Week 1: Knowing Yourself as a Loved Sinner -- Day 5 (Wednesday May 23)

How can I respond to a God so good to me and surrounding me with the goodness of holy men and women and the wonderful gifts of creation? All I can do is give thanks, wondering at God's forgiving love, which continues to give me life up to this moment. By responding to God's merciful grace, I want to ammend (Spiritual Exercises 61).



Today, more and more we allow our feelings of sorrow and repentance to shift our focus from ourselves as sinner to God as the prodigal parent who loves us even in our sinfullness. We want to experience God's mercy and love for us as one's caught up in the human story of sin.



Using Lection Divina read and pray through the following passages:



Lamentations 3: 21-26

Psalm 143:1-6



Using Composition of Place read and pray through the following passage:



Luke 15: 1-7

Questions to Reflect on

1. 
   
   What events and relationships in my life have been conduits of God's mercy to me?


2. 
   
   What are the feelings I associate with being forgiven and shown mercy?


3. 
   
   Are there relationships in which I need to show some forgiveness or mercy?


4. 
   
   How, through God's mercy and grace, have I grown stronger in the broken places of life?


5. 
   
   How have you understood yourself to be counted with the tax collectors and sinners that gathered around Jesus?

Click on Comments to review Pastor Mike's Reflections and make comments of your own.

Week 1: Knowing Yourself as a Loved Sinner -- Day 4 (Tuesday May 22)

St. Paul speaks of our being able to grasp the breadth and length and height and depth of Christ's love and experiencing this love which surpasses all knowledge (Ephesians 3:18-19). At its opposite pole, I try to experience the breadth and length and height and depth of hell -- the despair of facing a cross with no one on it [by this he means trying to imagine a world in which Jesus never died on the cross], the turning out upon a world which has no God, the total emptiness of living without purpose, an environment of pervasive hatred and self-seeking, a living death. (Spiritual Exercises 66-70).

Once I have let the awfulness of this experience sink deep within me, I begin to talk to Christ our Lord about it. I talk to him about all the people who have lived -- the many who lived before his coming and who deliberately closed in upon themselves and chose such a hell for all eternity, the many who walked with him in his own country and who rejected his call to love, the many who still keep rejecting the call to love and remain locked in their hell.


I give thanks to Jesus that... up to this moment he has shown himself to loving and merciful to me (Spiritual Exercises 71)

This exercise can be a little scary, especially if your imagination is good. It's not meant to scare us howerver. The key to this exercise is to be grieved by the sin, both in the world and in ourselves, without being totally overwhelmed by it. We have to let this exercise instill in us enormous gratitude that Jesus hasn't left us in our sin, and left us in our own hell. He's given us his grace and a way out. In recognizing desolation we are more moved to desire and recognize times of consolation.

Using Composition of Place read and pray through the following passage:

Luke 16: 19-31

Meditate on the following passages if you have time:

Genesis 3

Revelation 12

Questions to Reflect on:

1. Have sin and the effects of sin in the world ever paralyzed me and kept me from responding in love to Jesus by serving those around me? If so how?
2. What are my feelings and beliefs about death and hell?
3. In what ways do I feel I am still "alive" to sin? What sins do I struggle with the most?
4. In what ways have I epxerieinced Jesus setting me free my sins?

Click on Comments to view Pastor Mike's Reflections or make comments of your own

Week 1: Knowing Yourself as a Loved Sinner -- Day 3 (Monday May 21)

I put myself before Jesus Christ our Lord, present before me on the cross. I talk to him about how he creates because he loves and then he is born one like us out of love, so emptying himself as to pass from eternal life to death here in time, even death on a cross. By his response of love for God his Father, he dies for my sins.

I look to myself and ask -- just letting the questions penetrate my being:

• In the past, what response have a I made to Christ?
• How do I respond to Christ now?
• What response should I make to Christ?

As I look upon Jesus as he hangs on the cross, I ponder whatever God may bring to my attention (Spiritual Exercises 53).

We are people of the slow, burning heart. That's the conclusion I reach when I read Luke 24: 13-35 (The Road to Emmaus).

We experience the world around us, while on our respective faith journeys, in constant tension -- faith and fear, worry and wonder, sorrow and happiness, despair and hope. We know that through it all Jesus walks with us, but sometimes we can look right at him just like the disciples did and not even recognize him. Our hearts are slow.

Still we get glimpses of how good the journey can be when Jesus gives us a shake and wakes us up from our slumber. So we stay on the road, because our hearts burn at those times.

We're so much more able and apt to respond in faithful ways when our hearts are burning. But I know the times that my heart seems to burn with a passion for God, for Jesus and for the Kingdom are far outweighed by the times when my heart is slow. Today is about investigating our slowness of heart and how it keeps us from making appropriate responses to Jesus.

Using Composition of Place read and pray through the following passage:

Luke 24:13-35

Questions to Reflect On:

1. What attachments, addictions, and sins have prevented me from responding to Jesus in the way I know I need to?
2. What keeps me from recognizing Jesus in the events and people around me?
3. Have there been times when my heart has "burned" that I've neglected that burning? If so, why?
4. In what ways have I omitted responding to Jesus call from my life?

Click on Comments to view Pastor Mike's reflections and to make comments of your own

Sabbath Rest -- Reviewing Your Week (Sunday May 20)

Nothing new today. Take the day off and review your week before God. Spend some time opening yourself up to God and the grace of Jesus in prayer. Spend at least 5 minutes in silence making yourself present to God, as he is present to you.



Have a blessed Sabbath,



Mike

Week 1: Knowing Yourself as a Loved Sinner -- Day 2 (Saturday May 19)

I put myself before God and look at the contrast; God, the source of life, and I, the cause of death; God the source of love, and I, with all my petty jealousies and hatreds; God, from whom all good gifts comes, and I, with my selfish attempts to win favour, buy attention, be well thought of, and so on (Spiritual Exercises 59).

I look at my world. Everything cooperates to continue to give me life and strength... air and water... all the produce of the earth... everything contributes to my well being.

I think of the people who have prayed for me and love me.

Everywhere I look, the more astonished I become, seeing so much good comin in on me, while I issue forth so many evils. (Spiritual Exercises 60)

Today we want to gain an even greater perspective of our sins. We reflect on the fact that so many sinful thoughts, desires, and actions can come out of one person. Even our best actions are tainted by the smallest speck of sin -- perhaps a distorted motivation, or a self-centered one.

One Jesuit author noted that, "I am like a walking contagion of diseases who continues to walk who continues to walk throughout my world, affecting it and everyone who comes into my life."

Still we affirm that God upholds and loves his creation, and me and despite the ways I might twist and warp it. And he still gives us good gifts. Our only response can be one of gratitude and thanks, wondering at God's forgiving love, a love that gives me life and freedom even to this moment.

Using Lection Divina (see sidebar) read and pray through the following passage:

Psalm 130
Romans 7:18-25

Questions to Reflect On:

1. Do negative attitudes or self-defeating behavious lead me to choose death over life for myself and others, even in small ways? What choices am I making which are leading to death rather than life for me and others?
2. In what ways am I actively affecting the world around me (including people) by my sins?
3. How am I complicit in sin, both it's social and personal dimensions?
4. What areas of human misery in the world move me?
5. In recognizing the social dimensions of son, what small steps am I willing to take to be part of the problem instead of the solution?

Suggestion for Daily Living: Read beyond the headlines of the story of human suffering in the newspaper, looking for the deeper causes of it.

Click on Comments to view Pastor Mike's comments and make comments of your own.

Week 1: Knowing Yourself as a Loved Sinner -- Day 1 (Friday May 18)

In this week we'll be focussing our reflective attention on our sin. What we have to recognize as followers of Jesus who desire a closer walk with him is that it's vitally important for us to acknowledge our sin. Still, we don't do this as some sort of morbid, self-depricating exercise to make us feel weighed down with guilt. This is simply an honest attempt to bring to light those things in our lives that need improvement. When God sheds light of Jesus Christ on these areas we can't help but grow and improve. Tim Muldoon put it this way, "No one can grow in any way, be it as an athlete or intellectually or spiritually, unless he or she becomes aware of mistakes and wrongdoings." So, the purpose of this week's exercises is to become more aware of those mistakes and wrongdoings and the unique ways they negatively impact our relationship to God.

I see myself as a sinner -- bound, helpless, alienated -- before a loving God and all the love-gifts of creation (Spiritual Exercises 56).

I let the weight of such evil, all stemming from me, be felt throughout my whole being (Spiritual Exercises 57).

A Colloquy is made (Colloquy is a term that describes the intimate conversation between God the Father, Christ, [the Holy Spirit], and me). This conversation happens on the occassion of my putting myself as totally as I can into the setting of prayer. I will find that I speak or listen as God's Spirit moves me -- somtimes accusing myself as a sinner, sometimes letting myself be carried as a child, at other times letting expressing myself as lover or friend, and so on (Spiritual Exercises 54).

As you move through the exercises in the coming days it is important to feel the weight of your sin, but not be overburdened by it. You are after all a forgiven and dearly loved sinner.

If you find yourself being tormented by guilt simply pause and offer it to God.

Using Composition of Place (See sidebar) read and pray through the following passage:

Luke 15:11-32

Using Lectio Divina (See sidebar) read and pray through the following passage:

Psalm 51

Questions to Reflect On:

1. What am I beginning to realize about my own blindness, deafness, and insensitivity to sin and evil?
2. At home or at work, what are the subtle ways I use to ignore or excuse sin, especially any connected to my status or role and its perceived power or influence.
3. What contributes to my being more critical of others' shortcomings and less adept at recognizing my own.
4. How might I be blinded to addictive patterns in my own life which inflict harm on myself or others?
5. In conjunction with the reading from Luke 15 how have I squandered (younger brother) or not used (older brother) the inheritence the Father has given me? As I return to the Father what do I say? What does he say to me?

Suggestion for Daily Living: During the day, make choices which limit those things such as noise or exposure to violence which can blunt your sensitivity to both grace and sin.

Click on Comments to view Pastor Mike's Reflections and make your own comments.