Catholic Spirituality

I recently stepped in to teach a high school Catholic spirituality class for a teacher out on leave. This was a time of spiritual discovery for me.

My first question for myself is why I’m so miserably bad at growing my own Catholic spirituality. Now don’t get me wrong. I go to Mass at least weekly and my family prays together every day. I pray Morning Prayer many days and spend an hour a week in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

Yet, despite these good habits I struggle with two obstacles to Catholic spirituality – as I believe many Catholics do

• Consistency – my current prayer life is routine, but it is far from disciplined. I have a very difficult time molding in new Catholic spirituality practices. For example, Morning Prayer and prayer with my wife are constant struggles.
• Depth – while I pray out of a general love for God, I wouldn’t say that my typical prayer experience is the kind of love that is supposed to move Catholic meditation prayer. It is more the fulfillment of a duty than a quiet time spent between best friends. Catholic spirituality is all about loving God more perfectly. I am falling a bit short in that.

The client needs survey reveals that many of you struggle with the same issues surrounding Catholic spirituality:

• A better prayer life and how to sahre my faith with others.
• Finding or building community, learning to contemplate
• Finding peace, finding peace, finding peace. And greater trust in God. Almost one in the same I suppose.
• Living my life in a way that mirrors God’s will, being more mindful of God and His presence.
• Staying focused on our marriage improving my personal prayer life
• I need to have more faith and trust in God and His provision and guidance in my life. I need to look at life as a gift from Him, and look at all the positive things and not dwell on negative or self condemning thoughts.
• Consistent family prayer
• Prayer
• Continue to pray and stay faithful to my faith communities
• Active prayer life especially the sacraments. Acceptance of God’s will
• Daily mass when possible, individual visits with our priest
• My wife and I have started praying together daily as a family and go to adoration once a week. Keeping focused on the reason we are here on earth, to show our Love to God and gain heaven for eternity.
• I like reading uplifting books.
• I have learned to accept suffering in reparation and I am trying to increase my participation in the Mass.
• Talk to my wife and athers more about my faith. Going to daily Mass more often. Both have helped.
• Worked – going to daily Mass. Praying the rosary as a family. Trying to read more about the faith. Didn’t work – talking to others, letting society play into our lives too much.I am very happy with Jesus front and center in my life. I’m a living example for others and someone Christ can work through. I’m just so small compared to the clanging of secularism. I’ll never give up.
• Continue to pray and read more scripture. Practice what my religion has taught me. Being too impatient and wanting my prayers answered the way I want them to be answered.
• Prayer & trusting in God works
• Need for Discipline and Virtue

A lot of our struggle with prayer has to do with what we previously talked about in this series – the need to exercise the virtue of prudence, and the need to grow in virtues surrounding self-discipline.

What’s Mark Twain Got to Do With It?

Well, besides the introspection I also began to ask how Catholic prayer is best taught. The seniors that made up the Catholic spirituality class told me that they had a difficult time reading the spiritual books (we covered Story of a Soul, Imitation of Christ, and Interior Castle in my time with them). But they got a lot out of our discussion of the material. In other words, the ideas were valuable but wading through the works of the spiritual masters was difficult. In fact, while most of the seniors actually did read the assigned readings, none of them would have done so without the help of the discussions that shed light on what they were supposed to get out of it all.

My experience with these high school seniors got me thinking about adult Catholic learners and works of Catholic spirituality. Most Catholic spirituality books fall under Mark Twain’s description of classic literature.

“A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” —Mark Twain

I think the connection between the spiritual masters and the literary classics is more than just surface. The reason most people don’t read the classics is because they don’t know how to read the classics. They don’t understand the underlying metaphors, cultural elements and literary styles that would help them get the true message out of it. The same is true of the great works of Catholic spirituality! The truth about the classics is that if you could receive the guidance of an expert teacher, you would actually love reading many of them (though I will admit not all of them – some of them are still real snoozers).

How much would your spiritual life grow if you could be guided through great works of Catholic spirituality such as Saint Therese of Liseux’s autobiography Story of a Soul, Saint Terese of Avila’s spiritual masterpiece Interior Castle, Imitation of Christ by Tomas A Kempis, Introduction to the Devout Life by Saint Francis de Sales (my personal favorite), and Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross?

Hey – I’ve already done the work for all but the last one! Why not? Sign up to receive updates on this blog using the form below and we’ll get started on this project here. But I’ll also have some intense online classes produced that will take you through these works in even greater form. Then – with a lot less effort on your part – you and I can both enter into the world of meditation and (God willing) contemplation (I’ll explain the difference between those two types of Catholic prayer in a future post) together and share the experience!

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