“The people were astonished at his teaching…” (Mark 1:22)

When is the last time you experienced an amazing moment, a sense of being truly astonished?  Several instances come to mind when I think of amazing moments in my life:

• the first time I saw the morning clouds rising off the foothills of the Austrian Alps

• the first time I saw St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome

• standing on top of a mountain after a hike

• holding a newborn baby

• listening to the giggles of my nieces (my nephew doesn’t giggle as much now as he nears his teen years)

• making the Body and Blood of Christ present on the altar through my words and hands

• forgiving sins in Christ’s name in the Sacrament of Reconciliation

For me, these are amazing moments.  

Hopefully we all have had amazing moments.  They’re moments that take our breath away and deeply touch our hearts.  They bring us joy and a sense of peace.  And if we’re spiritually attentive, we can have them more often.

You see, the Lord desires that these amazing moments lead us to contemplate Him, the Truly Amazing One.  For every moment of amazement is a glimpse of God’s amazing beauty and love.

The Lord wants us to be amazed by His eternal love for us.  He wants our hearts to be captivated by His loving and merciful presence.  This is why, I believe, He allows these amazing moments to touch our lives: so that we can experience His amazing love for us.

So, the next time you are truly amazed; the next time you hear the uplifting laughter of a child or see a spectacular sunset or listen to a beautiful song, remember that the Lord is reaching out to you.  He is amazing you with His love and presence; He is using the ordinary circumstances of your life to raise your heart and mind to the extraordinary reality of His love.

Recently, while on vacation, I read Quiet Strength by Tony Dungy.  In football circles, Tony Dungy is known as a man who was a great NFL coach and the first African American coach to win a Super Bowl.  However, if you ask Coach Dungy, he’d tell you that he’d rather be remembered as a committed Christian, a dedicated husband and father, and a man who helped others to grow closer to the Lord Jesus.

I won’t summarize the entire book, but here are three lessons that I took away from it.

Lesson #1: No excuses. No explanations.  
Coach Tony Dungy always challenged his players to take complete responsibility for their decisions both on and off the field.  He wanted them to be great men, not just great players.  So often we make excuses for our bad decisions.  We explain away our behavior so as to justify it to ourselves and others.  Coach Dungy encourages us to live the words of Jesus, “The truth will set you free.”  Only when we stop blaming others and take responsibility for every aspect of our lives can we really be happy and free.

Lesson #2: The Lord always leads us; we simply need to follow in faith.  
One of the main themes in the book is how God continually led–and continues to lead–Tony Dungy in his life.  He never received any visible signs or heard any heavenly voices, but he always prayed about his decisions and God always led him to the right place.  Even when he was fired as coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he tried to see how God was leading him.  This is an important lesson for us.  It’s only human to question why certain things happen to us–a layoff, a sickness–but we must remember that God always leads us, especially during our dark and painful moments.

Lesson #3: Our personal suffering teaches us to be more compassionate and to reach out to others. 
Tony Dungy and his wife Lauren endured the most painful thing that parents can experience: their son committed suicide.  They’ll never know the reason why their son took his own life.  Their grief was, and still is, deep.  But what’s amazing is that Coach Dungy has used this  tragedy to reach out to others who are suffering.  He consoles parents who have experienced the same tragedy; he reaches out to young people who are struggling with life; he challenges both the young and old to always have hope.  The pain of loss will always be in his heart, but he is using that pain to enrich the lives of others.  Shouldn’t we do the same?

So, you don’t need to be a football fan to read Quiet Strength.  Tony Dungy is an inspiring man, and Quiet Strength is an inspiring book.

Sometimes I get frustrated with myself.  I get impatient with my imperfections.  I get upset at how I can be so focused on the Lord and spiritual living for an extended period of time and then, it seems, in an instant I can slide back into old habits.

So often I take two steps forward and three steps back.  I frequently think of St. Paul’s words: “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate” (Romans 7:15).

But a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in quiet prayer and the Lord spoke to my heart: “Stop judging yourself and live.”

Interesting, I thought.  I wrote those words in my journal, but I didn’t completely understand them…until I recently had one of my two-steps-foward-three-steps-back moments.

You see, in my life I’ve had a tendency to focus on the bad feelings that come after what I perceive to be a failure (I hated losing basketball games when I was younger!).  So I think what the Lord was telling me is that those bad feelings are often triggered because I spend too much time judging myself (“Stop judging yourself”).  If I can simply acknowledge my mistake and keep living, then those negative emotions won’t have such a deep hold on me.

The Way of the Cross is very instructive for us in this regard: Jesus fell, but He kept going.  That’s exactly what he wants us to do; and He gives us the strength to do it.

When we think that we’ve failed, we simply ought to acknowledge it, make a sincere act of sorrow to the Lord, and keep living, keep moving forward.  That’s what God wants.

God is our judge.  So stop judging yourself and keep on living.  Jesus desires us to live in the freedom of the Spirit.  We can’t do that if we’re always caught up in what we’ve done wrong.  We’re all going to make mistakes, but let’s learn from them and keep moving forward.

Please share Live Holiness and help others learn how to pray and to live.

“Let’s be honest.”

“I’ll be honest with you.”

“Honestly…”

“Honest to goodness.”

These are all phrases we’ve either heard or spoken numerous times.  As children, we were taught that telling the truth is the right thing to do.  And yet how many of us got into trouble–or maybe even still do!–for lying?

But what does honesty with God have to do with our prayer?As a teenager, when I began to develop a deeper personal relationship with God, my prayer was often filled with “Thees” and “Thous.”  Now, there’s nothing wrong with addressing God in this way; but, in retrospect, I believe that the “Thees” and “Thous” that filled my prayer were obstacles that kept me from truly pouring my heart out to the Lord.  I was more concerned with proper piety than with honesty, most likely because there were a lot of things in my heart that I wanted to hide from God.

Jesus knows what is in the depths of our hearts.  He knows the thoughts of our hearts before we speak them.  So if we fail to be honest with God in prayer then we are really only deceiving ourselves.  It’s important for us to know that honesty with God in prayer is liberating.

A classic example is when we feel anger towards God.  As a priest, people ask me this question all time: Is it wrong to be angry at God?  First and foremost, we must remember that anger is an emotion, and oftentimes emotions are neither right nor wrong: they just are.  What we do with our emotions is a separate issue.

People are sometimes surprised by the answer I give them: if you feel anger toward God you should tell Him.  Really.  He can handle it.  He wants us to pour out our hearts to Him in prayer.  He wants us to express what is in the depths of our hearts.  For didn’t Jesus pour out His heart to His Father in prayer?  In Gethsemane?  On the Cross?  Didn’t Jesus pour out the depth of His emotions to His Father?

We should do the same.  Hold nothing back when you pray.  Tell the Lord exactly what’s in your heart, especially the bad feelings that might be present.  It is precisely by pouring these emotions out that we are freed from their hold and we enter more deeply into the loving embrace of the Lord.

No, God does not want us to be stuck in anger or any other negative feelings we may have.  This is precisely the reason that we need honesty with God in our prayer.  We need to go before God as we are, not pretending to be someone we are not.  If we are honest with God in prayer, we will feel a sense of deep freedom, and we will find ourselves having a deeper understanding of how He his working in our lives.

It is important that we have the proper focus when we pray.  Christian prayer is not about introspection; Christian prayer is Christ-centered.  And so our awareness as we begin to pray is crucial.

When we quiet our minds and hearts by relaxing and focusing on our breath, we are not preparing to naval-gaze; we are preparing to enter into a prayerful awareness of God’s loving presence in and around us.

A Common Mistake
Many people mistakenly focus on themselves at the beginning of prayer.  I still fall into this trap at times.  It’s easy to do, because when we pray we want to pour our hearts out to God.  But authentic prayer is meant to lead us to deeper communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Yes, we should still pour out our hearts to God in prayer, but first our awareness ought to be on the Lord’s love for us.

Focus on God’s Love
Notice that our awareness is on God’s Love; it’s not an awareness of His anger, His judgment, or His discipline.  Yes, Scripture speaks about all of these attributes of God, but for the purpose of prayer, it’s important to focus on how much He loves us.  “God is love.”

Living in His Gaze…
What should this awareness “feel” like?  I believe one of the most powerful ways to become aware of God’s love is to be aware of His gaze upon us.  Think about the gaze of a parent upon their newborn infant sleeping in their arms.  How tender is that gaze!  And yet, as tender and loving as the gaze of a parent is upon their newborn, God’s gaze upon us is infinitely more loving and tender.

The Apostles experienced this loving gaze of Jesus.  They learned to live in the gaze of Christ.  After Christ ascended into Heaven, they continued to contemplate the face of Jesus in their prayer; and by continuing to remain in the loving gaze of the Lord, they became instruments of His loving gaze to others.  By living in the presence of a loving God, they brought His loving presence to others.

…We Become His Gaze
The same is true for us: When we become aware of the Lord’s loving presence, when we allow ourselves to be captured by His gaze, we in turn bring His love to others.  This is what authentic prayer does: it leads us to deeper communion with God which in turn deepens our desire to pour ourselves out in loving service to others.

Please share Live Holiness and help others learn how to pray and to live:

Let’s go deeper into the subject of how to pray.  In my last post I suggested four steps to help us enter into prayer.  I’d like to explore each of these in more detail in the next few posts.

As we enter into prayer, we first choose to be still.  “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).  That beautiful verse from Psalm 46 is the starting point for prayer; and the verse takes on even more significance as we approach Christmas.

For the next several days, traffic will be crazy and people will be running around finishing their Christmas preparations.  I’ve always found it ironic that this time of year which ought to be the most peaceful–the time that we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace–is actually the most hectic.  But in order to truly prepare for Christmas, we must allow our hearts and minds to be still.

For most of us, our default mode is set to “busy.”  Being still, then, is a battle and takes courage.  We must fight to be still..  It takes a strong act of the will to be still.  To be still, we must choose a different mode: we must choose to rebel against busyness; we must choose to believe that the quality of our lives does not come from how much we do, but rather how alive we are in Christ.

Because stillness is such an important part of prayer, I do believe the environment in which we choose to pray is crucial.  If you’re not able to pray in a church or chapel on a daily basis, it would serve you well to set up a sacred space in your home dedicated exclusively to prayer.  It needn’t be fancy; in fact, simpler is better.

Your prayer space should be a place where distractions are minimal.  Religious symbols, such as a crucifix, statues, or icons should be in place.  Personally, I love to pray in silence before the Blessed Sacrament, but I also love to pray in my living room.  I have a comfortable chair and a table next to it so I can reach for the Bible or a spiritual book or my cup of coffee.

As we sit–or kneel–to begin our prayer, it’s likely that our minds will be filled with distractions.  As we begin, we can take some deep breaths.  We can also focus on our heartbeat.  Our breath and heartbeat are signs of God’s love and presence within us.  We breathe because we have received the Breath of Life; our hearts beat because the Lord’s Heart beats in love for us.

As we become aware of our heartbeat and allow our breathing to slow, we enter into stillness; and it’s then that we are able to be more deeply aware of the presence of God.

Please share Live Holiness and help others learn how to pray and to live:

We, too, long to know God in a deeper way.  As Jesus shares the most intimate relationship with His Father, we too desire to share that intimacy with God.  Prayer is the way to God.

But how to pray?  Can we learn how to pray?  Can we really have an intimate relationship with God? The answer is, “Yes!”  Not only can we have an intimate relationship with God; God desires that we be in an intimate friendship with Him.

So, whether you are just learning how to pray, or you want to deepen your life of prayer, here are four steps to guide you along the path of prayer:

Be Still
The psalmist writes, “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).  Today, more than ever, it is difficult to be still.  We are bombarded with distractions.  Yet, in order to enter into prayer, the first thing we must do is to be still.  We must let go of the anxieties and distractions of our lives.  A simple way to do this is to take some deep breaths.  As you breath in, focus on entering into God’s presence; as you breath out, consciously surrender your burdens and distractions to the Lord.

Be Aware
As you become still, focus your awareness on the loving presence of God.  He is lovingly gazing upon you.  You are precious in His sight.  You are in His heart, and He is in yours.  Simply be aware of His holy presence.  Don’t rush to move beyond this awareness.  Allow yourself as much time as you need to be aware of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Be Honest
As you remain aware of God’s presence, speak to Him from your heart as a friend speaks to a friend.  Be open and honest with Him.  Share with Him your joys and sorrows, your hopes and fears.  He knows the depths of your heart, so hold nothing back from Him.  We experience deep freedom when we open our hearts to the Lord.

Be Attentive
After you speak with Him, listen to Him.  Do not feel that you need to fill your prayer with words.  In fact, spend more time listening than speaking.  He wants to speak to your heart.  He will speak to you.  No, not in audible words, but in your holy thoughts and desires.

Be still.  Be aware.  Be honest.  Be attentive.  These simple steps will help you to begin a life of prayer or take you deeper into your already-established life of prayer.

Please share Live Holiness and help others learn how to pray and to live: