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Posted by on Jul 26, 2011

Novena to St. Ignatius Loyola – Reconciliation – Fifth Day – July 27 –

Novena to St. Ignatius Loyola – Reconciliation – Fifth Day – July 27 –

Testimony:

Thank God for His mercy and grace. If not for His grace and mercy, I would have been so lost in drugs and alcohol and misery. He sent His son to die for each of us. What I have now is peace that passes all understanding, and His Spirit that lives in me to give me actual joy in life. finally joy and peace that I thought was in pain killers and booze. That wasn’t joy, that was being numb. Not now! Not anymore! Thank God for His grace. – blog comment on “Your Grace Is Enough for Me” by stormyweather

Reflection:

This testimony is a beautiful example of true reconciliation. It involves a transformative healing and could have come right out of the pages of the Gospel – The Good News.

Confession, or the Sacrament of Reconciliation, is high on St. Ignatius’ list of priorities for the First Week of the Exercises. The challenge for most cradle Catholics is focusing on a long Church approved check list of sins, as opposed to focusing on the person of Christ. The things that bother us the most are obvious if we are honest with ourselves. Often we can become neurotically obsessed with our own behavior in terms of small things, without facing major issues like alcoholic parents; sexual, physical, or psychological abuse; refusing to forgive. People in lifestyles or marriages that don’t meet Church standards can feel that somehow God is not interested in them; somehow He died only for the good people.

Most of the detailed lists cover symptoms of some type of break-down in our relationship with God as codified in the Ten Commandments or the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. However, this can lead to a denial of our own feelings and cause damage in other areas of our lives. If my anger is always close to the surface, it is not really helpful to keep confessing it and beating myself up over it without looking more deeply at what its cause is. My marriage can be problematic and my sex life unsatisfying. However, if I just keep focusing on the symptoms instead of these deeper issues, I am wasting time and energy and building up to something that will be very bad for everyone concerned.

Sin, guilt, and remorse can be very complicated. Returning veterans from the Middle East have not sinned when they killed people if you believe in the just war theory of morality. That doesn’t mean that they don’t carry a great burden. When they lash out in destructive ways as part of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, marriages are lost, children are harmed, suicide can follow. Going down a checklist doesn’t even begin to offer the healing we all need in these and most situations. Let us look at ourselves, our loved ones, and all others with honesty and compassion as we embrace the forgiving Christ. We are worth everything to God. Perhaps the greatest sin when we don’t see ourselves as worth saving. God does not make junk.

people-walking-on-street

Examination of Conscience

Place yourself in God’s presence and know that you are with a trusted friend. Put out of your mind all thoughts of an avenging father figure or some tyrannical authority figure. You are with the God who came to dwell among us and shared all things we endure except sin. Jesus was open and frank with people who came and spoke with him. He expects no less from you. If you are upset or confused, listen for the healing voice of your Friend. Open your heart and listen.

Start with a thank you for being redeemed and saved and for protection. Ask the tough questions. Why did my child die? What do I do with my alcoholic husband? My heart is broken. Can you mend it? I tampered with evidence to get innocent people convicted. I fought for tax laws that would protect me and take food, healthcare, housing, and education from the poor. I did my best to be careful, but I killed women and children in that village. I think the Church is wrong when it says we should get rid of the death penalty.

Be open to finding out the facts. Have I brought these issues to a counselor? How do I start to change things and to make amends. What is the deeper issue here?

Talk with Jesus. Accept His forgiveness. When he says “Go in peace and sin no more,” what will I do to make that a reality? If you are glum or downcast, something is wrong. You have been pardoned. Stretch, breathe, cry for happiness. Break out in song. Jump for joy. This day salvation has come to your house.

Concluding Prayer

St. Ignatius, you signed your letters “pobre de bondad,” poor in goodness, and called yourself a pilgrim. Please pray for me to be open to what God is calling me to do to announce and build up the kingdom. Transform my petitions into questions of discernment and pray for us to remember that all of our true needs and desires are already known to God. Pray that I be taken beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.

In your writings and by your example we are reminded to pray for the Church and the Holy Father, for all who dwell in darkness and for the millions lacking food, water, and other necessities. We join our prayer with yours for true openness so that we can contemplate the Divine presence in all things and praise, reverence, and serve God Our Lord in action.Pray for us to have the courage to meet and to serve the Lord Jesus in the poor and the suffering.

Praise be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
Now and Forever. Amen.

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Posted by on Nov 24, 2010

A Time for Gratitude as a Year Ends

As we approach the end of one liturgical year and the beginning of a new one, it’s good to stop and be grateful for the gifts we have received.  As it happens, in the United States we do just that on the 4th Thursday of November, our Thanksgiving Day.

Tomorrow, as we share meals, prayer, board games, football games, outdoor fun and indoor visiting, may we remember the wonders we have seen. The sunrises and sunsets. The sunny days and the rainy, stormy ones. The days of gentle breezes and the days of gale force winds. If we have been through great storms, may we be grateful for having come through them to safer days. If this has been a peaceful year, may we be grateful for the gift of peace and pray for strength to continue to trust the Lord when next we face challenges and hard times.

In this year, people have been born and people have moved on to the next stage of their lives with the Lord, the one we don’t yet share with them. We have seen children growing and parents aging. We hope to be growing ourselves in wisdom, age and grace – always growing in grace and graciousness, a sign of God’s presence in our lives overflowing into our dealings with other people.

We thank our readers for spending time with us here at Theologika.net. It is truly a blessing to be a part of a worldwide community and to share hopes, dreams and visions with all of you.

This song by Mary Chapin Carpenter from “Come Darkness, Come Light: Twelve Songs of Christmas” is a reminder of the gift of community we share.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Posted by on Oct 12, 2010

Remembering to be Grateful

“… One of them, realizing that he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in  a loud voic; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, ‘Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?’ Then he said to him, ‘Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.'” (Lk 17:15-19)

This story of Jesus’ healing of the ten lepers reminds us of the importance of expressing gratitude for the gifts we have received. I admit, I’m not very good at doing that as often as I should. Life gets so busy and there are so many pressing things that must be done, that days can go by and suddenly I realize that I never got that “Thank you” card sent or that phone call made. So if I owe you a thank you, please know that I have sent it many times mentally and in my prayers. I’m just not at all good at actually getting the stamp onto the envelop and the letter written to go with it.

Still, the reading is a reminder that in our relationship with God, it’s also important to express our gratitude. God doesn’t need us to say thanks, we need to say thanks. To the extent that we look at things with a spirit of gratitude, we are more able to deal with the hard times and challenges of life. None of us gets through life without experiencing them. They’re necessary if we’re to grow in wisdom and grace along with age.

One of the things I’ve learned in life is that I can choose how I will respond to the unexpected, especially the unpleasant unexpected things that happen. I can react with anger, frustration, jealousy, rage, … or I can try to smile (even through tears), laugh, forgive, wait patiently to see what good thing is coming next, etc. My immediate reaction is not necessarily going to be my final one, I’ve learned. When the negative ones jump up first, I can choose to set them aside and focus on the positive ones. It’s not easy when the really hard things happen – things like illness, injury, loss of jobs or loved ones. But at those times it’s especially important. Only by opening to the gift of God’s presence in those moments can we allow God to act freely and bring good out of them.

When I was much younger, I read a book called Praise the Lord Anyway, by Frances Gardner Hunter. The premise of the book was that God wants us to be joyful and grateful, even when we can’t see what good can possibly come of the situation in which we find ourselves. It’s good advice and even scriptural. St Paul tells us, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.” (Phil 4:4)

As I go about my work this week, I pray that I’ll remember to be grateful and joyful as I receive God’s gifts and the challenges that life brings to me. Whatever they may be, experience tells me that God will be there to bring good out of them if I just keep my heart open to hear and be grateful. May the same true for you.

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Posted by on Nov 26, 2008

Novena to St. Ignatius Loyola – Reconciliation – Fifth Day – July 27 –

At Theologika.net We Give Thanks

Thanksgiving has arrived and we at Theologika.net find ourselves with many reasons to be grateful. It’s been about a year and a half since our blog “went live” and just over a year since our search engine began organizing trustworthy, useful information for our readers to use in their work and their own spiritual journeys. In that time, we’ve met some amazing people and discovered some truly wonderful resources.

At this time, we’d like to express our gratitude to some of the people who first supported and encouraged us in our work. These include Dr. Megan McKenna, Timothy Radcliffe, OP, Armand Nigro, SJ, Thomas McDermott, OP, Terry Hershey, Bernard Tyrrell, SJ, Bosco Peters, and Patrick Conway, M.Div. Each of these people has helped with recommendations of people to contact, books and authors who should be included, reflections on questions we have asked for blog posts, or tagging materials to add to the search engine. To each of them we are grateful.

Others have followed these initial supporters. Jesse Manibusan, Faustino Cruz, SM, Kenan Osborne, OFM, Br. Bill Short, OFM, Sr. Krista Aiken, OSC, Mother Marija, ocd, Michael Fones, OP, Sr. Barbara Long, OP, Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam, and many, many others have shared their thoughts, prayers and best wishes with us.

In writing blog posts about the founders of some of the religious orders and other saints of the orders, I’ve reached out to a lot of members of those orders. Many have responded and I am grateful to them for sharing their thoughts with us. Those who have responded include Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Poor Clares, Carmelites and Vincentians. In the coming year, I hope to contact others to share insights about the gifts their brothers and sisters have brought to the Church.

This entire enterprise could not have begun or moved so far forward without the support and encouragement of Rajesh Setty, Vijay Peduru and Paul D’Souza of Suggestica, Inc., owner of the RawSugar technology that powers our search engine. We are also indebted to Naveen Lakkur of Compassites.net and his team who work behind the scenes to design the site and keep it working. Thank you to all.

And to our readers … we thank you for taking time from your busy lives to read our thoughts in the blog posts, share your reflections with us, and use our search/discovery engine in your work, ministry and personal spiritual journeys. Without you, there would be no reason for our enterprise. Thank you.

May the Lord bless and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you. May the Lord be gracious to you and grant you peace.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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