S
Shoshana
Guest
Code:
- Status
F
Father_La_Fleur
Guest
You say that you can’t do personal prayer…yes it is most challenging but most necessary in any Vocation, esp. in the celibate life as Religious or Consecrated Soul in the world. Perhpas this is what your SD wants you to realize. Without personal prayer, you will shrivel up and die. Communal prayer and personal prayer are not mutually exclusive as you know. One leads to the other. I would suggest two things: 1)Tell your SD that you find he gives you too many spiritual exercizes to do perhaps and find a prayer group that you can pray with-start one! 2) Find a Community where you can live a Community life experience for a few weeks-a month or whatever you discern with your SD. God bless!
Fr. Dominic La Fleur
Fr. Dominic La Fleur
B
Bebekoualy
Guest
EFLR = Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite
Sorry
There aren’t any convents around the place I live, but I’ll do so, find a good benedictine convent, but only for the next holiday.
I’m gonna tell my SD that I just can’t carry on with the numerous prayer he asked me to do for it discourages me and now I’m just not praying at all anymore and I’ve given up the idea of having a Vocation.
Thanks for your posts!!
Sorry
There aren’t any convents around the place I live, but I’ll do so, find a good benedictine convent, but only for the next holiday.
I’m gonna tell my SD that I just can’t carry on with the numerous prayer he asked me to do for it discourages me and now I’m just not praying at all anymore and I’ve given up the idea of having a Vocation.
Thanks for your posts!!
F
Father_La_Fleur
Guest
Take heart! you are learning to pace yourself in your prayer life and spiritual exercizes like an athlete of Christ, as Saint Paul says. You are learning how much too much is, before you learn what is essential to prayer life.Your SD is not out to discourage you, I don’t think. With SD, we sometimes act like chidren trying to live up to our Daddy’s expectations, then we give up.
You are not losing your Vocation because you are tired of trying to figure it out and live it out simply. Take advantage of the Advent Season to prune your prayer life and rediscover the basics. The Sunday Readings tell us how to prepare true works of conversion and penance. These are works of passionate love for Jesus, to make His coming into our soul and life as pleasing as possible-get His room ready! Find out His favorite kind of Nativity scene in your heart-simplicity, child-like trust, surrender, abandonment, poverty and detachement that says: I’ll all Yours! like Mary at His feet. Get back to basics.
When you feel you are doing too much, it’s because you are, plus you are tired and lonely and most likely isolated. Emotions drain us of all spiritual strength and can replenish it as well when well balanced. In the spiritual life, we must constantly review if we are finding joy in the fundamentals before all the extras. Ask your SD what you must esp. concentrate on and do that well. Go back to your roots of your calling during your stay in the Convent, the witnesses of Faith that have guided you, the signs you have received, the desires that have flamed up in your heart during the turning points in your life, when you made the most important decisions in your life. This is a time of Initiation, of Formation, not spiritual perfection before being spiritually perfected in a life-long committment. You are grounding your foundation on the Rock, the house of your spiritual life can not be built before the foundation is solid.
To use the analogy with Marriage Preparation, the engaged couples are not perfect before the Marriage, nor during, nor any time soon after…right?Whether you become a Mother of souls or of children, you will be a Mother and Bride, you will be perfected in spiritual or biological Motherhood, a Bride of a man, or of Jesus, the God-Man.
When you consider going into a Convent, or into the Rosary, or Mental Prayer(l’Oraison), or any devotion, remember, you are giving a personal gift of love to Jesus, through the hands of Mary. Seek to increase in spiritual love and perfection and nothing else, first and foremost. If you concentrate on measuring up to the ideal Nun, according to even the most beautiful ideas, you run the risk of becoming a Saint, a Nun for yourself, a self-made Saint…doesn’t work. You will grade yourself, 8/10, 9/10, A or A++, and miss the point. We all reach a point where we learn to do the smallest thing, the greatest thing, anything, solely out of love for Jesus and to put a smile on His Face. Do a Novena to St. Theresa of the Child Jesus before going for example, or while you are there, I suggest.
Jesus wants us small, helpless, vulnerable, lowly, defenceless, minute, harmless, like Him at Christmas. That way, His Mother can handle us and so can Joseph and so can He. Then, we are ready to become the Saint He wants us to become, according to the path He has drawn out, and not according to the manuscript we like to compose in our minds. I think the Lord is doing you a favor. I think the worst thing for you now would be to fee you are a star straight A Student and you fulfulling the curriculum and all the demands of your SD. It is not a course, it is eternity, your life, forever. Start all over, and be a manger for Him.
Fr. Dominic La Fleur
You are not losing your Vocation because you are tired of trying to figure it out and live it out simply. Take advantage of the Advent Season to prune your prayer life and rediscover the basics. The Sunday Readings tell us how to prepare true works of conversion and penance. These are works of passionate love for Jesus, to make His coming into our soul and life as pleasing as possible-get His room ready! Find out His favorite kind of Nativity scene in your heart-simplicity, child-like trust, surrender, abandonment, poverty and detachement that says: I’ll all Yours! like Mary at His feet. Get back to basics.
When you feel you are doing too much, it’s because you are, plus you are tired and lonely and most likely isolated. Emotions drain us of all spiritual strength and can replenish it as well when well balanced. In the spiritual life, we must constantly review if we are finding joy in the fundamentals before all the extras. Ask your SD what you must esp. concentrate on and do that well. Go back to your roots of your calling during your stay in the Convent, the witnesses of Faith that have guided you, the signs you have received, the desires that have flamed up in your heart during the turning points in your life, when you made the most important decisions in your life. This is a time of Initiation, of Formation, not spiritual perfection before being spiritually perfected in a life-long committment. You are grounding your foundation on the Rock, the house of your spiritual life can not be built before the foundation is solid.
To use the analogy with Marriage Preparation, the engaged couples are not perfect before the Marriage, nor during, nor any time soon after…right?Whether you become a Mother of souls or of children, you will be a Mother and Bride, you will be perfected in spiritual or biological Motherhood, a Bride of a man, or of Jesus, the God-Man.
When you consider going into a Convent, or into the Rosary, or Mental Prayer(l’Oraison), or any devotion, remember, you are giving a personal gift of love to Jesus, through the hands of Mary. Seek to increase in spiritual love and perfection and nothing else, first and foremost. If you concentrate on measuring up to the ideal Nun, according to even the most beautiful ideas, you run the risk of becoming a Saint, a Nun for yourself, a self-made Saint…doesn’t work. You will grade yourself, 8/10, 9/10, A or A++, and miss the point. We all reach a point where we learn to do the smallest thing, the greatest thing, anything, solely out of love for Jesus and to put a smile on His Face. Do a Novena to St. Theresa of the Child Jesus before going for example, or while you are there, I suggest.
Jesus wants us small, helpless, vulnerable, lowly, defenceless, minute, harmless, like Him at Christmas. That way, His Mother can handle us and so can Joseph and so can He. Then, we are ready to become the Saint He wants us to become, according to the path He has drawn out, and not according to the manuscript we like to compose in our minds. I think the Lord is doing you a favor. I think the worst thing for you now would be to fee you are a star straight A Student and you fulfulling the curriculum and all the demands of your SD. It is not a course, it is eternity, your life, forever. Start all over, and be a manger for Him.
Fr. Dominic La Fleur
B
Bebekoualy
Guest
Thank you ever so much, Father!
Hope is coming back again… I don’t think I’ve lost my vocation. I need to carry on.
The cold, the bad weather, the fact that I’m away from home, having to move again soon, lonely, all these things made me go through this spiritual dryness.
Merci, encore. Je persévererai.
In Christo +
Bebekoualy
Hope is coming back again… I don’t think I’ve lost my vocation. I need to carry on.
The cold, the bad weather, the fact that I’m away from home, having to move again soon, lonely, all these things made me go through this spiritual dryness.
Merci, encore. Je persévererai.
In Christo +
Bebekoualy
- Status