Connie Rossini's Blog, page 15

What – Why – How I Write #MyWritingProcess

 

Nancy Ward at Contemplative Homeschool.

Becoming your children’s spiritual director

The Fairy Tale by James Sant (Wikimedia Commons). Are you making plans for your children’s spiritual growth?

 

Have you ever thought of having a spiritual director for your kids or grandkids? Have you ever thought of being one? It’s not enough to teach children “religion”–i.e., Catechism. We also need to teach them how to become saints.

I am developing a spiritual growth plan for my three older children. (J is a little too young at age three!) Here are the areas I am considering:

Temperament

D is almost purely choleric, M is melancholic-phlegmatic, and C is primarily phlegmatic. (I haven’t completely figured him out yet–he’s eight and doesn’t know himself as well as the others do.)

Each of the Contemplative Homeschool.

You can make someone else’s suffering meaningful

Self Portrait with a Friend by Rafael (Wikimedia Commons). We can form holy friendships that help one person grow closer to Christ while relieving the other’s suffering.

 

In the middle of Lent, I received an email from a new reader I’ll call Jill. Jill shared with me her years of darkness in her personal and spiritual life. My heart went out to her. I wanted to do something for her, more than just writing an encouraging answer. So I thought about it and prayed about it. Then I had an insight.

Here, in part, is how I replied:

“I explore these questions [about God and suffering] a lot in my book. I will give you a brief version here. Rabbi Kushner, writing in When Bad Things Happen to Good People, said that we shouldn’t ask why when we suffer. Instead, we should ask, What now? How am I to react?

Finding meaning in our suffering

“Similarly, Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning wrote, “Suffering ceases to be suffering in some way in the moment that it finds a meaning.” He found that in the concentration camp, those who were able to survive and be psychologically sound found a purpose in their suffering. For Frankl himself, that purpose was to rewrite the manuscript of his book on helping his psychiatric patients find meaning in life. The Nazis had destroyed his manuscript when he was stripped of his possessions at the camp. So over the years he rewrote the manuscript, partly in his head and partly on any strips of paper he could find. He had the will to survive so he could publish his work…

“My question for your situation then was, How can your suffering become purposeful? Some people would counsel you to offer up your suffering. But if you are unable to complete even small projects because your darkness has sapped all your energy, offering it up may just be beyond your strength. What then?

Are you too overwhelmed to “offer it up?”

“Well, I thought, I could pray and sacrifice for you. I could become a partner with you to relieve you of some of your suffering…

“But then I had an inspiration. Maybe it came from the Holy Spirit. For Lent, as you may know if you have read many of my blog posts yet, I have been trying not to complain about anything. Honestly, I haven’t done very well at it. I have resisted temptation sometimes, but only a small fraction of the time. What if I offered my struggle against temptation in this area for you? This seems to me to go a step beyond fasting or making other sacrifices, because my concern for you would be helping me to resist sin and grow in detachment. And this would make your suffering meaningful.

“Without your having to do anything more than you are doing right now, your suffering could be my inspiration to grow in virtue. With thoughts of your darkness before me, I would (I hope) be doubly motivated to work hard against temptation. And my triumph over sin would be your triumph.”

Both partners can benefit

I have been offering my struggle against complaining for Jill the past month. And guess what? The second half of Lent went much better than the first! As I suspected, offering it for another person’s relief from suffering gave me the extra motivation I needed. I thank Jill for the opportunity to partner with her in our striving towards God.

What about you? Do you have fear, depression, family problems, financial needs, or spiritual darkness that weighs you down? Does your situation seem hopeless? Would you be open to partnering with another reader to work on both your needs? Remember, you do not have to do anything other than allowing the other person to make sacrifices for you. Your suffering is already enough for you to bear.

And the rest of you, who are experiencing only the normal challenges of living for God. Would you be willing to offer your struggle against temptation for the good of a stranger? Would you be willing to have God apply to him or her all the merit of your success?

If you are in the first group, please comment below, with a brief description of your darkness. Then one of our other readers can reply, volunteering to partner with you. If your darkness is too personal to share here, send me an email at crossini4774 at comcast dot net, and I will share with another reader as much as you would like me to about your situation. If you wish to volunteer and not enough people comment that they’d like help, I will send you information from someone who emailed me privately. Or perhaps more people will gather courage to tell us about their needs when they see how many others are willing to help them.

Please spread the word about this project and encourage others to join us. I think this could be really powerful for changing both partners’ lives.

Connie Rossini

Other posts you may likeContemplative Homeschool.

Which type of devotion to Mary suits your soul?

If you asked the saints what is the quickest way to become holy, most of them would answer one of two things: devotion to the Eucharist or devotion to Mary. We’ll save the Eucharist for another day’s post. Today I’d like you to think about the different ways you can be devoted to Mary.

St. Louis de Montfort wrote the classic True Devotion to Mary. You can read about how to follow his method of devotion in Contemplative Homeschool.

Our greatest spiritual battle is against ourselves

Joan of Arc on Horseback (Wikimedia Commons). Our flesh is our greatest enemy.

Sometimes life is a war zone. So many things disturb our peace. The kids act defiantly. An important contract falls through at work. Our finances are in trouble. The phone rings during a serious conversation. These are all surface battles. The real war we fight is the war against ourselves.

God created man in love and goodness. Adam and Eve sinned. Evil entered their hearts. Where once it had been easy to do God’s will, it became a struggle. They passed this struggle down to us, their children.

I want to do good, but I don’t

St. Paul wrote, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members” (Romans 7:15, 21-22). Haven’t we all experienced this?

We start the day with a prayer for grace and resolutions to do God’s will. Then temptation hits us, and we give in to the sin that we promised God we would resist. We know we do not really want to be sinful. We know that disobeying God cannot make us happy. And yet, we give in, because we are weak, or tired, or—for a moment—indifferent to the consequences.

The exterior battles are difficult. They wear us out. But if we could win the battle within, the battle against our baser selves, we could maintain peace in our heart in every situation. How can we find this peace?

God fights with us

The first step is to remember that God is in control, even in our interior struggles. God knew that Adam and Eve would sin. He knew we would have to fight against the consequences of Original Sin, the concupiscence that tempts us. When a battle rages within us, we do not fight alone. God fights on the side of good.

God guides our hand in the battle, but he does not force it. He gave us free will and He respects our freedom. He quietly offers us the grace to conquer sin. We must choose to accept that grace. We must invite Jesus to conquer sin in us.

Sometimes, we will be too weak to do this. Sometimes we will fail. Failure is part of being human after the fall. We cannot avoid it. We should not be surprised or dismayed by it. Failure does not surprise or dismay God.

Humility wins every battle

Whatever the outcome of our initial struggle, we can still triumph in the end. When we sin, we can simply say, “Jesus, I’m sorry. I sinned. Please forgive me, and give me the grace to resist temptation next time.” We don’t need to anguish over our sins. When we calmly accept God’s forgiveness, we grow in humility and trust.

We can grow closer to God by accepting his grace in the midst of the battle and resisting the temptation to sin. And we can also grow closer to God by accepting his grace and forgiveness after we lose the battle, resisting the temptation to despair. No matter how many individual battles we lose, we can still win the war. Weak and sinful people that we are, we can still become holy. Nothing can stop the progress of grace in our lives except our refusal to embrace it.

Connie Rossini

Share with us: Are you fighting a battle that you can’t seem to win? Can you tell us about past triumphs?

Other posts you may likeContemplative Homeschool.

What is a mystic?

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Old Man Praying by Falat (Wikimedia Commons). Are you a mystic? Can you be? Should you be?

 

The word mystic presents a similar problem to the word Contemplative Homeschool.

Learning typology with Daniel in the lions’ den

Daniel in the Lions’ Den by Rubens (Wikimedia Commons).

 

I  titled this post “learning typology,” instead of “teaching typology,” because this is a subject we can adapt to any age group. Many adult Catholics are unfamiliar with typology. So if your children are grown, or you’re not a parent, read this for yourself. If you do have young children or you teach religious education, you can adapt this to your students’ ages.

If you are completely unfamiliar with typology or need a refresher course, start with my post on Contemplative Homeschool.

Wounded for our transgressions

The Flagellation by Caravaggio (Wikimedia Commons).

 

Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
 He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
 But he was wounded for our transgressions,
he was bruised for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,
and with his stripes we are healed.
 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned every one to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb,
so he opened not his mouth.
 By oppression and judgment he was taken away;
and as for his generation, who considered
that he was cut off out of the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people?
And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Isaiah 53:1-9

Blessed Triduum!

Connie Rossini

 

Other posts you may likeContemplative Homeschool.

Keeping watch with Jesus–unexpectedly

The memorial to the martyrs of Unzen, Japan. (Photo by Connie Rossini).

This is the week for keeping watch with Jesus in a special way. Although God calls us to spend time with Him in prayer daily, we rightly feel that we should spend extra time with Him during Holy Week. But how should we go about it?

When I was a teenager, my family started a tradition of an all-night prayer vigil on Holy Thursday. Beginning at 10 p.m., my parents, siblings, and I took turns praying in one or two one-hour slots for the next eight hours. I loved offering this extra sacrifice to Jesus, this extra sign of love. Jesus would not be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane if I could help it.

After I graduated from college, I spent two years as a lay missionary in Japan, teaching English to support the evangelization work of an American priest. During spring break of the first year, my roommate Mary Beth and I traveled to the island of Kyushu. We planned to be in Nagasaki for Easter.

In the land of the Japanese martyrs

On Holy Thursday we were in the resort town of Unzen. Known for its hot springs, in which the Japanese bathe for health, Unzen is also the site of mass martyrdoms in the 17th century. In one of the most heinous instances of torture in history,  Japanese officials hung Catholics upside-down to slowly roast over the hot springs. They punctured holes in the martyrs’ foreheads, so that the rush of blood to their heads would not kill them prematurely.

Mary Beth and I had reservations at the youth hostel in Unzen. We asked a girl at the tourist information booth for directions by bus to our accommodations. She told us which bus number to take from the depot. Unfortunately, she forgot to mention that the bus lines ran both east and west from there. Too late we discovered we had gone the wrong direction.

We listened for the bus driver to call out the name of our stop, as the sky grew darker and every passenger but us got off the bus. Finally he stopped, and told us in Japanese that we were at the end of the line.

We realized then what had happened. We debarked, thinking we would just wait for the next bus going the other way. Then we looked at the bus schedule on the sign at the bus stop and discovered we had taken the last bus of the evening. So now we were stuck on the outskirts of town somewhere.

Stranded on Holy Thursday night

Not far from the bus stop was a small public park. We left our luggage there under a tree, which you can do in Japan without fear of anyone’s touching it. We explored the neighborhood. Houses occupied most of the streets. Then we saw a brick building with the word “Church” on it in English.

Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, where we attended the Easter Vigil (photo by Connie Rossini).

“I don’t care what kind of Protestant Church it is,” Mary Beth said. “I’m sure they’ll take us in.” I agreed. But as we approached the building, we read the full name: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We kept walking.

Seeing no alternative, we decided to spend the night in the park. We bought snacks at a 24-hour convenience store and spent some time browsing and reading magazines. Then we returned to our luggage.

“It can’t get any worse.”

The park had two cement benches. As the night grew later and our eyes refused to stay open, we each took one bench and stretched out, trying to doze on the hard surface. And then, the old punchline happened. It started to rain.

We had our umbrellas ready. But it’s not easy to hold an umbrella and sleep at the same time. We sat for a while with the handles between our knees and the tops resting on our heads. But as the rain came down harder we looked for another option.

Next to the park stood a small apartment building with a covered porch. We lugged our suitcases over and sat with our backs against the wall. We didn’t really expect to sleep, but at least we could stay dry.

Then someone came out of the building. We kept our eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, as two male voices addressed us. Was someone going to kick the suspicious-looking foreigners off their property?

When they touched our shoulders, we had to look up. We saw two teenaged boys. They invited us inside, and since this was Japan, we accepted the invitation. The boys happily practiced English while we all drank tea. No adults were home. When the sun had risen, we thanked them and left, returning to the bus stop in time to catch the first bus of Good Friday.

Unexpected opportunities to watch with Christ

I didn’t plan an all-night vigil for Holy Week that year. But God did. Sometimes we plan our sacrifices. Other times, God surprises us.

Do you have plans for spending more time with Jesus this week? What if His plans are different from yours? Will you watch with Him in the trials He allows you to experience? Or will you be spiritually sleeping though them? Can you be His companion in unexpected moments, as well as scheduled ones?

We can watch with Jesus all day, as well as all night. We need to keep our eyes open, or we might not even know He is there. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Watch and pray.

Connie Rossini

Other posts you may likeContemplative Homeschool.

What’s your favorite book of the Bible?

 

What’s your favorite book of the Bible? Do you have one? Do you read it often enough to choose? Or do you find yourself being the stereotypical Catholic  who never reads the Bible on his own?

I love the book of Sirach, also called Ecclesiasticus. It’s my favorite book of the Old Testament. Not found in Protestant Bibles, Sirach is part of the section known as Wisdom Literature. It contains sage advice for many different areas of life. We often hear readings from Sirach on the feast of the Holy Family.

It’s more difficult for me to choose a favorite from the New Testament. As I child and teenager, I memorized the first 15 chapters of Matthew (minus the genealogy at the beginning). I can still recite most of it.

But I’m really a fan of St. Paul. St. Paul was a brilliant writer, as well as a brilliant theologian. I love the way he interprets the Old Testament in light of Christ, his firm insistence on the truth, and the way he weaves a theme throughout the pages of an individual letter.

Holy Week is the perfect time to start reading the Bible more often, if you haven’t been doing it much lately. If you need some motivation, here’s an early posts of mine on Contemplative Homeschool.