No spiritual director in sight – how can I keep growing spiritually in the mean time?

Q: Dear Father John. I cannot find a spiritual director in my area. I will keep looking and praying, but until I find someone, what do I need to do to ensure that I continue to grow spiritually?

A: As you patiently continue looking and praying for a good spiritual director, God will continue to guide you through the other means for spiritual growth that the Church recommends. These are the some of the same items and activities that you would discuss with a spiritual director. If you make a decent effort to keep these plates spinning, the Holy Spirit will have plenty of room to work in your heart until he gives you a good spiritual director. These are the plates I am referring to:

• Participation in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and confession. It’s funny, but sometimes you run into people who claim to be enthusiastically pursuing spiritual growth, but who make little effort to receive frequent Holy Communion, spend some time regularly in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and go to confession (Although the Church only requires us to confess our mortal sins once a year, for someone like yourself, whom God is clearly drawing to a deeper intimacy, I would recommend at least a monthly confession – every 15 days is even better.).
• Daily prayer. A daily God-time is absolutely essential for spiritual growth. I would include both vocal and mental prayer. If you are not already doing this, I would start with a very realistic time commitment – 15 minutes of mental prayer in the morning would be plenty. If you can add a few minutes at night to prayerfully review how your day went, thanking God for his blessings, asking pardon for your sins, and renewing your desire to seek and serve Christ during the next day, that would be a big help.
• Spiritual reading. This is not the same as prayer. It consists in taking some time each day (or a few times a week) to read about the spiritual life. This is like fertilizer for the soul. If we are filling our minds with solid teaching about what it means to follow Christ and how to know, love, and imitate him better, our decisions and attitudes will gradually become more and more like his. What you are doing right now, for example, is spiritual reading. Some classic works that can be a good place to start include St Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life and Eugene Boylan’s This Tremendous Lover. (If any of our readers have some favorite spiritual reading books, I would ask them to share their recommendation with the rest of us!)
• Fellowship with people seeking to follow Christ more closely. Christianity is not a self-help method; it is a family affair. We were not meant to pursue holiness on our own, but together with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Developing friendships with others who have the same priorities as you do and are trying to live them faithfully helps keep the fire burning in your own heart, and actually makes it burn better. If you take a burning coal out of the hearth, it will lose its heat. But if you keep it in the hearth, in contact with the rest of the burning wood and hot coals, it will stay warm. If you can plug in to a faith-sharing or Bible study group that is truly focused on transformation in Christ, it will give exponential help to your growth in holiness.
• Service to others. Christianity is about redeeming the world, showing forth God’s goodness, rolling back sin and evil, and leading others to friendship with Jesus Christ. If we aren’t engaged in this activity, consciously and purposefully, we will be like those stultifying ponds that receive water from a stream but have no outlet. They become rank, clogged, and swampy. We want to be like a spiritual reservoir, constantly receiving new floods of God’s grace through our means of spiritual growth, and just as constantly sharing what we have received with others – grace flowing in, grace flowing out. That keeps our souls fresh, and gives God a chance to work more freely in and through us. This service could be directly religious, or it could be humanitarian. If you have a profession, this too can be supernaturalized, simply by offering your work to God for the good of your neighbor. Not everyone is called to be an explicit missionary, but everyone is indeed called to be actively engaged in the mission of spreading Christ’s Kingdom.

If this seems like too much, don’t fret. Just take baby steps in each area, gradually. The important thing is to get started and to keep going, not to break speed records. I will say a prayer for the success of your search for a spiritual director.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC

Abandonment XVIII – The Ever-Flowing Spring of Holiness

O all you who thirst, learn that you have not far to go to find the spring of living waters! It springs forth quite close to you in the present moment. Therefore hasten to approach it. Why, with the spring so near, do you tire yourselves running after shallow brooks which only tease your thirst? They measure stingily the water they give us, while only the spring itself is inexhaustible. If you wish to think, write and talk like Apostles, prophets and saints, abandon yourselves as they did to God’s inspiration.

O Love unknown! Men think that your wonders are past and finished, and that all we can do is copy the ancient volumes and quote Your words out of the past! And we do not see that Your unceasing action is an infinite source of new thoughts, new sufferings, new works, new patriarchs, new prophets, apostles, new saints, who have no need to copy each others lives or writings, but only to live in perpetual self-surrender to Your secret operations.

We like to speak of “the first ages of the Church – the times of the saints.” Are not all times the effect of God’s action, the working of His divine will, including all moments, filling them, sanctifying them and making them supernatural? Has there ever been a method of self-surrender to God’s will which is not still practicable? Did the saints from the earliest ages have any other secret of holiness than that of becoming what God’s will was seeking to make them from moment to moment? And will this operation not continue even to the end of time to pour out its grace on those who give themselves unreservedly to it?

Yes, dear eternal Love! Love eternally fruitful and full of wonder! Yes, Will of God! You are my book, my doctrine, my knowledge. In You are my thoughts, my words, my deeds, my crosses. It is not by consulting Your other works that I can become what You would make me, but only by accepting You in all things, in that one royal way, that ancient way, the way of our fathers, the way of self-surrender to Your will. I will think like them, speak like them, be enlightened as they were. In this way, I will imitate them, quote and copy them in everything.

Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade - Purchase The Joy of Full Surrender

Deep Conversion/Deep Prayer – Book Recommendation

Deep Conversion/Deep Prayer

By Father Thomas Dubay, SM

As in his other popular writings, Father Thomas Dubay’s style is profound and meditative yet clear and readable.  He gives an overview of the spiritual life for anyone seeking to grow in the love of God and neighbor.  An expert on the teachings and writings of the two great mystical doctors of prayer and the spiritual life, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, Dubay gives solid practical advice for a deepening moral and spiritual conversion, and for a radical growth in holiness.

“There are millions of mediocre ‘good Christians’ who need to hear the message of this book, which is the message of all the saints, about the universal call to holiness. Father Dubay is one of the truest, wisest, and most trustworthy guides on the road.”

To learn more or purchase this book, click HERE

How do I get rid of my “inner ugliness?”

Q: Fr John, I have been struggling with some interior trials with forgiveness, resentment and jealousy. I call this “inner ugliness.” I have been praying fervently, going to confession, and receiving excellent spiritual direction. I have been willing myself to be charitable even when I am not feeling it. So here is my question. What am I missing, why do I still feel “inner ugly”? How do I let go of all of this?

A: OK, brace yourself for this really blunt answer: You still feel “inner ugly” because you still are “inner ugly” – at least partially. Let’s be blunt again: It’s obvious from your question that you feel frustration at the stubborn persistence of some of your faults, in spite of your efforts to extricate them. Where does that frustration come from? Does it come from God? Is God frustrated with you because you aren’t perfect yet? Is he up in heaven tapping his watch and raising his eyebrows? Not a chance. Let me tell you, as a Catholic priest, that he is OVERJOYED with the fact that you have followed his nudges and made your way through the wilderness of our secular society onto the one path of holiness. Yes, you are on the path of holiness; you are on the “steep road” and passing through the “narrow gate” (Matthew 7:13) that lead to salvation, wisdom, Christian joy, everlasting fruitfulness, and eternal beauty. He has been trying to convince you to get onto that path for a while, most likely. Now you are there, and you are traveling it, and you are following the road signs (prayer, confession, spiritual direction… Heck, you’re in the fast lane!), and he is delighted!

So, if your frustration doesn’t come from God, where does it come from? I am sure you have already guessed it: your pride. You want God to go at your pace, but God is not always going to go at your pace. He knows better; he is going to go at his pace, and we (all of us) need to learn to follow that pace. If not, we will never grow in humility, the bedrock of all holiness and true happiness.

Baking School

Imagine: You are teaching your teenage daughter how to make an angel-food cake. First you make one together, and she really just watches and assists you a tiny bit. So then she gets really excited about it, and she wants to do one all by herself. She is so excited that she tells you, “Mom, you go running or something; I want to do this myself.” So you go running. And you come back to find her huddled over a rather floppy, lopsided, misshapen, and gooey culinary mutant. She is either crying or fuming. She is an impatient girl and wants to do everything perfectly right away, but the reality is that some things can’t be rushed. If she were a bit humbler and more patient, she either wouldn’t have tried to do it all on her own so soon, or she would have had more of a sense of humor over her delicious dessert disaster.

Transitioning the Garden

Here’s another analogy. Think of your soul as a large garden. You haven’t always been attentive to taking care of the whole garden. In fact, there were parts you didn’t even know you had, sections with amazing potential. So now the Lord has shown you the potential of your garden, and together with him you have rolled up your sleeves and gotten to work to make your garden into what it should be. There are various phases to this work. First, you have to repair the broken fences, cracked fountains, and disheveled walkways. Then you have to extract the weeds that have been growing freely for a while (maybe for a long while), so that the good plants (the ones already there and the ones you want to plant) have room to grow. Then you have to dig up the soil, aerate it, water it, fertilize it. Then you have to keep tending the good plants (protecting them from rabbits, deer, birds, etc.), repair things that get broken during storms, keep weeding, etc.

That’s the process. It’s long and hard, but it’s what matters most, because the flowers and fruits that come from our spiritual gardening are the ones that matter most: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22). That’s the opposite of the “inner ugly” that you are striving for.

Right now, you are working hard, sweating, and doing all the right things. But you are discovering that the weeds had deeper roots than you thought. You are discovering that the broken fences are taking much longer to mend that you anticipated. You are finding out that the soil is extremely dry and alkaline in certain areas and needs a lot of deep digging. You like the look of the new plants, but they are still so little, while some of the older, ugly weeds are still big. So you see the fresh inner beauty, but you also see the stubborn inner ugly, maybe even more clearly (more realistically) than before.

Letting God Be God

God can speed up the process whenever he wants (and in some aspects, he probably already has, whether or not you realize it). But when he doesn’t, he has his reasons. We can only make a decent effort to do our part (what more could he expect from us?). God’s part is up to him. If he is going at a pace that makes us uncomfortable, we need to trust his wisdom. The worst thing to do would be to let your frustration get the better of you and give up. The best thing to do, being the little and beloved daughter of God that you are, is to wipe the sweat from your brow, smile, and keeping following his lead: “But as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance” (Luke 8:15). He has guided you faithfully so far, and he won’t lead you astray now. And remember, the frustration doesn’t come from him – he is DELIGHTED with you!

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC