CowPi Journal

I’ve been tagged by Crystal. I normally do not do these meme things, but since it was Crystal… 🙂

Here’s the meme in honor of the Holy Trinity and the start of a new liturgical year:

1. Write three things that we’re grateful to God for in this past liturgical year.

• For my wife, family, friends, students, and the people I met online. May I meet you all again in heaven.

• For the gift of faith, hope, and love. May I never take any of them for granted.

• For my depression (both episodes)—I know that it was hard for others to witness and even harder for me to live through, but my faith and love for God and others is deeper than I ever imagined possible.

2. Write three ways in which we hope to improve our relationship with God in this coming liturgical year.

• To finish the Spiritual Exercises with a deep conviction and commitment to the ongoing process of conversion.

• To continue meditative prayer.

• To attend more daily Masses.

3. Pass this on to three other bloggers.

• Deb at Abiding

• Jim at Brainwaves

• Caitlin at Caitlin’s Place

For the last seven weeks, I have been meeting with a small group once a week and with a spiritual director twice a month for a 30-week program called A Retreat in Daily Life. It is based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

At the beginning of the exercises, St. Ignatius wrote his Principle and Foundation to lay the cornerstone for the retreat. (A quick search found an interesting article by Fr. John A. Hardonon on a thematic and theological analysis of this part of the Spiritual Exercises.) As one of the things we did to introduce us to the Spiritual Exercises, we had to write our own version. Here is my first draft. I assume that it is a “work” in progress and will have several revisions over the course of the retreat and my life.

I am being created in the image of God in that I can know, choose, and love. God seeks to have a direct, loving friendship with me.

All of creation is sacramental and reflects God’s truth and love. The purpose of creation is to reflect God’s love back to him and to the rest of creation. My purpose is to love God and to love others.

All of creation is within God and of God, but is not God. Mistaking creation’s reflection of God for God will lead me astray from my purpose in life. Things and people point toward God and his glory like a signpost pointing the way toward Truth. When I cling to things or people, I cling to the signpost and am prevented from moving toward God and his truth because I think I already have it. When I cling to things or people, I restrict my freedom to love and serve. Therefore, I must be detached from things and people in a loving and gentle manner in such a way that I am free to reflect God’s love to them.

All is gift. I must remain open to receive, not take. In receiving, I should be thankful, responsible, and generous to share God’s gifts.

The choices I make should always lead me into a deeper friendship with God and lead me to a better reflection of his love through me to others.

Why no!
I never thought other than that God is
    that great absence in our lives,
    the empty silence within,
    the place where we go seeking,
    not in hope to arrive or find.
He keeps the interstices
    in our knowledge,
    the darkness between stars.
His are the echoes we follow,
    the footprints he has just left.
We put our hands in his side
    hoping to find it warm.
We look at people
    and places as though
    he had looked at them, too;
    but miss the reflection.

— R.S. Thomas [via]

Father in Heaven, God of power and Lord of mercy,
    from whose fullness we have all received,
    direct our steps in our everyday efforts.
May the changing moods of the human heart
    and the limits which our failings impose on hope
    never blind us to you, source of every good.
Faith gives us the promise of peace
    and makes known the demands of love.
Remove the selfishness that blurs the vision of faith.
Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

— from the Liturgy of the Hours