Into your hands I commend my spirit

By Heidi

The Denial of St. Peter by Caravaggio (Wikimedia Commons).

"Though all may have their faith in you shaken, mine will never be.” Matthew 26:33

It has been a tough Lent for me, a long dry spell in prayer has continued, though not completely without respite.  Along with that a family situation suddenly came upon us that will continue to demand much prayer, love and sacrifice into an uncertain future.  And here I am with nothing to offer, not a thing. 

One day, as my husband and I were waiting on some news with our loved one, I reflected on how empty I felt, how impoverished I was in this particular situation.  How impoverished I had always been.  I stand at a crucial moment, like Peter at his denial of the Lord, relying on my own store of love and fidelity and I find am empty! In that emptiness, fear, resentment and bitterness were threatening to invade. “Lord!”  I cried, “I have no love!” 

The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame. 
Isaiah 50:7

It was a Thursday, so, since I had nothing to do but wait, I prayed the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary.  Oh, because of my dryness in prayer I tried to distract myself with other things, but in the end I relented to the call to pray. 

I don’t think I ever finished it, because as I prayed the second Luminous mystery, The Wedding of Cana I began to realize that Our Blessed Mother was helping me to ask for His love to minister to this situation, and in fact to overflow into my past failures to endure in love and faithful patience.  In turn, I was being invited to wait on the Lord.  How can one trust such an intuition?  How can one cling to it with nothing to see as proof it will come to fruition?


Continue reading at Heidi's blog Journey to Wisdom.

Feelings come, feelings go: loving God anyway.

by Amanda Rose

 

Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP via Flickr

St. Francis de Sales observed two common mistakes among spiritual people. "The first is that they measure their devotions by the consolations and satisfactions that they experience in the service of God; so much so, that if theses are lacking at times, they feel that they have lost all their piety. No, this is nothing but a sensible devotion."  

We usually think of "sensible" as meaning "practical," but in the spiritual life it is used to describe something that is experienced by the senses, through our bodies. Sensible devotions are sometimes called consolations and may be feelings of love, tears of contrition or joy, sensations of warmth, or other spiritual delights He gives us as beginners in prayer to encourage us and to help us to understand His love for us.

St. Francis is describing souls who feel like they have lost their devotion to God when those good feelings go away. Many of us have experienced this very real pain of thinking that we no longer know God, that He is gone, that we are doing something wrong. But St. Francis says, "The true and substantial devotion does not consist in these things, but in having a will that is resolute, active, prompt and constant in not offending God and in fulfilling all that which appertains to His service."

We begin our spiritual journey drawn by our feelings, and then we must use our will to make choices that can at times be like engaging in a battle with ourselves. It can be so hard to really believe that prayer, our relationship with God, is deeper than than the feelings we have or the consolations we experience. Our feelings and emotions so often create our reality, but God is calling us beyond those feelings to allow Him to create our reality anew.

Read about the second common mistake at Amanda's blog  Little Steps Along The Way.