Day 33. Shifting to Solid Ground
I waited, waited for the LORD; who bent down and heard my cry, drew me out of the pit of destruction, out of the mud of the swamp, set my feet upon rock, steadied my steps.
Psalm 40:2,3
Now that we understand where our Sense of Self, Source of Love and Hope of Happiness should be resting, the question immediately arises: “How do I shift my pillars onto the Cornerstone of Christ?” We’ll assume here that all the essential groundwork is laid (pun intended). We’ll take it as given that you are baptized, that you are a Catholic in good communion with the Church, and that you are striving to conform your life to the teachings of the Church in all areas of faith and morals. Not perfect, heaven knows, but also not openly rejecting essential doctrines.
I say this because the sacraments and obedience to the teachings of the Church are two of the most powerful means of transformation in our lives as Catholics. The sacraments especially are not to be underestimated. So any personal conversion we can speak of builds on a work already begun by God. Our own efforts must be understood in light of these unique, divinely established channels of grace.
But what about our part? If you fit the description above, then you can help move the pillars to rest firmly on the Cornerstone by means of the following key elements.
a prayer of repentance and surrender
a change in Prioritizing Choices
We begin with prayer – a particular kind of prayer. This prayer is a profound surrender of your life, an invitation without pre-conditions and no strings attached to our Lord Jesus Christ. Ask Jesus to be the Rock of your strength and the Cornerstone of your life. This means that you confess to him your sins as well as your weaknesses and fears and admit the uselessness of any other foundation beside Him. You make an Act of Faith – that is, you say to him that you place your Sense of Self, your Source of Love and your Hope of Happiness in him and you entrust the practical decisions necessary in working this out to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Think carefully about the words you say. It’s important that you mean it. Take this time to write your prayer in your journal. It doesn’t have to be long or eloquent – just honest. At the end of the Novena prayer for today, I invite you to offer God this personal prayer of dedication to him. Keep it handy; you’ll be returning to it often.
The second step is all about our will: what we choose. We’ve surrendered to God with our voices. Now we surrender our choices. We all make countless choices every day – usually starting with what we’ll wear or what’s for breakfast. While some of these are relatively insignificant, others are absolutely critical. Some choices, in fact, are so important that they actually make us the people we are. Do you think I’m speaking of major life decisions like where to go to college or what career to pursue? I’m not. I’m talking about Prioritizing Choices. We make them all the time – often, I think, without any idea of how critical they are to our personal development and to our relationship with God. It is our Prioritizing Choices that will shift our pillars to rest on the Cornerstone of Christ. Holy Spirit, please open our eyes to recognize these important daily decisions.
A priority is something you habitually place as the most important amongst a range of options. My priorities are those things that I will usually choose first. Most of us prioritize by preference. We naturally choose what is most appealing, most rewarding and most pleasurable to us. We look for the option that leads to maximum personal comfort. In fact, for me to suggest that this is not the best criteria for prioritizing our choices would strike many today as absurd.
If we’re going to shift our pillars, though, we have to start reprioritizing: placing our faith above our preferences in daily decision-making. Or to recall our analogy of “seeing” and “hearing” we must begin to prioritize by the music of God’s revelation and not by what is “seen” through our feelings and experiences. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1, emphasis added). It’s a choice of the will aided by grace in concrete circumstances. It often involves putting aside something good for something better. Prioritizing faith means we have to risk the things we prize in order to act on what God asks of us. Put plainly, “maximum personal comfort” can no longer be the default setting in our decisions.
Consider the following choices you make in a day. All but one are relatively neutral. One involves a Prioritizing Choice. Can you find it?
Should I pack a lunch today or just buy something on campus?
Should I walk to class or ride my bike?
Should I bring my biology textbook and read on campus or come back home to study?
When I get home, should I stream a movie or take time for prayer?
Should I wait for my roommate to come home or eat dinner alone?
I know, I made it easy for you. One of these choices involved a clear setting of priorities. Streaming or prayer, right? Notice that it didn’t rule out the possibility of a movie after prayer. The issue isn’t whether or not to enjoy some kind of media entertainment, but which is given the top priority?
How do Prioritizing Choices apply to what grounds our pillars? Remember Jennifer from week one who hates her professor? Through her strong, negative reaction to that professor, she had an insight into her interior life. She was able to see that she rests her Sense of Self on being an academic achiever and that her Source of Love is her father’s approval based on her success. Her Hope of Happiness in the long term is to be a doctor someday – with the corresponding short term expectation that she needs top grades. Again, there’s nothing wrong with any of these desires or affections. The problem is with Jennifer’s priorities. God has to become the foundation stone in these three areas of Jennifer’s life. How?
Clearly school is Jennifer’s top priority. If grades are on the line, Jennifer will sacrifice everything else – relationships with friends, prayer, even eating and sleep – to the demands of studies. No doubt there are “crunch times” in a semester or at work when such things are necessary for any of us – but the key is to recognize when they are the rule rather than the exception. That’s when they become Prioritizing Choices. That’s the case for Jennifer.
If we suppose that Jennifer is willing to apply the elements above and to be directed by faith as she makes her Prioritizing Choices, how might she begin approaching things differently?
First Jennifer offers a prayer of repentance and surrender to the Lord. She repents of placing her identity in grades and for looking to her own plans rather than God’s will for her future happiness. She asks God the Father to be the primary Source of Love in her life, while still holding her natural father very dear. (In fact, Jennifer realizes as she prays that she can love her father better when she gives God the first place in her heart!) Jennifer also repents for her hatred of her professor Mr. Verma. She acknowledges that her ill-will is based on her own misplaced priorities and is no fault of his.
Next, Jennifer looks at her daily choices. She used to take time for prayer and scripture reading before bed. That habit got whittled away by later bedtimes and shorter prayer times. Jennifer also used to meet weekly for fellowship and faith formation with other Christians. One week a big assignment bumped it from her calendar. The next she forgot, scheduling a study group in the same time slot. Third week she was too tired to go. After that she stopped altogether. Prioritizing Choices. Somewhere in there, Jennifer put studies over her participation in Christian community. None of this is sinful, per se. Yet all of it profoundly affected where Jennifer’s pillars are resting today.
To re-establish right priorities, Jennifer makes a decision to pray and read scripture for at least 20 minutes daily. Recognizing that there will be those “crunch times,” she decides that even if she has to skip prayer from time to time, she will never skip prayer twice in a row. Also Jennifer makes a re-commitment to attend her weekly fellowship – or finds some other way to make regular contact for prayer and spiritual instruction with other Catholics.
Finally, Jennifer entrusts these decisions to the Holy Spirit and asks for the grace to carry them out. She knows she’ll need to work hard at the beginning to reclaim her lost habits, but she trusts in God’s assistance as she embarks on this change in her Prioritizing Choices.
Weeks later, Jennifer has a particularly difficult day – another bad grade from Professor Verma. She begins to shift her Sense of Self by making a conscious Act of Faith; she reminds herself that her identity is not in grades but in the fact that she is a daughter of God. No doubt she has already heard this in Church, but now she begins to put real weight, real reliance, on this critical truth. She no longer treats it as a Sunday School answer. Then, to strengthen the ground under her Source of Love, rather than texting her dad (she knows he’ll be disappointed in her), she first goes in prayer before God the Father and accepts deeply his unconditional love – a love that embraces her even in weakness but also encourages her to keep doing her best. Confident in this perfect love, the text to her father isn’t nearly so hard for Jennifer. Finally, the fear that her Hope of Happiness is being jeopardized by her professor is eased as she puts her hope in God’s mysterious will. Jennifer resolves in her heart that if it is God’s will that she make it to medical school, then so be it. If he doesn’t desire it, then nothing she does can make it happen. As her heart is fixed more firmly on the real goal, heaven, she begins to understand that much of what she thinks she will gain from a career as a doctor – a feeling of security, of being an important person, of being able to heal and console and instruct – are desires that God can fulfill in many other ways.
I have described in a few lines what will, in fact, take time. In these important decisions, Jennifer will have to put her faith into practice and set her Prioritizing Choices more clearly on God and less on school. She’ll continue to reassess her daily schedule and include things that give God a more prominent place. Daily mass? Weekly adoration? Service to the poor? I’m not saying Jennifer should neglect her studies. Rather, she will need to place a portion of her time where the real priority lies – in acting and living as God’s daughter.
Novena Prayer
Jesus says: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Pier Giorgio responds: With violence you sow hatred, and you harvest its bad fruits. With charity, you sow peace among men – not the peace that the world gives, but the true peace that only faith in Jesus Christ can give us in common brotherhood.
Let us pray: Blessed Pier Giorgio, guide me in claiming my rightful inheritance as a child of God and heir of His Kingdom. Show me, by your own example, how to be slow to anger, and gentle in my dealings with others. Help me to show forth the peace of Christ by speaking words of peace, and by living a life of peace.
Blessed Pier Giorgio, I ask for your intercession in obtaining from God, Who is meek and humble of heart, all the graces necessary for my spiritual and temporal welfare. I confidently turn to you for help in my present need: (in your own words, ask for the Lord to lead you into greater freedom and self knowledge)
A Book of Prayers in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, by Rev. Timothy E. Deeter
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
A QUOTE TO NOTE
1. Choices Reveal Priorities
If I don’t know what my priorities are, I can look at what I habitually choose. Our Novena’s patron provides a good example of this principle in action. According to the quote below, what was Bl. Pier Giorgio’s priority?
His father, who had decided to give him a valuable present on the occasion of his receiving his diploma, gave him the choice between a car and its equivalent in money. Pier Giorgio made his choice and confided to a friend: “It is better for me to take the money because I can use it for my poor.” Such a choice is a sufficient gauge of the quality of his soul. “The mad one” his mother often called him. It was true indeed: madness had taken hold of him – the folly of charity [1].
What did Bl. Pier Giorgio reveal by his prioritizing choice about his father’s gift?
What choice would you have made in a similar situation?
Why do you suppose his mother called him “the mad one?”
GOING DEEP
2. What are my priorities?
Below are some examples of common experiences in the spiritual life with tools for analysis. Read on…
I’m too busy! I’ve got class, work and projects to do. I know I should pray but when I get home at night I’m just too exhausted to open a Bible or talk to God. I usually grab a bite to eat and then spend time on my computer. Before I know it, I’m ready for bed. Yeah, I know, ‘fail’ but what can I do?
▢ This is me. ▢ No, I can’t relate.
What are this person’s priorities?
What advice would I give this person?
Volleyball is my passion. When I’m out there with the team and the competition is intense, I feel this amazing rush. My teammates are my best friends. I’ve been playing for years. Like, I missed my confirmation because the classes met on the same night as my volleyball practice. Now I’m in college and trying to choose a major. I’ve always been good at science and would like to get into medicine, but the courses are really demanding. Not sure how I’ll fit in practice…
▢ This is me (not the volleyball part, but the rest of it). ▢ No, I can’t relate.
What are this person’s priorities?
What advice would I give this person?
When I’m in church, it seems like my mind is always somewhere else. It bothers me that I can’t check my newsfeed and I wonder what my friends are doing. I think about how much work I need to do and how I wasted too much time Friday and Saturday. The weekend is almost over and here I am unable to listen to the priest who’s talking a VERY long time. Is this even worth it?
▢ This is me. ▢ No, I can’t relate.
1. What are this person’s priorities?
2. What advice would I give this person?
BREAK OPEN YOUR BIBLE
3. Bad Choices: Who’s to Blame?
When I’m convicted that my bad choices in the past were based on bad priorities, I may feel like it’s not my fault. Here’s an example of this thinking: “I didn’t ask for all the trouble I’ve had in life. Am I to blame for doing wrong with all the wrong that’s been done to me? Besides, God is God. He could have stepped in and stopped me.” Even if that’s not me, it’s pretty common to blame others for our own faults. Is God to blame when we choose wrong? Here’s what the Bible says:
Say not: "It was God's doing that I fell away"; for what he hates he does not do. Say not: "It was he who set me astray"; for he has no need of wicked man. Abominable wickedness the LORD hates, he does not let it befall those who fear him. When God, in the beginning, created man, he made him subject to his own free choice. If you choose you can keep the commandments; it is loyalty to do his will. There are set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand. Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him. Immense is the wisdom of the LORD; he is mighty in power, and all-seeing. The eyes of God see all he has made; he understands man's every deed. No man does he command to sin, to none does he give strength for lies.
Sirach 15:11-20 (emphasis added)
In my own words, what does it mean that God makes man “subject to his own free choice”?
Have I ever been tempted to blame God for something I chose that went badly? If so, what was it?
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”
[1] The Soul of Pier Giorgio Frassati, Robert Claude, S.J.; tr. by Una Morissy, B.A., Spiritual Book Association, Inc., New York, 1960, p. 37
All Scripture quotes from the New American Bible, unless otherwise specified