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!

Pilgrimage: Santuario de Chimayo

This past weekend my brothers and I went on an official pilgrimage to sort of start the year. We would walk to the Shrine of Chimayo from Espanola, a town about 9 miles west of the "Santuario." We would stay in Pecos with Benedictine monks, praying with them and eating with them, there we would sleep. During the day we would either go up to the mountain and pray, hike around the monastery, rest or fish. It was a very quiet weekend for me and that is what stood out on the pilgrimmage weekend.
The invitation for me, was to return back to the silence not only in my actions but also in my prayer. Throughout the weekend we were praying, contemplating while at the same time still being open to the silence and the peace that is expressed through creation. The beauty of God is displayed in his creation and it was powerful for me to meditate on that.

Silence - the silence is required to cultivate a fruitful prayer, because if you are quiet then you are naturally listening. Listening to the silence means abandoning the noise of our lives. Read Psalm 46 and learn to be still in action.

Prayer - a conversation with God that requires interaction, participation and silence. It is more then just talking to God it is conversing with Him. He is listening to us, so we should listen to Him through the quiet and the silence.

Patience - Contrary to impulsiveness, it is the virtue of waiting, being still while at the same time trusting in God's plan. Saint Paul lists patience as one of the fruits of the spirit in Galatians 5:22.

These three have been the most obvious in my pilgrimage this weekend. It has been an invitation to pray in the silence and with that, I learned how effective and fruitful a prayer can be when it is nurtured by the quiet. There's a listening that is involved when we pray, because prayer is not just a way in which we talk to God, but rather it's a conversation. I learned that in the Silence is where prayer is formed. It's where patience is formed and so for me it was nice to be able to return back to that.

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.

Imitating Mary: 3 Ways

With the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception just two days ago, and the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe coming up, the whole week in my own reflections have been based on the Blessed Mother Mary and her model of a perfect christian life. For the first time in my life, I feel like God has placed in me a real, authentic desire to be obedient and truly humble with myself and who I am. For me there is an intense calling to radically change who I am internally and abandon once and for all my pride, my own personal ambition, my desires that hurt, my past and even my rule. But at least! what better time to have this reflection come by the Grace of God during the season of advent and even more so in between the feasts and solemnities of Our Lady, who IS the perfect model of obedience and humility by the way. This was the girl who abandon her self so easily, without hesitation and freely to be a holy tabernacle by bringing Christ into the world. I'm sorry but it makes perfect sense to pray to this perfect woman, our blessed Mother and ask for her intercession so that we might be made worthy of the promises of Christ (see what I did there.) So I'm in and I want the few readers I have to join me. As far as God calling me AS WELL AS YOU, here are three things that God has placed in my heart to change in my life starting right now during this very "Mary-week" in the Church. I call them the Marian Virtues.

1. Suffer in Silence.

When I think of Mary, I picture a pretty quiet person, a girl of strong faith and peaceful mannerisms if you would. The call is to live in silence each day, in the stillness and calmness without fast decisions or quick ordering of the senses.  There is discomfort since so often we might be so use to just getting up and going some where really quick, submitting to the passions. Silence brings peace and I think that in silence, it is when we are most actively listening to God and what he has to say to us. It is in silence that we can build up our lives around prayer and conversation with God. Now, so much of silence involves us being quiet, listening and sitting still. Not only sitting our physical bodies still from movement, but silencing and pausing our senses and those passions we have. When we look at the life of Mary, there is a call to silence what hurts us like our sin and learn to control those things that can potentially keep us from Christ. Mary, full of Grace, help me be silent in the night as you are.

2. Being Obediently Faithful

Mary is the ultimate model for obedience in the Church. I always find myself thinking about that, how faithful she was and how complete she was in her surrender to God. The joy is that we can obtain that perfect obedience with the help of God's grace through the blessed Mother who experienced it in the most profound, divine way possible. In the call to obey, on an even deeper level there is a call to die to self and that means letting other people have their way, even God. Thinking about Mary's surrender, we should have a desire to obey God that same way, perfectly, wholly, every bit of ourselves, everything. That means surrendering our lives, our own ways and what we think is best, all of that we should be willing to give up and obey God understanding that he will bless us with so much more in the future. It's okay if things don't go our way, and it's alright if the only trust we have at the moment is in ourselves, because God can restore that trust we once lost in him with the help of his Grace. The person to first experience this faithful obedience knows all about it, ask her to reveal and share with you her trust and obedience in God.  Mary, help me be as obedient as you someday.

3. Humbly Submitting

Mary, humbly submitted herself to God to bring Christ into the world. She also submits herself to us, to offer our prayers and petitions to Christ her son. The call is to humbly submit ourselves to other people, being present to them compassionately. Submitting ourselves to them in our service and doing it only for God's sake, just like the blessed Mother did for us. The great thing about this submitting is that we are not the only ones. God himself, became the least of men so that he might suffer and submit himself to death so that we can live. Being humble means to think less of ourselves, to be submissive and undistinguished. Submissive to those around us, and those who tell us of our faults and remind us of our shortcomings.Thomas Kempis says what does it matter that they bother us with our faults, they are doing the best possible thing for us, that is making us humble. Being humble involves an abandonment of pride and of course help from the one who experienced it firsthand for the sake of the world. Mary, help me submit myself to Christ present in other people through the ministry of his Church.

I think to reflect on this is an invitation to ask Mary for intercession and prayer that we can participate in the fullness of christian life and faithfulness as she has. She alone is perfect in all virtues and can lead us to God by her prayers. In our silence we can grow obedient to God and then we're given grace to submit ourselves to the people and their needs through the ministry of the Church. These are all things that I am called to work on, starting in silence, in prayer, faith and alongside the fervent intercessory prayers of our Most Holy Mother. 

Created with His Image

The world is full of wonders, so many that God himself created. Sometimes we take for granted the world we live in, almost as if we don't even know where living in it. Were so caught up in our day by what we think we have to do, or what we think we need to get done that we don't notice the things God has set in front of us. The world today is to busy to just stop, take a deep breathe, and meditate on what God has created. Even to thank him for loving us enough to create us almost exactly like him. We are all created in God's image and that to me is a privilege. In the world, it's hard to be still, its hard to be quiet on a spiritual level. It's easy to be loud, or always moving because that's what the world requires of us. Constant movement, constant change, it seems like there is hardly enough time to sit and be still, something that causes discomfort. It reminds me of the scripture from Psalms 46:10 " Be Still and Know That I am God." sometimes it just takes all that we have to sit still and thank God for everything we have, but that's okay because God is a loving and merciful God, He looks forward to the prayer that we say to him. God wants everything that we have to offer to him, when we were created, the image he placed within us is the image of his own self! Our souls, are made from the very image and likeness of God, we read this in Genesis 1.Our lives, have goodness, they have meaning because we have the very image of God dwelling within us. We were created to be holy to see everything that God sets in front of us. To see everything that he sees. It's our destiny to be Holy. It's What we were created For. Reminds me of the story of Jesus in the bible when he is speaking to the Pharisees. The Pharisees, in those days were holy people, they were obedient to the law, very meek and humble. The sad part, is that they were on a mission to catch Jesus by confusing him in his teaching. They wanted a reason to arrest him. They asked Jesus for his opinion, "Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" Pointing to the coin Jesus says, whose image is this? "Caesar's" they said. Jesus said "So then, give to Caesar what is Caesar's and give to God what is God's" Jesus is teaching on the very image that is placed in us. Just like the coin, bearing the image of Caesar, we are inscripted with the very image of God. The coin belongs to Caesar, and we belong to God. So for us the message would be to give to God the image he placed in us. This means our lives, our hearts and our souls. Everything about us should be placed at the mercy and will of God because we bear his image. We were created to be his, created to be holy and loving as he so we could share in Eternal Glory with Him, our creator.

St. Francis: Man of Peace

These past few months, have been extremely Franciscan for me, by the help of Grace I am more drawn to the life of Saint Francis, who he is and what he did. With the help of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio taking on the name of Pope Francis after Saint Francis, I have became attracted more to who Saint Francis is and Pope Francis by the authority given to him by God, invites us to do the same. In the life of Saint Francis, he leaves us with a message of love and compassion. He leaves us with a message to follow Christ with immediate obedience and I think this is what makes the life of Francis so attractive. A few weeks ago, I picked up a book over Saint Francis and found myself so drawn to his life, pretty soon I found myself halfway through the book. There are a couple things that I think are the most profound and necessary in following Christ, especially through the Saint Francis lens.


1.) Saint Francis at a young age was thrown in prison because he left the army he had only been apart of for a day. He was left in the dark, the silence and the cold for over a year. The interesting thing is that Saint Francis in essence,  was formed and molded by the silence, much like the Apostle Paul. It was said that it was in the silence where  Francis found God and so when he was released from prison he was so wrapped up in the silence and the insight he got because of it! So much that he would even seek the silence and look for caves in the nearby mountains. The very thing that he was afraid of before he was now seeking out. Saint Francis new the impact the silence had on him, he wanted to hear the voice of Christ, he desired him and he wanted to now more about him, so he placed himself in the silence and the very darkness he was afraid of.

2.) Saint Francis before his conversion wanted desperatly to become a noble knight and fight for the king of the land. He knew it would give honor to his family, especially his wealthy father. One night in a dream, God spoke to him asking, "Francis, who is it better to serve, The Lord or a man?", without question, Francis said "The Lord" Francis then left his original desire to become a noble Knight to listen and harken to the voice that he had heard. While seeking out this voice in the caves, and in the silence, Francis came upon small run down church and began praying before the altar, with his hands outstretched. Suddenly a voice came from the cross of the altar that said, "Francis, rebuild my Church, because as you can see, it is in ruins." It is described that God spoke directly into the heart of Francis and immediately, Francis ran home, sold everything he owned to follow Christ.

3.) The last is one that I find to be very appealing even in my own life. Saint Francis was a care giver and he cared for everyone even those who were not cared for. The lesser, the sick, the imprisoned, the  naked and the leper. One day St Francis was off to the Courtyard of the king on his father's horse. He recognized a leper on the side of the road. In those days, a Leper would yell, "unclean! unclean!" as they are ringing a bell so that passer-byers would stay clear of them. Well this particular day, Francis got down from his high horse, which is symbolic of losing his pride and honorary status. As he got down, he gave him what little money he had left before he could walk away, Francis was became prompted by the spirit to hug this poor leper. So he did the unthinkable and gave him a hug, with no words exchanged, he got back on his horse, left and as he turned to wave goodbye, he noticed that there was never was anybody there. At that moment, Saint Francis knew that he did not just embrace a leper, but he was embracing Christ and professing not only a love for the leper, but a love for God.

I think the joy is that we are reminded to live a Franciscan lifestyle, one that involves the silence and it involves a little immediate obedience, maybe even some embracing. Embracing those who are lesser than we are and those who don't have anybody. Francis in his life, wanted to serve God the King of Kings, he wanted to know God in a perfect way. How he did it is was through serving those people in need, and listening in the silence where he was placed.  We are called to live in silence, not in noise, with the help of silence God becomes present to us and I think Saint Francis realized this and so he wanted more of it.

Silence Me

You ever lie in bed and just think back on how fast your day went, so fast that sometimes you can't even remember what happened, who you ran into, who you smiled at, who smiled back or what you were doing. At the end of my day, I find myself thinking back on what I did right, what I did wrong. Possibly what I can change or what I can do better at, and I think a lot of times we find ourselves searching, and searching trying to find or remember what it is that we lost or what it is that we can't quite remember. It's like when you meet someone that you've been wanting to meet for a really long time now and today is the day that you are introduced and then by the time you know it you just can't remember their first name. I think a lot of times we go through our days thinking that we have another one tomorrow, we go through the motions, not really acting but just being present. Today I wrote a song while I was praying. It came to me as I was strumming, just because of my thoughts on the day. Lately my days have been missing what they should really hold, I feel like I am moving to fast, so fast that I pass right by Jesus and don't even recognize his being. I pray that for all that feel like their days are caught in the wind and just moving so fast that we don't even have time to pray or sit. I pray for all those that move so fast that they pass right by Jesus, just like me. This song is called Silence Me

Lord Silence Me, Silence Me
Slow Me down, help me live in the spirit
Lord silence me, silence me
Slow my Mind, help me learn to clear it
Silence Me, silence me
Ease my Heart, help me to give it, to you

Lord Speak to me, Speak to me
Draw me to you, help me see you forever
Speak to me, speak to me
Bring me down, down to my knees to pray
Speak to me, speak to me
Calm my soul, by the music of your voice

Silence Me, Silence me
Slow me down, Slow my mind
Silence me, silence me
Ease my heart, Draw me to you
Silence Me, Silence me
Bring me down, and Calm My soul