God’s Will

Living Our Vocation “to the Full”

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment
"The Good Shepherd" by Joseph Ritter von Führich, c. 1840

“The Good Shepherd” by Joseph Ritter von Führich, c. 1840

Yesterday, “Good Shepherd” Sunday, was the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. If you are discerning your vocation, I hope that you could feel the support of the Church’s prayers for you, lifting you up from all over the world!

Pope Francis offered a really beautiful reflection for the day in his Message for the 52nd World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  One of the coolest things about it is that he describes “vocation” in such a dynamic way, comparing the living of our vocation with the exodus experience. Thus, Pope Francis’ message for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations isn’t just for those discerning their vocations, but an invitation for all of us to live the gift of our vocations fully. I’d like to share three points that particularly struck me and that I’ve been praying with:

 

Following One’s Vocation (whether for the first time, or as a renewal of our commitment): 

Belief means transcending ourselves, leaving behind our comfort and the inflexibility of our ego in order to centre our life in Jesus Christ. It means leaving, like Abraham, our native place and going forward with trust, knowing that God will show us the way to a new land.

Living One’s Vocation “To the Full”:

The exodus experience is paradigmatic of the Christian life, particularly in the case of those who have embraced a vocation of special dedication to the Gospel. This calls for a constantly renewed attitude of conversion and transformation, an incessant moving forward, a passage from death to life like that celebrated in every liturgy, an experience of passover…. Vocation is always a work of God. He leads us beyond our initial situation, frees us from every enslavement, breaks down our habits and our indifference, and brings us to the joy of communion with him and with our brothers and sisters. Responding to God’s call, then, means allowing him to help us leave ourselves and our false security behind, and to strike out on the path which leads to Jesus Christ, the origin and destiny of our life and our happiness.

The Model for Every Vocation:

The Virgin Mary, model of every vocation, did not fear to utter her “fiat” in response to the Lord’s call. She is at our side and she guides us. With the generous courage born of faith, Mary sang of the joy of leaving herself behind and entrusting to God the plans she had for her life. Let us turn to her, so that we may be completely open to what God has planned for each one of us, so that we can grow in the desire to go out with tender concern towards others (cf. Lk1:39).  

If you can, go and read the entire message here. It’s not just beautiful, but challenging and encouraging, reminding us that the Christian vocation is to love, and that living the fullness of the Gospel message does not limit us but leads us to the fullest possible freedom. I also was struck by his comparing each Christian’s vocation to the Exodus experience, because in doing so, Pope Francis is indirectly validating the “storytelling” lens that I’m using on this blog to talk about discernment!

How Our Weaknesses Shape Our Discernment: the Importance of Knowing One’s Self

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / 3 Comments

“The Mirror” by William Merritt Chase, c. 1900

What makes a novel or movie fascinating for me is when the protagonist is flawed and must overcome inner obstacles to achieve his goal, or to choose (and find) her happiness. If all the characters—especially the main ones—are practically perfect, then we have trouble being interested in the story or the characters, because they’re not real. (Even the practically perfect Mary Poppins has a fault—or at least a weakness—in how she deals with her affection for the children and for Bert.) Perfect characters don’t just make the story less interesting. We are unable to relate to these flat characters, or to their lives, because they aren’t struggling with anything. They’re not like us.

We all struggle with ourselves—our faults, a flaw, or even a simple tendency that, in our situation, causes pain or distress. If we truly come to know ourselves, we acknowledge that we struggle with much more than the occasional fault. We all have a tendency to sin, and the more honest we are with ourselves, the better we know our sinfulness and flaws. (One of the benefits of spiritual direction is gradually coming to a clearer self-knowledge.) St. Augustine encourages us to pray for self-knowledge, and it’s something we can do daily before we make our examen.

People have different levels of awareness of their faults and sinfulness, but almost all of us have “blind spots” when it comes to how we see ourselves. A strength or talent we take pride in may actually be an irritant or flaw to others. For some of us, pride blinds us to our flaws and we have trouble acknowledging our sinfulness, except in things that we don’t consider that important. For others among us, all we can see is our faults and sinfulness. And many of us swing back and forth between the two perspectives—we have days we feel we can conquer the world, and other days where to love that irritating person for the love of Christ feels way more heroic than we can manage.

Neither perspective is really helpful. If you are someone who, like me, shifts back and forth, then you have one advantage: you know that you have still not come to the truth of who you are. For me, the key word in my understanding of who I am is one word: and.

Who are we? We are flawed and saved. We are called to eternal glory through the gift of our Baptism, and we are limited and sinful human beings. We are sinners and redeemed. We are cherished and we are called to conversion.

When we are discerning an important decision, it is crucial that we remember who we really are: precious and weak, sinful and called to holiness. At some point, God will probably call us to go beyond ourselves, beyond our own strength, sustaining us with the gift of his grace. But God also perfects our human nature, the gifts of our specific personality inherent in us. Our weaknesses shape our call just as much as our gifts, so it’s important in our discernments that we know who we are, in all the greatness of our call and all the weakness that we suffer.

For some helpful real-life examples, we can read more about the saints. In comparing two saints, we will often discover that the questions that they wrestled with were very different. A sensitive monk who grapples with scrupulosity and becomes a great confessor (like the great saint, Padre Pio) will have very different discernments during his life than a practical peasant woman who grows up on a farm and founds a religious congregation dedicated to bringing the love of God to others through the corporal works of mercy (like the great St. Frances Xavier Cabrini). Both are great saints known for their love for God and selfless service of others, but their love was expressed in completely different ways.

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To Journal About

  • How do I see myself? Do I use “and” or “but” when I describe myself?
  • At this point in my life, what is my greatest fault?
  • At this point in my life, what is my greatest gift?

You may wish to conclude your journaling time with a prayer to the Holy Spirit for the grace to see yourself through God’s eyes.

God Wants a Relationship with Us

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

To understand God’s call for us, we need to also understand how God sees us; we have to understand our “backstory” (to put it in storytelling terms) or where we come from.

How does God see us? Most simply put, we have been loved into being:

There is one truth for believers that, no matter how much our wounded nature might try, cannot be twisted. This truth is that God chose to create each of us. There is something so unique and wonderful about us that God wants to share his life with us. God wants us in the world.  – See Yourself Through God’s Eyes

Not only is this true, but it has an amazing corollary: in creating us, God is expressing a desire to have a relationship with us. Because of Jesus, we know that this relationship with the God is adoption as God’s child, and our relationship with Jesus is friend.

Image 7How precious is the worth and dignity of every person on earth! The core of our identity is that we are created in the image of God, invited to become a child of God through Baptism so that we can share in Jesus’ divine Sonship. Created in God’s image, we have the ability to know and to love. Unfortunately, the freedom that gives us the ability to love also gives us the ability to choose to turn away from love.

When we choose not to love, we aren’t living according to the greatness of our identity. Although we are beloved, we are also flawed and sinful. Yet, even God’s response to our sinfulness proves his love for us! God sends his Son Jesus to save us from ourselves, from the power of sin, from the power of evil. Every time that we repent of our sins and ask forgiveness, we are invited to return to the depth and beauty of greater communion with God.

Our “backstory” helps us as begin or deepen our attitude of discernment, because God’s call to us is congruous with this reality that we are precious in God’s eyes. Since our very identity is founded on our relationship with God, it makes sense then that God is the Co-Protagonist in our life. God wants to partner with us, to draw us always closer to himself (in deeper communion with him) throughout our lives.

To Pray With

Psalm 139 is wonderful to pray with and ponder our identity in God’s eyes—God’s beloved ones. Pray with it over the next few days, and allow the awe and gratitude of this psalm to fill you.

My True Identity

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / 1 Comment

In this series of blogposts about discernment, we continue to look at our life through a storytelling lens…beginning with ourselves as the co-protagonist of our lives (co-protagonists with God).

453px-Caravaggio-The_Conversion_on_the_Way_to_Damascus

Conversion on the Way to Damascus, 1601, Caravaggio

Who am I as the protagonist of my story? Who am I, really? What are the key events that have shaped my life? What important choices have I made so far? What are my deepest desires around which I want to base my decisions, plan my future? What do I consider my successes? my failures?

Each of us is a son or daughter of our families, and members of the human family. If we have been baptized, we also belong to the family of God, the Church. We are sons and daughters of God—adopted into God’s life.

And if we able to honestly and realistically look at ourselves (and this is not easy!) we will recognize great beauty and potential, but also great flaws and woundedness. We will see greatness and pettiness, openness to grace and attraction to sin. We will recognize that we carry both love and pride in our hearts, selfishness and generosity.

* * *

I used to not know this. As a teenager, I used to relegate the Redemption—Jesus’ suffering and dying—as  important background to my life. (Forgive me, Lord!) After all, I was baptized as an infant years ago, and I was grateful that I had been redeemed. But now I was on my journey toward holiness, and I didn’t need to keep going back to those ideas of conversion, sin, mercy, forgiveness, Redemption…

I look back and chuckle at how clueless I was—about myself, about human nature, and about my relationship with God. (One proof of God’s infinite mercy is that I’ve grown beyond this cluelessness!)

Saint Paul—one of the greatest saints ever—wrote, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Saint Paul’s entire life was shaped around the merciful love of Christ—the merciful gaze of Jesus as he forgave Paul for helping to stone Saint Stephen and persecute his first followers, the mercy of Jesus that revealed to Paul God’s great love for him in Christ. This was the merciful love that Paul constantly preached.

You might say that Paul needed conversion, but he wrote this years later, after he had already spent years of his life preaching Christ all over the world.

No matter where we are on our journey, even if we are baptized, live our faith in a dynamic and vital way, and earnestly seek God’s will, we will always, constantly, be in need of the mercy and grace of God to live out our truest identity—as human beings, as children of God.

This is where we need to start in our discernment, because the experience of God’s mercy is the foundation of our relationship with God. God creates us and loves us gratuitously: we cannot possibly ever do anything that would “earn” us God’s love. It’s in the midst of our unworthiness and even our sinfulness that we discover God’s immense love for us. God’s merciful love becomes the bedrock of our relationship with God!

Pope Francis, in his letter officially announcing the Year of Mercy (from Dec. 8, 2015-November 30, 2016), says this eloquently:

“Mercy: the ultimate and supreme act by which God comes to meet us… Mercy: the bridge that connects God and man, opening our hearts to a hope of being loved forever despite our sinfulness.”

Pen_UncappedTo Journal About:

Answer the questions at the beginning of this blog post:

  • What key events have shaped my life?
  • What important choices have I made so far?
  • What are my deepest desires around which I want to base my decisions and plan my future?
  • What do I consider my successes? my failures?
  • Who am, really?

Dancing with God

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

In a book or film, the protagonist is the central character in the story—the story is the protagonist’s story. Without the protagonist, there is no story, just a set of circumstances. This is also true of the story of our lives. We are the protagonists of our own lives. It is our story. But it’s also God’s story. God brought us into being, provides for us, and guides us as closely as we’ll allow. So God, too, is the protagonist of our story or rather, God and I are the co-protagonists of our story, which is the story of my life.

385px-Ballroom.svgIf we truly believe this—that the Holy Spirit is our Co-Author and Co-Protagonist—then how do we describe our role as the human co-protagonist? We know we aren’t simply passive spectators to our own lives. The Church unequivocally reminds us that we each have free will and the dignity of exercising that freedom. The question is how do we exercise our freedom, to make a choice, to step forward in faith, while letting God lead?

Letting God take the lead and our making a free choice are not mutually exclusive; in fact, just the opposite is true because ideally, they happen together! God invites, and we respond with faith and loving action. Our full, wholehearted response is absolutely essential to fulfilling our purpose, vocation, and mission in life.

For me, perhaps the best image of discernment as a way of life—even better than the image of co-authoring!—is that of a couple dancing together. Certainly one dancer usually takes the lead, but the other partner must choose to dance, take each of her own steps, occasionally choose her steps more independently when they are not hand in hand, and follow her partner’s lead when they are moving together. True dancing partners—even when across the room from each other—are always aware of each other, always seeking to harmonize or synchronize their movements. If not, there’s no dancing.

Growing in our relationship with God means that our partnership, this “dance” of our lives, enables us to understand always more the intentions and desires of God. Just like partners who have danced together for years can anticipate their partner’s next move, so when we live in communion with God, we start to understand God’s invitations and we can respond more easily and quickly—almost before God extends his hand in invitation.

Each step we take—whether we are intentionally following God’s lead or simply moving forward with our lives by doing the best we can—is a step we take freely. God respects our free will, works with our missteps, and wants us to grow in freedom. Just as partners who have danced together for years feel greater freedom—they trust so much in their partner’s support that they can take riskier moves—so the greater our spirit of discernment and union with God, the greater our freedom in living our deepest identity.

Discernment & the People in Our Lives

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

characters-setI hope you had a blessed Easter week. It’s a felt joy to be back here, blogging. This post will pick up where we left off a couple of weeks ago, when we were exploring looking at our lives through a storytelling lens. Today, we’ll begin to look at how the people in our lives affect our discernment. We’ll do this in a fun way by exploring the concept of characters in dramatic storytelling. 

In any good story, the characters—hopefully a diverse and lively cast!—are the most important part.

Our lives—the truest, most important story to us—are brimming with characters! The main character—the protagonist—is key. After all, it’s the protagonist’s story! But we will also look at other “characters” or forces, in our lives, such as the antagonist who seeks to thwart the protagonist either because of a personal issue, or because he or she opposes the protagonist’s mission. Most of us have many “supporting characters” in our lives than would fit in the longest Dickens novel (people whom we count on as friends, rivals, mentors, or sidekicks).

The interplay between God and each person—and how God works through the freedom, words, choices, growth, and personality of each person—is too complex for us to fully grasp. But we know that God often chooses to work through people, so much so that he sent his only Son to take on our human nature and share our human life with us. Today, the Church offers the salvation Jesus won for us by his Passion, Death and Resurrection through human beings: through sacraments administered by a priest, within a community made up of flawed and beloved human beings each on their journey towards salvation.

We never make our discernment journeys alone. The people in our lives play an important role in that journey. We’ll begin with the most important “character” of all: the protagonist.

Discernment in Images: Entrusting Self to God

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

Discernment quote 4This is one of my very favorite insights into discernment: we trust God because God–in Christ–first trusts us! Discernment: a relationship of love, trust, and freedom.

 

Blessed Easter! I have taken this week away from this blog to catch up on another project for our centenary year (yes, 2015 is the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Daughters of Saint Paul!), but I’ll be back next week. Thanks for your patience.

In the meantime, Sr. Margaret Michael Gillis, vocation director for the Daughters of Saint Paul in the USA and Canada, offers a two-minute audio reflection about discerning religious life here.

 

Discernment in Images: Understanding How God Saves Me

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Discernment quote 3

Wonderful App for the Examen

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / 2 Comments

GoodFriBlessings for Holy Week! You will all be in my prayers even though I’m taking a bit of a break from posting the book this week.

In the meantime I wanted to share with you an app that teaches and reminds us how to do the examen, a wonderful discernment tool and spiritual practice. The examen is a wonderful way to listen to God’s invitations in our life, helping us to look over our day and to be aware of how God is acting in our life, and how we’ve responded. The examen comes to us from the famous expert on discernment, St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who has influenced the Church greatly with his spirituality that focuses on discerning the will of God. One of the tools for discernment are his Spiritual Exercises–an in-depth retreat where the retreatant seeks to discover God’s will. A practical tool that everyone can use in everyday life is the examen of consciousness. 

The examen is a bit like the examination of conscience–examining our thoughts, words, actions, and omissions at the end of every day, or before we go to confession. But the examen is a bit different. Rather than  focusing on what we’ve done or haven’t done, the examen helps us to look over the day and focus on how God has invited us and worked in our lives during the day.

At http://www.theprodigalfather.org/ Father Michael Denk hosts the Examen App for iPhones, android phones, and tablets that can guide you through the examen–with written steps on the screen and videos. The app is free and contains a full explanation of how to pray the examen. It even has reminders that you can set so that you remember to take the time to pray the examen! If you have a moment, just visit his site now and download the app!

For those of you who don’t have a device with which to use the app, I’ll briefly share the steps of the examen below. Later, I’ll do a whole blog post on this powerful prayer and tool for discernment.

Steps for the Examen: 

1. Gratitude
Note the gifts of love God has given this day; give thanks

2. Petition
Ask God for insight and an open heart; ask God to show you what God wants of you this day

3. Review
With God, look over your day; pay attention to the stirrings of your heart; review your choices and responses

4. Forgiveness
Accept the love and forgiveness God gives you

5. Renewal
With God plan concretely how to live in accord with God’s desire for you

Journaling with the steps of the examen is very helpful, and Father Michael’s Examen app encourages you to do just that. For more explanations of the examen prayer, visit: http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/ignatian-prayer/the-examen/

 

God’s Will Is Love

/ Sr. Marie Paul Curley / Leave a comment

Discernment quote 6

A fitting quote from Father Rupnik as we enter into Holy Week on Sunday! May we discover the Father’s love for us in a renewed and deeper way as we contemplate Jesus’ great love for us on the Cross. (Quotation from Discernment: Acquiring the Heart of God by Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, SJ.)