How can I get out of patterns of sin!?

Q. Dear Sister Carmen, how can I deepen my relationship with God when I am stuck in patterns of sin that I can’t seem to break? I’ve asked this question to several people at different times, but I really can’t seem to figure this out or make any progress. I am really grieved over this. Thank you for your help.

A. It seems to me that your grief over patterns of sin is already the beginning of conversion and spiritual growth. Recall the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:18-19 when the son realizing his sinful situation says, “I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.’”

Your question obviously indicates that you have good desires and the fact that you are sincere in yearning to deepen your relationship with God presupposes that you have already established a relationship with Him. Our good desires, however, must include self-knowledge and humility.

Self-knowledge opens to us the reality of the mystery and ugliness of sin as well as to the mystery and beauty of grace. Teresa envisioned the human soul as a castle containing many rooms. Outside the castle there was darkness and fearsome reptiles and creatures trying to impede our way into the castle. The key to the entry of the castle is prayer and reflection.

Once inside we become aware of light emanating from the deepest center, that innermost room, where dwells the Glory of God. However, some of these fearsome creatures manage to squeeze in with us, for they are the temptations, the bad habits, the patterns of sin that accompany us and although the Light continues to stream from the center of the castle, we still experience darkness for that which accompanies us into the castle blocks the light trying to reach us.

There is much work to be done in the first room. We wage a daily battle between the person we wish to be, the person we really are and the person God created us to be. To come to self-knowledge we must be very willing to be honest and this requires humility. What am I really like? How do others see me? Do I spend my time trying to be someone I am not? Do I feel guilty being who I am? How much of the false values of the world around me have I absorbed?

The Prodigal Son was lured away from his loved ones by the false promises of happiness. It wasn’t until he had hit rock-bottom that he realized that he had sacrificed an authentic relationship with himself, with others, and with God for fleeting pleasures. Only when he ran out of money and his “friends” deserted him was he able to see the superficiality of his life.

Each of us needs to identify the vipers and poisonous creatures that block our passageway as we seek to move through the castle into the other rooms seeking the One who waits for us at the Center just as the father of the Prodigal Son, in the center of his home, looked longingly for his son’s return day after day until one day he saw him coming in the distance.

• Can I identify the blockages that hinder my movement forward?:

• What external occupations fill my mind causing me to neglect prayer and reflection?

• Am I addicted to noise (e.g. music, television, radio, etc.)?

• Am I afraid of solitude filling the emptiness within me with busy-ness?

• What patterns of sin do I need to break and what concrete measures am I taking to help myself?

• Do I make use of the sacramental graces provided by frequent confession?

• Have I considered the help of a spiritual director to assist me in breaking the pattern of sin and to aid me in practicing virtue?

What elements in my life am I willing to surrender in order to remain in and be attentive to God’s Presence?

It was only when the Prodigal Son made a firm decision to “arise” and go to his father that he began the journey that would take him to the treasure he had not recognized. As the father waited patiently for his son’s return, so also God is even more patient as we move through the rooms leaving behind us the paltry treasures we have accumulated in order to find the Pearl of Great Price at the center. Are we willing to sell all for this Treasure?

Until next time,

Sr. Carmen Laudis OCD

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.

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.

Self-knowledge and the spiritual life – Part III – Sacred silence

What is sacred silence? There are many scripture passages that convey important elements of a true God-ward silence. One that is sublimely concise is Psalm 46:10:

Be still, and know that I am God

This passage clearly reveals the type of silence necessary for a God-ward self-knowledge. First, we have the purpose of silence, to know and acknowledge that He is God. Silence apart from this acknowledgment and this pursuit of intimacy with God is a self-centered navel-gazing affair that will yield little more than an empty rest. With God, silence finds its highest value and meaning. It becomes not only restorative but also redemptive. It becomes an act of worship and lays the groundwork for a disposition that can receive the fullness that God has to bring to our souls – including self-knowledge.

The second element necessary for the fruitful pursuit of a sacred silence is to “Be still.” Stillness in this context is best reflected in the idea of the dedicated attention of one’s soul to another. As an example, my wife and I are very busy folks. We regularly communicate via text messages, emails, on the phone between meetings, or running errands etc. At times, usually after several months of this type of communication we run into a situation where our ability to connect breaks down. This often happens when we attempt to deal with the weightier issues of life on-the-fly. Sometimes we are looking to be efficient with one another rather than present. When this happens frustration rises. The only remedy is to slow down and spend time face to face, without interruptions, and with the demonstrated commitment that in the time we set aside to connect, there is nothing more important than loving and serving one another. This concentrated encounter captures something of the essence of stillness with God.

So, we have two simple elements that make up a truly sacred silence 1) being alone with and acknowledging God, and 2) being still before God.

The challenge for most of us is that this can seem like a lofty and out of reach ideal. How can we legitimately aspire to this kind of silence when the world demands so much of us? Most of us are not cloistered contemplatives. Most of us battle with an endemic busy-ness. However it is a reality that many among us achieve the goal of silence necessary to know ourselves and God. These will never be in the majority, but God is always calling and equipping willing hearts to enter into a deeper relationship with him.

That said, as with any meaningful accomplishment in life, loving God through this spiritual discipline of silence is not something we can simply snap into existence. It takes time, dedication, commitment and energy to achieve. Breaking away from the Martha-syndrome to achieve something of what Mary understood (Luke 10:42) is more than worth the effort. The lover of our souls is waiting in the silence. Only through silence will we find him and know the love that he has for us there.

For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.

In our next post we will begin to talk about ways to cultivate silence in the midst of our busy activity filled lives.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan

Self-knowledge and the spiritual life – Part II

In Part I of this series we discussed the problem of spiritual delusion and darkness as a consequence of the lack of a God-ward self-knowledge. The purpose of this awareness is simply this: To reveal the sin(s) that hinder our relationship with God and that keep us from the fullness of God’s person, love, and provision for us in this life and the life to come. As well, we desire to respond to this great love by a life of devoted service to him and for him for all eternity. To do this, we need to identify the barriers to growth and pursue those things that propel us deeper into the heart of God.

In our first post, we established – through our brake light analogy – that that there are things we cannot know unless someone else reveals them to us. So then, how is it possible that we can discover these challenges within our soul on our own? Doesn’t “self” knowledge imply we have that knowledge within our grasp? The answer is no… and yes. A God-illuminated self-knowledge is often beyond our reach, but we can work to acquire it with the help of the Holy Spirit and others. In fact, only with this help can we ever hope to really grow to the degree that God desires for us.

So, what are the key elements necessary for one to begin the lifelong quest to understand ourselves in the context of God and develop the ability to route out those soul-tainting defects that hold us from fully loving and being loved by him?

Silence: The noise and relentless busy-ness of modern life is a blight on our souls and a favored tool of the enemy to drown out the still small voice of God. Often we welcome this evil ambiance in order to to hide from the thoughts and feelings that cause us pain and anxiety. As with substance abuse, hiding from our thoughts and avoiding the discomfort of quiet doesn’t solve anything. Similarly, ignoring the signs of a serious illness like cancer allows the disease to progress unchecked in our bodies. So too, our hidden (or not-so-hidden) faults promise the same result in our souls. Silence is one of the most basic elements necessary for us to come face-to-face with these issues, with God, to hear his voice, and see our way clear to healing and growth. In the classic Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis reveals a demonic diatribe (a senior demon on a rant to an apprentice demon) about the value of noise to the enemy of our souls. An important side note here is that when the demon is talking about music he is speaking about sacred music:

Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise—Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end! We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of heaven will be shouted down in the end!

For most in modern society the enemy’s plan has worked. Between tweets, texts, telephone calls, TV, Internet, radios, computers and iPods, we wake up to noise, we are inundated with noise as we move through the day, we get in our cars and turn on the noise, we work with the noise in the background, we leave work with noise in our cars again, we return home to noise. Where in all this noise will we find God? How can we hear the voice of God when our hearts, minds, and hearing are constantly bombarded by the endless “noise” of modern life?

The truth is, we can’t. There is no way around this problem. We may limit the noise to those things compatible to our faith like contemporary Christian music or great programming like EWTN; however, regardless of the degree of piety or putrification we allow to occupy our souls, there is no way we can claim to hear God if we don’t first create space to listen to him in silence.

In Part III, we will explore exactly what we mean by silence and begin to identify ways we can incorporate it into our lives.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan

Self-knowledge and the spiritual life – Part I

How are the brake lights on your car? Are they working properly? I have an experiment for you. Go out to your car all by yourself and try to verify that they are working. Back already? How did it go? Did you cheat and do the exercise in your head? That’s ok, let’s just go with it. The bottom line is this; in the normal course of life, you would never know that one of your brake lights was broken unless someone else revealed it to you.

The same is often true in the spiritual life. Because of the effect of concupiscence (our inclination to sin) we are prone to self-deception and to fall prey to the lies of the world and the enemy of our souls. These deceptions are often subtle and have worked their way into our persons in such a way as to blind us to them. Our natural adaptation to ways of living, thinking, and acting become second nature and thus they disappear from our sight because they are familiar to us. These hidden faults might come from a series of choices we have made in life or they can come from patterns of behavior common to our families of origin. They can also come from the habitual clinging to imperfections or venial sins that provide some temporal benefit to us. Regardless of their source they are moral defects or patterns of sin and spiritually destructive behaviors that we are often unable to see without the help of others.  They are the broken brake lights that significantly increase the probability of a serious spiritual crash.

How can we be sure we are driving through life with all our lights functioning properly? The answer lies in a life-long commitment to spiritual practices that foster self-awareness. St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena, along with many other spiritual doctors of the Church, strongly emphasize the necessity of a God-centered self-awareness in order to have a vibrant and healthy relationship with God and others. St. Teresa says this about self-knowledge and spiritual development (in the second chapter of the First Dwelling Places of Interior Castles):

Knowing ourselves is something so important that I wouldn’t want any relaxation ever in this regard, however high you may have climbed to the heavens… So I repeat that it is good, indeed very good, to try to enter first into the room where self-knowledge is dealt with rather than to fly off to other rooms… Rather, let’s strive to make more progress in our self-knowledge. In my opinion we shall never completely know ourselves if we don’t strive to know God. By gazing at His grandeur, we get in touch with our own lowliness; by looking at His purity, we shall see our own filth; by pondering His humility, we shall see how far we are from being humble.

Regardless of the level of delusion we suffer, the challenge is that if these patterns of deception find a home deep within our makeup, it is very difficult to diagnose and then effectively deal with them. Failure to deal with them can result in serious spiritual calamity. The good news is that the beginning of freedom comes with the beginning of self knowledge. The beginning of self knowledge comes through the exploration of God’s love and provision for us. In our next post, we will explore a few ways we can uncover these challenges hiding in the dark corners of our souls that hinder the great love and peace that God has prepared for us in Christ.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan