Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 8

Prayer is a non-negotiable on the Lenten journey

As we move into the second half of the Lenten season, it’s a good time to take stock of our promises and practices. So often we give up sweets or alcohol or social media, or, conversely, we add in service and volunteer work. BUT, if we don’t thread prayer through the sacrifice and service, we are left with nothing more than a diet and philanthropy. Fasting and almsgiving only become such when they are grounded in prayer. Prayer is the air beneath the wings of the other two pillars of Lent.

Prayer is both our overarching theme and our underlying foundation during Lent (and during life!). Without it, nothing moves forward or expands outward. So today, even for just five minutes, sit with God in prayer. Don’t just move your lips; open the “ear of your heart,” as St. Benedict instructed. Prayer is not just talking; it is listening for the Spirit to speak to us, but that can only happen when we settle down in silence and pay attention with our very being.

If you’d like to continue this conversation on prayer, listen to the newest Life Lines podcast: “Living on a Prayer: Inspiration for Lent and Beyond” at the link below. And don’t forget to the subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss any episodes!

 

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Can you have a “happy” Lent?

As I was wrapping up a Lenten retreat recently, someone in attendance approached me afterward and asked if it’s appropriate or even possible to wish someone “Happy Lent!” The funny thing is, I had said those exact words to Father Bob Longobucco as he walked into the church earlier that evening, even though it’s not something I would usually say seriously to anyone. But if you know Father Bob, you know a little levity is always allowed amid the spiritual seriousness.

But this person’s question made me take a closer look at the topic, and I promised I would ponder it and maybe even write about it. So here we are. What I said off the top of my head that Wednesday evening was that I think we hear “happy” with our secularized ears and what we really mean is “joyful.” But does “Have a joyful Lent” ring any truer in a season where sacrifice and the road to Calvary are in view?

I would offer a resounding YES! And here’s why. Look at some of the readings of this season so far. On Ash Wednesday, in the first reading from the Book of Joel, we were urged: “Return to me with your whole heart … return to the Lord, your God. For gracious and merciful is he, and slow to anger, rich in kindness, and relenting in punishment.” What could be more joyful than a God like that? So often we focus on what is wrong with us and how unworthy we think we are, but God reminds us that we are beloved exactly as we are right now. And that should make us both happy and joyful, no matter what the season.

Last week, one of the Gospel acclamations, quoted Psalm 51, saying: “A clean heart create for me, O God; give me back the joy of your salvation.” I used this exact line of Scripture as a breath prayer for my retreat group precisely because of the words “the joy of your salvation.” I wanted to remind people that ours is a faith of joy, even on the road to Calvary, because we know what lies beyond it.

Famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton, in his book “Seasons of Celebration: Meditations on the Cycle of the Liturgical Feasts,” wrote: “Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy, and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast. It cannot be otherwise, as it forms part of the great Easter cycle.”

He goes on to say, “There is joy in the salutary fasting and abstinence of the Christian who eats and drinks less in order that his mind may be more clear and receptive to receive the sacred nourishment of God’s word, which the whole Church announces and meditates upon in each day’s liturgy throughout Lent.”

Notice the word he uses there: joy. For many of us, the word “happy” is where we get hung up, because happy in our secular world’s view is about those surface feelings we get when we go on vacation or get a promotion or eat a good meal. There is a big difference between happy and joyful, and we are called to be joyful in our faith, not just when things are going according to plan but even when they feel terribly off course, maybe especially in that case. No easy task, to be sure.

Even if you’re not comfortable wishing your neighbor at church a “happy” Lent, can you spend some time thinking about where the joy lives in this season?  When we discover the joy bubbling up amid the sacrifices we’re making, like a purple crocus pushing up from beneath the snow in our yard, we begin to realize that there is far more to this season than what we see on the surface.

Happy, joyful, blessed Lent!

Mary DeTurris Poust will be offering a Lenten retreat at St. Patrick’s Church in Ravena on Saturday, March 11, at 10 a.m. and via Zoom on Wednesday, March 15, at 7 p.m. For more information, visit: https://notstrictlyspiritual.com/events.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

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New podcast: The Head & the Heart (Lent, Week 1)

As we begin the first full week of Lent, I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about this 40-day journey and how we might best approach the challenge. Join me for a conversation about prayer, sacrifice, and packing light. Give it a listen at the link below. And don’t forget to subscribe to my podcast so you don’t miss any future episodes. It’s available on Apple, Spotify, Google and other platforms.

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This Lent, let God set the course

Back when I was younger, I would approach Ash Wed­nes­day in spiritual attack mode. Armed with books and an overly ambitious plan, I entered the Lenten season like a tourist set on seeing every attraction in a city while missing out on the true charm of a place. By the second or third week of Lent, I’d find myself deflated and disappointed, wondering how I ended up so far from my original destination.

One of the benefits of aging, however, has been a softer and gentler approach to this challenging season. I’ve become more realistic about what I might accomplish during Lent, or any other day of my life. I know how easy it is to set overwhelming goals — spiritual or otherwise — and give up in frustration before any new habits have taken root. So, this year, as we prepare to begin our 40-day journey through the desert toward resurrection, I’m packing light. Yes, I still have plans but those lean more toward the possible, maybe even probable, rather than the impossible.

It’s good to remember as we begin this journey that it’s okay if it’s not always a direct route from Point A to Point B. We are human, after all, and although we sometimes don’t seem to grasp that, God does. There will be days when we feel as though we’re not making any spiritual “progress,” and other times when we seem to be slipping farther and farther from our goal. Fortunately for us, God is kind and merciful. And patient beyond measure.

So, take a deep breath and just begin. Right where you are. If you stumble along the way, dust yourself off and begin again. Transformation doesn’t come in an instant or all at once. It comes bit by bit and with daily effort. It also comes only with a willingness to let go of our need to control where this season will take us. We often want a transformation of our own making, rather than accepting the version God has planned for us. What if we loosened our grip on the reins and let God set the course?

Pope Francis says, “Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy.” Let’s take a moment and contemplate what needs to be reawakened in us, what needs a little shaking up. To keep us steady and on track, we can stake out a dwelling place — even if only for a few minutes each day — in the heart of Scripture, where we will find guideposts and markers to move us along.

We start each Lent with the stark reminder that we are dust and to dust we will return. Even if we get the more contemporary refrain — Repent and believe in the Gospel — that smudge of ash from last year’s burned palms is reminder enough of our temporary status on this planet. It’s such a beautiful way to begin, stripping it all down to the basics. We are here, but not for long. What do we plan to do with the brief time we have? How will God figure into those plans?

The poet Mary Oliver, in her poem “When Death Comes,” writes:

“When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

Perhaps we can take Oliver’s words to heart as we head into Lent, planning not to tackle an unrealistic list of things to do and sights to see but instead fostering a desire to slow down and make something “particular and real” of a season that offers us time apart to move closer to who and what God has called us to be.

I’ll be offering several Lenten retreats in the weeks ahead: Thursday, March 2, 6:30 p.m. at St. Kateri Tekakwitha in Niskayuna, NY; Saturday, March 11, 10 a.m. at St. Patrick’s in Ravena, NY; and Wednesday, March 15, 7 p.m. via Zoom. For more information, click HERE.

Photo by Ahna Ziegler on Unsplash

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Not Strictly Spiritual marks 15 years

It’s hard for me to believe, but it was 15 years ago today — on the Feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists — that I launched this blog. (You can read my original blog post from this date in 2008 HERE.) So, happy anniversary me! And thank you to all of you who have followed me over the years and who continue to show up here again and again. I am forever grateful. It’s been an amazing journey, and, as you can see, what started as a little blog has grown into a much larger website and endeavor. It’s been a labor of love, one I plan to continue for as many years as I’m able.

When I first launched Not Strictly Spiritual, I did so with a favorite prayer by St. Francis de Sales, whose writings are remarkably relevant to our world today despite his being a 17th century bishop. I used to have this prayer hanging on my bathroom mirror so it was the first thing I would see when I began my day:

Do not look forward in fear to the changes of life;
rather, look to them with full hope that as they arise,
God, whose very own you are,
will lead you safely through all things;
and when you cannot stand it,
God will carry you in His arms.
Do not fear what may happen tomorrow;
the same everlasting Father who cares for you today
will take care of you then and every day.
He will either shield you from suffering,
or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.
Be at peace,
and put aside all anxious thoughts and imagination.
— St. Francis de Sales

So much has happened over these past 15 years, much of incredibly wonderful, some of it painfully awful. And yet through it all we carry on, trusting the path, trusting our story as it unfolds, trusting that God will carry us, enfold us, shield us, care for us.

As I look out toward the next leg of this journey, I can tell you that I hope to get back to my Life Lines podcast and make that more regular/frequent. I will continue posting my monthly Life Lines column, which runs in The Evangelist, and I will post other spiritual writing as I am able. You’ll also be able to find my upcoming events, which includes four weekend retreats in 2023 (one in the Capital Region, one in Syracuse, one in the Adirondacks, and one in Maryland), plus some single-day events here and there. I’ll be adding more as they are scheduled, so continue to check back on the Events tab at the top of the home page to see what’s coming up. I hope I see you along the way.

Thank you again for joining me in this space and in my Tribe. If you haven’t signed up for the Tribe, which includes receiving an occasional email newsletter from me, you can do so at the Join the Tribe button in the top right corner of this page.

Peace, Love, Blessings, and Every Good Thing,

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Prayer for life: moving to a sacred rhythm in a discordant world

O Mary, bright dawn of the new world,
Mother of the living,
to you do we entrust the cause of life.
Look down, O Mother,
upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born,
of the poor whose lives are made difficult,
of men and women who are victims of brutal violence,
of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy.
Grant that all who believe in your Son
may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time.
Obtain for them the grace to accept that Gospel as a gift ever new,
the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives
and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely,
in order to build, together with all people of good will, the civilization of truth and love,
to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life.
—St. John Paul II

It’s hard to look around at our world and not think we have lost all sense of the sacredness of life. From unborn babies who never get to take a first breath, to people fleeing the indiscriminate bombing of their homeland, to students and concertgoers and restaurant deliverymen gunned down in the street, to elderly people abandoned in nursing homes to die a slow and lonely death.

As much as these stories garner the headlines in the media and perhaps in our own hearts and minds, the reality is that when we widen our view, seeking out beauty even amid the horrors, we begin to notice the small and loving actions taking place around us every day. These mundane miracles remind us that, although we cannot change the world on a grand scale, we can change our world day by day through the power of the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed and that we strive to follow.

Always, everywhere, every day, we are challenged to come back to love, even when it would be easier to hate. We are called to live our lives not to the rhythm of the mob (be it on social media or in the street) but to the steady beat of a heart that knows the only way to piece together this broken but beautiful world is through constant love in the face of sorrow and hatred, anger and violence. Our Blessed Mother did just that. From the moment of the Annunciation, she set her life to the beat of the most sacred rhythm. She trusted and loved; loved and trusted.

And so we entrust ourselves and the cause of life to her today, knowing that our sorrowful mother will give us the courage and strength to keep love always before us, even amid heartbreak and injustice. Dorothy Day, who saw how love could spring up amid brokenness and suffering, taught this truth: “The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?”

This month as we pray for life, let us take a hard-but-tender look at our own hearts and see where God is calling us to an interior revolution that will ripple ever outward to help change our world.

Credits:
Mary DeTurris Poust, “A Prayer for Life,” from the January 2023 issue of Give Us This Day, www.giveusthisday.org (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2023). Used with permission.

Photo by Marius Masalar on Unsplash

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Entering a season that beckons us to bask in the ordinary

Most of the world moved on from Christmas as soon as the presents were opened and the dinner consumed, but we Catholics savor the season, soaking up every last bit of goodness right through the Feast of the Epiphany and finally the Baptism of the Lord. As we bring the Christmas season to a close, we leapfrog from Jesus in a manager, held by his young mother, to Jesus in a river, beheld by his heavenly Father. It can be a little disorientating as we navigate the spiritual time travel from Jesus’ infancy to the beginning of his ministry before we re-enter Ordinary Time and await the Lenten season only six weeks away.

As we settle into our non-holiday routines, our churches devoid of poinsettias and manager scenes and our homes swept clean of pine needles and tinsel, it would be easy to fall back into spiritual lives stripped of the extra prayer time and devotion we mustered during Advent and Christmas. So often, when these special liturgical seasons end, we take it as a signal that our spiritual life can shift to the back burner for a bit. But Ordinary Time is really the perfect time to use our ordinary and everyday lives to dig deeper into the extraordinary and transcendent gifts always at our disposal. In the post-Christmas season before us, can we look at our mundane tasks and challenges and recognize that Jesus and the Holy Family faced much of the same during the period of his life not narrated by Scripture, the period that probably looked like an ancient version of our contemporary lives?

After all, Mary and Joseph had to face many of the same struggles new parents face, on top of the frightening realities heaped upon them as parents of the Savior. They had to feed and change the infant Jesus, hoping he would take a nap or sleep through the night. They had to teach him to dress himself and say his prayers, take him to temple and tend to him when he was ill or hurt. Joseph worked and taught Jesus a trade; Mary cooked and cleaned and helped raise her son in the Jewish faith. I’m sure there were many days when they wondered how bringing up the Son of God could be so ordinary.

But that is the miracle and gift of the Incarnation. God comes among us as one of us and experiences life in all its messy, glorious, challenging reality. When something in our life upends everything and makes us wonder how we’ll get through, we can turn to a God who has been where we are. It’s incredibly comforting and confounding all at once. We look up to a God who is almighty, as we should, but we can never forget that our God was also one of us, making our entire faith a celebration of the extraordinary that always exists alongside the ordinary.

Ordinary Time gets its name from the numbered — “ordinal” — Sundays and not for its lack of pizazz. While it is not one of the notable liturgical seasons (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter), it is still important. In fact, it offers us its own endearing challenge: recognizing the majesty amid the mundane, the divine amid the everyday.

Here’s how the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops describes this season: “The Sundays and weeks of Ordinary Time… take us through the life of Christ. This is the time of conversion. This is living the life of Christ. Ordinary Time is a time for growth and maturation.”

What does that mean for us? How might we grow and mature in faith in the weeks between the end of Christmas and the start of Lent? As we approach the First Sunday in Ordinary Time on Jan. 15, can we make a plan to seek God not amid twinkling lights or the barren desert but right where we are today, no matter how ordinary?

Photo by Stephanie Harvey on Unsplash

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Resolve to Evolve: Begin a journey of true transformation

‘Tis the season to start thinking about our grand self-improvement plans for 2023, right? It’s right around this time of year, when we’re eating too many Christmas cookies, spending too much money, and just generally feeling overstressed and under-rested, that we begin to craft the resolutions that we vow to begin on January 1 and continue through the coming year. But, as we all know, that’s a fool’s errand. If we’re being honest, we often make the EXACT SAME RESOLUTION every single year. Because resolutions aren’t effective. They don’t work, and, more often than not, they usually just make us feel bad about ourselves and our ability to stick with our promise to                    . (Name your poison: eat healthier, exercise more, drink less, put down our phone, etc.)

Does that mean we should just give up the whole idea of transformation? No. But it does mean we have to rethink what we’re really looking for when we make a resolution that goes only skin deep and doesn’t get to the stuff underneath that usually creates the need for a resolution in the first place. Enter my annual rallying cry: ReVolution Not Resolution! You do not need to make resolutions. In fact, I challenge you to go against the grain and refuse to make any resolution whatsoever. Instead, promise yourself that you’re going to do something more meaningful and more lasting, something that helps you blossom into the Self you were created to be. The journey of inner transformation is the only real way to make the “progress” we seek in our spiritual lives and in our lives in general.

To that end, I’ll be offering an evening retreat — both in-person and online — for those who would like to take up this exciting and fulfilling challenge. We will talk about all the ways we block our own path when it comes to making our daily lives more peaceful and joyful and learn some practical exercises for clearing away the obstacles and moving forward. You can’t fail at this plan. If you don’t do what you set out to do, you just begin again right where you are. No resolution broken, no plan to abandon until another New Year’s Eve rolls around.

Hosted by Christ the King Retreat House in Syracuse and available to anyone in any region via Zoom, this workshop will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 4, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Two weeks after the event, on Wednesday, Jan. 18, at 6:30 p.m., we will hold an hourlong Zoom follow-up session for all participants so we can check in, share progress or challenges, and just generally support each other in our efforts to keep on keeping on.

If you’d like to read more about this approach to starting the new year off right, you can head over HERE to read a previous post on this favorite topic of mine. If you’d like more info on the retreat or the registration link, click HERE to go to the CTK website.

Click HERE to read a recent story on my upcoming retreat in the latest issue of The Catholic Sun.

Photo by SOULSANA on Unsplash.

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In turbulent times, look for the light

We are approaching the mid-point of Advent, which, of course, includes the lighting of the rose-colored candle in our Advent wreath. It’s not just a pretty color or a seasonal aesthetic. For all of us on the Advent path, the color has deeper meaning: Gaudete, Rejoice! In a world focused on pre-Christmas chaos, the rose-tinged theme of this week is a little wake-up call, providing a sudden bright spot that makes us snap to attention and simultaneously draws us back to our center. The secular version of the season insists we hurry, shop, bake, wrap, but the Advent readings remind us to recalibrate, pause and ponder the story that is unfolding slowly before us rather than jumping ahead to the ending.

If we surrender to what is offered to us during Advent and give ourselves permission to slow down, we suddenly find life set to a new rhythm, a sacred rhythm that urges us to savor the preparations for the feast rather than just the feast itself. As we walk step by step toward Christmas, we are continually reminded that the journey is the goal, because this is about so much more than a moment that comes and goes in the blink of an eye. If we are paying attention, this journey will coax us along, reminding us that when the bows and ribbons are discarded later this season and the tree is brought to the curb, the inner place where we dwell in silence and the Person who dwells there with us is eternal. If this season does what it is meant to do, we will be left with an internal glow that shines on long after the ornaments and singing Santas are packed away.

While that sounds nice, we all know it’s not so simple. It can be difficult to keep that light shining through all the challenges and frustrations and annoyances that come our way day in and day out. It’s so much easier sometimes to slip back into dissatisfaction, to take up a poor-pitiful-me position and wonder why God (and everyone we encounter) can’t make it easier for us to be prayerful and patient and peaceful. But that’s not the way life works, and what merit is there in being prayerful if its power only sticks when times are good, right?

I think it comes down to remembering that rejoicing (today or any day) doesn’t mean we have to be happy all the time, outwardly bouncing around with a smile on our face from one moment to the next. To truly rejoice is to remain inwardly joyful even when times are hard, because our joy isn’t in things of this world; our joy is in God and what God has done for us.

When I was on an Advent retreat several years ago, we sang a beautiful Taize chant:

“Our darkness is never darkness in your sight. The deepest night is clear as the daylight.”

The play of light against darkness is so apparent during this season, when the ever-increasing glow of the Advent wreath stands in stark contrast to the thick cover of night outside our windows. During these turbulent and troubling times, it is especially easy to become so laser-focused on the darkness that we don’t see (or choose to ignore) the light shimmering all around us. We can even get into the bad habit of seeking out the darkness and stewing there. It becomes familiar and comforting, despite being painful and fear-inducing.

Throughout Advent we hear the messengers of Scripture reminding our ancestors in faith — Zechariah, Joseph, Mary — not to be afraid. Because God is with us, not just during Advent, not just on Christmas, but through every high and low of our year and our life. Once we realize there is no darkness with God, everything becomes clear, and we shine like the sun, even at midnight.

This column originally appeared in the Dec. 8, 2022, issue of The Evangelist.

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We belong to the One who is and was and is to come

My Catholic News Service column for the Second Sunday of Advent. (The image is me offering an expanded version of this message as a reflection at Mass during the Advent retreat I led this past weekend at the Dominican Retreat & Conference Center in Niskayuna, NY.).

The image of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel stands in stark contrast to the secular holiday images that bombard us from every side during this season.

Camel hair for clothes and locusts for food are a far cry from a red velvet suit and a plate of cookies, and, yet, here we are, trying to navigate between two very different worlds with two very different messages. Ho, ho, ho, you brood of vipers!

This Sunday’s readings can be a tough sell. We listen, we hear, but it’s hard not to feel just a little bit disappointed to be handed threshing floors and unquenchable fires as we decorate our Jesse trees and open the doors on our Advent calendars.

And while John’s dire warnings may seem out of place in a season of hopeful waiting, if we dive deeper into the readings, we find glimmers of a hope that will outlast anything we might find under the tree come Christmas morning.

For starters we can soothe our jagged souls by spending a little time with St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, today’s second reading, to offset some of the harshness John is serving out.

In Paul we find endurance and encouragement, harmony and hope. That’s more like it, we want to shout, but the hard truth is that ours is not a faith of either/or but one of both/and. We do not get the harmony and hope without the repentance and refinement through spiritual fire.

We probably should not expect anything less from a God who was willing to break into our world to save us by becoming one of us.

“The Advent mystery in our own lives is the beginning of the end of all, in us, that is not yet Christ,” wrote famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton in his essay “Advent: Hope or Delusion?”

“It is the beginning of the end of unreality. And that is surely a cause of joy! But unfortunately we cling to our unreality, we prefer the part to the whole, we continue to be fragments, we do not want to be ‘one man in Christ.’”

That sounds suspiciously like an updated version of the message John the Baptist brings us today.

This mystery we call Advent, this path through darkness toward light, is not only about preparing the way of the Lord but preparing ourselves for the Lord’s coming — on Christmas, yes, but also at the end of time.

Advent is a season that dwells in both realities. We prepare to celebrate a birth even as we prepare for the end of the world as we know it.

But what does that mean for those of us who are living in the world, cooking dinners (not of the locust variety), buying gifts for family and friends, decorating our house and sipping eggnog?

Can we enjoy those moments of lighthearted joy even as we accept John’s message of repentance? Yes, because Jesus showed us how.

Throughout Scripture we see Jesus attend parties, share meals with friends and find joy in the innocence of children. Ours is not a joyless faith, just the opposite. It is a faith that finds joy even amid suffering, which is no easy thing.

This season of Advent and the Scripture readings that guide our way day by day provide the operating instructions for the difficult task of letting go of our unreality and clinging to the only reality that matters: Jesus Christ.

The rest of the world wants you to blast Mariah Carey around the clock, bake cookies till you drop and spend so much you’ll need six months to dig yourself out of debt. When you think about it, that doesn’t sound all that joyful, does it?

Advent, on the other hand, asks you to slow down, pause, breathe, wait, be. Can’t you feel your shoulders relax as you hear that? If you want a recipe for real joy, skip the world’s version and find what’s hiding in the challenging words of Scripture.

“Our task is to seek and find Christ in our world as it is, not as it might be,” wrote Merton. “The fact that the world is other than it might be does not alter the truth that Christ is present in it and that His plan has been neither frustrated nor changed: indeed, all will be done according to His will.

“Our Advent is a celebration of this hope. What is uncertain is not the ‘coming’ of Christ but our own reception of Him, our own response to Him, our own readiness and capacity to ‘go forth to meet him.’”

In other words: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.”

Turns out John the Baptist is right on time, not only in this season but in this period of history. The world tries to tangle us up in heartbreak and division, but John reminds us in the bluntest of terms that this world holds nothing for us.

We belong to the One who is and was and is to come.

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