steadfast in faith
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Steadfast In Faith For Lent

At Mass, we try to pay special attention to the readings and sermon. With good reason: God is present in His Word among the people. But some of the prayers and other parts of the Mass can slip by us.

My pastor told us a while back to pay attention to the “Collect.” This is the short prayer the priest prays at the very end of the introductory rites, just before we are seated to listen to the Word of God. Today’s Collect is quite beautiful:

O God, who delight in innocence and restore it,
direct the hearts of your servants to yourself,
that, caught up in the fire of your Spirit
may be found steadfast in faith
and effective in works.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God for ever and ever.

We could easily reflect all day on this lovely prayer, but one part truly caught my attention: “may be found steadfast in faith and effective in works.”

That OUR part, our pledge. We are asking Almighty God to direct our hearts through the Holy Spirit so that we can go forth from the Mass, nourished by the Eucharist, and – despite whatever comes our way today – we will hold fast to our faith and be effective in the vocation God has imparted to us. That is our prayer directly before the Word of God and the Gospel. That Word too will nourish us in faith. It will give us the example and strength to be effective in our work, just as our forefathers and -mothers in Scripture have been.

Whether you are able to attend Mass today, the Collect is a good prayer to meditate upon. Ask God, along with the Universal Church, to help you be steadfast in faith and effective in works today.

 

EH headshotElise Hilton is an author, blogger and speaker. Her role at Diocesan Publications is Editor & Writer with the Marketing Team. She has worked in parish faith formation and Catholic education for over 25 years. A passionate student of theology, Elise enjoys sharing her thoughts on parish communication, the role of social media in the Church, Franciscan spirituality and Catholic parenting. To enquire about booking her as a speaker, please contact her at ehilton@diocesan.com.

nun
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Pray Like A Nun

Really, the title of this post should be “Pray Like A Nun or A Sister.” There is a difference, even though we Catholics typically use the words interchangeably. A nun lives a monastic life, usually cloistered – away from the world. She spends her day in prayer and work behind the walls of the monastery, where there is little contact with the “outside.”

A sister lives in community with her fellow sisters, but they live in the world. There are sisters who teach, who are nurses, social workers, counselors, midwives, and on and on. Their lives are meant to be active: to be a sign of Christ in our world. (For a complete and excellent explanation, see here.)

Now, back to “Pray Like A Nun.” No, we are not suggesting that you formally pray six times a day while still doing your job (but wouldn’t it be great if we all did?) However, nuns can certainly teach us a thing or two about prayer.

For instance, St. Catherine of Siena: You, eternal Trinity, are a deep sea. The more I enter you, the more I discover, and the more I discover, the more I seek you. Perhaps before or after Mass, you can spend just a few minutes in prayer to the Holy Trinity.

Then there is St. Therese’ of Lisieux: Do you realize that Jesus is there is the tabernacle expressly for you – for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart…” Wow! Make sure your time spent before the tabernacle and during Mass truly focuses on Jesus and His immense love for you.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross: Let go of your plans. The first hour of your morning belongs to God. Tackle the day’s work that he charges you with, and he will give you the power to accomplish it. How many of us start our day without a thought to God? Before our feet hit the floor in the morning, we should lift our hearts and minds to God.

Mother Angelica:  We need to be attuned to the Will of God so that we only ask for the things He desires, then you will get all you ask. It has been said that the phrase from the Lord’s Prayer, “thy will be done,” is the perfect prayer. Are we praying that with sincerity of heart and mind and will?

We’ve all heard Catholic school stories where Sister hit everyone with a ruler or made the same kid stay after school to clean erasers because he forget his homework every day. Nuns and sisters are not icons of days gone by, or the butt of jokes and stories. These holy women, dedicated to Christ, have a lot to teach us. Are we listening?

Trinity
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The Trinity: Three Persons, One Substance

Yesterday was the celebration of the Holy Trinity. What an immense blessing it is for Catholics who are able to recognized our bodies as a “home” for the Trinity when we sign ourselves: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Our baptism has indelibly marked our souls in the name of the Triune God.

Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI wrote and spoke extensively regarding the Trinity. In 2009, he said this:

Today we contemplate the Most Holy Trinity as Jesus introduced us to it. He revealed to us that God is love “not in the oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity of one substance.” He is the Creator and merciful Father; he is the Only-Begotten Son, eternal Wisdom incarnate, who died and rose for us; he is the Holy Spirit who moves all things, cosmos and history, toward their final, full recapitulation. Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is wholly and only love, the purest, infinite and eternal love. He does not live in splendid solitude but rather is an inexhaustible source of life that is ceaselessly given and communicated. To a certain extent we can perceive this by observing both the macro-universe: our earth, the planets, the stars, the galaxies; and the micro-universe: cells, atoms, elementary particles. The “name” of the Blessed Trinity is, in a certain sense, imprinted upon all things because all that exists, down to the last particle, is in relation; in this way we catch a glimpse of God as relationship and ultimately, Creator Love. [emphasis added.]

It is amazing to contemplate the endless and “inexhaustible” life that is the Trinity, yet even more astounding that this life dwells in us! Indeed, the only way for this life to be “deadened” in us is through mortal sin. Not only that, but as Pope Benedict pointed out, the entire world is imprinted with this life. Imagine how radically different our world would be if each and every person recognized this and lived accordingly. Imagine how different your world would be if you recognized this and lived accordingly!

Pope Benedict also stated that we have clear evidence of the Trinity:

The strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: love alone makes us happy because we live in a relationship, and we live to love and to be loved. Borrowing an analogy from biology, we could say that imprinted upon his “genome”, the human being bears a profound mark of the Trinity, of God as Love.

One could say (although only as analogy) that our baptism “tattoos” the Trinity onto our souls. We are for all eternity marked, claimed for God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And this imprinting is pure love. Again, what a gift and blessing this is. God the Almighty – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – has claimed us and marked us for love for life, for eternity.