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Just like there are different levels of maintenance we have to keep up with in our homes, there are different levels of maintenance in our spiritual lives. This can be delicate, difficult, and sometimes messy work.
So, while Fr. Mark-Mary is not a mental health professional, he’s here to share a couple tips and fundamentals that will help anyone get back on track.
https://www.youtube.com/@AscensionPresents
//Clergy Coaching Network//
//Clergy Coaching Network//
At no point in the Gospel does Jesus tell us that if we follow him our lives will be filled with success or that people will like us for it. Quite the contrary, actually! We follow a man who came to share the love of God with the world through healing and forgiveness, but was rejected by the religious elite, betrayed by his closest friends, and murdered as a common criminal. This is not simply Jesus’s fate many years ago, but ours today. “Take up your crosses daily,” he tells us. While there is nothing wrong with hoping for success in our lives, our faith is destined for problems if it becomes an expectation we cannot live without. The road of discipleship is filled with failure; if we demand that our lives be successful, we won’t make it very far.
—from the book Let Go: Seven Stumbling Blocks to Christian Discipleship
by Casey Cole, OFM, page 28
To keep our bodies less defended—to live in our bodies right now, to be present to others in a cellular way—is also the work of healing past hurts and the many memories that seem to store themselves in the body. The body never seems to stop offering its messages. Fortunately, the body never lies, even though the mind will deceive us constantly. Zen practitioners tend to be well trained in seeing this. It is very telling that Jesus usually physically touched people when he healed them; he knew where the memory and hurt were lodged: in the body itself.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
Only mutual apology, healing, and forgiveness offer a sustainable future for humanity. Otherwise, we are controlled by the past, individually and corporately. We all need to apologize and we all need to forgive or this human project will surely self-destruct. No wonder almost two-thirds of Jesus’s teaching is directly or indirectly about forgiveness. Otherwise, history winds down into the taking of sides, deep bitterness, and remembered hurts, plus the violence that inevitably follows. As others have said, forgiveness is to let go of all hope for a different or better past. It is what it is, and such acceptance leads to great freedom, as long as there is also accountability and healing in the process. Nothing new happens without apology and forgiveness. It is the divine technology for the regeneration of every age and every situation. The “unbound” ones are best prepared to unbind the rest of the world.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
To keep our bodies less defended—to live in our bodies right now, to be present to others in a cellular way—is also the work of healing past hurts and the many memories that seem to store themselves in the body. The body never seems to stop offering its messages. Fortunately, the body never lies, even though the mind will deceive us constantly. Zen practitioners tend to be well trained in seeing this. It is very telling that Jesus usually physically touched people when he healed them; he knew where the memory and hurt were lodged: in the body itself.
—from the book Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
“There is still time for endurance, time for patience, time for healing, time for change. Have you slipped? Rise up. Have you sinned? Cease. Do not stand among sinners, but leap aside.”
— St. Basil the Great
St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (1887–1968) was born to peasant farmers in southern Italy. By the time he was 5 years old he practiced a life of penance and made the decision to give himself completely to God. He grew up working in the fields, and at the age of 19 joined the Capuchin Franciscan friars. His Franciscan spirituality was characterized by a life of poverty, love of nature, and charity to those in need, especially to those who were his “spiritual children.” St. Padre Pio had many spiritual gifts and was a great miracle-worker. These were well-documented from multiple reliable sources and included bilocation, levitation, reading souls, and physical healing by touch. Word of his holiness spread and people both pious and curious flocked to see him, especially to have him hear their confession. He is the first priest known to have received the stigmata, for which he suffered suspicion and investigation. Because of the unusual supernatural phenomena surrounding his life, he is considered one of the great visionaries and mystics of the Church. Padre Pio died in 1968 at the age of 81. He was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 2002. Because of the many miracles he performed during his life, he is commonly invoked as a healing saint for various ailments. His feast day is September 23rd.
//Franciscan Media//