Lenten Promises & Mother Teresa

"To be pure, to remain pure, can only come at a price, the price of knowing God and loving him enough to do his will. He will always give us the strength that we need to keep purity as something beautiful for him." ~Blessed Mother Teresa

This lent I am joining the Angelic Warfare Confraternity which sounds a bit crazy. I have already started though. More than anything it is a prayer for chastity and for purity. I struggle with chastity and it struggles with me - I'm sure. I thought that by the time I turned 28, it would be over, but alas, I am still a man, with man-thoughts. So for lent I am going to pray with the Confraternity every morning and pray with Scripture every night and I hope and pray that the graces I receive help me in my battle toward purity. And by Scripture I mean that I will be reading the Gospel of John and the Tao te Ching.

"The unnameable is the origin of heaven and earth; named it is the mother of the ten thousand things." ~Tao 1

Oh yeah, and Momma T, why is she up there in the corner? I have found that I have let down Jesus so often with my choices that sometimes it's easy to just to say, well Jesus - I'm going to sin again. I recently have been reading a lot about Momma T and have asked her to pray for me all of this lent. Everyday at the end of praying with the Confraternity I am asking Blessed Mother Teresa to hold me in her prayers, especially when it comes to my chastity and purity. Blessed Mother Teresa, pray for us!

Shalom,
Joe

Deferment & Finding Joy

I like to think that I am a silver-lining kind of guy. That I always look for joy in the dark places, hence the clever title of this blog, wallowing in joy. Occasionally this is put to the test - and in a real way, at least as it relates to my vocation, this just happened to me. On Monday, February 13th, I found out that I am being deferred for a year. This means that I can still go to admissions boards in June, but that I will have to wait a year after that to enter. Why? Debt, and I was told it felt rushed, and ... resolutely I agree.

So - I'm looking at August 2013, which seems really far away. So that silver lining, where is it? I am coming to terms with joy of patience and the rich fruits I have received in my current job. I work as a campus minister and retreat director. My job is so fulfilling and life giving, it's a bit ridiculous. I work with the cream of the crop at a Jesuit school and they model prayer and discernment better that I may ever. If the students I minister to remind me to pray and bring me joy, why not continue this kind of work for another year? What would be lost? Staying in contact with ministry is going to be an important part of my life while discerning and always, especially as a Dominican.

So here we are, on Ash Wednesday, and my lenten goals are pretty simple ... come closer to God through contemplative prayer. That's it. I think if that goes right, the rest will fall in place. And, that year won't seem so freakin' long.

Shalom,
Joe

Retreat and Roadblocks.

In the past two months I have gone on two retreats. Well, scratch that, I have went on one retreat and ran another. The first retreat was a silent Ignatian retreat. And I must say, I love Ignatian (Jesuit) spirituality. The Spiritual Exercises are the cornerstone of the Jesuits. The retreat I went on reminded me, and sort of intensely so, that God wants me to shut up. I actually felt God saying, "Shhhhh!!!!!" (exclamation points included). God is calling me to be a contemplative, or at least to try contemplation.

The second retreat I was on was the annual Emmaus retreat. Every time I work with students in such an intimate setting I am reminded of my call, my call to ministry. I am still not sure (and I don't know what that sure-ness is) that I am supposed to be a Dominican but I know that I want to try. The Emmaus retreat is a contemplative retreat, not a silent retreat. The students I work with basically pray the weekend away. They come with some intention on their heart and they share it. I gave a reflection on table fellowship. And I basically said:

With my affinity for cooking, and more importantly my love of loving people I felt ready and good about giving a reflection, or maybe more well said, I felt ready to preach. I talked about how we are to invite everyone to the table of the Lord, and then we are to serve them. I shared a personal experience of my failure, a time when I found someone so ugly that I avoided them. Afterwards my boss told me it was one of the best reflections on the Eucharist she'd ever heard, and I think she was being serious! So Yay for that, and yay for being a retreat director. I love my job, seriously, folks, I do.

So the roadblocks, I have two that are pretty big, at least to me. The first is that I have a spotty past, at best and it makes me a bit nervous. The second, I need to pay off about $50,000 dollars in student loan debt this summer. So here's to God being bigger than my problems. Cheers.

Shalom,
Joe