theROCK

I Want Jesus

Recently, I was reading a book on Mother Teresa. It told a story from the end of her life that struck me.  

One time when she was in the hospital and too weak to speak, she motioned to one of the sisters to bring her a piece of paper and a pen. Then with great difficulty, she wrote out the words, “I want Jesus.” In the days she was in the hospital, she had not been able to go to Mass and deeply desired to receive the Eucharist so that Jesus could be even closer to her in this time of suffering. 

As I considered this story and today’s Gospel, I found myself thinking about the times I do not put my love of Jesus first, the times I place keeping peace in relationships, my “free time,” sleep, and so many other things before my relationship with Jesus, the one who loves me so much more than I could ever imagine. I found myself remembering the times I have resisted picking up my cross, the times I have avoided leaning into difficult relationships, or have tried to avoid suffering. Oh how I need to repent and turn back to the Lord over and over again!  

As I continued to pray, Jesus then reminded me of the times when I have continued to show up to prayer, when I’ve tried to grow in love for my neighbor, where I’ve tried to embrace suffering and turn to him in it. It has been in these times that Jesus has invited me deeper and ultimately made me more and more into the woman he has created me to be. 

This week I am asking the Lord to help make my prayer more open to his invitations so that I can begin to say “I want Jesus” every day of my life. 

Greener Grass

One of the greatest and unexpected reasons I am a priest today came about when I was sitting in my formator’s office telling him I was thinking of leaving the seminary. My first year of college seminary was not as easy as I had hoped and I found myself struggling quite early on in my discernment. By the time the semester was well under way, I already was considering leaving the seminary. I felt spiritually dry. I remember telling the priest all of the things I had left behind for seminary and my desire to go back to them.

The priest listened intently and patiently as I went down the list of reasons why I should leave. When I finished he leaned forward in his chair and said, “You know Tim, the grass is always greener on the other side, and at times we want to leave our ugly looking grass and move. But sometimes, we just need to water our own grass.”

Sometimes we just need to water our own grass. It’s a simple lesson, yet it was a lesson that kept me in seminary and eventually a priest. I began to focus on what was causing my spiritual grass to die and what care it needed. It took some time, but eventually, I became quite happy and content with how green my own grass had become. 

Sometimes we get so caught up in looking around us that we neglect to water and care for ourselves. As we become focused on what we do not have, what we actually have begins to suffer. We then want to give up and move on to newer and better things. It becomes a vicious cycle. The more we look outward the more our grass dies until we eventually move on to greener grass. 

We all have times when we wish we could be elsewhere or further along than we are, especially in our faith. The temptation can be to move on to others things and give up. Let’s try a different approach. For as much as the grass looks greener on the other side, sometimes we just need to water our own grass.

Change My Heart

When one gets hurt and injured, we instinctively flee to someone, or somewhere, to find comfort and solace -  a haven, if you will. Once there, one of two outcomes will likely occur: we are comforted because we received the care that was needed, or we seek someone/somewhere else because it did not do it well enough. For the previous, if too much care is given, we may find ourselves developing almost an "Allegory of the Cave" mindset (from Plato), meaning that even though we know there is something more out there (such as pain or suffering once we leave the comforting place), we choose to stay here because it is only safe and comforting. This, however, would breed ignorance to everything else surrounding us, depriving us of a more real life of experiences, or the ability to connect with others in a deeper way. That being said, the other outcome here does not exactly bear great fruit either: jumping from person to person or place to place just to avoid having to hear or experience something we are trying to avoid, which stunts us from being able to grow emotionally or spiritually as well.

During a recent Sustaining the Mission seminar, one presenter talked about how we are afraid to be vulnerable or accept feedback that challenges us to grow more deeply. This got me thinking about an old song that we would hear at home growing up. Now, you'll have to pardon me here in not remembering fully the name or lyrics of the song, but one verse in particular stuck out: "Change my heart, O God!" 

For me, this always meant that we are asking God to change us, making our hearts more true, and changing us into His own image. Finding that haven that we seek for the hardest of times, in God. But God also reveals unto us hard truths that we must be willing to accept and to allow the change that we may pray for to actually take place; it is one thing to simply ask for the change of one's heart to happen, but to actually act upon it and allow that change to take place requires work and dedication. It is from this concerted effort and work that we can find a footing in the raging waters of life knowing faithfully that God will, indeed, change our hearts...but only when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and work to keep ourselves from falling back into our own personal caves.