The rule of three in the battle against sin

Q: Dear Dan, I am struggling with a recurring problem with anger that I can’t seem to overcome. I have read books, tried to understand how it surfaces in me, prayed fervently (I am living in a state of grace outside of this problem). But I seem to be making no progress. I am very very very very very very very very frustrated.

A: Yours is a challenging question. Because of the complex issues involved with this issue and my lack of knowledge of anything about you personally, I can’t give you a specific answer. I can however, point you to principals that I have no doubt will in some way help you face and overcome this challenge.

After years of observing intelligent, capable, and committed people work to solve problems, I have come to discover a rule that is almost universally true. Those who use this rule will be significantly more likely to overcome the challenges they face, those who don’t, will likely find themselves frustrated, dejected, and shackled with recurring sin and the debilitating and often disastrous consequences.

The rule itself is simple but it depends on a handful of basic realities that are worth a brief moment of exploration.

1. Sin clouds the heart and mind. Small sins and imperfections, left unchecked, cause a gradual and often unnoticed degeneration of the mind and will. Thus, when someone is caught in a destructive cycle, they often do not have, within themselves, the necessary faculties to identify the root cause, isolate it, formulate a solution, and then implement that solution.
2. We humans are finite creatures. We come into this world with blind spots. Even in the garden before our natures were tainted by sin, we had blind spots. In our perfect state, these were merely dependencies on one another to allow the other to see what the other could not see and to serve them in their need. In our fallen state, these blind-spots and dependencies can and do morph into serious realms of spirtiual delusion and dsyfunction. Post fall, with respect to serious emotional, psychological, and spiritual problems, it is very rare that we can effectively identify and overcome them on our own.

What can we do about these limitations and challenges? Well, the traditional means of the sacraments, prayer, spiritual reading, etc. are essential. Even so, many people are still stuck in their spiritual battles even after years of faithful practice of these life-giving disciplines. Other, less commonly used but very powerful tools are the combination of a rule of life coupled with a daily examen. Together these dramatically increase our spiritual peripheral vision by making us more self-aware (these practices consistently utilized can also help to shed light on our root sin). These tools help us to become more cognisant of our blind-spots and delusion not because we begin to see them clearly but because we see the patterns of the outcomes more clearly. Remember, you can never clearly see exactly what it is in your blind-spot.

Even with these wise and helpful practices, many people still are stuck in their spiritual growth. Why? It is because they don’t practice this simple rule:

If, with full vigor and commitment, we attempt to overcome a pattern of sin, imperfection, or any other major personal challenge three times without clear success or significant progress, we must seek outside help to properly diagnose and solve the problem.

Here’s an insight to the solution to this problem from God the Father given to St. Catherine of Sienna on the inherent incompleteness of our design and our clear need for others (Dialogue #7):

The same is true of many of my gifts and graces, virtues and other spiritual gifts, and those things necessary for the body and human life. I have distributed them all in such a way that no one has all of them. Thus I have given you reason – necessity, in fact – to practice mutual charity. For I could well have supplied you with all your needs, both spiritual and material. But I wanted to make you dependent on one another…

So, we are designed with a fundamental need for one another. Humility, mutual dependence and charity, are absolutely necessary for our spiritual growth; they are absolutely necessary for us to overcome serious spiritual challenges. Our culture, fueled by the lies of the enemy, militate against these holy needs and seek to replace them with the anti-virtues of pride, independence, and hyper-individualism. These ant-virtues coupled with fear and vanity have locked up and destroyed many people of good-will who simply would not reach out and get help with the challenges they face.

Jesus said that He came to give us life and that more abundantly. Reach out for that life that he offers to you. Don’t settle for less. Get the help you need.

PS: For more in-depth treatment of these ideas, you can pre-order Dan’s book, Navigating the Interior Life – Spiritual Direction and the Journey to God. It is scheduled to be available later in 2012.

Subscribe To Site:

Full Post Feed | Summary Feed

I am stuck in my spiritual growth… how do I get unstuck? This is frustrating! Part II of II

Q: Dear Sister Carmen, I feel like I am stuck in mansion somewhere in mansion one or two. Is this normal? Where do most people get stuck in the journey through the mansions and is there any common way you can suggest that we get unstuck? Maybe I am just impatient. I feel like I should be growing but I am not.

In our first post in this two part series we talked about a few of the reasons we get stuck and touched on the key issues we often face in the first three mansions. In this post, we will provide a little summary of the first three mansions through a brief examination of conscience may help to determine just where you “feel stuck”. Perhaps the following will be of some help.

Since one enters the Castle through the gate of prayer the person entering the first mansion already feels drawn to prayer. Teresa does not talk much about prayer in the first three mansions but she does talk about what may help or hinder prayer.

First Mansion

• How generous are you in the development of your prayer life?

• Are you growing in the poverty of self-knowledge which in turn helps you to know God better?

• What for you are occasions of sin and what determined means do you take to avoid them?

• How frequently do you avail yourself of the sacrament of confession?

Second Mansion

• How are you strengthening the practice of virtue?

• Is your prayer becoming more simplified?

• Are you growing in a healthy concept of perfection?

• Do you quiet your own voice in order to discern the gentle voice of God?

• Do you seek guidance in learning to conform your will to God’s?

Third Mansion

In the third mansion we see that true conformity with God’s Will is reached only when our “false gods” (centers of our lives) die and integration takes place not only in relation among these centers, but new life emerges as a result. “Unless the seed falls into the ground and dies…”

• Are you desirous not to offend God even by venial sin?

• Do you eagerly perform penance?

• Do you spend quality time in prayer?

• Do you use your time well?

• Is your life orderly?

• Do you practice works of charity?

Teresa speaks of seven mansions or main rooms. But there are rooms within each mansion. Our movement within these “rooms” is fluid not static. Although we may spend more time in one room than in another we tend to move in and out and may have brief glimpses of rooms to come, if the Lord chooses.

This whole process is about change or transformation. Change can take place only through our generosity and willingness to surrender. In the example of our butterfly above there are four main life cycles: 1) the egg or beginning stage; 2) the caterpillar or growth stage; 3) the chrysalis or transformation stage; and 4) the adult or perfected stage. We might compare the growth stage here of the caterpillar to the first three mansions. Without this growth the transformation might never take place and thus perfection would be stunted.

This is all a preparation for what lies beyond the first three mansions which is God’s to give not ours to produce.

PS: To learn more about the Carmelite Sisters visit our web site: www.carmelitesistersocd.com and for more information please contact the sisters at contact@carmelitesistersocd.com, or 626-289-1353 Ext. 246, 920 East Alhambra Road, Alhambra, California 91801.

Subscribe To Site:

Full Post Feed | Summary Feed

Broken? ~ Stanza II ~ Part I

Come Lord Jesus to repair us,
with Your gift of healing love.
Send Your Spirit to prepare us,
for our home in heaven above.

God is love.  I had a taste of the truth of this statement once while in adoration.  It was just a glimmer, lasting only a fraction of a second. Yet in that moment, I knew that God really is love.

For most of my life I had a hard time accepting the fact that God really created us, each individually, but He did.  His involvement in our creation is not just in some indirect biological context, as I used to think, but He wills each and every soul into being. There are no souls, (no babies), who are ‘accidents’.  In Matthew 10:30 Jesus tells us, “Even all the hairs of your head are counted.” This indicates a God who must be very close and attentive; it’s an incredible statement.  During my formation I learned that every word in the Bible is there intentionally and has meaning.  In light of this, I am left in awe and wonder, pondering the beauty of God’s love.

In the last post I mentioned that the Church teaches against certain things because they are evil and contrary to nature.  Since they are evil they can hurt us; when we choose evil over good we sin, and sin separates us from God.   Often we can’t see or understand that we’ve been harmed, but our soul knows, and if we don’t confess it and repent, it will eventually make itself known, one way or another; for me it was a mid-life crisis.

It was a big help for me to learn early in my formation how active the devil is in our everyday lives.  We don’t hear much about the devil anymore…..and I’m sure he would be quite happy if we forgot he was real, because when this happens moral truths become foggy and confused.  This is how I came to accept that while I believed that abortion was the taking of an innocent life…..perhaps it wasn’t my place to make that decision for another woman.  After all, she will have to live with her decisions, good and bad, like the rest of us.

Morality is not a democracy! (Matthew Kelly)

One of the realizations that came to me through healing was that it’s not just my beliefs or opinions here, but the universal laws of God – and what is morally good for me, is good for my brothers and sisters too.  Anything that is not good for me, is not good for my brothers or sisters, either.  Abortion hurts!  It hurts a lot of people, and yet it is fiercely defended as a right.   As I progressed through my formation program and actually read what the Church teaches about abortion, chastity, using contraceptives, and other issues like these, where we think the big bad Church is trying to take our freedom away from us with all its rules, I discovered that the teachings really made sense.  My experience has been that through loving surrender and obedience to the laws God established, I have been set free!  This is remarkable because it’s the opposite of what we think is true.  We think that following rules is restrictive and limits our freedom, but only because the devil is telling us so. “God’s holding out on you……”

Through God’s healing love I have learned that I need to do my part to share the truth about these evils with others – through discernment and with love – because they’ve been duped too!  There are eternal consequences to our choices, and it’s not charitable to watch someone ‘skipping and dancing’ down the road to perdition (indulging in destructive and selfish behaviors), and not do a thing to stop them.  With all my heart I want heaven for everyone; even if it costs me in this life!

So, what is it about us that needs repair?  When we sin, we lose sanctifying grace and damage our relationship with God.  Less serious, or venial sins, do less damage than do serious, or mortal sins, which turn us away from God.  Where do we find sanctifying grace?  In the sacraments.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) defines sanctifying grace as:

“The grace which heals our human nature wounded by sin by giving us a share in the divine life of the Trinity.  It is a habitual, supernatural gift which continues the work of sanctifying us – of making us “perfect”, holy, and Christlike.” (1999)

The word sacrament comes from sacramentum, which “…emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality…” (CCC 774)  God knew we would have trouble with the supernatural part of our faith, and so He gave us the sacraments in visible form to remind us of the hidden reality which they represent.  When we receive the sacraments frequently we are strengthened through grace (God’s action) and are better able to live as we should.

When we love someone, truly love them, we would never do anything to harm them or cause them sorrow or disappointment.  It’s not in the nature of love to do this.  Real love is demanding; real love is sacrificial; just look at a crucifix. God is perfect love, and He wants to share that with us; that’s what the “perfect” in, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48), is all about.  The saints weren’t perfect people, but they loved perfectly in many different ways; there are examples for each of us in the lives of the saints, and like the Bible, what they teach us is timeless.

Sadly, many souls have never experienced real love, what with the breakup of families today, and the casual way relationships are entered into and ended on a whim.  If we’ve never experienced the natural love family members should have for one another, how much value can we place in a God that is love?  If the only example of love a child ever gets is through an abusive and chaotic home life, how can they possibly see God as good?  Yet God can heal even these.

One of the most beautiful parts of my formation was learning that, through prayer, when the time is right, we can go back to the most painful events in our lives and find Jesus there!  Often crying for/with us, He will help us to forgive; He will teach us what we gained through the experience, He will lead us to pray for those responsible, and for those who are currently suffering similar trials.

Love & Prayers,

Becky

This post is part of a series.  The introduction and other articles from the series can be found here -link- once they have been published.

Subscribe To Site:

Full Post Feed | Summary Feed

Your next great idea

Dear Friends,

As most of you know, our journey with Catholic Spiritual Direction has been full of surprises. First I was suprised that more than seven people would be interested – we now have almost 10,000 subscribers and hundreds of thousands of readers in every country of the world! Then I was surprised by the work it takes to continuously provide life-giving content (I am not complaining mind you – it is a joyful privilege to serve you). And finally, I have been delightfully surprised at all the friends I have made around the world. We regularly correspond with people we would have never even have had the slightest chance to meet before this effort.

By God’s grace, this has all been made possible by you. You donate, you support,  you ask questions, you pray, you love others as they struggle and grow in the faith. Among you, many wonderful people have given a great deal to this effort. Today I want to make special mention one person. He has been on board since the beginning. When I had the silly idea, he encouraged me. Whenever we needed a change, he jumped in with energy and competence. His name is Tim Norton and he is the owner of 6Webdesign.

If you have a passion to reach the masses for the better, or even to figure out a better way to put food on the table, Tim is the guy who can get it done.

His latest work for us can be found on our new book site Navigating the Interior Life. To see his other work, check out the gallery of sites he has created here.

Tim is a good and devout Catholic man with a great family. Please offer a special prayer of thanksgiving for him for his service to us and to you and don’t hesitate to engage him to breathe life into your next great idea.

Pax Christi – Dan

Subscribe To Site:

Full Post Feed | Summary Feed

Catechism – Contemplative Prayer – 2715

Contemplation is a gaze of faith, fixed on Jesus. “I look at him and he looks at me”: this is what a certain peasant of Ars in the time of his holy curé used to say while praying before the tabernacle. This focus on Jesus is a renunciation of self. His gaze purifies our heart; the light of the countenance of Jesus illumines the eyes of our heart and teaches us to see everything in the light of his truth and his compassion for all men. Contemplation also turns its gaze on the mysteries of the life of Christ. Thus it learns the “interior knowledge of our Lord,” the more to love him and follow him.

Subscribe To Site:

Full Post Feed | Summary Feed