Since I didn't make any notes there aren't any to share.
From Isaiah 53:2-12 He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way; andthe Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb,
so he opened not his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered that
he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth
Perhaps the most misunderstood vocation in the Church is to be permanently single - to be present to the Lord for one’s entire life. These are persons who are called by the Lord to be singularly focused, even consecrated to making the Lord Jesus present “on earth as it is in heaven.” Although they are consecrated or set apart for God, they do not take the identity of being a lay religious brother or sister, but instead they are persons that God desires to leaven the temporal order with the riches of the Gospel. How desperately we need this vocation today! The world needs people who are doing what every body else is doing: teachers, doctors, lawyers, politicians, bankers, and every other profession, yet doing it with a single-minded focus of making Christ present in their sphere of influence.
In the country of Belize, there was such a witness, who greatly effected the history of this small country. His name is George Cadle Price. He was trained to be a Jesuit priest, then left the seminary to tend to his dying mother. In the mean time, he saw the people of his country living in squalor, deprivation, and unrest, and God called him through life events to respond to the temporal situation by becoming what people today call him,
“one of the principal architects of the country's independence, and is today referred to by many as ‘the Father of the Nation’”
While he lived in evangelical simplicity of life, attending daily mass and also attending to the needs of the poor, he wrote the constitution of the country. In it, he included many of the key ideas of the social teachings of the Church - one of the primary works of the lay single vocation. Reading this constitution is like reading, Rerum Novarum, the foundation of the teaching of Christ of the Church’s engagement in the modern secular order. Since he was solely dedicated to the common good and the temporal order of Belize for over twenty years, the country’s modern foundation was set on sure footing. This is an example what is possible for the single lay vocation.
SINGLE PARENTS, SEPARATED,
DIVORCED, AND WIDOWED
Another group of persons that is frequently forgotten by the Church are the single parents. How Christ loves you, single parents, and how the Church ought to draw near to you! Great is your need of the consolation of the Gospel! There are many who, although they set out on the pilgrimage of marriage with a companion, now find themselves alone through death, infidelity, or prolonged absence of the spouse. They must figure out how to answer the call of Christ to be faithful to their marriage, that they are still very much bonded to the Lord despite the absence of their husband or wife, and need extra help to raise their children and help them depart on the road of life.
All too often these people are also misunderstood, misjudged even by well-intentioned catholics, and may feel forgotten by the Church, which is rightly intent on building up marriage and the family, yet may appear to neglect those in difficult situations. To these people Blessed Pope John Paul reaches out in Familiaris Consortio, 83d:
“Loneliness and other difficulties are often the lot of separated spouses, especially when they are the innocent parties. The ecclesial community must support such people more than ever. It must give them much respect, solidarity, understanding and practical help, so that they can preserve their fidelity even in their difficult situation; and it must help them to cultivate the need to forgive which is inherent in Christian love, and to be ready perhaps to return to their former married life.
“The situation is similar for people who have undergone divorce, but, being well aware that the valid marriage bond is indissoluble, refrain from becoming involved in a new union and devote themselves solely to carrying out their family duties and the responsibilities of Christian life. In such cases their example of fidelity and Christian consistency takes on particular value as a witness before the world and the Church. Here it is even more necessary for the Church to offer continual love and assistance, without there being any obstacle to admission to the sacraments.”
Another group that is also forgotten about are the widowed. However, these people, often quietly living out their days in thanksgiving and praise in having lived a full life, are a great benefit to the Church. Since the earliest of times consecrated widows have been a blessing to the Church, who live in imitation of Our Lady, in whose widowed years was a great intercessor and bullwark to the Church of God, by supporting and praying for the ministers of the Church, serving the poor, and by a witness of spiritual maternity matured by years. In recent years there have been different expressions of consecrated widowhood.
If you are a teenager or not yet thirty, chances are you need simply to grow up. Who can help you grow in a solid way that will be a blessing to you and help you be a blessing to others? Christ. Pope Benedict XVI, in his first homily addresses young people:
“Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation. And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen.
All too often young people “go with the flow” and submit to peer pressure and find themselves in very unhealthy relationships, perhaps because they are told or may feel that they are not acceptable, not lovable, unless they find a boyfriend or girlfriend to tell them that they are beautiful or good. What happens is that they seek to find fulfillment, happiness, and wholeness from someone who in no way has any capacity to provide it - another broken, needy, and underdeveloped teen-ager like themselves. Sadly these relationships often end up in pre-marital sex, and if not fornication, at least the spirit of impurity soils their capacity to see God. Thus, they turn away from the living water who is Jesus Christ and turn toward empty cisterns that cannot quench the thirst for deeper love.
Remember in our last talk we discussed how everyone needs healthy masculine and feminine affirmation before one becomes an affirmed person, or adult. If a person goes into relationships when they are young in any way unaffirmed, unloved, needy, and seeking from the one person what they should have got from their father and mother, there is going to be a mess. Grow up first. Be friends with many young men and women. Gift yourself to others.
Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against teen love. It is just when teenagers don’t permit themselves to grow first and then try to enter into a mature relationship which is the context of discerning marriage. The problem we face today is that we live in an age of radical materialism, egoism, and lust, which greatly inhibits the maturity of young people. In times past a young man or woman in their late teens were certainly ready to start a family because they had the capacity to begin to give more than they received. Now it seems like people grow up in the same level in their thirties and forties.
What is necessary for young people? Be present to Christ! Give yourself to him. He understands you. He loves you. He knows you. He will guide you to a happy life, a life lived in intimate friendship with himself and service of others.
DATING AND FINDING A SPOUSE
There are a great many singles out there who desire marriage. This is normal. This is good. Most people have this vocation, and we would fail to approach the topic of singles if we didn’t talk about dating, but what is dating? Is it for pleasure? Some would say it is for pain.
Christian dating is about trying to find the right person you want to spend the rest of your life with. If it is not about looking for a husband or wife but rather for making yourself feel good about yourself or pleasure-seeking, it is not Christian, not of Christ at all. If dating is about looking for the right mate for life, then dating is about dumping. It is like looking for the right fruit in the grocery. You have to pick out the right one. If it isn’t, put it back! You shouldn’t be able to say, nope, sorry, you are not the right one for me.
A big problem for dating is that there is much pressure to move it into an exclusive relationships, before the couple has a chance to get to know each other. Since marriage, especially one that is happy and solidly founded, is based on friendship, this should be the key ingredient to help a person get to know the other. Love, as Blessed Pope John Paul II said in his book Love and Responsibility, ought to be viewed in different aspects, a metaphysical aspect, a psychological or experiential aspect, and an ethical one. Metaphysically, love has different dimensions that respond with the different parts of the being of the person, which have been called by different people the three kinds of love: agape (self-sacrificing love), filios (friendship), and eros (attraction or desire). These are all important but the communion of persons in marriage rises and falls within the scope of friendship. Then the Pope spoke about the experience of love, that it is a sensual, sentimental and relational experience. Again this experience is most healthy when it unfolds along the lines of friendship. Finally he spoke of the fact that if it is love, it can never be separated from the ethical dimension, it won’t lead a person to do what is evil in an ethical sense, even if at times this may do violence to a persons sensual or sentimental attractions, or if this may deeply fulfill a persons need for deeper love. That is to say, the friendship is also ethically good, not just emotionally good or personally fulfilling. Christian formation means that all these expressions of love that is the heart of marriage unfolds for singles in friendship that naturally progresses in a healthy way according to the law of God, while not denying any of the richness of sensual, sentimental, and interpersonal attraction, and allows the eros, filios, agape kinds of love to bloom.
CULTURE OF LUST
The HUGE problem nowadays is that we live in a culture of lust and all too often this is the predominant ingredient in dating, its discerning factor, with no ethical dimension of love. The most frequent pattern we see around us is that men give love to get sex and often women give sex to get love. Because sexual intercourse is an act that is meant for marriage, certain chemicals in our bodies that are released in order to bond a person for life are released and a sexually active person finds themselves bonded to another without having a sufficient understanding of who they are, what they are really about, and if they can be a best friend to them for life. Also because fornication is a grave sin, the spiritual blindness that accompanies the chemical blindness of a person’s hormones terribly impede her sense of judgment. A woman thus finds herself with a “guy” instead of a man, whom she could not be happy with. Then separation happens and the ripping apart of the hormones and chemicals rip a hole wide open in her heart, which she would have wanted to give wholly and undivided to the man she would marry for life. She then finds herself emotionally wounded and incapable of searching and discerning marriage in a healthy way. Thus begins a downward spiral of unhappy relationships.
For these reasons, it seems the best place singles can grow in friendship with others is when the first concern is not actually an exclusive relationships, but simply friendships. The first example of this we see is where a group of families live in a community and they grow over time together. However, since this is often broken down, an alternative is Catholic communities, where people are permitted to interact with each other and grow in friendship in a disinterested way.
When a couple realizes together that they want to start looking at an exclusive relationship together, then an alternative to dating that is more in keeping with the idea that an exclusive relationship is headed for marriage, but not necessarily must end there is courtship. Courtship may sound like an antiquated term, but it is most sound in allowing two persons to grow in knowledge of one another, deepening their attraction and longing for the other, while protecting them from not polluting it with premature sexual encounters.
OLDER SINGLES
There is a whole category of Catholic singles that, for whatever reason, have aged beyond what they may think is the normal time for getting married. These people may feel they have missed their opportunity for love. To these I would like to say, DO NOT GIVE UP HOPE! In a few months in our parish we are marrying two people who are eighty. A few months ago we married two sixty year olds. Why? Because they can. Because they want to, because they are free to.
Sometimes older singles may be in battle attack mode with their shields up and swords blazing because they have been hurt many times in the past, but Jesus, out of the great love he has for them, desire to peel away the armor, the masks, to heal the hurts and give hope for the newness of life.
It is important to always return to the basics of the single lay vocation and simply ask the good Lord, “What is it you want of me today?” It is so important to continually center ones activity and vocation on Christ. Only in this way will one be free of the fears and hurts that are accompany the single life.
Here let us repeat the fact that it is a vocation to be present to Christ. It is precisely in living out the call to holiness, mission, contemplation, and communion that we present ourselves to him. We know Jesus as the one who reveals the Father, for he said, “he who has seen me, has seen the Father (John 14:9), and so he is a kind of window to God, but if we look at him from a different angle we see that he is also a mirror, to reveal who we are to ourselves.
What is YOUR vocation? Jesus! He IS your vocation. Be present to him and he will be present to you in your thoughts, words, actions, and even your life decisions, your vocation. If you follow him every day in small things he will one day ask you to follow him in great things, i.e. larger decisions. Simply do this, ask God what is it that he wants for you today and allow him to lead you by living a holy life and being present to him. Then the excitement begins.
So where every you are in the single life, a teen-ager, a middle-ager, not so young ager, whether you find yourself looking for a relationship, looking for a mission, discerning priestly or religious life, committed, promised, engaged, betrothed, separated from your spouse and living a single life although still married, single mother or father, happy, unhappy, healthy or hurt, widowed, living or dying - YOU ARE CALLED TO BE PRESENT TO CHRIST!
All too often we think something monumental has to happen to us to reveal our vocation, like spilling the milk and it coming out in form of a cross or meeting the right lady or man and hear a voice saying, this is the one for you. However, much of the time God does not relate that way with us because he wants us to develop our freedom. Many times the answer to the question, “Lord what is it that you want of me?” might be silence, as if God smiles at you and allows you to hear clearly that he is not going to answer you. In this case, which I find is frequent in the lay vocation one ought to hear in the silence of God:
My child, I have given you a mind. Use it. I am delighted when you gift yourself freely to the good, which I know you can perceive with the mind I gave you. Exercising your mind and will, freely gifting yourself and growing in maturity greatly delights me.
For God,
“created man in the beginning, and he left him in the power of his own inclination. If you will, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water: stretch out your hand for whichever you wish. Before a man are life and death, and whichever he chooses will be given to him.” (Sirach 15:14-17)
Sometimes people ask me as a priest questions which I refuse to answer because I know that God would never answer them, but desire a person to use their head and chose wisely. What stock should I buy? What outfit should I wear? What should I eat? For some it may be frustrating to not hear God’s voice when they ask a question that they think God ought to answer, like is this the man you want me to marry? Does he have some grave moral problems that won’t be resolved easily? Does he treat his mum, sister, or other women in his life like dirt? Is he married and still bonded to a person he doesn’t live with? Use your head! God gave you a mind. Figure it out! Don’t do anything stupid, and if you do something stupid, don’t do something even stupider to react to initial stupidity. Begin again to live the Gospel and make sound decisions based on Gospel living.
The lay vocation comes from the Sacrament of Baptism where we are immersed (baptizein in Greek means immersion) in the Most Holy Trinity and communion with him. Therefore a single lay person is called first and foremost to “be” instead of do, to be present to the Lord.
A Baptized person is called:
-To become a saint! To “be holy as God is holy” (1 Peter 1:16) The call to sanctity is also a call to sanity. Here there are two dimensions that are in constant tension: humanity and divinity. Sanctity means imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi) and the following of Jesus Christ (sequitur Christi), true God and true man. Therefore we need to become divinized in his divinity and humanized in his humanity. Some use the call to holiness as an excuse to be off-balanced or extreme, yet we know that the perfection of the natural or moral virtues means a certain moderation. The expression, virtus in medio stat, (virtue lies in the middle) clarifies this. We have to come to a certain integrity in our humanity, living a healthy life of rest, recreation, and social interaction. Our age is very dehumanizing. We need to humanize it by allowing the Gospel to leaven and form us in a very full human existence with the development of art, science, culture and leisure, the development of our personalities, a healthy and appropriate sense of humour, of sorrow, and of empathy. There needs to a be a serious approach to the intellectual life, understanding the value of study, a view of social and political life that is something to contend with, tha our contemporaries may find embedded Gospel values to lift up society.
On the other hand, in charity there is no middle, no moderation, no limit, and since charity animates all the other virtues, we must be careful that we do not allow ourselves a kind of spiritual excuse for mediocrity. Balance does not mean luke-warmness. Authentic sanctity will always form our humanity and call it to something higher. To become divinized the Catholic spiritual patrimony suggests the following:
-Frequent reception of the Sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist and Penance
-Devout meditation on the Word of God, or lectio divina
-Marian devotion, that is not only practiced in a practical way through the Rosary, Scapular, or other form of devotion but also one that is interior, tenderly trustful, constant, holy, disinterested. For a particular potency in this regard turn to St Louis De Montfort’s book, True Devotion to Mary to read about Consecration to Jesus through Mary
-Close accompaniment of the Magisterium of the Church, the Holy Father’s writings and directives
-Graced Friendships with others who are trying to become holy
-Service of the poor, sick, elderly, and others in works of mercy
-Ascesis and custody of the senses through mortification & fasting
-Spiritual direction, retreats or pilgrimages, and other things in keeping with the spiritual patrimony of the Church
-To be a contemplative - The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that we all have a “Universal Call to Prayer” (#2566). Every single baptised person is called to be, as Blessed Mother Teresa says, “a contemplative in action.”
-To be a missionary, sent into the Vineyard of the Lord. “You go too. The call is a concern not only of Pastors, clergy, and men and women religious. The call is addressed to everyone: lay people as well are personally called by the Lord, from whom they receive a mission on behalf of the Church and the world.” (Christifidelis Laici - Bl Pope John Paul II’s document on the Laity)
Our mission flows from the Word of God:
-Proclaimed in the Sacred Liturgy, it always gives us a weekly and daily mission. It is there that we come to understand what God is asking of us in this moment.
-From the Sacred Magisterium and Bishops in union with him
-In the providential happenings, the life events, of the day and in the news events
The lay vocation has as its proper focus, the sanctification of the temporal order, to bring about the reign of Jesus Christ “on earth as it is in heaven.” Today, there are more fruitful mission fields, or arenas upon which we will have a very fruitful harvest:
Conscience- We must live the teaching of the Second Vatican Council to end the dictatorship of relativism that sits upon the throne of many consciences like a tyrant, destroying the potency of the Catholic faith, and making many people who sit in the pews, unbeknownst to themselves, worshipers of relativism. The teach of Dignitatis Humanae, the Declaration on Human Freedom is:
"This one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus committed the duty of spreading it abroad among all men...
"On their part, all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and His Church, and to embrace the truth they come to know, and to hold fast to it...
"Government is to assume the safeguard [NOT VIOLATOR] of the religious freedom of all its citizens, in an effective manner, by just laws and by other appropriate means...
"The disciple is bound by a grave obligation toward Christ, his Master, ever more fully to understand the truth received from Him, faithfully to proclaim it, and vigorously to defend it.
To sum up: we owe each conscience He for whom it was made - CHRIST! We are bound in conscience to proclaim Christ as the Truth for which all men are created and bound to follow once they see it, especially in the proclamation of the lives of the disciples. N.B. THIS is the real teaching of the Second Vatican Council. No one can say in the name of conscience to be a relativist catholic, worshiping the idol of self in place of the only King who should sit on the throne of man's inmost sanctuary, Jesus Christ the Lord.
The violation of the conscience which the Obama administration attempts in its HHS healthcare, in which it seeks to force Catholic institutions to go against the natural law in providing abortions, contraceptives, and sterilizations is not fighting the Catholic Church. Let's be clear: Obama fights God. Bring it! We know who is going to win.
Family Life - There needs to be a clear proclamation of marriage as a one-man one woman covenanted union which is meant for the procreation and upbringing of children. Same-sex unions can never match the same psychological health, wholeness, and blessing of marriage between one man and one woman. For more info, read here.
The UK attempting to redefine marriage between same sex partners is ludicrous and the first consultation showed this. 70% said no and 78% said it's not a priority. However, the government has discarded the first consultation for redefining same-sex marriages and made up a new three month long one, or they need to "redefine consultations before they redefine marriage." Clearly this is so they can try to shake the tree until the fruit they want will fall from it. Not going to happen. Time for Catholics to sign the petition to stop this madness and write their MP's. Please do this now if you are reading this. It is so easy. Just a single email with a few lines. Click here for a directory.
There has to be a very clear proclamation from every Catholic Church and the life of every Catholic about the culture of death and the lies of contraception, abortion, sterilization, in vitro fertilization, same-sex unions, cohabitation, and everything that attempts to present itself as a legitimate form of family life that is really the seed of destruction of human civilization.
Digital Arena- You can watch live the Holy Father on a digital device. You can know the teachings of the Church in a few clicks. You now have no excuse to not know the Church's teachings. You are not alone. There is so much help for you and so much encouragement online to preach the Gospel. The Holy Father said in his Message for World Communications Day a few years ago that especially priests, but all need
"to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis. Using new communication technologies, priests can introduce people to the life of the Church and help our contemporaries to discover the face of Christ."
Social Teachings of the Church - The teachings of Christ about economics, politics, and civic life need to be lived and shared by Catholic to the world that is in desperate need of reordering. The collapse of the economic order is because it is now based on materialism and greed, when it needs to be based on charity and solidarity. There is an excellent online resource, the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Read it!
-The Call to Communion - Now more than ever the Church needs to move in the way of communion precisely because it is the very witness that our world needs the most. In a time of broken relationships we are called to be men and women of communion, of friendship and solidarity. It has been said that the first Christian millennium lived out the words of Christ, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37), for this was the rise of all the monastic orders which focussed on the holiness of the person. The second Christian millennium witnessed the words, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12:31), and this was when the works of charity of the Church blossomed such as schools, hospitals, orphanages, and so on. In the third Christian millennium, it is clear there is a call to see holiness no longer as merely personal, or merely the perfection of charity to neighbor, but a matter of loving one another well in the words of Christ, “love one another; even as I have loved you” (John 13:34).
If you say the word, “single,” the popular mind immediately would immediately think of someone who is available, not yet married, or worse, that it has come to mean one is sexually active. In the mind of Christ, single means something else. Go ahead and look for the word in the Bible or Church documents:
On the Church: “A single people, a people which acknowledges him in truth and holiness”
We see here that it tends to the meaning of being focussed or unified and even set apart. It is only St Paul in his discussion on single life in 1 Corinthians 7 that he says,
“To the unmarried I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do.” (v. 8)
“Let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband --and that the husband should not divorce his wife.” (v. 11)
Only here does he mean it in a similar way that we are used to hearing about in the world around us, however, here it also does mean focussed on the Lord or set apart for him.
There are many ways we could approach a reflection on the vocation of what has started to be named recently, “Single Blessedness,” but we will approach it as having single-minded focus on Jesus Christ, a vocation of being present to the Lord. All too often even within the Church people would say that being single is like being suspended in gelatin, someone who has not yet found their focus or their vocation, hasn’t found a man yet, or they “missed the boat” and have grown two old for marriage.
First let’s start off saying the obvious: the single life is the most misunderstood vocation there is in the Church. An old retired bishop used to get very upset when someone would say about his sister, “She didn’t have a vocation. She was single.”
This might be because vocations are mistakenly or superficially defined often by what someone has or does. A married woman has babies. A religious sister has vows. A priest says mass. A married man provides for his family. Even our theology may be presented this way. You might hear that a priest or religious, or even a married person has found a vocation, but a single person? Many would say that it is a state of life that a person is in because they just haven’t found the right lady or man. What is needed is a recalibration or redefinition of the Christian vocation by who we are in Christ. This is what the Second Vatican Council and the Pontificate of Blessed Pope John Paul II attempted to do. In this light, a priest lives in Persona Christi Capitis et Pastores, in the Person of Christ, Head and Shepherd. This phrase is mentioned over thirty times in Blessed Pope John Paul II’s document on Priesthood, Pastores Dabo Vobis. A religious sister is a Spouse of Christ, or a Spouse of the Word, a rich identity that is being recovered in recent years to preserve the vocation of consecrated women from being reduced to social work or merely defined by actions.
The lay vocation comes from the Sacrament of Baptism where we are immersed (baptizein in Greek means immersion) in the Most Holy Trinity and communion with him. Therefore a single lay person is called first and foremost to “be” instead of do, to be present to the Lord.
Once we reorient our graced friendships with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we begin to have holy friendships with those around us. The amazing thing about God’s plan is that whatever we missed in our childhood he brings to us in his providence to restoration and healing. I find this happens so frequently that it seems it almost a spiritual maxim of God’s providence: God’s goodness will not permit us to remain in isolation as emotional orphans but bring different people into our lives to reveal the mystery of his gratuitous love.
A graced friendship is a relationship that is based on grace, upon living a relationship in the way that is pleasing to God. It is truly amazing the power that graced friendship has in healing us. Again, let us be clear that it is firstly a relationship with God in frequent reception of the Sacraments and prayer, and then relating with all his friends.
ALMSGIVING
The last talk I gave this lent was about prayer, fasting, and almsgiving to help bring about redemption. In it I pointed out that almsgiving is “a sincere and free gift of self to one’s neighbor.” This is the heart of graced friendship. It is loving and being loved. Giving the gift of one’s self to the other and receiving the gift of the other person. This also describes the inmost life of the Trinity. It is what our deepest heart longs for, to love and be loved. Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “poverty is loneliness and feeling unloved. Give alms of love,” and St Peter tells us in his first letter, “By obedience to the truth you have purified yourselves for a genuine love of your brothers; therefore, love one another constantly from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22). This is the true medicine that heals the heart. Blessed Pope John Paul II said,
“Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.” (Redemptor Hominis, 10)
CHASTITY
Graced friendship is also essential if one is going to live a chaste life. In fact the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about it,
“The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality.
“Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one's neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion.” (CCC 2347)
You could say another word for chastity is friendship. Friendship with God in your body and the ordered friendship with all the friends God gives you.
There is a need that our friendships remain chaste. All too often, even in Catholic circles, friendships “go south,” go sour, when a person’s woundedness or neediness propels them to relate inordinately in friendships, causing unhealthy attachments or exclusivity, and may lead them to sin, shipwrecking the very reason God brought that person into their life to begin with. If a person is aware of their wounds leading them toward a sinful or inordinate tendency with a friend, especially when they notice the origin of their need or wound is a lack of masculine or feminine affirmation, they need to learn how to discipline themselves.
Aquainas pointed out that passions blind the intellect and weaken the will. As soon as we notice that a particular friendship manifests an disordered attraction or repulsion, we should be careful to mortify that passion and be weary of our own judgment about that relationship. That is, we choose not to listen to ourselves. We lead our heart in this case instead of following it. We ignore our judgment and make the safe assumption that we are not trustworthy with regard to a particular friendship, humble ourselves so that God may grant us light and his grace may bring us back into equilibrium. On the other hand, we ought to be careful to not react too rashly to our own sinfulness lest our disciplined passions react like a child that has been harshly treated, complaining and whining until we give in.
OUR LADY
The Virgin Mother of God is a great helper in relationships. She helps us in a real friendship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. She is Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, a woman of communion and friendship first with God and then with all his friends. She teaches us the spirit of communion, of solidarity, of service and of humility.
The principle lesson Our Mother teaches us in relating with others is humility. She humbled herself all day before every creature, not trusting her own estimation, but always seeking God’s light and his Holy Spirit to be the very spirit by which she relates with others. May Our Lady help us to heal from our relationships by graced friendship.
Graced friendship is a relationship given to us by God to bring us into communion. It is a friendship that reveals God as a communion. The first graced friendship that is essential for healing is our friendship with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
ABBA FATHER
In friendship with God the Father we see that no one on earth is our ultimate origin, which is why we “call no man on earth father” (Matthew 23:9). Even though we have an earthly father or father-figures there is only one REAL Father, the first and last father, the only one truly worthy of the name, before whom all others are merely icons of the real deal. God the Father is the principle, initiator, and beginning of our whole person. Blessed Pope John Paul speaks about Christ’s conversation with us in the theology of our bodies that brings us back to the beginning. The Father is our beginning. He is the source of your manhood & masculinity or womanhood & femininity. In friendship with the Father we come to discover ourselves as “Created before the world began” or existent within the mind of God the Father before he created us, before there was a chance for sin, and most importantly in a personal way, before there was sin in my own life. A tender, interior, real friendship with our heavenly Father has the power to bring real freedom and confidence. Men find that they can stand tall as a son of God, who shows them their “glorious liberty of the sons of God” (Romans 8:12-17).
Women find the father-daughter fulfillment as being enthroned and enshrined in the Heart of the Father like “a dove nestled in the cleft of the rock” (Song of Songs 2:14). I don’t know how many times I find the necessity of re-introducing the relationship with Abba Father in the lives of the faithful. It seems there are so many people whose primary hindrance to holiness and happiness is that they don’t have a real friendship with God as Abba. How many people there are who just can’t find that extra confidence boost to go beyond themselves, stuck in a rut, spinning their wheels, just waiting for the moment when they will finally begin to live the Gospel the way their heart longs for.
HOW USELESS it is to talk about healthy graced friendships if a person is still in mortal sin! They could have already gone to confession many times, but they never confessed a particular evil that they freely and knowingly did many years ago. That sin is still lodged in their heart and life, and, still like a foreign infectious object, is the actual reason for many sleepless nights or depressing days. HOW FUTILE would it be to talk about relationships if you didn’t first get rid of sin. If a person commits one mortal sin they merit the eternal punishment of hell and separation from God (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1033-1036). This is the dogmatic teaching of the Council of Trent and therefore the authentic teaching of Jesus Christ. This is a teaching that he personally reveals to you in an intimate friendship with him. If the punishment after death is hell, you better believe that there is a very real separation from God in the soul that manifests itself in the emotions and thoughts of a person already in this life.
St Teresa of Avila said about those in mortal sin, “I cannot believe that He would grant them contemplation” and in another place “one of the biggest hindrances to holiness is unconfessed mortal sin.” We must confess our sins, according to canon law, “in kind and number all mortal sins committed after baptism” to get rid of them like weeding a garden. If we to just confess the sins without doing this it would be like taking the tops of the weeds off, which would in fact merely prune them, allowing their roots to grow deeper in unseen soil of our souls. In confession, Jesus is our friend who frees us sin.
Confession is the Sacrament given to us by God to be honest with ourselves and accepting of the evil that we have actually done. It is the way that we no longer feel victim of our childhood experience, when we take full responsibility for our lives and actions. I am convinced that it is the true way for God to totally free us of things which plague us, and that many kinds of emotional imbalances, depression, anxieties and fears, still are permitted to rule our souls because of unconfessed sin.
The love of Jesus, who was crucified for us and knows us even in our sins, loves us exactly where we are at right now, and it is this love, perhaps only this love, that gives us the courage to be brutally honest with him in the Sacrament of Mercy. Also we must know that a real friendship with Jesus Christ is SACRAMENTAL. This means it is incarnated into a specific ritual that he himself instituted and in which he himself wills for me to participate. I need to be able to hear his words spoken to me in a sacramental-personal way,
Baptism- “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5)
Reconciliation- “My child, your sins are forgiven” (Mark 2:5)
Eucharist- “This is my body, which will be given up for you” (Luke 22:19)
It is important for me to understand that is through sacramental friendship that it is incarnate, made real and intimate in a way that will potently change my life and bring me deeper into Christ. Christ also makes this friendship deeply ecclesial, a relationship in and of the Church. In this way I can truly hear the voice speaking in to me as the living Word of God, that is only transmitted in its fullness in the tripod of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium of the Church. The chief place where this Word is spoken to me and I receive it is the Liturgy, especially when it is celebrated well, with dignity and solemnity.
THE HOLY SPIRIT, THE SOUL OF OUR SOULS
The Holy Spirit is the Love of the Father and the Son. He is the “soul of our soul,” he is the gentle and powerful lover of our inmost hearts. To know him in personal friendship is first to realize that he is not just a symbol like a dove, a fire, a drop of oil, but a real PERSON, a friend. This friend is PURE LOVE. This is his divine personality. To know him is to know you are loved from the inside-out. This love takes the form of an interior power, a fullness, the joy of eternal love, the happiness of blessedness, the power of God alive in us.
The Holy Spirit reveals his friendship with us as the one who dwells and fills our bodies as a holy temple, our hearts as a sacred altar, our minds as a sealed tabernacle. He is particularly important in the work of the redemption of our bodies. In our baptism the Holy Spirit, and therefore the entire Blessed Trinity dwells in our inmost heart. Although our faculties are immediately purified of original sin, the effects still remain, and the Spirit works mightily in our interior to bring this about. From the inside and working outward the Holy Spirit slowly transforms our beings through grace, through prompting us to desire redemption more, through our response to suffering, ultimately through an ever more pure and full gift of our inmost self to God and to his friends. It is very much like a microwave oven, which heats up the core and then slowly moves outward.
“Deep calls to deep in roar of mighty waters” (Psalm 42:17), that is God the Holy Spirit searches the depths of man and “searches the depths of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10) and joins the misery of man to the mercy of God in Christ. You could say that the Holy Spirit finds the riches of the depths of Redemption, of the merits of Christ crucified, of his sacred wounds and sews them into the very wounds of man. For it was man’s wounds that wounded the redeemer and his willingness to be wounded by love for our sake that releases the mighty waters of the Holy Spirit, so that the inmost depths of man are eternally transformed into the depths of God. The greatest thing therefore that unites us to God are our wounds, not our gifts or virtues. They good that is in us is not the cause of our union with God but the fruit of it. The good that is in God cannot resist the parts of us that need him the most like water falls to the lowest point. This happens because of God’s mercy, not because of us, however our desire, our groaning, our inmost yearning for God is our cooperation in redemption. This is a work of the Holy Spirit and often happens very deeply within us without even our knowledge that it is happening, like heart transplant surgery or a bone marrow transplant. As Blessed Pope John Paul II said in his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem (On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church)
"For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words."282 Therefore, the Holy Spirit not only enables us to pray, but guides us "from within" in prayer: he is present in our prayer and gives it a divine dimension.283 Thus "he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."
The Holy Spirit himself is the relationship of the Father and the Son. He therefore is the one who is our relationship with each person in communion with them. He is the Spirit of friendship, of communion, of belonging, of family love. We ought to desire that the spirit of our relationships, which may often even in good and holy friendships still have elements of need, gratification, egoism, greed, vanity, impurity, and pride, be replaced with the Holy Spirit who is the relationship Spirit. What moves and motivates your friendships with others? What is the reason and purpose? The Holy Spirit purifies our relationships. It is truly only in Him that we have graced friendships with others.
