Prayer, reconciliation lead to increased vitality

By Marie Luttrell

Good habits are can be difficult to incorporate into our lives. We seem to get caught up in so many other things, by choice or by circumstance, or simply by letting things happen without being fully conscious of them. As well, our own talents and personalities become a huge part of establishing habits.

Exercise is a good example. For most of my life, I got exercise through circumstance. As a child, I was never into team sports, but I simply played. As an adult, I seemed to always be running after children. The thought of signing up for classes or taking a gym membership was a pipe dream.

It wasn’t just the busy-ness of life either. Physical "intelligence" is not my forte. I have to think about what I want my body to do far longer than most people do. It takes me a very long time to learn to swing a golf club or ski down a slope. I marvel at those who seem to be simply good at anything physical.

For the last 30 years we have been getting the message from anyone in the field of health that we cannot live well without regular exercise – our bodies simply are not made to be sedentary – so I have found ways to incorporate exercise that I enjoy into my life. I have been doing it long enough to understand that I have more energy and a better sense of well-being. Exercising has become part of my life, a habit.

Our spiritual selves, I believe, are much like this. All of us know that a rich sacramental and prayer life leads to a healthy soul. Some people find putting these things into practice comes naturally, while others find it takes much more effort, aside from all the distractions and busy lives we lead in this day and age. Good habits require work, but the degree of effort differs. In nudging people along to faith, we have to be very conscious of this.

In our own faith life, then, we might find some things come quite naturally. If we tend to be introverts who enjoy quiet time, a daily half-hour prayer time is not nearly the effort that it is for someone who is more naturally busy, flamboyant, and outgoing. All of us benefit from time spent in prayer, but some establish the habit of praying far more easily than others.

One sacrament that certainly helps keep the soul healthy is reconciliation. As I have worked with parents to try to bring a fuller sense of this sacrament, I have come across different reactions. One person might shrug and ask what the fuss is about. I know I did something wrong and to be healed I have to go to confession. Another person might confide later that she has not been to confession in years, because she finds it so difficult.

Priests have told me that they can almost see some people’s skid marks on the floor outside the confessional, while others slide through the door on a well-worn path.

Just as there are many ways to exercise and achieve health, there are also many ways to keep our soul in shape, and we must consider trying them. The nature of faith and faith practice requires that we keep growing in our learning, in our prayer, in our sacramental lives. To approach reconciliation as we did when we were children is to deny ourselves some of the richness and health that is inherent in the sacrament.

One form of prayer that might lead to a deeper awareness is the examination of consciousness, a practice that has been used for centuries. Several years ago, the Living with Christ monthly missal posted an excerpt from a book by Michael Prieur called Reconciliation: a User’s Manual. It suggested that by following certain steps for about five to 10 minutes a day, people would discover:

-- A deeper peace within them.

-- A greater awareness of God’s gifts in other people and of God’s hand in their own lives.

-- A yearning to praise and thank God more.

-- A deeper sorrow for their sins and for their lack of response to God."

The steps:

1. Calm down. Slow down. Find a quiet space to be aware of God’s presence in the moment.

2. Look for the "finger of God" in your day. Take only the previous day and try to see where God touched your life: in encouragement, sorrow, gratitude, and so on. It could be from a person or an experience. Reflect on it.

3. Examine your response to God’s call. Were you grateful, selfish, unaware, petty, distracted? Bring all of it to God.

4. Express sorrow. Distinguish between sorrow for not living up to the expectations of God and self-pity for failing to live up to our own expectations. "Sorrow turns our faces to God; self-pity turns our faces to ourselves."

5. Resolve to do better. We are called to start over and be confident that Jesus’s death and resurrection has overcome sin. Pray trusting in Jesus, the Divine Mercy.

When this becomes habit, the longing for the healing of the sacrament increases. It helps those of us who find confession difficult and those of us who are more inclined to the sacrament to find a deeper meaning in it.

Establishing spiritual habits is never easy, but once done, the health and increased vitality in our lives is noticeable.