God is like a specialist in relaxation - discomfort or pain is in our resistance

God is like a specialist in relaxation

Doing the Will of the Father

But there comes a time when God’s will moves from the front to the back, resulting in the disappearance of the light. I can no longer see where I am going. God is behind me, and I have only one thing to do: Let myself be pushed along. In the beginning it feels a little uncertain and unsafe, and small accidents can occur, not because God fails to do his part or is leading in the wrong direction, but because I have not dared to trust in him completely, and I resist or want to help. God is like a specialist in relaxation who works with the patient’s head, turning it in different directions. The fact that it causes pain is not the specialist’s fault. He does not turn it too far. No, it is because the patient’s neck muscles are tense. He cannot, dares not relax completely. It is no wonder God calls us a “stubborn people” (Dt 9:13).

The words “your kingdom come” that we pray daily are realized only when we live in total dependence on God. As long as he cannot do everything in us, his kingdom has not come. He wants not merely to decide himself; he also wants to carry out what he has decided, “as though without me and yet through me.” Our ego lives, thanks to and through our activities. When we surrender our faculties to God and let him manage them, the ego has nothing more to do; it dies from lack of work.

In his advice to the novices, Eckhart writes: “God has never given himself and does never give himself to a will that is foreign to him. He gives himself only to his own will. But when God meets his own will, he gives himself and enters into that will with all that he is.”

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us by Father Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

Fr Stinissen leads us in a reflection on the experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Lent - Surrender by becoming God's violin - by being God's instrument

Fr Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

Lent is about transformation - a stripping away all the debris that keeps us from being fully alive in Christ. In this my final installment from Father Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D. he lists 3 stages of Surrender and Abandonment. In the first two stages we “do” for God; in the final stage God “does” through us.) Here, in the third stage, God does His will through me. This stage "presupposes that we have practiced accepting and obeying God's will for a long time...There ought to come a time in the life of every Christian, when he is merely God's instrument and nothing more... In the third stage, surrender is much more radical and total than in the second. There, I refrained from choosing for myself what I would do. I tried to discover God's will and then carry it out, but it was I who did God's will...Now I offer to God not only my will but also all of my potential, all of the powers of my soul, so that He Himself may carry out His will through me... Before, it was I who played the violin. It was God, of course, who gave me the score, and I obediently played what He gave me to play. Now I give the violin to God and let Him play. One hears that it is the same violin... It has the same characteristics and defects. But there is no similarity between the music I produced myself and what resonates now. God not only makes use of all of the violin's possibilities, but He reveals something of Himself in His playing...It is not that I have become more skilled. No, now an artist of the very highest grade is playing... Being God's violin is something completely different from playing the violin for God. Now He does not content Himself with deciding what I should play, but He Himself touches the strings of my faculties. He can do that only when He has the violin in His hands, when my surrender applies, not just to one part of myself, but to my whole self. 'I abandon myself into Your hands. I offer it to You with all the love of my heart...and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into Your hands without reserve...

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us  by Fr Wilfrid Stinissen

Fr Stinissen leads us in a reflection on this experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Preparing for Lent - Surrender by becoming prayer 2

Fr Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

“... we must daily be striving to listen to God. We must pray, and not just say prayers. "Many turn to God only when they must make an important or definitive choice in life. They approach God as a computer, so to speak, who gives answers to certain questions. Often we do not get a clear answer when we ask God questions in prayer... We can stand there just as perplexed after prayer as before. The secret of evangelical freedom from care is not that we surrender our life to God only at certain times. The secret is rather that we never leave God!...If our sense of obedience has not developed by a continual assent to God's clear and certain Will, we cannot count on being able to perceive His Will when we find ourselves before a difficult and unclear choice." P 55

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us by Fr Wilfrid Stinissen

Fr Stinissen leads us in a reflection on this experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Preparing for Lent - Surrender by becoming prayer

Fr Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

"There can be so much escapism in our striving for a 'spiritual life.' We often flee from the concrete, apparently banal reality that is filled with God's presence to an artificial existence that corresponds with our own ideas of piety and holiness but where God is not present... As long as we want to decide for ourselves where we will find God, we need not fear that we shall meet Him! We will meet only ourselves, a touched up version of ourselves... Genuine spirituality begins when we are prepared to die. Could there be a quicker way to die than to let God form our lives from moment to moment and continually consent to his action?" Pg 23-4

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us by Fr Wilfrid Stinissen

Fr Stinissen will lead us over the next few posts reflecting on this experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Surrender by becoming prayer

Fr Wilfrid Stinissen, O.C.D.

"The Gospels and spiritual literature point out various practices of importance on the journey to God. We are told to deny ourselves, forgive one another, carry our cross, fast and give alms... We must also love our neighbor, pray with others in private, bring our troubles to the Lord, and be peacemakers. All of these things have their place, and nothing may be overlooked, but they may cause us to feel confused and divided... and we might even ask ourselves where we will find the strength to do all that is required. In spiritual reading we are instructed about balanced asceticism, the Mass readings of the day tell of prayer, and the retreat master speaks about love. We are pulled in different directions and, instead of finding peace, we become restless. What we need most is a central idea, something so basic and comprehensive that it encompasses everything else... In my opinion that central idea is surrender... Pg 9-11

Into Your Hands, Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us by Fr Wilfrid Stinissen

Fr Stinissen will lead us over the next few posts reflecting on this experience of freedom through surrender - surrender by becoming prayer through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.