Time for a Spiritual Health Check-Up? (Rebroadcast)

In this podcast, Fr. Eric Nicolai leads us in a time of reflection and prayer to check up on our spiritual health. He explains that when we are spiritually healthy, we are grateful and cheerful. But when we are not, even the smallest thing drives us crazy.

All those times when we're kind of irritable, restless, disconcerted, really worried about how things are going to turn out, what people might say, that's a sign we need a checkup and we need to get more spiritually healthy.

Our spiritual health will come, he explains, if we are men and women of prayer; if we are men and women who turn prayer into a real dialogue with God. Prayer puts us in contact with God, with our purpose and meaning, and therefore has the profound effect of giving us hope. There is nothing more essential for us than hope, to live by hope. We can't really live without hope. We can't even pray without hope.

The hope that comes from our prayer is also a reminder that we're never alone-- that's how some of the great saints survived. Prayer doesn't have to be a super perfect, forceful, or calm concentration. Prayer is a correspondence and dialogue with Our Lord.

As St. Josemaria Escriva says, “Prayer is the most powerful weapon a Christian has. Prayer must make us effective. Prayer must make us happy. Prayer gives us all the strength we need to fulfill God's commands" (The Forge, no. 439).

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel to seed for me. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your father, who is unseen. Then your father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Well, we begin our prayer now with these words from St. Matthew. Well, are we in our room? Have we closed the door? Or are we praying in secret? Well, we're not fully in secret, because we are together in this oratory, which is the place to pray, but we know the Lord sees us now, and that he says, Well, he will reward us. How will you reward us, Lord, if we go as good sons and daughters to really pray? That's what we want to do now, in this uh time now. It should not just be me, the priest, speaking, but it should be me, the priest, speaking and praying, and you listening and praying. The dominant feature of this time really has to be that we are we're some somehow praying. And if you think that the Lord will reward us, then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Well, that has to give us a lot of hope. Because we know that there's nothing more essential for us than hope, to live by hope. And not only that, but with strong doses of hope all the time, at every moment. That means we see the meaning of what we do, we see the meaning of our prayer, we see the meaning of our work, our interactions. We know that the Lord will reward us. He will reward you and me for the work we do, he will reward me and you for the fraternity we live, for the time we pray, for the moments in which we do our norms of piety. If we understand that phrase, then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. That reward, that fact that our work here has purpose, it should not be seen simply as a reward as in we personally, individually, will go and cash in our lottery ticket. It's a reward that is much, let's say, deeper than that, much broader than that. It's a reward that has to do with the purpose of our life, the meaning of our life. Isn't it true that the greatest reward for us would mean that our life has brought many other souls to you, Lord, because we prayed, because we were pious, and it extended the grace that we have received to so many other souls. And that certainly is a source of hope. We can't really live without hope. We can't even pray without hope. I don't know who said this, but somebody said a man can live 40 days without food. I don't think I could live 40 days without food. I don't know. But anyway, that's what they say 40 days without food. About three days without water, about eight minutes without air. But only one second without hope. And prayer puts us in contact with God, with our purpose, our meaning, and therefore has that profound effect of giving us hope. And a first essential setting for learning hope really is dialogue with Jesus, speaking with Jesus, prayer as speaking. It's as though our Lord doesn't want us simply to be like those hypocrites. The hypocrite, that is, he looks like he's praying, he appears to be praying, he appears to be doing the kind of good things like he says here on the street corners or in the synagogues, but they're actually just looking like they're praying. For our Lord, this would be hypocrisy. And this is certainly not what we want. We cannot simply look like we're praying. And that's why we could say that sincerity and truth with God and a true dialogue with him is what will nurture hope. Because when no one listens to me anymore, well God still listens. When nobody cares about what I have to say, well, the Lord still cares. And in other words, I can always talk to God. Even if I'm to be plunged into complete solitude, I'm never really alone. And if I pray, I am certainly not alone. And it is uh very sad to hear about people when they describe themselves as lonely. They say, I am lonely. As though they perceive like this idea that nobody's interested in them, they're isolated, they're without a contact, without a dialogue, without a sense of being loved. And indeed, it must be a painful experience to feel that loneliness. It could happen that we end up in a situation where we are like physically alone, nobody's in contact with us for whatever reason, but we know we're never alone. And we know that from our time of prayer. That's how some of the great saints uh you could say survived, like Cardinal Mguyen Van Twan, the cardinal from Vietnam, who was a prisoner for 13 years, and nine of those years was in solitary confinement. And he was never really alone, even though he was in solitary confinement. And he has left us a precious little book called Prayers of Hope. And he describes how, in those 13 years in jail, in a situation that was seemingly utterly hopeless, the fact that he could listen and speak to God became for him an increasingly powerful source of hope, even though he was never completely alone. And that enabled him after his release to become for people all over the world a witness to hope. He wrote a beautiful book about his experience. And you know, that great hope does not wane even in nights of solitude. That was the essence of Pope Benedict's encyclical on hope, Special Me, that even if we are hit hard by human circumstances that are very difficult, we can never really use hope if we are men and women of prayer. On April 30th, 1975, Bishop Nagoyan Van Twan was arrested by the communist government, and they were absolutely convinced that he had actually planned a conspiracy to bring down the government. They were convinced of that. So to avoid that, well, they thought, well, we've got to put him in prison. So they didn't just put him in prison out of a whim. They really thought he was a danger to the stability of the government and of the society. This is what he described. He said, from the very first moment of my arrest, the words of Bishop John Walsh, who had been imprisoned for 12 years in communist China, his words came to my mind. On the day of his liberation, Bishop Walsh said, I have spent half my life waiting. It is true. All prisoners, myself included, constantly wait to be let go. When am I going to get let go? I decided then and there that my captivity would not be a time of resignation, but a turning point in my life. I decided I would not wait. I would live the present moment and fill it with love. For if I wait, the thing is I wait for, they'll never happen. The only thing that I can be sure of is that I'm going to die. No, I will not spend time waiting. I will live the present moment and fill it with love. A straight line consists of millions of little points. Likewise, a lifetime consists of millions of seconds joined together. If every single point along the line is rightly set, the line will be straight. If every minute of a life is good, that life will be holy. So he just says, alone in my prison cell, I continued to be tormented by the fact that I was 48 years old, in the prime of my life, that I had worked for eight years as a bishop and gained so much pastoral experience, and there I was, isolated, inactive, and far from my people. One night, he says, from the depth of my heart I could hear a voice advising me, why torment yourself? You must discern between God and the works of God. Everything you have done and desire to continue to do, pastoral visits, training seminarians, sisters and members of religious orders, building schools, evangelism, non-Christians, etc., all of that is excellent work. The work of God. But it is not God. If God wants you to give it all up and put the work into his hands, do it and trust him. God will do the work infinitely better than you. He will entrust the work to others who are more able than you. You've only to choose God, not the works of God. Isn't that another beautiful expression? And you know, through prayer, through dialogue, we can come to that same attitude and that same task to choose God. And never forget that we always count on his grace despite our miseries. Now we might not be in prison, we may not be in solitary confinement, but the Lord can nevertheless, you know, despite our limitations, lack of time, make use of us. And we know ultimately that our prayer is that dialogue of hope. But do I really listen to the Lord? Do I really speak to him with confidence? When I say a memorari for the one who needs it most, do I have that person that needs it most? And do I think, okay, Lord, here's a good way that I can help her? Yet we haven't done anything. We haven't gone to clean her room. We haven't gone to, I don't know, fix something in her life necessarily. We've prayed for her. So often happens, people say to me, you know, they have this problem, that problem, you know, like they're big problems. And they inevitably just say, Father, pray for me. And that's true. My temptation is, well, you know what you can do, you can fix that problem by doing this and calling that place and seeing this doctor, I don't know what. Yeah. That's not what they're asking. They're just trusting in prayer. We know our prayer is a dialogue. But do I really listen? Do I speak with confidence? And the way we know, really, ultimately, is we truly can say that we are friends of Jesus. You know, today's gospel, chapter 13 of St. Luke. The Lord is going through Jerusalem and on his way to Jerusalem. Someone said, Sir, will there be only a few saved? He said to them, Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed. Once the master of the house has got up and locked the door, you may find yourself knocking on the door, saying, Lord, open to us. But he will answer, I do not know where you come from. Then you will find yourself saying, We once ate and drank in your company. You taught in our streets. But he will reply, I do not know where you come from. Away from me, all you wicked men. This is a powerful passage. We ate and drank. They're trying to persuade Jesus that he knows them. That he had been in contact with them. They're knocking at the door to come in. And if Jesus had known them, well, he would say, Yeah, no problem, I know you, right? But he's saying, I don't I don't know who you are. I don't remember who you are. I don't remember talking to you. I don't remember having had a dialogue with you. I don't really know who you are. You may have been at a party with me somewhere. You may have come to a talk, but uh sorry, if you don't ring a bell. I mean, it happens, eh? Your mom tells you you should not open the door to strangers. You should not allow a stranger to come into the house or to even join your birthday party when you're a kid. Even if a stranger comes up and says, I'm a friend of your friend. I played football with your friend. Don't you remember? Picture Jesus at the judgment trying to remember. You see, did you did we have a contact? Nomeswena, as we say. He tells us how some people will come to him and say that we ate and drank in your presence. You taught in our streets. Well maybe, but I I don't know. It's possible. It's like if you were to update this, the type of people would say, Look, uh we went to Mass on Sundays. We said grace before meals, we prayed the Angelus in school. We did some good things. But will all those supposedly good things actually mean that we had a dialogue with our Lord? Authentic piety? Instead of hearing those rather painful words, sure you may have done that, but I don't know you. We want to hear, ah, yes, of course. Of course I know you. You did your prayer every day. You tried. I remember you. You did your prayer. You were often distracted on your phone. But I know you were trying. I know you. I know you. I remember how many times you fell asleep in your prayer. I remember that as you were nodding away. I definitely recognized you because you persevered. If our Lord said that to us, that would fill us totally with hope. Not just because of our personal efforts, but because God gave us that grace and we did correspond. And that's what prayer has to be. It has to be that correspondence. It doesn't have to be this super perfect, forceful concentration. If we are truly men and women of prayer, we will also, like the saints, be full of hope. And if we are full of hope, we will always be full of this sporting spirit and full of cheerfulness. That's one sign of a person of prayer. She has this good humor, this cheerfulness. So what our Father says in the forge, prayer is the most powerful weapon a Christian has. Prayer must make us effective. Prayer must make us happy. Prayer gives us all the strength we need to fulfill God's commands. And that's what we ask that our Lord grant us that grace so that our prayer be effective and give us that lasting happiness. In a changing world where there's a lot of upheaval, there's a lot of uncertainty. But nevertheless, in front of those difficult moments, that we always be happy. I mean, it's easy to be happy when everything is going well, we're on an exotic beach or tropical beach or something, and we're enjoying things. But our happiness has to be independent of the situation that we're in. Paul, he had that. Cardinal V Antoine, who was in prison, had that. And indeed, St. Paul was in prison too. And yet he continually wrote about joy in his letters from prison. It's amazing when you think these great letters that we have of St. Paul, they were written from prison. In fact, the most common theme in his writings about joy in particular were written in the context of filth and squalor of his first century prison cell. We call them the captivity epistles. The captivity epistles are his letter to the Ephesians, his letter to the Philippians, his letter to the Colossians, his letter to Philemon. And those were, you could say, narrowed down to the year 60 or 62, more or less, is what the scholars think. So we can think of him there in those terrible prisons of the time. And there he is praying for all those churches. His letters really reflect the pastor's heart, full of nobility and full of sense of grandeur, of concern, of love. For all his spiritual children. He's praying for Timothy and all the other early Christians. There's a great painting from 1627 by Rembrandt. It's always struck me. At that time he was only 21 years old, and he's shown there in pen in hand. And his situation is harsh, difficult in jail, but that did not stop him from trying to realize or achieve his mission. Especially because he was able to pray. Or think even of somebody like Cardinal Pell in prison. When he arrived there, my understanding, I don't know if this is true, but my understanding is that they didn't want to give him his brevery. And he had to make special requests, and finally they gave him his brevery. And I think a New Testament, so he could pray with that. But when he was in prison, unjustly imprisoned, totally unjustly, he made friends with the prison guards. He made friends with the authorities in prison. He didn't take it out on them. They were just doing their job. He made good friends and he even praised the prison authorities for the good work that they were doing. And he wrote a whole journal, and it was all published. It's a beautiful journal. So we ask for that spiritual health. That spiritual health will come if we are men and women of prayer. If we are men and women who turn prayer into a real dialogue. And the most essential sign of that spiritual health is that we be souls of prayer. You know this author, Matthew Kelly, who he describes the spiritual health. He says, when I'm spiritually healthy, nothing bothers me. This one truth, he says, is the fruit of many years of self-observation. When I'm spiritually healthy, nothing bothers me. He says, when I'm spiritually healthy, my wife can take forever to get ready. The stock market can drop a thousand points in a day. The flight can be canceled. My favorite team can lose. My plans can fall apart. But I'm able to remain calm and maintain a joyful outlook with deep interior peace. Like Moses praying and keeping his arms outstretched. When he had his arms outstretched, that was a sign of prayer. Well, then the Israelites won. When he let them down, they they lost. And we know that we are in a place of spiritual health, and we know when we are not. And I would say one of the key indicators of spiritual health that we are souls of prayer. One of the key signs is that we have gratitude. You know, the doctor comes and he takes your pulse, he says, Mom, it's a good pulse, yeah, you're doing good. Or they take your blood pressure, they put the thing on your arm, and they squeeze it, and then they wait and they hear, oh, yeah, you're good. If they have to do it again, it means that they hurt a bad pulse or something. That would be a sign that you were not healthy. But for us, a sign that we are healthy is the result of that life of prayer, which is gratitude. When we are spiritually healthy, we are grateful. But when we are not, even the smallest thing drives us crazy. All those times when we were kind of irritable, uh, restless, uh, disconcerted, really, really worried about how things are going to turn out, what people might say, that's a sign. I need a checkup, you know, I need to get more spiritually healthy. When I'm not spiritually healthy, the only way for me to be happy is for everything to go my way. And of course, that never happens, that everything just goes our way. It rains, machines break down, people are difficult. Those things always happen. But when we are in dialogue with the Lord and speak to Him, truly we will be spiritually healthy. And all these things can happen. And we just keep plowing the fields. It'll be okay. Just, you know. These are the oxen that we've been given, and those are the oxens we've got to plow the field with. And they go the wrong way, and they, I don't know, they kid you and do whatever oxen's do. But we've got to plow the field, keep at it, and we will be uh spiritually healthy. Let's ask our blessed mother. We can imagine her prayer at that moment when the angel came and announced to her her vocation. That's the way he was able to speak to her because she was attentive and open to God's grace, showing to seek for us so that we have that spiritual health that comes from being souls of dialogue, souls of prayer. I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations you have communicated to me. In this meditation, I ask your head to put them into effect. My Immaculate Mother St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my God and angel intercede for me.