A Christmas Prayer by St. John Paul (from 1994) which I want to share with you. A very Blessed Christmas!
Prayer
God Dreams with Us, Not for Us
One of the traps that we can fall into when we’re trying to discern something is to think that God has one precise and perfect way picked out for us, and woe to us if we take a wrong step. We mix up God’s knowledge of the future with God’s will, imagining that God already wrote the complete story of our lives, and that we really don’t have free will. That’s a pretty robotic view of human nature, and it’s far from the Church’s teaching about the human person. (See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, numbers: 1704, 1705, 1711, 1731, among many others.)
1. God doesn’t abandon us if we don’t pursue his dream for us—he always loves us and continues to invite us towards a closer relationship with him, up to the last moments of our lives.
2. God knows us better than we know ourselves, and God is all-wise, so whatever God wants is a perfect fit for us. His dream for us is exactly what we want at our deepest core, we just don’t always know it.
3. God’s dream for us isn’t created apart from us. It might be more accurate to say that God dreams with us, not for us. With the Holy Spirit, we are co-protagonists in the story of our lives.
4. God values our free will so much that he invites us (not forces us) into a loving relationship with him. Similarly, he invites us to enter into his dream for us. We choose how we respond to God’s invitations. God respects our freedom, and is more than willing to work with whatever steps we take, especially when we are sincerely seeking his will for us. Even when our steps seem to be going in the opposite direction, God is able to turn things around in the blink of an eye. The cliché “God writes straight with crooked lines” totally fits here—although it’s not complete. It’s even more than that! God seems to delight in working with our littleness, even with our limitations.
(We have a powerful reminder of this as we approach Christmas: God delights so much in working with human littleness that, when he took on human nature, he was born a little Baby.)
Insights & Contradictions in The Sisterhood, Episodes 3 & 4
Adoration in our Pauline Chapel
Lifetime’s reality TV show The Sisterhood: Becoming Nuns continued last night with episodes 3 and 4 back-to-back. These new episodes highlighted all the conventions of a reality TV show that I don’t enjoy: competition, heightened (over-the-top!) drama, staged scenes, coaching from the show’s producers, oversimplification of relationships and personal journeys, and an overt editing that revealed an obvious manipulation of various events. For me, watching this show has become a study of reality television shows and how “not real” they are!
Yet, if we take these conventions into account, it’s still possible to gain insight, both into religious life and into the process of discernment, as some viewers live-tweeted with other sisters and me while watching the show. I think this is particularly true because of the good will of the sisters and discerners on the show, who tried to be real in their interviews and comments.
Insights that I think could be particularly helpful for those of us who want to live more deeply in a spirit of discernment are:
Insight 1. Do not be afraid, but trust in God! We can often see God’s hand in our lives much more clearly when we look back on an experience, rather than when we are living in it. The most positive moments in the show so far have been when the young women leave one convent for another. In looking back on their experiences there, they talk about being loved, about experiencing God, and about growing as persons.
Yet we have just witnessed that these visits were not easy to go through. So these episodes help us to see that even in the difficult, confusing, or challenging moments of our lives, we need to cling to hope: God will use every event to draw us closer to himself, if we let him. This insight bears repeating for all of us: Do not be afraid! Trust in God, no matter where you are because he is with you.
Insight 2. The power of Eucharistic adoration in discerning. As a Pauline sister, I have a special love for Eucharistic adoration. My favorite description of adoration is something that St. John Paul said when he encouraged young people to go before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and simply “let him love you.”
If you already pray before Jesus in the Eucharist regularly, you know how blessed we are to be able to take advantage of his presence, his love, his availability! When you take quality time with Jesus in the Eucharist—at Mass, receiving Communion, or making some time for adoration—Jesus will transform the rest of your life as well. You cannot, will not, walk away unchanged.
If you don’t already make an occasional or regular Eucharistic Hour of adoration, I encourage you to consider it, perhaps by starting with just 20 minutes. There is something about the tangible closeness and vulnerability of Jesus in the Eucharist that can pierce through our blindness and defenses, helping us understand how loved we are, and how faithful his love is.
For those for whom the silence of adoration is really hard, there can be for a number of reasons, but I hear two reasons repeatedly:
1) We simply don’t know what to do with the silence.
2) When we are silent for a time, all the negative stuff–thoughts, feelings, or experiences–that we carry within us come to the fore, and we’re not expecting that. It can make any time of silence difficult, including time of adoration. It can be really hard if we feel that we have to be “extra-holy” to come to adoration. But what better place to deal with the “tough stuff” of our lives than with our loving Lord? In the Eucharist, Jesus welcomes and loves us. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves, and delights in us, no matter what we are struggling with. And when we draw close to him in the Eucharist, we are inviting him to work in us, to heal us, to help us to grow.
What can we do if we struggle with the silence? Here are a couple quick suggestions:
- Bring whatever is troubling us to Jesus in the Most Holy Eucharist. Keep the time of adoration to a length that feels manageable. Even five minutes of adoration can transform our day. And use favorite prayers and Scripture readings to make the time of adoration a real encounter with Jesus.
- Use a method to guide your time of adoration. Saint Alphonus Liguori’s method is beautiful and easy to use. The Pauline way of adoration is my favorite—you can find more about it below.
- Use a book like my newly published Soul of Christ to guide your time of adoration.
(For more on Eucharistic adoration, you may wish to check out my book, Soul of Christ: Meditations on a Timeless Prayer, or another book on Eucharistic prayer.)
Insight 3. Discernment is not about proving ourselves; it’s about love. None of us are “worthy” of being loved or being called to love. If we honestly know ourselves and ponder the heights of each vocation to love—whether it is the vocation to consecrated life, single life, or marriage—all of us find ourselves lacking.
Several times during the show, a young woman referred to “proving” herself to God, or “redeeming” herself in the eyes of others. This highlights for me again that the show can be misleading about competition and comparisons. Discernment is about discovering that we are loved by God deeply and wondrously, and then responding to God’s amazing love.
Discernment is about discovering our call to love.
4. God works with each of us individually. There are commonalities within discernment, but there is also the truth that God has a unique relationship with each one of us.
Every young woman experienced something remarkably different in the aftermath of several events, for example, praying the Rosary in the car after Darnell showed up to bring Eseni home (and thus short-circuit her discernment). From bringing back painful memories for Stacey and prompting her to feel lost, to offering light and clarity for Christie, this moment showed how unique each woman’s journey is. God’s individual guidance was also very clear during the young women’s different responses to the quiet time of Eucharistic adoration. Some of the young women were deeply touched and one had a breakthrough, while some found the adoration time very difficult—with one young woman needing to leave for some fresh air. (Note: It might have been helpful if the young women had some guidance in how to make an hour of adoration, especially for those who hadn’t done it before.) Because discernment is so individual, a group experience like this—while it has its strengths—also needs to take into account where each young person is. Obviously this wasn’t possible in a show like this.
* * *
Although the young women and sisters offered a lot of support to the young women discerning, both Episodes 3 & 4 had moments that really challenged me to continue watching, when certain behaviors contradicted Gospel values that are sought to be lived intensely in religious life. Especially the moments where participants of the show talk about others on camera, it’s hard for me to see the charity at work there amidst the comparisons, even knowing the comments are taken out of context. As one of our sisters, @SrSeanM so eloquently put in Twitter-verse nuggets last week:
“I figured out what’s bugging me about #TheSisterhood. They’re treating #discernment like religious life Boot Camp. And it’s so not!”
“#Discernment NOT a matter of seeing whether or not you measure up! It’s a matter of discovering what you are called to.”
“There are no short-cuts to creating a deep loving relationship. Love takes time and persistence. #Vocation is a call to love.”
Ultimately, discernment is a call to love: to discover how loved we are, and to respond to that immense, divine love! I close this post as I have in the past: by praying for the discerners on the show and watching the show. The prayer below is adapted from the prayer given to us by our Founder, Blessed James Alberione, to encourage prayer for priestly and religious vocations:
Jesus, Divine Master, who said, “The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few,” we lovingly accept your invitation: “Pray the heavenly Father to send forth laborers into his harvest.”
Inspire a devout crusade for vocations: “All the faithful for all vocations!” More priests! May they be the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city placed on the mountaintop for the salvation of humanity redeemed by your blood. More religious–both men and women–to fill the earth with religious houses which welcome your chosen ones, and which will be centers of light and warmth, sources of prayer, gardens of saints, singing “glory to God and peace to men and women of good will.” More husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, who testify to your Gospel in the world, at work, in the family, and in the loving formation of their children.
Mary, “God’s chosen one,” Mother and guardian of holy vocations, pray with us, pray for us, and for all called by God to live our vocations in greater love and holiness. Amen.
Learning from The Sisterhood: Discernment in Episode 2
Prayer To Discern Well from new Discern It! App
As I mentioned in my previous post, and have shared in many conversations, Lifetime’s show The Sisterhood: Becoming Nuns, while suffering all the limitations of a reality TV show, can do a great deal of good by offering to viewers a fascinating portrayal of religious life, and a sense of the challenges and obstacles a young woman faces in discerning whether she is called to become a sister.
Episode 1 introduced us to each young woman and to the Carmelites of the Aged and Infirm, where the young women are doing the first two weeks of their live-in. Episode 2 brings us right into the “nuts and bolts” of the young women’s discernments.
For this episode, I’d like to look at some of the typical discernment moments that arose on the show, seeing what we can learn from them (and without making any judgments on the people involved). Some key moments in discernment that I noted while I watched:
- Eseni’s desire for growth and peace, and Sr. Maria Theresa’s response that it is important for her to seek healing. I really loved Sr. Maria Theresa’s comment that all of us are broken, and all of us need healing. (By the way, this is a wonderful insight for Advent: we are all in need of a Savior!)When we feel deep turmoil and restlessness, it’s a good time to reflect, but isn’t necessarily the best time to make a big change in our lives, because we might be making a change simply to find relief from our inner pain, rather than truly following God’s invitation. Saint Ignatius of Loyola has some great guidelines about this. If we are discerning about something major in our lives and we discover that we are deeply troubled about something else, we may want to slow down our discernment, or discern the cause of our turmoil and take steps towards healing and peace, rather than make a big decision about our original discernment. In general, when we are discerning something major in our life like our vocation, we want to discern from a place of peace.
- Christie’s desire for greater intimacy with Christ, while instead she was feeling desolation. I love how honestly she puts it: “I showed up and he [Jesus] didn’t!” A wise spiritual director might encourage someone in a situation like Christie to not be afraid and to “stay the course” and not make any hasty decisions—either about going home or entering religious life. In the midst of the kind of anxiety or desolation that Christie seemed to be experiencing, we want to pay attention. The spiritual life is full of experiences of consolation and desolation, so when we are in the throes of desolation, it’s good to take it slow and reflect on what’s happening. A spiritual director who has experience in Ignatian discernment, especially “discernment of spirits,” can be really helpful, because St. Ignatius offers a lot of wisdom when he describes the different causes of spiritual consolation and desolation, and how we can discern even from within them.
- The courage that several young women showed during times of anxiety or difficulty in participating in the sisters’ mission is inspiring and encouraging for all of us who seek to discern. Discernment takes great courage and freedom because we are letting go of our illusions of control and our ego, trusting in the Lord instead, and surrendering to his guiding love.
- At several points Claire struggles with her relationship with the other discerners. Several comments that were made highlighted for me an important principle in matters of the spiritual life—including discernment. It’s not helpful to compare ourselves with others, especially if we’re trying to determine where we are on our journey or our next step. God works with each of us individually, and each of us has unique experiences and a unique relationship with God. While we can learn from each other, note similarities or differences in our journeys, we don’t want to fall into the trap of making comparisons or judgements.
And this is important, not just for the young women and sisters in the show, but for those of us watching as well. Even in a show with such good intentions as The Sisterhood, the temptation seems to be to compare these young women to each other, and to judge their responses to the challenges they face (and then to compare with ourselves). This is a very human tendency, but comparing these young women to each other and making judgments about their journeys is really unhealthy spiritually. (It brings to mind a homily Pope Francis gave last year about gossip.) Talking about others uncharitably is gossip. A TV show about discernment might especially tempt those of us who know more about this spiritual art to make judgments about the people involved. But in all honesty, as viewers we are not even receiving the full picture.
We all know that reality TV is not real:
- it’s edited so that we never have the full context for any event or conversation
- people naturally play to the camera or can even react differently if they are within range of a camera
- reality TV fosters or emphasizes drama.
We also don’t know what only God knows: the deep desires and motivations of each person. Keeping all of that in mind, even if we had the right to judge, we don’t have the full information needed to do so. (And we never do!)
* * *
In that spirit, I’d like to close with a prayer for all the discerners: those on the show itself, and those who are watching and seeking to discern God’s will for their lives.
Come, Holy Spirit, and shine your light, peace, and wisdom on Eseni, Stacey, Francesca, Claire, and Christie, and all those who seek to live more fully in accord with your will.
-Give them the peace to not be caught up in their feelings, but to sort through them in serenity to have greater clarity about their desires
-Purify their hearts so that their motivation to live in union with you grows always greater
-And grant them the courage and freedom to risk, to take on new challenges and try new things, as they seek to discover how you call them to live the Gospel of life and of love. Amen.
For those interested, you can find the new, free Discern It! App here from the Daughters of Saint Paul.
The Power of Stories
I have loved stories ever since I can remember, becoming an avid, insatiable reader as a child. Some years ago, I realized that if I wanted to make a talk or workshop memorable, I had to tell a powerful story. Better yet if I could illustrate and connect the important points of my workshop together through a series of stories. We are surrounded with stories: novels, TV shows, films, video games… Some would call our communications culture an entertainment culture; even our news has become “infotainment,” which means that for us to retain facts, they are best told to us in an entertaining way (usually narrative- or humor-driven). We may think that we are sophisticated technologically, but our nature as human beings hasn’t changed. We always have and still find a good, simple story hugely compelling.
While it’s lamentable that many of us seem to need to be entertained to stay well-informed, and that our attention span as a culture seems to be growing collectively shorter, it’s reassuring that the power of a good story hasn’t changed. Stories have always been compelling, and stories can go well beyond simple entertainment.
Stories are often an important way in which we find meaning in events that are troubling, complex, or outside of our usual experience. Looking at a seemingly random incident in the light of its causes or consequences can comfort us with a sense of meaning or purpose. A good story can:
* help us learn from another’s experience
* feel a sense of community or support
* discover our identity
* recognize a pattern in seemingly random events
* discover what we share with others who are different from us
* walk in another’s shoes
* be inspired to see how important even one small event or choice can be
Perhaps because a good story “works on us” on several levels (intellectual, emotional, imaginative, experiential, spiritual, etc.), stories remain one of the most important ways we have of making sense of our world and of our lives, and of communicating in a meaningful way with others.
In the Bible, God uses stories to communicate with us. From prophets in the Old Testament, to Jesus, to the adventures of Saint Paul, to the Fathers of the Church, to theologians today, the events of the Bible are seen as salvation history—that is, the story of how God redeems, heals, and saves his people. Our individual lives can also be seen or interpreted as our personal stories of God’s healing, saving action in our lives, and our response to God: our personal salvation history.
In The Silmarillion, when Tolkien told the story of the creation of Middle Earth in a way beautifully reminiscent of Genesis, he wrote about creation as “great music.” As a Catholic and as a story writer, when I reflect on the world that God has created and my place in it, I see God as the Creator but also as the Storyteller, and Jesus not just as the Word of God but also the Story of God.
Seeing our individual lives as part of God’s salvation story for all humanity helps us to see the larger context of our lives, and to accept life’s ups and downs more easily, discovering meaning (or at least some meaning) behind the challenges, sufferings, joys, and routine of our lives.
* * *
To Journal About
1. What are my favorite kinds of stories?
2. If I think about my life as a story, what kind of a story is it?
3. How do I see my life as my salvation history? What role does God have in the story of my life?
Discernment Tip:
Re-read my favorite story in the Bible. Why do I like this story? What might be God’s invitation to me through this story?
What’s Your Story?
Like me, have you had “frozen squirrel” moments…where you’ve not been sure where God is calling you to go next?
Do any of the following feel true…at least some of the time?
- You feel that you are placed here on earth for a reason, that you were intended to do something special, to fulfill your unique role in God’s story for the world…but you feel you haven’t found what that is yet.
- You’re discerning your vocation–or you want to discern your vocation–and you don’t know where to start.
- You want to do God’s will, but you’re not sure what that is. Or you worry that you aren’t “up to it” and so you put off trying.
- You are searching for meaning, for a deeper purpose in life. But you feel disorganized, overwhelmed, uncertain how to juggle priorities, so that you end up doing things which may be important to others…but don’t feel as important to you.
- You always wanted to be someone who “made a difference,” to be part of something greater than yourself, something that could really change lives, and you’re frustrated because you don’t feel that what you do matters.
- You worry that you are meandering through life, not fulfilling what you are meant to do here on earth, not living your own story fully.
- Looking back on your life, you worry that you’ve made the wrong choices, and now you’ve reached a turning point in your life, but you don’t know what to do…or if your choice will even matter any more.
If any of these thoughts or feelings resonate with you, this blog (which I hope eventually to turn into a book) might be able to help you to sort through your life using the spiritual art of discernment.
To Journal:
* Which (if any) of the above statements ring true for you? If you can, write about the one that best describes your inner state.
* If you viewed your life as a story, how would you describe where you are right now? What’s lacking in your story?
* What are you hoping to “get” from reading this blog or book?
Share your insights and thoughts here or in the comments box below!
Co-Author Your Life with God 