I like this title for the new year, 1995. How else should we live it? Last year at this time we were preparing for the National Charismatic Retreat in Santa Clara. This year what are we as a Catholic Charismatic Community and you as an individual preparing for? I am writing with the word "we" but I hope you apply this in the areas of the "we's" and the "I's" of your life.
The first question becomes: Are we even looking forward beyond the demand of the urgent? Are we seeking a vision from God for the year ahead? A number of years ago an author I read compared the Christian to a "bird watcher" looking for "God sightings." Do I look carefully and see the actions of God in my life and seek His vision? Have I allowed the Holy Spirit to train me to be more sensitive to His movements interiorly, so that I can see these appearances of God? Where's my focus as I go through each day? That tyranny of the urgent can so easily take over in the days, the months, and the years.
Seeking a vision of the action of God, the movement of the Spirit in my life, my family, parish, neighborhood, city, diocese, etc., is closely linked with pursuing wisdom and living in communion with God. What spiritual writers have called the practice of the presence of God. This may require going before the Lord and allowing Him to do the inner healing in me needed so I am able and willing to look inwardly, seek inner peace, and pursue the interior life.
It totally amazed me the first time I heard that God knows the number of hairs on my head! [Mt. 10:30] My first thought was, "Who cares?" Then, with reflection, I was so awed by such an encompassing, caring love that God would bother about such a tiny detail of my life and well-being. It is true that I would not like to be bald or to have very thin hair. The fact is that we have a loving God who cares about every detail of our lives that personally and intimately.
That fact brings us to our next question: Am I willing to let God be intimately involved with me relationally? Do I have some closets or drawers that I don't let Him into or even peer into myself? As St. Augustine said in those well quoted lines: "Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord." Gaining perspective and having the willingness allows us to enter into what God is already doing in our individual and corporate lives. I am a prayer on His team. He's the coach. In fact, He is the best there is and one who deeply cares about the best for me. Daily, as I get my orders from Him, all things in my life will work for His glory and my good. Jesus tell us that He came to do the will of His heavenly Father, not His own. He tells us that, when it was time for Him to die, He had completed the work that He'd been given to do. In our Catholic tradition, we have a legacy of valuing all work. Nothing is too small and nothing is too great that it does not give glory to God.
We have a problem in ourselves, however. Since the fall of Adam and Eve was a sin of disobedience, our very nature has a deep wound in this area. Obedience can appear at times as not desirable. But he who practices obedience learns what an illusion that is. I am not saying everything is easy, but the experience of interior joy, peace, and God's presence makes it worth any cost when there is one.
As the Holy Spirit heals the ungodly movements of our hearts and thoughts of our minds, we can resist the temptations and illusions of the Enemy of Our Souls more and more. Surely he wants to keep us from experiencing this promised reward. When we learn the habit of contemplating God's incredible love in the sunset, in the blade of grass, in the crucifixion, in the Eucharist, in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, in whatever holy things and things of beauty that speak to us, we will discover interior healing. Gradually, when we learn to recognize Him in every circumstance of our lives as well, we will continue to grow into greater interior peace and rest in the abiding presence of our God. He is already there. It is as though He just waits for us to discover Him. Make your home in me, John writes in the gospel, as I make mine in you. [Jn. 16:4]
Printed in the February 1995 issue of the "Living Water." Published for the Charismatic Renewal in the Diocese of San Jose, California. Permission to copy is granted, as long as proper credit is given.
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