A Spirituality of Work

Since today is the day after Labor Day, I thought that a good topic for discussion on Relevant Radio's "Inner Life" show would be "The Spirituality of Work." 

The pain and frustration associated with work is the result of sin.  These are often the result of our own sins and those of others, but also because of Original Sin, which resulted in difficulties and pain in work, for God said: "Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat..." (Genesis 3:17-19).  But this pain was not part of God's original plan.  Made in the image and likeness of God, humanity was created to work with God in caring for creation.  A chapter earlier in Genesis we read: "The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it" (2:15). 

Jesus, the model human, shows us the beauty of work.  We often think of his work of redeeming humanity only in terms of his three years of active ministry when he taught, healed, raised the dead, and then suffered, died, and rose.  But each of the years and minutes of his "Hidden Life" was redemptive.  When he worked as a boy and adolescent side by side with Joseph, he was saving the world.  When he did his chores around the house, he was saving the world.  All this was done in obedience to the will of the Father and as an act of love for the Father, thus undoing the rebellious sin of Adam and Eve. 

Jesus declared that through work we imitate God the Father.  He said: "My Father is at work until now, so I am at work" (John 5:17).  He made it clear that he worked in union with God the Father when he said: "I cannot do anything on my own; I judge as I hear, and my judgment is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me" (John 5:36).  If, as Jesus says, he can do nothing on his own but does everything in union with the Father, how much more is it true that we can do nothing on our own.  After telling his disciples that he is the vine and they are the branches, Jesus says: "Whoever remains in me

and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing" (John 15:5). 

With this in mind, everything we do can play a part in the ongoing conversion and salvation of the world.  When we pray a Daily Offering prayer at the beginning of the day, we ask that everything we do may be done in union with God's will and may give glory to God.  Chuck Neff, the host of the "Inner Life" show, shared that one work he particularly dislikes is mowing his lawn.  He said that as he mows he thinks about various people that he wants to pray for or has promised his prayers to and he offers his work for them.  I

added that praying a version of the Jesus Prayer--"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me"--can be another way of uniting prayer with our breath and our work. 

We can also see work as an opportunity to practice and grow in the virtues.  Take the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love.  We can make our work an act of faith by surrendering it to God and trying to see how it can give glory to God.  We can acknowledge that God is always present and we can ask, "what are you trying to teach me through this work, through this event?"  When our work becomes especially burdensome and we are tempted to get down and to despair, we can exercise the virtue of hope, recognizing that our true home is heaven and that this--whatever it is that causes us pain or struggle--this too shall pass.  We exercise hope by substituting positive thoughts for the negative ones.  And we can exercise the virtue of love, telling God that the work in which we are engaged is being done as an act of love for him.  Especially when we are dealing with people who frustrate or upset us, we exercise love by praying for them, willing their good, and expressing that love in the way we treat them.  In this way work becomes a very practical way in which we grow in holiness.

One of the last questions we addressed involved rest, balance, and overwork.  In Genesis God rested from the work of creation to show us the importance of balance.  We too must rest, for in doing so we practice good stewardship of ourselves, our bodies.  But it is also a way of exercising trust.  When I am tempted by overwork it is usually not only because I want to give glory to God.  There is often a good bit of ego involved in the temptation to work too much or too hard.  It involves the fear of saying "no" and displeasing others.  It involves the desire to look good and to be successful.  God wants us to do good work and to follow St. Paul's advice to the Colossians: "Whatever you do, do from the heart, as for the Lord and not for others..." (3:23).  In that way we can seek God's glory at all times and not our own. 

An audio of the program can be found here, on the Relevant Radio website.  Just go to the calendar and click on September 4. 

Communities of Prayer

Upon my return from the Dallas area where I just gave a parish mission, I told the Apostleship of Prayer staff that I wanted to move our office there. Now I know the pleasant Spring weather of 70's and 80's will soon enough turn to the 100's of Summer. And I know that the 40 degrees that greeted me when I left the Milwaukee airport will turn to 70's and 80's in the Summer. But my attraction to Dallas is not just the weather.

It was an amazing experience to meet such fervent Catholics. About 300 people came to my parish mission at Mary Immaculate Parish where it's estimated there are 6,000 families. Also, I was blessed to have lunch with Kurt Klement who runs one of the largest high school ministries in the country at St. Ann's parish in Coppell where there are an estimated 8,000 families and where Fr. Phil Hurley, S.J., our director of youth and young adults, will be leading a Hearts on Fire retreat June 22-23.

Another blessing of my trip was to meet Tom Grossman, the director of campus ministry for Mary Immaculate Grade School and the Young Adult Coordinator at the parish. His card has the following Scripture quote from Luke 12: 49: "I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!" Tom is truly on fire with the love of God. Moved by the call of Blessed John Paul II for a new evangelization and for our communities to be "schools of prayer," Tom has helped start a group called "Communities of Prayer." One of their prayer cards caught my eye because it included the Morning Offering. My hope for the Apostleship of Prayer is that we not only unite in praying that daily prayer with the Pope's monthly intentions in mind, but that we truly become "Apostles of Prayer." The Apostles were the friends of Jesus who spent time with him. I think the materials available through Communities of Prayer are ideal for helping us grow in prayer and in our relationship with the Lord. Their "Lectio Divina" booklets can help us make this tried and true method of praying with Scriptures part of our life and the resources available at "Link to Liturgy" are excellent for using the Sunday and weekday Mass readings for prayer.

Once a month Mary Immaculate Parish holds a special Saturday night adoration service followed by entertainment and fellowship. It's called "The Shepherd's Cafe" and I met Yong Oh who is instrumental in organizing it. After Mass and dinner, Fr. Michael Forge, the pastor, and I stopped in for a visit. Throughout the evening the Sacrament of Reconciliation was available and there was a line for it the whole time that I was there.

Throughout the mission people mistook me for Fr. Michael. I guess that's because we part our hair the same way.

The Examen

I'm going to try to piece this post together from my faulty memory. I like to tell people that I have a steel-trap mind, shaped like a sieve. Last Sunday I gave a talk at St. Catherine Laboure Parish in Glenview, IL, a suburb of Chicago. The talk was part of a monthly series on the topic of discernment, and my talk was on finding God in the details of the day. Unfortunately, I misplaced my folder with notes and materials for my talk, and friends are now joining me in prayers to St. Anthony to find it for me.

From 1984 to 1988 I was the vocation director for the Jesuits of the Wisconsin Province, a seven state area in the upper Midwest. You could call it the "W Province" because it stretches from Wisconsin in the east to Wyoming in the west. As vocation director I helped people discern their vocations. In some cases that led to men applying to and being accepted into the Jesuits. In other cases, just as much "success stories," I helped young men discern that God was calling them to other vocations, including marriage. In fact, a couple years ago at a parish in Minnesota, I met a woman who told her two daughters that I was responsible for their birth! I had helped her husband discern that God was calling him to marriage and in following that call he was given a wonderful wife and beautiful daughters. One of the things I highly recommended to people discerning their vocations was the practice of the Daily Examen or what we at the Apostleship of Prayer like to call the Evening Review.

The idea is this: we don't discern in a vacuum. In order to make a major decision, in order to discern God's will in regard to a vocation, it's important to develop the habit of looking for signs of God's presence and activity every day. This helps us to have a discerning heart, one that is tuned into God's wavelength and better able to see the directions that God is giving us every day.

But before we can do this, it's important to become more familiar with how God operates. We have a record of that, a record of God's activity in the lives of individuals and nations. It's the Bible. Thus, to develop a discerning heart it's important to spend a little time every day prayerfully reading the Bible. In this way we will become familiar with the ways that God works. By trying to enter into the mind and heart of Jesus in the Gospels--what He was thinking and feeling, how He acted--we can receive direction for our own thoughts, feelings, and actions.

When we look at Jesus in the Gospels, especially in the Gospel of Luke, which will be the focus for the Sunday Gospels in the coming year, we see that Jesus often spent time alone at night in prayer. I think that part of that prayer involved looking back on His day and seeing how God the Father was present, walking with Him and speaking to Him. Just look at the parables that Jesus told. They were drawn from every day events. He drew lessons from watching a farmer sowing seed in the field and seeing it fall on different types of soil. He saw the Kingdom of God in a woman baking bread and using a little yeast to make a large amount of dough rise. He saw the Provident care of His Heavenly Father in the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. He heard the news of the day--a tower falling on some laborers and killing them--and used this experience to teach. Yes, Jesus certainly must have gone over the events and people of His day, finding in them the presence and love and direction of His Father and ours.

From this basis, then, we can commit ourselves to reading the Bible of our lives. God didn't stop speaking to us when the last page of Scripture was written and the books of the Bible were officially approved. The God who spoke throughout history, whose activities and words are recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, and who spoke definitively through His Word made flesh, His only-begotten Son, continues to speak to us through the events and people of our lives. Sometimes the word He speaks is an affirming word. Sometimes it's challenging. Either way, we won't hear it unless we take some time each day to listen, to look back on the events of the day in order to discern what God was trying to tell us through them.

So the first thing to do, in the words of a commercial, is to "just do it!" Schedule time every day for a review of the day. St. Ignatius Loyola felt this was so important to the members of the order he founded, the Jesuits, that he told them that apart from the Eucharist and the required prayers of the ordained, this is the one devotion or prayer that they ought never omit. Through the daily examen they would be able to seek and find God in all things.

There is no magic in when the examen is to be done. I find that in the evening I am often too tired or too distracted to do it and so I make it part of my morning prayer. With a cup of coffee at my side I look back on the previous day and I write. I find writing helps me to focus. Others may find taking a walk after supper and reflecting on the day helps them to not not only exercise the body but also the spirit. At the Apostleship of Prayer we have an Evening Review CD that people pop into their car on their way home from work and this leads them through a prayerful review of their day.

Is this the Examination of Conscience? I've heard that the word that we translate as "conscience" has various meanings in other languages. Strictly speaking, an examination of conscience focuses on our weakness and sins, what we've done wrong, what we are sorry for. We make such an examination when we prepare for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. But this examination or examen is broader and so it has been called the "Awareness Examen" or the "Examen of Consciousness." Fr. George Aschenbrenner, S.J., in a 1972 article, popularized this approach. A condensed version of that article can be found on a web site that's sponsored by Loyola Press.

There is also no magic in how the examen is to be done. Different individuals and groups offer different approaches or steps. The following is one five step method:

1. Spend a moment slowing down and being aware that you are in God's presence. St. Paul, quoting a Greek poet, said that in God we live and move and have our being. God is always present to us, but we are not always present to God. We are often distracted and so we begin our brief period of prayer pausing to reflect on God's presence.

2. Spend a brief period of time in thanksgiving. What are you thankful for at this very moment? This prayer of gratitude puts you in a positive frame of mind that allows you to be more open to God's presence in your day. It "primes the pump" for your review.

3. Ask for the help of the Holy Spirit to see yourself as God sees you. Most people tend to see the glass as half empty rather than half full. If I tell someone nine very positive things about him or herself and one negative or critical thing, that person will tend to go away thinking only about the one negative thing. You need the Holy Spirit to have perspective, to see yourself with honesty and also with love, unlike the one whom Scripture calls "the Accuser" who loves to disturb you by leading you to focus only on what is negative.

4. Review your day. Imagine you are watching a video of your day, seated on a couch with Jesus. Some parts you may fast-forward through, but other parts you will pause at in order to savor or reflect upon: what was God telling you through that event or person? How did you feel? What do those feelings tell you? Was God affirming you or challenging you through that moment of your day? You may want to fast-forward through some parts but Jesus may want you to pause so that with the help of the Holy Spirit at that moment He can teach and guide you. This part is the core of the examen.

5. Have a heart-to-Heart talk with Jesus. What comes to your mind as you finish your review? How do you feel and what do you want to say to Jesus? Are you sorry for anything? Are you grateful? Are there any signs in your day that point in a specific direction for the major decision you are making? You might write those down and keep an ongoing record of them to share with a spiritual or vocation director. Finish your prayer with a resolution or act of faith, hope, or love, committing yourself to following the Lord as best you can in the next day that God is giving you.

At the Apostleship of Prayer we encourage people to not only make an offering of their day with a Morning Offering, but, when the day is over, to review the offering that one has made. Doing this will help you to be more sensitive to God's presence and direction in your daily life. It will make you more aware of the many opportunities to renew your offering during the day and to seek God's will in the events of your life.

The Real Thing

In my last blog entry, about the football pilgrimage, I talked about the desire within the human heart for transcendance, and that if we do not fill our hearts with that for which they were created, we will fill them with all sorts of substitutes. So, for what were our hearts created? St. Augustine put it well: "You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." We're made for union with God. Our hearts exist to be united and filled with the Heart of Jesus.

A Jesuit friend sent me a link to a video about a group of Carmelite Sisters in Spain who just finished a retreat with Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the Capuchin Friar who is the official preacher for Pope Benedict XVI and the papal household.

I can't help using good Ignatian discernment of spirits here. The pilgrimage to Lambeau was exciting but now it's over and done. The video of the Carmelite Sisters was exciting and is over but has left an afterglow of joy and consolation. If St. Ignatius were here, he'd say that those Carmelites have the real thing.

A Football Pilgrimage

On Sunday I made a pilgrimage to Lambeau Field. Though I grew up in Wisconsin and have been stationed here for the past six years, I'd never made the trip to Green Bay for a Packer game. A good friend of mine invited me to the game on Sunday and I can't help reflecting on the experience.

In many ways football games in the U.S. have become a kind of religion. It seems to me that the human spirit longs for a spiritual experience and when that hunger isn't filled by the real thing, we have all sorts of substitutes to fill the void. Here are some of the "religious" themes that I saw on Sunday.

1. There are rituals in preparation for the event. As we walked to the stadium we passed one tailgate gathering after another and most of them involved "spirits" to help people prepare for the game.

2. The approach to the stadium can only be compared to preparing to enter historic cathedrals. The crowds approach with awe and eager anticipation for the experience they are about to have. Statues of Vince Lombardi and Curley Lambeau stand watch over those entering the stadium.

3. Other "saints" of football are recognized in the stadium where all those whose jerseys were retired are listed as well as those who are in the NFL Hall of Fame.

4. Most of the people in the stands were dressed in special clothing, the jerseys of their favorite players past and present, or in the "liturgical colors" of Green Bay--green and gold.

5. There is a strong sense of tradition in which the past is honored.

6. We were directed to stand and remove our hats for the opening song ("the national anthem"), as a huge American flag was unrolled to cover the field. At the very moment that the song ended two jets flew over.

7. The congregation participated in the game with appropriate "liturgical movements and gestures:--cheers and jeers, jumping up, and giving "high-fives."

In all of this I couldn't help thinking about how the human spirit longs for tradition and ritual, and to feel a part of something bigger than oneself, something that leads you to transcend yourself.

I hope all this doesn't sound irreverent. The experience clearly made me think of how much energy was expended in this Sunday football ritual and how the human heart, if it is not filled with the Spirit, will look for spiritual experiences that take one out of oneself.

Finally, I have to make a confession: it was great to see the Packers beat the Cowboys!