Transcript
The Eucharist is-- Profound. Mysterious. Dynamic. Inviting. Powerful.
We are people of the Eucharist.
Would you like to know the secret to supreme happiness? Today, we'll discover it. The spiritual life is made up of seasons. And even in the darkest moments, it is important to remind ourselves that spring will come again. What is unchanging allows us to make sense of change. The six lessons I am about to share with you have served me well in every season. Over the past 35 years, I have experienced many seasons in my spiritual life. Long stretches of great spiritual consistency, other stretches when I've been inconsistent in my prayer. Times of resistance and times of surrender, seasons of great patience, and seasons of selfish impatience. Periods when I couldn't wait to get to prayer and periods when I had to force myself to keep showing up. Days when I felt the warmth of God's love feel my whole being and days when I felt so cold, it seemed he could not be further away from me. Weeks when I felt I was in the thickest fog and months when I saw things with great clarity. Seasons of trial, when nothing seemed to go right, and seasons of triumph, when it seemed nothing could go wrong. The six lessons I'm about to describe to you had a seismic impact on my inner and outer life.
And I'm confident they will also have a great impact on your life. The definition of seismic is of enormous proportions or effect. I use that word very deliberately here. The first seismic shift of the spiritual life is just beginning the conversation. Prayer is a conversation. Once the conversation has begun, it can lead anywhere. Most important, it will lead to the places it needs to lead to. Never underestimate how important it is to just begin the conversation. The second shift is to ask God what he wants. The second of these great seismic shifts occurs within the conversation when we stop asking God for what we want and start asking what He wants. When we start asking God for advice, direction, inspiration, and guidance, this is a significant moment. When we stop asking Him for things, for favors, and for our will to be done, we begin to open ourselves to much more than His will. We open ourselves to His wisdom. The third shift is: give yourself to prayer. This third seismic shift occurs in the inner life when we stop doing our prayer and start giving ourselves to prayer. Giving yourself to prayer means showing up and letting God do what He wants to do with you during that time of prayer. It means letting go of expectations and agendas for our time with God.
It means detachment from the feelings that prayer provokes within us. What makes it difficult is that so much of our lives are focused on doing and accomplishing. This shift requires us to let go and focus on being. The fourth shift is: transform everything into prayer. Prayer is not an activity that encompasses a small portion of our days. It's a way of life. Prayer awakens our spiritual senses and we become aware of God at our side throughout the day. Not that He is in our presence, but that we are continually in His presence. The fourth seismic shift occurs when we discover that every activity can be transformed into prayer by offering it to God. "Pray constantly," was St. Paul's invitation, and it is a beautiful spiritual principle. Learning to transform daily activities into prayer was one of the greatest spiritual lessons of my life. Offer the next hour of your work for a friend who is sick. Offer the task you are least looking forward to today to God as a prayer for the person you know who is suffering most today. And do that task with great love better than you have ever done it before. Offer each task one at a time to God as a prayer for a specific intention and do so with great love.
The fifth shift is: make yourself available. Do you wish to know the secret to supreme happiness? Strip away everything in your heart that makes you less available to God. The joy we experience is proportional to how available we make ourselves to God. The fifth shift, the fifth seismic shift in the spiritual life is about making ourselves 100% available to God. Consecration is ultimately about making ourselves available to God in this way. Prayer is about making ourselves available to God. Through prayer, our spiritual awareness is constantly fine-tuned. And the more fine-tuned it becomes, the more we come to see that so few things really matter. The challenge then is to focus on the things that really matter. Is your life focused on the things that really matter, the things that matter most? How available are you to God? Are you ready to surrender and make yourself completely available to Him?
The sixth shift is just keep showing up. Just keep showing up. No matter what, just keep showing up to prayer. Keep showing up to mass. Keep showing up for your spiritual routines and rituals. We will explore this sixth shift in more detail tomorrow, but for now, it's enough to be mindful that it's not about what we are doing when we come to prayer. It's about what God is doing in us, through us, and with us when we show up to prayer. The Eucharist floods our souls with grace needed to respond to these six seismic shifts with courage and wisdom. Each time we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, each time we spend time in the presence of the Eucharist or acknowledge Jesus' presence in a tabernacle, our souls flood with grace. Consecrating yourself to Jesus in the Eucharist involves all six of these spiritual shifts. Trust, surrender, believe, receive. How many people do you know who need to hear this message? Become a member of the International Society of Eucharist today and we'll send you a free copy of 33 Days Eucharistic Glory, a copy of the children's version, a copy of the Limited Edition Journal, which includes an amazing Holy Week retreat. Click on the button below and become a member today. Have a great day and remember, be bold, be Catholic. We are people of the Eucharist.
Jesus, I believe that you are truly present--
In the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist.
Every day, I long
For more of you. I love you above all things.
And I desire to receive you into my soul.
Since I cannot receive you sacramentally at this moment
I invite you to come and dwell in my heart.
May this spiritual communion increase my desire
For the Eucharist. You are the healer of my soul.
Take the blindness from my eyes.
The deafness from my ears.
The darkness from my mind.
And the hardness from my heart.
Fill me with the grace, wisdom, and courage
To do your will in all things.
My Lord and my God.
Draw me close to you.
Nearer than ever before.
Amen.
Consecrate America to the Eucharist.
Bye-bye.
Have a great day.
Have a great day.
Have a great day.
Come on.
Have a great day.
Hey, Isabel. One simple way to be mindful of God's presence in the world is to know where the nearest Tabernacle is. So while we've got a couple of minutes, I thought we might work on your geography a little.
Sounds good, Dad. You're always coming up with something.
If I was at a latitude of 34.06 and a longitude of negative 118.24, where would I find the nearest tabernacle?
Our Lady of Angels, Los Angeles, California.