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Are You Ready for a Lenten Advent?

As we approach Advent, I’m sure most of us will focus more on what’s on sale on Amazon than on prayer and fasting. When it comes to seasons of preparation, Advent tends to take a back seat to Lent when it comes to people focusing on their spiritual needs. This Advent, I want to challenge you to devote more time and energy preparing what is in your heart in addition to what is under your Christmas tree.

True story. One time my wife and I met with a priest for a class on a weekday in Advent. The priest offered my wife a small brownie bite which she politely refused saying that she was abstaining from sweets during Advent. The priest surprisingly said that was the first time he’d ever heard of someone fasting during Advent. Lent? Of course. But you must be a special sort of crazy to fast during a time when stores, markets, homes, and offices are stocked wall-to-wall with Christmas candy and pastries.

eat as much as you can — It would be a Christmas miracle if I could abstain from eating from the office cookie dish.

I mention this not to show how strong-willed my wife is (okay, maybe I wanted to brag a little). I mention this because of the priests surprise that someone actually took a season of preparation to actually prepare for Christmas! I think many of us hear that word, preparation, but don’t actually internalize what it means. We decorate our homes, buy gifts, trim a tree, and do all sort of things to prepare for Christmas, the holiday. But we so often skip the preparation for Christmas, the Holy Day.

I encourage you to make a plan for Advent similar to what you do for Lent. Don’t just think about what you can give up. Advent is a good time to think about what you can add. Here are some ideas:

Set up an advent wreath and pray around it every day with your family.
Buy an Advent prayer book that you use daily.
Make an effort to go to Eucharistic adoration and receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Consciously do extra good deeds.
Pray the Rosary daily.

And on that last point, I have just the solution to help you pray the Rosary during Advent. After many long months, I’m happy to announce that my latest book, The Rosary Prayer Guide for the Rest of Us, is now available in paperback on Amazon. Right in time for Advent and Christmas. This book continues what I started in The Rosary for the Rest of Us. But instead of taking a holistic approach to each Rosary mystery, this new book takes a tactical approach. It has scripture passages, intentions, and quotations of wisdom for each Rosary bead. Get an overall understanding from The Rosary for the Rest of Us but get focus for each prayer in The Rosary Prayer Guide for the Rest of Us.

Remember, a Rosary a day keeps the Devil away!

Building Your Relationship with Jesus Through Rosary Prayer

I came across this interesting article on DesiringGod about something I think many of us struggle with — balancing our love of leisure activities with our love of God. In the article, a reader asks:

My question is about my desire and satisfaction in spiritual discipline and worship. I prefer entertainment to time with God. That’s the honest truth. Time with God feels like labor. Entertainment is the passive place I go to get away from work for a while. But I am also terrified for my soul, because my past tells me I’m just not trying hard enough, and I will regret this in the future.

I can absolutely relate. Actively building a relationship with God is hard work. I know I have given into my lazy tendencies and decided to watch TV over praying my Rosary. I tell myself that I’ll watch a quick YouTube clip and then I’ll start praying. Then it’s one quick article in a magazine, then right after I brush my teeth and get dressed, then… I know that I’m kidding myself when I say I’ll pray the Rosary right after something else. But it’s easier to believe the lie than to admit that sometimes I’m just not feeling strong enough to pray the Rosary.

I think the hardest part about Rosary prayer is that there is not immediate gratification from it like watching TV. You usually do not feel any holier after praying the Rosary. In fact, you may feel more worn out or feel sad after contemplating all the times you have fallen short living the faith. You cannot pin down the small, incremental gains you make each time you pray the Rosary. It is that lack of immediate feedback that drives many people away from their rosaries and into the warm embrace of a TV or smartphone screen.

Let me ask you this. If you are married or in a relationship, can you pinpoint the exact moment you went from liking spouse to loving him/her? Can you say, it was December 22nd and 9:13 pm that your relationship went from admiration to love? Most likely, you can’t pinpoint the exact time when your feelings for your spouse took a large leap forward (and no, changing your status on Facebook doesn’t count). After a lot of time and effort, relationships deepen but the change is imperceivable at any given moment in time.

Praying to the Madonna of the Rosary, by Carav... — Praying to the Madonna of the Rosary, by Caravaggio, 1606-1607 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The same idea goes for the Rosary. You probably will not know the exact moment when Rosary prayer turns from chore or burden to necessity and comfort. But there is one thing for certain. It will remain a chore if you never work up the energy to start praying it. Our relationship with Jesus is similar to any other relationship — it takes work and effort and isn’t always very fun. You need to look past the momentary inconvenience of Rosary prayer and see how you are building one of the most important relationships of your life — your relationship with Jesus. With the proper perspective, the graces your receive through the Rosary dwarf the pain you feel praying it.

Honor Mary by Asking for Her Help

In his article, Prayer takes Practice, Fr. Ed Broom lays out five ways to improve your prayer life. For the TL;DR crowd, the summary is:

Conviction — Have faith that prayer is actually important
Confession — Mend your relationship with God whenever you sin
Set a time and place to pray — Routine helps you pray consistently
Mass and holy communion — Mass and the Eucharist are the greatest prayers in the world
Seek our Lady of the Rosary — Pray the rosary to bring about peace

I want to focus on that last point — seeking out our Lady of the Rosary (naturally, this is a rosary prayer blog after all). On Aug 22nd, we celebrate the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary which we pray in the Fifth Glorious Mystery of the rosary. When we pray the rosary we are in essence “crowning” our Heavenly Queen. Mary wants nothing more than for us for to have a close relationship with her son, Jesus Christ. We honor and crown her whenever we show faith and conviction that our relationship with Jesus matters to us.

But having conviction and faith is not easy. Think about it. You may brood for days over a friend’s disagreeable Facebook post. You can get into a funk at work or at home when it seems like nothing is going smoothly. Many of us get tied up in knots over our finances. But how much time and energy do we devote to thinking about the state of our relationship with Jesus? Do we put more energy into worrying about Facebook posts than finding time to go to Confession? Do we spend hours on our hobbies and minutes in prayer?

If you feel like you are falling short in improving your prayer life, I suggest starting with the fifth point on that list. Pick up a rosary and earnestly tell Mary that you need her help. Tell her you need the courage to go to Confession. Tell her you need help to be more engaged at Mass. Tell her you need help praying on a more regular schedule. Tell her you need more faith and conviction that prayer actually means something. Praying the rosary will make all the other items on that list easier to accomplish.

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You crown Mary through the rosary when you earnestly say, “I need your help!” Speaking as a parent, I feel honored when my kids need my help no matter how trivial the matter. I’m lucky that my kids are young because it will feel odd when the day comes when they no longer need my help. Mary isn’t satisfied with the title of a queen but with nothing to do. She wants us to come to her with all our worries and problems so she can help us.

And let’s face it, we all need Mary’s help because having a perfect relationship with Jesus is nearly impossible because of the active attempts by Satan to derail us and our own weakness towards sin. But God knows this challenge and doesn’t leave us in a hopeless situation. He gave us a Heavenly Queen in Mary and the means for her to help us through the rosary. Honor Jesus by honoring Mary by asking for her help through rosary prayer.

Modernity and the Secularization of Reason

How the Rosary Helps Us Overcome Obstacles

I don’t watch a lot of television. However, when I find a few minutes and don’t feel like doing anything serious, I enjoy watching American Ninja Warrior. It’s a show where athletes run through an obstacle course trying to complete increasingly more rigorous feats. Most people fail to complete the entire course. But those that do are ecstatic because they overcame the temptation to quit even when they were fatigued and were entertaining thoughts that they didn’t have the ability to complete the course.

The same conflict between completing a goal or giving up because the obstacles seem too great appears in many of our spiritual lives. Many of us have a hard time mustering up enough energy to make it through an entire rosary chaplet or Bible reading. We all want to do God’s will and form a deep relationship with Him through prayer. And yet, despite all that we desire, we let trivial obstacles like a television show, website, or video game distract or derail us from doing what we know is good.

Saint Peter highlights what happens when we let obstacles overpower us and distract us from God’s will. In the Gospel, St. Matthew wrote about Jesus walking on the water in a terrible storm. Peter also tried walking on the water and was initially successful but then was overcome by fear and doubt and sank (Matthew 14:22-36).

Does Saint Peter’s story sound a lot like yours when it comes to prayer and doing God‘s Will? I can’t count the number of times I’ve said, “This time I’m going to stick to a rigid prayer schedule.” Or I read a book about the importance and benefits of prayer and get all excited initially only to be overcome by distractions. Like Saint Peter walking on water, instead of staying focused on my relationship with Jesus Christ I get distracted by the world around me.

But when we make an effort to pray and act according to God’s will, we actually act in a way that is doubly pleasing to God. Rev. P.J. Michel explains in his book, Temptations:

On this principle, when you observe the law of God and do His will in a way that is displeasing to nature, you acquire a double claim to reward: first, you have obeyed, and secondly, you have obeyed with difficulty and against resistance and combat. The sacrifice you have made of the natural inclination that solicited and impelled you is rewarded here by new graces and hereafter by an increase of eternal glory and happiness.

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What does the rosary teach us about praying through distractions and temptations? You can probably pick any of the Sorrowful Mysteries and see Jesus’ example of doing God’s will despite the pain and suffering. But that’s too easy of an example for regular RosaryMeds readers! I want to look at the First Joyful Mystery, the Annunciation. Here we have Mary being asked to be the Mother of God. At first, she focuses on all the earthly limitations of such a request. “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” she asked (Luke 1:34). But Mary didn’t let all those concerns distract her from accepting the burden and the honor God wanted to bestow on her.

Now jump to the Fifth Glorious Mystery, Mary’s Coronation in Heaven. Going back to the passage from Temptations, when you do God’s will in the face of difficulty, you increase your eternal glory and happiness. What better example is there than seeing Mary crowned Queen of Heaven? She followed God’s will even when that meant seeing her son rejected and crucified.

When you don’t feel like you have the time or energy to pray the rosary, look to Mary’s example of the grace God gives you when you make the effort to pray and do God’s will despite the difficulty. It may be hard, but the reward dwarfs the inconvenience.

How the Rosary Removes the “Beams” from our Eyes

The Gospel reading from this past Monday, June 26, 2017, was from Matthew 7:1-15 about the well-known analogy about judging others hypocritically. This lesson could also be about not letting the actions of others blind you to your abilities of living God‘s will. First, the actual text:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Let me remove that splinter from your eye,’
while the wooden beam is in your eye?
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.”

By now we all know we shouldn’t judge others considering that we all have our own flaws. I think many of us understand Jesus’ teaching and work hard to avoid judging others. Note, this does not mean we don’t care for others and help them become better people living in God’s grace. But we must do so caringly knowing that we also must work out many of the same sins on our own souls.

Let’s take a different look at this passage. Perhaps Jesus was also instructing his disciples to understand the greater influence one’s personal actions can have over the actions of others. What if the “beam” is not someone’s faults, but rather the amount of influence we give others for our situation in life? We are, in a way, judging others according to their perceived effect on our lives. And many times, we place that judgment in a disproportionate way. So many of us tend to look at others as the main source of frustration or disappointment in life, even when they have a minuscule amount of influence, while overlooking the much larger effects of our own actions.

Just look at how much time and energy we place on the influence of politicians, companies, media outlets, etc. Many of us consume news and show more concern over what President Trump tweeted than who needs help, attention, and kindness in our own family or circle of friends. We give politics so much attention even when the day-to-day soap opera of government has actually relatively little effect on our happiness. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be involved in politics and not hold our government responsible for their actions. But we need to find a balance and not tip towards government and news being EVERYTHING to us. That diminishes our own ability to find peace and happiness in our lives. It becomes our “beam” that prevents us from helping others.

How can you live happily if all you focus on is politics?

I think the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, The Visitation, communicates this idea of not letting others blind you to your ability to control your well being. Mary had every reason to dwell on how others might perceive her pregnancy outside of marriage. It could have consumed her to the point of inaction out of fear and embarrassment. After all, things weren’t really going the way she had planned. But instead of dwelling on the thoughts and actions of others, she went out and did God’s will which, at the time, was being with her cousin Elizabeth. Mary was able to remove any “beams” in her eyes which would have prevented her from clearly seeing God’s plan for her and acting accordingly.

When we pray the rosary, let us ask God to clear our minds of the fear, hatred, and overall energy spent on the people and events that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of our lives. We need to ask God to block out the noise that can distract us from doing His will (turning off the TV is a good place to start). We should ask Mary through our rosary prayers for the strength to imitate her and remain focused on serving God instead of living in fear of the influence others have on our overall happiness. When we take out the distractions which act as the “beams” in our eyes we can then see more clearly and help others better see how God is calling them to receive His grace.

Replaying Our Faith Through the Eucharist

I’m in the process of digitizing old home movies originally recorded on videotape. What I find so interesting is the amount of footage my parents recorded for each event. I have tapes with two hours of footage of a school talent show where I or one of my siblings was on stage for only five minutes. I guess my mom really wanted to capture the feeling of the event and not just have five minutes of footage in a vacuum with little or no context.

I think we can all understand my mom wanting to capture every detail of an event. After all, people upload 300 hours of video to YouTube every minute! Thousands of posts are made to Facebook every second. And everyone is an instant shutterbug with their phones. I bet much of this is to not only record the actual physical events in our lives but also try to capture the associated feelings. And yet many times, these recordings fail to truly capture the true emotion of an event and upon replay they just come out flat.

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But what about our faith? Is it possible to capture our Catholic Faith in a manner that does not lose any of its fidelity when replayed? In his homily on the Feast of Corpus Cristi, Pope Francis talked about how the Body and Blood of Christ is a remembrance of our faith. The Catholic News Agency reported:

“This is why the Eucharistic commemoration does us so much good: it is not an abstract, cold and superficial memory, but a living remembrance that comforts us with God’s love.”

Francis explained that when we receive the Eucharist, our hearts have the opportunity to become overwhelmed with the certainty of Christ’s love for us, the Eucharist giving us a memory that is grateful, free, and patient.

We can see the Eucharist as Jesus’ way of capturing the essence of the Catholic Faith to be replayed every time we celebrate it at Mass. The Eucharist does what no camera and video recording can do, no matter how high the memory and resolution — it captures the entirety of God’s love for us. When Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he wasn’t just telling that to his apostles in the room. Jesus was saying that all Christians, present and future, must remember that the Eucharist embodies all of his teachings and love.

3rd quarter of 16th century (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

But much like a forgotten videotape in a cardboard moving box in a warehouse, what good is the Eucharist if we don’t receive it? You never give yourself the opportunity to replay and feel the essence of Jesus’ teachings or God’s love for you. Don’t get me wrong, you can learn these things at a cerebral level by reading the Bible and listening to homilies. But that’s not the type of memory you recall when you receive the Eucharist. The memories replayed through the Eucharist are often only understood by your soul in a way you can’t easily describe because God’s love is beyond the human capacity to describe it. But just because you can’t describe it doesn’t mean you don’t receive its benefits.

To fully receive the memories of faith in the Eucharist your soul must be in a worthy state. That means receiving it with no mortal sins, having prepared by fasting, and appreciating the solemnity of the Eucharistic feast. Otherwise, you are like a broken video player unable to replay the captured memories. Or at best, it comes out so distorted and degraded that your soul can’t understand it.

When you pray the Fifth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary, remember how powerful a gift the Eucharist is. It is not something to be received lightly but it is something we should be receiving regularly. We need to slow down and remember that our faith is built on the Eucharist. If we don’t slow down, what good is the Eucharist having on our soul? As Pope Francis reminded us:

Our lives are such a whirl of people and events that we no longer retain memories. But this leaves us at risk of only living on the surface of things and never going deeper, he said, “without the broader vision that reminds us who we are and where we are going.”

“This is why the Eucharistic commemoration does us so much good: it is not an abstract, cold and superficial memory, but a living remembrance that comforts us with God’s love.”

Honor Mary for What She Does, Not Just Who She Is

We just finished Mary’s month of May. I hope it was a spiritually fruitful month for you. I want to talk about the Catholic devotion to Mary and how that connects to rosary prayer. This would have been a better article to publish at the start of May rather than in June so I apologize for the untimeliness.

Mary, Queen of Heaven (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Catholic Exchange did a great job of distinguishing the devotion we give to God (latria), what we give to the saints (dulia), and what we give to Mary (hyperdulia).

Latria basically means adoration. Traditionally, it refers to the worship and homage that we give to God and God alone.

Now, Catholics believe that we should not only honor those who excel in the things of this world, but that we should also honor those who excel in the things of the spiritual world (for example, in their devotion to God, their obedience to his will, and their charity to others). That’s why we honor the saints — men and women who, during their earthly life, excelled in their pursuit of holiness. Honoring the saints does not detract from God any more than honoring athletes does. In fact, when we honor saints, we are honoring God, too, for it is by his gifts, and for his glory, that saints are able to excel in holiness in the first place.

And in recognition of Mary’s pre-eminent holiness, the special recognition we give to Mary is called hyperdulia: the greatest amount of honor we can give to any created person.

When we pray the Fifth Glorious Mystery of the Rosary, Mary Crowned Queen of Heaven, we acknowledge her deserving hyperdulia devotion. She was not only exalted in her earthly life by being chosen as the Mother of God, but further exalted in Heaven by being crowned queen. And this is only fitting given that her son is King of Heaven.

We shouldn’t get lost on the honor bestowed on Mary by both God and humanity. We may think that God singling someone out, like he did Mary, would be like winning an award. Some of us may picture it like receiving a certificate you can frame and hang on the wall to show off to your friends that you have God’s seal of approval. But honoring Mary because God honors her misses an important fact. We don’t honor Mary solely because something passively happened to her but we also honor her active response to God’s plan.

English: Diploma — If only we could have something so concrete to know if we’re in God’s Grace. Oh wait, there is! It’s called CONFESSION.

God singling out Mary for that very special role came at a price. But because of her faith, it was a price Mary was more than willing to pay. It’s not like Mary could lead a normal life after the Annunciation. She led a life of perfect obedience to God’s plan even if that meant not understanding her son’s ways and eventually watching him die on the cross.

Mary lived a life of perpetual virtue which couldn’t have been easy. While she was immaculately conceived and free from original sin, she was not divine like Jesus. So living a life of perfect obedience and virtue had to have been challenging for Mary who possessed but overcame all the weaknesses inherent in being human.

When we pray the Fifth Glorious Mystery, we should ask our Queen Mother for the strength to imitate her and live in obedience to God’s will. When we give her hyperdulia devotion we should stand in awe of what she was able to do with her life and what we can do with her help and an active effort from us. Praise Mary, not just because of her status in Heaven, but also because of the effort she put forth in her earthly life as a model of what God asks of all us.

The Importance of Prioritizing Rosary Prayer

In my previous article, I talked about how we need to make every rosary prayer count by staying focused and engaged instead of just racing through it so that it can be checked off a spiritual to-do list. That naturally leads many people to ask this question, “Should I pray the rosary even when I’m not in the mood?” After all, when you’re sick, do you exercise heavily or get some rest? Is it better to skip rosary prayer if you believe you are just going to say the words on auto-pilot?

About a year ago I gave a lecture titled “Would you pray for a million dollars?” I put forth this theoretical situation. Suppose Pope Francis offered anyone who prayed the rosary every day for a month a million dollars. But you receive nothing if you miss just one day. How high would you prioritize rosary prayer amongst your other daily responsibilities? What would be so important that would cause you to skip a day and lose the big payout?

Do I get paid by the bead or by the chaplet?

For most of us, nothing short of the apocalypse would stand in our way of praying the rosary daily for a million dollars (bad example as I’m sure rosary prayer would increase during the Apocalypse). But the kicker is that Mary’s 15 promises to those who pray the rosary are infinitely more valuable than any cash payout. And yet, we so quickly tend to find reasons to avoid praying the rosary and miss out on its benefits.

Back to the original question of this article — should you pray the rosary when you don’t feel like it? Is no rosary better than an unfocused rosary? I think this is actually asking the wrong question. In most cases, it’s not that you don’t feel up to praying the rosary. After all, I bet you would find the time and energy for a cash reward. It’s that we tend to de-prioritize the rosary because we don’t appreciate its value. If we did internalize the importance and benefits of rosary prayer then nothing short of death would keep us from praying it (another bad example since you will be more likely to pray the rosary at the hour of your death).

I don’t want to sound sanctimonious because I certainly have days when I talk myself out of praying the rosary for very weak reasons. We all probably have our moments of weakness that allow Satan to convince us to put away our rosaries and do something else.

No, watching a movie starring Jim Caviezel is not the same as praying the rosary.

Before canceling your rosary prayer for the day, ask yourself whether you prioritized it correctly. Did you put it off all day to a time when you historically don’t focus well? Did you replace rosary prayer with TV or some other leisurely activity? In short, did you set yourself up for failing to pray by not giving it the proper priority in your day? Remember that rosary prayer has incredible benefits that far outweigh any material gain. Don’t casually convince yourself out of praying it regularly for weak reasons and miss out on all God offers you.

It’s May! Time to Get Out Those Rosaries

For Mary’s month of May, Pope Francis has recommended the “simple and effective” prayer of the rosary.

At his weekly General Audience this morning, May 3, 2017, Francis gave pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square this advice: “At the beginning of May, let us invoke the heavenly intercession of Mary, Mother of Jesus.”

During his greetings to Polish pilgrims, the Pope invited the crowd to applaud the Virgin Mary “Queen of Poland” on the day of the national holiday.

While to young people, Francis urged, “learn to pray with the simple and effective prayer of the rosary,” to sick people, he encouraged, “may the Blessed Virgin be your support in the trial of suffering.”

May is Mary’s month and I can think of no better way to honor our Heavenly Mother than with earnest rosary prayer. The word rosary comes from the Latin word rosa meaning rose. So while you are busy buying physical flowers for Mother’s Day don’t forget to send Mary spiritual flowers through rosary prayer.

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As an aside, I can picture some of you saying, “Wait, you’re saying May is the perfect time to pray the rosary. Didn’t you just say that we should celebrate Easter by praying the rosary? And before that, didn’t you say we should observe Lent by praying the rosary? And before that didn’t you say we should celebrate a new year with rosary prayer? And before that, didn’t you say to celebrate Christmas, Advent, October, etc. with rosary prayer?”

Naturally, my answer to all of those questions is yes! The rosary is the perfect prayer for all occasions. There is never a bad time to pray the rosary or start learning how to pray the rosary. Need help? Please browse RosaryMeds for videos, links, and other resources to help you pray the rosary.

What the Rosary Teaches Us About Spiritual Persistence

As a father of two boys, I can sympathize with those who face the never ending battle of trying to keep a clean house. No sooner have I vacuumed the floor that one of my boys starts jumping on the sofa and knocks down a leftover bowl of cereal. Or I just finish cleaning a room and they dump a bin of legos on the floor and start building. On Catholic Exchange, Sam Guzman relates the experience of keeping a clean house to keeping a clean soul in his article:

At any rate, I’ve noticed that, just as a clean house quickly descends into disorder and must be constantly cleaned, so also our souls need constant care and upkeep. We must always be beginning to put them in order again.

There are days when our children have made such a mess of things that cleaning up seems a hopeless task. My wife and I look at each other and don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Yet, we begin again.

In this life, holiness is found in beginning again and again. It is constant examination and conversion and regeneration of heart. Holiness if found in repentance. And repentance is not merely feeling sorry that you sinned. It is rather a re-turning to God—a thousand times a day if necessary.

My kids’ room 5 minutes after cleaning it

I call this never ending practice of conversion spiritual persistence. Spiritual persistence is continuing to pray and have faith in God’s plan even when it seems fruitless. When I pray the rosary and ask God for help building my spiritual persistence I meditate on Jesus carrying the cross in The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery. Jesus was literally beaten down carrying the cross with no hope for relief. Each time he fell down and got back up, he only had more cruelty and torture to look forward to. And yet, Jesus got back up and began walking again towards his crucifixion.

I think we all have moments when we ask ourselves, “what’s the point?” Why should I suffer for doing the right thing instead of taking ethical or moral shortcuts? Why should I fast? Why should I go to Sunday Mass? Why should I go to Confession? What good will these do since I’ll just go about sinning again in the future anyway?

Sometimes we can see our faith more as a cross than a blessing. We too often focus on what we give up or the effort required and not the benefits. Part of the challenge is that the sacrifice we feel immediately while the joy and grace are often delayed or is so subtle we don’t feel it. As an analogy to keeping a clean house, we so often tend to dread the steps needed to make a house clean that it often overshadows the joy of having a clean house.

This is where meditating on the fourth sorrowful mystery of the rosary becomes important. It puts all these perceived inconveniences into perspective. Jesus endured far worse doing his father’s will. If Jesus saw the importance of his Passion, we should ask God to help us see the importance of trying to live a spiritually healthy lifestyle. We may not always like housework, but we understand the importance of maintaining a clean house. And we may not always enjoy the obligations our faith puts on us, but we pray the rosary to understand why it is so important that we follow God’s plan.

As we near the end of Lent, many of us probably feel beaten down and tired. We may be tired of fasting, abstaining from meat, the increased prayer, etc. But instead of focusing on pain, let’s ask God to help us see the joy that comes from these Lenten practices. The joy that comes from letting go of some of our worldly pleasures and replacing them with God’s grace. The joy in understanding that we will one day find true happiness in Heaven due to our spiritual persistence in this lifetime.

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