I think this search started at a really early age for me. Like most people I took the road well traveled instead of the least traveled. The road I took was filled with instant gratification, self searching and lead to emptiness and loneliness.
On this road my life had become absurd. The word absurd comes from the Latin word surdus which mean deaf. To be completely deaf is to be absurdus. Through self-seeking, instant gratification, indulgence in the party life style, I had become deaf. My life had become absurd and my inner candle had dimmed to almost complete darkness.
It was from my life being absurd that my life had become less absurd and my inner candle became brighter. I know this sounds paradoxical , but it is the truth. We learn from our brokenness how to be full. We are born to eternal life through our death. Christ's passion is the ultimate example of this. It is through this mystery that we can and will grow spiritually. As a child learns not to touch a hot stove by burning them self, we learn how to listen by becoming deaf.
Many people of the 12 step program have found a good way to start this spiritual journey, especially if they struggled with the ideal of God. But if one already has a faith, one can learn this through prayer, meditation and living in the moment.
The search for God really starts from within. God and Christ dwells in our hearts. God communicates through love. This love must start of the self. We must learn not to focus on our past, our mistakes, things we have said or done. By learning to let these go and forgiving ourselves we can start loving ourselves.
We must also learn not to project ourselves and think of the future so much. If I can only have that promotion, if I could only find that perfect mate, what if my father dies, what if I lose my job, etc. By preoccupying ourselves with these if's and what if's, we lose sight of today and this moment.
In Revelations 21:2-5, God is telling us he is with us, he is within us. God will wipe away our tears, heal our pain and end our mourning. We must learn to listen to that voice that dwells within us. When we are listening to God, and in a relationship with Him through prayer, we will find these promises to come true. We will be able to have joy within our mourning, our pains will be healed and our tears will be wiped away. Our lives will not be crippled by these emotions and feelings and we will not be living in darkness. For the light of our inner candle will bring us warmth through God's love that dwells within us.
How can we do this? Myself, I found it within the Rosary. The Rosary is a very powerful prayer tool. It is prayer, meditation, mental and physical. But one can start as simple as repeating the Lord's Prayer (The Our Father), or the Jesus Prayer , or just by saying Jesus. By erasing the days thoughts, wants and desires and focusing on the inner us, we will be able to quiet ourselves and hear God and light the candle that is within us.
Just 10 minutes a day of this simple prayer will help us to listen. By listening our lives can become less absurd and we will begin to live within our hearts, where God dwells and our inner candle can shine more brightly.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Fr. Stan Fortuna
I first saw him on EWTN. I love the way he preaches, street preaching style. I hope more young Catholics and Christians get a chance to be exposed to him!
He is going to be in Indianapolis on October 17th with Scott Hahn at the Indiana Men's Catholic Conference.
He is going to be in Indianapolis on October 17th with Scott Hahn at the Indiana Men's Catholic Conference.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Grateful Dead 37 years ago Today
I heard this on my way in to work this morning. Unfortunetly the soundboard recording is not available on line for streaming, but this is a very fine audience recording.
The China Cat jam into Rider is awesome! Phil is all over the place.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
My nephew Theo's Baptism
Today, I get to witness and stand as Godfather for my nephew Theo's baptism. It's both an honor and a privilege. I was asked to write my wishes and hopes for Theo.
Dear Theo,
It is my hopes that you look back on this day as a source of strength and encouragement of your faith. That you always feel the presences of the Holy Spirit and never know a day when Jesus is not walking with you on your journey.
May you love from your heart and not just from your mind and remember always God's charge and glorious promise to you.
Love, your Godfather,
RJ
-
Dear Theo,
It is my hopes that you look back on this day as a source of strength and encouragement of your faith. That you always feel the presences of the Holy Spirit and never know a day when Jesus is not walking with you on your journey.
May you love from your heart and not just from your mind and remember always God's charge and glorious promise to you.
Love, your Godfather,
RJ
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
The Exact Image of God
Col 1:15
"He is the Image of the Invisible God, the firstborn of all creation"
Jesus is the Image of the Invisible God, is what this verse says to me. In my heart I hear, Jesus is the image of the suffering God. This hits me like Pujols bat on a fastball straight down the pipe. I dont think I ever really put it together until I read this passage.
Many words can be used to describe Jesus: Humble, Love, Healing, Gentle, Light, Teacher, Compassion, and Suffering. It's this last word that really hits home. Suffering. In Matthew 11:29-30 Jesus invites us to accept the burden, the burden of the world, which includes the suffering of humanity. Jesus himself is suffering. His passion stands witness to the suffering of humanity that he took upon himself.
What really strikes me is that God is suffering. This is a new thought to me. To actually think of God as suffering. Many of us have an image of a fatherly figure, white beard, sitting on a thrown, all powerful. Not this suffering God. But here we have Jesus, nailed to a cross, beaten, broken and He is the exact image of the invisible God. What a foreign thought. It took years for me to really, I mean really to understand (as much as my human mind can) and to see the suffering Christ. It wasnt until my own human bondage was too much for me to carry that I had to take up Christ's yoke that I could carry my own.
It was through my own suffering that I was able to create the new me. To allow change, to be lead to conversion, to know that I am not alone in my suffering. It is comforting to know that God is suffering with me. I am not sure why I never put the two together. Jesus is God. As Jesus said in John 14:10-12, He is one within the Father and the Father is in Him. So why did I not see God as suffering?
I think its hard for us as humans to accept our suffering and its even harder for us to accept a suffering God. As a child, I always felt sadness when I looked at the crucifix and had a deep understanding of His Passion. I think the Passion story hit me more than the Christmas story, but was very hard to accept. We do this in our own human condition. We hide our brokenness. We buy things to make us feel good. We engage in physical love without the bond of real love to feel good. We do not want to look at our suffering.
Without the acceptance of our own suffering, of our pain, we can never see the face of God. The story of Job is the perfect example of this. After all his suffering, all his pious friends telling him that he must have sinned against God, after all Job's yelling, ranting about justice and his day in court with God, he accepts it all without an answer after God finally talks to him. Job had to look within his own heart to find God, and once he heard God, there was no need of an answer to why. Because Job accepted his suffering and God, he was able to carry his load.
It is this acceptance and acknowledging his pain and suffering that leads Job to God. It was through my own suffering that I was able to find God and truly understand agape love. A love so true and honest, a love of myself, of God and of my own human condition.
Christ asks us, he begs of us to embrace our suffering. Thru our suffering we grow in our spirituality. We move closer to Christ and become more Christ like.
"He is the Image of the Invisible God, the firstborn of all creation"
Jesus is the Image of the Invisible God, is what this verse says to me. In my heart I hear, Jesus is the image of the suffering God. This hits me like Pujols bat on a fastball straight down the pipe. I dont think I ever really put it together until I read this passage.
Many words can be used to describe Jesus: Humble, Love, Healing, Gentle, Light, Teacher, Compassion, and Suffering. It's this last word that really hits home. Suffering. In Matthew 11:29-30 Jesus invites us to accept the burden, the burden of the world, which includes the suffering of humanity. Jesus himself is suffering. His passion stands witness to the suffering of humanity that he took upon himself.
What really strikes me is that God is suffering. This is a new thought to me. To actually think of God as suffering. Many of us have an image of a fatherly figure, white beard, sitting on a thrown, all powerful. Not this suffering God. But here we have Jesus, nailed to a cross, beaten, broken and He is the exact image of the invisible God. What a foreign thought. It took years for me to really, I mean really to understand (as much as my human mind can) and to see the suffering Christ. It wasnt until my own human bondage was too much for me to carry that I had to take up Christ's yoke that I could carry my own.
It was through my own suffering that I was able to create the new me. To allow change, to be lead to conversion, to know that I am not alone in my suffering. It is comforting to know that God is suffering with me. I am not sure why I never put the two together. Jesus is God. As Jesus said in John 14:10-12, He is one within the Father and the Father is in Him. So why did I not see God as suffering?
I think its hard for us as humans to accept our suffering and its even harder for us to accept a suffering God. As a child, I always felt sadness when I looked at the crucifix and had a deep understanding of His Passion. I think the Passion story hit me more than the Christmas story, but was very hard to accept. We do this in our own human condition. We hide our brokenness. We buy things to make us feel good. We engage in physical love without the bond of real love to feel good. We do not want to look at our suffering.
Without the acceptance of our own suffering, of our pain, we can never see the face of God. The story of Job is the perfect example of this. After all his suffering, all his pious friends telling him that he must have sinned against God, after all Job's yelling, ranting about justice and his day in court with God, he accepts it all without an answer after God finally talks to him. Job had to look within his own heart to find God, and once he heard God, there was no need of an answer to why. Because Job accepted his suffering and God, he was able to carry his load.
It is this acceptance and acknowledging his pain and suffering that leads Job to God. It was through my own suffering that I was able to find God and truly understand agape love. A love so true and honest, a love of myself, of God and of my own human condition.
Christ asks us, he begs of us to embrace our suffering. Thru our suffering we grow in our spirituality. We move closer to Christ and become more Christ like.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Finding agape.
a⋅ga⋅pe [ah-gah-pey, ah-guh-pey, ag-uh] -
–noun, plural
-Unselfish Love
For the first time in my life, I know this. I have looked for the ultimate love. I thought I would find it thru the opposite sex, I thought I would find it in my friends. But I found it from within. The place where God dwells, the heart.
It wasnt till after I learned solitude (I have always been alone, but never in solitude), silence (I have known places of no sound or talk, but never silence) and prayer (I have known foxhole prayers, wants, desires, wishes, but not true communion in prayer); that I found agape. After a period of searching within, quieting myself, I found true love and acceptance. My heart beats in an unceasing prayer for Love and Mercy thru Jesus.
Solitude was the first lesson I had to learn. I have always felt like I was alone, a loner, out cast, unwanted, rejected by my peers. But thru all this loneliness I did not know solitude. After I worked thru my character defects, and really looked at them and saw what my role was in my life and in how people reacted and treated me, that I was able to quiet myself down and actually sit in solitude. Alone, or with someone, I can find solitude. It's that place where you feel comfortable with yourself. It's a little voice that says "its ok to be me". At that point, I could actually feel myself and be comfortable. It wasnt, "what do they think of me", "am I handsome enough", "am I thin enough", "do I have enough money". It was "I am ok, I am ok to be me. Hello friend", that I was able to find solitude. Not to have all my peers defining me, but me defining myself.
After I found solitude, I was able to find silence. I was able to remove the bombarding of words that are all around us. I was able to not want to have the TV on or constant music. I found it easy to sit in silence, to drive without sound. To quiet my mind. Just think about it, we are constantly walking thru a dictionary, words on the radio/TV, billboards, signs, people talking etc. It's like the world is one big dictionary, words all around us. But thru solitude I was able to find silence, to stop hearing and seeing all these words, to listen to my own heart. My mind stopped trying to figure "it" all out.
All this started with a simple prayer "Jesus, please come to my heart, fill me with your Love and Mercy". It became my mantra. When I put my seatbelt on, "Jesus, please come to my heart". In a sigh, "Jesus fill my heart with your love". When I feel frustration, "Jesus, have mercy on me" It became automatic. I didnt have to think about it, it was as if, once I was experiencing silence and solitude, my heart beat these words. It came from within, the place were God dwells in each of us. We always seem to be looking up or around us for God, but all we need to do is to stop. Just STOP, and listen and he is there, just waiting to be heard.
Solitude+Silence+Prayer=Agape
Job 42:5
"I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eyes has seen you"
It wasnt till after I learned solitude (I have always been alone, but never in solitude), silence (I have known places of no sound or talk, but never silence) and prayer (I have known foxhole prayers, wants, desires, wishes, but not true communion in prayer); that I found agape. After a period of searching within, quieting myself, I found true love and acceptance. My heart beats in an unceasing prayer for Love and Mercy thru Jesus.
Solitude was the first lesson I had to learn. I have always felt like I was alone, a loner, out cast, unwanted, rejected by my peers. But thru all this loneliness I did not know solitude. After I worked thru my character defects, and really looked at them and saw what my role was in my life and in how people reacted and treated me, that I was able to quiet myself down and actually sit in solitude. Alone, or with someone, I can find solitude. It's that place where you feel comfortable with yourself. It's a little voice that says "its ok to be me". At that point, I could actually feel myself and be comfortable. It wasnt, "what do they think of me", "am I handsome enough", "am I thin enough", "do I have enough money". It was "I am ok, I am ok to be me. Hello friend", that I was able to find solitude. Not to have all my peers defining me, but me defining myself.
After I found solitude, I was able to find silence. I was able to remove the bombarding of words that are all around us. I was able to not want to have the TV on or constant music. I found it easy to sit in silence, to drive without sound. To quiet my mind. Just think about it, we are constantly walking thru a dictionary, words on the radio/TV, billboards, signs, people talking etc. It's like the world is one big dictionary, words all around us. But thru solitude I was able to find silence, to stop hearing and seeing all these words, to listen to my own heart. My mind stopped trying to figure "it" all out.
All this started with a simple prayer "Jesus, please come to my heart, fill me with your Love and Mercy". It became my mantra. When I put my seatbelt on, "Jesus, please come to my heart". In a sigh, "Jesus fill my heart with your love". When I feel frustration, "Jesus, have mercy on me" It became automatic. I didnt have to think about it, it was as if, once I was experiencing silence and solitude, my heart beat these words. It came from within, the place were God dwells in each of us. We always seem to be looking up or around us for God, but all we need to do is to stop. Just STOP, and listen and he is there, just waiting to be heard.
Solitude+Silence+Prayer=Agape
Job 42:5
"I had heard of you by word of mouth, but now my eyes has seen you"
Monday, September 07, 2009
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
