Tag: PeaceI need peace, I need your prayers…Dear Mother Luisita, I am deeply troubled by things that seem so trivial and I can’t seem to shake a sense of impending doom. My anxiety is constant. I need peace, I need your prayers.
Accept my loving greeting and my prayer for you to be what God wants you to be. What about your soul? Is it taking little steps toward heaven or is it flying there? Be very united with Our Lord so that your prayer may be continual, and at the same time, full of confidence in God. Fix your gaze on heaven, not on earthly things that all pass away like a breath leaving behind nothing but remorse and sadness like smoke that disappears with nothing but reality remaining. Be entirely at peace. What we have to do, myself included, is to become saints, to perfect the ordinary deeds of daily life and to live only for God. Let us bless God always and for everything, that we may remain happy and at peace even in the midst of thorns. Let us bless God our Lord in all and for all! Whenever sorrow enters your life, lift up your soul to God, offering it up to Him. Never separate yourself from Our Lord. He is always giving you proofs of His love for you. He loves you very much and, in return, you should love Him with all of your soul. We have to become very detached from everything else, so that He may be the One to fill our hearts. I remind you that He is very jealous, and that inordinate love for any creature will take His place in our souls. The troubles you are now experiencing are found everywhere. They are the flowers in this valley of tears that perhaps are part of the plan of God and a means of practicing virtues. Try to see the difficulties and contradictions in this life with serenity. God our Lord will help you if you place everything in His hands and pray much. When you place everything in His hands, He will do everything, and very well! Look to God, your soul, and eternity. All the rest is merely a puff of smoke! Peace, it seems to me, is an indispensable factor if we are to have life in our souls. Lack of peace is harmful to you. Try to allow peace to come back to your soul, praying to Our Lord for that grace. Every day you should be spending half an hour if you can, or even less, with the Blessed Sacrament asking Him for His help and presenting Him all your difficulties. As God, He knows everything; talk to Him as you would talk to a Father. Try not to lose God’s peace or His presence. May you receive the consolation that comes from Him alone. Try to become a little better each day. Make all of your devotions with increasing fervor and have a great purity of intention at the root of all of your actions. May God help you to be happy in your work, doing everything for the love of Him. When Our Lord sends you occasions to practice virtue in any manner whatsoever don’t oppose Him or resist Him. Accept with good will all of the difficulties and contradictions of life. I would like very much for you to become a great soul, strong and vigorous, never looking toward your own gain and self-love, but toward God’s glory. Keep well, my child, and be what you are supposed to be – a saint! Take care of yourself. Write me when you can. Pray for me and may God bless you. - Mother Luisita Click here to find out more about Mother Luisita
Your “how-to” guides to the spiritual life…Dear Catholic Spiritual Direction friends, In a recent conversation with Father John, he suggested that we group all of our recommend book resources in a way that might be more meaningful and helpful to you. So, we have updated the resource page for you. Here are the questions the various resources can help you with:
Before you check out the new page, we humbly ask that you make purchases of these materials through the link provided. These purchases generate just enough credit to keep the new books coming for review for you! Here’s the link to the new RECOMMENDED RESOURCES page. Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him, Dan Searching for and Maintaining Peace – Book Recommendation
We live in a day and age characterized by an extraordinary amount of agitation and lack of peace. This tendency manifests itself in our spiritual as well as our secular life. In our search for God and holiness, in our service to our neighbor, a kind of restlessness and anxiety take the place of the confidence and peace which ought to be ours. What must we do to overcome the moments of fear and distress which assail us all too often in our lives? How can we learn to place all our confidence in God and abandon ourselves into his loving care? This is what is taught in this simple, yet profound little treatise on peace of heart. Taking concrete examples from our everyday life, the author invites us to respond in a Gospel fashion to the upsetting situations we must all confront. Since peace of heart is a pure gift of God, it is something we should seek, pursue and ask him for without cease. This book is here to help us in that pursuit. Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him, Dan Ignatian Examination of Conscience on Faith, Hope, and Love
As we read the Spiritual Exercises, we may be overwhelmed by the minute detail of St. Ignatius’ treatment of what he calls the particular examination of conscience. At the same time, he is careful to provide, “Some Notes on Scruples.” It is very important, therefore, that we form a clear and correct conscience. This means that we cultivate a sensitive judgment which is alert to the least offense against the Divine will and, at the same time, protect ourselves against the wiles of the evil spirit. “The enemy,” says St. Ignatius,” considers carefully whether one has a lax or a delicate conscience. If one has a delicate conscience, the evil one seeks to make it excessively sensitive in order to disturb and upset it more easily. Thus, if he sees that one will not consent to mortal sin or venial sin, or even to the appearance of deliberate sin, since he cannot cause him to fall in a matter that appears sinful, he strives to make the soul judge that there is a sin, for example in a word or passing thought, where there is no sin” (Spiritual Exercises, 349). It is valuable to reflect on this tactic of the evil spirit before we offer some practical norms for making our daily examination of conscience. Why? Because otherwise, we are liable to overlook the importance of a daily inventory of our moral conduct for fear of becoming scrupulous. There is such a thing as growing in prudent sensitivity of conscience, without becoming a victim of the “enemy” as St. Ignatius calls him. We may set this down as a general principle, for those who are sincerely striving to do the will of God: It is characteristic of God and His angels, when they act upon the soul, to give true happiness and spiritual joy and to banish all the sadness and disturbances which are caused by the enemy. It is characteristic of the evil one to fight against such happiness and consolation by proposing fallacious reasonings, subtleties, and continual deceptions (Rules for Discernment of Spirits, II, 1). What are we to conclude from this? That the more zealous we are in trying to please God, the more He will give us a deep interior peace of soul. We should suspect as a temptation from the evil one, when we find ourselves worried or anxious or disturbed, no matter how pious the source of the worry or anxiety may be. The key to applying this principle is that, before God, I honestly want to do His will even though through weakness, I may fail to live up to my resolutions. One basic virtue on which we should daily examine ourselves is peace of soul. We should ask ourselves, “Have I given in to worry or anxiety?” “Have I allowed myself to get discouraged?” A good practice is to pronounce the name, “Jesus,” when we find ourselves getting despondent, or say some short aspiration like, “My Jesus, I trust in you,” whenever we become dejected over something. PARTICULAR EXAMEN ON THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES Before applying the particular examen to my own spiritual life, it is well to first ask myself, “What are the virtues that I know from experience I most need to develop?” The reason why this question should first be answered is that no two of us are equally prone to commit the same kind of sins. Nor are we personally always tempted in the same direction. There is wisdom in first knowing enough about myself, to be able to get to the root of my own moral weakness. Otherwise, I may be ignoring what really needs attention in my spiritual life and concentrating on what is not so necessary for me at this time in my service of God. Moreover, it would be a mistake to suppose that by attending to my moral failings, I am being “negative” in my pursuit of holiness. On the contrary. In God’s providence, He allows us to fail in those areas in which He especially wants us to grow in virtue. We can fail in the practice of these virtues either by commission, omission, or by tepidity, in not acting as generously as we might in responding to the grace we have received from God. FAITH
HOPE
CHARITY
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