Tag: faith

How-to list: steps to living our faith as love

June 24, 2024
Stairs, moss

The purpose of being a person of faith is ultimately about “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14).

Christ was asked, “Which of the commandments is greatest?” He responded, ““Love God and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:34-40).

So, how do we live our lives as our faith calls us to? Several steps – if applied – move us forward in love (kudos for these steps you already put into practice!):

  • Love God. God is love. We spend time with the people we love; thus, loving God requires spending time with God in prayer (note: prayer isn’t just a one-way conversation of us talking to God. Prayer is a relationship. Relationships go both ways – in addition to communicating to God, allow God to be present in prayer, be attentive to God’s loving presence.). Twenty minutes in daily prayer is feasible. Regular prayer transforms us, increases both our faith and how our faith unfolds in our lives!
  • Loving God requires loving God’s children. This is both a spiritual truth and applies our faith toward the greater social good (this spiritual truth is spoken of in 1 John 4:20). Everyone is a child of God – no exceptions. Even the people we don’t like are beloved children of God (that’s hard!). It can be easy to cultivate a loving relationship with God (the “faith is exclusively a relationship between me and God” syndrome) – it’s harder to apply our faith to learning to love any people we’d rather avoid. However, learning to love people we’d rather avoid (or even hate!) forces us to grow into becoming better people – faith in action! The world becomes a better place as a result.
  • Apply generosity of spirit throughout each day. As the saying goes, “everyone loves a cheerful giver.” Through this principle, we become better people and contribute positively to our communities and the individuals within our communities.
  • Go the extra mile to be a caring person when interacting with people. Be the one to help build community, to be a force for good. Result: people feel cared for!
  • Get involved in relieving the needs in your community. Volunteer where needed, donate to charity. We can all be involved in making our community a better place.
  • Make time for people when they need you. Be present when someone is vulnerable. This is sometimes easy when it’s someone we care about it, when the topic-at-hand is an easy one, and we can easily make time. Sometimes, though, being present when someone feels vulnerable is hard. Work at it, people need you. It’s a good, important way to support people.
  • Be the one to forgive, even when it’s hard. This is the right thing to do, it heals relationships. Sometimes, we need to be the bigger person (even when we don’t want to!).
  • Find something good in everyone. Nearly everyone – even the people who are difficult – have positive traits. Compliment people’s strengths.
  • In marriages, apply the “60/40 rule.” If both spouses spend 60% of their marital effort thinking about meeting the other spouse’s needs (rather than focusing on “what do I want out of this marriage”), the marriage will go well. A great strategy!
  • Build people up. Family, friends, co-workers.
  • Give children and pets – everyone who is vulnerable (sick folks, marginalized individuals, etc. – your undivided attention. When we are good to people who can’t do anything for us – we’re living as well as we ought to.
  • Commit random acts of kindness. The more, the better.
  • Cultivate empathy.
  • Allow God to clean up your character flaws. Often time, our flaws get reduced better with God’s help. Our imperfections don’t help anybody!

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). Also, your support ($$) to help sustain this blog is welcome.

We need each other: small group faith sharing

June 4, 2024
Clonmacnoise window

As we seek to grow in faith, we need each other.

This idea that we need each other in faith is observed and communicated time and again:

  • “No man is an island.”
  • “We are all radically incomplete. And we need each other.” Timothy Radcliffe at the October, 2023 Synod in Rome.
  • A person of faith who I admire wrote: “we all need to have encouragement and some checks & balances from other seekers in regard to our experiences, otherwise we can fall into despair, or begin to believe that our own experience is the fullest measure of truth, which is dangerous.”
  • Etc.

We learn in faith from faith leaders – pastors, book authors, etc. We also learn from one another.

Sometimes, there is a desire to go it alone in our faith:

  • “I am independent. I am capable of learning. I know my conscience – I will find a faith path that suits my conscience and my lifestyle. I will grow in faith by sitting home alone reading books on spirituality.”
  • Sometimes, people variously add….. “I don’t like our current pastor at church…” Or, “I don’t care for organized religion…”
  • Perhaps: “I will supplement faith reading by going on nature walks or going to occasional conferences or retreats.”
  • “I have an active prayer life. I will allow God to direct my life. It’s ‘me and God.'”
  • “Of course, I will work continually be a better person.”

In fact, we need each other. The email I quoted above goes on to say, “we need each other, and I believe that God designed us that way.” Even hermits at monasteries have occasional contact with the other members of their monastic communities!

Christ was asked, “Which of the commandments is greatest?” He responded, ““Love God and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:34-40). Loving your neighbor, of course, involves generosity of spirit to the people in our lives and supporting people who need support – it involves us interacting with one another, being in community.

Faith communities provide just that – communities where our faith is nurtured, where we hold ourselves to account, where we support the faith growth of our fellow faith travelers, and where we learn to more fully love our neighbor. Within such a context, small group faith sharing provides distinct and useful opportunities to learn and grow in faith, to support our fellow faith travelers. Local faith communities – churches, topic-specific communities such as prayer-based organizations, etc. – often provide small group settings ranging from Bible studies to prayer groups, life-stage groups (young adults, moms, retirees, etc.), topic-specific learning communities, and service activities (cleaning the parish, feeding the homeless, etc.). Please feel welcome to look up and join a faith sharing small group in your community.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!).

Prayer: two-way communication (interesting in an MRI)

May 21, 2024
John the Baptist

Daily prayer is a critical component of a faith-filled life. There’s a saying: “There can be no faith without prayer” (source uncertain). Within a theistic vision of faith, a life of faith must involve a relationship with the divine. Our relationships with the people in our lives are defined by relationship: social interactions. This also applies in our faith life – there can be no spiritual life without a relationship with God. Thus, a relationship with God through prayer.

Relationships are two-way. I like the analogy of comparing prayer to a phone call (it might be Fr. Mike Schmitz, “Bible in a Year” who put forward this analogy). We don’t sustain relationships with the people in our lives by phoning someone and saying, “I’m calling to tell you X” – then hanging up. Rather, a phone call is a give-and-take, two-way interaction. Prayer is the same way. We don’t just send our communication to God in a one-way phone call.  We both communicate to God in prayer and also rest in stillness to allow God to present to us.

This two-way nature of communication with God came to mind yesterday morning. I normally view prayer-based two-way-communication-with-God as “me communicating with God in a style that suits my prayer style, while God’s response is to be present with me in prayer.” That concept was “tested” yesterday morning. I was at a medical clinic getting an MRI. I knew I was going to be in the MRI tube/machine for about an hour and wouldn’t be able to move. Perhaps five minutes into the MRI, I realized “This would be a good time for prayer. I’m rendered unable to do anything other than to lay perfectly still while I’m in this machine. Prayer would be a good use of my time. ” So, I started to pray. I wasn’t thinking of imploring God’s aid; rather, this could be a good time to simply spend time with God. A brief moment after I started to pray, a perfectly audible voice asked me – plain as day – “Are you okay?”

Smile, irony….. The perfectly audible voice asking me “Are you okay” was the MRI technician speaking through the MRI’s microphone to ask if I felt physically comfortable in the machine.

“Yes,” I replied with a smile (“This is an ironic moment of communication,” I thought), “I am okay.” (….well…. I want my test results, but…yes….In this moment, I am okay…”).

There are many ways to pray:

  • Talking to God as we would talk to a friend (either verbally or through what’s often called “mental prayer”)
  • Simply being present with God, resting-in-God’s-presence as I’ve heard this called (we can do this anywhere)
  • Lectio Divina (a method of praying the scriptures reflectfully)
  • Attending church services (church is itself a form of prayer)
  • Religious singing (“Those who sing pray twice”)
  • Contemplative prayer (for example, learn about this form of prayer through an organization called Contemplative Outreach)

Interested in reading more about prayer? A couple of great books include:

Clinging: The Experience of Prayer (Emilie Griffin)

The Tradition of Catholic Prayer (The Monks of Meinrad Monastery)

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Update: Faith reading challenge – Brothers Karamazov

May 10, 2024
Faith Reading challenge: The Brothers Karamazov

In March, I challenged readers to consider reading Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and to read it from a faith perspective.

In March, I stated: “I attended a state university and we read The Brothers Karamazov as secular literature. While we read the book as secular literature, I do remember our instructor posing a question about a particular point for one of the books’ characters. I found myself responding as seeing the character as analagous to a friend of mine who was serving as a spiritual guide for me at the time. My instructor and classmates found this odd and laughed as such. It was an awkward moment…….Since then, I have periodically heard reference to “The Brothers K” as being a book – in part – about faith. Goodreads (an online book portal) says of the book, ‘Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture.’ Put May 1 on your calendar as the date to start reading The Brothers Karamazov through the lens of faith. I will post dates to begin discussing the book.”

We are now into the month of May. I did start to try reading “The Brothers K” again. In addition, a reader of this blog indicated that she accepted the challenge to read the book and has started reading – that’s great.

When I got a few pages into “The Brothers K” this time, I discovered that – indeed – the book includes more faith insights than I noticed the first time around. From the beginning, the book talks about faith being about love! Love is the root of what Christianity is about! When I first read the book for a secular literature class in college, I didn’t fully appreciate how infused the book is with faith concepts. Now, I see it.

Unfortunately, I am discovering that this very long Russian novel is a “bigger read” than I have an attention span for at this time. I am putting the book back on my bookshelf – with a fuller appreciation of what Dostoevsky put into the book.

For readers of this blog who open the pages of “The Brothers K,” I applaud your decision to read it!

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Book Review: Gerald May’s The Dark Night of the Soul

May 6, 2024
Gerald May's book: The Dark Night of the Soul

Teresa of Avila and her protege John of the Cross – two 16th-century Spaniards – are my favorite mystics and two of my favorite faith writers. When I began reading their books in 2017 or 2018, they articulated my own (more modest!) experience with contemplative prayer.

Since then, I have tried to explain to people that John of the Cross’s book Dark Night of the Soul is not about tribulations or depression. It’s not.

More recently, I came upon Gerald May’s book of the same title. Gerald May is a physician, psychiatrist, and writer of faith books). Gerald May, in his book, accessibly explains John of the Cross’s ideas in today’s language. I am grateful that he makes John of the Cross’s ideas more understandable to people than I have been able to present.

Treading into the Spiritual Depths: The (not depressing!) Dark Night of the Soul

In his book Dark Night of the Soul, John of the Cross writes about how the sometimes unviewable-to-us aspects of our inner faith journey are part of where God works within us to transform us (rather than this title being about a depressive view on things!). Attentiveness to our inner journey can allow us some small glimpse of when this (at least somewhat) unviewable aspect of our spiritual growth is being wrought within us – particularly if we have an active relationship with God in prayer.

Gerald May’s book of the same title speaks to this idea about “The Dark Night of the Soul”: “May emphasizes that the dark night is not necessarily a time of suffering and near despair, but a time of deep transition, a search for new orientation when things are clouded and full of mystery. The dark gives depth, dimension and fullness to the spiritual life.”

While John of the Cross’s book Dark Night of the Soul is not about suffering, modern day writer Gerald May does touch on the fact of suffering from a useful perspective on page nine of his book Dark Night of the Soul . His is a perspective that occurred to me in some fashion several years ago: “….suffering does not result from some divine purgation….Instead, suffering arises from the simple circumstances of life itself.”

Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross’s books are very worth reading. Gerald May’s book is also worth reading.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Rumi: Live where you fear to live

April 10, 2024

Abbey window Ballintubber

“Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.” Rumi

Too often, we make decisions based on fear. “I couldn’t possibly travel alone. How would I navigate the travel experience on my own?” “I couldn’t live alone as a single person. (Because…..).” “I couldn’t (fill in the blank).”

Okay, I cheated. The fears I listed above are fears that I don’t experience. I have my own list of fears – sometimes making decisions in reaction to those fears. In some ways, people view me as living a fearless life – I simply never learned how to have some of the fears that many people have. In some other aspects of my life, I don’t live fearfully because I was taught growing up to be pragmatic about living my life as I see fit – a good skill in the sense that I learned a healthy dose of independence (perhaps not enough interdependence and cooperation). In other ways, I am occasionally immobilized by aspects of life that don’t seem to phase other people. We are each living our own experience….

When we make decisions based on fear, we spend our time trapped in self-constructed prisons rather than fulling living.

God does not want us to live partial lives, self-restricted due to fear-imposed limitations. Jesus came “…That you may have life and live it to the full” (John 10:10). Making decisions based on fear is not being trustful in God, nor are we – by so doing – living the lives God wants for us. Not living the lives God wants for us is shortchanging the God who gave us life and the lives we are given. We are not truly being people of faith when we make decisions based on fear.

Really, one cannot be both faithful and allow fear to limit any aspect of our lives. We all have fears of one sort or another. A full and abundant life is one in which we live anyway, living without allowing fears to hold us back, allowing fear to define what we are going to do or how we are going to live…..Rumi: “Live where you fear to live.”

There is also the truism that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). To the degree that we live in fear, fear is diminished to the degree that we learn to live in loving connections with God and the people in our lives. Not sure that there’s a correlative force between increased love and decreased levels of fear in our lives? On a macro scale, people living in war zones will be living in fear (not love). On an individual level, the same principle applies. Give it a try.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Faith Reading challenge: The Brothers Karamazov

March 25, 2024
The Brothers Karamazov

I took a literature class in college in which we read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

I attended a state university and we read The Brothers Karamazov as secular literature. While we read the book as secular literature, I do remember our instructor posing a question about a particular point for one of the books’ characters. I found myself responding as seeing the character as analagous to a friend of mine who was serving as a spiritual guide for me at the time. My instructor and classmates found this odd and laughed as such. It was an awkward moment.

Since then, I have periodically heard reference to “The Brothers K” as being a book – in part – about faith. Goodreads (an online book portal) says of the book, “Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture.”

Because I have repeatedly heard of the book as having spirituality dimensions, I am planning to read “The Brothers K” again, after I finish reading another book (a long book that I’m reading rather slowly). This time, I will read “The Brothers K” through the lens of spirituality. I invite each of you to join me in reading the book to consider its’ faith dimensions; we can then discuss the faith ideas in book.

Put May 1 on your calendar as the date to start reading The Brothers Karamazov through the lens of faith. I will post dates to begin discussing the book.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Surrender – a perennial need

March 23, 2024
Candle

I wrote a post in July titled Surrender in Prayer. In that post, I wrote “Despite our western ideas about individual autonomy and self-agency, us permitting God’s agency to mold and shape us is liberating. God loves us, wants good for us and our world, and and has capacity for transformational good beyond our comprehension. There is no room for a negative outcome when we allow God to work within and through us.”

Surrendering to God’s will needs to be ongoing. The people who can stay in a perpetual state of surrender to God’ work in their lives – well, some of them are saints! They get the ongoing joy found in Acts 17:28: “For it is in him that we live and move and have our being.”

I live at times in Acts 17:28 – sometimes longer periods of time, sometimes shorter. Then, there are times when I get caught up in life’s challenges, fears, etc. It happened again yesterday. I arrived home in an emotional fit about one of life’s challenges. A few weeks ago, I spoke to a priest (who reads this blog) and mentioned some kind of discomfort about another challenge – he told me that I need to follow my own advice that I write about in this blog! Hmf!! ….I was then awake at 1:30 this morning fretting about the current life challenge. Embarrassingly, it took me until 5:00 am to come back to “surrender this in prayer.”

God loves us. When we surrender, God provides us with strength and turns us into better people. “I can do al things through Christ who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

I see ways in which God has made me a better person in recent years. I look forward to God continuing to transform how I live in the world – (re) surrender required on my part.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Book Review: Martin Laird’s ‘Into the Silent Land’

February 28, 2024
Book Cover: Into the Silent Land

I was recently given a copy of Martin Laird’s Into the Silent Land: Christian Practice of Contemplation.

As a contemplative pray-er, I find this book refreshing. Rather than only being a how-to book on the mechanics of how to pray contemplatively, this is the type of contemplative prayer book I look for: a description of what happens when we do a deep dive into contemplative prayer. It is – to paraphrase a speaker I heard once – the “poetry of our lives” that demonstrates the animation of one’s prayer life when prays contemplatively. Such poetry – it seems to me – helps lead readers into the experience of contemplative prayer via surrender into what we read in the books’ text.

A few “poetry of our prayer lives” excerpts:

  • “Silence is an urgent necessity for us: silence is necessary if we are to hear God speaking in eternal silence; our own silence is necessary if God is to hear us” (page 2).
  • “This book…proceeds from an ancient Christian view that the foundation of every land is silence (Ws 18:24), where God simply and perpetually gives himself” (page 6).
  • “…the grace of Christian wholeness that flowers in silence….dispels (the) illusion of separation [from God]” (page 16).

This is a short book, but it takes a long time to read – its’ contents are contemplated rather than merely read. It contributes meaningfully to one’s prayer life. This is a book I will keep.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Second Sunday in Lent: Reading Reflection

February 25, 2024
James Tissot's painting of Jesus praying

Many of Christianity’s denominations read the same Bible readings each Sunday – the three-year cycle of weekend readings decided upon by the Catholic church after Vatican II.

This Sunday, we hear in the First Reading of Abraham following God’s orders by going to a mountaintop to sacrifice his only son – the son he was given later in life to be the son who God had said would provide Abraham with countless descendants. At the last moment – when Abraham had demonstrated his willingness to follow God’s instructions – he was told not to sacrifice his son.

In the second reading (Romans 8:31-34), we hear reference to God not saving his own son – a son biologically descended from Abraham – from death.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus goes to a mountaintop – just as Abraham had gone to a mountaintop in the first reading (the readings each weekend are paired based upon shared topics or themes) – and is transfigured in dazzling white, having discourse with two prophets of old, all before three of Jesus’ apostles.

When we surrender to allow God to work in our lives, we are also transformed. To the degree that we allow God to work in our hearts, we become the people God meant for us to be. When we give up the false perception of being in control of our lives, it can be tempting to think that we are surrendering our independence and self-determination. How well is independence and self-determination working in today’s increasingly lonely, socially-distanced, and broken world? The people we are meant to be are people who are daughters and sons of God – daughters and sons who live in relationship with God and who are transformed through God’s love for us. We subsequently find ourselves transformed into living the two commandments Christ said are the two greatest: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Transformed into a life of joy that passes all understanding. In surrender, a new life is given to us.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). 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, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).