Author: Lana Kaczmarek

“I trust in the LORD; my soul trusts in His word.” Will you come to the deep with me? These exact words the Lord expressed to me, but they relate to us all. Will you place your complete trust in the Lord and trust the Lord to forgive you, trust that He loves you, trust that He will provide everything you truly need? The deep is a place we long for and truly need but are afraid to let go of the fear of drowning in our sorrow, of being alone, of losing control of our life or entering the unknown. The Lord invites us not to think of the deep in terms of human constructs, images, thoughts, or experiences but rather as a spiritual exercise on trust. We think of the deep as dark, violent, filled with terrifying creatures, terrifying indeed. We think of large waves overwhelming us. We sink, are taken down, take in water, drown, and die. The Lord shows us a different image and suggests different thoughts to consider, ponder and pray. The deep God invites us into is calm, warm, sparkling blue. No one there but God and you. The water appears as a crystal blue clear sky with the most beautiful, radiant clouds as pockets of air and light that reflect God’s glory, reflecting God’s presence under the water. Like light that bounces off a crystal, God reflects beauty in the deep. The Lord extends a loving invitation come enter the deep with Him. No fear or concerns, no hesitation or anxieties, no worries, just you and the Lord in the silence of the calm. This is a heavenly invitation to deepen trust in the Lord. To surrender your fear and embrace God’s loving presence. God continues to invite and encourage trust in Him. He says, stay here with me, pray here with me, obey here with me, love here with me, minister from here with me. The Father invites us also to consider the unfortunate consequence of not being in this place is like a fish ensnared and caught in a net. As if one being hauled on to the shore and left to die. On the shore awaits war, darkness, chaos, division, death. If we remain in trust with the Lord, we live and are loved, cared for, and remain under God’s loving protection. The deep is a spiritual exercise of self-surrender and trust. Can you surrender yourself and surrender it all to God and simply trust that God will provide all you need and everything else?   

“Man sees the appearance but the Lord looks into the heart.” I recall once being so captivated in the middle of an Alaskan city by a snowcapped mountain. The waterfalls were not particularly impressive but nevertheless, beautiful. From a distance, one could not hear the water flowing but if you listened carefully by listening to it from your heart, you might have heard water flowing. That day, many individuals simply walked pass the scene photographing the city sites, taking pictures of themselves or just breezed by in conversation taking no notice as if the mountain was invisible, perhaps just one of the buildings or not worth the time, a glance or a look. It stopped me in my tracks. As vehicles passed by, I found myself just looking, wondering, taking it all in as if the mountain was speaking directly to me. I saw beauty, beheld goodness, saw truth but the mountain appeared sad, weeping as if wanting to be seen, noticed, heard. After several moments of stillness and silence, the city and all its noise disappeared. I realized that I was smiling and crying at the same time. I felt somehow at that instance, God captured my undivided attention. As I beheld God’s creation with such awe and wonder, I could sense and feel God’s merciful gaze looking upon me and able to penetrate and pierce my inmost heart and being. Through this mountain, God touched me with His eyes. Seeing God seeing me caused the inner coldness in me to be warmed by a smile and the inner sadness and weeping in me to be flooded with great joy. God looks into the heart. He invites us to take a moment and to do the same. We often see things on the outside by what we see or notice. However, we know looks are deceiving. We all have heard you cannot judge a book by its cover, yet we usually do. We project ourselves onto the image we see. Our vision skewed and impaired by our own limitations, by our own weaknesses, and our own insecurities causes us to be blind to God’s beauty, goodness, and truth in one another. We can misjudge by appearances and fail to see the hurt and weeping of another caused by coldness, indifference, humiliation, abuse, or neglect. We may miss seeing the pain or the suffering Christ in one another because the appearance was not impressive or beautiful like a snowcapped mountain or how we would see, judge, or perceive ourselves. God simply sees Him in you.    

“True worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth.” The Holy Spirit moves hearts and reveals God’s presence. He makes God truly known and felt. It is as if God were simply present all night watching, waiting, setting His gaze upon you as a parent would with a newborn child anticipating the moment to make their presence known and felt and welcome the child into the dawning of a new day. We rest, God watches. He smiles and waits. When one becomes aware that the night is far spent and morning is about to arrive, we often are not aware or ready to welcome a new day or look forward to the beginning of another day with its uncertainties or possibilities or its vulnerabilities or the opportunities it could bring. One quiet moment, in the stillness of the dawning of the day, God helped me in an instant to know He was there, watching, waiting to welcome me into His awesome presence. The truth is I had no words and did not know what to say. I wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind. God then read my heart and shared with me what my heart wanted to say. He said that I wanted to be honest with Him and less afraid. To speak honestly and share more openly with Him what was truly on my heart and really on my mind. Yes Lord, I pray for that. God then shared I wanted to engage Him in prayer as in a covenant mutually sharing our thoughts, feelings, and desires, sharing all life’s experiences from the heart. I acknowledged that was something I was hoping for as well. God then said that I wanted to be authentic and real with Him. Seriously Lord, you know me better than I know myself, better than anyone could ever know me. Yes Lord, it is true. I pray to be more authentic and real with you. To be genuine, not fake, or plastic or insincere but to share more freely and openly with you without false pretenses or trying to impress you in any way. Then God said I wanted to trust Him more. So thankful for the gift of being transparent with God. Lord, you see everything. Nothing is hidden from you. Yes Lord, I pray for the grace to place all my hope and trust in you, in your grace, in your word, in your holy will. Thank you, Lord, for revealing my heart and yours as well. HEART: Honest, Engagement, Authentic, Real, Trust.  

“Lord, let your mercy be on us, as we place our trust in you.” Trust is such a fragile and delicate thing. We trust, we want to trust, we need to trust, we offer our trust to one another, to a spouse or friend, a family member or associate. Unfortunately, trust is often shattered, smashed, and betrayed. We are left bewildered wondering why a promise was broken, a commitment not kept or a confidence shattered. We risk losing and ending long-term friendships, fellowships and relationships built on trust, meant to last and founded on so much hope. We cannot trust anyone, including ourselves because we are also betrayers of confidence and trust. God has entrusted us with a message of hope, a gospel of life, a mission of love. Have we maintained the trust God has placed on all of us to listen to His beloved Son, Jesus? Has your poor heart ached and burned with the fire of eternal love to listen to God’s Word proclaimed to you personally at Mass, in liturgy, in prayer? Have you become a person of great prayer? Have you generously dedicated time from your busy schedule and day to know God more intimately, love Him more profoundly, serve Him more faithfully and minister in His holy name? Can you truly be trusted with sharing the Good News, faithfully receiving the Eucharist, joyfully celebrating the Sacraments, extend God’s peace, mercy, and forgiveness to others? Trust is the perfect gift we can offer our Lord this Lenten Season. God entrusted us with His Son even though He knew we would betray and crucify Him. We continue to betray Jesus when we break our baptismal promise to renounce sin and temptation and believe and trust in God. We say, “Jesus, I trust in you” but do we truly understand what we are saying and mean? Do we trust Jesus enough to care for us, provide for us, bestow His infinite love and divine mercy upon us? Do you trust that Jesus can forgive your sins? We all face difficulty with trust. Not that God cannot be trusted; God is faithful always and devoted in fidelity to His covenant. It is difficult to forgive, to heal, and trust again. Nevertheless, God gives us the remedy and the cure. Allow God to heal the betrayal you experienced. Permit God to flood you with His love, fill you with such gratitude that you can learn to trust again. Trust God always because He is trustworthy and will never betray you. Never has. Never will.

“Led by the Spirit into the desert… Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights.” I have come to learn, to believe, to rely on God, His Word, His grace, His Spirit to guide and lead me through the path of everlasting life. Honestly, left to us, without a good sense of direction or spiritual discernment, we would find ourselves in more situations and conversations that would lead us to more sadness, hurt, and disappoint. Left to our own judgement and imperfect knowledge, trying to navigate through life on our own without God’s help, leaves us vulnerable, unhappy, dissatisfied, and lost. Without God’s support, you may want to ask yourself, where are you going and plan to be if not led by the Spirit and the way God intends for you? God is the way of truth and the only way and the only life that guarantees us eternal happiness. So where are you going? Where are you heading? Is it a place of misery and mistrust or a place of genuine joy and unprecedented happiness? We tend not to want anyone to lead us but often choose to imitate and follow someone else. The Good Shepherd leads and guides us. Good leaders and good shepherds are those who unreservedly follow the Lord, imitate His deeds, are attentive to His voice and follow Him wherever He goes. The challenge of our journey is to come to intimately know and genuinely trust that God’s way is so much better than our own way. It is the only way. In His great mercy, God chose to free Israel from captivity and physical slavery then lead them into the desert to free them from their slavery and captivity to sin. God peeled back their physical attachments and invited them to detach from sinfulness and become more dependent and spiritually attached to God. Lent is a time of invitation to follow God into the desert and allow God to perform the same miracle for us. Cardinal Manning’s prayer for light is a good way to begin the journey. “O Holy Spirit of God, take me as your disciple. Guide me, illuminate me, sanctify me. Bind my hands, that they may do no evil. Cover my eyes, that they may see it no more. Sanctify my heart, that evil may not dwell within me. You are my God. You are my guide. Whatever you forbid me, I will renounce. And whatever you command me, in your strength I will do. Lead me then unto the fullness of your truth.” Amen 

“Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” I love the gift of prayer. Truly a gracious gift from God. A grace that permits us sinful unworthy sinners to enter freely and gracefully onto sacred ground, into God’s holy presence, an intimate union with the Lord. Prayer is at the heart of who we are, for we are relationship, a community, a family, a response to God’s great love, the answer to his prayer. I am thankful to God for the many ways He graciously meets us in prayer. He lifts us up and takes us onto holy ground then He brings us into Holy Communion. At times, we need the words from a saint or a poem or sacred scripture to inspire us. At times we need to remain still and silent and simply be and receive what the Lord offers us in response to our prayer. At times we need someone to guide us or lead us into divine intimacy through meditation, contemplative, or reflective prayer. Sometimes we just need the Holy Spirit to speak directly to our hearts through a song, a lyric, an upbeat melody or one that moves us to tears. What a great gift prayer is. So many ways to pray, praise, and acknowledge our needs and cry to God for help and assistance. In moments when we feel nothing is working, I am thankful that we can pray. We are often plagued with situations we cannot control, change, or correct. We experience those difficult days, ever so impatient when nothing seems to go our way. We can’t seem to get a break. These are great opportunities for prayer. God always provides the wisdom, grace, and direction we need. In prayer, we are not in control, God is. Can we truly say that we are in control of any situation or conversation? Can we control the thoughts, responses, or actions of another? Are you able to control your anger, temptation, impatience, desire, or sin? In the end, we have the grace and power of holy baptism to renounce and say no to sin and to believe and say yes to God, His will, His Spirit, His grace. In the end, we have the power and freedom to respond to every situation and conversation. Yes, let us pray for patience for it is a virtuous gift and a great aid to prayer. However, let us pray for the grace to say yes to God and no to all that opposes Him.

“You shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and He will say: Here I am!” The one thing that most challenges us is the one thing, by God’s grace, that I have only recently come to appreciate and be most grateful and thankful for, that is my own sense of being so spiritually poor and spiritually weak in the presence of God. Our world teaches us, our parents instruct us, our friends inform us and our community encourages us to take a stand, be strong, independent, and to rely on our own strength and wisdom. To never be weak or vulnerable but instead be self-sufficient, self-dependable, self-reliable because no one can do it better than you. We say, they say, you say, if you want it done right the first time then do it yourself. What does that say about you? What does that say about the rest of us? Well, thanks be to God, He has helped me to embrace and be most grateful for my own poverty and spiritual weakness. In the presence of God, in the sight of our Creator, in the knowledge of my own creation and existence, with God’s help, I have come to know, experience, and appreciate the great poverty God has so graciously formed me. Seriously, how can we say we are wealthy, secure, or rich in anything but God? Without God, we have nothing. Possessing God and being possessed by Him makes us the riches people in the world or in the universe for that matter. For God said, “My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.” What? Hold up – what did you say? I am you son, your child, your beloved! I am here, in your presence, in your divine will always! Everything that is yours is mine! What more can one ask for? What more do we need? God’s grace must be enough. God’s grace must be sufficiently sufficient for all of us. We must learn to cry out to the Lord for grace and help. We must become spiritual poor, weak, vulnerable, and needy in the presence of the Almighty and beg for His divine grace. We must become poor beggars in God’s presence that He may graciously and lavishly pour out His gifts over us, enrich our poverty, and strengthen us in our weaknesses for we are truly heirs to God’s Kingdom. So, do not be afraid to cry out and say, “God come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me!”

He began to teach them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Who are the poor in spirit? Are you poor in spirit? Are you among those Jesus calls blessed who will inherit the kingdom of heaven? In the Old Testament, the poor in spirit were those who simply lived in physical poverty and remained entrusted to God. Those who suffered the loss of material possessions and lived without the comfort of security or basic material needs but who remained confident that somehow God would provide what they truly needed and rejoiced in that knowledge. The poor in spirit were those who trusted in the providence of God and remained dependent on God for everything. Jesus was poor in spirit because He simply was poor. He was born poor. He entered into this world in such poverty that there was no room for His family in the inn or in any residence. With creation and with His creatures, He laid sleeping. Jesus would live out this reality throughout His adult life and throughout His public ministry for He Himself said, “The Son of Man has nowhere to rest His head.” Jesus also modeled for us the spirituality of being poor by being poor in spirit through His helplessness and total dependency on the Father for all things and in all circumstances.  Jesus showed and imitated for us blessed-ness and beloved-ness by simply submitting His will to the Father’s will, commending His spirit into the Father’s Spirit, and surrendering His life into the Father’s confidence, trust and divine love. The New Testament invites us all to be and become spiritually poor like Jesus.  Like those called blessed in the eyes of God. Like those who inherit and become heirs to the kingdom of God by becoming meek and humble of heart like Jesus by simply believing God always provides, He always does, He always has, He always will. In God alone can we truly trust for only God in His own spiritual poverty provides the love we truly need. Only God can love us so much with a tender love that truly enriches us in our poverty and even enriches us when we seem to have everything this world offers us. God makes Himself physically and spiritually poor so that we can inherit and enter His kingdom and His loving presence. Jesus humbled Himself to the point of death on a cross. Blessed in His beloved eyes and truly rich in His amazing grace are the poor in spirit for God provides what they truly need. 

“He called them, and immediately they followed Him.” At one desperate moment or another, we have encountered the great moment of question and anxiety: is this it, is this all that life has to offer? Did I miss something, am I missing the point? As we work or play, eat or drink, hope or despair we stop and gaze into the endlessness of our thoughts and ponder in our wandering mind, how did I get here, where am I going, what am I doing? We begin to consider life, the fullness of our own life in terms of meaning, value, purpose rather than simply doing, getting, accumulating. We begin to put worth on the bigger picture and wonder how we came into being and where is your own journey leading you to. How did you come to be and where are you supposed to be, and where will you be at the end of this journey? Great questions to consider and ponder. Great questions to take to heart and to prayer. By consideration, we mean to make and take some quality time to truly reflect and consider your own call, your own happiness, and the possibility of the greatness God created you in and what He created you for. By taking to heart, we mean to be seriously open and allow your own heart to speak to you and to have the courage and the patience to listen to what your heart has to say to you about hurt, healing, hope. Your heart will help you consider the past through a spiritual lens to consider what worked or did not work in your relationship with God or with others. How your own hurt and that of others influenced your decisions and got you where you are today. How the Lord wishes to heal the brokenhearted and call us to a life of hope, healing, happiness. By prayer, we mean to come honestly to the Lord without a list of demands, expectations, negotiations, or fake and empty promises. Prayer is best considered through the lens of scripture. Jesus Himself would go away to be silent, still and in communion with the Father. So, we pray by simply being silent and still and respond by saying, speak Lord your servant is listening. In considering the call and the response of the disciples, we can consider our own call and response as well. They pondered, considered their own life, reflected and prayed. Is this all there is? When Jesus called, they came to life. You can as well.

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” I think and wonder how prayer is such a marvelous and gracious gift from God. It is truly a blessing to be in God’s most holy presence and share our hearts, our joys, frustrations, and concerns with Him. How could one ever truly live or function without the great gift of prayer? How could one exist or breathe a sigh of relief without the gift or great experience of praying intimately with the Lord? How could one not ever really appreciate how amazing prayer can truly be? In my early days, prayer was not automatic for me. It seemed to be a last-minute resort or the thing to do when everything else failed or that thing I had to do when nothing else seem to work. It was only in those desperate moments and urgent times that I found myself in a church, on my knees begging, negotiating, pleading, and promising better ways and better behavior if only I could obtain the answer to my prayer. Sad to note, that is what we usually call or consider prayer. The prayer that only seems to work when we seem to get our way. Now, praise God, I confess that prayer is oxygen to me. It is better than food and sweeter than honey or any nectar or passion fruit. Prayer is the immediacy of God. His closeness, His intimacy, His profoundly real presence, the source, and summit of all we really need, long for, or desire. Prayer is consoling, revealing, healing, and up-lifting. Prayer is a person, an ear, a heart, a shoulder to cry on and a dependable person that we can always faithfully depend on to give us the best counsel, helpful guidance and the right and only answer we need to know. Prayer is life-giving, lifesaving, life-changing only if we pray with openness of heart, a generous spirit, purity of intent, and with unwavering faith, confidence, and trust in God. Prayer requires patient silent attention, a listening spirit, and a receptive disposition. You cannot pray or say you pray if you are not truly discerning God’s call or plan for your life. You cannot discern God’s will knowing you already made up your mind and already made the decision. That appears to be closed-minded, negotiating God’s will, or simply being manipulative. Prayer assumes the only true reason we pray is to be closer to God, to listen to His voice, to hear what He has to say, and enjoy His friendship forever.