Suffering

Here is the last part of my 3 part blog looking at different values I have come to find important in my life, Happy Lent Everyone. Join me next week as I start looking at my newest workout program, trying to make time for myself. Also be prepared for some big stuff coming next month as I start looking towards my 27 birthday!!!!!

For me my understanding of suffering is closely tied to of our Lord’s embrace of suffering and death to redeem us from our sins. As God the Son, Jesus could have chosen any way to redeem us. So the fact that he chose to redeem us through his suffering and death necessarily gives meaning to every human beings experience with suffering and to my own also. Because we are joined to Christ, our suffering is joined with his, and participates in the redemption He accomplished. One way I have describe this idea to teens is that at times in our lives things breakdown however we wouldn’t have breakthrough in our personal life if those breakdowns didn’t happen. Because Christ would not have been able to give us Easter Sunday without first going through Good Friday.

Understanding this has helped me be able to offer up my suffering and embrace it as part of my human journey. We offer up our lives and our sufferings formally, in the Mass, by consciously offering ourselves up with our sufferings, along with Christ to God the Father during the offertory. Informally, we “offer it up” simply by asking God, in the midst of our suffering, to join our suffering to Christ’s, and to use our suffering. For me this is a helpful way to move through suffering as I wait on redemption. The relation between our present life and the life to come is the condition for the meaningfulness of our sufferings in this present life. The gospel shows us that suffering is an opportunity given to us to participate in our future blessedness by offering our present sufferings, in union with Christ’s sufferings, to God in self-giving sacrifice.

Suffering is part of the human condition however it is how we react to it that truly effects are perception of the suffering and how we get through it. Throughout my life I have not always chosen the most positive reactions to suffering however my reaction to suffering as changed as I have grown in my own understanding of how I am made in the image and likeness of God and how I have come to a deeper understanding of my own personal freedom. It is the integration and understanding of how God is acting in our lives that helps us come to a deeper meaning and understanding of faith. For me answering and understanding these parts of myself has been a part of my journey to come to deeper understanding of the movement of God within my life.

Freedom

Welcome to part two of my reflection on values that I hold. Hope that its making you think and come to some deeper understandings. 
While we are made I the image and likeness of God we also have human freedom to choice and make our own choices. It is part of what sets us apart from other creatures; as humans we are the ability to look at situations and problems internally. When I am dealing with an issues or a choice I have to make, I can use reason that is within me to make this decision. While animals’ base all choices in survival. They do not deliberate and then decide to turn away. By contrast, we are able to formulate the thought: I don’t want to be the kind of person who does such-and-such. We can be motivated by such thoughts. We not only make choices; we evaluate our choices regardless of whether our evaluations are themselves caused by forces behind our control or not.

This is something that we grow into as we get older, for me this was something that I have grown into over the past ten years. Once I moved away from home and started to be able to make all my own choices, I had grown into a lot more human freedom, however had to grow more into questions and looking at decisions, using reasoning that is also part of the human freedom took longer to develop and happened after making bad decisions that didn’t reflect the person I wanted to be.  Human freedom is the unique ability, to reflect on and evaluate our desires and to choose one course of action over another, at this part of human freedom is the one where we need to make sure we are connected and reflecting.

From this point being spiritually free means to allow the movement of the Spirit to work through my freedom to help guide me and help me see what path I am meant to take in my human journey. In our lives there are always a number of areas we want to stay in control off. However for me I can note a number where my control of the situation isn’t coming from a place of following what I know is true, it comes from a place of fear to let go.

Human freedom is an ability. It is the unique ability, made possible by reflecting on and evaluate our desires and to choose one course of action over another. Only once I was able to accept this, I was then ability connect this to being morally responsible for what I take part in. This is where being connected to our spiritual freedom is so important to me. I very involved in social justice and it comes from this place of realizing that my freedom gives me also the ability to see and help those in need and work on creating more justice systems around us. This for me is the importance of moral responsibility and spiritual freedom, in our lives as moral beings, in our social practices including what we do daily and what we ignore.

With freedom however also come the chance to make mistakes, which I have done throughout my life. Because we make our own choices we can choice to move in a bad direction and at times we fall and we suffer. While not all suffering is our own doing, how we react and look at suffering is also effected by our faith. Christian believes that no suffering is ultimately meaningless or pointless. God always has a good purpose in allowing suffering, even when that purpose is inscrutable to us. We always have a choice in our suffering, whether to trust God as our loving Father, and receive the good gift that He is giving us, or to rail against God in distrust and anger.

For me I have seen both sides of this, there were many times especially after the death of my mother that I was so anger with God I couldn’t see how anything good could coming into being through my suffering. I also couldn’t see where God was in what was happening. However after the suffering was over, I was able to come to a deeper understanding of where God was even in my darkest moments.

Made in the Image and Likeness

Welcome to my 3 part blog on looking deeper at some of the values I hold. This came out of a paper I wrote for a class I am currently taking at St Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry. Hope you find it inspiring and fulfilling. I thought it was great time since we are currently in Lent. 

All my life people have reminded me that I am "made in the image of God." It's a nice thought, and probably one that at times I used to try to remind myself of my own value as a human being. However at times it has been one that I have had a hard time accepting. In reality, "Made in the image of God" is an audacious claim and carries some responsibility with it. We all know we are not gods, and at times I can think that I felt very far from being even close to this claim. However while it is true that I am not God throughout my life I have come to see how I am godlike.

It very hard for us to ignore that fact that we are like God, when you look at Genesis it talks about how God created man and women in his image and likeness (126-27). So in many ways in being human we are meant to fully reflect God through everything we are and do, from our intelligence to the relationships. While this is a powerful statement it’s is one that I have had a hard time fully allowing myself to believe through my life.

So, what does it mean to be created in God's image to me now? I view it as that we each are almost a snapshot of God. I have found the more I embrace that God loves me and that he created me in his imagine I am more able to following my own path to  fulfillment and what God desires for me. I feel the greatest pleasure and wholeness when who God made me to be is fully developed and expressed.

But in what ways have I come to see how I am made in the image of God? I come back to how I see God in myself that If I could take a snapshot of God, what would we see and what would it reveal about humans created in God's image?

First way I found how I was in the imagine and likeness of God was through dancing. We know that God is creative, he created everything on earth and every one of us. As humans we make things. Artists make things with paint. Poets, writers, philosophers and lawyers make things with ideas and the compelling use of words. Every human has the capacity to make things, to create, because we are all made in the image of a creative God.

 So for me I came to see this through dancing. I danced from the time I was five through my undergraduate degree. I still dance to this day but not at the same level I once did. It was an outlet but also became a place I created. I can remember choreographing the “dream” part of the dance of the gym in West Side Story. In it I moved around the stage making Tony and Maria get closer to each other. It was creative but after a number of people told me how moving it was. Later I was able to choreograph a number of liturgical dances for youth masses that Diocese of Buffalo put on, I began to see how I could use my gift to glorify God but more and more realized that my ability to create was given to me by God.

How I communicate I believe is another way I see how God has created me in his likeness, because God communicates. The human ability to think and reason, to use language, symbols and art, far surpasses the abilities of any animals. This gift was bestowed when the communicative God's image was imprinted on us.

One of the clearest examples of this in my life I can remember is when I was a sophomore in college I worked on a program called Young Christians at Work. The program took place during Holy Week and because I went to a state university I didn’t have time off from classes, but really felt called to working on the program. I worked with my teachers and got all my work done before hand to go and have to really talk my boss at work into letting me go. At the time I was working full time and didn’t have vacation time to use, so I worked two twelve hours days before leaving for the program. I really thought I was just going because I loved and enjoyed the program as a teen and wanted to still help out. However once I started to work at the program I realized I was there for a greater purpose. That year there was a very quiet girl that year who really broke down during an activity and as I tried to calm her down, I realized she recently lost her cousin during the war and felt so alone. I shared with her about losing my brother and how I knew they were still watching out for us and there when we needed them. I was able to connect and communicate with her on a level that helped her start healing. Later that year I received a letter from her thanking me again, something as simple as communicating help someone more through a very difficult situation.

The last way I found that I am made in the image and likeness of God is in my relationships. The phrase, "Let us make man in our image" reveals an "us-ness" in the very nature of God. The very essence of God is relational, and that essential quality has been imprinted on humans. This capacity for a relationship with God extends to humans, which is why the Genesis story declares that God created Eve for Adam because "it is not good for man to be alone." I have come to a deeper understanding of how I am made in the image of God through my relationship with others. Many times they have been the ones to see God in me when I am not able to. During the hardest and darkest parts of my depression and eating disorder, I didn’t see at all how I was made in the image and likeness of God. However is was those I was in relationship with, my friends and family who saw amazing qualities in me that God had been given me, even when I couldn’t. It was through relationship that I was first able to again see God in my life and in myself.