I am active in prayer groups – in addition to broader church involvement – and talk to people frequently about prayer. On a related note, I wonder when I attend church services why I don’t hear more conversations in church pews about the interior aspects of how people experience their faith. Perhaps these conversations happen most often in small groups that come together for this purpose. Perhaps, too, it’s my role to cultivate such conversations (thus, this blog post as a step in that direction).
I participated in a recent discussion in which a phrase came up that is currently being used by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in their National Eucharistic Revival: Encountering Christ. I’ve heard folks use the word encounter before in faith settings (“an encounter with God,” marriage encounter, etc.). I am now realizing that this may be a key word that people might use if there were to be more of the conversations about how people experience faith. It seems – I haven’t quantified this in statistically validated surveys – that the main topics of interest to people regarding the interior aspects of how we experience faith (or want to experience faith) are:
Encounters with God
Any number of saints write about their encounters with God. Some everyday people talk about their encounters with God. It seems that these encounters are initiated by God. We can cultivate being welcome receivers of such encounters (deepening an active prayer life, etc.). We can also respond to the inner promptings provided occasionally by the Holy Spirit – those “emotional nudgings” that we can either respond to or ignore (some nudgings are more obvious or poignant than others). It also seems that we are more likely to notice – and engage with – these promptings if we regularly connect meaningfully with our inner lives – something not always encouraged in our outwardly-focused culture (also, some people avoid the inner life to avoid inner challenges; having inner challenges is a universally human experience) – can make it easier to notice and reply to the Holy Spirit’s “emotional nudgings” welcoming us to an encounter with God.
What are these encounters with God? While the contours of each encounter is going to be personal to us, these encounters involve us sensing God’s presence – often with God making it possible for us to be somehow transformed. These encounters can range from a one-time occurrence to an ongoing or recurring experience. I responded to such an “emotional nudging” at a church service in 2016. I had been away from church for some years and attended a special service for social reasons – with the explicit intention of “I am only coming to this service for social reasons; I am NOT returning to church.” When I arrived, the service became more socially meaningful than I anticipated and the homily (sermon) impacted me – my sense was that the priest’s faith filled in empty hole in my soul that I hadn’t been able to fill. As the evening unfolded, I then stepped off a curb wrong on my way home from the service and broke my ankle – which left me on the couch at home; I was stuck not being able to actively distract myself from the “emotional nudging” I had experienced at church. Within days, this experience brought me back to church. In an extended period that followed, I experienced daily contemplative prayer that was given to me; I felt God’s presence in that prayer. All of this led to my faith broadening in wonderful ways and my emotional life growing and maturing in positive ways.
A crucial aspect of encounters with God gets to “the heart” of a relationship with God: God is love and God loves us. It is God’s very nature to love. Given that it is God’s inherent nature to love, the Catholic Catechism speaks to God’s nature needing to be Trinitarian – Father, Son, Holy Ghost – because God needed someone to love before God had humans to love; the three aspects of the Trinity could love each aspect of itself until we humans came along….and, of course, the Trinity continues loving each aspect of itself. Paragraph 221 of the Catechism reads: “God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.”).
Personal Transformation
- How do we mature in faith?
- How are we maturing – or not maturing – in faith? What are the roadblocks that we encounter in this regard? How can we get around these roadblocks?
- How can we grow through the most stubborn and challenging emotional difficulties and life challenges?
The Fruits of the Spirit – the outcomes of growing in faith – are listed in the New Testament (Galatians 5:22-23): love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Then, the most important result of growing in faith: love of God and neighbor
When Christ was asked which of the commandments was greatest, he replied that the two greatest commandments are Love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40).
How well are we present to the people in our lives – our loved ones, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc? How much do we attend to their daily needs? How often do we buy people flowers, send them cards, etc? Do we step up to “be there” when someone is having a difficult time? Do we listen? Loving people necessarily involves being present to them. People need each other. Being present involves focusing upon the person – taking an interest in their emotional state and interacting so they sense our interest in them (not thinking about what we’re going to interject when they are done with their next sentence!). When I stayed with a cousin following her surgery, I was moving around her house looking for physical activities to do that would be helpful (wash dishes, etc.); she finally told me, “Please stop. I just need you to be here. Come, sit with me.”
Beyond caring about the people who we are happy to have in our lives, we can’t say that we love God if we don’t love our neighbor – all of our neighbors, including strangers. Every person alive is a child of God. We are called to be good to everyone. Of course, we find that some people are easy to love, while some are harder to love. It’s easy to be nice to the people we like. We are measured, I suppose, by how well we treat the people we find hardest to get along with. Sometimes I do well in this regard, sometimes I don’t.
In today’s lonely and divisive world (us-against-them political divisions, etc.), each of us becoming more kind toward “the other side” would go along way toward improving our social divisions (it’s not just about waiting for them to “see the light” and be nice to us!)….. Loving more of the people we come into contact with – taking the time to acknowledge people – would also go along way toward reducing what the U.S. Surgeon General is calling our Epidemic of Loneliness. There’s a saying that gets posted occasionally (source unknown): Always be a little kinder than is necessary.
Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog post, please share it with them (thank you!
