Pitch Your Tent: A guide to Seeking Christ in Every Moment

It's the Second Sunday of Lent and coming up to half way through our journey of faith. We walk with Jesus through the desert for 4o days--fasting, praying and observing.
This Sunday Jesus takes Peter, James and his brother John up a mountain. According to scripture, it's a pretty high one too. It's here that Jesus reveals to his disciples His glory. He is transfigured and his face "shone like the sun" and his clothes becomes a bright white as light. The clouds open and out from the sky we hear the same voice that spoke to his at Jesus' baptism saying, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased, Listen to Him." What happens next from Peter is very much a response to Christ's magnificence and glory and I think we can use it as a beautiful lesson to keep in mind as we continue through our Lenten journey. Peter is captivated by God's revelation and power through the light of Christ transfigured and he intends on sticking around, so much that he plans on spending the night. He has recognized God's presence in that very moment, without even thinking his first response is to pitch a tent and stay, totally emerged in the Divine and in awe because of it. So what can we learn from Peter? Basically this, to seek God in every moment of our lives and learn to stay in those moments with your whole heart. Pitch your tent, to live in every grace filled moment that God gives. Here are some ways for us to be open to God's powerful presence in our lives, like Peter.
Be grateful. Being grateful is more than not complaining. It means showing appreciation for things that might not even be recognized. Learning to see the good in everything even the worst of times. The fact is that God reveals himself to us through every living thing, powerfully and specifically with the help of grace. When we are grateful for God's goodness and beauty in the world we are able to more receptive of the deeper ways He communicates himself like in the Eucharist, encounters with people, the Cross. This reception is the cause of a response, to love and carry out his will. Be grateful, appreciate God's presence in your life.
Be Silent. being silent is a difficult thing, but in my mind it can be a way to listen. Paying attention and with great awareness of God alive in every moment. Taking on an interior silence that comes from God allows us to respond  to His graces and also to the needs of our friends, family, maybe those strangers. The beauty is that the silence is more than just not talking, it can be stripping ourselves of any noise that keep us from responding to God's love and invitation to serve.
Be Prayer full. learn the ways that help you pray and use that to be open to the presence of God. Prayer is simply having a conversation, there is no rubric and no guideline to pray. God is a Father who loves and listens to everyone. The church uses different expressions of prayer that have been handed down through tradition. The Holy Mass is a prayer of Thanksgiving, the Liturgy of the hours is a prayer of communion. The beauty too is that every moment of our lives can be a prayer, our walk, our talk, and our breath. Learn to be prayerful through the day, the great saints tell us that prayer is like a cleansing for the soul.

With these three guides we can respond to those moments of grace in prayer, in love, in silence and with grateful hearts. It's here in our response that we are able to see God clearly, his transforming light and his perfect plan for us. God through our action of love and prayer, will make his glory known as believers we are called to seek out these moments, listen to these moments that Christ makes himself known and pitch our own tents. Lord, let your glory be made known to us!

Lent: Nineveh's Lesson

It always seems like the season of Lent comes at the right time. While the main focus of Lent is to practice fasting, conversion, prayer and simple living, for me it always seems that the weeks prior to the season is the exact opposite. The soul and the senses are restless, we hunger for a temporary satisfaction, lacking in prayer, indulging, doing our own things. But Lent, is a time to change all of that, its a time to see all that we have done wrong even those small things and truly repent and feel completely sorry for what we have done. Lent is a time for conversion of heart, prayer and a time for us to share in the Resurrected Glory of God in the end by defeating sin and conquering death.

I'm always fascinated at how Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. This journey of Jesus marks the start of a 40 day fast, an embarking that allows the Spirit to move in own lives by how we live. It's interesting, because during lent we can see that there is a definite call to repentance. A call to step outside of what we are used to and do something else and give up what we enjoy. It's a call to live outside our comfort zones. The gospel reading today, is the story of Jonah and his pilgrimage to Nineveh to proclaim to the Ninevites that they should pray, repent and fast.

"Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed, when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth"

 That was the call, and in some ways, it is a prefiguration of the Lenten call we see even today. It's a call to pray, a call to fast and even more so, a call recognize what we have done wrong and wear the penitential sackcloth of our own sin and repent. For each of us, Lent should be a time of conversion, prayer, fasting and repentance, just as it was for the Ninevites. It's a time for us to finally say goodbye to those things that we have grown so accustomed to, namely, Sin. This lent, don't just stop doing what you know isn't good for you, but recognize what hurts you, recognize your sin, [pray to the Blessed Mother to reveal to you your sins] and seek to be whole-heartily sorry for all those things that keep us from obtaining a perfect relationship with the Father.

Joy: a New Motive

Whoever said life was a roller coaster was not lying. There are so many up and downs in our lives that sometimes it might be so hard to keep up and even "hang on". There might be stages of having no motivation to do anything, no desire to speak or even get out of bed. It's like we want joy an we want peace but there's a distraction before all of it. For a college campus like this its everywhere and it leads us to depression and sadness. All of this and it seems like your in a rut with no way out, its like a hole that we dug underneath our feet and we forget to jump out. The tool being used to dig is in fact our very sin. Since sin is a distraction and hinders our relationship with Christ, it also separates us and breaks that natural link of sanctifying grace that is placed within us constantly. It makes perfect sense that in this break between man and God, sin can also break our relationship between man and creation, therefore keeping us from what we can fully be! Even Saint Irenaeus said it himself when he said that glory of God is man is fully alive. We are called to be fully alive, enduring sin, and resisting what hurts. If this is you, unable to move with no desire to get anything done, no motivation to get up out of bed I think the answer is very simple. For me its the people and the very creation of God. Besides prayer with a desire to rebuild that relationship with Christ, just talking to people and enjoying what they have to give you can be a relief. In my experience it gives joy and true happiness. The joy that is found, comes from the people and from God indirectly. Talk to your friends and peers talk to your co-workers, jump outside the box an forget the childhood rule that says "don't talk to strangers". Lent is the season of our joy an it can help bring you up an give you peace. Since we as a humanity have an obligation to each other, to build each other up and be a light for others, we are our brother's keeper and we should rely not only on our friends and peers to bring us up in speech, but also God who sustains all of us while granting a never-ending grace that unites us all together as one.

#Catholicsoup #JoyRide #JoyInThePeople

Just a Walk

The season of Lent is finally here, a time of repentance, a time of noticing our sins and making a commitment to change them. The season of Lent calls for a time of fasting to focus more on prayer and the continuous conversion that we have. This year I am trying to only eat one meal a day, and two small meals. So far It's working good. It makes me more grateful then I have ever been with the food that I eat. I was so happy to eat such a tasty meal. It made me see what I have, and what others don't.

The bible says that Jesus is led into the desert by the Holy Spirit after he is baptized in the Jordan. He is led for forty days and forty nights to a place that is dry. No water, no food, no animals, no shade, it is a place of sorrow and sadness. The desert is a symbol, just as the Cross of our Lord is a symbol. With the cross, we are called to carry it, take it up, and engage in journey with it. The journey carrying the cross is not easy, we will fall, we will experience pain and suffering but in the end it is all worth it. Same thing with the desert, It is not going to be easy to walk in the desert, Our goal on the other side of the desert is not going to be easy, we are going to be tested, tried, tempted.

I was sitting in Mass today, and I just felt drawn. I didn't know what to, I didn't know what for. It was just like a calling deep inside, I wanted to just close my eyes and sit there in the presence of God. I closed my eyes and felt so comfortable, so relaxed and so warm. It felt like I was at home, like when you have nothing to worry about, nothing to think about. Deep inside I know that God is with me where ever I go, even when I feel he is not, he is. It seems like God knows me so well that he just wants me. He wants me for whatever it is that he has planned for me. Lately I have been moving from his own plans, but I can feel his tug and hear his call. This is my desert, It isn't going to be easy, but with God, It's Just a walk.