Answers (eBook)

Catholic Advice for Your Spiritual Questions

Father John Bartunek (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
160 Seiten
Servant (Verlag)
978-1-63582-463-6 (ISBN)

Those who sincerely seek to know God (and themselves) better often struggle to find answers to thoughtful and sometimes troubling questions about the spiritual life, including: - Who is God? - How can I know God's will in my life? - Does God really hear me when I pray? - Why is there so much suffering in the world today? - What makes Catholicism different than other religions? Father John Bartunek has spent much of his priesthood helping others understand what it means to have an authentic, personal relationship with God. A master communicator, he is able to make difficult truths understandable, while at the same time issuing a call to action. For those seeking real answers about prayer, spiritual growth, living in the world today, overcoming sin, and the distinctiveness of the Catholic faith, Fr. John's advice will speak to their souls and touch their heart.

Those who sincerely seek to know God (and themselves) better often struggle to find answers to thoughtful and sometimes troubling questions about the spiritual life, including: - Who is God?- How can I know God's will in my life? - Does God really hear me when I pray? - Why is there so much suffering in the world today?- What makes Catholicism different than other religions? Father John Bartunek has spent much of his priesthood helping others understand what it means to have an authentic, personal relationship with God. A master communicator, he is able to make difficult truths understandable, while at the same time issuing a call to action. For those seeking real answers about prayer, spiritual growth, living in the world today, overcoming sin, and the distinctiveness of the Catholic faith, Fr. John's advice will speak to their souls and touch their heart.

Chapter Two

Spiritual Formation

FROM A CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE, THE degree of fulfillment we experience here on earth is directly proportionate to the depth of our communion with God in Christ. And that communion depends upon using and developing our spiritual faculties properly.

The proper exercise of one’s capacity for self-awareness involves discovering and assimilating truth—the truth about God, about the human family, about oneself, about the world. The proper exercise of one’s capacity for self-determination involves choosing what is morally good—that which actually helps us to live out our vocation to image God here in the visible world.

By seeking and adhering to truth and goodness, we can attain spiritual maturity (the healthy development of our spiritual faculties), a necessary precondition for lasting happiness. In this chapter, we’ll look at various obstacles that impede our progress in being formed spiritually, as well as the practical ways those obstacles can be overcome.

HOW CAN I LEARN TO TRUST GOD?

The need for trust is at the very core of the Christian journey. Sin separates us and distances us from God. All sin—our own personal sins as well as the sins of others, both of which damage our souls—traces its origin back to the Fall of Adam and Eve (that’s why their sin is called “original sin”). What was the essence, the deepest core of their sin? We tend to think it was disobedience. Think again, though: disobedience was the trunk, but it grew out of an even deeper root. Here’s how the Catechism puts it:

Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness. (CCC 397, emphasis added)

Trust: The Heart of Holiness

Rehabilitating trust in God is every Christian’s primary project for growth in holiness. Each of us has our own journey. Our experiences in life, good and bad, can damaged our capacity to trust in God in a personal, unique way. Our mission in life, our vocation, our way of knowing, loving, and serving God is also personal and unique. And so, the path each of us takes to rehabilitate our trust in God will have certain twists and turns, certain epiphanies and setbacks, that will be entirely our own. But, in the end, relearning to trust God is for each one of us the central, defining spiritual project.

How do you develop trust when you don’t have much? How can you develop gratitude when you don’t have humility? And how can you develop humility if you have a strong pattern of self-reliance?

Let me answer these questions with another question. Let’s pretend you don’t know how to play tennis, but you decide that you want to learn. How do you do it? How do you go from zero to beginner to intermediate to advanced? How do you develop the physical skills and coordination and muscle memory necessary for tennis when you have none of those things? The answer, I think you will agree, is fairly simple. You learn to play tennis by playing tennis.

Holy Tennis

Growth in virtue (trust, confidence in God, surrender, humility, and gratitude) is similar. Virtues are moral habits, just as skills are physical habits. They are developed under two conditions. First, it’s necessary to have the raw material. Future tennis players have to have the normal use of all the major muscle groups (you can’t play tennis without arms).

Future saints have to have the normal use of human nature: “heart, soul, mind, and strength” as our Lord put it in Luke 10:27. Virtues are not developed “once and for all.” We can never check a virtue like trust off our to-do list. We grow in trust, little by little, by trusting. We grow in humility, little by little, by exercising self-denial. We grow in gratitude, little by little, by saying thank you, sincerely and intentionally, over and over again, especially when we don’t feel like it. The sacraments nourish these efforts; prayer and spiritual reading inform and enlighten these efforts; the Holy Spirit—directly, through a spiritual director or mentor, through faith-based friendships, and through God’s providence—will coach you.

St. John of the Cross put it succinctly when writing about the virtue of love (which is the core of every virtue, so it applies equally to trust, humility, gratitude): “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.”3

As long as you are patient, even the tiniest effort to trust God will give God’s grace a chance to touch your soul and strengthen the very trust that you are using. Remember, at baptism you received sanctifying grace and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and at confirmation you received a strengthening of them. God is already at work in your life. He is drawing you closer to him. The journey will take your whole life, so don’t think that you have to make yourself perfect before God can do anything with you. On the contrary! God is already working in and through your life! Your desire to know and follow him better is already a clear sign that you are growing!

TWO TIME-TESTED TRUST WORKOUTS

On a practical level, the saints all agree on two spiritual exercises that directly strengthen our capacity to trust God.

First, meditate on Christ’s passion. As we gaze on Christ “loving us to the end” (see John 13:1), our fears are quelled and we realize, gradually, that even though everyone else may have betrayed us and wounded us and lost their trustworthiness, Christ will never betray us. He is worthy of our trust. No matter what happens, he will keep on loving us. That’s one of the core messages of the passion.

Second, focus on discovering and embracing God’s will in the nitty-gritty of your daily life. We know what God’s will is through his commandments, through the teachings of the Church, through the duties of our state in life, and through the circumstances of God’s providence. Lord, what do you want me to do right now? That question, that prayer, is a powerful ally in your path of growing trust. Why? Because every time we accept and embrace and try to fulfill God’s will, even with a fragile love and flimsy faith, we are actually exercising our trust in God. We are saying, “Okay Lord, I don’t really understand this completely, but I know that you want me to do it, so here goes.” That counts for simple tasks like washing the dishes. And it counts for more daunting tasks like talking about the faith or defending a Catholic position in a conversation at work. This is especially true when God’s will contradicts our natural preferences. That’s when we get to carry our own crosses, which is the privileged place for exercising, and therefore growing in, our trust in God.

HOW CAN I LEARN TO LOVE GOD?

If we were having an in-person conversation, my response to your question would be another question: “What do you mean by love?” It’s a word that can be used in many ways. Let’s start by reflecting together on that term.

Love as Emotion

Love can be an emotion. As an emotion, it consists of a feeling of attraction toward someone or something. Along with that feeling of attraction, we experience a desire to possess or be connected to the loved object. In this sense, we can talk about loving ice cream, or cats, or movies. This meaning is also linked to the experience of falling in love, which involves a powerful, sometimes almost overwhelming, feeling of attraction for another person. Often this feeling is immediate, mysterious, and irrational. That doesn’t make it any less energizing, influential, or important.

Love as Virtue

The word love can also refer to virtue: the virtue of wanting another person to exist and flourish. This is what our Lord referred to when he commanded us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). This is a decision to seek and promote the good of others, regardless of how you feel toward them. You may feel a strong emotional aversion to someone, but you can still love that person in this sense of the virtue—in fact, you are commanded to love the person in spite of contrary emotions. Another term used to describe this kind of Christian love, which considers only the need of the other, not one’s own emotional attachment, is mercy (and sometimes charity).

The Church has taught from the first Christian centuries that the virtue of loving one’s neighbor is central and critical to Christian living. Traditionally, the Church recommends the works of mercy as the normal channels for us to exercise this love. The Catechism summarizes it this way:

The works of mercy are charitable actions by which we come to the aid of our neighbor in his spiritual and...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	24.1.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-63582-463-X / 163582463X
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-463-6 / 9781635824636

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