Category: Questions and AnswersWhat if I just don’t like to pray at all?
I’m intrigued (and admittedly pleasantly surprised) at your #2 suggestion … in that I would have thought that anyone reading this blog would already be praying daily, and probably for way more than five minutes. I guess I overassumed..? Anyway, I enjoy the interesting posts on this blog. I’m sorry if my question(s) were at all offensive … I’m not Catholic. I’m just a heathen who’s sort of entertaining the idea of converting… thus reading Catholic blogs like this one. A: When I first read your question, I think of many people I know who don’t particularly “like” praying at different moments of the day or during different periods of their life; they are busy and their minds are somewhere else, or they have practical worries, or they are just tired and don’t feel like it. Your question goes a bit deeper, however, because it speaks about not liking to pray “at all.” Within the limits of email correspondence and not having the possibility of a face-to-face meeting with ulterior questions, my best attempt at an answer for your quandary (which, by the way, is not uncommon) would be the need to delve into a deeper knowledge of God. The age-old adage, “You can’t love what you don’t know,” is at the heart of the problem. If God is very foreign to me, or if I know very little about him, or if – practically speaking – he just has no influence in my life, then prayer is going to be difficult and it is going to seem like “talking to myself.” I recommend getting to know God more, and especially the person of Jesus Christ. Just getting to know him – the revelation of the Father – will most certainly turn your heart towards loving him… and then I believe prayer should start to become a sharing and not a monologue. I don’t think it is necessary to start with deep theology – just grab a book on the life of Christ and see who he is, how he dealt with others, the love he had for all men and women. The Gospel is awesome. It is THE book with which to start. But there are also others that narrate the life of Christ in a simple yet comprehensive way and serve to enrich our understanding. I recommend To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed, but there are many, many others. The way your question is written, it seems to me that Our Lord is actually reaching out to you. You are not Catholic. You are thinking about spiritual things. You are desiring to learn more about prayer. These things don’t happen in a vacuum. So I think you are in a very favorable situation and that God will definitely bless all of your good desires. One word about the prayer of petition. Not only is it a valid form of prayer, but the Lord himself exhorts us in many places of the Gospel to ask… and to ask many times without giving up. “Ask and you shall receive” is just an example. My favorite, though, is the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father. It is full of petitions – some for God himself (may his name be hallowed, may his kingdom come, may his will be done), some for us (give us our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil). God is the good Father par excellence, and he likes to hear his children ask. You will only experience his joy if you ask him for your needs. In Christ, Father Joseph Burtka, LC A Question about the Litany of Humility in Lent – How can I be freed from the desire of being loved?
A: It has been argued (quite successfully, in my opinion) that Christ’s greatest virtue during his earthly sojourn was humility. That you have felt nudged to pray the Litany of Humility as a Lenten devotion, then, seems a sure sign that you are listening to the Holy Spirit. It is edifying and encouraging to hear about it! Your dilemma is a good one. True, the deepest needs of our human nature, as designed by God, are to be loved and to love. This is because we are created in God’s image, and God is love, the infinite love of the relationship between the three divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Insofar as we reflect that divine Trinitarian relation of love within the limitations of our human nature, we live out our vocation as God’s children and we discover and enjoy the fulfillment we long for at the very bottom of our souls. Looking for Love in a Fallen World But remember, our current condition includes both a fallen human nature and a fallen world. As a result, these deep needs of our human heart have a tendency to express themselves in distorted ways. Think about a secular family in which the parents are trying to re-live their own youth vicariously through their children. They pressure their kids to excel at sports, the arts, academics, and everything else. And as the children grow up, they either rebel against this self-centered mode of parenting in some destructive way, or they fall into the over-achiever trap, thinking that achievements are a condition of love. In the latter case, they unconsciously form a habit of the heart in which their need to be loved is almost inextricably intertwined with a need to achieve. If they don’t get straight A’s, if they don’t get into a top college, if they don’t win this or that award, then they will let their parents down and therefore not be loved. As a result, they live in constant tension, deathly afraid of failure, because failure will disqualify them from being loved. This is an unhealthy spiritual state. Or think about a girl who grows up in a broken home. Mom raises her all alone, because dad abandoned the family early on. She reaches adolescence with a void in her heart, because she hasn’t grown up with the love of a faithful father. She starts dating early, and unconsciously tries to fill that void by winning the love of a boy, a boy who, naturally, is immature and full of adolescent lust. What happens? Her frustrated thirst to be loved leads her to give herself to someone who is not worthy, and only magnifies her emotional instability, maybe even leading to unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and a whole Pandora’s box of painful complications. The Key Concept We could multiply examples, but the core concept is very simple: it is possible, unfortunately, to aim our natural desire to be loved in the wrong direction. The unconditional love we are created to yearn for should be sought in only one place – God. St Augustine put it beautifully in a phrase quoted early on in the Catechism:
If we seek to fill our need for love from any other source, we will end up frustrated and confused at best, and wounded and lost at worst. We should serve others and do good to others and encourage others, not in order to win their love and worship, but because they are our brothers and sisters in Christ and therefore deserve our love. We should strive to develop our talents and utilize them to make a positive impact in the world not in order to win love, esteem, and praise from others, but because we are God’s children and this is what he has created us to do. The alarming, effervescent, energizing, and contagious freedom of the saints flows from their having learned this lesson. They no longer gauge their actions or decisions by what other people will think of them. And so they don’t live in fear, instability, and hesitancy. Rather, they have discovered that God’s love for them is as firm as the mountains (as the Psalms tell us). They don’t need to earn it; they just humbly accept it. And once they do, it propels them to echo and reflect it spontaneously and joyfully, regardless of the consequences. When you pray that line of the Litany of the Humility, as the context of the rest of the Litany helps make clear, you are praying for that same grace: “From the desire of being loved by others, from the thirst of winning the approval of others, from the slavery of depending on the praise and recognition of others, Lord Jesus, free me! Instead, Lord, grant me the grace to fill my infinite need for love at the only infinite fountain that exists: your Sacred Heart.” Yours in Christ, Fr John Bartunek, LC, STL How to Stay Strong Spiritually During Lent
A: Sure! The key thing to think about is why you tend to slide. If you can identify the cause, then you can easily find the solution. In general, three things tend to make our Lenten resolutions less transforming than we would like them to be. Start Small First, they can be unrealistic. Some of us have the tendency to bite off more than we can chew. It’s like the former jock who hasn’t worked out for two years. She decides to get back in shape. But then she sets herself an Olympic-style workout program. She does it for two days, but it’s way too demanding, so she drops it. What she should have done is start small – a 15-minute walk and some stretching every other day for two weeks, for example – then build back up to where she would like to be. In our spiritual lives we can make the same mistake. We forget that climbing the mountain of holiness is a journey of small steps. And after trying to take a bunch of big steps (and falling down every time), we simply give up. Root Sin Second, our Lenten resolutions can be off target. This is an endemic problem for us post-modern Catholics. We see the fruits of spiritual immaturity in our lives (impatience, unchastity, loose tongue, judgmentalism…), and we start hacking away at them, like cutting back the branches of a tree. But all the while, we leave the roots unbothered. When that happens, the branches just grow right back, or flourish even more! If we really want to make progress, we have to do our part to get to the root of our selfish tendencies. Do you know what your root sin is (we all have one)? Do you know its most salient manifestations? If so, then you will be able to choose a Lenten resolution that will help you aim your efforts effectively, and this will give you momentum and strength to persevere. If you don’t, I would recommend that you make a Lenten resolution to take up 15 minutes of spiritual reading each day, and read some solid, truly instructional books that will help you get to know yourself (like Spiritual Progress by Fr. Thomas Williams, or This Tremendous Lover by M. Eugene Boylan). Or, sign up for an authentic spiritual exercises retreat. Additionally, you may want to look for someone who can be a kind of spiritual mentor for you, or spiritual director. They can help you aim better. You can also find some information about what spiritual writers call a “program of life” here. (If you have some extra time, you may want to listen to this radio broadcast, where I talk a bit about holiness and root sins.) Season of Grace Third, we can suffer from impurity of intention. Sometimes even faithful Catholics can fall into giving things up for Lent for the wrong reasons. We can think more in terms of self-improvement than in deepening our friendship with Christ. If we do that, even in a subtle, subconscious way, we will run out of steam pretty fast. Lent is not the season of Catholic self-help. Lent is a season of grace, given to us by the Church to draw closer to our Lord and prepare for the celebration of his Passion and Resurrection. Any Lenten resolution needs to be geared towards helping us open our hearts to that grace and drink it in. (You can find more reflections on the season of Lent here.) Finally, don’t be afraid to alter your Lenten resolutions if you find they are not helping you live the season deeply. By changing them, you are telling God that you really are interested in drawing closer to him during these holy days. I will be praying for you, and for all our readers here! Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC Used by permission – Faith and Family Live – Where everyday moms offer one another inspiration, support, and encouragement in Catholic living Struggling with overwhelming sorrow during Lent – how do I deal with it?
A: These are important questions; let’s take them one at a time. First, embrace the lows of Lent to make the joy of Easter greater? Absolutely. This is the wisdom of the Church. Without suffering it is very difficult for us, in our broken state, to fully experience the joy that God has for us. Kahlil Gibran echoed this thought when he said, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain… When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you will see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” So it is with Lent. The deeper we allow the sorrow to carve into our being during Lent, the more joy we will experience when we celebrate his resurrection! Second, is there any joy found during Lent? Without a doubt. When Mel Gibson was making The Passion of The Christ, he ran into a problem. He recognized that the scenes of Christ’s sufferings were too much to take in any one sitting. He came up with the idea to intersperse flashbacks into the story. This gave just enough relief without totally leaving the theme of Christ’s horrific suffering and death on our behalf. Similarly, during Lent, every Sunday we have a time where we can set aside our fasting and remember not only his suffering but also his resurrection and provision for us in the Mass. Beyond this gift, we maintain our composure through all this because we know the end of the story. Those of us who suffer from lifelong illnesses sometimes are overwhelmed because in the midst of our suffering we don’t know if it will end in this life. With Lent we not only know the end of the story, but we even know the exact date when it it will end. This should give us the courage to persevere through the challenges and purification this season brings to our souls. A few more points about grief and depression. It is one thing to feel great sorrow over our sins and to thereby enter into the deep sufferings of Christ, and another to enter into anything like clinical depression or any other unhealthy spiritual or emotional state. With respect to the former, St. Teresa of Avila, after meditating on Christ’s sufferings on her behalf, would often become overwhelmed with grief and weeping for lengthy periods time. The harm done? Absolutely none. In fact, she attributes a great deal of the work of God in her soul, and the souls of other holy men and women, to this kind of affective meditation. How can you tell the difference? The difference is that someone who is truly experiencing union with Christ and his sufferings will experience two things: 1) Peace: Even with intense suffering of this kind, if we maintain peace in the depths of our souls and feel a greater compulsion to love him for what he has done for us, this is a good indicator that our sorrow is truly godly sorrow rather than an unhealthy state of depression. 2) Virtue: If our heightened sense of his love for us and our corresponding love for him leads us to deepen our prayer, expand our acts of charity, or further intensify our mortification, then, again, our suffering is likely sourced in God’s real and active presence in our meditation. St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians clearly echoes these truths (emphasis mine):
Finally, if you find yourself with a sorrow that does not meet the test of “godly sorrow” you can do two things about it. First, go absorb yourself in service to others – particularly those less fortunate than you. If the enemy is behind the anxiety in your heart, responding with love toward God and others will drive this oppression away. If you continue to struggle, make sure you talk with your spiritual director to get more specific insights into how you can make this season one in which you grow in your love and knowledge of Christ and in the virtuous life. He is real, present, and good… may he always be so to you, Dan Penance and Mortification – What is the difference?
A: This is a very interesting question. The distinction between mortification (synonymous in most spiritual writers with self-denial, abnegation, self-renunciation, dying to self) and penance (synonymous with penitence, sacrifice or self-sacrifice, and “reparation”) has to do with the interior motive behind the action. In other words, the exterior action (fasting, for example, or taking a cold shower on a cold morning) can be exactly the same, but depending on the reason why I am doing the action (my intention), the spiritual nature of the act can be either mortification or penance. The intentionality of an act of mortification is to “punish [i.e., discipline] my body [i.e., self-seeking tendencies] and bring it under control, to avoid any risk that, having acted as herald for others, I myself may be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27). In other words, I freely deny the satisfaction of a normal and healthy desire in order to grow in my spiritual maturity, to learn to govern the self-seeking tendencies built into my fallen nature. For example, I purposefully mortify my perfectly legitimate desire for dessert on Wednesdays and Fridays during Lent, so that I am better able to control an illegitimate desire to get drunk whenever that desire happens to surface. Mortification is spiritual training, tempering of the willpower in order to be able to better govern our passions and instincts, starving the bad plants in the garden (vices and selfish tendencies) so the good plants (virtues) can flourish. The intentionality of an act of penance is to “make up in my own body what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Colossians 1:24). I am doing penance for sin, making up for an evil, destructive deed, just as Christ did by dying on the cross. He offered his obedience as “payment” (or atonement) for our disobedience. This is how he repaired (made “reparation” for) the breach between God and man created by original sin. He sacrificed himself (made himself into an offering to God) on our behalf. Penance, therefore, is done as a way to tell God we are sorry for our sins, or for the sins of others, and to make up for them. Thus, my teenage son refused to go to Mass on Sunday, and so, to make up for this ungrateful offense against the majesty and goodness of God, I do penance on his behalf – perhaps making a Holy Hour on Monday evening instead of watching a favorite television show, or not listening to music during my morning commute this week, just to show God that someone (I) does indeed love the Giver more than the gifts. A good dad would do something similar if his son broke a neighbor’s window by throwing a rock; he would make up for it himself, if his son refused to do so. When we do penance, we are repairing for sin, reversing the self-indulgent act of sin by replacing it with a self-giving act of mortification. Two other points remain on this issue. First, the only way that mortification and penance really help advance Christ’s Kingdom is if we are united to Christ. We must be living the life of grace – Christ must be alive in us – in order for us to unite our actions to his, so that they share in his merits. It’s like having a bank account with co-signers. The check only draws from the vault of merit if it is signed both by me (junior partner) and by Christ (senior partner). We cannot save ourselves by ourselves; we cannot grow in holiness apart from the source of holiness: “for cut off from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Second, the concept of sacrifice also includes an element of intercession and petition. Offering God a sacrifice can be a way of intensifying a prayer of intercession. Thus, when St. Therese of the Child Jesus was interceding for the conversion of a criminal condemned to death, she and her sisters joined sacrifices (acts of self-denial) to their prayers. In the same way, we can offer sacrifices (acts of self-denial, obedience, patience…) to God in order to benefit other members of the Body of Christ who may be in need – those in temptation or sorrow, those in prison or suffering persecution. We are connected to them through our membership in Christ. It’s like a tug of war. We are all on the same team, pulling in the same direction. But sometimes someone on our team stumbles, loses their balance, or stops pulling as hard as they can. In those moments, we can pull harder, making up for their momentary lack, picking up the slack, so that they can have a quick breather and then get back into action. We can draw a whole host of conclusions from these observations, but I will finish by pointing out just one. Since the distinction between mortification and penance is in the spiritual intention, not the physical action, the same physical action can serve simultaneously as both an act of mortification and of penance. We can do one action with multiple intentions. So don’t worry too much about whether your Lenten sacrifice is for mortification or for penance – make it for both! Yours in Christ, Fr John Bartunek, LC |
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