Human Formation #4

In our last reflection (Human Formation #3 posted on Nov. 20, 2013), we spoke of affirmation, the response to our fundamental human need to have our goodness revealed to us by another.  Receiving authentic affirmation leads to emotional maturity and even opens us up to the love of God, leading to an experiential, felt faith.  Yet, the hard truth is that none of us have been loved or affirmed adequately.  This is obviously true for those from unhealthy families where, instead of affirmation, love deprivation and emotional denial characterize the family culture.  But it is true even for those from the healthiest of families since imperfect people are incapable of perfect love.  I mention this because sometimes love deprivation and emotional denial are subtle in their expressions.  A surprising example of affirmation-in-action will help to illustrate this point.  Dr. Baars writes:

Long ago a friend told me of a childhood incident that had left a lasting impression on him.  He was five or six years old when on a weekday morning the pastor came to visit his mother. His father was outside working on the farm. The older children were in school.  Being shy, my friend John hid under the table, but not entirely out of sight, while the pastor and his mother visited.  Neither one paid attention to him.  When the pastor had left and John had come out from under the table his mother stroked his hair and with a friendly smile said, "Were you shy, Johnny"?  Johnny had never forgotten this incident and the wonderful feeling that it was all right for him to be shy, that he did not have to force himself to be a big boy and to hide his shyness from the visitor. Johnny had been affirmed both by his mother and her understanding visitor. They had affirmed Johnny by allowing him to grow and become who and what he was supposed to be in his own time, in his own way, and at his own pace.  I remember asking John whether he recalled the effect of this particular visit. "Indeed," he replied, "I remember that it gave me a sense of confidence in myself, a feeling that I was O.K. And I'm almost positive that the visit cured, or at least greatly diminished my shyness."  This may sound like a rather unexpected outcome to those of us who find it easier to imagine another version of this visit by the pastor, like: "Johnny, come out from under the table and shake hands with the pastor. Show him what a big boy you are. Come on, Johnny, don't be a baby." But it is precisely the Johnny in this second version who is not being affirmed and whose emotional development will become adversely affected (Dr. Conrad Baars, M.D., Born Only Once).

While love deprivation and emotional denial may be subtle in their expressions, especially in healthier families, their long-term effects are obvious and painful.  These effects include (to greater and lesser degrees):  1) An inability to relate to others, to form intimate friendships; 2) Feelings of uncertainty and insecurity which often manifest themselves in hypersensitivity and an unhealthy need for acceptance and approval; 3) Feelings of inferiority, inadequacy and unworthiness; and 4) Increasing feelings of depression resulting from a fearful and lonely lifestyle.  Do any of these symptoms look or feel familiar?  This may be a tough reality to face, but it needs to be faced for the sake our own happiness (see John 10:10) as well as for the sake of our discernment.  Discernment requires both the freedom and the self-confidence needed to say Yes!.  Still, we do not need to be afraid of our weaknesses, God has sent His son Jesus to heal us and set us free so that we can say Yes to Him and His plan with confidence and freedom—this is the message of Advent!  With this advent hope in mind and heart, we will discuss in coming reflections how we dispose ourselves to receive the affirmation of God and others and how to become authentic affirmers ourselves.



May God bless you this Christmas!


Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
Harlem, NY

Human Formation #3

Please forgive the four week hiatus since the last post.  I'm happy to be back after some time away for prayer and ministry.  We continue with the third reflection in our human formation series.

As mentioned in our last reflection, in order to discern and answer God’s call, we need to know that He loves us.  An essential ingredient for knowing God’s personal love for us is proper emotional development and maturation.  But, how does this take place?  While there are many contributing factors to emotional maturity, some of which we will touch on in this series, emotional maturity is ultimately the fruit of unconditional love, or what some Catholic psychologists call affirmation.  As Dr. Conrad Baars puts it, affirmation is the “fundamental human need” to have “one’s goodness revealed to oneself by another”.  Being affirmed involves actually feeling my own goodness; experiencing that I am “loved and lovable simply for being” who I am, not for what I can achieve, produce or possess.  By being affirmed, I receive from another what only they can give me, the unique gift of myself, my true identity.  This is a life-changing experience—Dr. Baars actually calls it our second or psychological birth—that ideally begins in childhood in one’s relationship with their parents and significant others but also needs to continue throughout one’s lifetime.

            How does it work?  Dr. Philip Sutton teaches that affirmation takes place when “another person is fully present and attentive to us to recognize our goodness, is moved by our goodness, and then is in communion with us, revealing their being moved by us in the visible, sensible, physical changes in their face, posture, [touch] and voice.”  It’s more about being than doing.  This awareness, feeling and revealing of our goodness to us is all prior to any words or actions on the other’s part.  Based upon our needs and the circumstances of a given situation, words or actions may follow another’s affirmation of us, however, they are not strictly necessary.

            Being loved in this way is truly life changing!  Not only does it lead to a real love of self and others, it also contributes to our love of God, producing an experiential or felt faith.  Dr. Conrad Baars explains:  “A truly felt faith and trust in a loving God is essential if we are to become open to the goodness of all being, and to live without fear. However, the presence of this felt faith and trust is virtually dependent on and develops only as a result of emotional affirmation. A non-affirmed individual is quite capable of directing his will toward God when his intellect discovers the necessary reasons for doing this. However, purely intellectual orientation toward God does not stimulate his feeling of love for God and does little to open him to knowing and feeling the goodness of all being. In fact, in times of severe emotional stress this spiritual orientation may collapse easily and reveal the underlying fearful self-centeredness.”

             Brothers, our human relationships can shape and influence our relationship with God.  Let’s ponder that reality in these coming days….Stay tuned.

Human Formation #2

I concluded last week by proclaiming that God really loves us!  But let me begin this week's reflection by stating that in addition to the fact that He loves us, He actually likes us!  I use the word “like” because that gives an affective, personal dimension to God’s love.  God’s love for us is not general.  It is specific and individual.  It is personal delight.  He delights in us; He delights in you!  How else do we explain the above words?

How else do we explain ourselves?  God’s love for me is the answer to the question “who am I?”  Blessed John Paul II wrote in Redemptor Hominis:  "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself; his life is meaningless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.”

God is love (1 Jn 4:8) and He loves us (1 Jn 4:10; Rom 5:8; Gal 2:20).  And His love is so powerful that it makes us His children, it makes us His sons (1 Jn 3:1-2).  But, do we believe in this reality?  Are we really aware of it?  Do we feel it and live from it?  The answer to these questions will determine our ability to discern, choose and live out our vocations in joy and peace; in a word, the answer to these questions will determine our happiness!

God desires that we would believe in His love and yes, He also desires that we would feel it.  We are created to share in His happiness and in order to do so we need more than a merely general, intellectual knowledge of His love.  We need an emotional, experiential, heart-knowledge of it.  Really the same goes for our relationship with others; it’s not enough to know in our heads that we’re loved, we need to know in our hearts.  God made us so that the heart has primacy over the head.  The heart is supposed to lead the head; the head is supposed to serve the heart, because the heart is the place of loving-encounter--with God and others--the seat of true happiness.

While God’s love is certainly not reducible to an emotional experience, He does want it to touch us on that level.  Our experience of an emotional love for God can actually lead us to a deeper and lasting faith and the higher, sacrificial love that Jesus ultimately calls all of His disciples to.  The Saints and Mystics often speak of their union with God in personal, passionate, emotionally charged and poetic language.  The Bible itself, especially in the Song of Songs, uses powerful, romantic and even sensual imagery to describe God’s passionate love for us and our response to that love. 

Brothers, the beginning and end of all formation—human and spiritual—is the personal love of God for us.  We are loved!  The Christian life has been described as a passage from being loved by God without knowing it to being loved by God and knowing it.  Knowing His love is a must for both discerning and answering God’s call.  And proper development and maturation of our emotional lives is a must for knowing His love.  Therefore,  our series on human formation by exploring God’s plan for our emotional growth.  Stay tuned… 

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

Human Formation #1

Finally, the promised series on human formation is here.  As I mentioned a couple of months ago in our last reflection on the Creed, “in the coming weeks and months, I will be offering reflections on human formation and how the necessary healing and development of our human nature helps us to believe in and live everything we have been reflecting on in our Series on the Creed.  Human formation is an indispensable part of every vocation and it is my hope that these reflections will in some way help all of us to open our nature more and more to God’s grace.”

Human formation is indispensable because God’s grace, which is His very life, builds on our human nature.  Put another way, our human nature was made for the grace of God.  The Church teaches “the desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself.  Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for…” (CCC, 27).

We’re created “by God and for God”.  Our study of humanity in general and human formation specifically must start with God because He is our origin and goal!  That’s why I began with some reflections on the Apostles Creed.  The truth about man is relative to the truth about God!  And the truth about God is that He loves us!  Human formation is about preparing our nature to receive this Love, which is the foundation of every vocation.

As we reflected on the first two articles of the Creed we read:

“You have a Father in heaven, God, who created you. Even before the world began to exist, God your eternal Father thought of you, knew you, loved you, wanted you, and brought you into being. Your life is from Him. Although you need not have existed, He wanted you to exist, and therefore you do exist. Your life was given to you so that you might come to know how much He loves you and to love him in return…. Although you do not comprehend how much he loves you and adores you, He has provided a way for you to come to know His incredible love for you….[That way] is Jesus of Nazareth, the eternal Son. He is looking for you. He sees you, he knows you through and through, and he loves you. He reveals his love to you in a special way.

God really does love us!  Ponder that and stay tuned for the second part of our series.

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

Summer Greetings

Brothers,

I hope your summers have been restful, prayerful and fun!  Here in NYC, our summer has been action-packed.   Recently, four of our brother professed temporary vows and five professed perpetual vows.  These professions are a boost for the whole community and a reminder to all of us that God delights in us and that we are made for glory.  In the fall we look forward to welcoming three new postulants!  Please pray for Ben, Joseph and Joshua as they prepare to take the next stage in their discernment.  And stay tuned, the promised series on human formation is delayed, but on its way!

May God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
Harlem, NY







 

The Apostles Creed - Part 12

Hello all!  Here is the twelfth (kind of significant, huh?) and final installment of our reflections on the Apostles Creed.  We end on a very hopeful note:  with that hope in our hearts, let us "risk everything on his mercy", everything!  Enjoy!

To be clear, the resurrection-life inside of you will always be invisible in this life. But it will be real. It will grow gradually. Provided you do not resist its action, it will heal you and purify you until you become utterly what God wants you to be. The resurrection-life is nothing less than the Presence of the Holy Trinity living and active in the depths of your being.

If you have faith in his mercy, and if you take advantage of all of these gifts in the Church, and if you do so until the end of your days, they will change you into a saint. Gradually, through these many gifts, Jesus will fill you with all the fullness of God. You will come to know your heavenly Father, and you will learn to love him back with ease and joy. And you will not be alone. You will be in the Church. There will be people of all nations, races, and tongues who will be living through it with you. Some, like you, will still be on the way to becoming saints. Others, living or dead, will already be there. But regardless of whether it is you or others, already there or still on the way, all that belongs to the saints belongs to you. All is yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.

And on the last day, when the last trumpet blasts, and when all generations of men and women come forth together to meet our Maker, you will rise with a new and immortal and glorious body. And your new and immortal and glorious body will reveal to everyone the victory of love in your life. For grace has come to you. You have found Christ and his Church. You risked everything on his mercy. And even though the accuser, Satan, prowled around you, and always reminded you of every weakness, sin, and failure of both you and your Church, still you believed his mercy would never fail us. And so the last word on your life, the sentence handed down in the tribunal of love, the pure and simple truth on the last day will be this:

“You are my beloved in whom I am well pleased.”

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, these reflections are not mine.   They were born in the heart of a wonderful priest I only recently met face to face.  Thank you Fr. James for your inspiring words, for feeding us with the fruit of your prayer and study.  In the coming weeks and months I will be offering reflections on human formation and how the necessary healing and development of our human nature helps us to believe in and live everything we have been reflecting on in our Series on the Creed.  Human formation is an indispensable part of every vocation and it is my hope that these reflections will in some way help all of us to open our nature more and more to God's grace.

May God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY 

The Apostles Creed - Part 11

Hello Everybody!  Peace be with you!  Again, I apologize for the hiatus due to a very busy June!  So, picking up where we last left off, we continue to reflect on the great gift of the sacraments.  We finished last time with confirmation and we begin this time with the sacrament of reconciliation:


In reconciliation, he restores this resurrection-life to you if you should weaken it or throw it away by personal sin. His mercy is always there for you. There is no need to fear the impending tribunal of love so long as you believe in his healing love and mercy and put all your trust in him. In marriage, he transforms the resurrection-life into something you live together with a spouse and children. In holy orders, he makes a man into a minister in the Church of these seven great gifts. And in the anointing of the sick, he comes to you when you are in a state of serious illness, seals you again with oil and prayer, and thereby heals you of sin and fortifies your resurrection-life in the midst of your illness and suffering. There are many other gifts in the Church. There is Scripture – the book by which God speaks to you even now. There is prayer – the loving conversation with God in friendship. There are works of love and mercy to carry out for others. And there are more – too many to mention here. All of these things serve to build up and strengthen the resurrection-life within you. These are the ways that Christ, by his mercy, heals you and prepares you for the glorious day of judgment.

May God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 10

Hello all!  Please forgive the two-and-a-half week hiatus.  I had the privilege of visiting our brothers down in Comayagua, Honduras.  I am edified by these brothers and their desire to respond to the challenge of Pope Francis to go out and preach the good news to the poor.  I encountered many people who, while poor in the things of this world, are rich in the things of God; namely, humility, long-suffering, generosity and joy!  Please remember them in your prayer.

This week we continue reflecting on the following words from the Creed:

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.
 
In the Church you will find God’s seven great gifts to you. God has given the Church seven ways by which you can personally interact with the risen Lord Jesus and be filled to overflowing with his resurrection-life. In each one of these seven great gifts, we call them ‘sacraments’, the living and true God, Jesus of Nazareth, reaches out and touches you in some way or another. In baptism, he touches you with oil and water and prayer and by that gesture fills you with an initial influx of his resurrection-life. In the eucharist, he reaches out and feeds you with heavenly food, and this heavenly food nourishes and grows and revitalizes the resurrection life within you. In confirmation, he reaches out and seals you with oil and prayer and by that gesture fortifies the resurrection-life within you and makes you ready to give testimony before the world.

Next week we will continue reflecting on "God's seven great gifts" to us.  Until then, God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR
St. Joseph Friary
Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 9

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.

Love unites us. Love unites people with God and with each other. But the Holy Spirit is love – the eternal love between the Father and the Son. And the Holy Spirit is now at work in the world. It stands to reason, therefore, that the Holy Spirit is now uniting people with God and with each other. If we look for this unification, where do we find it happening? It is happening in the Church. The Holy Spirit is uniting men and women of every nation, race, and tongue in the Church. The international, intercultural, multimillenial unity of the Church is therefore a sign to you that eternal love really is at work in the world. In the Church, the same love can go to work in you and through you. Next week we'll discuss how this happens...

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY 

To eat is to discern

We interrupt our series on the Apostles’ Creed for a brief reflection.  Recently, in the daily mass readings we have been listening to John 6, Jesus’ bread of life discourse.  The basic thrust of Jesus’ teaching is that faith in Him leads to reception of the Eucharist and reception of the Eucharist leads to eternal life.  Simply put, believing leads to eating and eating and leads to Life.

It could also be said that if eating leads to eternal life, then to eat is to discern.  In fact, according to Fr. Timothy Gallagher in his book Discerning the Will of God, regular reception and worship of the Eucharist is one of the principal means of discerning God’s will (pp.50-52).  Why is that?  Because, Jesus says “no one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him…” (Jn 6:44).  Where is this draw of the Father felt more powerfully than in the Eucharist?

In the Eucharist we are a gift from the Father to the Son, a gift Jesus promises to protect and to lead to the Father:  “All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out.  For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day” (Jn 6:37-39). 

When we eat a nice steak, we don’t become the steak, the steak becomes us.  But through frequent reception of the Eucharist—“the living bread” (Jn 6:51), “the flesh” of Jesus given for the life of the world (Jn 6:51)—we gradually become Jesus.  We gradually enter more deeply into His risen life and His relationship with the Father and we gradually adopt the fundamental disposition of His Sacred Heart:  “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me…” (Jn 6:38).

This fundamental disposition of Jesus is the fundamental disposition of discernment:  openness to whatever God wills (see Discerning the Will of God, pp. 31-49).  To eat is to discern.  To eat is to be drawn by the Father through His Son, the Good Shepherd (cf. Jn 10).  Receive the Eucharist with confidence and know that you are already on the Way (cf. Jn 14:6).

God Bless You,

Fr. Isaac Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 8

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Jesus will return to earth someday – we know not when. He told us that he did not come to condemn the world but to save it. So, when he comes as judge, he will judge us in the tribunal of love and mercy. It is called the tribunal of love because God will put one question to your life. Did you love Me back? And His judgment will be nothing other than the manifestation of the true answer to that question. It is called the tribunal of mercy because God wants to show mercy to all, that is, to heal us so profoundly that we do in truth love him back. His mercy is always there for us, he is eager to show mercy, and he turns away none who ask for his mercy. All who call upon his mercy receive it in abundance, and so long as they call upon it they undergo a gradual transformation that prepares their hearts to hear a glorious verdict in the tribunal of love. Only those who are deliberately skeptical of his mercy, who harden their hearts against his love, need to fear the tribunal. How does his mercy, by being believed, prepare our hearts for the glorious verdict?

To be continued...

For those who are called, religious life is the place or the "state" where we "love Him back."  It is the place where we undergo the "gradual transformation that prepares our hearts to hear a glorious verdict in the tribunal of love."

God bless you all,

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 7

In our reflections on the creed, we now turn to the Ascension of Jesus:

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

Jesus is a fountain of resurrection-life. He lives with the Father and the Holy Spirit in heaven. Jesus is calling you to turn to Him, to believe in the love he showed for you on his cross, and to believe in the resurrection-life overflowing from him right now. To all who turn to him, he gives the power to become children of God, adopted sons and daughters of the same eternal Father, vessels of the same Spirit of love, men and women who live in the knowledge of the love of God.

God bless you all!

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 6

Happy Easter!   Brothers, discernment involves dying and rising with Jesus so that we can live the new life--the Resurrection-life--that He is calling us to!  We continue our meditations on the Apostles Creed by reflecting on this awesome mystery of mysteries...

On the third day he rose again.

Three days after Jesus died for you and for all, your heavenly Father raised Jesus from the dead. Jesus did not simply resuscitate. He did not simply get back his old form of life. Rather, your heavenly Father gave Jesus a new kind of life called resurrection-life. Resurrection life is a completely new form of human life. It was never lived or experienced by anyone before Jesus of Nazareth. He was the first to receive it. Pope Benedict XVI compared the resurrection to an evolutionary leap. Resurrection-life is a human life, but a human life not only lived without any wounds but filled to overflowing with the knowledge and the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus wants this life to overflow into you so that you too will be gradually healed of your wounds and filled to overflowing with the knowledge and love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is how you will come to know your heavenly Father for yourself and to experience His love for you – by being filled with the resurrection-life of Jesus.

Christ is Risen, Indeed He is Risen!

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

The Apostles Creed - Part 5

On this Holy Saturday, we continue our reflections on the Apostles Creed by reflecting briefly on the following words:

He descended into hell.

Jesus did not come for you alone. He was sent for all people of all time. After he died, the person of Jesus went to the abode of the dead to search out and find all the people who ever lived before him and to bring them too back to their heavenly Father. (At the time of his descent, hell was not what it is now. At that time, it was a temporary state, and not punitive. Now, it is different – it is permanent and punitive).

May almighty God bless you all as you celebrate Christ's Resurrection from the dead!

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY

Pope Francis!

Que Viva el Papa!  I know you won't mind that I interrupt our little series on the Apostles Creed this week to speak about our new Pope!  Brothers, all I can say is wow!  The Holy Spirit loves to surprise us and He’s done it again by choosing the first Jesuit pope; the first pope from the Western Hemisphere; and, dare I say most importantly, the first pope named after St. Francis of Assisi!  In a sense, all Catholics are Franciscan now and are invited to join Pope Francis in rebuilding the Church through the radical living of the gospel!

Continuing where Pope Benedict XVI left off, the Pope wasted no time in showing us where true and lasting renewal comes from:  Our Savior Jesus Christ!  Renewal is not a fruit of our own effort, but is a fruit of proclaiming Christ crucified and allowing Him to live in us!

The day after his election he proclaimed:  “…We can build many things, but if we do not confess Jesus Christ, nothing will avail.  We will become a pitiful NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of Christ… When one does not build on solid rocks, what happens?  What happens is what happens to children on the beach when they make sandcastles:  everything collapses, it is without consistency…. When one does not profess Jesus Christ, one professes the worldliness of the devil…. When we walk without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, and when we profess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord.  We are worldly; we are bishops, priests, cardinals, Popes, but not disciples of the Lord.  I would like that all of us, after these days of grace, might have the courage to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Cross of the Lord:  to build the Church on the Blood of the Lord, which is shed on the Cross, and to profess the one glory, Christ Crucified!”

Brothers, now is a great time to be a Franciscan—to be a witness to the individual, communal and Church-wide renewal that living the gospel brings!  Whether we are called to don the Franciscan habit or not, all of us can heed Pope Francis’ call to rebuild the Church by embracing Christ crucified and allowing Him to rebuild us!  What a blessed time to be a Franciscan!  What a blessed time to be a Catholic!  God bless you all!

Pax et bonum!

Fr. Isaac Mary Spinharney, CFR

St. Joseph Friary

Harlem, NY