Catholic Faith Space
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In the past two weeks, there has been a lot of celebrating in my family. My sister Abbey had a beautiful wedding mass and a great afternoon and evening to celebrate her marriage. Then, my sister Sarah had her baby shower, where we celebrated the gift of new life, with her baby expected to arrive in December. Having the extra family time to celebrate these major life events for two whole weeks was a time of great excitement. But now, life will get back to a more normal schedule. Nothing too major or significant will take place in the coming weeks. Life will be much more ordinary. The last two weeks have reminded me of the mountaintop experiences we can have in our faith. Sometimes, we have experiences where we are on a spiritual high from an intense encounter with God. Maybe it’s from a retreat, conference, pilgrimage, or some other event. But, we can’t stay in those moments forever. We must return to our normal schedules, where life is often pretty ordinary.
How do we hold onto our faith when we are not up on those “mountaintops?” How do we keep our relationship with Jesus our number one priority when people around us at work or school, have a lukewarm faith or no faith at all? After a significant spiritual experience, it’s easy to fall back into old habits soon after and to be lacking in the spiritual intensity we may have experienced. We often leave those experiences feeling closer to God than ever before, just waiting for the next time we can have another similar experience. While these experiences help us grow in our faith, they can not be our only way of growing. This is when it is important to create new prayer habits or strengthen former practices and stay plugged into a community who will help keep you accountable. There is a difference in feeling close to God and being close to God. Even if, in our ordinary and regular routines, we don’t feel close to God, it does not mean that we are not close to Him. It is for the best that those spiritual highs don’t last forever, because our commitment to God can be strengthened in these times. Are we committed to following God only if and when we feel close to Him or are we really committed to following God whether we feel His presence or not? If we continue to follow God at all points of life, it will be an overall slow, gradual walk. Sometimes the walk will be really exciting and filled with big climbs and great views from the top. Other times, it will be flat and maybe sort of dull. But in this slow, gradual walk, our commitment and love for Him will deepen. May we all allow the exciting spiritual experiences to keep us on the path towards God whenever we go back to normal life.
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There’s an old country song by singer Johnny Lee called “Lookin’ for Love”. While the song details the singer’s experience of looking for authentic love in his life, there is a line in the song that I think we could all relate to on a more general level. The line in the chorus, “I was looking for love in all the wrong places, looking for love in too many faces” speaks a truth that we have probably all experienced at one time or another.
How many times have we looked to the world and those around us for love and approval? We all want to be well-liked, to fit in, to be like everyone else. We want to be accepted by society’s standards and for people to approve of what we believe and the way we live. These desires and attitudes are all normal parts of being human. But if we are looking for love from the world and our culture’s standards, we are looking in the wrong places. Above all, we should be looking to Jesus. His approval is the only approval we need. If we seek to gain approval from anywhere else, it will ultimately fail us. And if we keep searching the world waiting and hoping for everyone we meet to love us, we will be waiting a long time. But if we stop and look at Jesus, whether on the cross, in the eucharist, or in scripture, we will find the love we are made for, a love that never fails, disappoints, or abandons us. Ask Jesus to reveal His love to you. And then listen. There is not a single moment that passes by in which we are not loved. We just so often don’t notice or take time out of our days to recognize it, so then we just go searching for that love in all the wrong places. When you are tempted to seek the world’s approval, look to Jesus. When you look to Him, you are in the right place. If you spent any time outside this past weekend, you’ve probably noticed that more and more leaves have already begun to change, revealing beautiful new colors that we all look forward to seeing every fall. The way that the leaves on trees change is the chlorophyll breaks down, making the green fade and allowing the reds, yellows, and oranges to show through. While it appears that the leaves are green most of the year, those other colors have actually been there all along, hidden and masked underneath the green, waiting to be revealed. The leaves can serve as a metaphor for us as Christians. The fruits of a life lived for Christ are waiting to be revealed. If we allow ourselves and our lives to be transformed by Jesus, we will change.
Each and every one of us is created in the image and likeness of God. From the moment of our existence, we were created to know, love, and serve Him. This means that we all have good qualities and fruits present within us that need to be cultivated. But these Christ-like qualities and traits are often covered up and hidden by our sinfulness. What if we all allowed our lives to be changed by Jesus, to become more like Him every day? We would love others better, experience more peace, and be more forgiving, humble, patient, and obedient. Many times, we fail to live out many of these qualities. These qualities and traits can often stay covered up by the opposite ones, the selfishness, the pride, the envy, and everything else that is not of God. So how do we uncover those Christ-like qualities and actions that we were all created with? We must acknowledge that we cannot become like Jesus on our own and that any good in us is because of Him alone. We must go to mass, receive the eucharist, go to confession, and spend time in prayer. Through our efforts and habits in our faith journey, we will see change and become who we were created to be. The process of the leaves changing every fall, reveals the bright and beautiful colors that the leaves were created with. What if we allowed ourselves to be like these leaves, allowing change to take place in ourselves, so that the goodness and beauty we were created with would shine through, ultimately revealing Jesus for others to see. |
AuthorStriving to share hope, joy, God's love, and all of the good stuff, one blog post at a time. Categories |
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