How can I better praise God?

Q: Dear Dan, Can you give any help on how to learn to praise God? I enjoy going to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and would really like to learn how to praise Him. I don’t feel my words are adequately expressing the praise I really would like to give. Thanksgiving is easier, but I would be grateful for some advice on the praise side.

A: Dear Friend, thank you for asking. This is a very touching question… a beautiful expression just in the asking alone.

The most helpful means to me in developing my own language of praise and adoration is praying the prayers of the saints. As an example, one of my favorite prayers during Lent is expressed in St. Alphonsus Ligouri’s version of The Way of the Cross. In his reflection at the second station he says,

My most beloved Jesus, I embrace all the sufferings You have destined for me until death. I beg You by all You suffered in carrying Your cross, to help me carry mine with your perfect peace and resignation. I love You, Jesus my love; I repent of ever having offended You. Never let me separate myself from You again. Grant that I may love You always; and then do with me as You will.

The first time I prayed this I felt uncomfortable. I just didn’t feel that it was completely true. Yes, I love Jesus, but, I know that my heart is divided. I love him with what seems to me to be a deep love, but I am also very aware of my sin and the fact that my love is not always as whole-hearted as I desire it to be. So, it felt a bit disingenuous saying the words, “I love you Jesus my love.” It seemed more honest to pray, “I don’t love you as much as I should, but I want to love you far more than I do.”

My rescue came in the writings of St. Catherine of Sienna. She relays how it is not possible for us to atone for even the smallest sin (if there is such thing as a small sin). She notes that even though this is true, with God’s grace working through us to love him, we are far more capable, by that virtue-amplifying grace, to repent and thus love God more completely. I realized that when I am expressing even the most meager half-hearted and poorly worded praise, that my words are reaching God in a way that has far more beauty and grace than I could ever muster on my own. It is something like little poorly skilled boy producing a painting that expresses his love for God. He works as hard as he can but from a human standpoint the painting is artistically pitiful. However, by God’s empowering grace, he receives, in the boy’s desire and his own amplifying grace, a painting that is more beautiful than Michelangelo could ever produce.

I was further comforted by the amazing words of a poem written by Saint Teresa Margaret of the Sacred Heart, O.C.D.

…How can you say you do not love God when your very desire of loving is love itself?

It is the sweet flame which escapes from the secret furnace of your heart…

With respect to praying with the saints, there are many good books available. One that I have found a particular blessing is Divine Intimacy. For every day of the year, following the Liturgical calendar, there are meditations and very beautiful prayers from Carmelite saints and other holy men and women. Praying these prayers and making them my own has been extremely helpful.

Another approach that I have found helpful is to personalize the treasure of our traditional prayers. For instance, I begin almost all of my meditation times with an adaptation of the Acts of Faith, Hope, and Love. When I first began this practice I simply prayed them as they are. Over time, I began to pray extemporaneously through the ideas and sentiments that they contain. That is, I made these acts my own either in the traditional form or adapted them to personal experience and the state of my heart each time I entered into meditation. This morning I prayed something like this for my act of faith:

Lord, I believe in you. Thank you for being present to me. I am grateful that you desire my presence in spite of my sin. Before the foundation of the world you formed me out of nothing in order to be in communion with me. You sent your son to help me understand that no matter the depth of my sin, there is redemption for me. I believe in your love. Therefore, I hope in you…

When I am feeling less able to express myself, I simply return to the traditional forms and pray them as my own prayer or I just sit in the quiet and gently repeat, “I love you Jesus my love. Grant that I might love you always, and then do with me what you will.”

For all of our devout friends out there, what approaches have you taken to improve your ability to praise God?

Dan

Penance after Reconciliation……implications of not fulfilling it!

Q: Dear Father Edward, a couple of months ago, I went to receive the sacrament of reconciliation. After I confessed my sins the priest asked me whether I could say the Angelus for my penance. He also asked me if I knew the Angelus. I very hesitatingly affirmed, thinking that if I concentrated enough (I had not said the Angelus in a long time), the words would come. However, on returning to the pew and put myself to the test, I could recollect most (not all) words, but the flow of the prayer was not there. Try as much as I could, I could not recite the entire Angelus. As such I “completed” the penance and then went on to receive Communion. I also said to myself that I would source the Angelus prayer form the Internet and say it the next day. This “next day” has only occurred today. Already I have availed of the sacrament of reconciliation a couple of times as well as received Communion every time I heard Mass. Not really knowing the implications/effects of this act, I did not even mention this at the subsequent confessions. But this keeps nagging at the back of my head. Please help me understand the role of penance, if it is a must and if it is to be “complied” with to the fullest.

A: It is good to hear that you are trying to avail yourself of the sacrament of reconciliation on a regular basis. The glossary of the Catechism describes the sacrament as “The liturgical celebration of God’s forgiveness of the sins of the penitent, who is thus reconciled with God and with the Church.” It remits and forgives those sins committed after baptism. The sacrament of reconciliation (also known simply as confession or the sacrament of penance) is one of the most comforting treasures that the Almighty has given to the Church. Countless souls over the centuries have approached the sacrament with heavy hearts ? and then came away with a renewed outlook on life. Years, even decades, of sin can be absolved in one good confession. The essential elements of the sacrament comprise the acts of the penitent along with the prayer of absolution by the priest. The acts of the penitent are: contrition, the confession of sins, and accepting the penance imposed in satisfaction or reparation. (The temporal punishment that lingers for sins can be remitted through indulgences as well as prayer and acts of charity.)

Now let’s turn to your specific situation. Your first confession was certainly valid, provided that you had the proper contrition, that is, the proper sorrow for your sins. Contrition can be imperfect, meaning that it is motivated more by a fear of punishment. Then there is perfect contrition, which is motivated by sorrow for having offended God; this suffices before the sacrament when one has the intention to go to confession. Let’s assume, too, that you confessed any and all mortal sins that you were aware of, including sins previously unconfessed (for instance, if you didn’t realize that they were mortal sins at the time you committed them). It is also “recommended to the Christian faithful that they also confess venial sins” (Canon law No. 988.2). Let’s further assume that you had the intention to fulfill the penance. You did the best you could at the moment, and eventually did find the text of the Angelus and prayed it. In the meantime ? and assuming that you remained in a state of grace ? you could receive Communion and even return to the sacrament of confession before having completed the first penance perfectly. In other words, your first and subsequent confessions were valid (if you fulfilled all other requirements) and your communions were OK too. So you can breathe easier.

The ideal, of course, would have been for you to pray the Angelus well the first time. If you knew the bulk of the Angelus by memory and prayed it, that would have fulfilled the obligation. If you had a reasonable doubt, you would have done well to get a copy of the Angelus as soon as possible. It would have helpful, but not necessary, to mention your tardiness in a subsequent confession; this might have prompted you to fulfill the penance sooner. This in turn helps us not to take the sacrament for granted.

A few other points are worth noting. An unfulfilled penance is a sin but does not invalidate the confession. If, after accepting a penance, the penitent finds it to be burdensome or very difficult to fulfill, he can ask the same or another confessor to change the penance. The Catechism in No. 1460 says that a penance “must correspond as far as possible with the gravity and nature of the sins committed. It can consist of prayer, an offering, works of mercy, service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sacrifices, and above all the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear. Such penances help configure us to Christ, who alone expiated our sins once for all.” Fulfilling the penance, by the way, doesn’t take away all the temporal punishment linked to our sins ? even one sin against an infinitely good God is beyond our ability to make up for it fully on our own ? but it does help to ensure the full benefits of the sacrament.

God bestows his mercy generously, but penitents need to have the right disposition. Tragic it is that relatively few Catholics avail themselves of this rich sacrament.

Yours in Christ, Father Edward McIlmail, LC

Father McIlmail is a theology instructor at Mater Ecclesiae College in Greenville, RI.

The beauty of your soul…

“…the soul of the just person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says he finds his delight. So then, what do you think that abode will be like where a King so powerful, so wise, so pure, so full of all good things takes his delight? I don’t find anything comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity. Indeed, our intellects, however keen, can hardly comprehend it, just as they cannot comprehend God; but he himself says that he created us in his own image and likeness… His Majesty in saying that the soul is made in his own image makes it almost impossible for us to understand the sublime dignity and beauty of the soul.”

An amazing thought isn’t it? I wonder what would happen to us if we understood how beautiful our souls are, or could be. Have you ever stepped into an immaculate home or better yet, stayed as a guest? A person of good-will in this situation will do everything they can to avoid making a mess. Why? First, because it doesn’t belong to them. Second, because they wouldn’t want to disturb the beauty, order, and cleanliness of the place.

When we see something and beautiful or pristine, our better instinct is to preserve it, to protect it. How would we treat our souls if we knew how truly beautiful they are or could be?

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan

For more this, read St. Teresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle. This passage can be found in the first chapter.

Lent and Mortification – What is mortification anyway?

Q: Dear Father John, What is “mortification” and how does it relate to Lent? What does Saint Paul mean in 1 Corinthians 9 where he says, “I pummel my body and subdue it…” Is he talking about “mortification”?

A: The root word for “mortification” comes from the Latin, mors and mortis, and it translates as “death.” In the spiritual life, therefore, mortification refers to voluntary actions by which we gradually “put to death” all of our vices, sinful habits, and the self-centered tendencies that lurk beneath them. Spiritual writers use terms like abnegation, sacrifice, self-sacrifice, and self-denial to refer to the same thing.

Jesus spoke about mortification as an absolute necessity for growth into Christian maturity. Here are some of the better known passages:

If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me (Luke 9:23)

In all truth I tell you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest (John 12:24).

Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it (Mark 8:35).

St Paul regularly emphasized this “best practice” of the spiritual life. Besides the passage you mention in your question, here are some other favorites:

…[Y]ou must see yourselves as being dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:11).

You were to put aside [we could say “put to death] your old self, which belongs to your old way of life and is corrupted by following illusory desires. Your mind was to be renewed in spirit so that you could put on the New Man that has been created on God’s principles, in the uprightness and holiness of the truth (Ephesians 4:22-24).

…[W]e too, then, should throw off everything that weighs us down and the sin that clings so closely, and with perseverance keep running in the race which lies ahead of us (Hebrews 12:1).

It may seem like overkill to list so many quotations (and there are a lot more), but I do so because this is a hard concept for us to accept. A secular culture by definition seeks heaven on earth. According to that mindset, suffering of any kind is valueless and to be avoided – a far cry from the Christian pattern of death to sin (through voluntary self-denial) as a path to true life.

In Pope Benedict’s recent message for Lent, he explains the reason behind this pillar of Christian spirituality: “Freely chosen detachment from the pleasure of food and other material goods helps the disciple of Christ to control the appetites of nature, weakened by original sin, whose negative effects impact the entire human person.”

In other words, because God has chosen to redeem our fallen human nature, and not just replace it, his grace enters into our wounded, self-centered, sin-tending souls, and gradually transforms them (think of Jesus’ parable of the leaven in the dough). But since we are free, spiritual creatures (not just instinct-driven squirrels), we have to freely cooperate with his grace in order for this process to fully develop. One of the ways we do this is through freely denying ourselves certain pleasures that are not in themselves sinful, e.g. not listening to the radio for the first three minutes of a half-hour commute, offering the silence as an act of mortification, and maybe using it to pray. When we do that, we learn to govern our tendencies to pleasure and self-seeking (which are always waiting for opportunities to run wild); we tame them so that they are fruitful and not destructive, like a tamed stallion as opposed to a wild stallion. This self-governance helps creates interior order and peace, so that we can better hear and respond to God’s action in our lives. The mortification is never an end in itself, but a means by which we become better followers of Christ.

Spiritual writers have used many images to explain the value of mortification. Picture a jar full of very sour vinegar. You want to fill it up with sweet honey. First you have to empty out the vinegar, and then scrub the inside of the jar, and only then can you put in the honey. Just so, to receive the many gifts of grace God wants to give us, we have to empty out and scrub clean every corner of our heart and mind, otherwise the grace can’t get in. Think of a garden (as in Jesus’ parable of the sower). The soil is our fallen human nature, riddled and overgrown with poisonous weeds (vices, selfish tendencies, psychological and emotional wounds…). God comes and plants the seed of grace, the seeds of all the Christian virtues. We water those seeds through prayer and the sacraments. But we also need to pull up the weeds (and some of them have very deep roots), otherwise they will choke the growth of grace, and our virtues will end up looking like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

OK, now let’s get practical. What does this have to do with Lent? The Church is a wise mother. She knows that we like to feast more than we like to fast, which is perfectly normal. But she also knows that if we don’t fast (practice mortification), we will get spiritually out of shape pretty quickly. So she has built into the liturgical year certain seasons when we focus a little bit more than usual on this aspect of our spiritual life – penitential days and seasons, like Lent. So, fasting (some form of mortification, voluntary self-denial) is a normal part of every Catholic’s Lenten journey; it gets us in shape for the holiest days of the year – Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday.

Each of us should choose some form of mortification (something that we notice, but not something that distracts us or overburdens us – balance and realism are important for a healthy spiritual life). In this way, we can unite our increased spiritual efforts to those of our Catholic brothers and sisters throughout the world, making this season a real family affair. Together we go with Jesus into the desert, where he spent 40 days practicing mortification, as a preparation for his public mission.

In another post on this blog, we have made some suggestions about what you can “give up for Lent.” Hopefully this current entry has helped you understand more deeply the value of giving up something.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC, ThD

His Grace for My Sin – A Prayer of St. Augustine

“What fault committed by man has not been expiated by the Son of God made man? What pride can be so immeasurably inflated, that it could not be brought down by such humility? Truly, O my God, if we were to weigh both the offenses committed by sinners, and the grace of God the Redeemer, we would find that the difference equaled not only the distance between east and west, but the distance between hell and the highest heaven. O wonderful Creator of light, by the terrible sorrows of Your Son, pardon my sins! Grant, O God, that His goodness may overcome my wickedness, that His meekness may atone for my perversity, that His mildness may dominate my irascibility. May His humility make amends for my pride; His patience, for my impatience; His benignity, for my harshness; His obedience, for my disobedience; His tranquility, for my anxiety, His sweetness, for my bitterness; may His charity blot out my cruelty!”

St. Augustine