We all could use more courage in our lives. The area where we need to have the most courage is in the area of our faith. We need to be able to practice our faith boldly, to bring it to others using the unique gifts that God has given us so that we can help to build the kingdom.
Each of us has a gift that God has given us. We can choose to play humble and to let it sit under a bushel, waiting for someone to use their own gift to pull it out, or we can get to working to help evangelize the world. We can get to working with our gift to help build our Church.
God is calling you to something completely unique.
The calling itself may look like other callings but the way that you are being called is for you alone. There is no one else in the world that can do what it is that you are called to do with your gifts. You are called to serve in a unique way, to wash feet that no one else can wash.
That takes fortitude.
It takes fortitude because no one is going to simply allow you to just do what it is you are called to do to help change the world. This is because people around you are intimidated by the very idea that someone would want to change the world. If you have, for the last 40 days or weeks, worked on changing yourself so that you can be more in line with what God is calling you to, then how can you stop now?
How can you keep yourself from the vocation that you have been discerning?
How can you keep yourself from the ministry that you have been called to?
How can you keep yourself from the unique calling to holiness that you received at baptism and is playing itself out in your life right now?
The time has come for you, the person reading this, to take action. The time has come for you to step forward, to step out, to start to consider that the time to wait for others to change the world for you so that you can live in it is over.
God, in the words of Pope John Paul II, who knew a thing or two, has no hands now but yours. What would it take for you to walk with the feet of Christ?
The fortitude may be the gift to recognize that what you are being called to is not as grandiose as you would think it would be. The call that you have may be to your own family. The call that you have may be simply in your neighborhood or in your own Church.
The fortitude may be the gift to have the ability to fully realize what it is that God is calling you to and to have the courage to step out and to do it. God may be asking you to get out of the sandbox and go explore the rest of the yard. To go see what it it is that the world needs and to fill one of those needs.
The fortitude may be to get over your preconceptions of what is needed in order for you to get started.
The fortitude may be to get over your preconceptions of what is needed to be holy, to be a saint.
You may need fortitude to approach that one person that could make it happen. You may need fortitude to ask for help. You may need fortitude to reach out in boldness to work, to start to allow the Grace of God to work through you so that the world around you can start to change.
This isn't the type of fortitude that manifests itself in loud, boisterous argument. This is a simple type of fortitude that gives you a peace about the unique calling that you have to your vocation, your ministry, your work, your life.
There is one more day for the Challenge.
Pray for the Courage to move forward.
Questions for Reflection:
- What is it that God is calling you to do to be a saint? Why do you need fortitude to do this?
- What is God calling you to be the patron saint of? Why do you think your are being called to that area?
- A good number of the saints were called to martyrdom. Nearly all of the saints suffered for their faith as they worked with the Grace of God to make the world around them a little holier. In what ways do you suffer for your faith? Why does it take great fortitude to practice your faith?
- What would be the scariest thing that God could call you to do in order to be holy? Why is God NOT calling you to do that? Are you sure?
- What are the gifts that God has given you? How can you use one of those to help build the Kingdom right now? Today?
- Asking for help is one of the hardest things to do because we don't want people to think that we are weak or dependent on others. Today, make it a point to ask for help with most everything that you do. Allow yourself to work through your own fear of asking people.
- Most times what is in our minds is not really as scary as we make it out to be. God is calling you to do one thing that you do not want to do because of fear. Perhaps it is considering a vocation, perhaps it is working in a new ministry, perhaps it is engaging the vocation you are in with a new passion. Take one step today in that direction.
- You have been hiding your faith from someone, or minimizing it when you are around them out of fear. Take a step today to make your behavior consistent with everyone that you meet. Do not make apologies for the gifts that God has given you.
- Take the week to work with a focus on the gifts that God has given you. Perhaps you can start to develop the plans for something. Perhaps you can start the process on something. Perhaps there is something that has been neglected that needs your attention. For this week, outside of God, make that issue priority number one. Give up the television, or other hobbies and just focus. For one week. Give this week completely to God.
- Every time someone tells you something that causes you to fear, write it down. Make those items a prayer so that God can start to remove that fear from your heart and replace it with the fortitude that He wants to give you.
Pray one of the four groups of five decades of the rosary: Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, Glorious
Ask for the intercession of St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, who suffered intense temptations of gluttony for five years during what can only be referred to as her "dark night of the soul" whenever you feel the temptation to fill that God-shaped hole with food or other physical things.
Prayer to Saint Joseph
Glorious Saint Joseph, pattern of all who are devoted to toil, obtain for me the grace to toil in the spirit of penance, in order thereby to atone for my many sins; to toil conscientiously, putting devotion to duty before my own inclinations; to labour with thankfulness and joy, deeming it an honour to employ and to develop,
by my labour, the gifts that I have received from Almighty God; to work with order, peace, moderation, and patience, without ever shrinking from weariness and difficulties; to work above all with a pure intention
and with detachment from self, having always before my eyes the hour of death and the accounting which I must then render of time ill-spent, of talents unemployed, of good undone, and of my empty pride in success,
which is so fatal to the work of God. All for Jesus, all through Mary, all in imitation of thee, O Patriarch Joseph! This shall be my motto in life and in death. Amen.
Act of Entrustment to Mary #3
Today we wish to entrust to you the future that awaits us,
and we ask you to be with us on our way.
We are the men and women of an extraordinary time,
exhilarating yet full of contradictions.
Humanity now has instruments of unprecedented power:
we can turn this world into a garden,
or reduce it to a pile of rubble.
We have devised the astounding capacity
to intervene in the very well-springs of life:
man can use this power for good, within the bounds of the moral law,
or he can succumb to the short-sighted pride
of a science which accepts no limits,
but tramples on the respect due to every human being.
Today as never before in the past,
humanity stands at a crossroads.
And once again, O Virgin Most Holy,
salvation lies fully and uniquely in Jesus, your Son.
Prayer to St. Dymphna
Courageous St. Dymphna, your strength was from God. His grace enabled you to resist evil, and to prefer exile to a life of sinful luxury. Christ's own power preserved you faithful to Him in life and in death. In your kindness help us to imitate your example in little things, and gain for us fortitude to bear with the misfortunes we meet, and strength to overcome our weakness. Amen.
