Jesus – Spiritual accompaniment

More on “Prayer – wordless sighs of the heart”… and “hearing from you”

May 21, 2026

In a previous post, “Prayer: Wordless Sighs of the Heart,” I mentioned that the Benedictine monks of Saint Meinrad Monastery mention in their book The Tradition of Catholic Prayer that “wordless sighs of the heart” is a type of prayer available to us. I love this type of prayer. Human language simply falla short for having a meaningful interaction with God in prayer. Vocabulary simply isn’t needed when we pray – we can simply be present with God. Prayer, at its’ most intimate – and therefore meaningful, is about presenting ourselves fully to the fullness of God.

In my readings, I recently came upon Paul’s letter to the Roman’s – Romans 8:26. I came upon it three times within about two weeks! Romans 8:26 says “…we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Holy Spirit intercedes [for us] with groanings too deep for words.” Super! Paul was touching on this same important theme in the early decades of Christianity!

Regular readers may have noticed that I often blog about prayer. Why? While prayer is deeply personal (it is about each of us being intimately present with God) means it takes a particular type of creativity to describe prayer well, I want everyone to experience the richness of experiencing God’s presence in prayer. Because I want everyone to have a rich experience of prayer, I have started compiling a reference list of my blog posts on prayer to make it easy for readers to find a list of my blog post on prayer. You can find that list here (please check it out!). FYI, you will see that I am also compiling other topical lists of my blog posts on that same page……

Speaking of “what matters to each of us in our faith journeys,” I am expanding the “input” of this faith blog. In addition to you – readers – receiving blog posts on faith topics I choose to write about, this blog is being opened up to hearing from you. Is there a spirituality topic that you’ve been pondering for a time? Ask us about it. Is there a faith topic you have been pondering but you haven’t found an answer? Submit your question to this blog….. A Dear Hermitage Within” page has been added to this blog’s website so you can reach out with your question. Have a question about prayer? Ask. Want to know something about Christian liturgy? Ask. Curious about some aspect of religious history? Ask. Want to inquire about some aspect of theology? Ask. If you submit a question and we plan to write about it on this blog (you would remain anonymous, of course!), we will be sure to let you know by email. FYI – I will write some blog responses to submitted questions and may sometimes invite trusted faith writers to provide insights – pastors, theologians, etc….. Be sure to visit the “submit your question” page above when you would like to submit a faith question!

The Genesis creation stor(ies), Jesus’ parables, chaos, stability, change

May 2, 2026

During this first term in my master’s in theology program, we’ve been reading through the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (the Torah/Pentateuch), the four canonical gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation.

Our two courses – one on the Hebrew Bible and one for the New Testament – were chosen as our first two classes to lay a groundwork. Tear down “what we thought we new about the Bible” and learn to look at it in fresh ways through the insights provided through Biblical Studies.

The two combined classes and the class textbooks have – indeed – percolated an interesting combination of insights that has captured my imagination.

In Greek – the language through which the complete Bible first came to us – the word COSMOS (order) is opposite of the word CHAOS.

In the time of Old Testament at at the time of Jesus, water represented chaos.

When Genesis tells of God creating the world (there are actually two versions of the story), the water – chaos – was separated from land. In creating the world, God created order out of chaos. God can create order in the world and create a world in which we can inhabit.

In the New Testament stories when Jesus walked on water toward the disciples and calmed the tempestuous water storm(s), these weren’t just physically miraculous. Walking on water and calming storms on the sea likewise represented calming chaos. Jesus calms the chaos in our lives.

Yet, Jesus is also the disrupter.

While the Genesis creation story is told in the ways in which tell us of order being created in our world, Jesus spoke in parables.

I learned to consider parables in more depth this term from writer Bernard Brandon Scott in his book Hear then the Parable (a commentary on the Parables of Jesus). Parables, it turns out, developed as a distinct form of communicating lessons in the geographic area of Christ during the time of Jesus. Jesus was among the first people to use parables. In telling parables, Jesus brought about social disruption. He used parables to take us from “here is something with which you are familiar (A, B, C.)” to “I hereby compare A, B, or C to ‘a better way to live’ and/or ‘X is how to get to heaven.'” He disrupted our famliar ways of living to show us his path.

All of this still applies today. When we encounter storms in life, we can turn to our God who loves us and who shelters us amidst the chaos of storms. Yet, the God who loves us as we are – as the saying goes – “loves us too much to leave us the way we are.”

It is up to us to allow God to change us into the people we are meant to be. No easy undertaking. This is involves surrender. I am not the master of my destiny. Personally, I’m attracted to the person I come closer to being when I allow God to shift me toward becoming the person I am meant to be.

Our social order comes closer to the world God wants for us when more of us spend more time allowing God to transform us toward being the people we are meant to be.

People of faith, becoming Easter people….

April 29, 2026

When I taught baptism preparation classes for parents and godparents, talking about baptism inherently required talking about Adam and Eve and “The Fall.” When we are baptized, we are given grace that helps us to reduce our tendency to sin – this human tendency to sin dates back to humanity’s fall in the Garden of Eden. When I would very quickly start talking about “The Fall” in these baptism prep classes – so that I could then get to the good part of explaining grace and baptism – I would tell parents and godparents that “the longer I am in church, the more convinced I am that ‘The Fall” happened with Adam and Eve. If you’re not sure that humanity’s ‘fall’ happened in the Garden of Eden, just turn on the news and listen to all the crazy things that we humans do. Humanity’s fall with Adam and Eve actually does an effective job of explaining our collective human faults……”

I have come to notice that the “church people” I most admire share a common quality. One way or another, each of them really, genuinely draw a connection between being people of faith to recognizing the darkest parts of themselves and facing-and-overcoming/improving those dark parts of themselves within the context of their faith. And, they talk about it. Often, this “talking about it” comes up in one-on-one conversations. I’ve heard people talk about overcoming depression, getting over being terrible to their spouses, about how there was a time when “they shouldn’t have had children” (and didn’t) to now being people who are visibly caring toward the people in their lives. The list goes on. Personally, I tend to talk about my challenges within prayer groups (a great place to find contemplative prayer groups is Contemplative Outreach).

This process of overcoming our darkest corners really pays off. We’ve all got dark corners in our lives. These are the parts of ourselves that we wouldn’t want to see described in the newspaper….. Being honest about this stuff takes courage. I think most of us are aware of the darkest parts of ourselves – whether we simply feel pulled down by it and don’t know what to do about it (that really does drag a person down emotionally) or if we take a hard, honest look at it “in the light of day.” Sometimes, getting honest about this stuff happens out of some kind of necessity (i.e., one’s particular form of darkness becomes manifest in some way that ends up requiring that it be addressed). Sometimes, people just want to become better people. No matter what path we take to really facing up to the darkest parts of ourselves, there is liberation to be found in letting God transform us. And, it really is God who transforms us. The best and most liberating transformation comes through our God who can – and will – bring about salvation.

Surrendering to letting God change our innermost selves can sometimes be terrifying. “My innermost self is ‘Who I am.’ What’s going to happen if I let God tamper with my innermost self?” What happens is that we become the people we are meant to be. We become better people. Transformation and freedom happen.

A couple of days ago, I had one of those “Murphy’s law” afternoons when “everything that can go wrong” does go wrong” (or, “things go wrong in ways that we couldn’t have even thought of”). I started coming unraveled. I recognized the unraveling when I shouted about that day’s version of “Murphy’s Law” and realized that my behavior was going to upset my cat (who had no control over my behavior). “Oh, my cat doesn’t need to be subjected to my unraveling.” I’ve been “doing church” long enough to know that this “unravelling” is no longer necessary when Murphy shows up and imposes his law. Further, I have experienced the process of God improving me enough to be able to shift toward that transforming process. I emotionally sat down and tapped into the transformative process I have learned in church. The unraveling began to reverse. There’s freedom in that. We don’t have be stuck in the worst parts of ourselves. We can become the people we want to see described in the newspaper (or, the church bulletin).

We are currently in the Easter season – the fifty days from Easter to Pentecost. God died for our sins and rose again so that we can join “the Risen Christ.” Our surrender in which we allow God to transform us means tapping into Jesus’s death and resurrection. This is truly beautiful. Transformative. It’s freely available to all of us. God wants to be in our lives. “Being the people we were meant to be” is an available option. Happy Easter.

Kim Burkhardt blogs about faith at The Hermitage Within. Thank you for reading this faith blog and for sharing it with your friends. While you are here, please feel welcome to provide support to sustain this blog ($$). You can also $$ support this blog by clicking here here to do your Amazon shopping (if you click here before you start your Amazon shopping, Amazon pays us a commission when you shop via the link provided).

The Hermitage Within (an important location!)

June 22, 2025

Book and Topic: The Hermitage Within — The Hermitage Within

I was looking up a url link to another book I am currently reading to prepare a book review; while looking up that other book, I happily came across the book The Hermitage Within on Liturgical Press’s website (I read a lot of books by Liturgical Press – they have great books!).

I wish I had thought of this phrase “The Hermitage Within” and had chosen this title as the name for my blog. This phrase gets to the heart of what I want to convey in this blog….

Liturgical Press summarizes this book with articulation I’ve been seeking to describe about people’s inner experience: “Not everyone can, or should, live as a hermit. Yet all Christians need an inner hermitage, a place apart where we come face-to-face with our true selves, and listen to the still small voice of God. It is a place of silence, of fear and fascination, of anguish and grace. The writer of this profound yet simple volume encourages us to find our own inner hermitage—a place of calm and contemplation, apart from the demands of the modern world, a place so silent that we can hear God. The desert, the mountain, and the temple provide the focus of the anonymous author’s reflections. He meditates on the wilderness experiences of such biblical persons as Jesus, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalen. He considers the place held in the Christian story by Mount Sinai, the Mount of Olives, and Calvary. He ponders the idea of temples, using such images as our inner temple and Christ the temple, the foundation of the Church.”

I encourage everyone to connect with and cultivate regular time spent in your inner hermitage – such time can and should be nourishing. Western culture largely encourages us to be outwardly focused….. Sometimes it can be tempting to avoid the challenges of encountering the difficult aspects of our inner experience. Yet we must encounter these difficult aspects of our own inner experience, wrestle with these aspects of our experience, and surrender this to God’s healing grace. Further, there is much richness available to us within our own inner hermitage. It is in our own inner hermitage that we experience both the essence of our own self and a relationship with the divine. Yes, our own inner hermitage is an important place where we can “allow God in” so God can foster God’s healing grace in our lives.

Daily time spent alone in our own inner hermitage is important for encountering and cultivating those aspects of our life experience that can only be experienced by going inward. Going inward is an opportunity to experience rich vibrancy. For more of my reflections on our inner hermitage, visit my previous post Geography of Grace.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechis t. If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (it’s free – thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).

Book Review: Ars Celebrandi

June 5, 2025

This book, written for priests to inspire artful presiding at mass, brings to life the nuts and bolts of how the Catholic mass brings liturgy – the work of the people – is celebrated. For the non-ordained among us, Ars Celebrandi: Celebrating and Concelebrating Mass provides insight into how the liturgy is designed to invigorate the faith of the faithful.

In practical terms, this book picks up where the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (the “GIRM”) ends….. The GIRM is the instruction manual of “how to do a Catholic mass,” whereas Ars Celebrandi gets into the art of how to preside.

Two examples of this book’s insights come from the foreward of Ars Celebrandi (written by Bishop Mark Seitz):

“The liturgy is the action of the entire people of God who are being more perfectly formed into the Body of Christ. The Second Vatican Council’s seminal teaching that the people of God are called to full, conscious, and active participation is based upon this fundamental recognition.”

“The liturgy, as we know, is a language and a certain style of communication that comes down to us from the ages but is also constantly adapting under the guidance of the Spirit in every age. It a language of signs and symbols that are read universally by people in the church. To be sure, there are regional and cultural aspects that are rightly represented as local communities worship, but these are secondary to the expressions that unite us across times and places.”

Then, we lay readers learn in this book about the complexity of presiding at church services. For example:

“[Presiding at a liturgy] involve a marriage of books and ministers. The liturgical norms [i.e., what is suppose to be done] encounter a real-time relationship with the individual persons ordained to carry them out….The relationship presumes that priests know the liturgical norms. However, the rules are complex. The books detailing them are many. Some laws keep changing….Furthermore, not every aspect of liturgy is prescribed. When presiding, a typical priest is suppose to do certain things, is free to do certain other things, and takes freedom to do even more….” [Subsequent paragraphs delve into specific examples of these “certain things” and “certain other things.}

Reading this book is of interest for we lay people in that we become more observant of the nuts and bolts of what happens at church. A book worth reading.

Book Review: Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs

April 17, 2024

There was a time when I would have read this reference book from cover to cover (I am among the readers who believe that when I read a book, I should read the entire book…..).

This is a useful, scholarly book to have on one’s bookshelf as a reference to inform one’s study of any number of topics. I am reading some of it now and plan to refer to it on occasion as the reference book it is intended to be.

Christianity is 2,000 years old. In 2024, the majority of us – with the possible exception of those Biblical scholars who specialize in Early Christian Literature – are not going to be familiar with the ins and outs of the topics discussed in the early church. Nor are most of us current on the etymology of what every word meant 2,000 years ago (“dictionary definitions” of words and the cultural context of vocabulary changes over time…).

“Sure,” some will say, “We know what early Christians were talking about. They were talking about Jesus, the resurrection, the gospels, and how to be Christian.” Yes, that’s true. But how exactly did those conversations unfold in Palestine, Greece, Turkey, etc. in, say, the year 75, 125, or 300 AD?

The gospels weren’t written down until several decades after Christ’s death. Jesus said during his lifetime that he would return during “this generation;” thus, it initially seemed unnecessary to Jesus’ contemporaries to write down his life and teachings for future generations…. Eventually, it started to become clear that he wasn’t coming back imminently, so his narrative began to be written for posterity. It then took time for the early church to decide which gospels – from among the gospels that were written down – are canonical (accepted as church doctrine). It wasn’t immediately clear to the early church that “the Bible” was going to include (and only include) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Likewise, it took time for the early church to develop and “come together” on any number of topics that we recognize today as “Christianity.”

So, precisely which “Christian topics” were under discussion in the early days of Christianity? This book – A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs – provides useful insights in to this question. Having this reference on one’s bookshelf can inform our understanding in any number of settings – when studying Sunday’s readings at church, when we want to learn more about a specific aspect of Christianity, when studying church history, etc.

A sampling of several topical entries in this 704-page resource include:

Christ, Divinity (how the early church came to understand this one topic gets 25 pages!)
Descent into Hades
Gifts of the spirit
“Keys of the Kingdom”
Patriarchs
Paul, apostle
Prayer
Rapture
Schism
At the end of the book, there are “Quotable quotes from the Early Christians.”

I appreciate having this book on my bookshelf.

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: Nourishing Love – A Franciscan Celebration of Mary

November 6, 2023

This book takes readers on a novel way of exploring Mary’s life (no, not a novel). For those of us who tend think of Mary either historically and/or as a saint, this book brings us an additional way to consider Mary.

Franciscan author (and priest) Murray Bodo offers us something similar to that of The Chosen TV series: a conceptual view of what it could have been like living Jesus’ or Mary’s lives – making their day-to-day lives more tangible for us than what many of us consider when reading the Gospels. Both this book and The Chosen contain historical aspects of the lives of Mary and Jesus (respectively). Reading historical accounts alone – however – don’t necessarily take us into thinking about the daily aspects what they did and felt as people.

In this book, Nourishing Love, there are reflections that take us to ponder, “what thoughts did Mary ponder?” After Jesus offered her and John to one another as mother-and-son, what conversations Mary and John have about Jesus? Possibly ponderings by Mary and possible – plausible – conversations between Mary and John are presented here to bring us into considering their lives on a very human level.

At one point in the book, the author writes, “Since Jesus was both God and man, he had his mother’s genes and was deeply influenced genetically, as most of us are, by his mother. He was Mary’s son, prompting us to imagine how Mary herself was in fact revealed in the person of her son.” Hmm….. Did genetics cause Jesus to look like his mother? Did Mary and Jesus share similar voice inflections? Did Jesus maintain some of Mary’s habits once he became an adult (ate the same foods for breakfast, had the same evening routines, etc.)? How much did Mary’s human personality influence Jesus’ human personality? The author of this book observes that the stories Mary told Jesus during his infancy and childhood may have influenced the types of stories Jesus chose to tell as an adult – including the parables he told. How she cared for the people around her could have been socially instructive for the human Jesus.

The way this book is constructed made me think of Ignatian exercises in terms of the creativity brought to subjects of faith. There’s a degree to which I felt uncomfortable with this book – I would more naturally gravitate to an academically-oriented sociological construct/analysis of people’s daily lives in first-century Palestine to get a sense of Mary’s life (that type of book would also be interesting!). Sometimes, though, discomfort is good. Discomfort can challenge us to consider topics in new ways; new perspectives help us grow.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a “Content Creator/Individual” 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 post, please share it with them (thank you!).

Spiritual accompaniment

Accompanying you in your faith journey

Tag: Jesus