There has been a lot going on behind the scenes as I rediscover my writing mojo as well as clarify what I want to be writing about. Lots of Gospel reflections, quite a few magazine articles, and most importantly, a brand new Substack.
The past few years my writing here at Daily Graces has been intermittent at best, and even that is generous. To those of you who are still sticking with me, wow. You are absolutely amazing and I am so grateful for your presence and patience as I struggled to get words to page in this format.
Over the summer, at the Chicago Mariapolis, I heard from a friend about this platform called Substack that I’m sure many of you are familiar with. I knew something about Substack but had not really taken the time to figure it out. The more I learned, the more I liked.
At the same time, I started seriously journaling. With the goal of taking time to journal 4-5 times a week, I quickly realized the things I want to be writing about are specifically Focolare in nature. Focolare spirituality continues to become more and more a part of my everyday life. Looking back on the posts here, that is pretty apparent in the writing I have been doing. My new Substack is building on that and really running with it.
Faith Through a Focolare Focus is my new space. There, I’m sharing about the spirituality in general, but also how it’s weaving its way into my life and bringing a beauty and richness to our everyday ordinary. A lot of what I wrote about here I am still going to be writing about there. But, Focolare will be more seamlessly and intentionally woven in, rather than stuttering and starting like I felt it was here.
Daily Graces has been such a gift for me. I have been writing here on and off for 10 years. 10! That’s crazy! I never dreamed when I started it I would be sitting where I am, writing consistently for 2 different websites as well as contributing to 2 different magazines on top of this blog.
Thank you, so much, for everything you’ve shared with me. For the time you have taken reading my work and sharing it with others. I would love to have you continue in my writing journey over on Substack.
A few details about Substack:
Substack offers both free and paid subscriptions. I am still internally struggling with this but am trying to be brave and honestly recognize that this writing I do is work, good work. Work is deserving of fair payment. However, I also want to build a community grounded in the communitarian spirituality of the Focolare, so I do not want the financial element to be a burden to anyone. I have written 2 months worth of Wednesday Gospel Reflections that are free to read. While they are related to specific dates on the calendar, the words of Scripture are always speaking to us. So even if you read them a 3 months away from their dated assignment, there is still something to hear from God.
Starting in Advent, the weekly Wednesday Gospel Reflections went behind the paywall. There will be some posts each month available to everyone. There is already some content up and I hope you will consider checking it out. The most recent fully post is about the November Word of Life:
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God (Mt 5:9)
This blog will be staying up for the time being, so the free resources aren’t going away. Should that ever change, I will let you know in as many ways as possible.
My thanks, friends, for these last 10 years. I hope to see you over on Substack.
My five and four year olds have been running through the house with their race cars recently shouting, “Rampage!” It’s been consistent enough, and loud enough, both Ben and I have been wondering where it came from. Ben recalled it as a quote from a TV show, but not one for kids, so it obviously wasn’t that. He asked them, “Where is the whole ‘Rampage!’ thing from?” They both blankly looked back, unable to tell him. Ben was telling me about this and I asked if he had tried phrasing the question differently. “Which character says it?” or “What was happening in the show or book when you heard it?” Eventually we settled on the recent race car show after trying a few different questions to help jog their memories.
This whole experience got me thinking about the importance of how we phrase questions. We’ve all had a hard time accessing a memory until someone says just the right phrase, we smell the right smell, or are able to back track through a series of memories to get to the one we want. It’s like getting the right key in the lock, once we get the right key the memory opens. It doesn’t matter how we got there, just that it makes sense in our mind.
I experience this same kind of thing when doing math with my kids, especially when they are first learning the basics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. 8+4 can be looked at a few ways. You can start at 8 and count up 4. You can start at 4 and count up 8. You can borrow 2 from the 4 to get to 10, then add the extra 2 that are left. 8×4 is 4 8’s, or 8 4’s, or it’s 8×2 twice, 4×4 twice, etc. No matter how we get there, 8+4 =12 and 8×4 = 32. I’ve learned that each kid has their own preferences for how to break down numbers and put them back together again. It’s important to learn all the ways of course, but it’s also good to learn that this one prefers doubling while another prefers counting up or back, etc.
This is also a great way to think about the different spiritualities and movements in the Church. All the spiritualities of the Church have the same goal – holiness and intimacy with Christ. But how they get there is different, and that’s great! Let’s look at a few (there are so very many, it would be quite challenging to list them all) and see the wonderful diversity open to our spiritual journeys.
Focolare
You had to know I’d start with the Focolare. This is the lay ecclesial movement our family is a part of. In the spirituality of the Focolare, the main focus is unity. The way unity is achieved is by following the two Great Commandments of Jesus – love of God and love of neighbor. Unity can be achieved when we recognize in every person we meet Jesus alive and present before us. In this way, we can go to God together, two (or more) people loving to their fullest capability Jesus in the other person. We become a participation in the life of the Trinity: God, myself, and the person I love.
Benedictine
One of the earliest formal spiritualities in the Church is the Benedictine Order. Founded by St. Benedict in the early 500s A.D., the Benedictines follow the Rule of St. Benedict, the first of its kind. Benedictine spirituality places great emphasis on balance in life, especially between work and prayer. The community of monks come together at regular intervals throughout the day to pray, and then go out into the community (or elsewhere in the monastery) to work and serve in all areas of life. Benedictine spirituality is therefore deeply communal. Rather than moving from place to place, Benedict wished, as much as possible, for the members of the order to remain stable so they could fully invest in their community.
Franciscan
The Franciscan spirituality was founded by St. Francis of Assisi and is one of the largest religious communities, present in nearly every country across the world. Franciscan spirituality highlights both deep contemplation as well as intentional action with special focus on evangelical poverty and care of creation. For St. Francis, and by extension St. Clare who helped found the Poor Clares, the women’s branch of the Franciscan order, all of creation is an opportunity to witness and participate in the goodness of God. This included everything from beautiful sunsets to worms and dirt, from the immense joy of a newborn baby to the suffering and sorrow of a painful death.
Carmelites
Carmelites have a fascinating history as there is no single person we can trace as their founder. The Carmel refers to Mt. Carmel where the prophet Elijah settled, as we can read about in 1 Kings. In 1155 we find the first recorded references to hermit monks living in the caves on Mt. Carmel, dedicating themselves to penance and prayer. They built a church and in the 1200s St. Albert of Jerusalem wrote a Rule for them to follow. The goal of the rule was for the hermit monks to live with greater intensity their faith through lives dedicated to prayer, silence, and solitude. Today, Carmelites continue in this tradition. While many Carmels are cloistered, there are some active communities that live and work within the wider community. Carmelites strive for intimacy with God, recognizing the incredible gift of God’s entrance into human history in the Incarnation. This intimacy is especially sought after in contemplation, stillness, and solitude.
I could, of course, go on and on. There are so many beautiful spiritualities in the Church that offer unique and practical ways of journeying through this life towards heaven. There are the Marianists, the order who ran my college and sparked my interest in the importance of community. The Lasallian priests and brothers founded my high school and impressed upon me the importance of a Catholic education where all the subjects can be connected, faith interwoven even in math. There is the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an old order founded in 1609 during the height of the Protestant Reformation in England by a woman, Mary Ward, who wished for her companions to be uncloistered – a revolution within a revolution and a fascinating study (as I did in my undergraduate thesis). There are the Dominicans, the preaching order, the Jesuits (Pope Francis!), the Augustinians (Pope Leo!), and so very many, many more.
I hope that this post has inspired you to consider learning more about one or two of these spiritualities. Look around your local community. Do you have a monastery nearby, a cloister? Does your parish or diocese have a certain spirituality that meets regularly? Is your parish or one in your area run by an ordered priest? What about the local Catholic schools or universities?
No matter the spirituality, the goal of them all is to bring us closer to Jesus. I heard it explained like this once. The whole of the Gospels brings us to Jesus. But, we read them usually in short snippets, focusing on one or two aspects of Jesus at a time. Just as the smallest particle of Eucharist is still the whole Eucharist, so too these shorter sections still contain all of Jesus. So perhaps I read about one of the healing miracles and feel drawn to a spirituality that has special focus on healthcare, poverty, and service. Someone else may read about Jesus moving away from the crowd to spend time in silence and prayer and feel called to a contemplative life, one that focuses on intense prayer for the whole world and a life detached from the things of the world. Another could read the Sermon on the Mount and be drawn to a life of teaching and preaching, dedicating themselves to the spiritual works of mercy such as “instruct the ignorant,” “counsel the doubtful,” and “admonish the sinner.” Each of these biblical moments tells us something about Jesus and is a way to be close to Jesus. Isn’t it wonderful that Jesus, in his humanity, shows us such a myriad of ways to follow after him!
No one lives with perfect circumstances. Things might be going really well, but there is always something in your life that could be fixed up. Even in the lives of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus – two of whom were perfect people in that they were without sin – even they lived in imperfect circumstances. We don’t get to pick our circumstances but we do choose how we respond to them. The Christmas season highlights a few different biblical characters and the way they chose to respond to unusual, perhaps even seemingly imperfect, circumstances.
Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, responded with fear and doubt when told about his coming son by the angel. He relied on his own understanding and was not open to the possibilities the Holy Spirit could create. Mary, on the other hand, received a message from an angel about a baby as well. But in her case, she remained open to the action of the Holy Spirit, being willing to cooperate with God’s plans even though she did not understand them. She was filled with the Holy Spirit and even before Jesus was born we are able to hear how both Mary and Elizabeth (John the Baptist’s mother) speak inspired words to one another. Both Mary’s fiat, her “yes” to God, and her Magnificat spring from her faith and trust in God’s love.
The Holy Spirit still speaks to us today if we are attentive. Sometimes in the words of others, sometimes in the words that come out of our own mouth. Sometimes, even in our imperfect circumstances.
This fall, my mom was diagnosed with a glioblastoma tumor in her brain. This is an aggressive type of tumor and it was less than 48 hours between diagnosis and brain surgery to remove as much as possible. Our whole world was completely turned upside down. Thankfully, the surgery was as successful as the doctors could hope for. There is still a long road to go, and we don’t know the twists and turns that will come.
Before my mom was diagnosed, she had some speech and word finding issues. After surgery, the doctors said she could have a hard time with speech due to the location of the tumor. We have some funny stories of those early days and the word switches, misses, and adaptations my mom came up with as her healing began. Every so often, she still slips. However, there is one particular slip that I believe is Holy Spirit inspired.
While the chemo my mom was prescribed are daily oral pills she can take at home, radiation had to happen at a cancer center. Every weekday for 6 weeks she went to the center for treatment. After a few visits and settling into a routine, she began calling “radiation” “adoration.” Obviously, these two things are definitely different. And yet, as we talked about it, I can’t help but feel there is some kind of Holy Spirit inspiration between the switch.
What happens in radiation? For a few minutes (really, less than 10, it’s rather remarkable), the person has to lie in perfect stillness while the mechanisms and machinery delivers the radiation treatment to a specific and carefully aligned area of the body. There isn’t anything my mom can do to make this process more effective or efficient except to be faithful to the treatment process. If she didn’t go every day, the effectiveness would greatly diminish. If she wasn’t compliant to the doctor’s recommendations for staying active even when she was exhausted, to try her best to eat as well as she could even when all she wanted was saltines, her body wouldn’t be as strong as it could be to continue fighting this invisible enemy.
What is adoration? Adoration is coming to adore Christ. It is taking time out of our day to place Jesus at the center of our life. Typically, people are pretty still during adoration, with sitting or kneeling being the predominant postures. Adoration is an opportunity to open ourselves up to Jesus’ action in our lives, to let him highlight the areas of our life in need of his mercy, his healing, and his love. In Adoration we can receive inspiration for how to live our lives, what actions should we do or avoid that will help us more fully follow God’s Will. We faithfully show up to adoration, but it’s God’s action that is on display.
From this light, there is a lot in common between radiation and adoration. If you are willing, I’d like to invite you to pray for my mom, Mary Kay, and for her healing. I’d also invite you to pray for my dad, Steve, as he walks this journey with her. My parents have both asked for prayers specifically through Chiara Lubich’s intercession. Long-time readers will hopefully recognize Chiara as the founder of the Focolare Movement that our family is a part of. Below is the prayer of intercession that is officially recognized by the Church. Chiara is a named Servant of God but cannot move forward in the canonization process without miracles associated with her intercession. God willing, my mom can be one of those miracles.
Eternal Father, source of Love, and of every light and goodness, we give You thanks for the charism of unity given to Chiara and for the remarkable witness to the Church and humanity that she gave of this charism, remaining faithful to Jesus Forsaken.
Grant us, O Father, through the action of the Holy Spirit and the Word lived in the present moment, and in following Chiara’s example, the grace to contribute together with all people of good will to the fulfilment of Your Son’s will: “That they may all be one!”
Humbly we ask You to grant us, Your children, to live in mutual love and in love of all so as to rejoice in the presence of the Risen One while, in communion with Chiara and through her intercession, we ask You, if it be Your will, the grace for the complete healing of Mary Kay Jennrich from brain cancer, through Jesus and for the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.
Amen
If you’d like to learn more about Chiara and the movement, I have three resources for you. First is the film Love Conquers All that can be viewed on Formed.org. Many parishes subscribe to this streaming database. Check with your local parish if you are unsure if you have free access or not. The second is the primary website of the Focolare Movement. Third is the main media resource for the Focolare which has videos, articles, and other resources you may be interested in.
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