The Mountaintop Experience

         The transfiguration of Jesus is a mountaintop experience.  It was such a divine encounter that Peter wanted to pitch tents and remain there forever.  Whenever I experience the divine light of Jesus, I just want to remain in it and stop all else.  I long to remain in His light and love, and to cease any other existence.  But life goes on and the message to us is the same today as it was for Peter, James and John then. 

          Jesus comes down from the mountain to be with us! WOW!! Why? It didn't seem to do much good or to invoke a huge change in the culture of His time, as witnessed by the persecution and cruel death He endured. But He continued to love and to prepare His disciples for His crucifixion and the ultimate mountaintop experience of His resurrection.  He is always preparing us for what lies ahead, just as He was preparing Peter, James and John for what was forthcoming.

          Whenever I do not see results of my hard work, I can get frustrated, depressed and sometimes devastated to the point of giving up the work.  Why clean, as it won't stay clean for very long around here?  Why cook delicious home-cooked meals when it all ends up in the toilet anyway?  (Had to throw that in!)  Why exercise, I'm not losing weight and I won't be able to keep it up? Why love, people don't seem to change? Why strive for holiness in a world that doesn't value it?  Mother Teresa is credited for a poem entitled, Anyway, but it was originally written in 1968 by Kent Keith and slightly reworded by Mother Teresa for her children's home in Calcutta:

"People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.  Love them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.  Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.  Be good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.  Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.  Build anyway.

People need help but will attack you if you help them.  Help them anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway."

           Climbing the mountain to have a mountain-top experience is hard work.  Whenever I focus on the climb and getting to the top, I'm distracted from my being in the light and love of Jesus who came down from the mountain to be with me. He didn't ask us to climb a mountain to encounter Him.  He basically tells us that even though our work of loving doesn't seem to make a difference to others, it does make a difference to the Spirit within us, so do it anyway!  The Holy Spirit is preparing us every day to be transfigured into Jesus' radiant light and love by His Word and Sacrament.  It is when His light and love radiates through us to our family that we experience God and the beauty of a mountaintop.

           Why is it so much easier to shine His light on our friends and strangers than it is to our own family?

"And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart.  And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light.  And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.  And Peter said to Jesus, 'Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.' He was still speaking, when behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him'  When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces, and were filled with awe.  But Jesus came and touched them, saying, 'Rise, and have no fear.' And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only."  (Matthew 17:1-8)

          Mother Teresa recited this prayer every day of her life.  It is entitled, Radiating Christ, by Blessed John Henry Newman:

"Dear Jesus, help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go.  Flood our souls with your spirit and life.  Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly, that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.  Shine through us, and be so in us, that every soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul.  Let them look up and see no longer us, but only Jesus!  Stay with us, and then we shall begin to shine as you shine; so to shine as to be a light to others; the light O Jesus, will be all from you, none of it will be ours; it will be you, shining on others through us.  Let us thus praise you in the way you love best, by shining on those around us.  Let us preach you without preaching, not by words but by our example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what we do, the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.  Amen." 

  

                     

Do Not Be Afraid of the Work

            Physical exercise is a part of my daily routine.  I dread it, but I do like the extra energy it produces and the calorie burning.  There are lots of other things I don't like to do either, such as grocery shopping.  But I do like to eat, very much, so it forces me to grocery shop. The joy of food is also the reason that I do not like to fast, but I do like the fruits of fasting.  Anything that requires effort and self-discipline, which basically is anything that resembles work, I look for an easier way.

          There is no such thing as an easy marriage or any easy vocation.   There is no easy way on this pilgrimage.  Sometimes it just seems too hard and I don't want to put forth the effort.  One day as I was complaining to God that I was over-worked and I just couldn't do it all, the thought came to me (I'm sure via the Holy Spirit) that I would do it more willingly if it were for money.  That thought quickly gave me insight into my heart, and I didn't like what I saw. 

          I didn't value family life because there is no monetary gain in it.  Our culture measures success by the amount of money we have.  My husband never made enough money for me and I spoke of our lack of it often.  It was our wish that our children obtain a college degree so that they could seek careers that enabled them to make a lot of money.  And yet, raises in pay brought us happiness initially and then it wasn't enough. The truth is that there is no job more rewarding, more valuable, and more difficult than, to love, especially in family life. 

          A priest at a funeral I attended once stated that you can tell the success of an individual by the amount of people who attend their funeral.  Success lies in the amount of loving we do and not the amount of money we have.  A person who loves a lot is like a magnet that attracts a lot more people, because we are all looking for happiness and lasting happiness is found in being loved.  If it were easy and came in a bottle, we would all love and be loved.  It is hard, hard work that requires an abundance of God, for God is Love!

          So if we find ourselves lacking in love, go to the source of love.  Whenever I am confronted with a proposition and it requires what appears to be a lot of work, my initial reaction is always negative.  But I pray on it, and I hear God say, "Take heart, it is I; have no fear." (Matthew 14:27)  The outcome of my efforts and in disciplining myself to say "yes" to more work, is always positive.  I realize that God picked me for that job to do with Him, and I feel loved and valued. 

          God picked me to love this spouse and this family that He gave me.  It is the most important work I will ever do, and when I choose to do it with God, I am certain to feel loved, valued, and rich!


          "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  Matthew 6:21


     

Communication

          My husband and I facilitated family retreats.  We have one session where we sit down with the husband and wife on retreat and share our story.  Much to my husband's dismay, I start that session with these words,  "Hi, my name is Linda Tedrick and I am a recovering control freak.  This is my husband, Bob, and he is a recovering non-communicator.  Everyday is still a challenge, and that is why I'm doing all the talking and he is saying nothing."  Every couple would laugh and say that they could relate.

          We all know that communication is a very important element in every relationship.  If there's not much communication, there's not much of a relationship.  That is why the most important communication we can do, is to pray.  Prayer is nothing more than talking with God.  According to St. John Vianney, there are two duties of man --- to pray, and to love.  During my self-centered period, I would talk with God and tell Him everything I wanted from Him.  Likewise, I would talk to my husband and tell him everything I wanted from him.  Gee, I wonder why he didn't enjoy talking with me?!!

          When my conversation with God began to be more about what I could do for God, my life had meaning and I was filled with gratitude and joy.  Likewise, I saw that when I spoke with my husband about what I could do for him, he started to turn the t.v. off, or the radio, or put the paper down, or whatever it was that he was doing to avoid talking with me stopped.  Because I was more attentive to his needs and valued what he had to say, the miracle of a positive, loving dialogue was born in our marriage.  He followed my lead, and started to ask what he could do for me and he started to value what I had to say.  Talking together led to doing good works together united with God. We are very grateful and joyful.  I must add that it amazes me that once my ears were opened to accept whatever my husband had to say, I found his words to be very profound a lot of the time.

          There are still times that I feel the need to bring up something that is unpleasant or derogatory.  In those moments, I pray.  God's Word always encourages me to love dutifully by valuing all that is good in my husband.  He reminds me of his goodness for the mere fact that he came from God and God is incapable of creating anything but good.  God dwells in him, and he is beautiful.  When I see him in that light, he begins to shine.

          At a conference I attended once, a psychologist explained that a child who is told that he is bad, will act bad because that is who he is.  If he is bad, he must do bad things.  God showed me that if a spouse is told (or feels) that he/she is not worthily contributing, he/she will act accordingly.  There is good in everyone because God dwells in us.   Once I truly began to value my husband's contribution to our family, even though I wasn't in control, our conversations and actions were blessed.  Following my husband's lead by not needing to talk endlessly about everything has also blessed us!

          The lesson I have learned is that every conversation should be an encouragement to pray and to love.  The statement, "let's pray on it" or "let's value everyone because God dwells in them and  we are to be obedient to God's command to love everyone" should be stated often, and lived!  When we encounter a difficult situation with a person, let's communicate to ourself, "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!" (Psalm 84:2)  Strong and fruitful relationships will grow and bloom.

Blaming Versus Understanding

          One of the best times of being a parent is when our children work or play together lovingly. Those times always overwhelm me and I want to live in that moment for as long as I can and bask in the light of that peace and joy.  Likewise, I enjoy books, movies, stories, that have people united in a love that is pure, innocent and genuine; the feel-good-kind of stories. 

          When my life story started to include more of my husband and I working and playing together lovingly, I experienced many more feel-good-kind of days.  It meant putting an end to my childish ways of blaming the other for not going by the rules, usually my rules, or not cooperating properly, trying very hard, etc.  Whenever we started to argue, I always thought in my head, "Well, you started it."  Starting it is always easy, but the challenge lies in stopping it before it escalates.

          I now picture our Father in Heaven watching our family live together, and I want to give Him a feel-good-kind of moment.  When I start the blaming game of, "he did this or he didn't do this," it takes an act of God, literally, to stop me in my tracks and turn things around.  I beg for the grace to be more understanding and to overcome my stubborness to say, "I shouldn't have said or did this or that, please forgive me."  The situation changes.

          The following excerpt from a Bantam Book entitled, Peace in Every Step by Thich Nhat Hahn was in a church bulletin recently, and it beautifully sums up what I learned about blaming versus understanding:

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce.  You look for reasons it is not doing well.  It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun.  You never blame the lettuce.
Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person.  But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce.  Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience.  No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.  If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

          This Sunday we celebrate Father's Day.  Let's give Our Father in Heaven a feel-good-kind of day by living as children of God that work, play, and pray together lovingly.  It's the gift that keeps on giving because we give ourselves and our family a feel-good-kind of day too!

               

To be Fully Human

           We've been on vacation and are now back.  I'll be attempting to blog every Tuesday and Friday once again.  It's amazing how I thought that my sharing the lessons I have learned in this blog was to help others, only to see how God is using this blog to help me to grow closer to Him. So, I continue with His grace.

           The month of June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Jesus' heart is totally consumed with the fire of Love.  His heart burns with the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for us.  All that Jesus does flows from the love in His sacred heart. The three persons in one God are always together and united as one, as Jesus said to His disciples, if they have seen Jesus, they have seen the Father. Trying to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity made me more aware of what it means to be a Holy Human.

          Holy is the root word of whole.  To be wholly human, the mind, body, and spirit must work together and be united as one.  We are whole/holy when all that we do flows from a heart of love. Being well in mind, body, and spirit means having a heart on fire with love for God.  When our heart is totally consumed with love for God, we can love our family and everyone else like Jesus.  Our actions reflect what is in our heart. Is it consumed with the love of God, the love of ourself, or the love of the world or ...?

           There are many times when I say one thing, and do another. In addition, my spirit does not always reflect a spirit of love.  But there was a time that God gave me an experience of a burning in my heart and I learned what it means to be fully human as Jesus was fully human.

            While in parish ministry, a parishioner approached me about praying for their children as the mom and dad were getting a divorce.  After sharing many resources with her, I told her that I would be praying for them, especially on the Friday that the divorce was to be final.  That Friday morning, I remembered the family and spoke to God about their situation.  In my mind, I had been given a thought of why the marriage fell apart.  It seemed to me that it was a problem that could be easily reconciled and I vowed to call the mom the following Monday to discuss this further.  Due to the fact that on that Friday I had planned a shopping outing with friends, I did not want to take care of it right then.

          To make a long story short, I ended up cancelling my plans with friends in order to meet with the mom that day, because the Holy Spirit would not let me stop thinking about it.  I sacrificed my first day off in weeks to help someone I really did not know for the love of God.  My mind, body, and spirit united in doing a loving thing.  On my drive home after spending several hours with the mom, I felt a burning in my heart that brought tears to my eyes, and I experienced a feeling of pleasing God and of wholeness.  There was nothing that I could have done with my friends on that day that could come close to the feeling of God's love on fire in my heart.  Again, I thought I was helping someone else, and God was using that situation to help me know His love more deeply.  It is all God's grace. Our God is amazing!  Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in us the fire of your love!

"Philip said to him, 'Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.'  Jesus said to him, 'Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?  He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?"  John 14:8-9


"I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate."  Romans 7:15


"I came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled!"  Luke 12:49

Encouragement to Serve Humbly

        Every day is a challenge to love one another.  I hope that in this blog I do not display self-righteousness or act as if I have it all figured out and that married life is easy for me now.  Each day I must put forth a great effort to stay centered in Christ rather than in myself.  And some days I do well and some days I don't do as well. 

        To close out the month of May, I need to point to our Blessed Mother once again.  She is the shining example of the virtue of humility.  There was a time that I thought being humble meant to think less of myself, when it actually means to think of myself less.  Blessed Mother immediately said yes to being obedient to God's will for her and did not consider the difficulties it was going to cause her.  Then after the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and she became pregnant with Jesus, she travelled to her cousin Elizabeth to serve her in her time of need.  Blessed Mother was thinking about serving and not about herself.

        A lot of my problems within family life stems from desiring an easier way of living life.  Managing a household requires constant service.  The home is our mission field and the work is never done.  I never worked alongside Mother Teresa in Calcutta, but something tells me she never looked at the amount of work she had to do but looked at the opportunity to serve God in the poor.  She was a humble servant.  And so many people were drawn to this small holy woman.

        Being a part of something good and positive draws others.  It feels good to be a part of something positive.  In family life, my complaining about how much I had to do or detailing how much I did do, with an air that no one appreciated it, did not make my family members jump to help me.  It was when I served humbly and with joy, that I received unsolicited help, and it was a very positive experience for everyone.

        For years, I did not want any help because it usually caused me more work.  I missed out on having my husband help me cook because it usually meant washing more pans and a thorough cleaning of the stove/oven too.  The children wanted to help, but they might spill something or cause me to then need to wash the floor, etc.  There is not much humility in any of that!

        Staying positive about being a humble servant requires support. Being in family ministry, I talk with a lot of couples who are in difficult marriages.  It is easy for them to find friends and family members who will tell them to get divorced and move on.  It is not as easy to find friends and family members who will point to Jesus and encourage us to be faithful servants.  The purpose that I feel God is asking me to share my lessons on this blog is to encourage one another in continuing to run the race to the finish, fight the good fight.  This earthly battle is difficult and we need each other to support our striving to win the prize.

        To my surprise, the prize of love came to me when I started to think about myself less.  Many saints have said that all the other virtues flow from the virtue of humility.  Seeing serving others as an opportunity to be a part of something good and positive drew people to me and I felt the love of God through the love of others.  It is a grand prize.

        Whether single, married, separated, divorced, religious, let's encourage one another to seize the opportunity to be a part of something good and positive and serve humbly. 


        "Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for 'God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.'"  1 Peter 5:5

         
        "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."  2 Timothy 4:7


        "What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but has not works?  Can his faith save him?  If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and in lack of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?  So faith by iteself, if it has no works, is dead."  James 2:14-17

        "May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."  Romans 15:5-6

       

Being Intentional

        Today is our 38th Wedding Anniversary!  When we got married 38 years ago, I did so with the intent to stay married until death do us part.  I didn't realize then that unless we bring new life into each day through the Spirit of Love, we do die even though we still breathe, and we do part, even though we remain together.  Thank you, Holy Spirit, the giver of life, for flaming the embers of love in our heart, to bring us to live anew each day on fire with the love of God.

        The biggest change in me that reaped the biggest reward in my vocation as a wife was when I began each day being intentional about being the best wife that I could be with the help of Jesus and His Blessed Mother.  I pray each morning for the grace to have pure intentions in all that I think, say, and do, motivated solely for the purpose of giving glory to God, our Father and creator.  By my being faithful to my promise to love and honor my husband until death do us part, I glorify God.  I end my morning prayer by asking Jesus to help me to remember to do everything with Him and not just for Him, so my work each day will be a worthy offering to God. 

        Jesus is the only one who could die for our sins as He is the perfect sacrifice. When I try to do things without Him, which happens all of the time, I feel stressed to get done what I think needs to be done.  When I make a conscious effort before each task to call upon the Holy Spirit as my advocate and counselor, everything seems to go much smoother and I feel that I am about our Father's business alongside Jesus.  With Jesus, it is a perfect sacrifice, done with and for love. 

         There is a Christian Family Life radio station that I came across since recently moving that does a great job of promoting intentional living.  It really made all the difference for me many years ago when I read a book about waking up each morning with the intent to honor your spouse throughtout the entire day.  This intention became mine and it did not hinge on whether my spouse deserved to be honored or not, or whether he was honoring me.  The knowledge of the Holy Spirit that God honors me and loves me faithfully each day, became enough for me.  I felt joy in that inspiration and that joy captured my husband too.  It started slowly to change everything, and the planting of our life as one started to sprout new green leaves.

        Each day is a gift from God to celebrate life and love.  Let's all celebrate today by being intentional about it!
 
        "Make love your aim, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts" (1 Corinthians 14:1)

        "Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude.  Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends;"  (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)