Living as He calls us to live - help from Fr. Dan Danielson and other sources
As CCOP parishioners our mission is "To know Christ better, to live as He calls us to live, and to make Him better known." As the year 2012 begins we can reflect on how we are living our lives and perhaps renew our commitment to living as He calls us to live.
Ideally each of us would have a job that fully utilized our talents and abilities and that served a purpose that we could be proud of serving. Ideally, too, we each would spend our time and our money in ways that best elevated human life and dignity. How can we come closer to reaching these ideals?
Fr. Dan Danielson:
"None of us exists alone. We exist in relationship with others. We are in fact defined by those relationships, first of all with our parents and birth family, then with our own family as we grow older and enter into those lifelong relationships of husband and wife and children. So the first place we have to look to find the will of God is in those contexts - our family.
"But we have a broader family as well and we must seek to treat all in our family with kindness and justice - always. Our lives affect theirs; their lives affect ours. We must not forget them when we seek God's will for ourselves. We are called to care for them in the same way that we care for those who live in our homes.
"'How are we to do that?' is where discernment comes in. This caring can and should take many forms - from defending my larger family against unjust treatment by legislation or budget cuts in this country to actually getting my hands dirty in serving food to the homeless and the poor. It can involve supporting those agencies which minister to some of the people that we cannot personally reach. It involves keeping our radar on, knowing what's going on that would affect our sisters and brothers (e.g. through the Catholic Legislative Network).
"I would argue that we are never going to be fully satisfied with how well we are doing God's will in our home family or with our broader family. After all, we remain weak and sinful human beings, totally dependent upon God's grace.
"But we must refuse to let go of either part of our vocation, our call to carry out God's will in the midst of the human community of which we are a part. The fact that we can't do it "all" does not free us from trying to do some things well.
"Whatsoever you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus and all will be well."
The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by Fr. James Martin, SJ
Fr. Martin is the author of The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (available from the Pleasanton Public Library). The book has the subtitle A Spirituality for Real Life. It describes and illustrates a spirituality having four components:
- Finding God in all things
- Being a "contemplative in action": being active in the worldand aware of what is happening around us but being guided largely by our moments of contemplation
- Experiencing "Incarnational Spirituality": seeing God in Jesus, in every person everywhere, and in the everyday events of our lives
- Seeking freedom and detachment
The book makes repeated reference to the "examen" which is a period of daily reflection and examination of our day involving gratitude for the good things that have happened, recalling and reflecting on all that happened, recognizing and feeling sorrow for failures, asking for forgiveness, and asking for grace to have a better tomorrow. Especially important are moments of feeling God's presence, seeing God's willingness to help to us and to help others through us.
The next to last chapter is about our work, our life, and who we are. Our work, our job, and our career should all be seen in the larger context of our vocation. We all have a general vocation or calling to be holy people. Each of us has a specific vocation which encompasses the kind of person we hope to become. Our vocation is what we are called to do and who we are called to be.
We discover our vocation by seeing what kind of work we are drawn to, our desires for accomplishment. Many are drawn to marriage by a combination of physical, emotional, and spiritual desires. In a similar way, accountants, teachers, artists, and electricians discover an attraction for their work. Martin is saying on the one hand that we need to pay attention to our lasting desires, our deepest satisfactions. We also need to believe in our own worth without being grandiose and without belittling ourselves. Throughout the book Martin emphasizes the need for contemplation, for thinking things over, noticing our own reactions and the reactions of others.
The Ignatian spirituality which Martin describes involves being responsible for one's physical health, living a balanced life, and taking care about our food, clothing and living quarters.
Martin notes that many affluent people are shielded from the poor. He suggests that we can participate in community efforts, Church-related or otherwise, to help the poor, we can be more generous financially, and we can get to know poor people personally. This personal contact can open our eyes to a world we have not seen and be richly rewarding to us spiritually.
Martin says we can find God in others even in the midst of an unappealing job. We can learn to see our work as directed to a larger purpose. Even when we encounter deep disappointments or if we become unemployed we can take stock of the situation, see what we can learn from the experience and begin planning where we are to go from here.
We can bring our best selves to work by
- Self-awareness - reflecting on what we have done, what we are doing now, and what we will do and then being guided in our action by our self-understanding
- Ingenuity - finding ways to accomplish things
- Love - helping to create a caring and supportive environment for those around us
- Heroism - working, planning and dreaming of a more God-filled world
- Appreciation of the dignity of work
- Acceptance of our disappointments and failures
- Reliance on God
Martin ends the chapter by talking about becoming yourself, the person you are meant to be. It is the adventure of living. We may see changes in ourselves, and we can be willing to let it take a long time.
Other sources of help for living as Christ calls us to live
There are of course many religious orders besides the Jesuits who have long traditions for living a good and holy life. The Franciscan Action Network http://www.franciscanaction.org/ aims to "help build a society rooted in social justice, peace and care for all creation."
Fr. Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/ has the mission of being "a center for experiential education, rooted in the Gospels, encouraging the transformation of human consciousness through contemplation, and equipping people to be instruments of peaceful change in the world".
U.S. Catholic magazine http://www.uscatholic.org/ describes itself as being "in conversation with American Catholics". It has articles on a variety of topics of interest to Catholics, and the online version allows extensive comments from readers. The current issue has an article about New Year's Resolutions http://www.uscatholic.org/life/2008/12/new-year-new-you?page=0,0
JustFaith Ministries http://www.justfaith.org/ says, "Our Christian faith extends an invitation to each of us to become agents of God's compassion and healing in a wounded world. JustFaith Ministries empowers ordinary people and their communities to act on that invitation. Through workshops and programs, JustFaith Ministries helps participants to expand their commitment to social ministry within their faith communities." One of those programs is Engaging Spirituality http://www.justfaith.org/programs/engagingspirituality.html.
Creighton University offers a free online Ignatian Retreat that is a way to "experience a relationship with God coming alive in the midst of everyday life" http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/cmo-retreat.html
Several religious communities, Anglican and Lutheran as well as Catholic, have "Third Orders" for lay people. Here is a list with descriptions of each via the Catholic Encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14637b.htm.
