I was blessed in that I had a Spiritual Director since I was 15. When I came back I used to be able to get dwon to the country to the Passionists to meet with him. It is so great to find someone to understand. One of the things I noticed back then (I think I was about 26) was when I went to Church every day I was always te youngest in the Church , which made me sad. I also lost all my friends because what interested them did not interest me. But I have always been somewhat of aloner, even as a child so this just gave me more time for prayer. However over time I have seen time and time again there are people who do understand and are walking the same path. Often they are hidden, but time and time again they come forward just whent they are needed , like little diamonds along the road. One of the Desert Fathers compared souls to trees. He says when a storm comes along a single tree will get blown over but a forest of trees will remain. We all need someone. Need community. Bill Withers (a very good man) said it well.
Music is such a comfort. I remember when I got in the car , just after my brother Colm died, I turned on the radio and they were playing this:
Now there goes a singer and a half! You have good taste Padraig. Withers is one of my favourites. I think he abandoned the music industry to head back home and farm. Wise man. So many are destroyed by drugs in that industry makes me wonder what spirit is truly behind it!
I heard a nice interview with Bill Withers one time , Bobby which made me like him a lot. In the interview he sopke of the town where he grew up Slab Fork, Virginia which is a minning town . He said that the town was divided into two halfs, balck and white with the rail tracks in between the two. But he said that although they were so divided geographically that there was very little racism. The resason was that being miners their lives depended on them getting on with each other. They had to lean on each other, so the song.
I was supposed to go into work last night but a heavy cold has wiped me out and I could not go ,so i am sitting here at home, probably off work for a few days so I am going to try to catch up a little with this topic. It probably won't be very deep or good but I will try...
I was writng about Journey's End. What we are heading for. God is Love and what God wants us to become is Transformed from one Degree of Glory into the next into the image of Jesus to be incorporated through ,with and in Christ to become one with God. In other words through Love to become Love. So the measure, the deepest measure of progress along the way is that we should be deepening in love for God and the true reflection of this love is in how much we are loving those around us. There is a piety that is false that appears to be Goldy (like those of the Pharisees) , which appears to glitter but if we do not love and forgive those aorund us all else is in vain. So that is the ultimate touchstone of our Fiath, of our Spiritual Life that we love and forgive those around us. THe ultimate touchstone is in how much we love those who hate and persecute us. The ones who most, if you like nail us to the Cross. If we can love those then we can be sure that at its deepest levels our Spiritual Life is secure. This is why Jesus taught us the, 'Our Father', which points so deeply to this Truth.
They have very special booster sections full of fuel which they drop off to get them into orbit. The soul recently converted is given its own little special booster section , full of graces ( sometimes quite miraculous) to get them right up there into the orbit of God's love with the rest of us who have been orbiting for quite some while. But these special graces of conversion are not meant to last forever, they will fall away and by that time the ordinary every day graces are meant to take over. This can lead to a kinda down turn or orphan efeect which is very normal. We can't live on Spiritual Highs all our life for where would be the merit of that? The Good Lord cannot carry us on His shoulder all through life , no we must take our turn at carrying Him, by carrying His everyday Cross.
A key part of this carrying on the everyday Spiritual Life is to have a regular pattern of prayer and Worship. This is the very framework on which the Winds of the Holy Spirit will blow and weave their magic. Each of us is different and each of us must take her or his own road in this, for since we all so different souls, like the colours of the rainbow , that each of us must the take the special path of own spirituality. Nevertheless some things will laways be the same or similiar, in the regular Traditions and practises of Holy Mother Church and will suggest a few here.
By far, far , far the most important step any Catholic can ever take to grow in holiness is the Daily Mass. Nothing else comes close by a billion miles. If I were to make one suggestion which I would guarantee to make any soul grow holy or into a saint .Go with Devotion to Daily Mass and there receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Do this and you shall live ; we have Christ's Promise.
Amen! The Mass is more valuable for our soul than anything our worldly, human minds could ever conceive! We are not humans with a spiritual side, we are spiritual beings living in a human body....only the soul is eternal and it is the soul that needs the Mass...daily+
I am sitting here waiting to go out in heavy rain to the 1 pm mass. I feel tired with this heavy cold and part of me wants to stay in and go to bed. But after a while of recieving communion every day a hunger, a great hunger for the Bread of Life stirs up in our souls for the Bread of Life.
Here are a few tips I learnt down the years to saying the Mass well and with more Devotion. Come to mass early and leave it late. I always try to hit the pew at least 15 minutes before mass and leave it not earlier than 15 minutes after mass. This helps us to be prepared to for what is to come and afterwards to take in what has just happened. If you look at people coming to Church before mass, they remind of little birds settling in a tree at sundown. They chirp, sing and shuffle about a while before sttling themselves down. We are the same , we need time to get prayerfully set for the mass. After the mass when we have just received the body and blood and heard the word of God , like all good meals, we need time to digest things. We also need to let time to listen to God talk. If we don't give the good Lord time to talk, how will we ever listen? Also it is more respectful, if we visit someone homes to sit, don't take our coats off, perch on the edge of the chair and keep glancing at our watches ,we aren't giving much respect. We are ,clearly, in a hurry to get away. In order to get the full good out of it we should try as best we can to give it space.
Try as best you can never ever to talk in or around a Church. We have all year to talk to other people. When we talk in Church we are bing disrespectful to others who are trying to pray, to Our Lord in Tabernacle and the angles , the saints and the Holy Souls who pray around it, we are cutting into our own prayer time and we are turning the Church and the Mass itself into a Social Club. Talking in Church is the Death of all true prayer. In Charity we sometimes have to respond to people who talk to us, but we should show by our attitude we want to get back to prayer, this is as good an example to others as it is good for ourselves. If we are in deep prayer it is a good warning light to others to give us some space. https://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/talking_in_church.htm View attachment 3742
