Sufferings bring patience… and patience brings
perseverance, and perseverance brings hope, and this hope is not deceptive,
because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit
which has been given to us.
Scripture for
reflection: Matthew 6:6
“Go to your private room and when you have shut your
door, pray to the Father who is in that secret place.”
Continuing with
Henri Nouwen: Without solitude, it is virtually impossible to live a
spiritual life. Solitude begins with a time and a place for God, and him alone….
To bring solitude into our lives is one of the most necessary but also most
difficult disciplines. As soon as we are alone, without people…books…TV…phones…
an inner chaos opens up in us…. inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories,
unresolved conflicts, angry feelings and impulsive desires…. The confrontation
with our inner conflicts can be too painful for us to endure. This makes the
discipline of solitude all the more important…. Therefore, we must begin by
carefully planning some solitude. Five or ten minutes a day may be all we can
tolerate…. The amount of time will vary for each person according to
temperament, age, job, lifestyle, and maturity. But we do not take the
spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and to
listen to him…. Once we have committed ourselves to spending time in solitude,
we develop an attentiveness to God’s voice in us. In the beginning…we may have
the feeling that we are simply wasting our time…. At first, the many
distractions keep presenting themselves. Later, as they receive less and less
attention, they slowly withdraw. It is clear that what matters is faithfulness
to the discipline. In the beginning, solitude seems so contrary to our desires
that we are constantly tempted to run away from it….But when we stick to our
discipline, in the conviction that God is with us even when we do not yet hear
from him, we slowly discover that we do not want to miss our time alone with God….
We even start looking forward to this strange period of uselessness. This
desire for solitude is often the first sign of prayer, the first indication
that the presence of God’s Spirit no longer remains unnoticed. As we empty
ourselves of our many worries, we come to know not only with our mind but also
with our heart that we were never really alone, that God’s Spirit was with us
all along…. The discipline of solitude… is one of the most powerful disciplines
in developing a prayerful life. It is a simple, though not easy, way to free us
from the slavery of our occupations and preoccupations and to begin to hear the
voice that makes all things new. (Devotional
Classics, edited by Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith, Harper Collins,
1993)
Prayer: Sweet heart of Jesus, be my Love.
My thoughts: I
defer my thoughts to those of Richard Foster, editor of the above mentioned
book. He voices so well the summation of what we have read for the last two
days: Solitude is one of the deepest
disciplines of the spiritual life because it crucifies our need for importance
and prominence. Everyone – including ourselves at first - will see our solitude
as a waste of good time. We are removed from “where the action is.” That, of
course, is exactly what we need. In silence and solitude God slowly but surely
frees us from our egomania. In time we come to see that the really important
action occurs in solitude. Once we have experienced God at work in the soul,
all the blare and attention of the world seem like a distant and fragmentary
echo. Only then are we able to enter the hustle and bustle of today’s machine
civilization with perspective and freedom.
Our prayer to God:
A really good way to introduce solitude into our lives is to arrive 15 to
30 minutes early for Mass. Simply sit in the pew with your eyes closed, and let
God speak to you in the depths of your heart. It will be the most important
conversation you will have all week!
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