New York Times bestselling author Matthew Kelly interviews author Luke Burgis. Luke is a teacher, speaker, entrepreneur, and author of Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life.
Daily Reflection – When We Know Our Desires, We Know the Direction of Our Soul
Daily Reflection – We Need So Little
Meditation of the Day – The Strength of the Soul
Morning Offering – Sometimes God Does Not Give You What You Desire
“Even when God’s will does not correspond to your own desires, it is always beneficial for you.”
— St. Arnold Janssen
//Catholic Company//
5 Keys to Discern Anything
How to discern God’s will is one of Fr. Mark-Mary’s favorite topics. He has some principles he uses to guide his discernment. He narrows these principles down to four: needs, responsibilities, desires, and capacities. Needs: We need to be intimate with God’s word. He has already given us his word, but often we haven’t read it before discerning. Have a regular relationship with the Word of God. The primary place we should look to learn his will is in Scripture. Responsibilities: School, your career, or your living situation are examples of responsibilities that you should consider when figuring out God’s will for you. God probably isn’t calling you to travel the world as a missionary if you’re the father of five kids under seven. If you’re a student who needs to study, God probably is not calling you to go on a service trip with friends. Desires: Even though they shouldn’t determine everything, your desires do matter. If a desire doesn’t go against the other principles, then do it. Capacities: If you want to do service and grow in your relationship with God, understand your limitations. If you’re honest about your capacities, God will understand. Maybe you just don’t have the capacity to make that extra commitment. Whether or not you can do something is important, and if you can’t that’s nothing to be ashamed of. God is probably calling you to something else. If you push yourself too much you may end up hurting yourself and others. Lastly, we can all do a better job serving the needs of the poor. When discerning, do not forget what you can do for them. Remember, we are pilgrims. Little by little, we’re going to make it.
Matthew Kelly – How Does God Speak to Us?
Meditation of the Day – Christian Life is a Retreat
“Christian life is a retreat. We are ‘not of this world’, just as Jesus Christ is ‘not of this world’ (John 17:14). What is the world? It is, as St. John said, the ‘lust of the flesh’, that is, sensuality and corruption in our desires and deeds; ‘the lust of the eyes’, curiosity, avarice, illusion, fascination, error, and folly in the affectation of learning, and, finally, pride and ambition (1 John 2:16). To these evils of which the world is full, and which make up its substance, a retreat must be set in opposition. We need to make ourselves into a desert by a holy detachment. Christian life is a battle … We must never cease to fight. In this battle, St. Paul teaches us to make an eternal abstinence, that is, to cut ourselves off from the pleasures of the senses and guard our hearts from them … it was to repair and to expiate the failings of our retreat, of our battle against temptations, of our abstinence, that Jesus was driven into the desert. His fast of forty days prefigured the lifelong one that we are to practice by abstaining from evil deeds and by containing our desires within the limits laid down by the law of God.”— Bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, p. 17-18
Minute Meditation – A New Beginning
It seems that we need beginnings, or everything eventually devolves and declines into unnecessary and sad endings. You were made for so much more! So today you must pray for the desire to desire! Even if you do not feel it yet, ask for new and even unknown desires. For you will eventually get what you really desire! I promise you. It is the Holy Spirit doing the desiring at your deepest level. Therefore you will get nothing less than what you really desire, and almost surely much more.
You are the desiring of God. God desires through you and longs for Life and Love through you and in you. Allow it, speak it, and you will find your place in the universe of things. Now let me tell you something: You cannot begin to desire something if you have not already slightly tasted it. Now make that deep and hidden desire conscious, deliberate, and wholehearted. Make your desires good and far-reaching on this Ash Wednesday of new beginnings. You could not have such desires if God had not already desired them first—in you and for you and as you!
Remember finally, that the ashes on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.
—from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//