june 2020 faithposting

[prismaticbleed]

In these troubling times, as we struggle with fear on a daily basis, it is so important to remember that human emotions are not wrong– God gave them to us, as He gave us all things: with the purpose to glorify Him. This is key. Fear happens naturally as a response to percieved threats and suffering, fear of death and disease and danger. Truly fear itself can therefore be very virtuous, as in fear of sin and its spiritual danger! But it is incomplete, imperfect. Fear is only step one, but if we use it rightfully, leading us closer to God, then step two is love!

In all things we must trust in God. Even if we are afraid, and rightfully so from a natural standpoint, we can and must still surrender our circumstances to trust in God. We love Him and He loves us, and when we remember this, the very thought of fear evaporates, and we are like a child comforted in its Father’s arms. Even if we die, we fear not, we trust in God! He is in control of all things and He knows what we are going through. He is with you, He stays with you always.

We start and complete: “God, I am afraid of what might happen… but I know that whatever WILL happen is YOUR holy will, and You love me so much that Your will is the best possible outcome for me, whatever it may be. So I trust in You. I surrender to Your direction and care. My life I give into your hands.”

And the fear sees you are perfectly safe in God, no longer in any danger, your soul invincible even if your body fades, and so… fear disappears.

 

"Grumbling is caused by misery and it can be put aside by doxology (giving praise). Grumbling begets grumbling and doxology begets doxology. when someone doesn’t grumble over a problem troubling him, but rather praises God, then the devil gets frustrated and goes off to someone else who grumbles, in order to cause everything to go even worse for him. You see, the more one grumbles, the more one falls into ruin.
Sometimes the devil deceives us and makes us unable to be pleased with anything; however, one can celebrate all things in a spiritual manner, with doxology, and secure God’s constant blessing."

+ St. Paisios of Mt. Athos, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos Spiritual Councils IV: Family Life

 

Lately, I have been making a strong effort to do this, especially when I am scared, sick, or otherwise distraught. I will effectively pray, “God, I don’t understand Your reasons for doing or allowing this, but I trust You, and I know that Your Purposes are always Good. I accept Your Will in this situation and I pray for the grace to cooperate with it in wholehearted surrender and trust.” And then I will do my utmost to just let it go, even if I am literally in tears from emotional and/or physical turmoil. God led me to this place in time, space, and circumstance for His Reasons and I am determined to put all my faith and hope in His Love during whatever may happen here.

It is the only reason I’ve been surviving lately, and it’s also the indomitable cause of a genuine joy in me that is rooted deeper than any sorrow or pain, however sharply real those experiences still are. Even if I cannot be pleased with my present place– truly one should not be “pleased” by disease or poverty or dissension– I can and will be grateful for God’s Hand in it nevertheless, for He knows far better than I, and He is still Good.

Sometimes we suffer bad things just to scrub sin out of our lives and draw– or drag– us closer to God; I know this contritely firsthand. Sometimes we suffer bad things at the hands of the world because we are opposed to it in our adherence to Christ. And sometimes we may be so afflicted we can’t tell why we’re suffering, only that we’re crushed under its weight. But Jesus’s Cross and Death were both gifts from the Father, too.

Praise God for everything, at all times, and just lean into that in your life. Let that radical faith transform you, even if your outward circumstances stay the same. God knows, God sees, God chastises, God upends, and God loves, all the time, no exceptions. Praise be to God!!

Keep Christ at the center of your focus.
Keep Christ at the center of your focus.
Keep Christ at the center of your focus.

No exceptions– in everything you do, from the common to the critical, and at all times, from the mundane to the magnificent… keep Christ at the center of your focus! Whether in joy or agony, sickness or prosperity, anxiety or comfort… fix your heart and mind on Him, from Whom and for Whom it all exists. Only by doing this will you find fulfillment and purpose and peace.

“What we are apt to call interruptions are God’s way of introducing us to a new knowledge of Himself.”

— Oswald Chambers

Calling something an “interruption” means that it has broken into our ego’s schedule– it has stopped us in the process of pursuing our current plans. But nothing interrupts God or His plans, therefore if we follow His Hand we will never be “interrupted” because every sudden shift will also be something we lean into in surrender to Him. And so it follows that if we are currently irked by interruptions, God is indeed sharply showing us that we’re not looking to Him as strongly as we should be. Pause, humble yourself, and look at where He is leading you now. Accept it and follow Him. In this way of surrendering our schedule to God, we will absolutely learn more about Him, in His leading of our lives.

"It is better to limp along the way than stride along off the way. For a man who limps along the way, even if he only makes slow progress, comes to the end of the way; but one who is off the way, the more quickly he runs, the further away is he from his goal."

-Saint Thomas Aquinas

Even slow progress in holiness is progress– but do start slow, or pride may run you off the tracks!

Always be prudent, even in faith. This is a vital heart-check and hope both. I may be limping, but golly it sure is making me careful– and it also means that every successful step comes with that much more gratitude, because I know how easily I can fall.

“By afflictions, God is purifying and deepening our faith and our holiness, weaning us off the world, so that we will be fit for and worthy of the kingdom.⁠”

— John Piper

A prayer my church says with the Joyful Mysteries is: “Teach us, dear Mother, to be detached from the things of the world and from all things that can hinder our union with Jesus. Let us love poverty, privations and inconveniences just as you did.” And I think about that every day. The less of the world is in our lives, the more room we have for God. So it is with every deprivation we experience. We can only lack material things. We will always have God– and He is everything we can and will ever need. So rejoice in your afflictions, for they serve a holier purpose than what the world can see. Our Lord was crowned with thorns, after all, but He’s still The King.

““A verse must be read often, and re-read and read again before the wondrous message of love and power that God has put into begins to appear. Words must be turned over and over in the mind before their full force and beauty takes possession of us. One must look a long time at the great masterpieces of art to appreciate their beauty and understand their meaning, and so one must look a long time at the great verses of the Bible to appreciate their beauty and understand their meaning.””
- R.A. Torrey

No infant learns to walk or talk on their first try. We, too, as children of God, constantly being reborn into the new life of Christ, must repeatedly revisit the Example and Ideal in order to more perfectly understand and incorporate His Teachings. And as we mature in faith, not only will our appreciation grow, but so will our comprehension both deepen and sweeten. God’s beauty increases in our eyes with time, as long as our gazex remains fixed lovingly upon Him. So be patient and persevere in your reading and re-reading of your beloved Bible, for it is full of eternal treasure, and will reveal its bounty only to those who sincerely and diligently seek it.

 

apenitentialprayer: There’s apparently an Orthodox tradition that claims that, no matter how successful he was in converting people to Christianity, and no matter how humble and saintly a man he grew into, even after becoming Pope of Rome, Saint Peter would weep every time he heard the crowing of a rooster. Father Spyridon Bailey says we must take this example and “see ourselves as beginners in the spiritual journey, and always, always continue to see ourselves til our last breath as beginners in the spiritual journey. The minute we imagine we are humble, or virtuous, or dare we think saintly, we must take it as a sign that we are deluded.” There is never a moment where we don’t need our repentance and God’s forgiveness.

This genuinely has me in tears.

Saint Peter, pray for us, the sheep of your beloved Lord’s flock, which He entrusted into your paternal care. May we be blessed with the same grace of sincere contrition and humility, that same total admission of weakness and need of God… even if it means God must send us our own rooster to drive the point home.

May we love Christ enough to let our hearts break for Him.

God has never done all that He can do. He always has one more move.

Trust Him. His power is infinite. There is always hope.

How to live a life of perfect peace:
1. Trust in God.
2. Keep your mind fixed on Him.
3. Acknowledge God's power.

 

Remember, these are not passive steps. Trust, focus, and acknowledgement are all ardently active and frequently require engaging in spiritual warfare against the world & the devil.

But, even then, a heart fixed on God will indeed be in perfect peace. No matter what we may endure or encounter, God is our strength and our song, and by His loving protection, we can rest in Him, who “even the winds and the waves obey” [Matthew 8:27]!

“We have time and prayer backwards. We think time determines prayer, but prayer determines time. We think our lack of time is the cause of our lack of prayer, but our lack of prayer is the cause of our lack of time. 

When a little boy offered Christ five loaves and two fishes, he multiplied them miraculously. He does the same with our time, but only if we offer it to him in prayer. This is literally miraculous, yet I know it happens from repeated experience. Every day that I say I am too busy to pray, I seem to have no time, accomplish little, and feel frazzled and enslaved by time. Every day that I say I’m too busy not to pray, every time I offer some time-loaves and life-fishes to Christ, he miraculously multiplies them and I share his conquest of time. I have no idea how he does it, I know that he does it, time after time.”

- Peter Kreeft, Time

If we’re “too busy to pray,” we’re just running away from Life Himself, and we are inevitably going to burn out all our time until we give up and return to Him. Stopping to sincerely pray in the midst of a packed schedule reminds our hearts of the One Who Is beyond all temporal existence, and For Whom it all ultimately exists. Busyness feels a lot less busy when you keep it in proper perspective– juxtaposed against the Big Picture! This is because Prayer reconnects us with Eternity. When we give our limitations to a Limitless God, miracles can and do indeed happen. But you have to stop and give first– especially if it seems an impossible task! That’s what miracles are all about, after all.

 

"In no way should you allow yourself to be frivolous with regard to prayer. Persuade yourself that such an attitude toward prayer is an offense, the most serious criminal offense. Consider prayer as your first priority in life, and keep it in your heart as such. Then set about it as your primary task, not something that is by-the-way."

 

-St. Theophan the Recluse

 

Prayer is our direct connection to God– our Creator and Savior and Purpose– during our short time in this suffering world. Without Him we are nothing, all is empty and fruitless and broken. With Him, we have Him– we have true love and hope and life, all which, outside of Him, are unattainable. Prayer connects us to life in the midst of death. Prayer gives us light in the deepest dark. Prayer opens the doors to God when we are being crushed by devils. In the biggest picture, prayer is more important than breathing. All else utterly pales in comparison.

“One of the most fascinating myths is that of the Minotaur…The Minotaur was half bull, half huge & powerful man. The various mythic adventures about him and how Theseus defeated him are of secondary interest. What interests me is the symbolism of the myth. The Bull-Man is just what it looks like– a frighteningly powerful beast from hell. Like a bull he is powerful, unpredictable, hot blooded and stubborn. Not only immensely powerful, but the Minotaur is hidden– locked in the underground labyrinth beneath the palace of the king. The palace of the king is beautiful, respectable, wealthy, powerful and pleasurable. The palace contains all that seems attractive and delightful about life, but locked in a labyrinth beneath the palace lurks the Minotaur… and notice that the Minotaur dwells below the palace of the King who is named Minos. “Taur” means “bull” so the minotaur is the dark and bestial shadow side of the king himself. Minotaur stands for the underground evil– the lurking, potent force in the subterranean passageways of our lives. Beneath the shining successful surface of the palaces we create for ourselves, the Minotaur roams and roars. What is this monster in our lives? It is the stubborn, unpredictable, chthonic urges rumbling below like a dormant volcano. This beast roams at will within the labyrinth of our underground lives. It is there that our kinship with Cain wanders about seeking whom he may devour. Without redemption, the Minotaur dwells beneath our silken palaces and our shining exteriors. [But] out of the darkness of the labyrinth the man speaks. To defeat this underground monster of the dark we need the courage and cunning of Theseus whose name reminds us of “Jesus” which means “Savior”. The Minotaur is all that is secret, dark and deep… we should be gathering our courage to face the foe, and it is Christ the True King who comes to enter into that subterranean realm to do battle and defeat him once and for all.”

— Father Dwight Longenecker
 

"But destruction can also pave the way for creation," they say. That is the ironic point here. The Minotaur destroys the false palaces, yet it too in its violent rage is self-destructive and doomed. The Minotaur can tear down but it cannot build. The kings can build but they have no foundation but catacombs. Ultimately all such false things will annihilate themselves, and it is only in our willingness to see them fall that we can be re-created by Christ– the Only Source of True Life, the Only One Who has risen from the dead, and the only True Foundation on which anything can be built.

Let Jesus in to storm their hollow castles and empty the tombs. Let Him defeat the proud kings and wicked monsters. Then you will be reborn in His Victory over both death and decadence, to a new life in God.

“A Catholic may sin and sin as badly as anyone else; but no genuine Catholic ever denies he is a sinner. A Catholic wants his sins forgiven, not excused or sublimated.”

— Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

A Catholic lays his soul bare before God and all, because only then– in absolutely raw honesty– can every last corner of his heart be scrubbed clean by Christ’s mercy.

I do not want my sins excused, because I do not want to sin at all! I want my sins pointed out, chastised, corrected, and forgiven. Something in me is broken when I sin, so I desperately seek to fix it– not deny it! Lord have mercy on me, a sinner… if I do not admit this terrible illness in truth, I will never receive the mercy that can heal it.

“A Christian is not his own master, since all his time belongs to God.”

— St. Ignatius of Antioch (via averosamystica)

Remember this daily. Are you spending your time, which was given to you by God, for His sake? He gives you so much; are you grateful and using it well, or are you wasting this precious gift? One day He will not give you any more time, and you will have to give a full account of your spending! Keep this in mind, and honor the moments you have been entrusted with!

"I would rather die than do a thing which I know to be a sin, or against the will of God."

-Saint Joan of Arc

I think about this quote almost every day; it’s effectively inscribed in my heart. Honestly all Christian souls should hold this same sentiment with as much courage and fortitude as they can muster, and should ask the Holy Spirit for increased grace to hold ever the more truly to it as we grow in holiness until our inevitable, and hopefully blessed, deaths.

Apparently, Saint Joan said this after receiving a mortal wound, and some soldiers wanted to heal her with pagan charms. She refused with the quote above, adding that “if to her could be applied a remedy without sin, she was very willing to be cured”. Mind, she sought life not for her own sake, but for the sake of continuing her mission from God, which she indeed lived to complete, praying before every action and weeping for the souls of those who died in the sieges, friends and enemies both.

She has been one of my patron saints since early childhood, a holy woman who others inexplicably but consistently associated with me. In time her life has proven to hold many notable similarities to and lessons for mine, and I am deeply humbled and honored to call her one of my most specially beloved patron saints. Dear Saint Joan, pray for us!