Dealing with Disasters: 2nd Luminous Mystery

We’re living in times when everything looks like a disaster. We’re hearing about nightly riots in major cities like Portland and Philidelphia. Covid cases are spiking worldwide with no near term cure in sight. Some places are considering shutting down public spaces once again. We are deeply divided and worried over the US presidential election. On a personal level, many of us worry about our financial and emotional wellbeing from sheltering in place for such a long time. This does seem like a hopeless time.

Finding Perspective


In these times of trial, I like to meditate on the Second Luminous Mystery, the Miracle at Cana. I think about how running out of wine at the wedding was a disaster. Sure, it’s not a Covid19 sized disaster, but for a wedding, it would be a big deal. However, even if Jesus never performed the miracle of turning water into wine, I’m sure the bride and groom would have been just fine. Sure, there might have been some temporary embarrassment, but there are worse things in life than running out of wine at your wedding.

We can look at this Rosary mystery and ask ourselves whether we are making a bigger deal out of the challenges in our lives than need be. Are we giving situations more importance than is warranted? While we should bring all our concerns to Jesus, we don’t necessarily have to give them all equal weight. And perhaps Jesus answers our prayers, not by eliminating life’s challenges, but by telling us not to worry so much about everything.

Don’t Expect Miracles

At the wedding, Jesus solved the wine shortage problem in his first public miracle. Remember, at this time Jesus wasn’t yet known as a healer and miracle worker. He hadn’t yet gained popularity where people flocked to him for miracles. We take it for granted that when Mary told Jesus about the wine shortage that he was going to solve it through his divine powers. But that maybe wasn’t what people were expecting at Cana. But Jesus saw it fit and appropriate to perform a miracle in that case.

In these uncertain times, we too can always hold out hope in miracles. But we shouldn’t expect miracles or only look for a specific outcome. God has a way of intervening in the way He sees fit; sometimes with a miracle and other times without. We need to put our faith in God’s plan; that it will ultimately lead to joy and freedom even if there are disastrous moments. Remember, at the wedding, they weren’t running low on wine. They ran out of wine. So for a moment, there wasn’t just an impending disaster, but a real disaster. And maybe we too have to live through a few real disasters ranging from a few minutes to a few days, months, years, or decades. But God won’t allow for those disasters to ultimately triumph, especially if we call on Him to help us.

Indirect Miracles

The headwaiter didn’t know that Jesus turned the water into wine. From his perspective, no miracle took place. Maybe that’s the same with us. God may be performing all sorts of miracles but they are in ways we don’t experience directly. In chaos theory, big events can find their roots in simple actions that follow a long and complex chain of events. Miracles can act the same way. A small miracle can have a huge effect elsewhere but through the chain of events, that small miracle may not even be noticed because it’s so far detached from the outcome. I think many times, we are like the headwaiter — we experience miracles without even knowing it.

I’m sure we all have anxieties and worries that we want God to solve. But contemplate the Second Luminous Mystery when you’re feeling anxious or depressed. Consider that God may be answering your prayers and performing miracles in subtle ways. Or maybe He’s telling you to have faith and a little patience in His plan. Maybe He’s telling you that your disasters aren’t really disasters or at least aren’t as big as you’re making them out to be.

The Value of Not Praying for Specific Outcomes

I’m going to talk briefly about politics. I know, I can hear the collective groan from you all because you’re sick and tired of everyone talking about the US elections. But please, stay with me as this ties into Rosary prayer and faith.

I can’t tell you who is going to win the presidency or which party will control the Senate after November 3. But one thing is certain — there will be a large group of people unhappy with the results because their side lost. And there were be others ecstatic because their side won. Some people will think their prayers were answered while others will ponder why God ignored them and would allow such an outcome. What is playing out in 2020 has happened thousands of times throughout human history.

Regardless of the winner, now is the time to learn this important lesson — we shouldn’t pray by asking God for a specific outcome to our concerns. That’s missing the point of prayer and reduces God to the role of a genie. Instead, we should ask God to give us strength, patience, and understanding to live with the outcome. The outcome of an election is manmade, but how we deal with it can be aided through God’s grace. God doesn’t favor one political party over the other. He sees all of us, whether we are Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, etc. as His children.

Like a parent watching children quarrel over a toy, God will let us fight and argue without intervening in some large, magnificent way. Because from God’s perspective, what we argue about in this world isn’t all that important. Yes, even something as worldly important as the US 2020 general election isn’t significant universally. Who we choose as president of the United States is minuscule in importance compared to the state of one’s soul. That is what matters most to God and should be of the utmost concern to us.

It’s not that I don’t care about the outcome of the election. I do. And I’m concerned about the direction the United States could go in after this election. But when I meditate on the First Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, I think about Jesus in the garden asking God to let this cup pass over him. Jesus asks God to find a way for salvation that doesn’t involve pain and suffering. And I pray that the outcome of this election doesn’t result in increased hardship and suffering. But Jesus also said that he would do God’s Will. I too ask that I will remain faithful to God’s plan for me regardless of how the world changes.

Let’s also think about the Fifth Luminous Mystery and the institution of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist and Holy Mass, Jesus is present with us. No matter how the world changes and what hardships we encounter, He is with us. We can always find him in the Mass. He is always waiting for us in the stillness of a church to come and pray. Even if governments try to inhibit our ability to visit Christ in the Eucharist, it’s nothing the Church hasn’t endured before.

I know this is a big ask. But please don’t put all your energy and focus into an election. Don’t stake your happiness on a particular outcome. Don’t give Biden or Trump all-consuming power over your emotional wellbeing. Don’t be a slave to the 24-hour news cycle trapping you in an emotional whirlwind to bump up ratings. The sure bet is to put your faith in God. In other words, “vote” through your actions that you want to send your soul to Heaven. That is way more important than endlessly worrying about who we send to the White House.

What the Rosary Teaches us about Preparation

In last Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus told the parable about the wedding guests and how one was thrown out because he wasn’t wearing appropriate attire.

But when the king came in to meet the guests,
he saw a man there not dressed in a wedding garment. 
The king said to him, ‘My friend, how is it
that you came in here without a wedding garment?’
But he was reduced to silence.
Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet,
and cast him into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’

For a long time, this part of the parable troubled me. I always felt bad for the guest who showed up only to be tossed out for not wearing the appropriate attire. Here was a king, desperate to have people attend his wedding banquet after the invited guests turned him down. And so someone, maybe out of a sense of pity, agreed to come only to be humiliated and thrown out. Hadn’t the king ever heard the saying, “beggars can’t be choosers?” What did he expect by going out and inviting random people to his banquet?

Like Jesus’ other parables, this one isn’t supposed to be taken literally. It’s not a lesson on the etiquette of first-century wedding attire. Similar to the parable of the workers in the field, Jesus is using a simile about God and Heaven. Like any comparison, it’s not going to line up exactly. It’s the overall message and lesson being taught that is important, not the details used for illustration.

The point Jesus made in this parable was that God invites everyone to His Heavenly Kingdom. But that doesn’t mean we can act however we want and He has to accept us. Let’s look at this parable from a different point of view. Maybe the person without the garment wasn’t someone who could not afford one and maybe he wasn’t driven by pity to attend the banquet. Maybe he figured that because the king was asking everyone, he wouldn’t care how people came. Maybe, it was out of laziness that this person came to the banquet not attempting to make himself presentable. Basically, he was being what we would call a freeloader — someone looking to score a free meal.

I think that is the point of the parable — God won’t accept freeloaders in Heaven. While He desires all of us to be with Him in Heaven, we have to truly want to be there too. And if we want something, we have to work towards it. We can’t be lazy, selfish, or self-entitled. God made the rules quite clear through the 10 Commandments and Jesus’ teachings. Much like how people are expected to know the proper attire for a wedding banquet, we are expected to know and follow God’s laws for entering Heaven.

Preparation in the Rosary

Think about the Third Luminous Mystery, Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven and His Call to Conversion. We can think of conversion as us putting on the proper banquet attire and following proper etiquette. Our conversion is us taking off our worldly desires and sinful behavior so that we can appropriately sit at God’s banquet table in Heaven. We should be so excited about that prospect that we prepare ourselves here in this earthly life.

Praying the Rosary and meditating on the mysteries is about preparation. I forget who said it, but there’s a piece of wisdom that says, “if you don’t prepare for all possible circumstances, you haven’t prepared at all.” Well, death and judgment isn’t just a possible circumstance, it’s a certainty. Maybe the person in the parable without the wedding garment had one, but it was dirty. Or maybe he lost it. Whatever the case, he wasn’t prepared when the king invited him to the banquet. Ask yourself, are you prepared to attend God’s heavenly feast? Or are you still clinging to your worldly garments?

I like to pray for those who are close to death and judgment when I pray the Second Glorious Mystery. Jesus ascended into Heaven to make a place for each of us. He is the king making room at the banquet. However, many are not prepared. I pray for those in danger of being thrown out of the heavenly feast because they came before God not adequately “dressed.” Or some may need to wait a long time in Purgatory before being allowed to sit at God’s table. Pray for everyone close to death, especially those who don’t know it because maybe God will call on them suddenly and without warning. Pray that those who need it most receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation and that we all make an effort towards conversion. Let’s all have our Heavenly wedding attire close at hand.

New Joyful Mysteries Page

Good news everyone! I redesigned the layout of the Joyful Mysteries resource page. It’s much more app-like and acts better on smaller screens like phones and tablets. I’ll be working on the other mysteries this month and roll them out as they become available.

Thanks to some great WordPress plugins (a big shout out to Slide Anything and Tabs Responsive!), there are now tabs for each mystery and for each section within the mystery for intentions, meditations, videos, and scripture passages (related links tab coming soon). Within the meditations, you can scroll/swipe left and right to read a random meditation from other websites. If you like what you read, be sure to follow the links and visit those sites. This new layout should reduce the number of pages you have to navigate to pray the mysteries.

https://www.rosarymeds.com/the-joyful-mysteries/

I hope you enjoy this new layout and it helps make your Rosary prayer more fruitful. Maybe one day I can transform this into a real app. Baby steps…

Pray the Rosary this October

Yeah! October is finally here. Besides the prospect of Holloween candy at the end of the month (Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups!), October is the month of the Rosary.

I’ve been on a bit of a Fatima kick lately. I’ve listened to an audiobook on it as well as watching a children’s series on Formed.org. And I’m going to watch the recently-released Fatima movie. What all of these accounts have in common is the focus on the Rosary.

When Mary appeared to the children at Fatima, she told them to pray the Rosary every day. Think about the weight of this request. This is coming from the mouth of the Queen of Heaven. Mary is the Mother of God. When she asks us to do something, it’s important and we better do what our Heavenly Mother tells us.

This October, pray the Rosary every day. It’s what Mary wants from us so that we can keep Jesus close to our hearts. I’ve collected Rosary resources from across the web on this website that can help you keep the Rosary fresh and engaging. If you need more of a reason than our Heavenly Mother requesting that you pray the Rosary, also consider the many benefits of praying the Rosary:

  1. Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces.
  2. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.
  3. The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell, it will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.
  4. The Rosary will cause virtue and good works to flourish; it will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God; it will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire for eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.
  5. The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish.
  6. Whoever shall recite the Rosary devoutly, applying himself to the consideration of its sacred mysteries shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice, he shall not perish by an unprovided death; if he be just he shall remain in the grace of God, and become worthy of eternal life.
  7. Whoever shall have a true devotion for the Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.
  8. Those who are faithful to recite the Rosary shall have during their life and at their death the light of God and the plentitude of His graces; at the moment of death, they shall participate in the merits of the saints in paradise.
  9. I shall deliver from Purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.
  10. The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in Heaven.
  11. You shall obtain all you ask of me by the recitation of the Rosary.
  12. All those who propagate the Holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.
  13. I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death.
  14. All who recite the Rosary are my sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters of my only Son Jesus Christ.
  15. The devotion of my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.

Jesus Is Not a Politician

No matter what I read, everything seems to have a hint of politics these days. And by “hint” I mean it proclaims in bold letters some political view and repeatedly hits me over the head about it throughout the article or video. I can’t read a chocolate chip cookie recipe online without the author finding it necessary to proclaim his support for Black Lives Matter.

Because everyone in the news, whether it be Nancy Pelosi or Donald Trump, is trying to drive a political agenda, we naturally insert politics into religious texts as well. It’s easy to read the Gospels and see Jesus as a politician trying to enact new political and social policies. This leads to us reading the Bible with a hint of skepticism and not fully believing in Jesus’ teachings because we think he has some ulterior motive like all politicians.

Last Sunday’s Gospel about the workers, like many parables, can be misunderstood if you think of Jesus as the politician. Many people point to parables like this one to support specific social and political ideas. One may read this parable and say that Jesus is advocating a socialist-style of governance, minimum wage reform, or universal basic income. After all, Jesus is saying that everyone should be paid equally out of fairness right?

My parish priest, in his homily, provided a great insight into parables like the workers. You have to remember that Jesus starts by saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like…” That is very important. First, Jesus is using a simile. A simile is a comparison between two unlike things. If I say “she is like a rose,” I’m not saying everything about the woman is the same as a rose. I don’t mean to say she is made up of a long thorny stem, photosynthesizes, and sprouts petals. A simile makes a comparison between certain attributes of two things but it does not equate the two.

In the case of the workers in the field, Jesus is not talking about labor and wage laws. He is not saying that Heaven is exactly like what he describes in the parable. It is a simile about God’s grace and mercy and how everyone can receive them. That is why Jesus does not come out and say, “Landowners should pay their workers the same wage.” He wasn’t talking about wages. This parable has as much to do about economics as the parable of throwing seeds has to do with a lesson in agriculture. These are all similes comparing what people know about earthly realities with God.

The second point to understand is that Jesus talks about the nature of God and Heaven in his parables. He is trying to explain what Heaven is, not prescribe how the world’s laws should be. In other words, Jesus isn’t trying to sway Roman law or whip up the people in revolution. He isn’t trying to get a coalition together or establish a political party. He wants people to understand who God is and have them freely turn towards God and do His Will. By explaining Heaven, Jesus gives people a sense of hope and something to live for beyond what they can see and hear.

Okay, maybe it’s not 100% accurate that Jesus wasn’t trying to sway opinions. But he was trying to sway the hearts of individuals. He was turning people towards God by teaching them God’s Will. That is different than someone trying to espouse a political philosophy or enact new laws and policies. If Jesus had been a politician, he would have tried to change laws. He’s didn’t do that. He changed people’s hearts by having them use their free will to turns towards God after learning about Him through Jesus’ teachings.

In closing, don’t read the Bible as if it were the New York Times. And don’t read the New York Times as if it is the Gospel (you’re probably better off not reading the NYT at all).

Reprioritizing Rosary Prayer

As much as I would like life to go back to normal, we are still far off from returning to any form of normalcy. Many of us have seen drastic changes to our educational, social, professional, and family lives throughout 2020. It will take time for society to return to 2019 norms. And while this may not have made headlines, the largest disruption of 2020 for many of us was to our prayer lives.

There is a lot of depressing news out there. Of course, COVID 19 is the leading headline. But there are also racial, political, economic, societal, and climate concerns. Personally, because of poor air quality due to fires in my area, I haven’t been able to go outside for any meaningful length of time. That has taken a toll on my mental state. These headlines can become all-consuming because they are the only view into the world many of us have if we’re sheltering in place.

I think the reason news headlines affect our moods more than ever is that practicing our faith has become disrupted. Many of us can’t go to Mass or receive the sacraments. We start to digest all this news with a lack of spiritual perspective that usually comes through prayer. It’s God who helps us face this often cruel and challenging world with words of hope. He tells us through prayer that everything will be okay if we put faith in His divine plan. When we don’t see things through this spiritual lens, everything starts to look more hopeless and pointless.

I’m not proud of this, but my Rosary prayer hasn’t been very consistent in the last few months. I took a summer vacation from praying. My summer wasn’t great; it was a large slog of work and parenting. We didn’t have any exciting vacations and my kids didn’t have their usual camps. My anxieties were only amplified by the lack of daily prayer. I dwelled on things that I would normally shake off as no big deal. Because I wasn’t grounded in prayer, my wellbeing was at the mercy of the latest headline.

Starting last week, I rebooted my Rosary prayer routine. Now that my kids are back in school (remotely), I’ve arranged my schedule so that there is time in the morning to pray the Rosary. I integrate light exercise and stretches between decades followed with a cup of fresh coffee to wake me up. I start the day in a much better state when I’ve had some exercise, coffee, and the Rosary.

I had a choice. I could either lament the state of the world or I could change my routine. I chose the latter and that has made a difference. Of course, my day is still challenging. But I’m slowly finding that physical, mental, and spiritual energy to face those challenges. Restarting Rosary prayer hasn’t been a silver bullet, but it helps. And from the “silver linings” department, because of COVID, my parish has started live streaming all Masses, including daily ones. I’ve started participating in those daily online Masses increasing my spiritual reserves for the day.

As we approach October, the month of the Rosary, I suggest changing your routine to include the Rosary if you aren’t already praying it daily. It might make all the difference for you and those around you to include Mary and her son, Jesus Christ, in your day. Like a trusted friend, lay forth all your anxieties at Mary’s feet and ask for her intercession. You will be amazed at what she will do if you approach her humbly asking for help.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Piety

One aspect of parenting I find incredibly difficult is trying to teach my kids to do the right things on their own. I don’t want to have to continually nag them to clean their room, not to interrupt when someone is talking, say “please” and “thank you,” and all those other little things that create peace and pleasantness. It’s an ongoing challenge to instill in them a sense of wanting to do the right thing and to see that it makes life so much better for everyone.

This brings me to the final gift of the Holy Spirit — piety. This is the wanting or longing to do God’s Will. It’s not living the faith out of fear or responsibility, it’s wanting to do God’s Will because we desire to live in God’s grace. It’s wanting to go to Mass, pray, and receive the sacraments, not out of a sense of obligation or under penalty of sin, but because we want a close relationship with God. Piety builds on those other gifts of the Holy Spirit, understanding and wisdom, to know that there is nothing better than living in God’s grace. Piety instills that longing to live in that grace and ultimately, in joy.

I think there’s a reason why we are called God’s children and we call him “Father.” When it comes to our interaction with God, we can act childish at times. We do things because we are told to. We often go to Mass or pray before meals because we feel the Church nagging us into it. Like a child reluctantly cleaning his room, we do these things without joy. We do them begrudgingly because we don’t understand the bigger picture. If we did see it, we would gladly go to Mass, pray, and sacrifice like the saints because we would understand that not living in God’s grace is not living at all. We need this gift of piety to see through the drudgery of spirituality and see it as the path to true joy and happiness.

Piety in the Rosary

Let’s look at St. Simeon in the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Like many people, I picture St. Simeon as a fragile old man who lived a difficult life. He spent all his time in the temple praying only to finally see the baby Jesus before dying. Many of us might see that as a pointless life. But God is challenging us to see our faith differently in this mystery. We should see Simeon as leading an exceptional life — one that is centered around forming a relationship with God. We should see the joy that comes through piety because it’s a life filled with God’s grace instead of fickle worldly desires. For all we know, Simeon may have come to the temple every day joyful in his encounters with God through prayer. And we too can find joy being with God through prayer.

We should also remember that Mary guides us towards a life of piety. As Queen of Heaven (Fifth Glorious Mystery), she desires everyone to enter into God’s kingdom. That means living in a way that is centered around God. How do we expect to live with God in Heaven if we never make an effort to live in His grace on earth? Fortunately, Mary is constantly guiding us toward God. She bridges the gap between us and God through her messages and apparitions throughout history and her mediation between humanity or Her son, Jesus. When we pray the Fifth Glorious Mystery, let’s remember to lay our struggles living a pious life at Mary’s feet and earnestly seek her help.

Piety is all about saying “yes” to God. This is no better represented in the Rosary than in the First Joyful Mystery. Mary whole-heartedly said yes to God. It wasn’t a “yes” born out of fear. After all, God isn’t some tyrant demanding strict obedience. He gives us the freedom to say “no” but provides us an overly abundant number of reasons to say “yes.” Piety is about having the wisdom and right judgment to weigh a pious life against impiety and see that the pious life wins out in every way.

Piety: The Easier Path

Going back to getting children to do the right thing. Often, I try to show my kids that doing the right thing is easier than doing the wrong or lazy thing. Keeping a clean room means that toys and books don’t get broken or lost. Sharing means that everyone gets more toys and games to play with. Going to bed on time means more rest and more energy.

The same is true with leading a pious life; it can lead to more joy. When we want to follow God, we choose not to follow Satan and fall for his lies. We then avoid a life of sin and avoid vices like greed, gluttony, envy, and anger. All of those choices, while maybe providing short term pleasure, lead to long term unhappiness. In short, it’s a bad investment of our time and energy. Piety is such a small investment but leads to the biggest payoff — a life in God’s grace and an eternity in Heaven.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Fortitude

Two great movies are “Touching the Void” and “Lone Survivor.” The former movie is a documentary about a mountaineer, Joe Simpson, who broke his leg at the summit of a difficult climb, fell off a cliff on his way down, and was assumed dead. And yet he managed to crawl down the mountain on one good leg back to camp where his climbing partner was able to get help. “Lone Survivor” is the story of Marcus Luttrell and a Navy SEAL mission gone bad. He crawled to safety with a broken back after a terrible gunfight with the Taliban killing everyone on his team.

What is remarkable about both these true stories is how hard they fought to stay alive without knowing how their situation would turn out. For all Joe knew, his climbing partner may have broken camp and left the area. His efforts to get crawl down the mountain may have been for nothing if there was no one left to get him to a hospital. For all Marcus knew, he could have crawled into a Taliban camp instead of a village willing to protect him. Both of them didn’t give up fighting although they had no idea whether their efforts were in vain.

That brings us to the next gift of the Holy Spirit — fortitude.  “Fortitude is the virtue that allows us to overcome fear and to remain steady in our will in the face of all obstacles, physical and spiritual. Prudence and justice are the virtues through which we decide what needs to be done; fortitude gives us the strength to do it. It show itself in moral courage against the evil spirit of the times, against improper fashions, against human respect, against the common tendency to seek at least the comfortable, if not the voluptuous.”(learnreligions.com).

I see fortitude as the strength to practice the Catholic faith in the face of uncertainty. We take it on faith that all the prayer, sacrifices, and restraint leads to a closer relationship with God and eternal happiness in Heaven. And while we may know this, it can be hard to muster the strength to practice it on a daily basis. We don’t always feel close to God. It’s this gift that reminds us not to give up doing God’s Will.

Fortitude in the Rosary

Look at Jesus in the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary. I know I’ve mentioned this point several times in the past, but He fell three times and got back up knowing that his situation was never going to improve. Just think about the strength Jesus had to posses to look past his physical pain and see the greater role God had for Him. Jesus knew that God’s Will was not to have Him die on the road. But that meant Jesus had to summon the courage to get up and follow God’s Will to His Crucifixion so that he could triumph through His Resurrection.

We must look at Jesus’ example of fortitude in our own lives. Let’s face it, being a Christian isn’t always easy or fun. We are saddled with our crosses. Prayer doesn’t always seem fruitful. Fasting doesn’t seem beneficial. Following God’s laws isn’t always a joy. Making this more difficult is that we don’t receive immediate feedback. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see our heavenly scorecard whenever we practice virtue or sin? But it’s the gift of fortitude that allows us to carry on, like Jesus taking up His cross, in the face of uncertainty. When you pray any of the Sorrowful Mysteries, meditate on how faith requires fortitude because we need to do God’s Will without immediate, concrete feedback.

We must also remember that fortitude isn’t just about summoning courage for the “big things.” We all aren’t called to be martyrs or overcome some momentous challenge. We must show fortitude in the small things too. That means remembering to pray every day, attend Mass, receive the sacraments, fast, and live chastely. These aren’t easy. Sure, we may be able to muster the strength on our own some days. But in order to do God’s Will consistently, we need this gift from the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, we’ll just get worn out, dejected, and give up. It’s this gift of fortitude which gives us that “second wind” to keep going even when we think we have nothing left to give.

Include God in Your Suffering

My interest in ClickToPray ebbs and flows. Currently, it’s flowing and I’m using it to pray daily. The daily prayers are easily digestible and provide good ideas for further reflection. This morning’s prayer had a typo which at first confused me and then got me thinking. Without the typo, I probably wouldn’t have given this prayer much further thought. But with it, I started thinking about whether I’m including God in my daily struggles and triumphs.

I give thanks to the Lord for this new day, for this new week. All of these are opportunities for Christ to come to me, to receive his Spirit. In the face of situations of suffering that I do not understand and have difficulty accepting, I ask the Lord not to stay with me. I know that in your presence I will find peace. I offer my day for the Pope’s intention for this month. Glory Be…

https://clicktopray.org/august-3-morning-2/

It’s the “I ask the Lord not to stay with me” that contains the mistake. I’m sure the author probably meant to type “now” instead of “not.” But let’s consider the sentence as written. Ask yourself how many times, in the face of suffering, do you ask God not to be by your side? We may not tell God explicitly to go away, but we also might not ask Him to stand by us either. In other words, maybe we ignore God as we go about our business. We go to FaceBook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and maybe our family to voice our frustration in a cry for help. But how often do we include God with the challenges we face?

After reading this I thought about Jesus in the First Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary. I thought about His example of how we should act in the face of difficulty and suffering. Jesus didn’t complain to His disciples or vent about how he was being unfairly treated. Instead, Jesus asked God for the strength to do His Will. And while God didn’t save Jesus from a gruesome crucifixion, He gave Jesus the strength to endure.

The next time you’re facing a challenge or suffering, remember to include God in your circle of friends and family. Ask Him for help. It may not change the situation, but God may change the way you approach that situation. As the daily prayer says, He will give you peace.