I’m starting to understand the Saints when they were reprimanded by God for making sacrifices he never asked them to make. It’s another form of pride, albeit a seemingly saintly one. It’s another way of saying to God, “I’ve got this. I know what I need to do, you don’t need to worry about me.” It is a way of refusing grace, refusing our neediness, and it aches the Father’s heart.
“But Samuel said: “Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to the LORD’s command? Obedience is better than sacrifice, to listen, better than the fat of rams.” 1 Samuel 15:22
Trust in the Lord’s power and desire to purify your heart. He will do it. Attend your ear to him, listen to where the Spirit prompts you, but be aware of your own pride, your desire to purify yourself on your own. What good is it to eat only bread and water if the Lord has not commanded it? What good is it to give up more than the Lord asked you? Isn’t that but an even worse form of pride, to say to God, “I hear what you’re asking of me but I know better so I’m gonna do it my way.”
The Lord is patient and gentle and will not ask for more than we have grace for. Ask the Holy Spirit to convict your heart of the ways you ought to grow and sacrifice. Sometimes, in his gentleness and wisdom, he asks us to abandon some sacrifice, some penance we were performing; it’s as if he says to us, “Will you trust that I am sufficient? That it is I who will make you well?
All throughout high school and young adulthood, I felt addicted to my phone. I was scrolling through youtube, Pinterest, finding different games and activities I could enjoy. For quite a while I prided myself on having no social media accounts (which really just meant no Instagram or snapchat). I still enjoyed other activities beyond what my phone provided, but my phone gave me a feeling of safety and a way to distract my heart.
I do not condemn myself for that, nor do I even see it as an evil. It was a grace. A childhood filled with abuse and neglect left my heart aching and anxiety soaring and my phone provided a way for me to cope without me knowing it. Even when I started to process through my story, I held onto my phone. It served a purpose, to provide my heart a distraction from heart-wrenching and completely overwhelming pain. But when it came time to move more into freedom, my heart no longer desired the distraction. My phone created feelings of restlessness and just as easily as I picked up my phone, I learned to put it down again. My focus shifted, through no strength of my own, but all through a specific grace of conviction.
This is how the Spirit works in our lives: it reorients our hearts towards God, convicting us of our need for him. Acts of sacrifice and service require the same reorientation from self-reliance back to the Father's will. The Spirit moves and convicts us in areas that we are ready to attend to, in areas he desires our growth, but not always in the ways we think or in the areas that we think need attention.
Absolutely we can completely ignore the promptings of the Spirit and turn towards sin but I think the more common temptation in strongly Catholic circles is to launch ourselves into a life of prayers, Mass, and good deeds. Are those objectively good things? Yes. But our God does not want a people that is self-reliant, preoccupied with doing the “right” things, or so obsessed with our prayers that we forget to pray. He wants a people that is tuned to hear his voice, is responsive to the movements of the Holy Spirit, and is completely dependent on him for everything because he so desires to shower his love on us.
Do we abandon our good deeds then? Do we drop every spiritual practice we have worked into our lives? No. But we take time in prayer to examine our motivations, to ask the Spirit to convict us of where we are self-reliant and instead ask the Spirit to teach us to abandon ourselves to Christ and to his will for our lives.
I always hated the Rosary growing up. It was too long and boring and repetitive and I could never stay focused. We’d pray the Rosary as a family before long car trips and on Fridays throughout the year; I dreaded it every single time.
But recently I attended a silent retreat. It was a five hour drive to the retreat location and I had my little decade Rosary sitting in my car and very unlike me, I decided to pray the Rosary. I couldn’t remember the mysteries and had to look them up and got a little mixed up on some of the ending prayers (there went my pride of being a “great” catholic). But it was the most intimate time of prayer with our Blessed Mother. I sat with the mysteries and over and over again, her heart echoed to me “Listen to him.”
The Baptism in the Jordan, “This is my Beloved Son,” listen to him. The wedding feast at Cana “Do whatever he tells you,” listen to him. The Proclamation of the Gospel, listen to him. The Transfiguration, “This is my Beloved Son, listen to him.” And finally the institution of the Eucharist, sitting with the apostles in the upper room with my head on Jesus’ chest, listen to him.
This was not a grace that I somehow conspired to gain. This was an invitation put forth by the Lord that invited me into deeper communion with him and gave me a place to start my retreat. I’ve started praying the Rosary more often, but even this morning, though I had set out to pray the Rosary before starting my day, I felt drawn instead to write and all I have written, I have written with ease. The Spirit puts forth the things that he desires for us and removes obstacles, even seemingly impossible ones, as we step forward in trust.
We may not feel the comfort or ease as we grow in holiness, after all, we are giving up the way of existing that we know best, but let us remain certain that the Spirit is working for our freedom and joy and that it is the God of Heaven who makes us holy; we have only to listen and receive the grace necessary to respond to his invitations.
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