‘Sitting with God’
Sometimes, people don’t pray because they feel they’re not worthy of it. They think it’s not for them. Mention the word ‘contemplation’, and they just run a mile. They think it’s for monks and people who have all sorts of qualifications. Prayer and contemplation are nothing more than simply ‘sitting with God’.
The world we live in can be very distracting. Everything gets broken down or torn apart, important concepts are shredded into little bits and pieces. Prayer, and particularly contemplation, allows you to enter into the heart of God, knowing that this world beats as one and that there’s harmony in the world. You are more than broken bits and pieces and individual parts. To be at peace, you have to see the whole, get the picture of the whole, and get a sense of the whole. It is prayer and contemplation that help you achieve this.
I find that when I pray in the morning, I go out into my day with a greater sense of purpose. I’m not just fiddling with little bits and pieces and trying to fit them together chaotically.
Alan Hilliard, Dipping into Life: 40 Reflections for a Fragile Earth
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Trust in God
Worry is the cause of many of the world’s problems, and it can be a warning sign that God is not first in my life at this point in time.
A day of worrying can be more exhausting than a day of hard work. Nothing wastes more energy than worrying. It’s a total waste of time and it’s useless. Worry can damage your health. It can raise your blood pressure, cause depression, increase your stress levels and give you sleepless nights. It can be a slow killer.
There is no pill you can take to stop you from worrying; no seminar, book or CD will stop you from worrying. The answer is to put God in control of your life. Trust him. Leave tomorrow to God. Don’t cross bridges until you reach them. Don’t open your umbrella until it starts raining.
Hand over everything to God: yourself, your problems, plans and health, everything. Surrender and abandon yourself to him. Your future is in God’s hands and in God’s hands you are in safe hands. Trust him and all will be well. Easier said than done. It may take time. But it works.
Terence Harrington OFMCap, excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger, December 2023
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God accompanies us in times of fear
In a strange city, I had been told to attach myself to a native of the city to cross the road – with him, I’d be safe. Otherwise, I was scared stiff in a city crowded with traffic. The fear that time was overcome with the help of another person, of someone who could help me cross.
Many of our fears dissolve if we share them; they don’t exactly go away immediately, but they’re different. We can help each other because we’re all afraid at times, just as people had their fear (and still do) of COVID. In bereavement, we’re frightened of being lonely, being left alone. It’s the same in our older years. All of us have fears like these, and we can bring them into our relationship with God. Job in the Old Testament was like that. He even feared he was losing his God, but by being honest with God, he could live with his fear. Jesus was afraid in the Garden of Gethsemane, but later, with trust in his Father, he went to his death unafraid.
May God bless us with the joy of walking with him, accompanying us at times of fear, helping us to live our lives with trust and confidence. A saying of Jesus in the Gospel is ‘Be not afraid. I go before you always. Come, follow me.’ Our prayer can be: ‘Lord, help me believe that nothing can happen that you and I together cannot face and overcome.’
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger, July 2023
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Our Guiding Star
We often pray, ‘Heart of Jesus, make our hearts like yours.’ We pray to be as large-hearted as Jesus in compassion and care for all creation.
The god of Herod in the story of the Magi is tiny, created in Herod’s image and likeness. His god is as small as his influence, which did not last, and as small as the precious stone in his crown. He has made God as tiny as the outreach of his heart, which looked to others only for what he could get, not what he could give. His zest for power is so strong that he kills even tiny children who might threaten him. A bit of him wanted to see and hear Jesus later in life, but only to condemn him.
The God of the Magi was a big god! Big enough to bring the wise men on the long road to Bethlehem. They followed the star of love, goodness, faith, courage, endurance and justice, guided by a star whose light, the light of God, never fails. Their God was big enough to be recognised in a small baby. They searched and found what they were searching for, even though they may not have been sure what they would find.
The star that guides us is the star of the loves and questions, joys and sorrows of our life’s journey. It lives in the hearts of all we meet. Like St Francis of Assisi, we see in a crowd of people not a mob, but the love and image of God multiplied in all. His God was wide, and, like Jesus, his care for God’s world went to every person God created, every blade of grass and everything that has life.
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger, January 2023
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The Greatest Gift
Silvano Fausti SJ wrote a version of the Christmas story that is popular in Italian elementary schools. Caleb was the poorest of the shepherds near Bethlehem on that holy night. He had just two sheep. When the angel appeared to the shepherds and told them to go to town to find their Saviour in a manger inside a cave, they quickly gathered up some gifts, whatever was to hand. One brought a chicken, another some freshly baked bread and another a basket of fruit. Caleb followed them but being so poor, he had no gift to bring.
When the shepherds reached the cave they proceeded inside, each bearing their gift, kneeling before Jesus. Soon, other people arrived, each bringing some gift to honour the sacred child. Caleb remained some way off, too embarrassed to approach the scene empty-handed.
Mary and Joseph felt overwhelmed by their visitors. They found it difficult to manage the crowd and all those useful presents, especially as Mary was also holding Jesus. Noticing Caleb standing some way off, with his empty hands and sad expression, she asked him to come closer, and then she placed the baby in his arms while she arranged the gifts. Caleb’s hands were no longer empty. They were, in fact, holding the greatest gift of all.
Even if we have little or nothing to offer the Lord this Christmas, that poverty, in itself, may be enough of a gift to welcome the Son of God.
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger, December 2023
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Christ is born again each year in our hearts
Many people find winter difficult; with cold weather and very little sunlight, it can be a tough time. But it is during these weeks that Christians celebrate something amazing: God entering into humanity, putting on skin and living among us as a full human person in a way that we still find hard to put into words. Jesus – a Palestinian Jew who was born into a homeless family in an animal shelter in a remote part of the Roman Empire – was marginalised from the very beginning. Yet he transformed history and continues to transform our lives today.
Into all the harrowing struggles of our world, then and now, God is born. Christ is born again each year in our hearts if we can make room for him there and in our world if we look with awareness in ordinary places. As we light the white candle on the Advent wreath on Christmas morning, let us remember what it represents: the peace, unity and hope for which the world desperately longs. We are invited to rejoice with the angels and the shepherds, joining together in praise and singing, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace, good will among people’.
Excerpted from The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark by Tríona Doherty and Jane Mellet
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‘go now to Bethlehem’
Christmas is often described as a ‘magical’ season: festive gatherings, songs and movies, the excitement on little faces on Christmas morning, the traditions we carry with us from childhood –all of these evoke strong emotions. But there’s something that transcends all of this, and that is the familiar story of the shepherds.
Some 2,000-plus years later, our own daily routines are put on pause by the arrival of Christmas and this ‘good news of great joy’ (Luke 2:10). Like the shepherds, we are invited to step out of our everyday life with its challenges and worries, and ‘go now to Bethlehem’; to meet the child Jesus in the manger in all his newness and human vulnerability. We live in a world that can feel increasingly uncertain, dark and frightening. We cannot escape the daily news of war, famine, mass shootings, hateful attacks on minorities, worrying news about our climate and our planet. It is important to be engaged, but the barrage of bad news can leave us feeling anxious about the future and about the security of ourselves and our loved ones. This Christmas Day, we have an opportunity, like the shepherds, to step out of our routine and visit the Christmas crib. This scene still has the power to move and amaze us. We bring our worries and anxieties, and perhaps we can leave them there awhile as, like Mary, we reflect deeply and treasure this mystery of God with us. The world will still be there to return to, as it was for the shepherds, with a new perspective and renewed hope.
Excerpted from The Deep End: A Journey with the Sunday Gospels in the Year of Mark by Tríona Doherty and Jane Mellett
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Communing with Nature
During this time of the year, I notice myself withdrawing from the busy pace of the world to seek quiet time for reflection. Nature is integral to my daily spiritual life. In the sacred space of the natural world, I feel a profound sense of what it means to be part of the web of life – to belong to a bigger cosmic consciousness.
For me, my intimate connection to God in nature is the Holy Spirit in action. I have long held a strong connection to all living things on the planet. My desire to live in a more sustainable, conscious way is how I respond to the call of Laudato Si’ to have an ecological conversion.
A nature-based approach to spirituality could hold the solution to our feelings of alienation and disconnection from the Church, our global community and even our role in the current global climate change crisis. As we make it our intention to restore this connection in order to overcome the current socio-ecological crises that threaten our survival as a species on the planet, we also deepen our own faith. As Thomas Berry wisely observed, ‘The destiny of humans cannot be separated from the destiny of the earth.
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger, December 2021
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Preparing for Advent
Just as we are never conscious of air, because God’s presence is always around us, we never notice it. The journey of faith is a gift of a loving God who takes the first step and waits patiently, silently, almost shyly for the human response. Life is a vocation, a call to seek this shy God.
Advent is a time to remind ourselves of the many contradictions at the heart of our faith. This most powerful presence chose to be manifest in powerlessness.
As we prepare to celebrate the moment the Word became flesh our faith needs deepening. Ours is a faith that sincerely accepts the darkness surrounding the search for more light. Consequently, Advent is a time of loving adoration, a true act of supernatural hope and of loving surrender to this shy God.
This shy God reminds us this Advent that life is about relationships, not about things. The greatest joy comes from good relationships –the greatest sorrow and suffering come not from loss of job or property but from broken and betrayed relationships. All relationships of love are rooted in the love this shy God has for all of us.
Excerpted from Let Advent be Advent by Vincent Sherlock
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Finding God in All Things
Today, in our diverse world, we all come to faith from different places and from different backgrounds. Faith in Christ is sort of like the great equaliser. Prayer is one of the spiritual disciplines we all have to learn. We can ask several questions about prayer: How do you say a prayer? What is a personal prayer? How can I grow my prayer life?
Finding God in all things is integral to the Ignatian worldview. ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’ (Gerard Manley Hopkins). This God is present in our lives, ‘labouring for us’ in all things; he can be discovered, through faith, in all natural and human events, in history as a whole and, most especially, in the lived experience of each individual person.
Excerpted from The Sacred Heart Messenger magazine, June 2022, Sunny Jacob SJ
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