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“Why do you hesitate? If you are bound with even a gold chain, cut yourself loose so that you may make progress along this road. The Lord waits to welcome you at the end of it.”

What is this road about? Is it about hope, faith, joy? Well, merely it’s about love. And love is love only when it’s lived. Today I will call a friend just to see how she is. Today I will help people feel that they are loved. I must show it to them.

Lord, here you are what I am, take me and grow me – You know what I need today.

“The profession of faith, the Credo, should sharpen our appreciation of the sacrifice of Our Lord: “He was born of the Virgin Mary and became man. For ourselves He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered, died and was buried”; a sacrifice during the whole of his life, a sacrifice of oblation.”

After coming back from a week’s holiday, I was afraid to come back to work. Will I be able to catch up on all the things? Will I still have authority within my colleagues? Will I be able to answer my boss’ questions? Will I be successful? What if not?

All these my doubts were washed away within 5 mins of prayer:

“I will look after. I love you whatever happens.”

Jesus came here, He let Himself be killed, He suffered an awfully lot for me, even if I didn’t ask Him for it at all. He WILL make sure that I am happy, He will look after everything in my life, He loves me. There is no doubt any more, no fear of failure, as the only failure in life is a failure to recognize His love, a failure to realise that I am loved by the Greatest, by Somebody who is everything; I am loved by Everything.

“You have to make many sacrifices when you live in the midst of people who differ from you politically, socially and ideologically. Look at the example of Jesus Who is God: He lived among sinful mankind. This was thirty three years of continuous sacrifice.”

Today I was reading a bit of the Gospel by Luke. And funnily enough, it was the part about Jesus’ 40 days in the desert. Look at the notes that were there:

In secular history, people only participate and cope with other people. Sacred history views things from another perspective: God’s plan unfolds hindered by the disturbing devices of the evil spirit, and people are called to take part in this struggle that exceeds their own plans. This is why Jesus had to face the evil one.

We speak of temptation when we feel the pressure of bad instrincts or when we feel dragged into doing evil by circumstances. Jesus did not possess our bad instincts but the Holy Spirit led him to be tested into the desert – remember that to tempt and to test have the same meaning – and there he felt the strongest persuasion from the evil one who tried to dissuade him from his mission.

Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, began his ministry by undergoing a very hard test: forty days of total solitude and fasting. In this situation, Jesus experienced his frailty as he faced a leap into the unknown: he was about to let go of life in Nazareth in surrender to the Father’s will, and begin a mission which would lead him to death within a few years.

The devil, or the accuser, spoke to him; thus is he named in Scripture because he always criticizes. He leads us to accuse God, and when he has made us fall, he then accuses us and tries to convince us that our fall will not be forgiven by God.

If you are the Son of God. Jesus knew who he was, but he had not yet tested his power. Could he not, for a moment, release divine energy when his body was weak from hunger? Could he not, someday, get down from the cross to save himself?

Jesus refuses to be self-serving. He has higher goals: and so the Devil takes him higher. Knowing people as they are, Jesus is tempted to impose himself on the people and manipulate them. He is tempted to compromise and use weapons of the devil who respects neither the truth, nor freedom of conscience. It would then be easy to reign over the nations “in the name of God,” since the devil gives them to whom he wishes.

Jesus has chosen to serve only God. The devil asks, “Why, then, do you not begin your preaching with something spectacular, like dropping from a high place into the midst of the crowd at prayer in the temple? – Do you not believe that God will perform a miracle for you?” – This time the devil uses the very words of Sripture: in reading them, one might think that with much faith, one would always be healthy and successful. Jesus warns against the error of a “faith” which tries to remove the cross. Jesus will not demand miracles from his Father to avoid suffering the humiliation and rejection that are the lot of God’s messengers: this would be to challenge God under the pretense of trusting him.

The devil left him, to return another time. In the Passion of Jesus, the devil will turn the people’s wickedness against the Liberator whom he could not lead astray.

“There are many regions in the world without priests which have maintained the faith through many decades by means of the recitation of prayers in the families.”

How important is it to pray with my husband every evening? Should we not now, when we don’t have kids yet, form the foundation of our future family – based on prayer?

How should we pray, is another question. And this has been developing since we started going out together 8 years ago. From a shy decade of Rosary as we walked along the river, to something longer that we have now – a short prayer by our own words, then a decade and reading a few lines from the Gospel.

Will we ever get to meditating together? Will we be able to ever really discuss our knowing of God? Will see. But one thing is very important – pray together, whatever form suits you.

A saint couple is much more than one saint.

“Prayer on the lips of an un-baptized person is genuine sign of the beginnings of faith.”

Last Saturday night, just before the Resurrection, my friend was baptized. In our community, I saw him as a very keen Christian, who motivated many of us. It was just later that I learned that he hadn’t been even baptized then. It’s interesting how other people can motivate us with their burning desire for Christ.

Lord, please, strengthen my faith in You, let me see You Resurrected and Praised.

““Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20). These words of Our Lord are fulfilled especially in those many communities that pray whilst living thousands of miles from a priest. They still organize themselves to pray together and to hold firmly to this practice in the midst of their difficulties and isolation.”

Yes, and yet many of us, who have 2 million priests at hand, we who can choose to which church and at what time to go – every day – yes, we are not willing to participate. We tend to stay passive, we don’t take it seriously, we don’t use the gifts we got!

Currently I am living together with 7 people who claim to be believers. They all go to a mass more than once a week, apart from one. They pray hours every day.

And yet I am so slow to talking with them about faith. I wouldn’t pray with them so easily. Why? I don’t know. I am just not used to talk to people about faith. Maybe I am afraid of being revealed. Maybe I am just shy. Or maybe, I just don’t know what to say.

Anyway, we need to get together and pray together. What if we started to meet once a week to pray a rosary? I will suggest this on Saturday when they all are at home.

“There are people whose practice of religion consists of reciting many prayers and attending many Masses, but they do not put their faith into practice. There is no different from someone who might ask a friend, “Are you well?”, and the friend replies, “I eat six meals a day.” Eating a lot of meals is not necessarily the same thing as being healthy.”

Today I didn’t go to a mass. I also bought myself a huge bite of chocolate, although it’s lent and all my friends fast from sweets. Am I healthy?

I’ve been looking for a spiritual director and it seems that I’ve just found one. She is one of those ladies who live on their own – but she had a reasonably successful career in Brussels – and she left because she wanted to be a Christian leader, she wanted to serve as a spiritual director – for free. Her own spiritual director is Peter Hannah, who wrote a book called Only if you wrestle – which I read when I was starting this blog and soon after I realised what my life goal is.

She is rooted in Jesuit philosophy, and these guys seem to know their bit about spiritual life. And she prays. And she will be praying for me which I really need. And I also got another priest to pray for me, after I made my confession and told him about my addictions and sins…

I want to be one with God. I want to be holy. I want to love. I want to be happy. I want to be strong and healthy. I want to serve and give. I want to Be.

And as I’ve heard that spiritual direction is not about telling me what to do – it’s more about helping me to listen to God’s voice in my life. I’m sure it’s gonna be tough for my director to lead me, as I am not very good at listening to others…

But I want to move forward. Now is the time, this is the day of salvation. What should I wait for?

What should I do to prove my faith? I think that one of the crucial things is my solitude – what I do when I’m on my own. As this is when I am myself, nobody sees me, except God. So do I really believe in His presence? In my lonely moments, do I behave like one of His children? Am I full of respect and peace? Or do I fall down into overeating, masturbating, laziness, etc.?

Am I able to pray always when on my own? Is my faith so real that I will never ever do anything that contradicts with it?

“Results and success are two different things. There may be no outward signs of results, but instead, an increase in experience, an increase in humility an increase in your faith in God. That is your success from a supernatural point of view.”

Today I went to our youth mass – the mass where I used to play the guitar in the choir every Friday 2 years ago. Now, after 6 months when I heard them play the last time, I got a chance to see them in action again. They were excellent. Much better than before – the quality of the music was just great – I cannot express how harmonious it all was – and they had the full band playing and the singers were brilliant – all the solos and the choir as a complex thing – simply, I stayed speechless.

But it was not only the music they were playing. I could see there is nobody a real “leader” in terms of standing out from the crowd. Yes, there was a conductor, but the whole thing looked more like they are one team, that it all was a result of them working together. I could see that everybody had their own role there.

And it still is not everything. The mass itself. Yes, I could see familiar faces. The same people as 2 years ago. A few new guys, anyway. But I simply felt at home – although I had left, they all kept coming to this mass every Friday.

Ok, I have earned lots of money. I can now speak English much better. I have learned an awfully lot, working abroad. But this mass… It’s something I had to sacrifice, something where I have been missing, as I belong here. I have delivered results, but these people are successful, although they maybe never achieve what I’ve “achieved”. 

I just pray that I will be more humble and that my faith will strengthen even though I have been chasing other things. Lord, please, grant me more experience which I can get through persistence, give me more humility, so that I can really serve others and listen to them, give me more faith, so that I can pray according to your will and be successful in Your eyes.

“Do not be afraid to talk to Our Lord about everything you desire. Think of these words of Our Lord, “Hither to, you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive” (Jn 16:24). To be fearless is to love just as a child loves its father.”

This morning was very interesting. I was feeling sick – a flu or something like that. And it was Thursday, when I normally run a morning meeting of about 20 people – so that I have to speak in front of them. And I felt so weak when I woke up. So at 5am I texted one of the guys and asked him to run it for me.

No reply back. If he wouldn’t come back to me, I would need to go out and simply do it, however sick I was.  So still in my pyjamas, I kept waiting for his message. Ok, and I prayed that he would confirm he would do it for me. 6am. Still nothing.

When it was 6.15, I started to get ready for the meeting. I put on my clothes and went out to the darkness and cold… When I was in the middle of my way to the meeting, I got the wanted text: ”yes”.  So I turned back and went back home  and straight away to my bed. Wow, that was at the last moment…

But I was thinking then, what my faith should be like? Shouldn’t I simply have kept waiting since I had prayed and Jesus said that “if we ask God about anything in His name, that we simply will get it”? So wouldn’t  it have been so much easier if I simply stayed at home all that time and relied that the text would come? Or, would it be irresponsible to wait until it could be too late and – what would I do then? What if the text would not come at all?

Anyway, later on that day I tried another “prayer” and that worked as well. We simply hadn’t booked bus tickets to get home – and in our country, it was that type of bus company which would never take you without booking the tickets. And a quiet prayer, like “Lord, you know that it’s 10pm and if we don’t get on this bus, we will come home very late, and we are tired etc…” And it worked again.

Now I am just wondering why I haven’t prayed for things like that earlier. I just always get them. Everything I have prayed for, I simply got – maybe not immediately, but later on for sure. So why are we so interesting in God’s eyes? Why does He bother to enter the game we are all playing in this world, be it at work, school, in our relationships, various competitions etc. and He simply assists us when we ask Him for help?

Why does He support our desires?

“You are prepared to reject wealth and position, to give up your own life in order to preserve your ideal, your honor and your faith. So, you will never behave otherwise, for to do so means the loss of everything.”

And yet it’s so easy for me not to be myself when I am at some business meetings, it’s so easy to fall for success, money, praise from others… It’s so easy to follow my ego and my desires.

“Look for the kingdom of God first and all other things will be added to you on top of it.”

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