To Trust God

Trust in God in every situation that you find yourself in. Know that he is loving beyond what you can imagine: trust in his love. Know that his wisdom transcends time and space, which he creates and sustains: trust in his providence.

When the universe tumbles around you, do not be troubled, do not be afraid, do not question, remain focused on God's will and unify it with yours. When life crushes you, trust in God and say "yes" to him. Be still and know that he is God.

When God makes you aware of his interaction with you, you may realize that God is speaking to you, not knowing that he never had stoped interacting with you since he created you. God relates to you by sowing into your soul the seed of himself. Being free in God's image, your will controls the growth of the seed. Your level of trust in God is directly related to your knowledge of him. If you know him marginally you will trust him marginally and his seed in you will also grow marginally. A marginal trust is like a dry soil that lacks the moisture necessary for the seed to grow properly. If you know him well and trust him but have no strength to hold on him when the concerns of this world and its time table overwhelm you, then his word is chocked within you by life's thorns. Be a rich soil: ask him to create you as such.

Sometimes you do everything right: you pray, you ask, you focus, and life comes very hard at you, I mean real hard, not just that things are not going your way, but things are purposefully designed to crush you, crush your family, destroy you on the inside, and they come in bundles and they do not stop. Your life becomes so hard and you ask "My God are you not there? Do you not see what is happening to me? Why do you continue on forsaking me?" His silence will puzzle you at first, then it will anger you, then it will depress you until darkness smothers all hope in you. Then from no where, a butterfly dances around you, the sun peaks at you, a bird crosses your path, a purple flower draws your attention. Ah! "God is with me", you breath a sigh of comfort and recommit yourself to him.

What is so important about the world's time? What is so valuable in it that takes precedence over God? Be smart and recognise that it is God who gives and God who takes. As Catherine of Siena proclaims, your sanctification is what he want most for you. The fruit of life's hardships will take you there if your soil is rich. Trust in God, in his love and in his wisdom, and no matter what do not be shaken by anything at all. Focus on Christ.

To Be Humble

If you ever ask God to make you humble, he will not hesitate nor delay, and after you feel that you are humbled, he continues on humbling you for a long time. He loves answering the humility prayer! Why is that?

There must be a direct relation between humility and sanctity. The faster way to sanctity must be humility. It is said that humility is the knowledge of self and the understanding of one's limitation and dependency on others and on God. Why is it so?

You are in the image and likeness of God, but God is not dependent, so why are you? Perhaps it is not so much dependency but relationality that defines humility. God is Triune and hence relational. You are created relational with others and with God. From the moment you are conceived you are in relation with your mother and that relation gives you life and gives her joy. When you are born you continue to be in relation to those around you who love you. When you die, those who love you bury you and pray for you.

To be truly human you must die to self and live to God. It is only by dying to self that you gain yourself. God does not dwell in sinless hearts, he rather dwells in humble hearts. The fruit of humility is exaltation to a world of meaning and joy of heart emanating from a complete trust in God.

When you are humble, you realize that you are made to have God live in you. You realize that your true nature is a being in constant and eternal relation with God. When you are humble you are strong in God not in yourself. The price of humility is the cross and its reward is the resurrection to a new life where God dwells in you.

When Gabriel, the Angel present before God, spoke to Mary, she said "I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." Then the one who is full of grace, the one who is overshadowed by the most high, the mother of God, the most blessed among women, the mother of the Lord, went to serve her cousin.

You cannot be humble if you tried, for that itself is pride. You can only be humble if you ask God to humble you. But be careful what you ask for, since the cross of humility is not easy to carry. You must also ask him to carry your cross with you, he was humble enough to ask you to do the same.

To Pray

God told Catherine of Siena "Whenever you think of me, I think of you". When you pray, your first thought is God, and just before you finish praying your last thought is God. When you grow to pray better, then every thought in between is God too. When you pray like God wills you to pray, you will not enter prayer nor exit it, rather your entire being will remain in prayer through every thought, feeling, and action. Your being becomes an everlasting flow of giving glory to God. Until then you must go on reentering and reexiting the experience of prayer.

When you pray and think of God, you appear before God and heaven, in a similar way that an angel from heaven appears before mankind. The instant you direct your being toward God, he simply exists all within you, and around you. Catherine describes it like the fish in the ocean and the ocean in the fish. Job complains until he enters into communion with God, and then nothing matters anymore. Thomas Aquinas' value for his multitude of writings on faith and intellect faded before him like a straw consumed by fire when he entered into a mystical communion with God.

When you pray with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, you become a new being, no more the same. "How"? You ask. "I am the same and my problems are here present before me." Yet knowing that you age, you do not question it, for although the process is hard to track, it nevertheless continues. It is the same in prayer. When you pray, you enter into communion with God and the experience becomes greater than the subject on your mind. It is God who prays within you and it is God who offers your prayers, and it is God who receives them. You become one with God, without loosing who you are. You become a beloved child in God's Triune Being, loved like an unborn in her mother's womb, one with her, yet not her. Then God gives birth to you and you are new again, but your blood is nourished with his blood and your soul is vibrant with his light.

Pray and make time stands still. When you pray know that God thinks of you.

To Be Aware

You must be aware. Your awareness is demanded of you sooner or later and as long as you refuse to be aware then you are dead to everyone, including yourself. You are never dead to God, but God is the one who demands your awareness. God created you to know and to love and you cannot do either if you are not aware.

Aware of what? Aware of who you are and what you are. Aware of those around you. Aware that you are an individual dearly loved by God into existence. Aware that you are dependent on others before you and after you and most dependent on God. Aware that everything is under God's providence and nothing happens without his knowledge.

Be aware that God dwells within you and within your neighbor. Be aware that God took a name for himself and lived among us. He took joy and suffering and the human experience. Be aware that just like he is fully God and fully one of us humans, in participation with him we participate in being God. Be aware however that you are the created one and he is the creator who sanctifying you by inviting you to partake in his divinity.

Lift up your head and know that you are a child of God, and lower your head and love him in your neighbor like Catherine of Siena taught. Scripture tells you that you cannot love God and not your neighbor, so you might as well start from now recognizing him in your neighbor and love him and serve him there, because it is precisely there that he needs you.

Be aware now or be aware later, but until then you are dead to yourself.