Spiritual Fitness: This is the Time

We hear a lot about physical fitness in the media. People seem to recognize the importance of a regular workout. I try to run for 15 minutes every day because it gives me more energy. But there is another kind of “workout” that is far more important. Unfortunately, it gets no press. There is no “Biggest Losers” TV show about spiritual fitness. But there should be. Those who neglect their prayer life may very well be “the biggest losers.”

Spiritual fitness is a process of tuning into the silence of the heart in order to connect with God. It’s not easy. I read somewhere that cultivating an interior life is “rarified air.” That image makes me think of a room that has been closed up for so long, even the air feels stale. Our world is so noisy and demanding, even a drive to the store isn’t quiet. The phone buzzes. The children squabble. The road signs blaze with messages. Quiet. Where do you find that?!

But that step of finding some quiet time is only opening the door of the gym. It’s the very basic first step. Lots of people open the door, but seem to change their minds and shut it again!

The real “exercise” begins in the quiet of the heart. And part of that exercise is to try and keep quiet on the inside. The mind is so full of chatter.

And talking to God isn’t easy because we have ignored Him for so much of lives. We’ve forgotten how to even get started. God seems at first to be very reclusive…actually, we are the ones who have tried to hide from Him. So it seems hard to start. We look to old prayers and they seem dry.

But that’s OK because God wants “us.” Not the stuff we like to put between us and God. The prayer practice of St. Teresa of Avila appeals to me. She tells us to call to mind an image of the life of Christ. Jesus with the children. Jesus healing the blind man. Jesus in the Garden, sweating blood. Jesus meeting His mother on the road to Calvary. Jesus meeting His disciples who don’t recognize Him after the Resurrection.

After we call to mind an image, we can reflect on what it means for us. Why is it important? What does it teach us about Jesus? Why did He come to earth, leaving behind His heavenly glory? We must seem pretty lowly to Him…and yet He loves us. And His love is not a collective, generalized “yes I love all of you.” His love is personal. He loves me in all my unworthiness. Wow!

Then we can praise Him. Thank Him. Love Him. After that it is time to be quiet in His presence. He is near. He is here. Be with Him.

I asked my son to try this and told him to see the word “Jesus” if he couldn’t see an image of Jesus. Eventually, what he saw was a blue flame. A flame of love, burning away everything else.

I tend to come back to the image of Jesus in the Garden. Because He was human, He knew fear. He knew the pain and the heavy load of sins that He would carry. And for a moment He may have wondered if there wasn’t someone else who could do this. Couldn’t it happen a different way? He gave this question to the Father. And then the load was lifted. There was peace. He surrendered to the Father’s will.

Peace. That’s the gift of Spiritual Fitness. The load is lifted. The burden is light because we are doing God’s will and God is lifting us up.

So, here’s the pitch for this fitness program: On the one hand there is the inevitability of Hell if we neglect God…And on the other hand, there is the great gift of peace that comes when we pay attention to Him!

Open the door…and begin. He is near.

Beware: Cancerous Soup for the Soul is Doled out Daily!

By Judith Costello

All the feel good books are have titles about Soup for the Soul…stories meant to be warm and comforting, reassuring and easy to swallow. But this is Lent…time for a tougher look.

It’s time to consider how cancer grows in the Soul. Fr. Larry called sin a “cancer” last weekend. He said we should be able to diagnose this “sickness” just like we diagnose the physical stages of a spreading cancer. (This is my version of that concept.)

Stage 1: Unchecked Emotion.To Heck with Faith and Reason. I FEEL Bad—The modern world recognizes feelings over reason. I was thinking about this when I heard a young woman who whined between every meal, because she had decided to fast from between-meal snacking. Since she was used to snacking all the time, she felt grouchy. And no matter how much anyone pointed out the purpose of fasting and the value of discipline, she continued to punish everyone around her with her grouchiness.

It’s easy to see from the outside of this situation, that the purpose of fasting is defeated if we have to tell the world how hard it is! But the same thing happens to all of us and it’s not at all humorous. We are irritated and let it show. We feel envious and try not to show it at the moment. But then we gossip about that person later on.

Emotions are meant to be just the “garnish on the plate.” They add color but they should never be the main course! Unleashing our emotions, allowing them free reign, guarantees the spread of a cancer in the soul. The main course on the plate of our lives should be faith.

Faith requires self discipline in order for it to nourish us.

Stage 2: Rationalization.
Once the emotions go unchecked then the devil offers lots of easy rationalizations. One of the best rationalizations among church-goers is: “God loves us so of course he doesn’t want us to suffer. He certainly doesn’t care if we eat between meals. This whole fasting thing is just something made up by stuffy old guys.” I’ve heard it said. And I have to admit I used to use the “God is love, and a loving, nice-guy God wouldn’t expect this.” We have lost perspective.

It helped me when I started to really study the Catechism and prayer. Our job is to get to know God. And yes He is Love. But the love He demonstrates is all about sacrifice. Love is not easy. Love is not a feel good, chicken-soup thing. Love is the cross.

The season of Lent is a wake-up call about avoiding Stage 2 Cancer of the Soul.

Stage 3: The Blame Game.
Adam said, “It was Eve’s fault.” And Eve blamed it on the serpent. So I guess we can blame the “blame game” on our original parents! It is very easy to unload our responsibility. There is always an excuse.

Someone else led us here. Or it’s our upbringing. Or something someone else said caused this reaction.

But sin is sin. We are responsible for our actions and responsible for making a U-turn when Stage 3 Soul Cancer has taken over our lives.

Stage 4: From One Sin to Another.
Once the door to sin is open, sin snowballs. The tools of the first three stages are in place. Like physical cancer it now starts to take over in more severe ways. Excuses, desires and scapegoats provide the necessary equipment. Now it’s just a smooth ride of self-indulgence.

I’m sure that’s how people, who appear to be good, decent folks, end up stealing millions from an employer. All it takes is this—Never Tell the Truth. That person never admits to “stealing,” it’s only been a process of “re-directing.” It is not “lying” it’s “telling a different truth.”

Stage 4 Soul Cancer can be fatal. Once this sin cancer begins to grow, the road to health is a battle.

But there is good news. The Savior came for just such souls.

Now is the time. Today is the day. Resolve to make the Lent a time for these things:
• Truth Telling
• Personal Responsibility
• Confession and Sacraments
• and a Renewal of Faith.

What's In Style?

Children (and adults) sometimes wear name brand clothing as a badge of honor. My daughter was nine, when she came home comparing her clothes to those of a friend at school. Brigit's classmate bragged, "This blouse cost $50 because it's the best. And these are designer jeans too." Brigit felt discouraged. There were no flashy labels on her clothes. She was beginning to get the message that money was to be used to show off.

But the truth is we don't have that kind of money at our house. In fact, many of Brigit's favorite clothes come from the thrift store or yard sales. And those are the kind of places some children are taught that only "lower class people enter." So it was time for a lesson. We visited the thrift store that day. And God provided as always! A nearly new, name brand shirt, in exactly my daughter's size, practically jumped off the shelf into her arms. The price tag was $1.

We talked about what it meant:

* Would you rather spend $50 so you could say you got that at a fancy store, or spend $1 here so you have $49 for more necessary items such as food?

* And this shirt is practically new. So someone spent a lot of money to buy it, but hardly wore it at all...Do you think that is wasteful? Should you buy something just because others will think it's "cool"?

* Our world offers hundreds, maybe thousands, of flashy new products every single day. Some people spend hours looking at them, and they frown on anything that speaks of poverty or a lack of money, such as these stores. But we are finding good and useful things here. Do we really want to spend hours fantasizing about things we don't need and being tempted to spend money we don't have, for such things?

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from a secondhand store or yard sales. Lessons about waste, consumerism and the value of a dollar. And there are spiritual lessons too as we consider what is truly important. What do we really value? Have the things of the world been turned into "gods"?

I began to take Brigit with me to the secondhand store on a more regular basis. One day we ran into her friend with the flashy clothes there. The girls both seemed embarrassed, but in a few minutes they were running around the store trading ideas about what looks good--without regard for whether it's a name brand!

God is Watching Over Us

I let the pigeon fly free. We have two of these birds--given to the children as pets. And the pigeons have been living behind a divider wall inside the chicken coop. But I worried that they needed more space and opportunities to really fly. So one day, when my son had tucked them in his jacket to keep them warm, I told him he could let them fly outside the chicken coop. One of the birds flew high and far. She was impossible to catch. The other returned quickly to the safety of her enclosure.

The pigeons are like children. Some like to play it safe, eager to follow the rules. But others are risk takers, always testing the limits and boundaries of family life.

"A member of our family is missing?" my husband said with moist eyes after I admitted that I let the pigeons fly free and one of them hadn’t returned. My husband is a worrier. He went outside in the cold wind and stood by the chicken door, hoping the bird would come nearby and he could personally welcome it home.

I had assumed the bird could find its way back through the various holes in the coop. But my husband didn't believe it. As the day wore on, he was convinced the bird would be dead within hours, attacked by other birds or dashed to the ground by the now fierce wind. As our family watched from the windows, we spotted our bird with its distinctive markings, trying to get acquainted with other pigeons. They seemed to attack her. Our bird was chased out of trees and off the telephone wires.

And so we prayed for the pigeon. "What else can we do but pray?" I asked my husband. He looked over his glasses with an accusing stare. "Not let them out in the first place. That would be a start," he said. But once a thing has happened, prayer is an answer.

Why do we minimize it? Prayer is a great answer!

I prayed that the children’s pet would be safe. And I prayed that my husband would forgive me if my impulse to give more freedom, caused the bird's death.

That afternoon, when I went out to feed the animals, the wind was so punishing, there were no birds anywhere in sight. I wondered where they all hide when the weather is bad like this. Our yard is normally filled with sparrows and blackbirds and pigeons.

I went to the chicken coop, ready to admit it--the worst had happened. That's when I heard cooing. I looked behind the wall. Both pigeons were there! And they were climbing all over each other--happily saying, "You're safe. You're home. All is well."

My husband continues to playfully repeat, "There is a bird missing."
In a way, he is acknowledging that when a family member takes a step toward independence they take a part of us with them. He was also acknowledging in his playful way that I was right to have faith in the bird's ability to find her way home. And, it is important to trust in God who said He watches over everything, even the little birds.

But my husband's words, "A bird is missing," are also a reminder to me that we parents need to find a balance between supporting our children as they try out new things, and keeping them safe. They need both the boundaries and the options--the parent who would give them freedom to explore, and the one who would guard them.

And they need our prayers for those times when we can’t be present. Our children need their heavenly Mother to watch over them at all times.

Let us pray, "Mother Mary, guide our children as they explore the world. Be with them to keep them safe and show them how to live a life saying 'YES' to God."

Silence in the Heart

I was reading an old text that recommends “silence in the heart.” Saint Diadochus of Photice, a bishop of the fifth century, said our mind should be like still waters. Then we can see the pollutants (temptations) and recognize “the fish” (grace).

It sounds wonderful. Such great advice. But it seems impossible to achieve in this modern era, especially in busy houses with children. How is this possible?

Today, for example, there is no school because snow has enveloped the state of New Mexico. And the children have important projects to do which means lots of interruptions for questions. And the barnyard animals are struggling with the severe cold so we are going outside more often to bring warm water. And I have a big editing job due soon. And the living room is a mess because of all our projects. And the kids eat all day long so the sink is full of dishes…

And…And…And. You get the drift. Chaos reigns.

Silence would be wonderful. But I don’t suppose St. Diadochus meant it would be easy to achieve. In fact, he says we need the assistance of the Holy Spirit and a persevering nature.

So here is my plan to still the waters of my soul. For whatever it’s worth, maybe it will help someone else.

1) Discipline. Getting up just a bit earlier means there is time for quiet prayer.

2) Repetition. It’s possible to repeat simple prayers over and over to drive away the distracting thoughts and temptations. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, help us.”

3) Holy Spirit Help. The Holy Spirit comes into our hearts with a simple invitation.

4) St. Michael Help. St. Michael drove Satan out of heaven. He is a good protector.

5) Breathe. Breathing puts us back in our bodies and helps achieve stillness.

6) Study. Reading the Bible or other spiritual material opens the heart to long for Jesus.

7) Pray. It’s like a corridor to heaven!

8) Sacraments. Frequent reception of the Eucharist is a gift. We make room in our hearts for Jesus.

Come Holy Spirit. Into the troubled waters of my soul you come. Bring silence. Help me to calm my mind so there is room for You.

Where are the Models of Virtue and Sacrifice?

Could it be that the absence of moral and noble role models in the modern world leads to young adults who feel they are “owed a good life without effort”? Some sociologist will have to take up that question.

But I think it’s safe to say that our children begin looking for role models, beyond the example of their parents, as they enter the “tween years.” And the glorified images they see in the media today are less than wholesome. There are images of arrested athletes who are quickly excused so they can play in the next game. Or movie stars who perform in heroic scenes but are drunken playboys off screen.

These may be models of sin and the need for redemption, but they don’t offer images of virtue and sacrifice.

So, it is with great joy that we should celebrate the news that Pope John Paul II will be beatified in May! He is a true modern hero.


My son, Peter, started a yearlong project last fall to study this pope for a special project of his own. This project has given our entire family an opportunity to learn more about Karol Wojtyla.

Pope John Paul had a beautiful way of communicating. He would take what someone else said, or a belief held by many, and find some kernel of truth in it. Then he would move to the big Truth and the Light that needed to be understood in that situation. It was a non-confrontational way to say, “Yes there is an Absolute Truth we can point to. And Truth is not open to compromise.”

Truth is a beautiful thing to discover! Pope John Paul expressed love AND strength. He was an athlete, a poet and a man of prayer. And for me, his willingness to sacrifice and give of himself, makes him a perfect role model for our youth. As the disease of Parkinsons began to ravage his body, he refused to hide. Instead, he allowed the world to see his suffering and his great effort to persevere on behalf of Truth and worldwide healing.

As Peter researched the life of the Pope, he came across a much lesser known hero.

A Catholic Who Volunteered to Enter Auschwitz

A contact in Poland shared the story with us of Witold Pilecki. He was a young member of the Polish Army in 1939. Pilecki went into hiding after the Nazis took over his country.

Pilecki came up with a plan to assist his homeland. He wanted to make a firsthand record of the atrocities happening at Auschwitz in order to get more support from the Allies. So he allowed himself to be arrested. He was tortured for two days and then sent to Auschwitz. While in the camp he organized the prisoners and distributed the few supplies available. When the Nazis learned that he was plotting a massive escape plan, Pilecki was forced to escape with only one other prisoner. After that he assisted in the uprising in Warsaw and disrupted Nazi supply lines.

In 1945 he was recognized as a hero of World War II, the “Volunteer for Auschwitz.” But shortly afterward, he was arrested by the new communist government and tortured. He was labeled an “enemy of the state—an imperialist spy” and was shot in the back of the head. His heroic story was buried by the government and his name could not be spoken for the next forty years. It wasn’t until Pope John Paul inspired the nonviolent overthrow of communism in Poland, that the Pilecki story was uncovered in 1989.

These are stories of two Catholic men who exemplify faith, courage and sacrifice.

Journalist Michal Tyrpa has hopes that Hollywood will make a movie about Pilecki. Meanwhile he has put together a website called "Let's Reminisce About Witold Pilecki" ("Przypomnijmy o Rotmistrzu") and has written a letter to Pope Benedict XVI asking that a case be opened to consider Pilecki for sainthood. For more information on that story visit www.witoldsreport.blogspot.com

Pope John Paul, pray for our families. Pray that our young people, who you cherished, will be inspired by stories of faith. Help them to rise above the temptations of the world. Help them to live with fortitude, Grace and virtue, as you did.

One Cold, Dark Night....

When our furnace died, one terribly cold night, it became an opportunity to huddle together and focus on the warmth that comes from faith, family and love…

It began at 4 p.m. when our gas furnace rocked and rattled. The serviceman confirmed what we suspected. The blower was shot. Unfortunately, the nearest supplier was an hour’s drive away and our serviceman didn’t have time to take out the old one and drive that distance to get it fixed or replaced. He advised us to bring build up a fire in the fireplace.

So, this could have been the start of a nice, change-of-pace, cozy night. Except one of our fireplaces was labeled “dangerous” the last time it was checked. And the other fireplace is in the back of the house and doesn’t send heat very far into the house.

The temperature was dropping fast. It was five degrees outside according to the thermostat but colder than that with the wind chill. Brigit, age 11, was coughing in allergic reaction to chimney smoke. I was in denial. This couldn’t be happening, or could it?

As the warmth inside the house quickly dissolved, we huddled together in one room. Under a pile of blankets we watched the old Titanic movie. Not the love story version, but the original film, showing terror, heroism and devastation. It all happened in a single night back in 1912.

It gave us the opportunity to talk about what we would do in that situation, faced with jumping into the frigid ocean. “I’d move my legs a lot and pray hard,” someone said.

We piled on blankets and pretended we were living in the earlier times when cold nights were an everyday experience. And we tried to be thankful for our blessings…for the blankets that came as Christmas presents and for movies that helped us keep our perspective about our troubles.

Especially we prayed for Jurgen, my husband. He is in seventies and has health problems. But he courageously kept the fire going in our back room fireplace so that we had one spot of warmth in the house.

When dawn finally came, it was as if our eyes were opened in a new way. Light brought a feeling of renewal and warmth. All things are possible when there is Light.

I share this story by way of saying that any time of trouble offers an opportunity to be renewed in faith. The contrast of warmth and cold, fire and ice, light and dark are important images for us. We are called to trust in Jesus when there is cold, ice and darkness.

Then the Light of the World will shine for us. And then the darkness is conquered. The warmth is re-kindled.

From our family to yours, we pray that our eyes will be opened. The Light is always there dispersing the darkness if we but turn in faith to Him.

And then “the peace which transcends all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4: 6-7) Isn’t it amazing to think that St. Paul wrote those words while he was in dark prison cell?! Clearly, he could see the Light.