The Great Commission.... Yours!

I am going to ask you to do something different. I am going ask you to imagine yourself in a place that is quiet, with little to distract you, a place where you feel comfortable, at home, at peace. This could be a room in your house, it could be a quiet space outside, it could be an adoration chapel, or a church, but should be a place that you can visit every day. This place is personal to you…imagine yourself there.

Now imagine that you make visiting this place a high priority in your daily life. You set an alarm for the same time every day. Nothing can keep you from this spot. You can spend a minute, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, the choice is yours, but you need to be honest with yourself and consistent. This is the place and the time you are devoting to prayer. There is no greater power than the power of prayer and there is no greater love than the love you experience in your relationship with God. The time you spend praying and speaking to Christ has to become the centerpiece of your day. Everything else should flow from this.

I am going to give you a moment to imagine the place, look at your watch or a clock to imagine the time you are going to be there, imagine yourself in deep conversation with God. Imagine yourself feeling such peace.

Now imagine yourself out in the world. Imagine yourself feeling comfortable speaking to others about your faith, about your prayer life, about your relationship with Christ. There is no sense of fear. There are just words of love. Imagine finding that place that brings you such joy because you are helping others in need. There are so many volunteering opportunities, you find the one that really speaks to you and you jump right in and help however you are needed.

Prayer, speaking about your faith, helping others are all ways we can be witnesses to Gods love in this world.

The only way we can really claim to be disciples is to find what works best for us and be consistent with it. It is easy for our days to become so busy we forget to pray. It is easy for us to find a teaching moment but to not take it because we do not want to offend or to overstep. It is easy for us to say we just don’t have the time and let opportunities to help fall on the shoulders of others. I am asking you right now to dedicate yourself to making your faith the number one priority in your life. The great Commission of Jesus was not just to send those disciples he was speaking to out into the world, it was to send all of us. Imagine yourself praying, imagine yourself spreading the Gospel in words and in deeds. Imagine how your life can change and how you can change the lives of others too.                       -- Jackie Sullivan

Saying YES to God

As I reflect upon graduating from Loyola University Chicago, Thomas Merton's prayer comes to mind...

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

—-Thomas Merton

I too have "put all of my eggs in the basket". I said "YES" to God without even knowing the question being asked of me. Yet, I am at peace. At peace without a job because of my relationship with God. A God that loves me more than I love myself. A God that continues to bring life and light even to the darkest of hours.

Am I doing God's will? Whose voice am I listening to? I cannot know for sure, but In discerning what brings life orients me towards the loving Creator. A new day is dawning and life will flourish in the light...

(Above photo I took several years ago near Salt Lake City.)

Peace and Joy,
Mark Olivieri

The Ignatian Plus Sign

            There’s an old idea that people can be divided into two camps:  those who believe the glass is half full and those who think the glass is half empty.  With no small degree of self-honesty, I am someone who would probably look at the proverbial glass and ask, “But what if it’s poison?”  Which is to say, I struggle with a mindset that can be the opposite of the one that I am supposed to have as a spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition.

            St. Ignatius had many wonderful ideas about spirituality, but one that has spoken to me throughout my journey is that of the Ignatian “plus sign.”  Ignatius said that when anyone says anything, we are to take the best interpretation of that statement.  What if there is no best interpretation, I hear you ask?  Well, Ignatius suggests that the listener dig a bit deeper and keep looking.

            This week, I have found myself confronted multiple times with my own tendency to move quickly to the least generous interpretation of events.  One morning, while walking my dog, I saw that bulldozers were in the woods, cutting down trees and displacing the wildlife already struggling for a place in our growing town.  More houses, I thought.  What about nature, I thought.  What awful humans are doing this, I thought.

            What if you’re wrong, I thought. 

I dug deep into my spiritual toolkit and I reminded myself that I was working myself up over absolutely nothing but a mean-spirited set of assumptions.  And when I approached the man piloting a nearby bulldozer, he told me that he was working on clearing a series of trails in that area.  Not only had I been wrong, I had been completely wrong.  Worse, I was ready to let being wrong set the mood for my whole walk, or even morning.

            As I continued home, I could see where God was inviting me to notice a flawed way of thinking.  Expecting the worst is like wearing dirty glasses and wishing the world looked brighter.  The world is plenty bright, but we have to look for the light, and to do so we often have to account for our own flawed perspectives.

            I thought about how this might apply to on-line interactions, where the wildest things are said and the quick assumptions are frequently made.  What if, every time I caught myself judging a statement, I tried to imagine what kind of day the person on the other side of the screen was having?  What don’t I know about that person?  And regardless of their point of view, what do I gain by hating them or wishing them ill?

            I decided today to hold on to the image of the nice man piloting the bulldozer, the one with greater information.  Today, I was able to find him and get more of the story—but we don’t always get that missing piece.  The Ignatian plus sign invites us to know that there is a bigger picture, the part of the story that makes the character with whom we are struggling just a little more sympathetic.  To use the “plus sign” is an invitation to give up control of the narrative.  And if we can’t find that kindness at the moment, perhaps we can at least see that God is inviting us into a great mystery—one in which we don’t have all the answers.

            How might God be inviting you to see differently, today?  Towards whom are you being invited to practice this different way of seeing?  How does this change you, the only person you can really change?

Alison Umminger Mattison