — Grateful for each passing day. SJG photo.

And so we learn to live in gratitude and come to know that “thank you, God” can be the most important and deepest prayer we can ever say. For “thank you, God” means, “I’m paying attention.” It means, “This is not all just about me.” It means, “Everything is gift.” With Noah in our family, we have a fresh and beautiful reminder of the gift of life, a little divine nudge that we should never take any of this for granted, but rather embrace it all with gratitude.

Ask yourself in silence: For what am I grateful today that I couldn’t even have imagined four years ago?